Simon Ostrovsky, a journalist covering Russia and Ukraine for PBS NewsHour who previously reported from Crimea for Vice, argues against the pre-election view that the United States should pull back from Ukraine. He traces a pattern across Vladimir Putin's two decades in power: the second Chechen war, which Ostrovsky covered for the Moscow Times and which crushed Chechen independence so completely that Chechen units now fight for Russia in Ukraine; the 2008 invasion of Georgia, which drew objections but no sanctions and left Russia occupying South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and the 2014 seizure of Crimea. He cites Hillary Clinton's reset as an example of incoming American politicians wiping the slate clean. Asked at the end for good news, Ostrovsky points to European rearmament and to Giorgia Meloni's continued support for arming Ukraine.
Guest: Simon Ostrovsky
In brief
- Ostrovsky argues Putin has escalated from one invasion to the next precisely because none of them produced meaningful international pushback.
- He says the second Chechen war was wrongly treated as an internal Russian matter, since the first war had ended with an agreement giving Chechnya effective independence.
- He notes that Chechens now fight and die for Putin in Ukraine, an outcome he says would have been unimaginable when he covered Chechnya in 2001 and 2002.
- He points out that Russia's 2008 occupation of Georgian territory drew no sanctions and was followed by Hillary Clinton's reset.
- He argues American election cycles are too short to support the long-horizon thinking available to a leader in power for more than twenty years.
- He offers as a silver lining that Ukraine woke Europe up before Russian tanks reached a NATO border, and that even a hard-right populist like Giorgia Meloni backs continued weapons supply.
Full text
Hey, everybody. Today, I'm here with Simon Ostrovsky, who's an expert on Russia and Ukraine and has been covering the Ukrainian war, among other topics, for PBS's News Hour. He's also a documentary filmmaker, has worked extensively with Vice, and so on. And uh yeah, it's been a great pleasure, Simon, to get to know you recently. And um you know, so much of Yeah, I I I really wanted to talk to you for the for this podcast cuz it feels like so much of the um you know, kind of election that's coming up swirls around you know, this idea that Trump is somehow an anti-war candidate and somehow we shouldn't be involved in the Ukrainian war, that it's actually um we should pull back and and and just, you know, hand it over to you know, that's there's a danger of it leading to nuclear conflict, it's just not really our business.
So, I know that you have um you know, you have a long-term profound interest in the region and great knowledge of the area. So, I thought, yeah, happy to have you introduce yourself and then maybe, you know, start off start the ball rolling with some thoughts and then I'll ask you some some deeper questions. Sure. Um it's good to be on here. Uh I've been following you for a long time. Um I've also been following Russia and the former Soviet space for a long time, uh as you said. And you know, one of the things that I've noticed over my many years of covering that part of the world is sort of a pattern of behavior.
Because you have to remember that uh Putin has been in power I did I did Oh, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. No worries. Sorry. No worries. Um yeah, you have to remember that Putin has been in power for uh over two decades now. And uh while American uh presidents and British prime ministers come and go, uh the constant has been Vladimir Putin in power in Moscow. And um you know, a pattern has emerged which um American politicians aren't like aware of instinctually in their bones because they haven't been around for long enough. Maybe some of them are aware of it on an intellectual level, but, you know, our election cycles are way too short for the kind of long-term thinking you can do when you're in power for more than two decades.
Um which by the way is not a good thing. I don't think any person should be in power for more than two decades because, um you know, to to use a cliché power corrupts. Um in Putin's case, what has happened is that he has invaded a place and then hasn't received any pushback from the international community and then gone and invaded the next place and then not received any pushback from the international community and then gone and invaded the next place again. So, I've been a reporter covering Russia pretty much since the year 2001. Uh and at that time Russia was involved in its second war in Chechnya, which Putin had started.
Uh and essentially that war dragged on for a few years until the rebellion in Chechnya was utterly and totally quashed. Uh and now fast forward 20 years and we see that uh Chechen independence-minded Chechens were wiped out so completely and so radically that you actually have Chechen legions fighting in Ukraine on Russia's side in Putin's war. And it almost seems like, oh yeah, I mean, that's like completely normal. But, you know, for for if you told me back in 2001 and 2002, when I was covering the second war in Chechnya for the Moscow Times, uh that 20 years down the line you would see hundreds, if not thousands of Chechens fighting and dying in Ukraine for Vladimir Putin, uh you would have blown my mind. So, Chechnya was perceived Is it okay if I like go back a little bit?
Yeah, please do. Please do. Yeah. You know, Chechnya was perceived as Russia's internal conflict because it was technically within Russia's border, at least it looked to be on on on internationally recognized maps. But in actual fact, uh the first Chechen war ended with Russia losing that war and Chechnya and Russia signing an agreement that said that Chechnya was going to essentially have independence and then like 5 years down the line they were going to resolve its final status. So, Chechnya had won. So, when Russia invaded, they were invading a sovereign state. It wasn't the when Russia invaded the second time under Putin. So, it wasn't really Russia's internal issue, but because it was perceived as Russia's internal issue, international the international community didn't think that they needed to do anything about it.
