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This is Honestly.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is nearly one month old. And tonight, the UN is saying about one fourth of Ukraine's population has been displaced by the war. Here in Lviv, local activists and authorities set up a stark visual reminder of the toll of this war. One hundred and nine empty strollers were set up in a square to symbolize the number of Ukrainian children that have reportedly been killed so far. Russian munitions are still having a devastating impact on civilians in key cities.
in Mariupol, in the capital, Kiev. But Russian forces are still making little progress, advancing across Ukrainian territory. The core U.S. assessment hasn't changed for much of the war. I've been doing this for 25 years and I've been in a lot of countries at war. I have never seen a population in a country that has been invaded as determined and unified.
And for today, a conversation with three people who over the past month have found themselves becoming inadvertent war correspondents in Ukraine. First, there's Katerina Saragotskova. This is real hell on earth. She's the editor-in-chief at Zeborona Media, an independent news outlet in Kiev. Katya is usually writing about things like LGBT rights and government corruption.
Then there's Vladislav Davidson. A man has to do what he has to do. I will get a helmet before I get back there. Vlad is the founder and editor of the Odessa Review. He's also Tablet Magazine's European culture critic. And before a month ago, he wrote about things like operas, poetry, and Jewish-Ukrainian identity. Then there's Maria Avdiva.
— 21st of March, Kharkiv, Ukraine. This used to be a sports outlet in the historical building of Kharkiv city center until Russian plane dropped a bomb on top of it. — Maria's a security analyst at a think tank in Kharkiv. She's usually researching Russian disinformation. And then Russia turned its disinformation campaign against her own city. — This is something I would never see.
in Kharkiv. I would never imagine this happening in Kharkiv in these days. But it is here and Russia continues bombardments and shellings. All three of these people have had their lives turned upside down since Putin invaded their country. And all three have become invaluable resources to learn about what's really happening in this war. We'll be right back.
Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Thank you guys so much for being here and for talking with me today.
So just to start, I'm wondering if each of you can tell me where you're sitting at this moment and without sounding too dramatic, if you're safe, perhaps Maria, we can start with you.
Hello, thank you for having me. I'm now in Kharkiv, which is the most eastern city of Ukraine at the moment, and it is from the border with Russia. So Kharkiv was under Russian attack for more than 25 days now, and I am staying in my apartment. I am lucky to have water, electricity, and what is more important now, internet connection.
But many people in the city are not as lucky and were forced to flee Kharkiv or now are hiding in the basements or in the metro, sleeping in the subway cars there with their children. So the situation is difficult for people here in Kharkiv to survive.
And it is not safe here at any place because while we are speaking, the shell goes on and it doesn't stop day and night. It is a constant sound. Sometimes it is closer, sometimes it is a little bit far away, but the shell goes on. And that means that at this moment some other house will be hit by a Russian missile rocket and someone else might be fine dead under the rubble.
So, Maria, you can hear the shelling as we're speaking right now? Yes, it doesn't stop. The residential areas on the outskirts of Kharkiv are very heavily distracted because Russian troops are targeting exactly those areas where only people live and no military facilities are situated. Maria, earlier in the war when we first spoke, you
You described dragging your mattress into the hallway because you thought it would be safer there. Are you still sleeping in the hallway of your apartment? I know that you should sleep and stay in place where there are no windows and be closer to the ground. That's why I continue sleeping in the hallway. But then you're never sure. And well, no place is safe here anymore. Probably only the metro, the underground, because it was designed...
to survive during the nuclear war. But then I do not want to spend all my days hiding because of the Russian attacks. And that's why I try to find this compromise between being safe as much as possible and being able to live my life and to give out the world about what is happening in Kharkiv.
And Maria, how many people are left in Kharkiv at this point? How many have fled and how many would you estimate are still remaining there? Generally, Kharkiv was before the war one and a half million city. The official number was that 600,000 people left only using the railway transportation alone. Then I would estimate that probably the same number of people left using cars.
So basically it will be probably now 300,000 people in the city, but still it is hard to say. The streets are completely empty. They're deserted. I don't see anyone when I walk around the city center except the military people and
and the territorial defense. I see people mostly in front of the shops when they are queuing to get some bread and some food, and also in the underground. So when I go to the metro, they are completely full of people. People are there everywhere. They're lying on the floors. There are small children there and also children of school age.
And we have many underground stations in Kharkiv, and that is why it's difficult to say how many people are there generally, but there are still so many in the city. Katya, can you tell us where you are and if you're safe right now?
I am safe. I am in one of the European countries. I can't tell you more. But yeah, I had to move my kids. I have two children, two boys. We thought that it would be safer to be in Lviv. But one day, Russians, they shelled eight rockets to one of the military bases near Lviv and near the Poland border.
So we figured out that it is not safe anymore anywhere in Ukraine. So, yeah, we decided to move our kids. And then I went back to report. So, Katya, you're saying you were living in Kiev with your two sons. You fled Kiev to Lviv. And then how recently did you leave Lviv? It was like three days ago. I actually don't remember, you know, the date.
