0:14

Ladies and gentlemen, can

0:17

I please have your attention? Can

0:21

you dig in? Greetings

0:28

dear listeners. I'm Mark Goldberg, host of the Remden Podcast,

0:30

brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media.

0:34

So, a quick backstory.

0:36

I've been name dropping this report

0:39

a few times in the last couple months

0:41

since it came out. The

0:44

Kremlin's occupation playbook coerced

0:46

rustification and ethnic cleansing and

0:49

occupied Ukraine. I think

0:51

it's a great piece of work and I wanted

0:53

it to get more attention. And

0:56

then some gnome at AEI

0:58

contacted Guy Denton, my

1:00

gnome, and said, hey, why don't you have the author

1:04

of the report on the Remden if you think it's

1:06

so good? And I normally, I

1:08

like to not encourage

1:11

my research assistants from thinking they have

1:13

good ideas, but this was a good

1:15

idea. And so we've invited Carolina Hurd,

1:17

who is the Russia team deputy lead

1:19

at the Institute for Study of War,

1:22

to come on. I should clarify,

1:25

I actually just learned

1:27

the actual status of this moments ago. I

1:30

always thought of ISW as sort

1:32

of affiliated or associated or certainly,

1:35

I think it is literally adjacent

1:37

in a geographic space to

1:40

AEI, where I hang my hat,

1:42

but it is not. It's

1:44

an independent entity. It's just that we

1:46

share. Fred Gagan, who listeners remember, is

1:48

so sharp you need a

1:50

tourniquet every time you shake his hand. And

1:54

so beyond that, that's all. And ISW

1:56

does some of the best open source

1:59

stuff. Why am I explaining it to you?

2:01

I can have Carolina explain it to you. So Carolina, welcome

2:04

to the Remnet. Thank you so much for having me. So

2:06

why don't you just sort of explain what

2:08

ISW's just general approaches before we get into

2:10

the meat of the report stuff. Like what

2:12

does it do? What would you say you

2:15

do here? Yeah, absolutely. So I think most

2:17

people will know ISW over the past couple years from

2:21

kind of our day-to-day reporting on

2:24

what's happening on the ground in Ukraine. So

2:27

we use exclusively open source methodology.

2:29

So that's basically, for example, social

2:32

media sources, local media, leveraging

2:34

commercial satellite imagery, different

2:37

kind of NASA data, that sort

2:39

of thing. Everything that anyone

2:42

could really hypothetically find on the internet. And

2:45

we will pull that together and create

2:47

a very synthetic but granular overview

2:49

of what's happening on the battlefield in

2:51

Ukraine. Our maps are

2:53

formed with that same methodology, as well as

2:55

the written text of the daily campaign

2:57

assessments. Aside from the

2:59

daily battlefield dynamics that we go

3:02

into, we look at a range

3:04

of other stuff under that

3:06

same open source methodology. So we look

3:08

at everything from internal

3:10

Kremlin politics to Russian

3:12

defense industrial-based efforts, force

3:14

generation, occupation, et cetera.

3:17

So the occupation aspect is what I have

3:19

been focusing on at my

3:21

since I've been at ISW for the last over two

3:24

years now. So

3:26

using that same open source

3:28

methodology, leveraging local news,

3:30

Russian language, text, et cetera, to

3:32

build out a picture of what's

3:35

happening in the regions of

3:37

Ukraine that Russia is currently occupying. It's

3:39

worth pointing out, I've known some people

3:41

who didn't only work with open source,

3:43

shall we say, right? Like actual intel

3:45

people. And it's always kind of surprising

3:47

how much people on the actual

3:50

intel side also just use, I don't want

3:52

to say just use open source, but like

3:54

I think a lot of laymen think that,

3:56

oh, just using open source is like

3:58

somehow amateur. hour, when in

4:01

reality, a lot of what actual

4:03

intelligence analysts do is open

4:05

source as well, right? Absolutely. I

4:08

think that the war in Ukraine has really turned

4:10

the tide on this a little bit because

4:13

there's so much out there in the open

4:15

source, and there's so much phenomenal analysis that

4:17

one can do just from looking at drone

4:20

footage on Twitter or looking

4:23

at different geo-located combat

4:26

footage excerpts, that sort of thing. And

4:28

I think we know that a lot of

4:30

our products are used as supplements for the IC, and

4:32

I think it really goes

4:35

to show how valuable and important

4:38

using open source methodology is

4:40

not just as a supplement,

4:42

but also just as a

4:44

co-equal product in the

4:46

overall IC war analysis

4:50

space. Yeah. There's a

4:54

bad analogy, well, not a great analogy, but

4:56

an illustration of the idea is just like

4:58

you could have a spy on the ground,

5:00

that would be closed source, or you could

5:02

have the pings from a thousand Russian phones

5:05

in a certain location. The information that

5:07

the spy on the ground might give you is that there are a

5:09

thousand Russians there, but so would the pings

5:11

from a thousand phones, right? So it's

5:14

a leveraging thing about where you

5:16

would deploy resources at a time when the availability

5:22

of stuff in the open domain is

5:24

like it's never been before. A

5:26

hundred years ago, you'd need a spy, because there

5:29

was no, like, oh my gosh, he opened an

5:31

envelope. There's no electronic signal for that, but it's

5:33

different now. And I think

5:35

the battlefield is so transparent these

5:37

days, which obviously has

5:39

different impacts on the actual

5:41

fighting on the ground, but just from an

5:43

observational standpoint, everything

5:47

is so available. And I think that leveraging

5:49

that availability can bring a lot of really

5:51

unique perspectives to the

5:53

conversation that a lot of times

5:55

the classification systems that exist in

5:58

the IC can kind of, I guess, obfuscate. Some

6:00

of those are effective. Okay, so

6:03

if you had written a book, the general rule in here is

6:05

the first question I ask is what's your book about? But you

6:07

didn't, you wrote a report. So I think that's an exclusion

6:10

to the rule. But what's your report about? Like

6:12

explain it, like you've been working on this thing

6:14

clearly for a while, you're deep in

6:16

it. So what are the top lines?

