Today, Explained - Why Ukraine won’t quit

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

Millions of people have fled Ukraine since Russia’s war begin. We check back in with Kurii Vasyl, who stayed behind, and his niece Yulya, who fled. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Noel King. 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

The day that Russia invaded Ukraine, we called a man and his niece who live in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Now, three weeks into the war, we called them back. Hello. Hello, Mr. Vasil. Yes. Good. We have Mr. Vasil and we have Yulia. Do you remember me? I do. This family is divided by a border now, like so many other Ukrainian families. And they wanted to tell us what they were seeing from both in and outside of Ukraine.

And I want as many people as it is possible to hear the truth, what is happening here in our country. Yulia's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, echoed her words on Wednesday. He pleaded with Congress for help. I call on you to do more new packages of sanctions are needed constantly every week until the Russian military machine stops. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM.

And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about Bet MGM. Download the app today and discover why bet MGM is your basketball home for the season raise your game to the next level this year with bet MGM a sports book worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA bet MGM.com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager Ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario The city where Kuri Vasil and Yulia Lopushinska are from, Lviv, has been luckier than Kiev or Mariupol.

The Russians aren't shelling the city, although air raid sirens sound constantly. Mr. Vasil speaks Ukrainian, so Yulia interprets for him over the phone. Where are you now and where is your uncle now? Well, I am in Poland. My children and I, my husband, stayed in Ukraine. And my uncle, you can ask him later. Why don't we turn that question over to him now. Mr. Vasil, where are you now?

Where are you now? In Lviv. In you now? Your uncle is still in Lviv. Is your uncle safe? What is he seeing? Lviv, right now for today, Lviv is the least dangerous. So the whole territory of Ukraine is dangerous right now. Russian troops, he called them terrorists, they are shelling in chaos the buildings, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, whatever and whatever and wherever places they want. And it is not that in one place or another, they in a different places like chaotic. Do you know what I mean? It sounds like you're saying they never know when, where the shelling is going to hit. That's absolutely.

You never know where it is going, what building or what place or what city can be next. Do you mind if I ask why you decided to leave? My husband stayed husband stays home. He is home right now. He helps, but he wanted us to leave. It's not that he doesn't think that it's not safe, which is not very much. But every time he leaves, he thinks that my children and I, we are at home. And every time the siren goes off, he he's thinking about us and what we are doing, where we are.

And maybe the next shelling be close to our house, you know. Yes. And he is not with us because he cannot stay home all the time with us. That's why he, because he wants to help. He wants to do things. He wants to protect. And that's why it was mostly his decision for me to go. I understand. And I'm, I would like to know from your uncle, I understand your uncle sounds very brave. I understand that he does not sound afraid. But I wonder, how does your uncle plan to protect himself if Russian troops arrive? Does he have a weapon?

Does he have friends who have weapons? How will he protect himself? When you ask if I have a gun, yes, of course, I do have. A lot of people have guns. Besides, they create a local protection army, you know. I am brave because I am among brave people, and it helps me to be brave. I'm not special. I am, as some other 40 million Ukrainian people.

All people, everybody in Ukraine, and myself too, we say we are sure that we will not live in invaded territories, in occupation. Not a single Ukrainian is not even thinking about living in slavery. There is only one variant to win or there will be no Ukraine otherwise. What do you think when you hear your uncle say, we will never back down? Do you agree that that's what should happen? I do. You know, it's very, I cry a lot. It's difficult. I am not in Ukraine, but my heart is there.

Every single morning, you know, my morning does not start with, some people say coffee, tea, breakfast. It starts with the news. I turn it on and I want to see what is happening, what is going on. And I personally, I would not live in an occupied territory. No. I'm going to ask your uncle if he could just give me a little bit of a description. I just want to know what are his circumstances of how he is living and is he okay?