It is hard to count days. My team was divided into two cities. Some journalists and producers, they stay in Kiev and some of us are in Lviv. It is not safe in Kiev. It's safer in Lviv, but yeah. Right. So when the shelling started on Friday, you and your family decided to leave. And can you give us...
a little bit more detail about how you got out? It was the middle of the night when we heard sirens. And after that, I heard a few sounds of explosions. In the morning, officials said that military base was destroyed and more than 30 people died. They were Ukrainian military and more than 100 people injured.
After that, the next day or so, there was another bombing in Lviv. So now people who live in Lviv, they hear sirens every day and they don't feel safe anymore. Because, you know, the first day of the invasion, many people fled from their homes, mostly to Lviv, to the Western Ukraine. And they thought that it would be okay to settle them there. Mm-hmm.
But yeah, now there is a new wave of migration from the Western Ukraine to the border with Poland, with Romania and other countries. So now we have more than 3 million people in Europe who fled from Ukraine, more than 10 million people, temporarily displaced persons inside Ukraine. And this is like one third of the country.
Vlad, where are you right now? And give us a little bit of a sense of where you've been over the past few weeks. Thank you, Barry, for asking. I am now sitting in the Polish capital of Warsaw. I've been here for two days. I'm actually working on a film with American actor Sean Penn. I have been reporting in Ukraine for the last month. But on March 8th, my wife asked me to take her family from
from the port of Odessa out to France. I was able to get four of her relatives out of a dozen out. I was not able to help the men in her family because men aged 18 to 60, Ukrainian men are a lot out of the country. From the Romanian-Ukrainian border, I crossed into Romania and it was actually my birthday and it was very surreal. I wound up in a refugee camp on my birthday eating warm shawarma in the back of a Red Cross ambulance, which I wrote about. How was the shawarma at the border?
After standing in the snow on the Romanian-Ukrainian border in a chain-link fence, it was delicious. So right now you're in Warsaw. And do you have family, any family left in Ukraine, Vlad?
Yes, I do. I have about half a dozen relatives to eight relatives left in Odessa. I have tons of friends all over the country who I'm trying to help to get out to various places. I have relatives in Odessa who will not be able to get out. My father-in-law is a stubborn old man.
He's just not going to leave. He's 77 years old and he was born in 1945 before the city was evacuated, taken back from the Romanians and the Nazis. So he just says, my parents stayed here during the Nazi occupation, the Romanian occupation. Why do I have to leave? My military-aged menfolk in my family, there's nothing I'm going to be able to do for them. So I got the women out, the little girls out.
And as soon as I got them out to France and get them settled, I came back on the first flight to Warsaw. I'm going to be here three days and then right back into Lviv and into Ukraine. Okay, so let's go back almost four weeks ago now.
February 24th, Putin invades Ukraine. And I want each of you to tell me, if you could, where you were and what you remember from those first few hours of the war. Maria, if we could, let's start with you.
Yes, I remember the very minute of that day. I was actually planning to go to Kyiv from Kharkiv on the conference to speak about Russian disinformation and how Russian disinformation was preparing ground for the war. But of course, I was not thinking that it will happen that exact day. So I woke up early to go to the train and immediately heard the shelling.
and started to receive messages from my friends and family throughout Ukraine because the same was happening in their cities as well. So I realized that this is a war. There was some moment when I was frozen, not knowing and not understanding what to do.
But then I started to get calls from international media. They somehow found my phone number and asked for comments about the on the ground situation. And at the same time, I was following Russian state media and saw the huge disinformation wave coming out of them.
And they were claiming that they now started the liberation of Ukraine. And Russian state media editor-in-chief Margarita Simonian, editor-in-chief of Russia Today, she posted that day that Kharkiv is ours and posted the picture with the Russian flag on
Kharkiv main administrative building, which was, of course, a complete lie because I was at that moment in Kharkiv seeing no Russian troops in the city and they are not able to get any kind of control over it still. So I decided that my mission now is to fight in this information battlefield because what Russia is doing, it militarizes information and uses it as a warfare weapon
together with tanks, missiles, rockets, the same they do with information. So I can apply my previous experience to this wartime and help Ukraine to fight in this battle. And what I can do is I can provide information. So I asked my family to leave Kharkiv because I knew that it would be better if I will stay alone so that I will not
have people for whom I should take care and that will allow me to invest all time I have into this new mission. And that's why I stayed and still I'm staying in Kharkiv, combating with Russian disinformation with every single possibility I have.
Maria, what members of your family did you send away? Are you talking about parents or children? Who did you help leave? I do not speak about the family because I know that Russia has the skill lists and when they take control over the city, they will go from flat to flat, from apartment to apartment, looking for people who were walking against them. And I do not want Russians to have more information about myself than they've
might have, but I do have family. They are in Ukraine, but not in Kharkiv. Okay. I completely understand that. So it's striking to me that the thing that you're an expert in, which is Russian disinformation and propaganda, you see it being used from the very first day of the war. And this Russian disinformation is saying that your city of Kharkiv was taken, which obviously wasn't true. And, you know,
to see your Twitter over the past month has been watching someone who, you know, was an expert in something become something of a war correspondent. Your Twitter is the thing that I'm checking every single day to get a real sense of what's going on on the ground. Now, Vlad and Katya, you were both journalists in Ukraine before the war began. So I'm wondering, before the war started and that became the thing that you covered, what
What was your typical beat? I write for Tablet Magazine. So what I do is Ukrainian-Jewish relations. But I've just done a lot of political stuff. I write for Foreign Policy about just the nitty gritty of political maneuvering and who's up and who's down in Ukrainian politics. I'm really interested in Belarus. I've written a lot about the Belarus-Ukrainian relationship and how that's been shaping up.