Um this gets back to the pattern that I was talking about. Several years later in 2008, Russia decides to invade uh Georgia, the sovereign country of Georgia on Russia's southern border, not far from Chechnya. In fact, Chechnya borders Georgia. Um and there was this time a lot of international outcry, but there wasn't any pushback. You know, aside from the United States and European Union countries saying that they were not happy with what happened, they didn't do anything to stop what was happening, and Russia ended up occupying, I think, about a quarter of Georgia's territory. I don't know if it's exactly a quarter, but it's a lot and it constitutes the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Russia has permanent bases there now with soldiers and occupies those parts of Georgia and has done since 2008. And I don't believe that there were any sanctions applied. In fact, Hillary Clinton came around and decided to do it her famous reset with Russia. It's like, let's start over and pretend nothing ever happened. And this is what I'm talking about like with the new politicians coming in and trying to wipe away and not notice the patterns that have happened before. So, tick tock, tick tock, time goes by. Putin realizes that he's completely gotten away with occupying a quarter of another country's territory. Well, first of all, he's gotten away with wiping out resistance in Chechnya and making it a part of Russia again.
Then he's gotten away with occupying a quarter of another country. Nobody did anything. Nobody imposed even sanctions against him. And then in 2014, he occupies Crimea. And I was there for that. I was covering Ukraine and Crimea for Vice Media at the time. Um that time, it sparks an actual land war in eastern Ukraine because the Ukrainians are like, "Wow, the Russians have just taken taken over an entire peninsula of our territory." Um when protests, so-called pro-Russia protests started happening in eastern Ukraine, they brought their troops in to try to prevent it happening again in another part of Ukraine. Um so, now we have a land war in Europe.
Uh and the Obama administration sort of belatedly, um you know, imposes sanctions, uh but refuses to even help the Ukrainian Ukrainians arm themselves. Um and and refuses to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine. They're like, "You're on your own. We'll do economic sanctions on Russia." Um Economic sanctions which, you know, Russia brushed off because the sanctions that came later after the full-scale invasion in '22, to skip ahead, were a lot more serious, but Russia even is able to get around those. So, the ones that came in 2014 and 2015, um they were the first of their kind, um but uh they didn't the Russian economy. Uh so, that's not the end of it.
So, there was a little bit of pushback, but they wouldn't we we we wouldn't even arm the Ukrainians. So, the the Russians at this point are like, "We can do whatever we want and nobody's going to say about it." And so, the war in Syria starts, uh and uh Russia decides that it's going to enter that war on Bashar al-Assad's side to prop up his regime. And in 2015, they reopen um their Maymeem airbase. Uh and then they start, you know, bombing uh hospitals and schools and residential buildings in the areas of Syria um that are controlled by the opposition forces. Um and they're there under the invitation of Assad, and you know, um the Obama administration uh draws some red lines and says, "If you use chemical weapons, um we are going to get involved because you can't use chemical weapons against the civilian population.
That's just beyond the pale." Um and what happens? The Assad regime goes and uses civilian chemical weapons, and of course the United States doesn't do anything, even though they promised that they would stop it. Um and Russia enters the war, and this is yet another signal um that uh you can get away with anything to Putin, you know. The president of the United States tells the Syrians they can't do something, the Syrians do that thing, and the United States doesn't react. That's the That's the pattern that we're seeing sort of develop. What about Europe and NATO? Cuz this is obviously much closer to them. How how come they're not reacting more?
Because they're so subservient to Russia due to the oil and gas uh exports? I mean, that's like That's another conversation about um European weakness uh and and European mm you know, shyness and just sort of desire to keep business going as usual uh because they've experienced this really a historic period of peace since World War II, and and people living in the European Union in particular think that this is how things are normally you know, they've lived their entire lives in peace, just like we have here in the United States for the most part. Uh and so we think that that's normal. That's how things usually are, but that's not how things usually are. Th- Those things come at a cost.
Like that peace uh was enforced. Um and the security umbrella that the Europeans have from the United States, they take for granted. But I'm getting to uh 2022. Um and you know, all of Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, the war in Eastern Ukraine. Um and all of that Sorry, and Syria. All of that were sign- All of those things were signals to Putin that the West wasn't prepared you know, to put its money where its mouth is. Um and when the rubber meets the road, you know, the West will express grave concern and maybe issue some sanctions, but they're certainly not going to, you know, give weapons or bring their soldiers or do something that could actually cost them.
And so then we get the full-scale invasion um of Ukraine in 2022 when Russia's like, "Forget about it. Like who cares? We're not going to pretend like we're not involved in the war in Ukraine anymore. We're just going to send our soldiers in on tanks and we're going to take over Ukraine and and they say that we're going to overrun Kiev in 3 days and the whole country is going to be ours." That didn't happen. I mean, that was it took that for the world to wake up to the fact that in order to for these things to stop happening, you actually have to have some skin in the game.
And at the sort of current point where we are, the skin in the game, so to speak, is arming the Ukrainians. Uh, and supporting their economy. And, you know, giving them fuel because Russia has uh bombed uh all of their power stations and their um energy infrastructure. Um, you know, when you go to Kiev these days, um the whole town is a hum with generators uh because the power cuts are so frequent. Um, so I guess what I'm I just wanted to lay out a little bit how we got to where we are today. Uh, and by the way, Donald Trump um was when his administration came into power, um was no different in terms of he didn't bring new sanctions against Russia uh because of the still simmering war which started in 2014.
I think the Trump campaign uh wants people to think that there was peace in the world while he he president, but the war in Ukraine started in 2014 and and went clear through the Trump presidency. It was happening while he was president. Yeah. Uh and then Biden came into office and it was still happening. And then the full-scale invasion happened. So, you know, if if uh Trump had been more muscular as he claims he is uh and has the respect of the Russians as he claims, um then he could have gone harder against the Russians and said that there would be you know, he could have tried to resolve the war that was already happening in Ukraine, but he didn't.
