What A Day - The Humanitarian Crisis In Ukraine

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

A Russian airstrike destroyed a maternity hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol on Wednesday. This is the latest example of Russian forces hitting civilians and civilian infrastructure, with United Nations monitors reporting on Wednesday that over 500 civilians have been killed so far. Washington Post journalist Isabelle Khurshudyan, who is currently in Odessa, Ukraine, joins us to discuss the impossible choices that citizens face about leaving the country.And in headlines: Conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol won South Korea’s presidential election, a new study found that historically redlined neighborhoods have higher levels of air pollution, and a 1915 shipwreck in Antarctica has been located.Show Notes:Washington Post’s Isabelle Khurshudyan – https://wapo.st/3vVQzbwUkrainian Congress Committee of America: donate to humanitarian efforts – https://www.mightycause.com/story/M1wzpfUnited Help Ukraine: donate to the life-saving medical supplies to Ukraine’s front lines – https://bit.ly/3MAFK4DRevived Soldiers Ukraine: donate to treatment of the wounded and the provision of hospitals – https://bit.ly/3vYGpXBRed Cross for Ukraine: donate to tactical medical training and emergency response in Ukraine – https://rdcrss.org/3vT4qPODoctors Without Borders – https://bit.ly/3pOUJxRFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/whataday/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Thursday, March 10th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Priyanka Arabindi, and this is What A Day, the podcast that you can download for free over cellular data if you are on Stephen Miller's parents' family plan. Yes, Stephen Miller, we learned, is still on his parents' family plan. And if you are as well, sorry, I guess. You know, I'll keep your secret, but I am sorry. Yeah.

On today's show, Congress advanced a spending bill that helps Ukraine and quite a bit more. Plus, a 1915 shipwreck in Antarctica has been located. But first, the latest on the conflict in Ukraine as of around 9.30 p.m. Eastern as we go to record. Yesterday, a Russian airstrike destroyed a maternity hospital in the southern city of Mariupol. Gideon, what do we know about what happened? Yeah, we're sort of figuring this out throughout the day. Ukrainian officials said at least 17 people were wounded in the strike. We still don't know the latest number. The governor of the region that includes

Mariupol said that those injured were mostly staff members and that no children were hurt. That's according to the Washington Post. But still, some of the images that are coming out of all this are really quite horrific. Doctors Without Borders said in a statement in part, quote, we are horrified to hear reports that a hospital complex, including a maternity ward in Mariupol, was struck in an attack today. While we can't confirm that this was a targeted attack, we know from our staff that houses and hospitals have been damaged during the fighting over the past days. And to that point, the strike is really the latest example of Russian forces hitting civilians and civilian infrastructure throughout the country. United Nations monitors said on Wednesday that over 500

civilians have been killed so far. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the hospital strike an atrocity, and he wrote on Twitter that there were, quote, people and children under the wreckage. There was also a report from the AP about a mass grave being filled in Mariupol, which a lot of people on the ground have been saying has seen some of the worst of this entire crisis. So yeah, pretty harrowing stuff coming out of that city. Yeah, really horrifying. Meanwhile, ceasefire talks are still ongoing. What was announced yesterday? Yeah, so yesterday morning, authorities announced that thousands of civilians were able to leave bombarded towns around Kiev and also in other cities around the country like Mariupol and Volnovka. The Ukrainian deputy

prime minister said Russia agreed to allow for the evacuation of civilians along six routes. But in the suburbs of Kiev, as people tried to escape, there were reported explosions that were heard in the capital, making their departure even more dangerous. The same happened in Izium, according to officials, another city that was set to be evacuated. So despite that agreement, some civilians were reportedly unable to leave Wednesday because of Russian shelling. Right. Ukrainian authorities have been raising concerns

about potential war crimes. Is this due to those ceasefire agreements? Yeah, it seems to be. It has to do with endangering the lives of these fleeing civilians that are caught in the shelling. Also, an Amnesty International investigation that came out yesterday found that a Russian airstrike on March 3rd in the city of Chernihiv killed 47 civilians.