I wrote a book called From Odessa with Love about Ukrainian culture in Odessa. I have a piece coming out in Tablet Magazine just now about the state of Ukrainian literature with a friend named Kate Garcia-Tsurkan, who's an American in Chernivtsi. And we're just writing a big essay on the state of contemporary Ukrainian literature. So that's my beat.
And Katya, how about you? So my understanding is about four years ago, you started Zabrona Media. And I looked it up and it translates, and correct me if I'm wrong, to Taboo Media, which I love both as a name and a brand and as an idea. What kind of stories did you pursue? What were the topics that were especially interesting to you and to your media company? You know, actually, Zabrona Media was a kick-ass media news outlet.
Because we were writing about not very popular topics in Ukraine, like human rights violations, far-right groups, extremist groups, not only far-right, about LGBTQ persons and communities, corruption. So everything that you see in your real life when you live in Ukraine. And I loved it. It was so, so good to...
to raise awareness on the topics that are very pro-European, pro-Western. You know, we really wanted to change something in Ukraine to make it better. And it all fucked up because of Russia. From what I understand, before the war with Russia, you were already on the receiving end of death threats from within Ukraine for the kind of reporting you did. At one point, I read that you even had to go into hiding.
Why were you a target? What did your critics say about your work? When you try to raise awareness on, for example, far-right groups, and this is a topic that Russia tried to make Ukraine kind of a fascist state. They tried to push this narrative. And when you make an investigation on the real extremists involved,
Some of groups in society don't like it. And I understand it. I mean, this is our role as a journalist. And of course, some people didn't like it. And they threatened me and my family. So we left Ukraine for a few months and then we came back.
Katya, I want to get into what some of those subjects were in a minute. Before we do, I want to understand, you and your publication are kind of before the war in a role of criticizing Ukraine, criticizing the government, criticizing violations of human rights or LGBT rights, and so on. How did your understanding of your role as a journalist change?
And also maybe just your role as a Ukrainian citizen change in the days that followed Putin's invasion. You know, one of the first things that we made in our newsroom, we launched a fund called
It is named 2402, like the first day of the war, Russian invasion. Yeah. We decided that we want to help Ukrainian journalists with protection, with vests and helmets, with some equipment, because we are experienced war correspondents. I covered the war in Donbass because you know that the war started in 2014.
I wrote a lot about annexation of Crimea. I wrote a book about that. I was writing about post-Soviet foreign fighters inside ISIS who fought in Syria and Iraq. I've been to Iraq and covered the war against ISIS. We've been through the wars.
And we know how important it is to be protected. A lot of journalists in Ukraine, like hundreds of them, they didn't have such experience and they didn't have an equipment. So we started fundraising from around the world. And now finally we have 70 kids and some protection for Ukrainian journalists. And we know.
So basically, we're just not only doing our job as a journalist, we're not only reporting, not only recording some evidences from regions that are occupied or that were bombed by Russia. We try to help our colleagues.
And this is very different from what we were doing before the full-scale invasion. We now think that this is one of our new missions to protect each other and to help journalists in Ukraine, as well as millions of people now in the very difficult situations.
So many of them want to flee the country. Some of them stay in Ukraine and in the cities like Kharkiv. It is hard to imagine how it is to live there. Maria, you have decided to stay put despite the very serious danger that you're in. It's clear that Putin's blasts spared no one. Women have been killed, children have been killed, foreign aid workers and also journalists.
Just last week, a 24-year-old Ukrainian journalist named Sasha Kushnova, alongside Fox News cameraman Pierre Zhekrevsky, were killed while reporting just outside of Kiev. Another journalist, Brent Renaud, was shot dead by Russian soldiers in the city of Irpin. And you're in Kharkiv, which you describe as a ghost town, and your videos surely make it look that way. So I wonder why you're staying in the center of a war zone. Why don't you leave, and what is keeping you there?
Because I think that what Putin does and what Russia does is evil. And there should be people here in Ukraine, and there are people who are fighting with this evil. And if all of us leave Ukraine, then who will be here to protect Ukraine?
I speak to also to military a lot, to territorial defense units. I yesterday met the guy who actually was taking the body of his comrade from the morgue to Bari. And he told me that his house was
completely destroyed because of the bombardment. And he has no home to go back after the war is finished. And in his eyes and the eyes of other people here, I see this fire resistance and the readiness to stand here till the last,
because there is no way for them, there is no option. That is their land, that is our land, our homes, our children, schools where our children went here and universities. And that is why we need to stay here and protect that because there is no other option. That's not the choice for me personally, because I feel that I have to stay here and do what I can do in this situation.