Um so, What about now we now we're facing a contest between uh Donald Trump and Harris um where Donald Trump has signaled that he kind of wants to throw Ukraine under the bus and stop arming the Ukrainians and just let the Russians finish off what they started because that seems to be his vision of peace. His vision of peace is like if you let the Russians win, the war ends. Um and that's certainly true, but why do the Ukrainians have to pay that high a cost? Because it's not just the lives that get lost in the in the fighting. It's what happens after the Russians take over, the purges, um the Russification, the banning of uh any cultural expression that isn't explicitly Russian.
I'm working on a uh proposal for a documentary right now about the um religious minorities in areas of Ukraine that are occupied by Russia that are being repressed uh expressly because they are not hewing um to the state church, the Russian Orthodox Church. Uh so, these are all of the things that happen after the war ends, so to speak. They're happening already in the areas that are occupied by Russia, the sort of ethnic and cultural cleansing. That's Those are the things that we have to look forward to, um, if uh we don't help the Ukrainians uh hold the line. What about so, you know, one argument which is bounced around become very popular, it's kind of the the John Mearsheimer argument that um actually, um you know, the Russians, you know, rightly felt that NATO was going to encroach and uh you know, bring uh you know, nuclear weapons to the border of of of of Russia, that Ukraine was about to join NATO uh and therefore in a way that we provoked Putin to do to doing this and it's kind of our fault in a way.
Well, that's certainly a talking point um that the Russians want uh spread around as far as possible um because they want it to seem like it's the West's fault that they had to start a war. But like, do you see like the illogical nature of that statement? It's your fault that we started the war. The West didn't bring tanks into Russia. The West didn't even bring tanks into Ukraine until the full-scale invasion of 2022. And when they did, they didn't put their soldiers in them, they gave them to the Ukrainians. Um the West has been very, I would say, too hands-off uh with this war. Uh we need to be all in to help the Ukrainians win it um because Vladimir Putin's regime respects uh power, not restraint.
To him, restraint is a sign of weakness and I think the Mearsheimers of the world are advocating for um us to project weakness thinking that this will discourage the Russians from moving forward with their plans of world conquest. But it's just the opposite. But here's the other thing that makes that argument ahistorical. Um the troubles in Ukraine, so to speak, um didn't start uh because of NATO expansion. They actually started because of a rather boring European trade agreement that the Ukrainians wanted to enter in 2013 before the Euromaidan revolution happened. The trigger for the Euromaidan revolution was not NATO expansion. The trigger for the Euromaidan revolution was the pro-Russia president, an ally of Putin of Ukraine at the time, who had promised his people to sign a trade agreement with the European Union.
And because the economy was in the tank because his regime was so corrupt. So the one thing that he wanted to do in order to save his presidency before the next elections rolled around was to give Ukraine a sort of free trade agreement with the European Union that would be a huge boost to the economy. That's all it was. When he traveled to Lithuania or planned to travel to Lithuania to sign that agreement in 2013, uh he got a phone call for from Putin who was incensed. Um and Putin said, "Don't take this deal from the European Union. I will give you a uh low-interest essentially forgivable loan of I think it was around $9 billion that you can use to boost your economy as long as you don't sign the agreement with the Europeans because Putin saw Ukraine's move towards the European Union and this economic pact as being a move away from Russia.
Russia had its own competing like European Union like structure called the Eurasian Union that it's trying still trying to get as many countries as possible to join and many countries in the former Soviet Union have joined and like I said it's a it's like a you know a European Union clone economic union. So countries like Kazakhstan can ship goods into Russia without going through customs. Unlike the European Union, it's not a political union. So the border is still there. You just don't have to pay customs on the goods, but you still have to get a visa, you know, to travel between and you have to go through border checkpoints and so forth.
So anyway, so Putin wanted has wanted Ukraine to join that thing. And then he felt betrayed by his ally in Ukraine Yanukovych wanting to sign a deal like that with the European Union. And so he was like look man, here's $9 billion to make you look the other way. And Yanukovych did and then the the younger people in Ukraine were so incensed because they were looking forward to this new shift in direction for Ukraine away from Russia and towards the European Union because they tied their you know future hopes and dreams to that. They came out into the square and started the protests which you know, the pro-Russia trolls of the world want you to believe were a CIA um and protests led to the ousting of that president who refused to sign the deal with the EU.
And his ouster is was the trigger for Putin going into Crimea and annexing it. So Putin really like his $9 billion bribe didn't work. And don't quote me on the number. It could It might be $13 billion. I don't remember. Um, that didn't work, and and he was so angry that he decided to take a chunk of of Ukraine, Crimea. Um, and that essentially sparked the the war in Ukraine. It wasn't NATO expan- expansion. It was that chain of events that I just described to you that sparked the war in Ukraine. Cuz when Russia came in and annexed Crimea, you got to believe that a lot of Ukrainians were upset by that.
So, when um they tried to do the same trick in Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainians had already learned their lesson once, and they sent their troops there. And the war started. Um, so what is your I mean I I have so many questions for you. Some of them are kind of I mean I don't know if you're um like Yeah, what do you What do you think is going on with Putin, Trump, and Elon Musk? I mean, you know, now we're learning that Elon Musk has been in, you know, you know, ongoing kind of uh you know, contact with Putin, direct contact. Apparently, there's something called the Logan um Law or something which he may have violated, you know, as as a as a as a The Logan Act, yeah.
And then we also know that Trump has had seven calls with Putin, you know, since leaving office. Uh and you know, there was kind of this whole uh you know, dossier around Trump basically almost being like an agent of of Putin. Uh the you know, which some people say, "Oh, that turned out not to be the case cuz they weren't able to prove it." And so, and a lot of people say, "Well, actually, there were a huge amount of you know, a lot you know, a lot of evidence that does seem to suggest that um you know, there's a very strong connection there that um uh yeah, what what what's your perspective on all that?" Well, I don't think that Trump is necessarily an agent of Putin, but I think that people like Donald Trump and people like Elon Musk are fellow travelers. You know, they see eye to eye with Putin. Um they view the world through the same lens uh as Putin.