Amnesty reported that while some civilians were waiting for food and resources, at least eight bombs with no legitimate military target hit the area. Separately, the World Health Organization identified at least 18 attacks on health facilities and workers. Really just horrifying. Yeah, and to get a better sense of what all is happening on the ground, I spoke yesterday to Washington Post journalist Isabel Kershudian. She is currently in Odessa.

That's a port city connected to the Black Sea. And really, a lot of what we talked about was the sort of impossible choices that citizens face as they try to decide what to do amidst all of this. I started by asking her to describe what is going on around her. This is a city that has its roots in imperial Russia. It was created by Catherine the Great. So, you know, there's a lot of historical cultural importance to, you know, this Russian world that Vladimir Putin envisions that are rooted in this city, but also a very strategic one for Ukraine and one that Russia is going to target because

of that. They want to kind of cripple Ukraine economically by cutting it off from the sea. And this would be the last stand here. Wow. And how imminent is that in terms of what you've been seeing and hearing? You know, we do hear the sounds of war here in the sense that every night you'll hear some explosions going off in the distance. And what that is, is actually the air defense system here working. And it's also a sign that the Russians are testing the air defenses here. So they'll

launch something in this direction, air defense will knock it down. And that will obviously, it sounds a certain way. We thought an attack here would happen sooner. But it seems like Russia's military kind of moves have stalled all over Ukraine. And taking some of these cities are taking longer than they expected. So I think the common thinking is that they won't launch an attack in Odessa until after their forces have taken Mykolaiv, which is, you know, where there's a fight right now. So I think once Mykolaiv falls, or if it falls, then Odessa, it's probably within, you know, a day at that point that they would kind of try to make their advance here. Wow. I want to shift gears for just a second to talk about something that is ongoing in another city.

We're still getting the full details as we're talking here, but there was this documented Russian strike on a hospital complex in Mariupol on Wednesday. What more have you or your colleagues heard about this so far? I mean, Mariupol is a city that has been under siege since this started, even before it started, because it was already kind of in that Donbass region that had been at war with Russian-backed separatists for the past eight years. And that's another port city that's pretty important to Ukraine economically. there is a serious humanitarian crisis going on there that people can't get out, that they are encircled and they're not able to get, you know, basic things like food, water, medical supplies, anything. There's been talks of humanitarian corridors and these peace talks of trying to

evacuate people from Maripol. But, you know, these corridors keep breaking down or there is shelling going on in the corridors or in the middle of them. And it is just a horrifying situation there that is now getting compounded by this latest strike that targeted a hospital. And we heard Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zaharova, say that Ukraine was using that maternity ward in the hospital as like a place for its military positions. So I think that's how they're going to justify that strike. But I mean, from the images we've seen, there were definitely women, pregnant women who were in there. And I think there's

going to be quite a few casualties. Yeah, it's really horrific. And it had us thinking, how much of an increased frequency has there been of late in civilian targets getting hit throughout the country? You know, I think we expected this, unfortunately, to a degree that the more resistance, you know, Ukraine put up, the more of a fight they put up, the more Russians would get kind of impatient and be more indiscriminate with their shelling with their kind of strikes. So I think we definitely have seen that in Kharkiv and suburban Kyiv and in Maripol. Kharkiv, we saw this starting to happen within days of the war starting,

that civilian areas were getting shelled with what we believe are cluster munitions. Wow. You know, that civilian areas were getting hit with these multiple launch rocket systems that aren't precision weapons. These are rocket launchers that, you know, just kind of spray the area. And, you know, a lot of civilians are getting hit because of that. Really horrible. I would say just it could get worse, even more so because there is a growing impatience. This war was unpopular in Russia to begin with. I don't think Russians were in any way expecting this war. And there's going to be pressure on the Russian government to finish this up quickly. So I think it is going to lead to a lot more attacks on the population to leverage that. Wow, that's really horrific to think about.

