Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She now lives in Brussels and writes, on Substack, about foreign influence operations:

I’ve spent the last several years screaming from the rooftops about the corrosive effects of foreign influence operations on democratic societies. Now, I’ve decided to put all that information into a newsletter so that maybe you will start screaming from the rooftops, too. The more we understand how these influence operations tie into national security and corruption, the better we can arm ourselves against them.

I thought it would be interesting to have her on the podcast to discuss what we’re seeing.

How Russia captured a slice of the American mind

America’s response to Trump’s so-called peace plan proves just how successful Russia’s influence operations in America have been.

The KGB’s” active measures” system, refined in the late Soviet period and later adapted into the FSB/GRU playbook, rests on three principles: 1) Exploit existing divisions; don’t create fissures; widen them; 2) Use truth, half-truth, and lies interchangeably, whatever advances the psychological objective; 3) Obscure the source: The greatest triumph is when the target population spreads your messaging for you. Russian intelligence thinks in terms of cognitive openings: Any weakness—cultural, emotional, political, historical—becomes an entry point. America has a lot of entry points.

I recorded this podcast with Vladislav Davidzon on Zoom on Wednesday. I thought we’d covered some interesting ground. But when I listened to it, I was horrified to discover that something was seriously wrong with the audio. Vlad’s voice was mostly fine, but mine was often inaudible. I don’t know why. I record conversations on Zoom several times a week, and this has never happened before.

I spent yesterday trying to salvage the recording, but I could only improve it so much. Finally, tired and frustrated, I gave up and decided to deal with it today. Having slept on it, I decided that it didn’t merit my wasting another full day trying to fix it. Too much is happening in the world that I want to write about, and I didn’t want to see another day go down the tubes.

So I’m putting it up as is, with the transcript, below—read the transcript, listen to as much as you feel like, or don’t. I also gave the transcript to Google’s NotebookLM, which created a completely new podcast, with perfect audio. in which two slightly dopey AI speakers discuss the transcript in a chirpy tone. It’s just as good as the original, really. Voilà:

Claire: Welcome to the Cosmopolitan Globalist Podcast. I’m here with my friend Vladislav Davidson, who is in Amsterdam. Is that right?

Vlad: I am in Amsterdam indeed, Claire. Hi.

Claire: Hi! Are you coming back to Paris?

Vlad: I should be back in about a week or so. I’m waiting for a meeting with a politician. As soon as he tells me what his schedule is, I should pop back in.

Claire: Right.

Vlad: I’ll stay with you. Don’t worry. I know you missed me.

Claire: You going to be back for the 14th?

Vlad: Um, possibly. What do you think, you mean the parade?

Claire: Firemen’s ball. I thought it might be fun to go this year.

Vlad: You're going? Do you have extra tickets?

Claire: You don’t need tickets.

Vlad: I only have a white jacket with me while I’m on the road. What do you think?

Claire: Oh, you don’t need to dress up. It’s for the whole neighborhood.

Vlad: Is it on the street? Where is it?

Claire: It’s at the firehouse. It’s just across on the rue de Sévigné.

Vlad: I think it’ll be nice.

Claire: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

Vlad: Let me know. Actually, I’ve never done that.

Claire: You absolutely should.

Vlad: Right?

Claire: Yeah, speaking of the 14th, they’re practicing now for Bastille Day with the planes overhead, the fighter jets, and you know, when they pass overhead, the sound terrifies the cats—they run under the bed and they can’t be coaxed out for hours. And it actually terrifies me, too. I find these sounds terrifying. Just—

Vlad: I have flashbacks to the war. I can’t, even now in Amsterdam, sometimes the car back stops, sometimes it takes me a few seconds to realize I’m not in Ukraine. I’m not at the frontlines that—when some alarm goes off, I’m continuously thinking, are the Shaheds firing? So, uh—

Claire: It scares me and I know that they’re not coming for me. They’re just practicing for a parade. What is it like to deal with that for real, knowing that they are coming for you night after night? It’s just—

Vlad: It’s terrifying. And I have an extremely high appetite for risk, more than most people. But it’s really, really scary when you are in a situation where you’re getting bombed and you know you’re getting bombed. It’s not pleasant

Claire: Night after night. It must just leave people—it must just leave people beyond exhausted, beyond, beyond empty.

Vlad: Yeah. Well, that’s the point. That’s why they do it. They know that this is a way to grind down the population. They purposely do it in the middle of a night in order to wake people up and not allow them to sleep and to grind out the population’s capacity to resist.

Claire: I feel so bad for everyone who's living with this. I feel bad for the people in Gaza living with this. Obviously, I’m not a great enthusiast of Gaza’s political leadership, but—

Vlad: One has to have empathy for ordinary people who are caught in between the bad decisions of the leaders or the decisions of other leaders, right. I support Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas, and I also feel bad for every collateral casualty, for the suffering, by innocent people. Obviously it’s terrible. War is terrible.

Claire: Yeah, I know. I—that’s not a very original observation, but I—

Vlad: It’s not, it’s not.

Claire: But still, I just really feel bad for everyone who’s going through this, and I don’t understand why my fellow Americans don’t seem to feel for what Ukrainians are going through.

Vlad: Well, they did. They did and they still do. The polling is very obvious on this. But some people on the NatCon MAGA right have been, I wouldn’t say manipulated, but it’s become a partisan issue, and it’s easy for people not to care when they feel they're not being taken care of by the state.

Claire: Well, you have to be pretty stupid to allow that to be a partisan issue. For most of American history, there was an edict that politics stopped the water’s edge. And to make this partisan issue—

Vlad: It became a partisan issue because of the stupidity of some people, on both the Democratic Party and on the Ukrainian leadership side. The Ukrainians obviously have made a lot of mistakes in their dealings with Donald Trump over the last nine years.

Claire: I really think you’re blaming the victim on this one.

Vlad: I was a US law enforcement witness on this. I was there and I saw this, the Ukrainians got off on the wrong foot with Donald Trump from the very beginning. And obviously there was no playbook for how to deal with an insurgent Trump campaign in 2016, and the Ukrainian Embassy made some unfortunate calls in a difficult situation—I discussed this very recently with the Ukrainian ambassador at the time, and he’s very grateful to me for what I did back then.

Claire: You mean by handing over the information from the Party of Regions?

Vlad: That was one of the things they did. Yeah. Hmm.

Claire: What else?

Vlad: Uh, how discreet do I wanna be? The Ukrainians made a bad decision about, thinking that the Clinton campaign was gonna win and they made they made less effort to talk to the Trump people in the beginning, Ambassador Chaly—and I’ve told him this to his face—made a bad call with the way he published an article on The Hill in the spring of 2016, when Donald Trump was talking about Crimea as Russia—I mean, it should have been done at the level of the Foreign Ministry. It shouldn't have been the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington that made that call and wrote that op-ed.

Claire: Mm-hmm. I still think you’re blaming the victim. No normal administration would pay attention to that. They would act in the American interest.

Vlad: I mean, obviously he got embroiled in the Ukraine impeachment stuff. Obviously, that’s his own fault. But he did get embroiled in Russiagate, which was a lot of psychosis from the legacy media. And he saw the Ukraine stuff as an extension of Russiagate psychosis. So, he should get over it, but there’s multiple instances of things that he continuously got involved in. As a MAGA guy says to me, the Ukrainians somehow keep getting involved in Trump’s business. It’s a very vulgar but not incorrect way of explaining why Ukraine kept getting involved. And for whatever bizarre reason, as I put in one of my articles, Ukraine was fodder for presidential elections, three cycles in a row, 2016, 20 and 24, and that’s weird.

Claire: I don’t want to spend all of our time on this, but I still think that you're blaming the victim. The abnormality here is—

Vlad: I’m not blaming the victim because these are my people. I’m on the Ukrainian side. I think the Ukrainian leadership, before Zelensky, has a lot to answer for. Zelensky inherited a bad hand and a bad relationship. I don’t like the way they were treated. I don’t like what happened with him in the White House, that’s all terrible. But certain things happened between 2016 and 2019 that when Zelensky came into office, he already inherited a not-great relationship with the Trump administration. There’s a bad relationship, why there’s bad blood, why there’s lack of trust, you know?

Claire: What are you hearing about the latest insane episode in which it was reported that Pete Hegseth and perhaps Elbridge Colby unilaterally decided to hold up arm shipments to Ukraine? Is that true?

Vlad: Look, I don’t want to discuss Mr. Colby because I don’t want him to stop replying to my DMs on Twitter.

Claire: At some point you’ve gotta stop DMing and report what he says, right?

Vlad: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna—

Claire: He doesn’t listen to this podcast.

Vlad: I put a lot of effort into having conversations with those people and a lot of people told me it was a wasted effort, and it turns out—

Claire: So your sources are so carefully cultivated that you can’t ever use them?

Vlad: Yeah. Right, right. I don’t know, I tried, and a lot of other people tried to have conversations with the other side on this stuff, and some of them have come around, some of them have not, and I think it’s—

Claire: Well, you don’t have to say anything. But if he’s responsible for it, chuckle. And if not, I—

Vlad: I’ve read the same reporting that you have. Ha ha ha, ha ha.

Claire: I see.

Vlad: So, I really wish that wasn’t the case. They are really committed to their pivot away from Ukraine to Taiwan. They are committed to having the Europeans deal with this, and they are committed to offsetting this situation onto, NATO and European.

Claire: But Colby isn’t committed to Taiwan. He’s said so, explicitly. He said that he doesn’t think Taiwan is a vital American interest, and he thinks we should reach some kind of accommodation with China. It’s all just stuff he say. He’s a total opportunist. I know you don’t want to ruin your relationship with him, So I—

Vlad: Honestly, I don’t want to attack this gentleman. He has power, and there are a lot of vindictive people in the world, and people in power typically have egos and or sometimes thin egos. And I really hope that this is just a more of a kabuki game, which it very well could be. A lot of what happens with the Trump administration is kabuki games, allowing Trump to have his daily change of mood on whatever it—

Claire: Trump just said something about the Russians b**********g him, to which the entire world said, “Um, yeah.”