Um and uh they believe that Putin stands up for what they call, you know, Western or traditional family values that they believe the woke in the United States are trying to destroy. And so because, you know, they're so afraid of the woke horde coming and destroying everything that they hold dear, um, these people think it's okay to go to a foreign adversary um, and, you know, break bread with him. Uh, and and plot and plan. So, I don't think that they're necessarily, you know, in Russia's pay and Russia is this mastermind, but I think the the Russians play the anti-woke card very cleverly. And so they are able to win ideological allies across the right in the United States and Europe.
And Elon Musk is a part of that. I mean, you know, Elon Musk is one of this this guy that, you know, used to talk about how there would be no political bias on Twitter if he was running it. Um, and then once he took over Twitter like very explicitly went in for for Donald Trump. So, not exactly an honest guy, but people's memories are short. Um, and so now it's like, you know, Elon Musk has always been an explicit supporter of Donald Trump. Um, but you know, he used to try to sit on the fence and pretend he was unbiased. Uh, so you know, I think it's, without having to be an agent of Putin, it's just as damning that you will make common cause with the leader of a country that not only isn't a democracy, it's turned into a totalitarian state, but has also explicitly identified the United States as its prime enemy.
Um that to me is like if if that's not uh betrayal of your of your country, um I don't know what is. And by the way, you know, Elon Musk is a immigrant and a naturalized American citizen. I don't think you should be able to come here from another country. I'm also a naturalized citizen, by the way, but I don't think you should be able to come here from another country and then make com- take a citizenship and make common cause um with a country that has declared us their prime enemy. How has uh how has Putin actually declared the US as prime enemy? I mean, is that just an understood thing or is it actually something that he stated, you know, outright?
Um Russian military doctrine in you know, in the documents that they put together, uh it actually identifies um the uh United States as the um uh glavnyy sopernik or uh the main adversary. So, you know, uh Russian military policy um has state the United States out as the main adversary in contrast to um other NATO member countries um like, you know, in Europe uh who are perceived by Russia as being satellite countries around the main adversary. So, this is the this is language that comes from their own military doctrine. Got it. And um what do you think I mean, is Putin is Putin just sort of playing by instinct or is there a larger like does he have a long-term like geopolitical goal or agenda?
I mean, I you know, I I followed a little bit the work of Alexander Dugin, who apparently was very influential at some point in terms of like this idea that uh Moscow is the new Rome and ultimately with you know they're they're going to take back Europe and so on. I mean to what extent do you think Putin just you know yeah and and and and and it says why is he doing this? Um you know I don't think that there is any maximum to to Putin's ambitions. You know you know I think that some of the thinking out there is like you know if we let him have the former Soviet Union essentially what he wants to be considered his backyard then he'll stop there. But the backyard is a concept that can really grow and really stretch.
So first you start with the the countries that were part of the Soviet Union and and then you know why not go to the countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact after that. And now we're talking about you know Poland and we're talking about um uh Germany and as far west as the Czech Republic and so forth. So you know um I do think it's more of kind of following instinct than having a drawn out plan because I think that the way the Russian regime operates is by testing whether they will get resistance and when they don't get resistance moving forward. So that's what I was talking about you know with Chechnya then Georgia um then uh Crimea then Syria you know and then Ukraine. Um it's like they go in they get resistance and they push forward as far as they can until serious resistance is met.
And they finally met serious resistance in Ukraine. And while their hands are tied with Ukraine, I think it's unlikely that they're going to start any large military campaign anywhere else. But that's the problem. You know, that's a problem for Ukraine, but it's the problem for the people who think that um you know, the Donald Trumps of the world who think like let them have their chunk of Ukraine and they'll be happy. Um they are going to use that time to rearm and make their plans for their next military advance. Because, you know, that's what history of Russia under Vladimir Putin has shown. It's just a pattern of things that keep happening.
It's like not rocket science. Just look back. This is what keeps happening. Russia's territory gets bigger, not smaller under Vladimir Putin. And it keeps growing. Um yeah, I mean I guess like Brzezinski and like the grand chessboard had said that like, you know, Russia needs Ukraine again to become an empire again. So yeah, I mean that would be a lot of resources it would then have to keep building its armaments and all that stuff. Yeah, but that's not a good outcome, you know? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm against that outcome. So okay, but I guess so you've been spending a lot of time in Ukraine up to up to now.
Like you've been going back and forth. Uh you know, what are you seeing there? I mean I cuz I I try to read like Reddit and I read like X and read, you know, all these different commentaries. You know, some people are saying that um yeah, it seems like the war kind of stalemated. It seems like you know, Ukraine just invaded a little bit of Russia. Russia's making gains here and there. There's an idea that there actually is a huge amount of attrition to like Russia's you know, armor and you know, weaponry and so on. That actually we've had maybe slowed them down, you know, even for like a generation.
There'll be a lot to rebuild. Yeah, where where where where where where is your thinking about all of that? Well, I think the the war is been really, really difficult and fought at a huge sacrifice um by the Ukrainians. And proportionally, uh I think it's a greater sacrifice for the Ukrainians than it is for Russia um because a lot more Russians have died in this war than Ukrainians in simply like nominal terms. Just the number Like the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, I think, for the Russians. Uh nobody knows what the actual uh casualty figures are cuz they're not really being released by either side.