6:19

Why'd you write it? What are the takeaways,

6:21

etc.? Yeah, so the

6:23

report that I wrote for ISW

6:26

focuses on a couple

6:28

things. First and foremost, it's looking

6:30

at why Russia is occupying Ukraine

6:32

the way that it is. And

6:35

in order to understand why and

6:38

how that's happening in the

6:40

time period between 2022 and

6:42

2024, it's really important to

6:44

deep dive into how Russia occupied Crimea

6:46

in 2014. Because

6:49

that was essentially their first

6:51

experiment with occupying Ukraine. And

6:54

a lot of the lessons they

6:56

learned have been brought to

6:58

fruition at a larger and more expedited

7:02

scale since 2022. So

7:05

essentially just looking into how Russia

7:08

is occupying Ukraine, and why

7:10

it's employing the different tools that it

7:12

is employing, using

7:14

some grounding in historical analysis

7:16

from the Crimean example, and then very

7:19

carefully looking at pretty much everything

7:22

I've observed over the last two years of

7:25

how the occupation administrations in

7:27

Herzogne, Zapparyy, Danyetsky, and the

7:29

Hineskoblast are basically trying to

7:32

forcibly integrate Ukrainian

7:34

civilians, etc., into the Russian

7:37

sphere of influence. And a

7:39

really big part of this too is the overall

7:43

deportation campaign, which

7:45

is something that I started seeing in

7:47

July of 2022, the deportation

7:50

and forced adoption issue, which is

7:52

very much a supplementary tool to

7:54

this overall project to

7:56

basically absorb Ukraine into Russia in such a

7:59

way that it's... It

8:01

looks inseparable to both

8:03

Kiev and Kiev supporters. So why

8:05

don't we take two seconds

8:08

and explain what the deportation and

8:10

forced adoption issue is? Like

8:13

what is what are we actually talking about in scope, numbers,

8:15

etc? So by the Russians own

8:17

admission, and this is a little bit difficult to

8:19

verify, but by the

8:21

Russians on admission, they have, quote unquote,

8:24

relocated, but really under international

8:26

legal norms deported five

8:31

million or so 4.8, so close to 5

8:33

million Ukrainians since 2022. And

8:38

the Ukrainian government has actually been able to

8:40

confirm the identities of 20,000. So

8:43

that's a pretty big discrepancy, but

8:45

it's really difficult to confirm the

8:47

identities of all the people who've

8:49

been deported because unfortunately, quite

8:51

frequently, these deportation schemes target,

8:53

for example, orphans who

8:55

don't have the documentation

8:58

or guardians to kind of speak up for them

9:00

or confirm their identities. So important to

9:02

kind of situate the numbers

9:04

in a wider context. But

9:08

the Russians own admission is 4.8 million. And

9:11

we've been seeing... And that could be overblown though,

9:13

right? I mean, that could be overblown. It's

9:16

also unclear. We do

9:18

know that on some occasions, Ukrainians will

9:20

return to Ukraine after being deported to

9:23

Russia. That's obviously a

9:25

complicated process, but the exact statistics

9:27

are very complicated. I know that

9:29

saying the range between 20,000 and

9:31

4.8 million is like a

9:33

huge range, but I

9:35

would say probably closer to the 4.8 million

9:38

than the 20,000, but

9:41

hard to directly confirm. But

9:43

they're very schemes through which

9:45

Russians are deporting Ukrainians. And

9:48

part of this is to forcibly absorb

9:50

Ukrainians into Russia and

9:52

eradicate their identity, which

9:55

is a component of this. But it's

9:57

also meant to kind of drive a

9:59

demographic transition. position in occupied Ukraine. So

10:02

we've seen deportation schemes through, for

10:04

example, children

10:07

being taken out of orphanages or taken

10:09

from their homes, et cetera, and taken

10:12

to, for example, camps, children's

10:14

camps in Russia, where

10:16

they're taught Russian ideals

10:18

and Russian history and basically just,

10:21

in a lot of ways, it's brainwashing, right? Eradication

10:23

of Ukraine and identity. And we've

10:26

seen so many reports that these children are

10:28

severely traumatized from being taken from their home

10:30

and told that their language, their families,

10:32

et cetera, are, quote unquote, Nazis

10:35

or, you know, any

10:37

variety of narratives that the Kremlin pushes

10:39

about Ukrainians. So there's the

10:42

deportation schemes that target children. We

10:45

know that adults are

10:47

also targeted by these deportation schemes. Sometimes

10:51

they accompany the children, for example,

10:53

so that it's like

10:55

deportation of whole families. So

10:58

there's several, several methods in which

11:01

Russians are basically deporting Ukrainians,

11:03

specifically Ukraine children. But

11:06

in tandem, they're repopulating occupied

11:08

areas of Ukraine with Russians

11:10

to very much change the

11:12

demographic makeup of occupied Ukraine. They

11:15

did this very intensely in Crimea

11:18

between 2014 and kind of 2018.

11:21

They brought over a million

11:23

Russians by Russian estimates, Ukrainian

11:26

estimates, Russian open source data,

11:28

et cetera, to

11:30

Crimea and basically changed the

11:32

population makeup of Crimea. And

11:35

we've seen this since the beginning of

11:37

the war in Ukraine as well. So

11:39

I think it's useful to think about the

11:41

deportation issue as part of

11:43

this dichotomy of deporting

11:45

Ukrainians to Russia and then

11:48

repopulating occupied Ukraine with

11:50

Russia. So I

11:52

have many follow up questions. First of all,

11:54

I think it's kind of worth pointing out that

11:57

if you think this forced

11:59

deportation thing is bad, right?

12:02

Let's use a normative word there.

12:04

If you think it's evil, wrong,

12:07

a crime, the

12:09

fact that the Russians are the ones bragging

12:11

about the bigger number is

12:13

a confession against interest, right? Or

12:15

an omission against interest because it's like the

12:19

bank robber saying, I didn't steal $5 million, I

12:21

sold $50 million, right? So

12:23

it's just worth leaving

12:27

that in mind when you talk about

12:29

this discrepancy between $20,000 and $4.8 million,

12:32

the damning number comes

12:35

from the Russians, not from the Ukrainians.

12:38

But in terms of follow-up,

12:41

do we know, like, I

12:43

would assume that they're just, that these

12:45

expatriated, I guess that's

12:47

the wrong word, but these absconded with Ukrainians

12:49

just don't have the run of the country

12:51

now, right? I mean, are

12:53

they confined? Are they monitored? Are they

12:56

imprisoned? I mean, do we have a

12:58

sense of you would not, given

13:01

the state of paranoia of the Russian regime, you

13:03

would not want anything close

13:05

to 4.8 million potential fifth

13:07

columnists just running free inside

13:10

of Mother Russia. So like, what do we

13:12

know about where they are and how

13:14

they're actually being treated and monitored and all that kind of

13:16

thing? Yeah, so I think

13:19

you point out a huge

13:21

aspect of this, which is kind of that

13:23

social control or like coercion factor. It's

13:26

oddly a lot, I have a

13:28

lot less clear of a picture of what happens

13:30

to adults when they are deported to Russia. But

13:33

we know that there are, there's, I forget

13:36

the exact statistics,

13:38

but there are statistics on Ukrainian

13:40

adults who have been deported to Russia and are

13:42

being kept in like detention centers, for example. So

13:44

they're not just kind of walking around.