And many of my friends who were not forced to flee the city also feel the same. They do not want to hide and go somewhere and flee and become migrants. They want Russian soldiers to get out of our country. I have a friend who is now taking his weapons and is now on the forefront fighting with Russians.
because he knows that this is his duty. He has no other options. He doesn't want to go somewhere to Western Ukraine and live in peace and in safety and know that other people will be here fighting for him. So everyone now
does what he or she might do in this situation. Other people are volunteers who are risking their lives bringing food to people who are stuck in their houses and there are many such people, especially elderly, who cannot go out and take care of themselves and volunteers under the constant shell and bring them food.
prepare that food. Other people participate in bringing people from Kharkiv and bringing humanitarian aid to Kharkiv so that people will have some food supplies here. I think this is the moral responsibility now Ukrainians have to defend our country. And the unity, I think,
feel now with Ukrainians, with my compatriots. I have never felt it before. We are like one nation fighting against Russian aggression. And this unity, it gives me strength. And the words of support I get throughout the world, I then spread to these people here and tell him that the whole world is united with us in this fight against evil. And it is very valuable for them. And
They really appreciate that and this is very important for them to hear. I want to talk more with all three of you about the kind of national unity that Maria is describing. But first, Maria, I want people listening to get a sense of what you are witnessing in Kharkiv and what I'm seeing of the videos that you're sharing. Just this morning, you tweeted out this video that you took of a destroyed clothing store.
I think in the historic district in the city and the entire building was in ruins. The water that was dripping had become ice. There was this mannequin lying in the rubble and you wrote this connected to the video. You said, I've already seen more destruction and death in these 26 days than in my entire life. For those who haven't yet seen your videos online, can you describe
Just share with us a few scenes. Share with us the kind of things that you're seeing when you're walking around your city. The most striking, of course, what everyone sees here and what I see every day is the destroyed historical center of Kharkiv because it survived Nazi occupation. And now you have the scene for World War II movies in the city of Kharkiv.
I knew always Kharkiv as a very vibrant, lively, young city with lots of students outside, with many cafes open, coffee shops, and people on the streets were day and night in the city center. And now it's in ruins because of the bombardments.
And the university buildings are without windows, half of them half destroyed, others just completely in rubble. And this is unbelievable to see Kharkiv city center like that because I saw that pictures in my history book.
during Nazi occupation, but then some of the buildings actually survived that Nazi occupation and now they are destroyed. There are many stories which I see every day that strike me. I cannot put everything on the web. So today that story was about the man, 96-year-old, who survived four Nazi camps. And he was living in his apartment, not able to leave, and he was killed because of the Russian shelling.
And there are so many stories of people suffering right now, this moment, because of this constant aggression and war crimes committed here. And I have been, I've told you, to the morgue and seen that so many people there because it is full.
I have them in my mind all the time and it is why I want to share for people all around the world to understand. And he will not stop. And I told you about Russian state media openly discuss which country they will invade next. Will it be Poland or, for example, Moldova? And I have seen people here, they put these signs.
on their cars with the words "children". Apparently, they think that if the Russians will see that there are children in the cars, they will not shoot. But we see on the contrary what happened to Mariupol, this dramatic
theater, there were the children in front of the theater, and Russians deliberately targeted that because there were people, thousands, more than thousands of people hiding in there. So it is very hard to grasp how much evil is now in Russia and how much evil it brings now to my country.
Katya, Maria talked before about a feeling of national unity such that she's never felt before. I wonder if you feel similarly.
Yeah, I can tell that I can feel the same. And I see that actually friends of mine and friends of friends, they are all volunteers now. So they have their job, but also they try to help army, to help other volunteers, to help refugees, not only in Ukraine, but in Poland, in Romania and in different countries.
European countries. So yeah, I can say that the whole Ukraine is a volunteer country to help each other and to help to fight Russia. I feel it like a genocide of Ukrainian people, because what I've seen in Mariupol and what I've heard from people who escaped Mariupol, this is real hell on earth.
We actually don't know how many people survived this huge bombing of the drama theater. This was the theater where the word children was written out in giant white letters on both sides to signal to any Russian planes, and yet it was bombed anyway. Is that right? Yes, yes. There were more than 1,300 people. So...
I don't know how can we call it the war because Russia just destroy people's life, like ordinary people, civilians, children.
Can I add something here, if I may? Please. Russia is losing this war, and actually it is not going according to Putin's plan. And Russia failed to get control over any major city in Ukraine, which was their initial plan. And they are not succeeding because of the fire's resistance and fighting from Ukrainians.
And because Ukrainians are holding up so tightly to their land and Russian troops are putting down their weapons, they surrender en masse. There are huge losses. There are hundreds of bodies of Russian soldiers because Russia does not take them back to Russia, lying all over Ukrainian territory. So that means that Russia is losing. And if we continue doing that with what Vlad said, with the help of the West...
With the fighter jets, with air defense system, with any kind of defensive weapons, middle and long-range weapons, that will mean that Ukraine will win this war. And we are already winning because Russia has nothing to do now than just continue terrorizing the civilians. But with military on the ground, they cannot do nothing.
Those of us who are watching this from the West have been moved by the idea of ordinary civilians. You know, there's a video I saw of a computer programmer, but also of a ballerina, an actor, a mother, sort of taking up arms to defend their land and saying, no, I'm going to stand up and defend everything that I love. But as Vlad mentioned before, you know, the truth is that a lot of men in Ukraine don't have the choice. Men between the ages of 18 and 60 have to stay behind.
So I'd love it if you could tell me a little bit more about the national mood around the nature of the fighting. What are you hearing from people in your communities, from your sources? What are you seeing about the people that are taking up arms and their attitude about doing so? Vlad, maybe let's start with you. So, yeah, so men are not allowed out of the country, but no one is making anybody fight who doesn't want to yet.