Vlad: But he knew this for months. I mean, he’s frustrated enough to actually call them out publicly on it because he knows he’s not getting anything from them. The Russians are just really stubborn, and they don’t want deal, and they don’t want anything and they’re just pushing Trump around. So at a certain point, even Donald Trump, whose policy was not to publicly criticize them and try to get them to make some sort of small concessions privately, said, “Okay, f**k these people.”

Claire: So why is he trying to rescue them economically?

Vlad: I mean, he has, again, a complicated relationship with Russia. He has a difficult relationship with the Russians and he obviously, like several other administrations, wants to park the Russian relationship and see if we can just get back to business as usual. Of course, there’s no going back to business as usual, and I think even he gets that, but he’s trying. Did you read my piece from December with Mark Galeotti?

Claire: The one about Trump scheming to get a Nobel Prize? I read about a third of it before you called.

Vlad: What’d you think of a first third?

Claire: You know what, just let me tell you something interesting that I heard, which I haven't written about yet.

Vlad: Yes?

Claire: Actually Trump has done something important in Congo. Something that

Vlad: Is that right?

Claire: He could legit get the Nobel Peace Prize for if anyone paid any attention to it. You know, that is the worst armed conflict since the Second World War. And it was heating up again. I found this out—it wasn’t reported anywhere—from my cab driver. I know it’s a cliche to cite the cab driver, but what can I do, it was a cab driver who told me this. My cab driver was from Congo, and we ended up talking about it. He was kind of surprised that I knew anything about the conflict. But he said “The Americans have really helped us”— and did you know there are American troops there in quite large numbers?

Vlad: When?

Claire: Now.

Vlad: I had no idea.

Claire: No, me neither. I mean, I’ve taken this from my Congolese cab driver, I haven’t tried to find out if it’s true. But why would he make that up? That’s kind of a hard thing to be mistaken about, right?

Vlad: I’m going to Google this. Immediately. US troops in Congo. I’m gonna Google this. It should be—I mean, unless it’s a secret and we’re secretly—

Claire: We pushed back M23, which is a significant achievement. Negotiated a ceasefire. And apparently, Donald Trump is popular there because he’s credited with stopping the war.

Vlad: Al Jazeera reported three years ago that President Tshisekedi authorized the deployment of US counterterrorism forces in the Eastern DRC. And the US Embassy says US Congo Military Cooperation continues. “A new chapter opens military cooperation.” This is on the US Embassy Congo website and “The need for US action for Democratic Republic.” Amnesty, USA. It seems that there are troops.

Claire: There are indeed. I was surprised to hear that, and surprised to hear the first non-American person I have encountered, probably, who was genuinely enthusiastic about Trump.

Vlad: African News has a piece on us deploying Army to secure the DRC election last summer. So it’s obviously true

Claire: —and this is a significant accomplishment. Now, obviously, the only reason, I’m sure, that we’re there is because it’s such a significant source of absolutely essential minerals. But—

Vlad: —but so what? You stop a war. You stop a war.

Claire: —you stop a war, you stop a war. So why isn’t Trump talking this up? Is it because he thinks his base will disapprove of sending troops to Africa?

Vlad: This may not be even in his top priority list. He may not even understand how successful his own policy may be. It’s entirely possible.

Claire: Well, he is a much more realistic candidate for a Nobel Prize for that achievement than for anything else.

Vlad: Well, I’m not against him getting the Nobel Prize if he actually does something worthy of it. Yeah. At this point he probably deserves it more than Barack Obama did.

Claire: Well, Barack Obama didn’t deserve it at all. He hadn’t done anything when he got it.

Vlad: Right. And in fact, he caused wars, and caused a lot of people to die.

Claire: Yeah, no. But Trump does seem to be quite obsessed with getting a Nobel prize. He’s having everyone who visits him submit his application to the Nobel Committee. He’s not going to get it, of course. And I don’t know—

Vlad: I had lunch with a very prominent Anglo-American journalist the other day, and he told me that he’s talking to his Norwegian friends and Swedish friends about getting their governments to back the committee to get it. And that’s the one way that we’re going to get influence on them, is the thinking. So, some serious people have had this thought.

Claire: Yeah. Pakistan came over and offered to nominate him for having negotiated a ceasefire with India, which India completely denies, and then the Israelis are nominating him for … having bombed Iran, I guess. Can you make any sense of this proposal in Gaza? I mean, what is he talking about when he talks about taking control of it and turning it into the Gaza Riviera? Does he—

Vlad: Is there an actual proposal, or that was just him—

Claire: —there was a press conference, a couple days ago. And I actually happen to have the transcript. Someone asked me about it. Let me just pull it up. His speech is so incoherent that it’s really hard to figure out what he’s getting at, in even the most literal sense.

Vlad: Do we just annex Gaza, make it into the 51st state? Is that what you're asking?

Claire: Well, he seems to be talking about “taking ownership,” which has to mean annexation, right? Or maybe it means taking ownership in the sense of “taking responsibility.” And—

Vlad: Anything?

Claire: Okay, here’s the transcript. Here we go. “We brought peace and stability to the Middle East like we haven't seen in decades. Together, we defeated ISIS, we ended the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, one of the worst. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Vlad: Blah, blah, blah.

Claire: “We starved Hamas,” which is a really unfortunate turn of phrase, “and other terrorist proxies. And, we starved them like they had never seen before.”

Vlad: Cool.

Claire: Blah, blah, blah. Says we’re going to have a lot of people signing up for the Abraham Accords very quickly.

Vlad: Good.

Claire: And then he says, “The horrors of October 7th would never have happened if I were president. The Ukraine and Russia disaster would never have happened if I were president”—

Vlad: By the way, I agree with that. It’s actually the case. It happened because we had a very weak and brain dead cadaver in the White House, and Putin made the decision to go all in because he saw weakness. I do believe that actually if Trump had been president of the war, and that sort of—

Claire: I am sure the debacle in Afghanistan was a significant part of his decision making, but I also think he felt internal pressures that had nothing to do with us. I think it was an act of regime consolidation.

Vlad: Yeah, I know, but he made a decision to go thinking that, it was not gonna have any kind of—

Claire: The ones he really thought were weak, compared to reality, were the Ukrainians. And that was obviously a major miscalculation.

Vlad: Yeah. Obviously there were miscalculations all around. But, that doesn't mean the Biden administration doesn’t have a lot to answer for.

Claire: Hey, we dispatched Bill Burns, the CIA Director, to Moscow before the war. Do you have any idea what he said to them?

Vlad: No, that’s top secret. But he threatened them. Obviously. They didn’t care. They didn’t believe him or care. Yeah. So—

Claire: I’m just wondering what he threatened them with. Alright, so here's what he says:

“Gaza strip has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly, who’ve been really very unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It's been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just, uh, has not been good. And it should not go through a process of rebuilding or occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it, lived there and died there, and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains, which will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly, bad luck.

“This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be the numerous sites, or it could be one large site, but the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and we’ll get, I’m sure, we’ll get something really spectacular done. They’re going to have peace. They’re not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of wonderful people has had to endure.

“The only reason Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It’s right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down. They’re living under fallen concrete, and that’s very dangerous, precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.

“Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job, do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for a hundred years. I’m hopeful that the ceasefire could be in the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and overall, but the same—”

Vlad: Claire, okay. I’ve had enough. Claire, what are you parsing there? What are you getting out of it?

Claire: I’m just trying to figure out what on earth he’s getting at. What is his idea here? Who is he talking about, even?

Vlad: I think he is sending signals to whichever Sunni Arab allies of ours we're trying to blackmail into paying for it and policing it. That’s what I would guess. But who knows?

Claire: Americans are not going to be happy with the idea of sending troops into Gaza.

Vlad: No, no. And we shouldn’t. And I personally want nothing to do with that. And that’s a bad idea. Obviously no one needs to do that. And—

Claire: On one thing, he’s right. Doing the same thing will get the same results.

Vlad: It’s totally right. Yeah.

Claire: It’s just—I just don’t know what he’s proposing as an alternative,

Vlad: Both the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes will collapse if they take on more responsibility for it. And the other Sunni Arabs don’t want to do it and the Palestinian authority doesn’t want to do it. I don’t have an answer anymore than anybody else does to, sorry to say.

Claire: I saw something—was it coming from the administration or was it just something I saw online?—about turning the Sinai into Palestine?

Vlad: People have been wanting to do that for a long time, but that would lead to the collapse of Egyptian regime, one way or another. And we’ve promised our Egyptian friends that we wouldn’t make them do that. So no one serious is actually demanding that they do that because it would bring the war to Egypt.

Claire: Trump doesn’t care what we promised.

Vlad: He understands power dynamics extremely well. He has an extraordinarily predatory and clear-eyed understanding of power. He is the president who is most comfortable, and most understanding of, power dynamics that we’ve had in a very long time.

Claire: That's why he can’t figure out how to handle Russia?

Vlad: He sees Russia as having nuclear weapons and very difficult to deal with and rightly so. I mean, what are you gonna do if the Russians don’t want to make peace? What are you going to do? You could.

Claire: Arm Ukraine! Give weapons to Ukraine!

Vlad: Yeah, I know, I know. And that, yes—I’m calling for that, obviously, but, still. It is a difficult situation. I don’t know why I’m defending him. I mean, I just like being on the contrarian side of things. Anyways, what did you make of my piece with Galleoti, as much as you read of it?

Claire: So far it was interesting. I just didn’t finish it. I mean—

Vlad: Basically we predicted that he would put a lot of pressure for some of the Ukrainians and that when that wouldn’t work, he would put the pressure on the Russians, and that's exactly what happened. Sadly, it didn't happen quickly enough.

Claire: He’s not putting a lot of pressure on the Russians.

Vlad: No, he is not. He’s not, and he doesn’t think he has a lot of sticks.

Claire: When we spoke to about this when you were here the other day, you said that Ukrainians are holding on for Russia’s economic collapse, which I think really could come quite quickly.