13:46

So that

13:49

that's a little bit more opaque to

13:52

me. What's startlingly clear to me is

13:54

what happens to children when they

13:56

are deported to Russia, because the

13:59

Russians, they're much self admit

14:01

on this all the time. It

14:03

makes my job sadly a lot easier

14:05

when it's like coming to the tracking of kids. So

14:09

children are, when they're first removed

14:11

to Russia, they're kept in

14:13

children's camps. That could

14:16

be anything from, for example, like

14:18

a medical, psychological, psychiatric rehabilitation camp

14:21

to something that resembles, at least

14:23

on the outset, a summer camp,

14:25

right? So recreation, outside time, that

14:27

sort of thing. But they're very

14:29

much kept away from

14:32

wider society. And

14:34

there's been some really good reporting

14:36

by Russian opposition outlets, such as

14:38

Medusa, on basically the psychological

14:41

impacts this has on the kids. Because

14:44

Kremlin authorities appear to have

14:46

issued a directive and guidelines on

14:49

how to treat these children. And

14:52

Russian adults who are in charge of, I guess,

14:56

watching these children are really worried about

14:58

them acting out or rebelling against

15:03

their Russian keepers. So

15:06

there's very much an awareness of this on

15:08

the Russian side. But

15:10

then there's children kept in children's

15:12

homes and then adopted out into

15:14

Russian families. The

15:17

Russian commissioner on children's rights

15:19

herself has adopted a Ukrainian

15:21

teenager. And the

15:24

way that she talks about him provides

15:26

a really interesting framework of understanding of

15:28

how these adoption processes go about. She's

15:31

talked about how when she

15:33

first came to him, or when

15:36

she first came to her, she was

15:38

really upset and didn't

15:40

want to speak Russian, didn't want to

15:42

be around Russians. But then after she and

15:45

her husband essentially brainwashed him, he

15:47

became a lot more amenable

15:49

to the Russian side of things

15:51

and was running around calling Ukrainians, Nazis,

15:53

et cetera. So a lot

15:56

of this has to do with the

15:58

deportation in that. itself is

16:00

inherently isolating, but

16:03

they continue to keep these kids

16:05

very isolated so that they can

16:07

kind of instill these pro-Russian ideals

16:09

on them, eradicate their Ukrainian identity,

16:12

and then basically kind of introduce them

16:14

into Russian society as

16:17

very much like controlled kind

16:19

of case studies. So it's very,

16:22

very nefarious. And I think

16:24

we've kind of quietly accepted that this

16:27

is happening because the Russians have

16:29

been very, very sadly

16:31

very good at kind of cloaking this

16:33

in a humanitarian veneer, I suppose,

16:36

where they say that, you know, they're saving these

16:38

kids, they're moving them from a war zone. And

16:41

I think they've drank their own

16:43

Kool-Aid in a lot of ways so that

16:45

they think the Russians believe that they're doing

16:47

the right thing and that they're saving these

16:49

kids, they're saving these Ukrainians. Because

16:53

it's kind of cloaked in this, it becomes a very kind

16:55

of radioactive discussion to

16:57

have. Yeah, I want to come back to that in

16:59

a second, but it just reminds me, I've been meaning

17:01

to ask somebody about this. I've heard different explanations, but

17:04

for a lot of Americans, when they

17:07

hear Putin call Zelensky

17:09

a Nazi, or Ukrainians

17:11

Nazis and all this kind of stuff, my understanding

17:13

is that in the West, well, I

17:16

think it's true, in the West, we

17:18

associate Nazism with genocidal antisemitism and the

17:20

Holocaust. And that's like, we

17:22

associate it with the father who was invading Poland

17:24

and whatnot, but the thing that stands out is

17:26

the Holocaust part of it, right? And that's

17:29

not the way... So do you

17:31

have a good sense of explanation

17:33

for what the Russians mean by Nazis?

17:35

It just means potential invaders? Like,

17:40

does it have a different connotation in

17:44

Russian rhetoric when they say

17:46

that, you know, all our enemies

17:48

are Nazis and fascists? I think

17:50

it's a very convenient Kremlin narrative,

17:52

right? The Kremlin is very good

17:55

at invoking kind

17:57

of anachronistic, historical...

18:00

concepts to basically

18:02

further its own information operations. So

18:04

it's very much always cloaked the,

18:08

for example, the Maidan revolution, revolution

18:10

of dignity, etc., in this Nazi

18:13

rhetoric to really try

18:15

to make it seem illegitimate. There's

18:18

no connections there. It's simply rhetorical

18:21

and kind of a narrative framing.

18:25

That's very much the way that the

18:28

Kremlin kind of conceptualizes or kind of frames

18:31

Ukraine as

18:34

the Kiev-Nazi regime, etc.,

18:36

because that has very strong

18:38

emotional pull for the domestic

18:40

constituency and then also kind of

18:42

in the West, right? They know

18:45

their audiences. They know the emotional

18:48

solicitation this gets when you're invoking, for

18:50

example, the Great Patriotic War and the

18:52

concepts associated with that. So it's very

18:54

much a rhetorical and narrative framing. And

19:00

it's very much lost a lot

19:02

of its strength, I guess,

19:04

at this point, because the Russians use

19:06

it so flippantly that it doesn't

19:08

even make sense anymore. But

19:11

the overall kind of

19:13

strategic objectives in Ukraine

19:15

of denosification, demilitarization are

19:18

meant to kind of invoke this historical narrative

19:20

to elicit

19:23

a feeling from the domestic audience,

19:25

international audience, etc. Right. No, I get that.

19:27

I mean, Putin basically made the

19:29

state ideology kind of a World War II cult

19:32

starting in the early 2000s. I guess

19:36

my only point is when they talk about denosification,

19:39

right? It can't

19:41

immediately mean get rid of the Jewish presidents

19:43

of Ukraine, right? It's got to mean get

19:46

rid of the threat. The

19:49

only way to make it explain on its own, make it

19:51

make any sense on its own terms is

19:55

that in Russian memory, Nazis, yeah, Nazis

19:57

were bad people, but like.

20:00

They also invaded our country and killed 20 million

20:02

of us. And

20:04

so external enemies are called Nazis. At

20:06

least that's the only explanation I can think of for like

20:10

why it wouldn't... Then

20:12

again, I don't know. I take that

20:14

back given how many people are calling Israelis Nazis. And

20:17

we have similar problems there. Okay. So

20:20

you said earlier that 2014 was... And

20:23

this is the thing that I'm sort of fascinated with.

20:25

And I think I went around the horn with Fred

20:28

about this a little bit. He said 2014 was the

20:30

first experiment with this Russification thing. And I get it

20:32

in the sense that... I don't disagree in the sense that this

20:37

was the first implementation of a policy that

20:39

we're seeing right now. But

20:41

if you go to the conceptual level, Russia

20:44

has played these kinds of games

20:46

with population transfers holding

20:48

certain populations literally hostage. And

20:52

as a strategy

20:56

goes way back into

20:58

Tsarist Russia and

21:00

all of that. And I've

21:02

been kind of on this

21:05

kick lately about the Kennan sort

21:07

of Soviet interests did

21:09

not verge that much from Russian interests

21:11

kind of argument. It seems to me

21:13

that the ability

21:15

for Putin to man and merge

21:17

both Tsarist ideology

21:20

or imperial ideology and Soviet

21:22

ideology in a way that is

21:24

totally consistent in his head suggests

21:27

to me that really it's the

21:30

nature of the Russian nation

21:33

that is expressing itself

21:35

in different ways, in different

21:38

contexts over

21:40

time. But there's a real continuity there. I

21:42

mean, this... And

21:45

I'm just sort of wondering, how far back do

21:47

you see the antecedents for this?

21:49

I mean, you're definitely right. 2014

21:51

is not the first time this has happened.

21:54

I think it's kind of the

21:56

first kind of what I call the case

21:58

study when it comes to Ukraine. occupying

22:01

a part of Ukraine. Modern

22:05

independent Ukraine, which only goes back to the

22:07

early 90s anyway, right? So it's like a

22:09

discrete thing. Exactly. But then, I

22:11

mean, you go a little further back and a lot

22:13

of the same principles were applied in 2008 with

22:17

the invasion of Georgia, go further back

22:19

to kind of manipulations in Transnistria in

22:21

the 90s. And

22:23

then of course, the tried and true

22:25

Soviet strategy of moving

22:28

populations around within the Soviet

22:30

Union's claimed borders, right? There were

22:33

the Stalinist deportations, etc. I

22:36

personally do not have the historical background to kind

22:38

of go much further back than that. But

22:41

I think it's absolutely kind of... There

22:44

is a historical continuity in the way

22:46

that we've been observing things. And that's

22:48

what's always kind of startling to me

22:51

is that 2022 occupation and onward is

22:55

not new. The 2014 occupation was

22:57

not new. The 2008

22:59

invasion of Georgia was not new. Like

23:01

we've seen that the condition setting and

23:04

the templating for this

23:06

over and over and over again, but

23:08

still have not kind of figured out

23:10

as kind of an international community or

23:13

Ukraine's partners, whatever, how to talk about

23:15

it or address it or remedy it. And

23:18

I'm not saying that there's a clean and cut argument

23:20

to this, but you'd think that the

23:22

rest of the world would have kind of learned, but we

23:24

just don't appear to have

23:26

learned, right? That the

23:28

international community talks about Crimea and

23:31

thinks about Crimea and the parts of Donbass that

23:33

have been occupied since 2014. This

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24:35

Yes, I

24:37

find it particularly vexatious in

24:39

the sense that we've heard

24:41

a lot about... And

24:44

I'm not making this into special pleading

24:46

for Israel, but I've heard a lot

24:48

about the evils of settler colonialism lately

24:51

and how settler colonial

24:53

powers deserve basically

24:55

whatever they got coming and that all

24:58

forms of resistance to settler colonialism is

25:01

justified and yada, yada, yada, and we

25:04

don't need to rehearse all that. Just as a statement

25:07

of objective fact in history,

25:09

Russia under the czars, Russia

25:12

under the communists, Russia under Putin

25:15

is a settler colonial power. And

25:17

that's one of the things I think is so important about

25:19

your report is like it's

25:21

literally what Israel

25:24

is consistently accused of sometimes with some

25:26

merit, you know, and about some settler

25:28

outposts and whatnot, but

25:31

sort of at a micro level. Russia

25:35

is doing on a grand scale. It's

25:37

moving, it's changing the facts on the ground, moving

25:40

hundreds of thousands or millions of

25:43

Russians into seized territory and

25:46

extirpating hundreds

25:48

of thousands or millions of Ukrainians and

25:50

tens of thousands of children and

25:53

turning them into Russians under

25:56

essentially forced conversions. And if

25:58

like, if Russia were Muslim. and

26:01

Ukraine were Presbyterian and they

26:03

were converting them all into

26:05

the state religion of Islam.