I think at some point it is not good, but when people in Lviv, when they hear the sirens, when it goes off, on and off. So it means that the whole night we had to spend in the bomb shelter. And plus during the day, the situation was the same. It means that we will be all paralyzed. We will not do anything. We will not be able to help our army, to help people who come from the eastern part of Ukraine. We will not be able to do anything. It sounds to me like Mr. Vasil is not going to leave Lviv. It doesn't matter what happens. He's going to stay. Is that correct? correct nobody is going to go anywhere uh everybody stays not only in lviv but in kiev also

but what my uncle also said is that um what men do a lot, they try to protect their families, their wives and children. So they try to take them away because there are no very much safe places, but they try to take them to the most safe, to the safest place they can, or sometimes to send them abroad. But men, they stay in Ukraine and they are ready to go. What was very surprising to me that two days ago, when I was helping some soldiers to go to fight at the KU, and they were going to go by train. What I thought is that the train will come from KU, the train will come full of women and children, and then it will be easy to go to KU,

and the train will be half or even not even half, will be empty and then we can easily go. But what turned out that women and children, when they got off the train, then in a few minutes, the train was full of men ready to go to Kyiv to the capital and fight. Торох, торох сию гору, Горошку-, горошку по трошку, Щоб ми ряни та й нагору втоптали дорожку. У-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у-у- um Thank you. 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

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Terms and conditions do apply. Hello, Igor, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. It's charging, but you know, if it dies, just call me back. Igor Kosov is another person we talked to on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. I-G-O-R-K-O-S-S-O-V. I'm a journalist with the Kyiv Independent. And where are you now, Igor? I'm in Kyiv. What's it like in Kyiv? What's happening there now? Half the city's gone. It's like 4 million people, 3.5-ish. Now there's like less than 2 million left. They're evacuated. The city's real empty. Nobody's outside. It's kind of spooky. It's like horror film spooky, but some people are still walking around. Major supermarkets are open for food. Pharmacies are open, but there are lines. You got to stand in and you're not always likely to get your meds. Every couple of hours,

we'll get air raid alert or shelling alert, you know, a siren. And then once in a while, and depending on the neighborhood, you hear a lot of thunder of artillery or rockets, largely towards the western part of the city where there are obviously Russian forces in the western and northwestern suburbs fighting against the Ukrainian forces. That's about it. When the air raid sirens sound, what do you do? Do you have someplace safe to go? I have a lot of work. I mostly stay in my apartment. I got my windows taped up. I got my mattress in the hallway. There are multiple rooms. I want to say there's like multiple walls between me and the windows. So I'm pretty safe, if anything. I also can go downstairs and go to a not far away. There's a train station.

Train stations in Kiev are famously deep. So it's very safe there. Although the number of people taking shelter in train stations has come down somewhat from the early days from what I've seen. Igor, I apologize for this question if it comes off as naive, but may I ask, how are you feeling? You know, it varies. It fluctuates. Normally, I'm okay. Sometimes I am pretty unhappy about the civilian casualties that are going on everywhere. I'm really upset about Mariupol sometimes. I'm sure you've heard there of the people I talk to, some of the interviews I do. Sometimes I'm feeling a little discouraged about, you know, again, the deaths and destruction and the... But overall, I'm maintaining the faith that Ukraine will hold because Russia's shown that it's not doing very well. And despite it killing all these civilians, I'm hoping that those deaths aren't going to escalate significantly and that Russian forces will be ground to a halt and destroyed before that happens.

Igor, we hope to understand why Russia isn't doing well. We know that there's this very long convoy trying to encircle Kyiv. What's happening? Why are the Russians stuck? And how are Ukrainians along the length of that convoy responding to the men in those tanks? I can't really tell you that because I'm not a Russia defense expert. Fair enough. I can't say exactly why they've decided to do things this way. I can say that the Russians have shown some baffling tactics. They advanced through the open and very tightly packed columns, making them excellent targets for either anti-tank weapons carried by infantry or artillery hits or drone strikes.

They've presented very good targets. They've really screwed up their logistics. Their destroyed vehicles have gotten stuck in giant traffic jams for tens of kilometers. The Russians have just been acting as a very ineffectively, despite threatening to be this overwhelming force. And I don't know if this is because the commanders in Russia have been told what they want to hear instead of what's actually happening. I suspect that's part of it. I suspect that this happens all the way at the top and people just blow sunshine up the ass of their commanding officers a lot.