Vlad: The system is very shaky. It’s shakier than anticipated. And the Ukrainians are extremely smart and they know what they're doing and they are really putting a lot of effort into blowing up stuff like oil refineries, right? And so they are very good at blowing up oil refineries and oil tankers and arms munition sites. So they’ve—according to Ukrainian intelligence—created US$10 billion worth of economic damage inside Russia already just with drones, right? Just a couple of days ago, the Ukrainian drones shut down all of the flights, the entire night, in one of Moscow’s four major international airports. So nobody was flying in and out of Moscow that night, and the cell phone jammers were turned on in order to jam the drones. But basically, all those people in the airport didn’t have cell phone service, so they sat there for hours waiting for their flight, which didn’t happen until maybe the next day. They couldn’t call anyone and couldn’t go home. So that’s a knock-on effect. No one likes that. You get on a plane and then you have to sit at the airport and then you have to go home, right? So the idea is to make life very difficult for the Russian population and also to blow up a bunch of stuff that the regime needs to consolidate its economic control. So do Ukrainians think they’re gonna kill every last Russian soldier? No, they don’t. But they think they can, they can wait this out. And, um, maybe they—

Claire: Then what?

Vlad: Then? I don’t know, honestly. We’re waiting for the regime to collapse. He’s only human. You don’t make a deal with with him, because he doesn’t want to make a deal. You just wait it out.

Claire: There’s been an impressive number of Russians falling out of windows recently.

Vlad: Yeah. Like three of them just over the last three days. Yeah. Regime consolidation is real.

Claire: So these are people who were suspected of disloyalty in some way?

Vlad: Even a former defense minister, Timor what’s-his-name, went to jail for 13 years for corruption. There is a lot of internal politics in Russia and some of the regime elites are unhappy. Some of them are looking for quiet ways of making a deal. And some of them are falling out of windows because the regime both needs to scare some of them and also to take away their assets in order to pay off others, right? The system cannibalizes its own, once in a while, and even very high-level guys, a former transport ministry guy, a former defense minister, going to jail. This is just the way they run the regime, you know?

Claire: Yeah. Of the elites who aren’t happy, are there more of them who are unhappy in the direction of wanting to make a deal, or more of them who are unhappy in the direction of wanting to become more aggressive and take more risks?

Vlad: Well, there are those of them who just want to keep going and keep fighting. And then there are also those who are like, “This is stupid. This isn't going anywhere,” right? I think the ones who were okay with the war have consolidated their support for a really long time, and they’ve just priced in the fact that this war’s going to go on for a long time.

Claire: Who are the notable figures? Who would like to cut a deal, do you know?

Vlad: No, because if we had their names, they wouldn’t be in the game anymore. So I know that people do talk to them, and I have two names that have been bandied about, but I’m told I can’t make that public. There are regime insiders who do talk to Western intelligence agencies, but if they get caught, they do get killed.

Claire: So, do we have any insight to Putin’s state of mind right now?

Vlad: I personally don't know. There are people who look at that all day long, but it’s very difficult. And he does sit in a bunker, and Kremlinology is real, of course, but that’s a very difficult one. So I can’t say for sure. He thinks he’s winning.

Claire: Does he?

Vlad: Yeah, he absolutely does. Yeah. Why wouldn’t he? He is winning on the merits of his own position. He’s kind of winning. Yeah. So why wouldn’t he think that?

Claire: Certainly in the larger sense of demoralizing the West, leaving it too confused to understand the difference between its allies and its adversaries, bringing allies to power in Europe, and—

Vlad: The Russian Army’s grinding—at tremendous, unspeakable, inhumane costs, 1,300 Russian men dead and wounded every single day—they are making gains, they’re making substantive gains. And the Ukrainian army will run out of men at this point. It’s just the way it is.

Claire: Are Russians noticing all these wounded men coming back, do they—

Vlad: Well, it’s a good question actually. The Russians have made a point of not cycling people out of the war zone. Unless you’re really terribly maimed, you’re not going to be allowed out of a war zone by the Russian authorities. They try to keep the mobilized men in the war zone or in the regions around Russia in order to keep them from going back to their hometowns in Siberia and telling everybody how terrible things are.

Claire: Well, they remember 1917.

Vlad: Yeah, it’s a real policy at the presidential administration level. The number of demobilized guys is tiny. Actually, most people who were mobilized since September 22 have not been demobilized. There’s no demobilization structure. All the contracts that have been signed, with exception of the six-month ones that were given to the Prighozin guys, the Wagner guys, those have been honored, but everyone else, their stop-loss stuff has prevented them from going home. So the Russian regions are sort of getting information and if 200,000 Russian men are dead, those are substantive losses and—

Claire: People must have noticed that their loved ones are not in contact anymore.

Vlad: There’s a lot of that, but again, people will find out how bad it is when the demobilization starts, and there are gonna be huge, huge knock-on effects to the Russian economy and Russian society for decades to come as veterans come back, and crime, PTSD-related incidents skyrocket and roil the society. But that’s in the future. In the meantime, they’re not being let out of the staging grounds. And the population of Russia doesn't really know quite how bad the war’s going for them in terms of losses.

Claire: The POWs that were released recently, they didn’t even let them go home. They just sent them right back to combat.

Vlad: That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. That’s Russia. Ukraine is worse. You know, there’s a new term in Ukraine. It’s called a double widow. Do you know what a double widow is? A double widow is a Ukrainian woman who lost her husband to the army, remarried after 23, and lost her second husband. Can you imagine that’s a social term?

Claire: “Ukraine is worse”—not in the sense, however, of keeping people at the front so to conceal the extent of losses, I presume?

Vlad: No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, in terms of per capita dead, per capita wounded. Probably a lot worse for the Ukrainians, but the population is a quarter or a fifth of the Russian population, so it’s not the same.,

Claire: It’s an utter catastrophe. An utter catastrophe for Ukraine, for Europe, for Russia too. I mean, it’s just, just—

Vlad: It’s their own fault, but yes.

Claire: It’s their own fault in one sense, but there’s—really, I cannot think of anything that would make a country deserve this.

Vlad: The Russians put up with this regime for years and years, and actually in some ways they do deserve it, to be honest. There was a reckoning coming and they absolutely got what they deserved. Any Russian man who wound up in the war zone and was not forcibly thrown into it, with no agency of his own, deserves this in one way or another. I’m sorry to say that. I have very little sympathy.

Claire: I think I’d agree with that, but I wouldn’t agree that the whole society deserves what’s coming to them.

Vlad: I’ve asked soldiers, Ukrainian officers, on the front line, “Do you feel bad for anybody?” And they're like, “No. Look, you go to jail. Just say no to mobilization orders. Go to jail. Don’t kill anybody. Don't wind up dead in a ditch.”

Claire: I think I would agree with that—but—

Vlad: The Ukrainian officers do not have even the least bit of empathy for any Russian man who wound up there, and it’s completely normal. You have to dehumanize totally. You have to dehumanize your opponent in order to win. Obviously. That's a normal thing to do.

Claire: Sure. But I cannot condemn Russian civilians for being easily propagandized and incurious about the wider world, and willing to accept things that a free society shouldn’t accept, because if I use that standard, I’d have to condemn my own country, and I’m not willing to do that.

Vlad: Yeah. Yeah, no, I have more empathy for MAGA guys who see this as one more lie from an elite that has been lying to them and sending them to Iraq and Afghanistan than I do for any Russian on the frontline. I’m sorry to say.

Claire: Guys who think that are not the ones who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Those guys are actually much more aware of what’s going on and they tend to be extremely supportive of Ukraine.

Vlad: No, actually I do talk to people who were in Iraq and Afghanistan who are like, “What was I there for?” Like. “This is the one more lie. This is just—”

Claire: Well, I understand that bitterness about Iraq and Afghanistan for the veterans of those wars, but I don’t think that, by and large, that people who served are completely ignorant of why there’s a war in Ukraine, and who’s the bad guy.

Vlad: The Americans aren’t stupid. They know what’s going on anyways. Um, anything else we can talk about in terms of—

Claire: I contest that statement. I have to contest that statement.

Vlad: Really?

Claire: Yeah. I don’t think Americans know what’s going on. No. I think by and large Americans exhibit very little understanding of foreign relations and would be very hard pressed to answer simple factual questions about this conflict..

Vlad: Well, why is that?

Claire: Most people, not just Americans, but most people are not interested in international relations, or even politics. They become interested when it touches them personally. And Americans have a long history of feeling insulated from the rest of the world, different from the rest of the world, and they’re also unbelievably badly served by the media. It’s not really even the media’s fault either. We all know that the media’s been destroyed by the internet.

Vlad: Well, and their own stupid decisions.

Claire: A lot of them too. A lot of them too.

Vlad: Yeah. Anyway, Claire, thank you so much for this. It’s been a lovely, lovely time talking to you. I’m a bit miffed by all this also, so I, I can’t really—

Claire: Come back on the 14th and we’ll go to the firemen’s ball.

Vlad: Yeah, lemme try it. Lemme try. Okay. Okay.

Claire: A little plug for your new Substack?

Vlad: Are people gonna listen to all the way to the end?

Claire: You don’t want the ones who don’t as readers.

Vlad: Okay, I’m Substacking about art and politics, so I really hope everyone will tune in to my Substack about art and politics. And I think I'm good at what I do. I know a lot of interesting things,

Claire: Lots of lively writing and very informed commentary about both art and politics.

Vlad: Yes I just had my first piece. Claire was nice enough to cross post it. Claire, what was it about?

Claire: It was about the Rijksmuseum.

Vlad: Oh. And, hanging out, looking at arts. Yep. Right. You, you feel like you’re on a little walk through the Rijksmuseum, in art—

Claire: I left you a comment saying, “I got hung up on the word ‘garrulous’ to describe Otto Dix.” He had a fine pictorial feel for what things looked like after an exchange of artillery. You could say that.

Vlad: Right? That’s right. Alright, so do I. So do I. Thank you. Thank you Claire. Okay.

Claire: Alright.

Vlad: Bye bye.

Claire: Bye

Vlad: Bye.

While I’m at it, here’s the conversation you missed with Sergei Cristo. He’s the hero of the podcast Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring, in which he offered evidence of a spy ring operating at the heart of the British establishment.