26:08

Everyone would recognize how—well, I would like

26:10

to think everyone would recognize how heinous

26:12

this is, but since the state ideology

26:14

of Russia is the glory of Russia,

26:17

converting these children to the state ideology

26:19

doesn't ping the same

26:21

way psychologically. But

26:24

I can say the same thing about China

26:26

with Tibet and the Uyghurs and Hong Kong.

26:28

I mean, this is real settler colonialism at

26:30

scale, and if

26:32

people truly believe that settler colonialism is

26:34

bad, which I think is a perfectly

26:37

defensible position, it's a little

26:39

historically naïve once you start

26:41

going back in time

26:43

because the history of humanity is the history

26:45

of settler colonialism to one extent or another.

26:48

But if we think this is

26:50

one of these old practices that needs to stop, not

26:53

being more outraged at what Russia is

26:55

doing, kind of calls the bluff

26:57

on a lot of people who are spending a lot

26:59

of time talking about this. Yeah, I mean, I can't

27:02

necessarily talk to the outside of

27:04

Russia examples here, but I think

27:07

that this really goes back to—in

27:09

essence, this goes back to kind

27:11

of the Kremlin concept of reflexive

27:13

control more broadly, right? In

27:16

that the Kremlin is very

27:18

good at—and I'm using the Kremlin as kind of

27:20

like a stand-in for Russia, right? Sure. The

27:23

Kremlin is good at signaling

27:25

to external audiences and getting external

27:27

audiences to do what

27:30

the Kremlin wants. And

27:32

a lot of this has been kind of wrapping

27:34

up the war in Ukraine in

27:37

all of these different narratives. And

27:39

I think that the narratives track very closely

27:41

onto the humanitarian side of things and make

27:43

people really uncomfortable about

27:46

talking about them. And

27:48

that is one of the major

27:50

components of Russia's occupation project in Ukraine.

27:53

Even Ukrainians think

27:55

and feel differently about the way that

27:57

kind of— the

28:01

territories that... So basically, Donetsk,

28:03

Guhansk, the areas that have been occupied

28:05

since 2014 and then Crimea should be treated by

28:07

Kiev in the case of their integration. So

28:11

the way that the Kremlin has

28:13

shrouded its occupation project and framed

28:15

it and kind of advertised it

28:18

is very intentional and it's intentionally

28:20

complicated the way that the world

28:23

kind of looks at it. And

28:25

I think that it's kind of tamped

28:27

down some of the outrage because

28:30

we have all these Kremlin officials running around saying,

28:32

you know, we're rescuing these kids. We're saving them

28:34

from a war zone. This

28:36

is necessary. But then that preempts the

28:38

conversation of, well, why are they living

28:41

in a war zone in the first

28:43

place? Well, it's because you illegally invaded

28:45

Ukraine and subjected its people to occupation.

28:48

So it's all kind of wrapped

28:50

up in ideological narratives and

28:52

kind of reflexive control techniques,

28:55

which makes it a very kind of... I think

28:57

once it was a radioactive issue and I kind

28:59

of stand by that because it's

29:01

difficult for, I think, especially like

29:04

the US to kind of properly

29:07

engage with concepts about genocide

29:09

and ethnic cleansing, etc., because

29:11

the Russians have done

29:13

such an interesting job of cloaking it

29:16

and kind of covering it. Yeah. I

29:18

mean, to me, there's an analogy

29:21

the way Americans and Canadians

29:23

through Native American kids

29:26

into orphanages and try to completely

29:28

deracinate them from their

29:31

backgrounds and their traditions and their culture and their

29:33

religion and make them into

29:35

good Christians. And so the Russian narrative

29:37

that they're telling themselves is they're

29:39

turning these people that they think are good, are

29:42

actually confused Russians. That's Putin's official

29:44

position is that the Ukrainians are

29:47

just sort of... What do they call them? Little

29:49

Russians? They think

29:52

they're a country, but they're not. And

29:54

it seems to me like... Let me ask

29:57

it this way. I don't think they

29:59

feel that way about Georgia. And they certainly don't feel that

30:01

way about Chechens. Do

30:03

you see much evidence that... Sorry, just

30:06

I want to get this idea. So

30:10

I have this big thing about Russia. It's not

30:12

strictly speaking nationalist in the normal sense because

30:14

it doesn't have that kind

30:16

of ethno-nationalism that a lot of

30:18

nationalist countries do. It is imperialist

30:21

and it's self-consumption. It's a little like the French, or

30:24

it's a lot like the French in the 19th

30:26

century where imperialism

30:29

was around Frenchness and the

30:31

French language. And

30:33

so like kids in Algeria at

30:35

French schools would wake up every

30:37

morning, would go to school every morning and say, our forefathers

30:40

is Gauls because they were

30:42

being taught to be French

30:44

despite their ethnic or genetic

30:46

background. And

30:49

Russia sort of operates the same way. They

30:51

think where everybody speaks Russian, they're Russians in

30:53

effect, or at least they're part of their

30:56

zone of control and that kind

30:58

of thing. But I'm kind of curious, do

31:00

we have examples or know of... Is

31:03

there evidence that notions of Russian

31:05

ethnicity are playing a bigger role

31:07

with the Ukrainian population

31:09

because of this theory

31:11

that Putin has that Ukrainians are not in

31:14

fact a different people at

31:16

all? So I

31:18

think the point here that you made is

31:20

a good one. That kind of

31:22

language is a through line that defines

31:25

a lot of what's going on in Ukraine and what's

31:27

been going on kind of

31:29

in the post-Soviet space more broadly. But

31:31

I think that Russia has

31:33

defined its relationships with the post-Soviet

31:37

space on very kind of

31:39

vague and intention nebulous terms

31:41

that don't necessarily account for

31:43

ethnicity or even language. Language is

31:45

an important through line, but

31:48

Russia has defined compatriots abroad.

31:50

This is an actual term

31:53

in Russian foreign policy, Russian strategy,

31:55

etc. Russian

31:57

Compatriots abroad. As anyone who feels...

32:00

The even my peripherally conducted

32:02

spirits. Lead to Russia. So

32:04

they've taken a lot of the

32:07

like concrete grounding factors that have

32:09

an anthropologist would used to define

32:11

a nation nor a community of

32:13

cetera and it for moved us

32:16

from the equation and created israel

32:18

nebulous definition of what it means

32:20

to be Russian and then use

32:22

that to claim. right?

32:25

Special rights to a sovereign people

32:28

and sovereign territory and who seem

32:30

kind of like. Even the

32:32

inklings of this. I mean George's

32:34

a good example. With that said,

32:36

the Break way Republic's Tendon this

32:39

year is a really good and

32:41

scary example of this. With

32:44

the Transdnistrian guy. Deputies

32:47

asking to the Kremlin for the

32:49

she just which is like. Descents

32:51

or Protection and which will allow you

32:53

to explain for just two seconds. for

32:55

people who are not grammarly songs were

32:57

his friends monsieur more? what's it feel

32:59

arm and why does scare? Yeah I'm

33:01

getting into the weeds here and I

33:03

apologize. I know we we we we

33:05

like. Weeds is a really bad as

33:07

that followed the Just Sometimes Yep as

33:09

tell people were north and south as

33:11

when you're deepen. absolutely and. I think

33:14

most people you know have trouble pointing

33:16

out Moldovan a map, much less census.

33:18

Yeah! so ah chimp. This year is

33:20

a small breakaway pro Russian region on.