Conscription is possible and men are not allowed out. And there has been general mobilization of the reserves and the territorial defense guys. But Ukraine has more than enough men and women. I think one out of every six people in the army now, I think 16, 17 percent are women. And Ukraine now does have two major general, I think major general, lieutenant general, but two women generals.
It has promoted women to the top level of the military hierarchy. So women are fighting also all along the front. So there are enough people who are willing to hold guns. I think up to a million people, including the reserve people and the people who are just holding guns and people who have joined the territorial defense units all around the country are mobilized. There are people in fatigues in every single city. There are enough people to fight off the invasion. There's been tremendous mobilization and tremendous social cohesion.
So there's just enough of that, and I don't think the government is actually making anybody who doesn't want to fight, fight yet because they have the manpower. There's no lack of manpower. There's a lack of weaponry. There's a lack of guns. There's a lack of supplies. They're not getting as much as they want. They're getting some stuff from the Europeans and the Americans who are touting their support, but they don't feel that they're getting quite what they need. And they're winning on the ground because the morale on the Ukrainian side is fierce.
And they're winning because the morale is on one side and it's completely lacking from the other side. That said, the entire society has been mobilized in much of the country. In southern Ukraine, where my family is from, Russian speaking, about 30 to 40 percent of the population are latently what they would call Ruski Mir, pro-Russian. And they're just not interested in saying anything now.
even in harkiv which is the most russified city probably in ukraine even there there's just no interest in making arguments for the quote-unquote russian world now the fifth column that did exist to a certain extent a month ago is absolutely not there now and there's a good reason for this the russians have lost ukraine for a hundred years maria and and katya
Tell us what you're hearing and seeing from your family and friends. Do you have family members? Do you have close friends who never thought of themselves as a soldier who are sort of joining up to fight Russia?
People here, all my friends and colleagues, they knew that there will be such a moment because Russia started this war back in 2014. And Kharkiv was always the city which was on the front line. And Kharkiv military hospital, I have seen, you know, for eight previous years, Ukrainian military were brought here from Donbass because they were wounded.
fighting for Ukraine there. So we were, for the last eight years, living in this situation that it was very clear that the war is very near and it could happen. And there was no warm thoughts or warm feelings towards Russians.
Even some connections existed before 2014. Everything was gone when Russia started the invasion back then. And so I have a lot of my colleagues which are now with the weapons fighting in territorial defense units.
I have some striking examples. So I'm a lawyer. I have a law degree background in international law. One of my friends, he was the judge. And when the moment came, he decided that now is the moment to fight for his country.
He took weapons, put all the laws aside and went to the fourth flight and he is now fighting there. Another university professor, two of them actually, one in economics and one the other in international law as well, are fighting in the territorial defense units
in the forefront right this moment. And it is very hard for everyone there because these are not people with some special military background. They had trainings before the war, but of course, one thing is trainings and the other thing is for...
25 days leave on the ground somewhere in the fields, hearing the shellings and the constant bombardments and understand that any moment you can be killed because Russian soldiers came to your country. So it's difficult for them, but I do not see any kind of fear in their eyes. All I see is anger.
because they are so angry that Russia, what it is doing to Ukraine. And the other feeling is that they will stand up and fight to the end because they are protecting their homes, whereas Russians are occupiers who came here and without no particular goal. When we see them on the videos, they're talking about, you know, denazification and liberation of Ukraine. This is ridiculous. They themselves do not believe in these lies.
And that's why they do not have any morale, actually. And when they see any fire resistance, they even do not want to clash. They do not go into direct fighting because they understand that this is a very weak situation for them. And that's why they continue staying on their positions, you know, terrorizing civilians. But the moment will come soon when the situation will change and Ukraine will push them out of our territory.
I have a story about one of my friends. He's an IT guy. He worked for the US company.
And he had a very, very good salary. And when the war started, he wrote me a message. Like, I decided to go to territorial defense. Like, I was shocked. Because when you see this guy, you never think that he could go to the army and, you know, to take weapons. He's very thin and small and very intelligent. But selfish.
Something, you know, clicked in his mind and he decided to go and fight. And now he actually learns how to shoot. And Katya, had this IT guy, had he ever picked up a weapon before in his life? No, no. He just told me that I never thought that I would go to fight again.
Never thought. He was just, you know, in a unicorn world where he had a very, very good life, very comfortable. And now he spends his days in a military base and training himself. So, yeah, and this is about Ukrainians because everybody can just change in a minute and go and fight to protect the country and to protect their city.
hometown. And this is incredible. And I think that, you know, this practice that some generals get medals after the wars and people make them heroes. But now I think that every Ukrainian who go and fight, who can go to the streets and protest Russians in the occupied cities like Kherson and Melitopol, Berdansk, I mean, a lot of cities in the south,
They are literally heroes because they are fighting with pure evil. The second question I want to ask about this emerging, powerful, maybe unprecedented national unity in the country is the extent to which it's connected to the head of the country, Zelensky, who has emerged as a kind of Churchillian figure.