I apologize for how long it took me to put this up. My computer wasn’t able to handle a file this big, so I couldn’t get it down from the cloud. Every time I tried, it crashed my computer. I finally broke down and bought a new computer. (It was time. My old computer had serious problems, including a broken keyboard—I could no longer type the letter “a,” which was a handicap in my line of work.) Then it took me a little while to reestablish all my files from the old computer. But I’m now good to go—and this will be followed by more video files that I haven’t been able to upload.

I’m a bit puzzled, though, because while I have the whole audio transcript, I can only find the highlights of the video, below. Did I move the video file somewhere else in the hope of opening it? Sergei, I’ll keep looking for the complete video file—it’s very likely that I moved it somewhere clever, and it will come back to me what I did with it. For now, this is actually quite a good summary:

UPDATE: I found the full video. I’d uploaded it to Dropbox in the hope it might open there.

Here’s an AI summary:

Russian Intelligence Operations in the West

Sergei discussed the Russian intelligence operations in the UK and the West's readiness to accept these operations. He highlighted the growing realization of autocracies working together, regardless of their ideologies, and the need for a unified approach to confront this growing threat. Sergei also touched on his research into Western investments in oppressive regimes and how these investments damage the national security of democratic countries. He mentioned parallels between the recent history of Turkey and Russia and the importance of understanding the Gerasimov doctrine, which outlines the role of non-military means in achieving political and strategic goals.

Russian Warfare and Western Intelligence

Sergei discussed the Russian approach to warfare, emphasizing that they view their intelligence operations as part of a war plan. He suggested that the West's successful use of soft power in the Cold War was weaponized by Russia in an inhumane way. Claire expressed concern about persuading Western publics that Russia is at war with them, particularly regarding the 2016 US election. Robert and Arun discussed the difficulty of convincing people of the truth, even when faced with evidence. Kay asked why there hasn't been a factual reveal from their own intelligence agencies. Sergei suggested that the UK could conduct a proper review of the evidence they have.

Trump’s Russian Organized Crime Ties

Sergei discussed the potential connections between Trump and Russian organized crime, highlighting Trump's business relationships with Russian criminals and the potential influence of the KGB. He also touched on the topic of cryptocurrency and its potential use for money laundering. Claire asked about the significance of Elon Musk's connections to the Kremlin, to which Sergei responded that while he doesn't have a definitive answer, there are potential links through new industries and the legalization of cryptocurrency. Andre Bauer asked about the connection between Alexander Lebedev and Boris Johnson, to which Sergei explained that Lebedev's father was a former KGB officer and that Lebedev himself was elevated into the House of Lords by Boris Johnson.

Aaron Banks’ Russian Financial Ties

The discussion focused on Aaron Banks, a major donor to the Brexit campaign, and his financial connections to Russia. Sergei and other participants share information about Banks’s business practices, including his use of offshore companies and potential involvement in money laundering. They also discuss Banks’s Russian wife and his meetings with Russian diplomats. Xavier adds that Banks was known for laundering money for Russian oligarchs through Gibraltar. The conversation touches on the broader implications of Russian financial influence in British politics and the need for further investigation into Banks’s activities.

Russian Influence on Trump’s Behavior

Claire discussed the influence of Russian operations on Donald Trump's behavior. The group agreed that Russia's influence is significant, but some participants, including Robert McTague and Robert Zubrin, expressed concerns about the public’s willingness to accept this fact. They suggested that a major incident, similar to the 9/11 attacks, might be needed to convince the public. The group also discussed the media’s role in educating the public about these issues, with some participants expressing frustration at the media’s failure to do so.

Russian Influence in Politics

Robert Zubrin discussed the dilemma faced by generals and politicians like McCarthy in acknowledging Trump’s potential ties to Russia, as it conflicts with their institutional loyalties. Sergei then shifted the conversation to Russian influence in politics, particularly focusing on the Brexit campaign and the harassment of journalist Carol Cadwalladr. He highlighted the role of Russian intelligence in orchestrating online abuse campaigns and the importance of exposing political figures with Russian connections, especially in Britain.

Financial Deals and Political Manipulation

Sergei discussed the potential consequences of exposing the financial dealings of politicians and bloggers, emphasizing the damaging impact of populist figures. He also shared his concerns about the British government’s reluctance to investigate Brexit. Sergei suggested that the revelation of Trump's financial deals and alleged misconduct could lead to widespread disillusionment among his supporters. He also expressed his belief that the rule of law should be used while it still exists, and he criticized the lack of action from the British authorities. Claire agreed with Sergei’s points, highlighting the need for democracies to harden against manipulation while remaining open societies.

Statesmanship and Sovereignty in Democracies

Robert Zubrin discussed the importance of statesmanship in democracies, citing historical examples such as Pericles in Athens and Churchill in Britain. He emphasized the need for a patriotic political movement to reverse current trends. Sergei brought up the issue of sovereignty and foreign interference, while Arun highlighted the division in American society and the perception of Russia among Trump’s voters. Robert Zubrin clarified that the majority of Americans support Ukraine, not Russia. The discussion also touched on the role of media and the importance of understanding the difference between criminal and counterintelligence investigations.

Russian Influence on US Political System

Larissa expressed concern about the Russian influence on the US political system, emphasizing the need for new ways to maneuver in the face of changing political dynamics. Sergei discussed the potential for Russian interference in the US electoral system, particularly with the suspension of cyber defense operations against Russia.

Western Investments in Oppressive Regimes

Sergei discussed his research on Western investments in oppressive regimes and its impact on national security. He is working on a case study of asset managers and sustainable funds, which often invest in regimes like Putin’s. Sergei is collaborating with investigative journalists and publications like The Economist and Berlin Times to publish his findings. The discussion also touched on the influence of Trump and other American politicians on European far-right parties like the AFD in Germany.

Social Media’s Impact on American Politics

The group discussed the impact of social media and Russian influence on American politics, particularly in relation to Trump’s presidency. Robert Zubrin suggested that social media has created a “post-truth environment” that made Trump’s rise possible, rather than an increase in racism. Claire recommended Adam Garfinkle’s work on the effects of social media. The conversation concluded with Sergei emphasizing the importance of exposing crimes and the group agreeing on the need to find solutions to combat misinformation.

Help Sergei expose Western investments in dictators here.

And just for fun, here’s a briefing and a podcast created by Google’s new one-click AI podcast creator, which turns everything you feed it into banal but completely realistic podcast slop. It’s amazing.

Listen to Google Slop’s podcast version of our conversation

Briefing: Russian Intelligence Operations and Western Influence

This briefing summarizes the key themes and important points discussed in the provided transcript, focusing on Russian intelligence operations and their alleged influence in Western democracies, particularly the UK and the US.

Main Themes:

* Russian “Active Measures” as Warfare: The core theme is that Russia views its intelligence operations, including propaganda, covert influence, and disruption, as a form of warfare against the West, not merely espionage. This is linked to the Gerasimov Doctrine and a perceived lesson from the Soviet Union’s collapse and Western "soft power" success.

* Historical Context of Russian Influence: The discussion places current Russian activities within a historical context, noting parallels with Soviet ideology and methods, as well as drawing lessons from the Cold War.

* Targeting Western Democracies: Russia is seen as actively targeting Western democracies through various means, including exploiting political divisions, supporting populist movements, and using financial and commercial links.

* Difficulty in Western Recognition and Response: A significant challenge is the difficulty in persuading Western publics and institutions of the reality and severity of Russian influence operations. There is a perceived reluctance to acknowledge being “at war” with Russia in this unconventional sense.

* Specific Cases of Alleged Russian Influence: The discussion delves into specific cases, including the US elections, Brexit, and individuals like Donald Trump, Aaron Banks, Alexander Lebedev, and potentially Elon Musk, examining their alleged connections and the mechanisms of influence.

* The Role of Finance and Organized Crime: The transcript emphasizes the intertwined nature of Russian intelligence operations, organized crime, and financial dealings, particularly through offshore structures and potentially cryptocurrency.

* Challenges in Investigating and Prosecuting: The offshore nature of some financial activities and the political sensitivity surrounding these allegations are presented as significant obstacles to effective investigation and prosecution.

* Impact on Political Discourse and Public Opinion: Russian influence operations are seen as contributing to the amplification of divisive narratives and potentially impacting electoral outcomes and public understanding of events.

Most Important Ideas and Facts:

* Russian “Active Measures” as Grand Strategy: According to Sergei, referencing the Gerasimov Doctrine, Russia considers intelligence operations and covert actions as the “cheapest in terms of grand strategy” and a “more effective way of achieving those goals,” making them a “part of the war plan.”

* Western Democracies are “at War” from Russia’s Perspective: Sergei states, “if we're asking ourselves... in Russian's eyes, are we at war with Russia in the West, NATO with Russia? The answer is absolutely, categorically, we are because they're already conducting that war as per Gerasimov doctrine.”

* GRU Involvement in US Elections: Sergey mentions that “according to CIA, what they’ve disclosed was that the part of the intelligence machinery of Russia that was engaged with the first Trump election was GRU group, which is part of which is military intelligence.”

* Trump’s Relationship with Russians: Sergey suggests Trump’s trust in Putin likely stems from his “long established relationship with Russians” through his business dealings, describing it as a “fusion of the KGB, organized crime under Putin, and weaponizing Trump’s commercial links.”

* Aaron Banks and Brexit Funding: Aaron Banks is highlighted as a significant figure in the Brexit campaign who received scrutiny for the source of his large donation. It’s noted that his business is structured through offshore companies and that his companies had similar names with small differences, a potential sign of illicit activity according to due diligence practices. The largest political donation in British history was Aaron Banks’s £6 million to UKIP (now Reform UK).

* Alleged Russian Influence on Aaron Banks: Connections between Aaron Banks and Russian intelligence are suggested through his meetings with Russian diplomats and alleged discussions about gold and diamond investments. The use of diamonds as a historical KGB funding method is mentioned in this context.

* Aaron Banks and Money Laundering in Gibraltar: A personal account from someone with connections in Gibraltar alleges that Aaron Banks and his companies were “laundering money like it was going out of fashion for the Russian mob” through Gibraltar.

* Lebedev’s Elevation to the House of Lords: The elevation of Alexander Lebedev, son of a former KGB officer and owner of UK newspapers, to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson is presented as a controversial event that occurred just before the publication of the Russia report, despite leaked objections from the Security Service.