I wanted to go back to something that you had mentioned before, and I was reading some of your reporting on the safe passages out of various cities and sort of how difficult that has been. What more can you tell us about that? And I suppose, why is that not happening with ease, this ability to allow civilians to leave? Yeah, I mean, I think you just go back to these negotiations to begin with, you know, people who I'm usually a Moscow correspondent. And when you saw the kind of list of people Russia sent out in their delegation, nobody really took this seriously, right? Like if they were really going into this as good faith negotiations, that's not who they would send. These humanitarian corridors, as they're called, were leading to Russia and Belarus, which is also ridiculous. Right. So I think we see this a lot with ceasefires, unfortunately, or purported ceasefires.

You know, they fall apart very quickly. I think some are working now better than others. It seems like the humanitarian quarter out of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine worked a little bit better today and people were able to get to Poltava. And in general, like this isn't like a full ceasefire across the board. It's only like, oh, we'll stop in certain areas. And so, you know, people are scared. There's a lot of disbelief in the population on the ground there that, oh, this is a trap. If we, you know, use this moment to evacuate, like, are we sitting ducks, like

going into the line of fire rather than like hunkering down? And when the option becomes sort of hunkering down, as you put it, you were also talking about the fact that in those cases, it's very difficult to have basic resources when given that choice. Can you talk a little bit more about that and sort of the crisis that that decision can lead to? Yeah, I know in Harkiv, I remember talking to the mayor there a week ago, maybe, and he was saying that the shelling was so consistent and so bad that their first priority was trying to get to people and get food, water, you know, even just trying to restore power in

some of those spots because a lot of transformers had been hit. And, you know, we're talking about, it's very cold here right now. I mean, I'm in the South of Ukraine and it was snowing here today and they couldn't do it because the shelling was so consistent that they were not even able to get there. And that's within the city. I mean, we're talking about like a 15 minute drive. People were hiding in the metro stations. I remember talking to someone on the first day of the invasion who was hiding it like on the metro platform, along with hundreds and hundreds of other people. And he was like, oh, I'm hoping I can go home tonight, but they'll like just be an announcement that this is all over that, you know, we've won. And, you know, it's two weeks later. And I think the situation is, if anything, gotten much, much worse. And so it's hard for people to, in some places, they can't get out of the bunker, that it's literally unsafe to leave, you know, an underground shelter. But how long can you stay there when supplies start to get dire? Yeah, it's unfathomable, truly. You also wrote this story about older citizens who, for a lot of different reasons, may not have the ability to leave. Can you talk a little bit

more about that reporting and how it may or may not line up with some of the other points you were just making? Where I'm at in Odessa, it's like one of the few places in Ukraine where if you wanted to evacuate, you had two weeks to safely do so. I mean, you could still do so. And that is a very unique luxury for a city that I think we thought would be like under attack right away. In any of these cases, I always wonder like, why didn't people just leave? Right. And the elderly I met here, you know, one woman I met is blind. I mean, how is she going to possibly evacuate on a train or, you know, one of these exit routes, you know, another man, his wife can't really walk anymore. How are they

going to do it? And like, what will they do when you get to like one of these like refugee camps on the other side of the border? So I think it is much more complicated choice for people than you even imagine. And then, of course, on top of that, men 18 to 60 can't leave. So you see a lot of women and children evacuating. But in some cases, like, you know, their main provider has to stay behind. And that's, you know, incredibly challenging to when you're talking about leaving behind your entire life and starting over with next to nothing. Priyanka, that is my chat with Washington Post journalist

Isabel Khrushchev. We are going to include some links to her recent work and how you can help in our show notes. We'll keep you updated as things progress in Ukraine. But that is latest for now. We are going to be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. The House managed to pass a spending bill to fund the federal government and avoid another government shutdown ahead of their deadline this Friday at midnight, though the Senate still has to vote. After months of negotiations, the details of the $1.5 trillion package were released yesterday morning. Notably, it includes $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine, and it reauthorizes the Violence Against Women Act,

which expired in 2019. But one thing it will not cover is COVID-19 relief funds. The bill did include $15.6 billion for COVID relief initially. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that those funds would be stripped out following disputes between Democrats over how to cover the costs. So under the original formulation, COVID expenses would be offset using unspent funds from last year's American Rescue Plan. But Democrats from 30 states with unspent funds didn't like this plan. And on the other side, Republicans didn't want to allocate new money. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? After COVID aid was cut from the spending bill,