Um but, you know, and for Ukraine, it's probably over a 100,000 and maybe even 200,000 um who have already um died. But that's those are just estimates. So I I don't I don't know I don't know the real numbers. Um Ukraine is a much smaller country uh than Russia, so proportionally that is a much heavier blow. And there really isn't anybody in Ukraine uh whose family hasn't been affected by uh what's going on. Um and so, you know, there is the question of how much longer can uh Ukraine hold out? A- and uh as you said, Russia is making very incremental advances in the east of Ukraine at a very high cost to Russia.
Um but the issue is is that the Putin regime uh you know, doesn't care about the cost um to to the population of Russia, to the you know, population of young men in Russia that that it takes uh in order to make these advances. Um and uh Ukraine, on the other hand, is a country that really does care about the cost of the war um and how they are uh you know, giving up an entire generation of young men. In fact, it's it's really crazy, but um it was kind of old men uh for the most part uh who were fighting the war in Ukraine because on the Ukrainian side uh because uh Ukraine, until very recently, uh had a law that said that you couldn't be drafted into the army um, unless you were a certain age. I think like almost 30. Um, so a lot of people did volunteer to fight who were younger than that, but you couldn't be forcibly drafted um, unless you were over that age.
And it just wasn't the math wasn't working. So um, recently they uh, passed a law making it possible to draft people who are either 24 or 25. Which if you if you think about it is crazy. Ukraine might be the only country in the world um, which doesn't take its youngest, you know, like 18-year-olds um, and throw them into the meat grinder. Um, which I think is a really sort of uh, humanist uh, policy. Um, but they did have to lower it because they are just going through so many um, not so young men. Uh, and um, a lot of people are are dying and it's very difficult.
And so again, this just like brings me to the idea that uh, Ukraine needs a lot more help, much more help. And there's this whole idea in the uh, Biden administration uh, about de-escalation. And by the way, when I criticize, you know, what the Biden administration is doing, um, I I'm not trying to contrast it to the great things that a Trump administration would do if they were there. You know, the Biden administration is helping Ukraine. My view is that they're not helping Ukraine enough. And um, my view on a on a potential Trump administration is that they would pull as much uh, aid from Ukraine as possible because those are all the signals that they've given up until now.
Um, we've saw that in action uh, when Congress was trying to pass a package of aid to Ukraine for months. And um, the speaker of the house um, Johnson uh, was telling his party not to vote for the Ukraine aid package under instructions from Donald Trump because Donald Trump didn't want that Ukraine aid to go through. So, you know, we've already got evidence that Trump doesn't want to help Ukraine. He's tried to block the war the war aid and I think if he became president then that would almost be guaranteed. So, anyway, going back to what the Biden administration is doing now, they're always talking about not wanting to escalate.
And so they think that by not giving Ukraine certain types of weapons, certain types of long range missiles, certain types of ammunitions, that this will cause the Russians not to escalate. They cause essentially the Russians not to up the ante. The Americans don't want to be seen as being responsible for up in the ante. And what has happened instead is that the Russians just continue escalating. They every time the United States, you know, doesn't give something to Ukraine, it doesn't like lead the Russians to to be like, "Okay, we're not going to push forward on this one." So, right now Ukraine has you know, missiles that can go 300 km, let's say that we give them.
And so the Russians just fire their long range missiles from an area outside that window. The Russians have uh airborne ammunitions that are fired from from planes that will sort of take off, gather speed sort of in the way that the space shuttle is boosted by a booster rocket, and then we'll fire the missile when the plane is already at speed, so you can add the two speeds together. And you know, and then the missile goes hypersonic into Ukraine, and it's much harder for the Ukrainians to shoot it down with the anti-aircraft systems that have been provided to Ukraine like the Patriot missiles. Um So, you know, and so the consequence is that the Ukrainians are like, well, can you give us the longer range ones to make it so we can shoot those airfields that the Russians are firing those missiles from at us. Um and then the administration will prevaricate for a long time and be like, we don't want to escalate.
We don't want to give you something that's going to allow you to shoot deep into the heart of Russia because we think that's going to be escalatory. Um and it just But isn't that underlying that is the the fear which also is something that I hear all the time now with Trump supporters. Like, oh, Trump is going to prevent nuclear war. You know, like like if we ask you know, if we keep escalating, if we keep adding fuel to this fire, you know, Putin is over and over again, you know, kind of like threatened nuclear, you know, his people on TV are like, this could go nuclear. We're going to we're going to drop a nuke in the English Channel to send a tidal wave over England.
Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't think that Trump is the person that's going to stop the nuclear war, and neither is Biden. The thing that stops the nuclear war is our nuclear deterrent. You know, the the the people who um keep ringing alarm bells about the potential for Russia to to go nuclear nuclear um are forgetting that we have a really sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons here in the United States that is a lot better maintained than the one that they have in Russia and probably still works unlike half of what the Russians are holding uh and that you know, a nuclear strike by Russia would trigger a retaliatory retaliatory strike by the United States that would wipe out Russia. That's what That's what deters Russia from using nuclear weapons, not any one politician.
Um they're never going to use the nuke because if they do, it's not just the end for us, it's the end for them. Yeah, that's how nuclear weapons work. If you logically play out that argument, it ends there. Well, I mean, what if there was a lot of concern for a while that they were going to use like tactical nukes like sort of begin to kind of legitimize limited use of nuclear weapons, but for whatever reason that hasn't happened yet. Well, for whatever reason, I think the reason is clear. If you're trying to take over a country um Ukraine and you're not going to turn it into a radioactive wasteland that you can't have after you win the war.