I'm guessing that's part of it. I don't know for sure why they're just moving and maneuvering so poorly and presenting such juicy targets for Ukrainian weapons. Now, the column thing, that's a little bit outdated information. That column has the supplies have been distributed to the forces that are massing around Kiev, and that column has somewhat been dispersed and placed throughout the forests and the roads in preparation for an attack on Kiev. So far, we haven't seen a massive push because we believe, we at the Kyiv Post, that is, believe that they don't have

sufficient strength yet. But that giant traffic jam of a convoy that's been warned about, that's kind of cleared out and dispersed and is sort of regrouping and preparing to move. As for what the Ukrainians are doing, the Ukrainian forces have been hitting them hard. Ukrainian artillery can be heard working very often throughout the night, throughout the day on the outskirts, on the western outskirts of Kyiv, constantly getting reports of vehicles being shot. There were a couple of heavy firefights between Ukrainian and Russian infantry. So there are constant battles going on. And as Russians try to

find a position or try to find an angle for an attack, while Ukrainian forces hold them off. From the beginning, Russia has said, Vladimir Putin has said he would not target civilians. We know from the beginning that that has not been true. But I wonder, as Russia has been frustrated militarily, have the attacks on civilians gotten worse? What are you seeing? When its blitz didn't work, Russia reverted back to its doctrinal tactics of using heavy artillery to just pound cities, pound civilian targets. I think what I'm seeing is that they're trying to demoralize. They're trying to destroy the spirit of the Ukrainians. They're trying to make them want to sue for peace. They're constantly hitting civilian targets with rockets, with artillery, with airstrikes all over Ukraine. It's especially heavy in the south and east. You've seen what happened to Kharkiv, you've seen what happened to Mariupol, but it's also happening near Kiev, as obviously multiple times when people tried to flee from the suburban

towns west and northwest of Kiev, Russians have attacked these corridors, famously killing women and children with mortars, with other indirect fire weapons, and sometimes even with direct fire weapons. Igor, the last time we spoke on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, I asked you if you had any hopes for a diplomatic solution. And you basically laughed at me and said, no, you did not. I wonder, we hear about talks between Russia and Ukraine, indirect talks at times, direct talks. As this grinds on, as Russia seems unable to finish this war quickly, which is what it wanted, are you any more optimistic that diplomacy might work here, that some of these talks might come through? I'm not sure because, once again, this is Russia. All of this is being directed by Vladimir Putin,

and he is not the sort of guy, I don't think, even if he was the sort of guy to back down, he can't really afford to. He's committed. He's taken huge economic damage. He's thrown Russia into this new kind of narrative of, we're trying to reclaim the great empire of the Rus' sort of thing. we are trying to uh restore the the unity of one people and uh i don't think you can afford to back down um and i think that any negotiations with russia will involve russia asking unacceptable concessions from ukraine and i would like to hope and i also believe that ukraine would just find a lot of these russia's demands which i haven't seen the latest ones but this is what i'm thinking i'm thinking that ukraine would find the majority of russia's demands to be unacceptable and russia would find the majority

of ukraine's demands to be unacceptable so while these talks are going on, I hope that this will prevent more civilian deaths. But based on who rules Russia and how, you know, their entire modus operandi, I don't know if the two sides will be able to come to something that both of them are willing to accept. Igor, what does Ukraine need now? What does it need most? What will it need down the line? Ukraine needs weapons, obviously. It needs humanitarian support. It needs vehicles, ambulances. It needs anti-aircraft, anti-rocket air defense systems, basically. There is that hope about the jets. I don't know if we're going to see them. Ukraine needs some sort of clear commitment for clear messages, you know, when it's going to be accepted into the EU and whether or not it's going to be accepted into NATO.

And also Ukraine needs for the world to maybe try to hurry up and wean itself off faster from Russian gas and oil, because that's what sustains Russia right now. It's six o'clock in Kiev right now. What are your plans? Are you going to stay inside tonight? Yeah, that's right. At this point, it's two hours to curfew. My fridge is pretty much stocked, and I'm going to continue working on a logistics story about the logistics of bringing in food and produce and medicine for Kiev residents. And I'm also going to be working on a couple of other stories, transcribing interviews. I've got a really great feature coming up that I'm really excited about. And after I'm done with that, I'm just going to relax and maybe, I don't know, watch some old shows. And then sleep on the mattress in the hallway. Exactly. It's a very nice mattress.

Thank you, Igor. Sincerely. Stay safe. Thanks. Bye. Today's show was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, edited by Matthew Collette, engineered by Afim Shapiro, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Noelle King. This is Today Explained. Thank you.