33:23

How the east coast of not not coast but

33:25

eastern border of not. Other that borders

33:27

and Ukraine ah it has been

33:29

it's It's a fascinating place. very

33:31

much more of like accept crit

33:33

pro russian criminal enterprise than like

33:36

up for proxy state. But

33:39

the the transition congress deputies

33:41

appealed to see the Kremlin

33:43

a couple weeks ago for

33:46

the she just. Which.

33:48

Is A It's a kind of broad

33:51

term that means like defense or protection.

33:53

And we're starting to see kind of that that

33:55

the. almost like what you're

33:58

saying and ukraine throw Sorry,

34:00

not pro. Before 2014,

34:04

when there's Russian speakers

34:06

in Transnistria that need defense from the

34:09

genocidal Moldovan regime, there's Russian

34:11

passport holders in Transnistria that

34:13

need protection from Moldova, etc.

34:16

All of this kind of trying to blow up Moldova's

34:19

EU bid, etc. But

34:24

it kind of goes to the point that I'm making of

34:26

like the Kremlin's

34:28

definition of Russian-ness is so broad

34:30

that they can really fit

34:32

anyone they want into that,

34:35

regardless of religion, ethnicity, language,

34:37

history, cultural affiliations, etc. Yeah,

34:39

no, it's a great hack,

34:41

right? Because Hitler had to

34:44

rely on, because he was a biological

34:46

racist and had these notions of Aryan

34:49

lineage, he had to look for

34:51

the Sudeten Germans, right? But they had to be Germans.

34:55

He didn't want any Slavs necessarily.

34:57

And I know he turned a whole bunch

34:59

of Poles into quasi-Germans, essentially,

35:01

but I think they looked for blond

35:03

ones. But my point is, the Russians, they

35:05

keep it loose and

35:07

just basically say anybody who

35:10

speaks our language or wants

35:12

our digs

35:14

us, they are our

35:17

sphere of control and we're responsible

35:19

for them. They

35:21

don't have to seize every opportunity, but

35:24

it gives them a lot of options,

35:26

right? A lot of optionality on that.

35:29

So I should ask you before we

35:33

get to like, how do you fix the

35:36

specific Russification stuff and all that,

35:38

because that's sort of begging a

35:40

certain question, which is, will Ukraine

35:43

actually win? Why don't we take a timeout on

35:46

the report stuff for a second? How is

35:48

the actual war going? Like, are

35:51

you and your colleagues despairing a little bit? I

35:53

mean, you guys are all very professional, but

35:56

you're not umpires, right? In the sense that

35:58

you're not providing the same thing. same

36:00

sort of granular services that would

36:02

aid in the bet Russia's effort,

36:04

right? You see good guys and bad

36:06

guys in this. And if I'm wrong about that, correct me.

36:09

But it doesn't feel like the war is going the

36:12

way some of us would hope. I

36:14

don't think it's lost, but winning

36:18

it seems farther away. What's

36:20

your assessment of it? Yeah. So

36:23

we're in a tough spot right now. And

36:26

we're in a tough spot largely

36:28

because of at

36:30

this point, US aid, right? And

36:32

the supplemental lack of it. I

36:34

mean, the supplemental being tied up

36:37

and those political debates being

36:39

very much kind of inhibiting Ukraine's

36:42

ability to receive the aid it

36:44

needs from the US. What

36:47

we're seeing right now is Russia trying

36:49

to exploit a very specific time window

36:52

on the battlefield that comes from its

36:54

understanding of political processes in the West,

36:57

specifically in the US with the aid

36:59

packages. And then some

37:01

battlefield realities kind of led by, for

37:03

example, the weather conditions, right? We're

37:06

coming out of the winter, the ground is

37:08

stalling, the mud season makes it really difficult

37:10

for like tracked vehicles to move around. So

37:13

Russia is very much racing against this quickly

37:16

collapsing time window and

37:19

trying to basically push everywhere along the

37:21

line all at once to

37:24

force Ukraine to commit scarce

37:27

manpower material, use up

37:30

its already very, very scarce artillery

37:32

ammunition, that sort of thing, bring

37:35

air to have to make very difficult calculations

37:37

about where to commit scarce air defense assets,

37:39

et cetera. So right

37:41

now, it doesn't look

37:43

particularly great. But

37:47

the way it looks right now and that kind

37:49

of like microcosm or like snapshot of the front

37:51

line shouldn't really be taken as

37:53

reflective of what will happen once EU

37:56

arsenals start hitting or... EU

38:00

aid starts putting Ukraine's arsenals. If

38:02

the U.S. aid package comes

38:05

about, etc., Ukraine is also

38:07

doing some stuff on its own mobilization

38:09

front. So they've lowered the mobilization age

38:11

by two years to expand and make

38:14

that mobilization pool more sustainable. So things

38:16

are changing. And they're changing in advance

38:18

of Ukraine anticipating the ongoing or

38:22

upcoming Russian spring-summer offensive

38:24

that they've promised or

38:27

that's been forecasted. So

38:29

things, again, kind of the KT is

38:31

that things don't look great

38:33

now, but that shouldn't be taken as

38:35

this is the end-all be-all of what it's going to

38:37

look like for the rest of 2024. And

38:42

I think it's really important to not just kind of

38:44

envision 2024 as the year of Ukraine sitting

38:48

back receiving Russian offensives and

38:50

not pushing forward at all and

38:53

basically just letting Russia keep

38:55

the initiative throughout the entire year because

38:57

that will be very, very costly for

38:59

Ukraine in the scheme of things. You

39:01

speak Russian, right? So you follow

39:03

Russian media and social media. I

39:05

think it's very hard for people in the

39:08

West to appreciate what a

39:10

hot house environment Russian

39:12

media is and how impervious

39:15

it is to outside facts and all

39:17

that. At the same time, the terrorist

39:20

attack by at the concert hall

39:22

like 10 days ago or something like that, do

39:25

you get any sense of like Ukraine

39:28

was behind it? Is a widely

39:31

subscribed to view

39:33

among normal Russians? Is there a way to know

39:35

that? I mean, it's not like you can poll

39:37

reliably on that kind of thing.

39:39

And it's not like a lot of people are going

39:41

to post their true feelings on their telegram accounts. But

39:44

at the same time, I find

39:47

it very hard to believe that that message

39:50

is succeeding, but they're definitely trying. It's

39:52

a good point. And I don't have an

39:55

exact feeling on how your average Russian thinks

39:57

about this, but even the Kremlin messaging has

39:59

been super dissonant, because on

40:01

one hand, Putin,

40:03

Pazu Shev, all of these kind of

40:06

high-ranking Kremlin figures have been running around

40:08

saying, it's Ukraine.

40:11

But then on the other hand,

40:13

the actual tangible physical response to

40:15

this has been crackdowns against

40:18

migrant communities, kind of

40:21

counter-terrorism raids in the caucuses, etc.,

40:23

that very much look like the

40:26

Kremlin is actually trying to address

40:28

the potential threat of ISK, ISK

40:31

recruitment, etc., in

40:34

Russia itself, and realizing that

40:36

migrant communities are particularly vulnerable because

40:39

of the way that the Kremlin disenfranchised them, etc. So

40:43

the Kremlin messaging on this is weird,

40:46

and it's not agreeing, right?