* The “Bad Novel” Problem: Claire Berlinski suggests that one reason people struggle to accept the reality of Russian influence operations is that “it sounds so much like a bad novel or a bad movie makes people think it cannot be true.”

* Brexit Referendum’s Legal Status: Sergei points out that the Brexit referendum was “advisory,” meaning “the same strict rules is applied to elections to see what was actually legal result of election. What could have been an illegal result in the election. Those rules do not apply to advisory referendums.”

* Western Investments in Oppressive Regimes: Sergei mentions his research on how Western investments in oppressive regimes can damage national security, focusing on asset managers investing in the “Putin regime” despite it being labeled a “sustainable fund.”

* Undermining NATO as a Russian Objective: The boosting of the AfD in Germany by figures like Vance and Musk is seen as making “perfect sense in terms of our operating assumption,” as undermining NATO and splitting Western alliances is a “big Russian grand, strategic, objective.”

This briefing provides a snapshot of the concerns raised regarding Russian influence operations and highlights the complexity and perceived lack of preparedness in Western democracies to address this challenge.

NotebookLM can be inaccurate; please double check its responses.

For those of you who missed it, here’s the conversation we had on Sunday with Vivek and Raja Muneeb.

Here’s an AI summary of the conversation—it’s remarkably accurate:

Pakistan’s Nuclear Threat and Implications

The meeting involved a discussion about the potential threat of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the implications of their use. The participants discussed the possibility of Pakistan using nuclear weapons as a bluff and the potential consequences of such an action. They also touched on the issue of Pakistan's nuclear technology being sold to rogue states and the need to prevent this from happening. The conversation ended with a discussion about the stress and sleep deprivation experienced by the participants due to the ongoing tensions.

India-Pakistan Tensions and Terror Groups

Vivek and Raja discussed the recent developments between India and Pakistan, focusing on the events that took place in Pahalgam and the speech made by the Director General of Military Operations. They also touched on the history of Kashmir and the role of terror groups in the region. Raja explained the Pakistani military’s mindset and the political situation in Pakistan, while Vivek provided context on the formation of terror groups in the 1980s. The discussion also included the evidence of the terror attack and the reasons behind Pakistan's denial of involvement.

Kashmiri Pandits’ Experiences and Historical Context

Raja shared his personal experiences and memories of the 1989-1990 exodus of Hindus from Kashmir. He described the violence, harassment, and terror faced by the Kashmiri Pandits, including extortion, rape, and murder. Raja also discussed the impact of the conflict on the education system and the economy in Kashmir. He mentioned the role of Jamat-e-Islami and other terrorist organizations in subverting the society and the government institutions. The meeting also touched upon the historical context of the Kashmir issue, including the Instrument of Accession and the role of Sheikh Abdullah.

Pakistan’s Government and China’s Influence

Raja explained that Pakistan’s government, feeling isolated internationally, has rekindled the conflict to boost its legitimacy. He also mentioned the influence of China in the region, particularly in Balochistan, where the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is facing challenges due to the Balochistan Liberation Army’s activities. Vivek added that Pakistan's economy is in trouble, and the CPEC projects have been criticized for being poorly negotiated and expensive. The group also discussed China’s interest in keeping India destabilized, as they are competitors in the Asian space.

Indus Waters Treaty Conflict

The meeting focused on the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, particularly regarding the Indus Waters Treaty. The participants discussed the treaty’s history, its implications, and the challenges it poses. They also touched on the role of the United States in mediating the conflict and the potential for de-escalation. The discussion also included the effect on the treaty on the region’s demography and the potential for a plebiscite. The participants also discussed the potential for international intervention. The conversation ended with a discussion on the economic interests of the United States in the region and the potential for a hyphenated approach to the conflict.

Pakistan’s Identity and Military Power

The group discussed the fundamental insecurities within Pakistan about its identity, stemming from its formation and the reasons behind it. They highlighted its psychological insecurity and the talk given by General Assi Muni on April 16th, which stated that only two nations were formed on the basis of the Kalma, one being Pakistan. The team also discussed the challenges faced by Pakistan in building a truly Islamic identity, the problems within the country, and the question of whether Pakistan needs to emerge from its religious mindset.

They also touched upon the role of the Pakistan military and the myth of the threat from the Hindi, which has been a core reason for the army’s power. The speakers concluded that without othering India, Pakistan’s right to exist is questioned, as a large part of Pakistan shares the same gene pool, food, and practices as India.

India-Pakistan Relations: Challenges and Reconciliation

Vivek and Raja discussed the complex relationship between India and Pakistan, highlighting the challenges in fostering peace due to Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism. They noted that India’s attempts at reconciliation have consistently been met with aggression from Pakistan. Raja emphasized that the Pakistani military’s rejection of cultural ties and its support for radical groups have hindered efforts towards peace. The discussion also touched on the role of political parties and the impact of democratic regimes in Pakistan on its relations with India.

Terrorist Group Connections and Funding

In the meeting, Vivek, Raja, Robert, and Jim discussed the connections between various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They highlighted the complex networks and funding sources of these groups, with a particular focus on the role of ISI.

The discussion also touched on the challenges of tracking and countering these groups, with Robert mentioning the division between India’s Indo-Pac Command and Pakistan’s Central Command.

The conversation ended with Claire expressing interest in having Raja write about these topics.

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You’ve heard, I’m sure, of my famous but highly elusive brother, Mischa Berlinski. He’s the author of FIELDWORK—a finalist for the National Book Award— and PEACEKEEPING. His writing has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. He got a Whiting Writers’ Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Addison M. Metcalf Award. He’s the big family literary success. But he’s very shy, and until now, he has categorically refused to come on this podcast.

However, he’s written a new book. He would very much like you to pre-order it, and so would I, because pre-ordering is hugely important: If it looks as if people are excited and eager to read a book, the algorithms will start flogging it.

So, capitalizing on his desire to sell his book, I’ve managed to persuade him to introduce himself to you and tell you a bit about MONA ACTS OUT—a novel that just happens to take place over the course of a single Thanksgiving Day.

We’d be ever so grateful if you were to pre-order it now. I promise you won’t regret it. It really is so good.

I’ll add some extra motivation too: If you pre-order a copy today, I’ll comp you an extra month here at CG.

Here’s the cover blurb:

Both beguilingly approachable and intricately constructed, at once funny and sad and wise, MONA ACTS OUT is a novel about acting and telling the truth; about how we play roles to get through our days; and how the great roles teach us how to live.

Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of a household of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she’s still fighting with her husband, who has not forgotten what happened last night; and in just a few weeks she is supposed to step into the rehearsal room as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. It’s the hardest role in theatre—and the first role Mona has ever attempted without her sister, who died just over a year ago, by her side. When her father-in-law starts fighting with her niece about Donald Trump, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow (“I forgot the parsley!”) to find the only person she doesn’t have to act for: her estranged longtime mentor, Milton Katz, who may or may not be dying and who was recently forced out of the legendary theatre company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona’s trek turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face to face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has loved and still loves.

A brilliant, highly-anticipated return of a writer of almost magical descriptive and imaginative powers.

The reviews so far have been fabulous:

Kirkus (Starred review):

Berlinski follows acclaimed novels set in Thailand (Fieldwork, 2007) and Haiti (Peacekeeping, 2016) with a New York–based comedy of of manners and morals featuring a brilliantly imagined female protagonist, Mona Zahid, one of the stars of a Shakespearean theater troupe based in the East Village. Until recently, the company was led by legendary director Milton Katz, but an article in The New York Times, filled with accusations of misconduct from a slew of actresses, led to his disgrace. Mon herself “an out-and-out, unabashed Miltophile,” was not among the accusers. We meet her as she awakens in her Morningside Heights apartment on Thanksgiving Day to a full house—in addition to her surgeon husband, teenage son, and canine companion Barney, her in-laws and her college student niece, Rachel, are milling about. Absent is Rachel’s mother—Mona’s sister, Zahra—who died less than a year earlier, leaving Mona a stash of 150 pain pills of which there are now only six. Mona starts her day by taking two. Not long after, she hears the assembled family members begin to argue about Milton Katz and Donald Trump. She knows she should go out and save the day, but by then she has vaped some weed so strong she suspects it of being laced with “hallucinogenic toad drippings” and can only bring herself to put Barney on his leash and race out the front door, claiming she’s off to buy parsley. At this point the novel takes an amazing left turn; suffice to say, Mona will not be home for dinner. Readers who know their Shakespeare will thrill to Berlinski’s brilliant distillation of the power and relevance of the plays and characters, but those who don’t will find they can easily come along for the ride. And a great ride it is.

Wonderfully constructed, witty, warm, wise, and filled with an extraordinary sense of the relation between theater and life.

Publishers Weekly (Starred as well):

In the sharp-witted and weighty latest from Berlinski (Fieldwork), #MeToo allegations roil an off-off-Broadway Shakespeare company, prompting a 50-something actor to reevaluate her life. Mona Zahid is already grappling with the difficult new role of Cleopatra and what it says about her career; after playing everyone from Juliet to Lady Macbeth, being cast as the Egyptian queen means she’s just about aged out of Shakespeare’s heroines. Mona’s also dreading hosting Thanksgiving dinner, especially after the death of her younger sister, Zahra, whose daughter, Rachel, will be in attendance. Recently, Mona learned that Rachel, following an internship at the theater company, was one of the women who accused its octogenarian founder, Milton, of sexual misconduct. On Thanksgiving Day, Mona escapes her cramped Upper West Side apartment for a last-minute grocery run, during which she frets over a recent postcard message from Milton, in which he claimed to be dying. She decides to make a detour to Brooklyn to see him, and on the way, she burrows deep into memories of her younger years as a player in Milton’s company, when scoring an audition at his dingy Avenue C squat was akin to “winning one of Willie Wonka’s Golden Tickets.” Mona’s thoughts are laced with scathing humor and piercing insight into the actor’s craft, resulting in a surprisingly moving exploration of the courage required to play life’s many roles. Berlinski deserves a standing ovation for this bravura performance.