To what extent are people in Ukraine looking to him and his courage? Or is this something that's just emerging from people and he's sort of a sideshow? Because at least here in America, he has emerged as just this incredibly powerful figurehead. And I wonder how everyday Ukrainians are seeing him and how you understand his role. Katya, let's go back to you there.
You know, before the full-scale invasion, Zelensky was very criticized by society. The society was divided, actually. Like, some groups that hated Zelensky and the government
But he showed himself like a really great figure, a great leader who has a power of a word. The things that he says every day to ordinary Ukrainians, I think they help them, they help us to go through this. I don't know actually if that drove lots of people to go and fight.
I think that it was different because they have no options. But I think that President Zelensky helped with this inspiration.
Maria, what's your sense of Zelensky's role in the national unity that you're experiencing? What are people in Kharkiv saying about him? I think that what President Zelensky does and generally his team are a great role model for Ukrainians because at the beginning, again, Russian propaganda was spreading disinformation that he has left the country and he has made that very powerful picture and the video when he and his team are in the center of Kiev
not leaving the city. And that was a great example for all of us here. Like, why would I leave my home city if president is on his place in Kiev, which has been under constant Russian attacks? That is the role not only...
he has now, but generally many top figures in the office. For example, the other such figure is the head of the general staff, Zaluzhny, which also is a role model for the strength of military and
He showed that Ukraine is fighting fiercely. And so these people, they now give the hope for Ukraine that this war will soon be over. And Ukraine is doing great in fighting and resisting this aggression. And I see ordinary people watching these videos, which I have never imagined before the war that someone would watch the videos.
president giving the speech because this speech, it is so powerful. It gives you this feeling of hope and that everything will be okay and that Ukraine is holding up. And not only him, as I said, but there are also some other public figures. There are these heroic mayors of the cities. For example, the other such figure is the mayor of Mykolaiv, the southern Ukrainian city. Every day he gives videos
saying that Russians tried, but they didn't succeed. We are staying here. We are fighting for our city. And Russia will have eventually to put down the weapons and go out of Ukraine. So this kind of videos, they are hugely popular. People share them on social media and everywhere because it gives us hope and understanding that there is no other possibility for Ukraine is to win this war and we will win it.
Vlad, you're someone who writes a lot about Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Is there anything in the history of Ukraine or really Jewish history that could have prepared us for the fact that a Jewish former comedian would be the head of Ukraine in this moment? Someone whose family has, you know,
was butchered by the Nazis. I mean, how do you understand his role at the moment and perhaps also the role of his Jewish identity? You know, not a lot of people know this,
But Defense Minister Reznikov is also of Jewish descent. And the mayor of Kiev Klitschko also has a Jewish grandmother, even though he doesn't really love to talk about it. And also the head of the presidential administration has some Jewish roots, as do multiple aides in Zelensky's government, who
who are all Russian speakers as opposed to Ukrainian speakers. But are these people that identify as Jewish or do they have some Jewish roots? Zelensky talks about it openly and has deployed it. The mayor of Kiev, Klitschko, I think he is deeply in tune with it, but I don't think he keeps it kind of discreet. But he talks about it in certain circles. And certainly the defense minister knows he's a Jew and doesn't bother him. The former prime minister, Groisman, is also Jewish, but I don't think he cares about it very much.
Let's stick on Zelensky. Tell me about Zelensky and his role and the complicated role maybe that his identity plays
So, Zelensky's Jewish identity. I don't know how deeply he is invested in his own Jewish identity. The Holocaust is obviously that he understands and something that's important to him. That's one thing. But on the other hand, he's not really coming from a place of Jewish literacy or a family which was observant. He grows up in the periphery of Ukraine and of the Ukrainian Jewish community in the 90s. He's a gentleman who really is a child of the 90s.
He turns, I think, 15 or 14 when the Soviet Union dissolves, and he's 25 in 2001. So his teenage years and early 20s are really spent in the outskirts of Ukraine, in Krivoi Rih, a really tough Russian-speaking town in the southeast.
So he doesn't really come up with a lot of Jewish culture, he comes up with Russophone culture and post-Soviet culture in the 90s. And he has a connection to the Holocaust, but he doesn't really have much Jewish literacy or Jewish culture in terms of assimilation or acculturation.
So he comes from the outsider frame and he really represents, and his entire administration, which is chock full of Jews, what it really represents is that these are Russian speakers who are outsiders to Ukrainian blood and soil nationalism.
Zelensky represents a polyglot, multicultural ideal of Ukraine. It's the ideal that's going to win as opposed to the old Ukrainian blood and soil, Milnytsky-Petlura type nationalism. So that's really important to understand why his Judaism is a thing to be talked about.
Putin obviously has used the idea that he wanted to, as Maria mentioned before, denazify Ukraine as the pretext for this war of aggression. Now, obviously, that's total bullshit, right?
But it's also true that Ukraine has a faction of its military and perhaps its culture that is neo-Nazi. And before the war began, that was something that Katya, your publication, would write about. Can you tell us a little bit about the Azov Battalion and the extent to which this is a real faction within the Ukrainian military force and how the conversation about it has changed since the war began?
So before the war, we've talked a lot about them. But you should understand that this is like maybe a few hundreds of people in the whole Ukraine who shared radical ideology. And we were writing about them just to show that this is not normal.
And Russia just used that narrative that, you know, every Ukrainian is a Nazi. I mean, this is ridiculous. Maria, does that resonate with you?