Right? Uh so, you think that even if let's say the US and NATO were like, "Okay, it. We're going to go in full missiles, uh full army." You know, you don't think that would have the possibility of triggering nuclear conflict? Well, I'm not saying that it doesn't have the possibility. There's always like a small I mean, there's a possibility that what's happening now could trigger a nuclear conflict, you know? Um there's always a small sliver of possibility even in peacetime that nuclear conflict could happen um because somebody crazy presses the button for the wrong reasons. Um and you know, that's not great. Uh but I think my years of uh observing uh the behavior of the Putin regime and literally I have been covering Russia since 2001.
I actually went to university in Russia. So, you know, I've been observing Russia since 1998. Um has shown me that Russia responds to force. You know, if they Russia doesn't go around to attacking strong countries. Russia goes around attacking what it perceives are weak countries. Russia fights wars that Russia thinks it can win. So, I think when Russia invaded Ukraine, all of the bluster about taking it over in 3 days came from a place of Russia believing that they had the capability to take it over in 3 days. They thought it would be an easy win. You know, just the fact that they were wrong, proved wrong by Ukrainian resistance.
Um and a Western determination to supply Ukraine with the arms it needs to defend itself doesn't discount this idea that um uh Russia won't go for hard targets. Russia will not go for hard targets. Russia is afraid to lose. It doesn't want to be seen as losing. So, you know, I don't think um if they were going to say invade NATO that they would go straight for Poland. I think if they were going to invade NATO they would go for the Baltic states which are pretty much cut off by land from the rest of NATO. You know, they're going to they're going to go for the easy targets.
So, the way you stop them from going from any targets is by making those targets look militarily strong and really difficult to take over and for that you have to grow your military and I'm sorry guys, that's the big bad military-industrial complex that we love to hate on. We've got to have it because when countries don't show strength, countries like Russia come in and roll their tanks in and we saw that happen in Ukraine. Right. And I guess NATO is now increasing their defense budgets like Germany and so on. They're like trying to like get ready for I mean would you know would they be able to fill in?
Let's say Trump, you know, pray that it doesn't happen, gets in office, the US essentially cuts its aid, military aid to Ukraine, would NATO would Europe be able to fill some of that void and and and and and keep this uh from you know becoming a one-sided conflict? You know, I think the way human nature works is that um people don't really prepare for a really big problem. Um they only react to when that really big problem has occurred. That's just you know, the reality of what we're like. We suck in that way. Um so I think that this Ukraine invasion has really showed that in terms of European readiness for increasingly aggressive Russia.
They didn't want to spend money on their on their own defense um until it seemed like the Russians were literally at their door with their tanks. Um they didn't The crazy thing is I'm working on a story right now looking at the um production of gunpowder in Russia. Uh and you know, the flip side of the production of gunpowder in Russia is looking at you know, how much gunpowder we produce in the West uh and to make artillery shells that we have to supply to Ukraine. Um, and there's only one factory uh, that manufactures this key ingredient called nitrocellulose um, in in the United States. One factory that is like 100 years old, barely operates.
Um, and and then I think it's the same situation in the entirety of the European Union. In the entirety of the European Union, there is one factory in Poland, um, I think that still manufactures TNT. Um, and now they're scrambling to try to find ways to build more factories and more facilities and train people, but they almost don't even have the know-how to do it anymore because they thought war was such a remote possibility for so long. But now it's not a remote possibility anymore. It's like right there. I mean, if you live in Poland, some of the missiles that are being fired at Ukraine land by accident across the border in Poland.
It's happened. Um, so you know, the war is right there. Uh, and I think the Europeans are starting to get their act together, um, but it's not something that you can do with a snap of a finger. Uh, those kinds of investments uh, take years to come to fruition. So, you know, we we've been searching all around the world to see where else we can get munitions and so forth and so have the Russians. Uh, and the Russians have been getting their uh, ammunition from uh, North Korea uh, and from Iran. And now the Russians are not only taking ammunition from North Korea, they've actually brought thousands of uh, North Korean soldiers uh, into Russia at this point, apparently to fight uh, in Ukraine.
How terrifying is that? Uh North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world. Uh it's not a very big country. I think it's about maybe 23, 25 million people. Uh but they've got an army of a million people. It's one of the biggest armies in the world. That's how big the Russian army is supposed to be on paper. And I yeah I was wa- I went to this uh what was it called? Oslo Freedom Forum. There was a North Korean woman who managed to escape who had written a book. And she was saying when she grew up there, she literally thought that the dictator was a god.
Like that they that that that there was not even a thought that he was like a normal human and then that and that he could do whatever he wanted. So it's like I I think we really don't, you know, we're so used to our kind of liberal humanist ideology, we don't really realize how intensive, you know, ment- mind mind washing, mind programming can become. Like in a in a generation or two, you can have people who are completely locked into completely fanatical Well, that's what I'm saying happened with the Chechens who are fighting in Ukraine on Russia's side. You know? Um That's why I'm like this I mean how how how terrified are you about this upcoming election?
I'm I'm not I'm like the highest level of like stress and alert I've ever been cuz I really feel like people are I don't know I'm curious about your journey in the journalist community, you know, cuz you must be connected to a lot of like other journalists and you know, people at PBS and advice and so on. You know, I mean yeah, it feels like you know, certainly some people are freaking out but I also encounter a lot of people whether through Facebook or you know, people you know, my daughter's age who somehow it's like um they're they're they're they're switched off. It's it's it's like they they either think that it's too late or that we're in a state of doom or that you know, just yeah, like cuz I I could actually, you know, I mean I read this book Unhumans that both Trump and Vance have blurbed, and the book basically says that uh leftist socialists, people like liberal Democrats, are not human, and they don't have to be treated like humans. And it says that you know, Pinochet and Franco are the best models for the United States. And you know, the way that they you know, created these like you know, Christian fascist societies, and like Pinochet threw his you know, political opponents out of helicopters without any like you know, legal you know, anything.