“Mischa Berlinski has written an instant-classic New York novel about theater, aging, sex and love, and the promise and price of life’s second acts.”—Joshua Cohen

“After a few pages, I canceled my dinner plans rather than put this one down. I absolutely loved this novel’s stunning, almost alarming, insight into one woman’s longing. An unflinchingly honest exploration of the complexities of the human condition and the ambiguities of contemporary morality, MONA ACTS OUT epitomizes great comedy; deftly woven throughout its fabulously hilarious prose is significant wisdom and sorrow.”—Binnie Kirshenbaum

“The delightful MONA ACTS OUT takes us where we all dream of going: away from the irritations of our present moment, into the open streets, to confront everything that still haunts us and reach, surely, hopefully, the Promised Land.”—Daniel Handler

A delightful, insightful, and critical view into the world of theater, New York City, and one woman’s reflection on her life as she enters her later years. Mona, one of the star performers in a Shakespearean troupe, struggles to reconcile her life as she lived it and the modern criticism of the mores of that time. The story asks, how will Mona reconcile her truth and experience while acknowledging that times have changed and she may be left behind if she does not change with them? Humorous, reflective, and insightful; I enjoyed taking the journey with Mona. A thank you to W.W. Morton for an advance readers copy. —Joanna on Goodreads

Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning. Her in-laws are there, along with her husband (with whom she is unhappy), her son, and more. Mona is a skilled and experienced Shakespearean actor, soon to begin rehearsals for Cleopatra. Given her age, it is likely the last leading role she will have. She needs to have some time, so she heads out with the dog to buy parsley. This leads to an overnight ramble that brings past and present together. As a long-ago English major, I read most (maybe all) of Shakespeare’s plays. My roommate and I found the plays to be much more approachable and enjoyable by doing two-person readings. We were on the right track, but this novel explains so much more about how Shakespeare should be presented. (Does that sound horrible? It really is much more casually informative and fascinating than didactic.) In any case, this is quite a great novel that shows how much we learn from the roles we play. —Lee Cornell on Goodreads

“I’m head over heels for this witty, tender, keenly intelligent exploration of art, artifice, and the human heart. Mischa Berlinski is a masterful and deeply empathetic storyteller, and MONA ACTS OUT is a pure delight.” —Antonia Angress

Only one bad review, so far—from a woman who also panned Shakespeare:

First, I didn’t like Mona at all. I found her unsympathetic, annoying, and selfish. That makes for some tough reading. Next, I found all the Shakespeare unbearable. Too much with all the quotes and references. I had to stop halfway through. Too many wonderful books out there and for me, this was not one of them. —Sylvia

I loved this book so much that I made this collage for Mischa, for his birthday, with all of the book’s characters in it. When your copy arrives, you can check back to see how, exactly, I imagined everyone in the book. (The original is really big, so you have to look at the close-ups for the details.)

Close up:

Even closer:

🎟️🎭🎼➪☛☞ BUY IT HERE☚☜⇦🎼🎭

Once. you’re hooked, you can also read my brother’s first two novels: FIELDWORK and PEACEKEEPING.

And you can read about how my brother tried to buy a Zombie in Haiti, too.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers! Among the many things for which I’m deeply grateful today are you. It’s a joy to have readers to whom I can introduce my brother (on the very rare occasions he emerges from his cave)—and vice-versa.

And should you be finding discussion around the Thanksgiving table slightly taxing this year, do not do what Mona did.

I invited Bob Holley on the podcast to discuss the article he recently published here, Fracturing the Security Map, warning that the return of Donald Trump, coupled with Ukraine’s defeat, could spark a stampede to redraw the world’s nuclear security arrangements.

Discussed in the podcast

This is the remarkably prescient article by John Measheimer I mentioned: The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent

America First

I’ve been thinking about this problem since the first Trump presidency. I’ve explicated my own arguments about this risk in these and other articles:

Five Alarm Fire: The 118th Congress is destroying the world our grandparents built.

At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945—when a ball of fire rose in gold, violet, grey, and blue over the Jornada del Muerto desert, melting the sand into light green radioactive glass and illuminating every peak and crevasse of the nearby mountain range with a searing white light—American statesmen began a frantic, desperate effort to forestall the emergence of precisely the world we are now ushering into being.

“[T]he US is basically making the case to all states that they should try as hard as they can to develop nuclear weapons,” writes the war historian Phillips O’Brien … There is nothing wrong with his logic. His observations are correct and so is his reasoning. But the same logic applies to every other power in the world that would prefer not to suffer Ukraine’s fate.

The United States is pursuing a feckless, shortsighted policy that will lead to moral disgrace, generational shame, global nuclear proliferation, and an uncontrolled, multipolar nuclear arms race. We’re not pursuing it deliberately. It isn’t what we mean to do. But we could not be pursuing this policy more industriously if we had dedicated all the resources of our federal bureaucracy to the goal.

America First means nuclear war. The inevitable end point of losing the world's trust is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation:

… Here’s where a devout cadre of Trump’s supporters jump in on Twitter and say to me, “Great! All these freeloaders can start paying for their own defense!”

No. That’s not what’s going to happen. No single country can conceivably match the power of the full NATO alliance. That’s why we had it.

It would be a catastrophe if every country with the ability to do it acquired the Bomb. Never mind whether they would use them in anger, it would multiply the risk of an accident, which we already know is insanely high.

But they’re going to to do it if we keep this up. Any American who owns a gun, even though rationally they grasp that fewer Americans would die if there were no guns in America, should understand the calculation other countries are now apt to make. Is it a rational thing for the world to do? No. Rationally, the world will be, objectively, less safe if everyone acts on that impulse.But the world isn’t a rational place. People want safety for themselves, even if it means putting the world at greater risk. The inevitable end point is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation. What “America First” means, in the end, is “Nuclear war.”

If you missed it the other day, here is the case for believing that under these circumstances, the risk of an accidental nuclear war would be insanely high.

If you’re unconvinced by this case, you may be suffering from one of these common cognitive errors.

It’s Happening

This is no longer theoretical. We’re not discussing an abstruse theory in international relations, or something that might happen. It’s happening now. The news is scarcely being reported in the United States, crowded out by discussion of Trump’s Cabinet picks, but as soon as the election was called for Trump, the world began to change:

“NATO or Nukes.” Why Ukraine’s nuclear revival refuses to die:

Addressing a European Council meeting in Brussels on October 17, Zelensky invoked Ukraine’s decision to surrender nuclear weapons inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security commitments from nuclear states—the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia—recorded in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. (China and France pledged similar security assurances in separate letters.) The Budapest Memorandum commitments failed spectacularly to prevent Russian aggression against Ukraine. So, how does Ukraine provide for its security? Zelensky outlined two options: “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then it will be a defense for us, or Ukraine will be in NATO. NATO countries are not at war today. All people are alive in NATO countries. And that is why we choose NATO over nuclear weapons.”

On the same day, Zelensky revealed that he had delivered a similar message to presidential candidate Donald Trump during his visit to the United States in late September and added that Trump responded that his reasoning made sense … the international community cannot blame [Zelensky] for stating the obvious: NATO members, under their nuclear umbrella, are at peace while Ukraine is at war. Russia and NATO exercise restraint vis-à-vis each other based on a shared understanding that a direct conventional confrontation between two nuclear-armed adversaries would carry the inherent risk of nuclear escalation and possibly a nuclear war. Russia does not exhibit a similar restraint toward a non-nuclear, non-allied Ukraine. To add insult to injury, Russia, with its nuclear saber-rattling, has succeeded in partly influencing the timing and conditions of Western arms supplies to Ukraine, hampering Ukraine’s defense effort. In short, peace is the prerogative of those who are fortunate to benefit from nuclear deterrence. The unfortunate ones must suffer war.

“I was surprised by the reverence the United States has for Russia’s nuclear threat. It may have cost us the war. They treat nuclear weapons as some kind of God. So perhaps it is also time for us to pray to this God.”

Could Zelensky use nuclear bombs? Kyiv could rapidly develop a rudimentary weapon similar to that dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 to stop Russia if the US cuts military aid:

Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. …

With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine would have to rely instead on using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors. Ukraine still controls nine operational reactors and has significant nuclear expertise despite having given up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in 1996.

… The paper, which is published by the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, an influential Ukrainian military think tank, has been shared with the country’s deputy defense minister and is to be presented on Wednesday at a conference likely to be attended by Ukraine’s ministers for defense and strategic industries. It is not endorsed by the Kyiv government but sets out the legal basis under which Ukraine could withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the ratification of which was contingent on security guarantees given by the US, UK and Russia in the 1994 Budapest memorandum. The agreement stated that Ukraine would surrender its nuclear arsenal of 1,734 strategic warheads in exchange for the promise of protection. “The violation of the memorandum by the nuclear-armed Russian Federation provides formal grounds for withdrawal from the NPT and moral reasons for reconsideration of the non-nuclear choice made in early 1994,” the paper states.

…. Trump has pledged to cut US military aid unless Kyiv submits to peace talks with Putin. Bryan Lanza, a Trump adviser, has already said that Ukraine will have to surrender Crimea. This week Donald Trump Jr. taunted Zelensky, posting on X: “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance.”

… “You need to understand we face an existential challenge. If the Russians take Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians will be killed under occupation,” said Valentyn Badrak, director of the center that produced the paper. “There are millions of us who would rather face death than go to the gulags.” Badrak is from Irpin, where occupying Russians tortured and murdered civilians, and he was hunted by troops with orders to kill him.

Western experts believe it would take Ukraine at least five years to develop a nuclear weapon and a suitable carrier, but Badrak insists Ukraine is less than a year from building its own ballistic missiles. “In six months Ukraine will be able to show that it has a long-range ballistic missile capability: we will have missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometers,” Badrak said.

Signatures collected in favor of stationing nuclear weapons in Latvia.

The Future of the Zeitenwende: Scenario 5—Poland Becomes a Nuclear Power:

… Given that Poland would have to fear Russian preemptive action, especially in a world where Washington had withdrawn from NATO, Poland’s best bet would be to hide its nuclear ambitions for as long as possible. In this regard, Poland would likely aim to present the world with a fait accompli once its nuclear weapons program has started to bear fruit.