Absolutely. All these narratives about Nazis, they were brought by Russia to legitimize the aggression. If you will now look at what Russian state media show, they will show all kinds of fakes, disinformation, ridiculous lies about how they find these, you know, Nazis here, which they made up themselves and how they are fighting and help liberating people in Kharkiv.
from these Nazis and other cities as well. So this is the complete false narrative. In Ukraine, it was never a case. They do not have any political presence anywhere. And especially in the regions that are now under most heavy attacks, like Kharkiv,
Mariupol and other southern and eastern Ukrainian cities. So that's complete lies. And I just want to make it very clear that discussing this narrative all the time, it was like playing on the side of Russia, because Russia then would pick up all these pictures, you know, three people with the Nazi flag, and then try to show that this is what Ukrainians are. But
It never was the case. It always was the manipulative narrative which Russia used and continues using to legitimize aggression.
Vlad, do you agree with Maria that these Nazi groups are marginal? Absolutely. She's 1000% correct. And I'm Tablet Magazine's European culture correspondent. I write about Ukrainian Jewish stuff all the time. I've been talking about this for eight years. I have a book coming out on Ukrainian Jewish relations. It's called The Birth of a Political Nation. I'm putting out a collection of my writings on Ukrainian Jewish stuff. I've been talking about the Russian disinformation regarding World War II,
history and memory policy and memory politics for years. This is all nonsense. There are marginal, marginal weirdos and freaks and some guys who have blood and soil nationalist ideals. But they're just really a marginal thing.
And there's a joke, actually, in Odessa. One guy says to another, you banderite freak, you're a Ukrainian right-wing nationalist. The other guy says, yeah, the entire synagogue is like that now, you know? One last break, and then we'll turn to what Vlad, Katya, and Maria think is going to happen next and how they feel they've changed since the war began. Okay, so when the war started four weeks ago, I think...
People across the world thought that this is Russia. This is Putin. They're a nuclear power. Ukraine, much smaller, much weaker state. Surely Russia is going to win quickly. But here we are a month later, and that's not exactly what's happening. I'd love if we could quickly go to each of you and tell me what you think is going to happen next and what you are hearing from other people about how they think this is going to play out. Katya, let's start with you.
I'm afraid that we will face a long way to victory. When I read some insights from the West that Russia decided to change their strategy and now they want to hold those occupied territories,
and continue to terrorize other cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv, just bombing there. I think this is a worse scenario, right? Because you cannot do anything. You cannot rebuild what was destroyed. You cannot start a new life because this nightmare has no end. And this could be on for a few months, maybe more, maybe less. So...
In the other hand, Russia is losing money. So maybe that could stop it from this scenario. But yeah, I know I sound not very optimistic. This is my role. Maria, what about you? More or less optimistic than Katya? How do you think this is going to play out in the coming days and weeks?
Well, I believe our military. I believe what they tell me. And they tell me that Russia is weak. They are losing. They have no success on any battlefields on the ground. So I believe that very soon Ukraine will be supplied with the defensive weapons it is asking for.
Probably they will not call an all-flying zone above Ukraine, but there will be some solution that will give Ukraine much-needed help to protect the sky, and that is what we need, the only kind of help, actually, because we don't ask other nations to fight for us. We are fighting for our country ourselves, but we need the weapons, and we will get them.
And we will go to some kind of negotiations process, which is already going. There have been four rounds of talks with Russia on the much stronger positions. And there will be pressure on Putin inside Russia because of the harsh sanctions
And because now the close Putin's circle have no possibility to go to their houses in London, to use their yachts in Monaco or, you know, to possibility for their children to study in the West. And also the ordinary Russians.
which are now buying all supplies of food in Russia, buying out of the supermarkets, afraid that there will be soon nothing there. So all of this will create also internal pressure on Putin regime. And of course, my greatest hope would be that Russia will collapse sooner than we will have them negotiate in these peace talks.
But then I think the realistic scenario will be that there will be some kind of negotiations and Ukraine will be in that process on a very strong position. And we will get some kind of ceasefire, which Ukraine now needs more than ever. But we will have Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty. There will be no negotiations about that because it is not possible.
Vlad, what about you? So the Ukrainians are holding tight. There's no way that the Russians can achieve their objectives by using ground force. They're just losing. They do not have disciplined troops. The number of troops that they have deployed is too thin on the ground. They've not been able to take any large cities. They'll probably take Mariupol sooner or later. We'll blow it to the ground. There's going to be a
negotiation where the Russians will try to partition the state or they will try to get some sort of Finlandization neutrality. Then they'll try to demand Crimea and Lugansk and Donetsk and probably a few other things. A lot of it will be very technical. I do not see them having achieved any of their original objectives.
As they do worse and worse, they're going to blow up more and more civilian housing, they're going to create more and more refugee outflows, they're going to get more and more people flowing out of eastern Ukraine and from Sumy and Kharkiv and Kyiv and Mariupol into western Ukraine. I hope they don't try to blow up my native Odessa, my beloved Odessa, but they may try to do that anyway.
So basically, I see several more weeks of intense scrimmaging, really horrific things in terms of pictures and videos. After that, the Russians will run out of ammo and fuel and capacity to fight. There will be either an armistice and both sides will take time to refuel and rearm. Then it'll begin again and go on for months and years, Syria style. Or Putin will sue for peace under the guise of having won.