40:48

Because officials are saying one thing, law

40:50

enforcement is doing another thing that

40:53

doesn't seem to look

40:55

like they're going after Ukraine. So

40:58

just from a basic messaging standpoint, it's kind

41:00

of... The

41:03

Kremlin line is one thing, the Kremlin response

41:05

is another, and it's interesting, and I don't

41:07

have a very good sense of how

41:09

your average Russian is picking up on

41:12

that divergence, but it's very interesting. Yeah,

41:17

so when you monitor, just more generally,

41:20

forget the ISK part. When

41:22

you monitor Russian media,

41:24

Russian social media, how

41:29

free do you think actual Russians feel

41:31

about expressing their views on what's going

41:33

on? Because it's always kind of shocking

41:35

to me. I'm

41:38

a pretty devoted listener to the Telegraphs

41:40

Ukraine, the latest podcast, and

41:42

whenever they're reading from what the

41:44

Russian military bloggers are saying about this war,

41:46

it's a disaster, Putin screwed it

41:48

up. You don't say Putin screwed it up, but

41:50

they'll say the military screwed it up. It

41:55

sounds like pretty harsh stuff for

41:57

a country that is supposed to be this... quasi-totalitarian

42:01

police state. And

42:03

so the harshness has to be kind of, certain

42:06

kind of criticism has to be

42:08

allowed to be expressed, but more

42:11

broadly, because it serves Putin's aims or

42:13

whatever. But like what

42:15

visibility do you guys actually have about what

42:19

the state of Russian moral

42:22

is, Russian attitudes about the

42:25

war? Is

42:27

it all gleaned from the small protests

42:29

or people throwing flowers in the Volney's

42:31

grave, or is there more

42:34

robust data to be found? We've looked at

42:36

a lot of different sociological

42:39

polling from within Russia. There's

42:41

some good, I'm forgetting the names, but

42:43

some good organizations that do kind of

42:45

independent polling. And we've

42:47

looked at different polls, different

42:49

kind of surveys of the general

42:52

attitude in society. And

42:54

for the most part, it's just kind

42:56

of general apathy, right? The social situation

42:58

in Russia is, I mean, it's not

43:01

great, but Russia has

43:03

kind of overcome a lot of the sanctions, a lot

43:06

of the shocks that they were feeling the first year

43:08

of the war, two years

43:10

on, it feels a little more minimized.

43:13

So there's this general apathy within Russian

43:15

society of this is our life

43:17

now, we're just going to get on with it. And

43:19

very much like the

43:21

protests and experience of the war

43:23

have been siloed. And

43:26

the Kremlin is very good at kind of isolating

43:28

communities from kind of talking and like spreading

43:31

discontent. So generally

43:33

we're seeing that Russian

43:35

society has just kind of accepted

43:37

this as the outcome. They

43:40

generally want Russia to win in Ukraine,

43:42

but they're not up in arms about

43:44

it. And, you know,

43:46

discontent or protest movements are very much

43:48

on the periphery of society by design.

43:53

Putin kind of experienced the power,

43:55

for example, that the mothers,

43:58

like mothers are of soldiers movements

44:01

and he's been very much trying to kind of

44:03

prevent that from becoming a thing as much in

44:05

this war. And

44:07

the mill bloggers, there's actually a lot

44:09

of censorship that's been going on in

44:12

the mill blogger community. So when you

44:14

talk about mill bloggers criticizing the military,

44:16

they're criticizing the MOD,

44:19

which Putin is trying to scapegoat,

44:21

right? He wants the

44:23

blame to fall on the Ministry of

44:25

Defense Shoygo, Chief of the General Staff

44:27

Gedassimov and just kind of the institution

44:29

that is the MOD. The

44:32

mill bloggers or the commentators

44:35

that were criticizing the Kremlin

44:37

and Putin are in prison,

44:39

dead, unaccounted

44:42

for, or

44:44

the Kremlin has kind of bought them off

44:46

and given them state awards, etc. to kind

44:49

of co-opt them and bring them

44:51

closer into the Kremlin sphere of influence.

44:53

So even when we're talking about

44:55

the critical mill blogger community, there's

44:57

a lot more censorship and control

44:59

there than you would kind of see

45:02

because of how critical they are,

45:04

but that criticism is curated and

45:06

specifically directed. So just another thing

45:08

on the nuts and bolts stuff. At

45:10

the beginning of the war, it was fun. People

45:13

like you and others could

45:16

pick up Russians saying

45:19

the dumbest friggin' things on their phones, not

45:21

thinking that anyone else would be paying attention

45:23

and all that. How much has Russia imposed

45:25

discipline on its own troops for that kind

45:28

of thing? Is your job harder now to

45:31

find this stuff? And what have

45:33

they actually done to make it harder? Yeah,

45:35

so just because we do look

45:37

quite heavily at the mill blockers and so many

45:39

of our Russian military

45:42

sources have their channels

45:44

have been taken down, they've been thrown in

45:46

prison, silenced

45:48

all of this sort of stuff. It actually

45:50

is a little bit more difficult. Our

45:53

pool of sources has shrunk since the start of the

45:55

war. Also there's

45:57

been more, especially after kind of

45:59

personal... electronic use was linked

46:01

to Ukrainian strikes on Russian

46:04

concentration areas, their general

46:07

desire to maintain good ops-ec operational security

46:09

has increased. So that's kind of limited

46:11

some of what we've seen. Though,

46:13

you know, we're still getting enough that we

46:16

can form assessments, but the media environment and

46:18

the information space has changed a lot

46:20

since even last year, since

46:22

the beginning of last year. So we're

46:24

just trying to kind of figure out

46:26

methodologically how to navigate those shifts

46:29

in the broader information space.

46:31

So with the report, let's

46:35

say Ukraine wins, including taking the

46:37

back Crimea or not. We can talk about,

46:39

like, I understand, I want Ukraine

46:41

to have Crimea back, but I think everyone, even

46:44

if they're wrong, the fact that so many people are

46:46

wrong about how that's

46:48

a different thing, makes

46:51

it more difficult. Right? How

46:54

the hell do you unwind this, right?

46:56

I mean, you've got people buying

46:58

condos, people buying property, you

47:00

got kids who have been brainwashed. How

47:02

do you change those facts on the

47:05

ground anytime soon? That

47:07

is the ultimate question thing that I've

47:09

been reckoning with a lot while I

47:11

was writing and then after writing this

47:13

report. And frankly, I don't

47:16

have an answer right now. I think

47:18

that Ukraine will have to look,

47:20

well, I will say that the Ukrainian government

47:22

has a lot of contingency plans. The

47:25

Ukrainian Ministry of Integration, this is their kind

47:27

of entire project, right? How do we get

47:29

our people back? How do we reintegrate them

47:32

into Ukraine society? How do

47:34

we work with external partners to repatriate

47:36

Ukrainian children, get families out

47:38

of occupied areas, etc. So the Ukrainian

47:41

government has a framework and they've had

47:43

a framework since 2014

47:45

because of the occupation of Crimea and

47:47

Donbass in 2014. I've been reckoning with

47:49

this a lot and thinking through kind

47:51

of like historical examples and kind of

47:54

what parallels Ukraine could look at when

47:56

they think about reintegrating territory. Something

48:00

that Fred and I have talked about, for example,

48:02

is France kind

48:04

of reintegrating its

48:07

territory after the fall of the Vichy regime, because

48:09

Ukraine is going to have to reckon with the

48:11

fact that Ukrainian civilians have

48:13

kind of taken up positions

48:16

in occupation administrations and are collaborating

48:18

with the Russian government, that sort

48:20

of thing. So thinking through

48:22

how this is done in the past, how this

48:24

can be done in Ukraine now, I

48:28

think especially the repatriation issue is

48:30

going to be so difficult

48:32

and heartbreaking by design, right? Because

48:34

when Russia is removing these children

48:36

and adopting them into Russian families,

48:39

that's purposeful so that they can never come

48:42

back to Ukraine. So there's a lot of

48:45

Ukrainian organizations that are

48:47

doing work on the ground to

48:49

physically bring people back. So

48:51

whatever lessons they're learning that they can

48:53

apply on a larger scale will be useful.

48:57

But as of now, I

48:59

sadly do not have an answer because I

49:01

think it's going to be multifaceted,

49:04

multi-component. And the way

49:07

that it's so complicated, again,

49:09

is the exact purpose of the Russian occupation project

49:12

in the first place, right? I don't think I

49:14

asked this before, but it just occurs to me,

49:16

like, let's say the number is much closer to

49:18

4.8 million than 20,000, right? Just

49:22

by the laws of large numbers, you think that a

49:25

goodly number of

49:27

Ukrainians would have escaped and made

49:29

it back, right? But

49:32

you're saying how you don't have much visibility, but what happens

49:34

to adults? Have anybody come back from

49:36

these places and said, hey, here's what's going on. Here's

49:38

how we retreated. I got out on a laundry truck

49:40

or anything like that. There's

49:43

a no firsthand testimony to sort of

49:45

give us some sense of what's going on

49:47

with them? There's some of that.