Interview with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski:

“If America cannot come together with Europe and enable Ukraine to drive Putin back, I fear that our family of democratic nations will start to break up. Allies will look for other ways to guarantee their safety. They’ll start hedging. Some of them will aim for the ultimate weapon, starting off a new nuclear race.”

Center-right leader Weber supports Macron’s call for European nuclear deterrent.

Germany debates nuclear weapons, again. But now it’s different.

Germany and a European nuclear deterrence capability

Germany must go nuclear! 

With Russia inching forward in Ukraine, the US threatening to flake out as an ally and the rest of Europe in a state of paralyzed shock over Donald Trump, Germany should waste no time in pulling together a nuclear arsenal. In a nutshell, that’s the position of Germany’s atomic hawks, who have been screaming from the rooftops this week that the clock is ticking to take action before Germany finds its collective self once again staring down the barrel of der Russe (the Russian).

To be sure, Germany’s nuclear debate isn’t new. In recent years it’s come up again and again. But this time, the debate is much more urgent. “We’re running out of time,“ Maximilian Terhalle, a German security and military expert  who has spent years pushing his country to reconsider its stance on nukes, tells the Bulletin. … Putin could see an opening to test the US’s resolve to protect “every inch” of NATO territory as soon as Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025 by moving into Estonia or another Baltic nation (or as Trump has been known to call them, the “Balkans.”)

Iran reaffirms stance against nuclear weapons amid regional tensions:

In recent months, there have been calls from certain figures within Iran to reconsider Khamenei’s fatwa in response to Israel’s nuclear capabilities and escalating tensions. In May, Kamal Kharrazi, Chairman of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that Iran could reassess its position if Israel were to threaten Iran with its nuclear weapons. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also stated that such a threat could lead regional countries to reconsider their nuclear stance.

Saudi Arabia will build a nuclear bomb “as soon as possible” if Iran succeeds in developing its own.

Turkey needs to acquire nuclear arms to stop Israel, urges Erdoğan’s chief fatwa giver:

Hayrettin Karaman, the 90-year-old Islamic jurist and chief fatwa (religious edict) giver for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a prominent ideologue for the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood, has said Turkey must pursue nuclear capabilities to counter Israel and establish deterrence against its adversaries.

In an article published September 8 in the Islamist Yeni Şafak daily, Karaman argued that Turkey’s current efforts are insufficient to stop Israel. He urged that “either the Islamic world must unite and collaborate with China and Russia, or Turkey must move forward by acquiring nuclear warheads and weapons.”

Erdoğan’s nuclear itch. Why Turkey’s nuclear program is a threat to regional stability and the international nonproliferation regime:

The year 2023 is an important one for observers of Turkey’s nuclear program, as that year is when the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Turkey’s first, is scheduled to come online, making Turkey’s ambitions more clear. The threat may very well come to pass as nothing but a threat. This rests upon the international community adopting several measures to reestablish confidence in the nonproliferation regime, something which looks unlikely at the moment but is necessary to prevent a new nuclear arms race. A nuclear Turkey would help realize Erdoğan’s dreams of a Pan-Turkic Empire. So long as Erdoğan continues on his revanchist path of returning Turkey to its Ottoman glory, the threat posed by Turkey gaining nuclear capabilities cannot be disregarded.

Taiwan must get serious about nuclear weapons:

Since its February 2022 invasion, Russia has repeatedly threatened nuclear escalation if NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Predictably, NATO has refrained from sending troops. Equally predictable is that the US would avoid sending troops to Taiwan if it believed the decision might lead to nuclear war. … Ukraine tried to deter Russia with conventional weapons, and it did not work. Instead of repeating Ukraine’s mistakes, Taiwan should learn from them. … Ukraine and Taiwan have no choice but to face their nuclear-armed adversaries alone. Their best chance of long-term survival is to acquire their own nuclear arsenals.

Trump’s comeback fuels nuclear debate in South Korea:

"In general, the more the Trump administration denigrates and neglects the alliance with the South and the more it shows signs of wanting to reach an arms control deal with North Korea that provides Pyongyang with nuclear weapons status, the more South Korea will entertain its intention of obtaining its own nuclear weapons.” …  That concern will be heightened if, as has been speculated, Trump pursues an agreement with the North that bans its development of the long-range missiles—the kind of missiles that could be used to threaten the US mainland with nuclear weapons—in return for the West effectively accepting North Korea as a nuclear power. Such a deal would provide no assurances to South Korea, whose capital city is only 50 kilometers from the North Korean border.

Trump win fuels campaign for nuclear arms in South Korea:

“Mistrust of the U.S. is growing,” said Cheong, who founded the ROK Forum for Nuclear Strategy, a group of 50 analysts, former military officials and academics who share his view that South Korea should acquire nuclear arms. …In 2020, Trump ordered the withdrawal of around 12,000 US troops stationed in Germany, calling the European nation “delinquent.” “Germany’s not paying for it,” he said at the time. “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore.” Trump has similarly dismissed the US-South Korea alliance as an unnecessary drag … As president, he canceled joint military exercises between the two countries for being “tremendously expensive” and told aides that he wanted a “complete withdrawal of US forces from South Korea”…

“Rhetorically, nuclear weapons are on the table,” said Mason Richey, a professor of politics and international relations at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. “And that will be significantly affected by how the Trump administration approaches the alliance with South Korea and how it approaches the relationship with North Korea. In general, the more the Trump administration denigrates and neglects the alliance with the South and the more it shows signs of wanting to reach an arms control deal with North Korea that provides Pyongyang with nuclear weapons status, the more South Korea will entertain its intention of obtaining its own nuclear weapons.”

“So much has changed since the Ukraine war, with the nonproliferation regime once managed between China, Russia, and the US having been considerably weakened. Who will tell South Korea that it can’t have nuclear weapons for its own survival?”

Push for Seoul getting own nuclear arms gains steam after Trump win.

… “There are a lot of concerns about former President Trump having been re-elected,” the first-time lawmaker said. “Gaining nuclear potential is going to be a long game for South Korea. But I think we can and should try to get there faster.”

Retired three-star Army general Rep. Han Ki-ho, reputed as a leading military expert in the ruling party, went a step further and said South Korea getting nuclear arms may no longer be a choice given North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program. “For South Korea’s survival, nuclear armament may be the only path left to us,” he said. Within the People Power Party, a National Assembly resolution urging the government to pursue nuclear arms as a means of North Korean nuclear deterrent is underway.

How Trump could push Japan, South Korea to go nuclear:

“If South Korea has nuclear weapons, Japan will surely have them,” [said] the prime minister’s advisor, who had recently returned from a visit to Korea. …Technically, while South Korea can move faster politically, Japan has the fissile material already in storage—the plutonium stockpile from reprocessed spent fuel—as well as a potential long-range delivery system in its H-2 and H-3 rockets. “We have to face the sheer reality of who is leading the US,” the former senior Foreign Ministry official concluded. “We cannot change that.”

The Inexorable Logic

Imagine that you are the defense minister of an American ally. When you open the newspaper today, this is what you see:

* Russia and China: Two Countries, One Threat:

The combat deployment of 10,000 North Korean troops to the battlefield near Ukraine’s border has confirmed that Russia’s war of aggression is now a multi-theater global confrontation—China’s critical role in sustaining Putin’s war machine through the supply of dual-use goods, as well as drone and missile technology, and Iran’s provision of ballistic missiles and other armaments to Russia, make it hard to argue against the de facto existence of a four nation authoritarian axis. These developments should put paid to the notion that the theaters can be neatly separated.    

Pyongyang’s active engagement in the conflict, in particular, is a turning point. Not only does the transfer of North Korean military personnel to Russia represent a major escalation, it also marks yet another failure of US deterrence.  Whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, or the South China Sea, Moscow and Beijing seem increasingly keen to test US responses to their escalation. The deployment of troops to Eastern Europe by one of Moscow’s allies from Asia creates a precedent that defies residual assumptions from the Cold War era.

* Trump’s secretary of defense pick is a wildly unqualified Fox News host.

* The curious case of Tulsi Gabbard: Is she a Russian asset or a dupe?

What would you conclude?

The moments when an adversary is on the precipice of acquiring the Bomb, or a secure second-strike capability, are the most dangerous. That’s when the incentive to launch a first strike is the greatest. But rivals have incomplete information about each other’s capabilities, so the chances that one party will miscalculate, sparking a blood-soaked conventional war or a nuclear exchange, are enormous. Israel and Iran are the obvious example of this dynamic.

No one should console himself with the thought that the world will be safer when our allies, or former allies, acquire the Bomb. We don’t have the ability to say that friendly countries may have nuclear weapons but hostile ones may not. The demise of the NPT will even destabilize regions that are for now tolerably stable. A global proliferation cascade will ensue.

By electing Donald Trump, the United States initiated a de facto withdrawal from its treaty commitments and alliances around the globe. The effect of this will be much like that of the sudden collapse of the British or the Ottoman Empire. When empires suddenly collapse, they leave a security vacuum and chaos. There are no examples from history of such a thing proceeding peacefully.

There are now superpower-sized holes in the world’s security architecture. We will very likely see multiple regional nuclear arms races, under circumstances and in configurations the world has not seen before, as a consequence. This will be a world completely unlike the one every living American has known. Many Americans believe, wrongly, that the power configuration of the world and all that implies is simply the natural order, rather than a thing we built deliberately. For people like this, the ramifications of its destruction will no doubt come as a great shock.

We’re willingly embarking on a project to create precisely those circumstances most likely to give rise to terrible accidents and miscalculations. Even if the world’s luck holds, which is unlikely, we will live for the foreseeable future in a world where nuclear showdowns like the Cuban Missile Crisis regularly occur, but we will have no power to shape their outcome. No one will be looking for advice from their former security guarantor.

By the time we realize what we’ve thrown away, and what it meant to have it, it will be too late. We will be hostage to other nations’ fortunes. Our power to shape our own destiny, in the most fundamental of ways, will be gone.

Historians, if they survive, will be puzzled that we barely thought twice about it.

My friend Ariel Cohen joined us today from Netanya, where he’s celebrating the holidays. A political analyst, Ariel focuses on Russia, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and energy policy. Obviously, we had a lot to talk about.