And so you know, the back of the book uh you know, Vance is like yeah, this is a great plan. You know, Trump is like yeah, this is what we should do. You know, so I take this like very very seriously. Considering they've already like tilted the Supreme Court. I I I'm really terrified that the US could go fully fascist. It might not happen in like the first 6 months or the first year or two, but Musk is talking about how he wants to take control of the media networks. He's like we'll take control of the networks one by one. I mean, even just when you have that ability, even if you don't carry out the threat, you know, if you know the Supreme Court is behind you, and then they get the military behind them and they change the whole government to their people.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm very freaked out right now. I mean, I don't know how you feel but You sound freaked out. Yeah, but I just did all the research to freak myself out, you know. No, I get it. And I think you're like entirely legitimate in that. I I think I'm just sort of blocking it out, you know? I I uh I I I guess I that's part of why I'm able to do the reporting that I I do in the scary places that I do it is because like I I I just like sort of tune it out and turn it off. Um and I think it's a toss-up, you know, literally I think either one of them has an equal chance of winning.
Um I don't think I have any special kind of insight from being in the community of reporters and you know, knowing a lot of people in media. Um I literally have no idea what's going to happen. And that's part of the beautiful thing about this country. If you think about it, you know, in Russia people don't have that luxury of not knowing who the next president is going to be. And here we still do. And I really hope that it stays that way. I hope this isn't the last one where we get to wonder who the next president is going to be. Right. And yeah, unfortunately I think if it goes the wrong way, we are going to lose that ability.
I think that I think there's a good chance that if Donald Trump becomes president, he's going to do everything in his power um to subvert the democratic institutions that we have that you know, govern having a free and fair election. For sure. And yeah, so it sort of feels to me that during the research that there's sort of these sort of various forces of global autocracy and authoritarianism, you know, have been circling the US like a pack of wolves. And Putin, I mean, you know, we talked obviously we talked about the military, but then also there's sort of like, you know, the meme warfare, the bot warfare, the hacking, the the sort of kind of contributions to conspiracies and you know, which now like Musk and those people are kind of like you know, kind of like augmenting so just just breaking the reasoning faculties of the American mind, which really seems to have gone to a to a very large you know, very I mean, I can't believe how we've landed and how even people that I knew who I considered like friends and fellow thinkers and influencers have you know, they they they've completely been switched around into this like I guess some people talk about like a I guess sort of like it's like before the event like you know, people start to chill out. You know, whether it's like Russell or Charles Russell Brand or Charles Eisenstein or like the the Post and the LA Times like either it's like not taking a side or already preliminarily taking the the authoritarian side.
Yeah, I mean not not endorsing is sending a signal, right? Like changing your policy from always having endorsed a candidate to not endorsing a candidate sends a very clear signal to Trump that if he wins, um he will be able to put pressure on these uh you know bastions of of media freedom up until now. Because that's saying like okay, they've they've basically blinked. So that means I can keep going. Yeah. Um so the fact that the LA Times and the Washington Post uh both decided like I wonder actually how that happened, right? It can't be a coincidence that both of those institutions suddenly decided um that they're not going to be endorsing candidates anymore.
It's like do the billionaires who own these papers get together now? Um and and sort of plan like what's going to be best for our bottom line? Is this going to help us? Um because we know we've seen that powerful people in the world uh they they believe that the owners of the newspapers um control the editorial policy of the newspapers. Uh and to an extent that they actually don't control the editorial policy. But you know, remember the Jamal Khashoggi murder? Um the guy was a Washington Post contributor. Uh and um MBS in Saudi Arabia was incensed by the coverage of uh of himself and Saudi Arabia after the Jamal Khashoggi murder at the at the Washington Post because he he had a deal in the works with Jeff Bezos at the time.
Um and so we thought that because he had a deal with Jeff Bezos, that would win him you know, positive coverage or at least not covering the fact that he had ordered this killing. And that wasn't the case. But it and and so I think yeah, I watched the documentary about this about Khashoggi and and and in the documentary you find out that MBS retaliated by putting the Israeli spyware on Jeff Bezos' phone phone that leaked the pictures that led to his divorce with his wife. So you know, MBS got his you know, quote revenge against Jeff Bezos although Jeff Bezos had nothing to do with the Washington Post's coverage of the Khashoggi aftermath. But like I said, the perception is there that they do.
And I and I think you know, the lesson for Jeff Bezos there is that if people are going to think that I control the editorial line, then I might as well control the editorial line. In in actual fact. And I think that that's what's happening here with the with the decisions to no longer endorse candidates. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, well thank listen, thank you so much for your time. You know, we can just go a few more minutes. I mean I guess yeah, I guess some of my questions are more or my my wondering is sort of geopolitical or like I mean you know, so like you know, so climate change is obviously affecting different parts of the world differently.
And it feels like you know, for Russia, you know, it might actually be you know, at least for the short term kind of a net benefit, right? Like I mean I was reading about how in Siberia they've been importing This was I guess before 202022 importing cowboys from like Wyoming and Montana because now as the as it gets warmer and the the soil becomes, you know, more arable, you can have at least cattle ranches. So so they're starting So like, you know, I mean, you know, I know you said that you don't think he's working impulsively, does that have a larger geopolitical kind of agenda? But, you know, both the fact that you know, Europe doesn't really have its own I I hear what you're saying. Um but I I you know, I think Garry Kasparov put it much better um than anyone else uh when he said that uh people think Vladimir Putin is playing chess, but really he's playing poker.