49:49

There have been some interviews done with kids

49:51

who've been kind of exfiltrated,

49:53

is not the right word, but basically, you know,

49:55

repatriated them and they've given firsthand

49:57

accounts of what's happened to them. in

50:01

children's camps, kind of how they were deported, how

50:03

they were treated, etc. But

50:07

I think the Ukrainian government

50:09

has actually managed to mediate some returns

50:12

of children through the Qataris.

50:15

So the Qataris are kind of working

50:17

with Russia and Ukraine to bring kids back.

50:19

And there's quite a bit of a

50:22

lockdown on those kids once they get back to

50:24

Ukraine, I think largely because they're probably

50:26

very traumatized and it's difficult. You don't want to

50:28

be taking a kid who has gone through the

50:30

worst trauma of their life and then putting them

50:32

in front of cameras. So that's

50:35

another thing, right? Developing procedures

50:37

to keep these children safe once they're

50:39

being reintegrated into society

50:41

after suffering substantial trauma. But

50:45

there are no adults who made it out?

50:48

I think there definitely are.

50:50

I can't think of any examples of interviews.

50:53

There have been some interviews done with 16,

50:55

17, 18-year-olds who've made it back and they've

50:58

had their harrowing experiences living under Russian

51:00

occupation in Russia, etc. I

51:03

think it's very difficult for people to escape on

51:06

foot back in Ukraine

51:08

or kind of cross back from

51:10

occupied Donetsk, go blast back to

51:13

Ukrainian controlled territory just because of

51:15

the frontline, etc. But

51:19

yeah, I think it's... I'm

51:22

struggling to think of some exact stories, but

51:24

they do exist. People do

51:26

get back. Sometimes they can coordinate their way

51:28

back because they have family members in Russia

51:30

who can kind of help them get back.

51:32

I've heard one-offs of that. But those are

51:34

very much one-offs and not kind of systematic

51:37

examples. Yeah. I mean, forget getting

51:39

into Ukraine, you think someone can make it to

51:41

Istanbul, or some place like that, right? I mean,

51:44

I get getting to Kiev from

51:46

Sevastopol was a hike, particularly

51:49

if you're in some sort of camp. I'm

51:52

not asking this because I don't think you're right. I

51:54

mean, again, we

51:56

don't know the exact number. I just think the fact

51:58

that we're not hearing... A

52:00

lot of stories about

52:02

this, about grown people who are expatriated

52:04

from one reason or another, is

52:07

because bad things either

52:09

happen to them or is

52:11

happening to them. Because again, I don't know if you

52:13

know about this, I was raised by a dad

52:16

who was a passionate, intellectual, anti-communist guy,

52:18

and he held paper on a lot

52:20

of this stuff. And he would quote

52:23

me chapter and verse. I remember asking him when I was

52:25

a little kid about, it was a big thing when I

52:27

was a kid about the POW-MIAs in

52:29

Vietnam and whether or not there were still

52:31

Americans there. My dad went through all the

52:33

victims of Yalta and all these kinds of

52:35

things. And he was like, then of course

52:37

there was the Greek Civil War where the

52:39

Soviets took hundreds or thousands of

52:42

kids and families and expatriated them because

52:44

they wanted them as hostages and were

52:47

captive populations or future agents or whatever. And then

52:49

all just a whole enormous number of them, like

52:51

with the Stalin transfers and all that, were just,

52:53

they were just killed. They were just either

52:55

killed through deprivation or execution. It

52:58

seems to me like it is

53:00

not a great sign

53:03

that we haven't gotten some rogue

53:06

video testimony from a lot of people saying,

53:09

we're here, this is what's going on. I'm

53:12

sure Ukraine has networks of people inside

53:15

Russia that are

53:17

trying to get visibility on a bunch

53:19

of things. And just the fact that these stories

53:21

are not surfacing in a way that highlights

53:25

what's going on is not a great

53:27

sign about what the reality is for these people who are

53:29

taken out of since 2014 or since 2022. But maybe I'm

53:31

wrong. I just doubt it. It's

53:35

the fact that we're not hearing stories about

53:37

people getting out of Russia and how that

53:39

is a bad sign. And I think part

53:42

of that could be true in that there's

53:45

a lot of social control over people

53:48

who've been deported to Russia. So we can't

53:50

really tell what's happening with them. And

53:53

it's just hard for them to escape and

53:55

get out. I also think that the Ukraine

53:57

government and Ukrainian organizations

53:59

probably have a pretty big interest in

54:02

keeping whatever networks

54:04

they have under wraps because

54:06

they don't want to expose

54:08

the channels through which they

54:10

are repatriating people. Right. There's

54:13

sources and methods, all that. There's vulnerable people, exactly.

54:16

I know that I've spoken to some

54:18

mute-printing orgs that are operating on the

54:20

ground and they're understandably a

54:22

little bit cagey about their methods because

54:24

this is where you really get into kind

54:26

of human intelligence and human networks and don't

54:28

want to expose them. I

54:30

think that on a wider level, the Ukrainian

54:33

government is also probably interested in keeping the

54:36

ways that it's repatriating people quiet.

54:39

There's also the larger conversation

54:41

about trauma and re-traumatizing people

54:43

through kind of having

54:46

their stories broadcast. I'm

54:49

sure that they do exit interviews, if you want

54:51

to call it that, in kind of

54:53

confidential settings. There's

54:56

a lot of human elements to this that I

54:58

think really complicate the story. I

55:00

think this is one of those things

55:02

that unfortunately, we're coming up against

55:04

the bounds of what open source can do because we can

55:07

see what's being pushed on telegram and what

55:09

interviews are going out in major news outlets,

55:11

but it's really difficult to actually see

55:13

what's going on inside Russia

55:15

with these people who've been deported and all of

55:18

that. Very complicated

55:20

and difficult, which makes the reintegration question

55:22

even more difficult. Yeah. It's

55:24

all perfectly legitimate pushback

55:26

and I get it. At the

55:29

same time, there's a British newspaper

55:31

somewhere that is willing to pay some

55:33

Ukrainian guy who made it back to

55:36

talk about the arduous stuff

55:38

and they're not finding that person.

55:42

That's my point. We would hear more.

55:47

The Northern press heard

55:50

from slaves who made it to

55:52

freedom and they ran their stories and

55:55

that kind of stuff. Maybe

55:57

that's not the best analogy, but you get the point. Like

56:01

during the Cold War, people who made it out of

56:03

the Berlin, under the Berlin Wall, you know, or over

56:05

the Berlin Wall, they, some

56:07

of them had stories to tell. Some of them didn't want to

56:09

tell their stories. The fact, again,

56:12

I take all your points. My only thing

56:14

is that for all of the discipline Ukrainians

56:16

are trying to apply to this, to keep

56:20

their sources and methods safe and all that kind of stuff,

56:23

it has to be a fairly small number, making it out, to

56:27

make that task possible, to

56:29

make that population manageable. And

56:31

I just don't think that's a great sign,

56:33

but I mean, I just think it

56:36

would be good. And if they do have these people, it would be good

56:39

for those stories to get out because people

56:41

really losing sight of the fact that Russians

56:43

really are. They're not just

56:45

bad guys because people like Ukraine. What they're

56:47

doing and how they're doing it defies

56:50

the laws of war and is abhorrent.

56:54

And it's in

56:56

our interest for them to lose. So

56:59

like the propaganda war, we could be doing a lot

57:01

better on, I think. Absolutely. I

57:04

think the closing point

57:06

that I make a lot when I'm talking

57:08

about my part, my work is that, you

57:11

know, we are thinking about this

57:13

war as lines on a map.