House Democrats introduced a standalone $15.6 billion COVID relief bill, but that is not expected to go very far against Senate Republicans and the filibuster. Just once, I'd like love to hear of a bill that was, you know, presented easy, less than like five minutes before they needed to vote on it to keep the government open. I feel like that would be a cool change of pace for this whole story. We can dream. We can dream. Conservative candidate Yoon Seok-yool won South Korea's presidential election yesterday after edging out his liberal opponent, Lee Jae-myung. Yoon won by less than 1% of the vote on Wednesday, and the neck and neck race marks the most contested presidential election in the country's democratic history. Yoon's win shifts power back to the conservative People Power Party after years of left-leaning leadership under current

president Moon Jae-in. Yoon, who is formerly South Korea's top prosecutor, is known for helping to convict former president Park Yoon-ae during her impeachment trial. During his campaign, the president-elect notably ran on a platform of hardening South Korea's stance on North Korea when it comes to potential nuclear threats. Yoon's term, which lasts for five years, begins in May, and he faces a slew of crises, including rising income inequality, steep housing prices, and slowing economic growth as the pandemic continues. Here is another reason to hate cars as well as dead racists. A new study found that neighborhoods that were redlined by

federal officials during the Great Depression have higher levels of bad air pollution today. That is more evidence that the process of redlining, by which the federal government systematically devalued homes in majority Black and immigrant communities, has affected the health of people living in those areas for generations. The researchers, who are all climate scientists, found that many historically redlined neighborhoods are closer to highways, bringing in traffic and industrial pollution, and causing an increased incidence of asthma among children in those areas. The study also found that residents of these formerly redlined areas breathed in twice as much nitrogen dioxide

compared to their neighbors in more well-off communities. Dr. Joshua Opte, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley who worked on this study, said, quote, this history of racist planning is so deeply ingrained in American cities, basically of any stripe anywhere. So unfortunate and so true. The only large boat that we can say with complete confidence isn't owned by a Russian oligarch, The Endurance was located off the coast of Antarctica where it sank in 1915. And that is the only reason we can say that. Yep. Led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer whose industry was famously killed by millennials,

the Endurance is one of the most famous shipwrecks. It was crushed by ice in what Shackleton described as, quote, the worst portion of the worst sea in the world. But its crew of 27 managed to survive by camping out on ice for nearly two months. Whoa. Which I must know more about. Yeah. I'm incredibly curious.

Locating this ship was extremely difficult given the conditions, but a team of 65 managed to do it using drones, submarines, helicopters, and robots, all of which Sir Shackleton would have described as devil machines. For a ship that spent the last hundred years in a saltwater bath, the endurance is looking pretty good. The ship's name is still visible on the hull. Anyways, we hope this tale inspires at least one listener of WAD to become an explorer. Just be mindful of getting your boat crushed by ice. That could happen, or you could wait it out and explore in 50 years when there is no more ice left.

Jeez. I was going to say, like, you could use Stephen Miller's family plan. You listen to WOD while you're exploring. He probably has great roaming options. But yeah, no, maybe you can wait as well. I'm sure we'll still be around. That is very true. You can keep listening in our iceless sea on the good data plan just merging the glass half

full and glass empty there i think love that for us yes uh those are the headlines that is all for today if you like the show make sure you subscribe leave a review find a boat preferably old and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just the tales of conquest by sir ernest Shackleton, like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Priyanka Arabindi. I'm Gideon Resnick.

And stop procrastinating, Congress. Yeah, come on. Stop procrastinating. Why do you do this? Beat a deadline for once. See what it feels like. Maybe you'll like it. You never know.

You're not setting a good example for the kids. Everyone's just going to look at this and be like, well, I can do everything last minute too. This is the only part of Congress that's a bad example for children. No other parts are bad examples. Everything else is great. Yeah. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance,

Jazzy Marine, and Raven Yamamoto are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran and me, Gideon Resnick. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka. you