Um so, you know, I think uh you know, obviously Putin and Russia don't control the weather and patterns and um the uh climate change uh in so far as I mean, they continue selling oil, which contributes to it, but so are we and so uh are the Saudis. Um so, are they Is Russia going to try to reap the benefits of more uh land becoming arable? Sure. Like, why not? Why wouldn't they? Um but don't forget that Russia's economy uh is this Russia looks really big on the map, uh but Russia's economy is the size of Netherlands or Italy, you know, depending on what year it is.
Um Russia's like for for its size and for its population, Russia is doing really badly. Um and we need to remember that. We need to remember that Russia's a like a puffer fish. Uh it projects much more power and strength than it actually has. Uh and if we projected just the power and strength that we already do have, um you know, without exaggerating, we're not even projecting it yet in my in my view, um then we could deter uh a lot of uh Russian malfeasance and and bad behavior. Yeah. Um cool. Yeah, I mean, um any any possibility? I mean, you know, there was also the thinking that um the war would put such a strain on on Russia that you know Putin's regime might collapse and might be internal descent or or does does he seem to have like a total handle on all of that?
Say that again. Uh there was you know there there there was the speculation that all the sanctions like Russia's economy begins to like melt down and uh you know that could lead to cracks in his regime and and ultimately him being you know killed or deposed or some kind of internal rebellion within Russia. They definitely could. Um uh we need to be much more serious about our sanctions. Uh we need to be much more um Um well we need to enforce them particularly when it comes to uh our own Western companies that are helping Russia get around sanctions. And when I say helping, sometimes they pretend like it's unknowledgeable to them as in they'll send they'll send some technology to a third country and then that a company in that country will then sell it to Russia and they'll pretend they don't know what's happening when everybody knows exactly what's happening.
So I mean I think uh the the Treasury needs to enforce export controls against American companies much more seriously so that Russia doesn't get the technology it needs needs to be able to expand uh its uh capacity to go to build munitions. Um and you know in terms of whether it's going to lead to cracks in the regime, uh you never know when that's going to happen. I mean these things they they build to a critical mass uh and even the people on the inside um don't always know when that critical mass is going to break um or when the will of the person in power is going to break um and uh you know you just have to be there continually putting the pressure on uh so that when that moment happens um you've helped it come about um because if we take the pressure off then we know it won't happen, right? But we have to play the game like it can happen um cuz you never know when uh you know that sort of thing is going to pay off. Look at the president of Iran who died in a helicopter crash.
He died in a helicopter crash in an in an American Huey helicopter, the kind of helicopters that they uh used during the Vietnam War, um because of sanctions against Iran, because they don't have modern um you know, uh a modern air fleet over there. Um and because of the sanctions that have been in place against Iran for all those years. Um and that sort of without you know, much uh insight or planning, that just happened because of the bad condition of uh the uh Iranian uh air fleet that's a result of the sanctions that have been imposed against Iran for such a very long time. So, you don't know what the consequences exactly are going to be um of sanctions on a country that's your adversary. Um but you know, you're going to hope that they're not good, right?
Because this is these are countries that want your destruction and we have to remember that. All right, Simon, I think we're good for today. I really appreciate your time. Uh and I appreciate that the main points for people would be, you know, Russia really conceives of America as its enemy. We shouldn't be messing around with that. Uh they're actually like a you know, a puffer fish. I like that that idea. That they look probably imposing land-wise and so on, but actually sort of their actual econo- economy and potential is much smaller. Uh and um yeah, every everything points to the need to support Ukraine and not just think that we can just give give that up um to them cuz they're not going to stop rolling on.
And why would you want somebody who's declared itself your mortal enemy to just begin to keep keep amassing more countries and more resources. Uh and and you know, hopefully it's Harris and and Waltz uh in charge, but um perhaps even if it's um Trump and uh Musk and Vance and so on. I mean that's just a puppet of Musk as far as I can see. They'll also, you know, recognize that you can't just like seed all of that to to Putin. Yeah, hopefully, but I think there's a good chance that they will want to make a deal that uh just shows Putin once again that there are no consequences to his actions.
Right. And maybe they'll do the same want to do the same thing somewhere else. Okay, so yeah, I mean yeah, I guess you know I mean one theory is, you know, the Christian white nationalists love Israel so much because it's showing the model of a religious ethno-state that can just you know do whatever horrible acts up to genocide on its minority population, you know. And that could be a model for what they would want to do here given absolute control and power. All right, what's the good news? Oh man, you really came at me left field with that one. I mean, like I said, the the good news is is that the wake-up call came to Europe because of what happened in Ukraine rather than having to wait for the Russians to actually roll their their tanks across NATO's border.
So, I think the Europeans are getting much more prepared for really bad outcomes. And that's a good thing. And you see that even with sort of right-wing politicians in the mold of Giorgia Meloni in Italy. Because there is this view that the right populist leaders are all supporters of Putin. And she's definitely right populist borderline fascist if not full fascist. I mean, she certainly grew up in the fascist milieu of politics in in Italy. But she uh, also a strong partner for NATO and believes in in continuing to, uh, supply, uh, Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself. So, that's that's the silver lining is that even some of these right-wing populists are coming on board to, you know, the politics have to stop at the border of NATO at least, you know, that, uh, a threat, uh, to one country, um, among our friends is a threat to, uh, all of us.
Right on. Okay, Simon, thank you so much and, uh, hopefully we'll see you soon and talk soon. Thanks so much for having me. It was good to chat. Right on.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.