57:16

What side is blue? What side is red? How

57:19

many square meters did red gain

57:21

in one day? And

57:23

operational analysis by default very

57:26

much makes people operational inputs

57:28

and takes their humanness

57:30

out of it in a lot of ways. But

57:32

when we're talking about this war, we are

57:34

talking about people and human people who

57:37

are living under Russian occupation. And I

57:39

think coming up with a better

57:41

way as Ukraine's partners

57:43

to combine our

57:46

understanding of the war holistically as battlefield

57:48

outcomes and also deeply,

57:50

deeply human outcomes. Right.

57:54

All of the conversations we're having about aid.

57:56

Yes, it's about the battlefield. But in

57:58

my opinions, more importantly. what's happening

58:00

behind the front line. Why

58:03

does it matter that Ukraine is getting its territory

58:05

back? Well, territory is

58:07

important. It has strategic implications, but

58:09

it's people. Putin has always

58:11

endeavored to control Ukrainian people,

58:13

not necessarily Ukrainian land. It's

58:16

about people. And I think

58:18

just really marrying the two discussions, right? And I

58:20

think that in the West,

58:22

these two camps are quite separated, right? There's

58:24

the military analysts and then the people

58:26

looking at more of the human rights stuff. And I think, you

58:29

know, there's no clear-cut answer to this,

58:31

but bringing those two things in together

58:33

to kind of really make people understand

58:35

the costs and the implications of this

58:37

beyond just battlefield gains, et cetera.

58:39

Okay. Carolina Hurd, thank you so much for doing this.

58:42

Thank you for your good work. Obviously, we'll put the

58:44

report in the show notes and links to ISW and

58:46

all of that. And thank you for doing this. Thank

58:48

you so much for having me on. Okay.

58:51

So Carolina Hurd has left the studio. If

58:53

things sounded a little sort of

58:55

weird and strained, which

58:58

maybe we'll fix in editing at

59:00

the end, it's because her battery

59:02

completely died on her towards the

59:04

end. And there's a long lacuna

59:08

Delta hiatus between my

59:12

long-winded and rambling question about

59:14

missing Ukrainian adults and her

59:16

answer. But we got her

59:18

back and I

59:20

really do recommend the report. I

59:23

will probably keep revisiting this stuff because

59:25

I think it's just, I was a very

59:27

strong supporter of Ukraine from, you

59:29

know, from the outset, right? And

59:32

I still yet to find a very compelling

59:35

argument about why we should throw

59:37

Ukraine under the bus. And I mean that it's sort

59:40

of, I don't find, I

59:42

haven't found a really good persuasive realist case.

59:45

I found plenty of pieces that point

59:47

out things of serious concern that policymakers should

59:49

be aware of. Don't get me wrong. You

59:51

know, this is not a perfect situation by

59:53

any stretch of the imagination and how America

59:55

proceeds is complicated. I don't dispute that at

59:57

all. But let me put it this way.

59:59

This way. The moral case is

1:00:02

unassailable as far as I'm concerned and I've found

1:00:05

nobody to make

1:00:07

a moral case that

1:00:10

can justify what Russia did or

1:00:13

justify us turning a blind eye to it,

1:00:15

at least rhetorically, if not, and

1:00:17

I would argue in policy matters. Russia

1:00:20

is an evil actor in this context.

1:00:23

It is doing evil things every

1:00:25

single day as a matter of policy. And

1:00:28

it would be antithetical to American

1:00:31

interests and our allies' interests and our

1:00:33

allies' matter were Ukraine

1:00:35

to fall to Putin. I

1:00:39

just think that's... I'm as convinced of

1:00:41

that as I've been. I keep trying to find interesting

1:00:44

steel manning of the other

1:00:46

side and I just don't think there is any with

1:00:49

the, you know, again, with the caveat that like, they're

1:00:51

just some sort of... People

1:00:53

of the sort of realist school say Russia cares about Ukraine

1:00:55

more than we do and so Russia is going to do

1:00:57

what is necessary and is willing to do

1:00:59

more and pay a higher price than we are. And

1:01:03

I think that's true, but

1:01:05

I also think the cost for us is so much lower because

1:01:09

we do not border Russia and

1:01:11

at minimum, at a pure

1:01:13

realpolitik level, making Russia pay a higher

1:01:15

price to do this is in our

1:01:17

interest and Russia deserves to pay

1:01:19

a higher price for doing that. And it would be

1:01:21

good for the world if Russia paid the

1:01:24

highest price, which is to

1:01:26

lose this war and maybe quite

1:01:28

possibly see Putin's regime overthrown as

1:01:30

a result. And people say that's

1:01:32

pied, but history of Russia is

1:01:34

the history of disastrous military engagements

1:01:37

leading to coups, overthrows,

1:01:40

and changes in the regime. I mean, it's

1:01:42

happened many times before. I

1:01:44

felt this way before October 7, but

1:01:47

listening to people think that all I have

1:01:49

to do is say the abracadabra words settler

1:01:53

colonialism or occupier

1:01:57

or aggressor and

1:01:59

that just... justifies being

1:02:02

pro-Hamas or anti-anti-Hamas

1:02:05

or being profoundly,

1:02:08

contemptuously anti-Israel

1:02:12

or making apologies or turning a blind eye

1:02:14

to anti-Semitism. I have problems with all those

1:02:17

things on the merits, but to use these

1:02:19

abracadabra words as if they justify it, as

1:02:21

if, well, you know, we're talking about fighting

1:02:24

settler colonialists oppressors,

1:02:27

they deserve everything they

1:02:29

got coming to them. And

1:02:32

if these people don't feel exactly

1:02:34

the same way about Russia, where

1:02:36

there is just vastly more evidence,

1:02:38

that that is exactly what Russia is

1:02:40

doing and intending to do. You

1:02:44

know, absconding with children, erasing

1:02:47

a culture, reprogramming

1:02:49

people, targeting hospitals

1:02:51

which, when

1:02:54

Israel attacks hospitals, it's because

1:02:56

Hamas is back in a hospital, fighting

1:02:58

from a hospital, using a hospital as

1:03:01

a military asset. Russia just

1:03:03

fires on hospitals. They don't care if there

1:03:05

are Ukrainian soldiers in them. They don't

1:03:07

care if it's a military asset, because it's not a

1:03:09

military asset. Russia is doing

1:03:12

literally what

1:03:14

people are accusing Israel of doing

1:03:17

falsely all the time. And

1:03:19

to hear the sanctimony and the self-righteousness

1:03:21

from the anti-Israel crowd by

1:03:24

invoking these principles of

1:03:26

resistance and anti-settler colonialism

1:03:29

and anti-imperialism as

1:03:32

their rationale is infuriating to me. And

1:03:34

I just think that this is a

1:03:36

point that needs to be pointed out

1:03:39

again and again and again because

1:03:43

the logic, the false logic,

1:03:46

the permission structure that

1:03:48

people get from these magic

1:03:50

words vis-a-vis

1:03:53

Israel need

1:03:55

to be called out. I mean, again, if you're against settler

1:03:57

colonialism, then you're against it. colonialism,

1:04:00

I'll argue with you about how

1:04:02

well that concept applies to Israel.

1:04:04

But if you think that concept applies to

1:04:07

Israel 100% or even 50% and that justifies whatever Israel

1:04:11

has got coming to it, but

1:04:14

you absolve Russia and China for

1:04:17

the same thing when it's so obviously

1:04:20

clear that they are more guilty, more

1:04:23

egregiously guilty of that crime

1:04:25

or that sin than

1:04:28

what people allege about Israel, then

1:04:31

I'm going to have to say that your

1:04:34

issue really isn't with settler colonialism, your issue is

1:04:36

with this one Jewish country and that's a structurally

1:04:39

anti-Semitic formulation. Anyway, we can talk about

1:04:41

this more, we will talk about this

1:04:43

more. Thanks again to Carolina Hurd. Thank

1:04:46

you all for listening and I'll see

1:04:48

you next time. Yeah, I'm going to say that I'm not a

1:04:50

Muslim, but I'm very a Muslim.