I want to end where each of you are sort of personally and have you reflect a little bit on what the past few weeks have revealed. Katya, you've now had to flee your home three times. You fled 2014 from Crimea. You fled Kiev for Lviv. And now you fled Lviv a few days ago for an undisclosed location in Europe. You wrote this about what it's been like to pack your suitcase and leave your home.
You wrote, "We took a few things: a couple changes of clothes, a video camera, a bulletproof vest, a supply of diapers, a Lego Harry Potter set , and a set of felt-tip pens that my younger son can't live without." That to me just stayed with me, just the specificity and the realness of the kind of things you're having to prioritize and what you can fit in your bag and what you have to leave behind.
I'm thinking about your sons and I'm wondering how have you explained what's going on, this war to your children, and what do you hope for their future in this moment? It's tough. I explained my son, the older one, who is six, that this is a war, that we have to go from Kiev and we don't know what to expect in the future.
And he cried. And then he asked if he can see his pal from the kindergarten, his best friend. But his best friend fled Kiev also. And now he lives in the Baltics. And of course, I told them that they will, you know, reunite it somehow. But we just have to wait some time.
And then we can return home. He wants to go to Kiev. He loves the city. So, yeah, actually, when you have kids and you have a situation like that, when you have to make really tough decisions to move from your city, it feels strange.
more emotional to me because I have to somehow explain my son who is also very emotional, you know. He believes that he will return to his home very soon and would hug his grandmother and grandfather who stays in Kiev and everything would be fine.
Do you think that you're going to get back there sometime soon? Of course, of course. Yes, we plan to come back. Sure. I've been thinking, listening to all of you and just watching as ordinary people have totally transformed their lives and sort of been called by history.
who I would be in this moment. You know, if something like that happened here, if I would stay or if I would go, if I would take up arms or if I would bear witness as Maria is doing. I'd love it if each of you could talk a little bit about something that has surprised you about who you've turned out to be in this moment in time. Vlad, let's start with you. I actually surprised myself by my capacity to work
extremely hard, like a monomaniacal crazy person, 18, 19 hours a day for the first three weeks of the conflict. For the first time in many years, I stopped keeping my notebooks and stopped painting and stopped drawing. I only worked and worked and worked to get people out and write articles and work continuously. I surprised myself with my capacity to work like a crazy person. I'm surprised by the resilience of the Ukrainian people and their capacity to put aside their issues of governance
and whatever other issues they have in not being able to collectively do things and stand up. I'm surprised by the stupidity of the Russian political leadership. And I'm pleasantly surprised by the fact that
Western Europeans and Americans stood up and saw how deeply impressive the Ukrainians have been. This reverence that we've gotten from the West has been deeply, deeply surprising and very gratifying. Katya, what about you? Have you surprised yourself over the past four weeks? You know, I'm a journalist, I'm a reporter, but also I'm an editor-in-chief and I have a team of 25 people.
And I found myself in the situation that I have to find words to comfort people, to calm them down, to, you know, and I surprised myself that I did find words that can help them. I never thought that I would be able to be that kind of leader. You know, I used to be this crazy editor that...
Okay, let's do this. Let's do this. Like, you know, hundreds of ideas every day. Now I think that I can have more instruments to deal with such crisis. Maria, you mentioned that within the first few hours of hearing the shelling, you knew that you wanted to stay.
Did that answer surprise you? Yes, it did. And actually, during all these 25 days, at first I was thinking that I will stay here for a week because my family actually was continuous asking me to come and join them,
So I was thinking, I will stay here for a week, then I will join you. And then another week goes on and now it's more than three weeks now and I'm still here and I still do not want to leave my city. And the more time goes, the more resistance and readiness to stay I have because
Right now, leaving Kharkiv feels like leaving my home and running away. And I don't want to run, I want to fight. And that is what surprised me about myself because I was probably thinking before then in such situation I might be afraid for my own personal security.
I am not. I am afraid for the security of my family, of my beloved ones, but not about myself. And that also surprised me because before that, I was always wondering how these people on the forefront line, how they managed to be there, to stay there when the bombs are dropped on their heads and they see tanks.
going on on them? How do they cope with that? And now I understand that you have no other choice. You have to stay and fight. Then it gives you this feeling that you are not afraid. You are just going forward and doing what you have to do.
So you don't feel scared despite what you're seeing all around you in Kharkiv? No, not scared. I wouldn't say that I am scared. The understanding that any moment anything could happen. When I walk on the streets, I always keep an eye on something where I could hide if this moment the airstrikes happens right here so that I can lie down somewhere or find some shelter or some stay near the walls of the buildings and always trying to
see what to do next if this happens and generally this feeling that any moment the situation might change it is here so yeah living through this for all this very different feeling and I think that it has changed me forever so I don't know what will happen next but already I understand that I am different now.
Maria, Vlad, Katya, I am unbelievably grateful to each of you for your time. And you're going to be in my prayers. And let's stay in touch in the coming days and weeks. Thank you so, so much. Thank you, Bari. Thank you for the invitation. It was great. You're doing great work. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. And for more coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine, please go check out our newsletter, Common Sense, bariweiss.substack.com. See you soon.