We spoke about a question that’s maddening me: Why can’t the people who make our foreign policy learn from experience? W…

“There are smart pollsters, insightful pollsters, accurate pollsters … but few are all three. Christine Quirk is. She makes people who hire her look smarter than we really are.”—

Christy Quirk is a more cosmopolitan globalist than most. I met her in Istanbul about twenty years ago, where I discovered she had an interesting job: She’s a public opinion res…

Vladislav Davidzon joins us to discuss his latest article in Tablet.

Ukraine defies the US to launch a showy offensive into Russia: Observing Israel’s moves in the Middle East, Kyiv gambles on an American power vacuum:

… What changed in July is that the Ukrainians, like other embattled US allies, were faced with a new opportunity in Washington: The cognitively impaired president had been forced out of his reelection bid in favor of his vice president, who was now out on the campaign trail, three months before the election. With this emergent power vacuum at the White House, the Ukrainians decided to bypass both the deposed occupant of the White House as well as the staff of his hypercautious National Security Council, instead of slowly bleeding to death under rules guaranteed to produce slow-motion defeat. …

Kyiv observed carefully how Israel conducted its strikes immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from a triumphant speech before the US Congress. In fact, earlier this week the chair of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Roman Kostenko, explicitly referenced the Israeli example in a televised interview. “So Israel announced that they would take the advice of their partners very seriously but would afterward make their own decisions in the best interest of their own national security. I think that we can simply mirror that approach in our own case.”

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a transcript:

Claire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re back in the Elephant Cage with my guest, Vladislav Davidson. Vladislav, let’s talk about your big scoop.

Vladislav: Hi, Claire. Thank you for having me on. I have a big piece out in Tablet Magazine, and a lot of other people seemed to have missed the obvious. On August 6th, the Ukrainians began their long-awaited mechanized invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast. The Ukrainians had been preparing for their annual counter offensive for a long time and picking their target of convenience. And they chose to go all in into Kursk because they saw that it was very weakly protected, and it turned out to be a very good decision. A lot of the Russian border guards and conscripts just gave up as soon as they saw Ukrainian mechanized forces and combat-ready, battle-hardened divisions. A lot of those guys just ran, to a point where the Ukrainians seemed to be taking between 100 and 200 Russian POWs a day, and times10, 12 days. They already seemed to have taken two divisions worth of Russian POW conscripts, thus refurbishing their exchange fund to the point where the Russians have, according to Ukrainian sources, initiated a POW exchange for the first time in two years.

Claire: Yeah, I saw that. It’s actually quite amazing. I’ve been seeing a lot of photos and a lot of videos of Russians surrendering en masse. I have not been sure whether those photos are real, but it sounds like they are.

Vladislav: I think they are real. I’ve seen a lot of those videos. Those are hard to stage. And a lot of those guys are 19, 18-year-old conscripts who are technically not supposed to be fighting outside of Russia, but they’re fully usable to defend the Russian border so the Russians throw them at the Ukrainians to stop them while they bring in better forces, Interior Ministry troops, fast response guys, national guard, hardened, battle-tested troops from inside Ukraine. While they’re trading land for time, as one does in that situation, they’re throwing conscripts with four or five, six months of training under their belts directly at these really excellent Ukrainian airborne troops. It’s Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian doctrinal policy to use airborne troops for raids. This is a textbook raid, which was transformed into a territory holding situation. The incursion is being done with the best troops, airborne troops.

Claire: Tell us how the Ukrainians decided to do this. Obviously, they’d been planning this for at least three to six months. But they decided to go all in after they saw the Israelis do what they wanted to do, after Netanyahu returned from Washington, DC. On July 30th and 31st, the Israelis carried out assassinations against two high-value targets, one in Beirut, one in Tehran. These assassinations were carried out immediately upon Prime Minister Netanyahu returning from his trip to Washington, DC, where he addressed Israel, Congress, and where he had private meetings with whoever was in the White House. And he saw Harris in the White House and he saw the national security people of the Biden administration. And he nodded politely to the finger wagging that he received. And immediately upon returning to Jerusalem, he launched assassinations against high-value Hamas and Hezbollah operatives. And it was obvious that he was told to do one thing by the White House, and he did quite another thing.

Claire: I don’t think that’s obvious, actually. There’s been a lot of speculation that he cleared that with the White House before doing it.

Vladislav: I’m not sure he did. Why would he do this right as the Democratic Party is having its convention today?

Claire: They’d do it because Haniyeh was only going to be in Iran for those days.

Vladislav: And he’s not there all the time. He was there for the swearing in of a new Persian president. And he was a target of opportunity. They obviously used a lot of effort and regional resources, operatives to get that bomb smuggled into that house. And it’s not every day that you get a chance to take him out. And they had the opportunity and they took it.

Claire: But what about that makes you think that he didn’t clear the White House beforehand? I don’t know whether he did or not. I’ve just seen speculation that he did. And as for Fuad Shukr, of course, we would have said, yeah, take him out. He’s responsible for the death of 242 Marines.

Vladislav: Yeah, but he’d been operating for decades in Beirut.

Claire: I’ve been wondering about that myself, but I just cannot imagine the Americans saying to Netanyahu, “Don’t do that.”

Vladislav: Really? Just the opposite. I can’t imagine them saying, “Do it” in this situation. This is a very delicate time, and it’s a very complex situation in terms of the Americans’ internal interests, which is, obviously, this administration is carrying on the Obama-era foreign policy of normalizing relations with Tehran. They hate the Israelis. And they hate the Israelis complicating their regional foreign policy pivot, which is obviously not something the Sunni Arabs or the Israelis want.

Claire: I’ve seen no evidence that the administration hates the Israelis. Biden likes the Israelis, he just doesn’t like Netanyahu.

Vladislav: They see them as a problem, the thorn in their side for their big foreign policy shift.

Claire: No more than every other administration always has.

Vladislav: This is a really big difference. This is a continuation of Obama-era foreign policy with a lot of the same people in charge of Middle East foreign policy, people like Blinken, people like Sullivan.

Claire: I don’t believe that the Biden administration is more vexed by Israel than almost every previous administration has been. Because our interest in Israeli security has always been at odds with our other interests in the region.

Vladislav: There’s always been a contradiction. It’s true. But with the Obama foreign policy, there is a direct contradiction between the historical American foreign policy and what the Israelis see as their existential interests in the region of keeping Tehran boxed in. And the Obama foreign policy is to normalize Iran and bring them into the Middle East security architecture as the Americans are trying to leave the Middle East. So, this is a completely radically new situation.

Claire: The radical situation is Iran’s approaching a deployable nuclear weapon. That creates all kinds of problems without easy solutions.

Vladislav: Correct. That’s true.

Claire: So tell me about how the Ukrainians reacted to this.

Vladislav: The Ukrainians spent a few days observing the American response to the move. That is obviously not a happy situation for the White House and the National Security Council led by Mr. Jake Sullivan. The State Department under Blinken does not love it. And they made the decision that they too could run their own foreign policy, independent of their American allies’ scolding and red lines of constraint. They saw the Israelis getting away with it. Act first and apologize later, which is one of the quotes from a high level source in the Zelensky team in my piece.

Claire: The people who spoke to you, they must want the administration to know what they’re thinking?

Vladislav: After I reported the piece, a gentleman who is head of the Defense Intelligence and Security Committee inside the Rada went on TV and said, look, the Israelis listened very carefully, very politely, very generously, to the advice of their allies. And they said, we will act first in our own interests, and then we will answer our allies’ concerns afterwards. He said this openly. The head of a national security committee in the Ukrainian parliament, who’s one of the very few MPs inside Ukraine who knows what’s going on in terms of defense, because even Ukrainian MPs don’t know very much about operational stuff, because the army is keeping the Ukrainian parliament in the dark, most of them.

Claire: Tell me how they understand what’s going on in America right now.

Vladislav: They see a zombie regime in the White House and they see an overcautious National Security Council administration infrastructure, which is fulfilling the orders of a zombie regime. They see a gentleman in the White House who has Parkinson’s or dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever, and who is no longer fulfilling the president’s duties, who has given a policy to his State Department, to his Pentagon, and to his National Security Council, but is no longer making radical decisions.

Claire: Is this based on their meetings with him or publicly available information?

Vladislav: Why do you have to meet with them?

Claire: I’m just trying to figure out where they got their information, whether they specifically met with him and came to the conclusion this guy’s not in charge anymore, or are they just reading the reporting. Have they had a personal experience with him?

Vladislav: I don’t think that they’ve had a personal experience with him and they’ve had a lot less time with him because he did a lot fewer meetings. I’m not sure who the last Ukrainian to have a one-on-one with him was that the Ukrainian government decided this is a zombie situation.

Claire: But this is a really important thing to know. Because we want a sense of whether other governments are likely to have decided that this is a zombie situation, therefore we’re just going to do whatever we feel like.

Vladislav: But isn’t it the case that the entire world has access to this information?

Claire: The entire world has a strong suspicion of it.

Vladislav: But the Democratic Party made him step down from running for a second term because it’s obvious, after the debate, that he’s no longer the man that he was. Isn’t it obvious to everybody?

Claire: But it’s unclear to what extent he’s capable of discharging his duties when the spotlight is not on him. For five hours a day, or whatever.

Vladislav: Absolutely right. This is a very serious thing. The lame duck situation plus the fact that he’s no longer running and that Harris is trying to establish her own foreign policy credentials while getting the campaign into high gear has created a space of opportunity for American allies to no longer be constrained by American red lines.

Claire: Yes, and American enemies as well.

Vladislav: Yeah, American enemies and American allies, yeah. And this is a testing of red lines set forth by both Moscow and Washington, DC, one; two, this is a declaration of independence; and three, the Ukrainians know full well that they got away with it because two or three days after the start of the Kursk offensive, the Americans delivered the next tranche of US$125 million worth of previously promised assistance.

Claire: And all Biden has said about it is, “Gee, that must be a very difficult situation for the Russians.”

Vladislav: That legitimizes the act of crossing the border on August 6th. The fact that the Pentagon said, “Yeah, this is what we agreed to previously.” And yet, the new tranche is not being held up. The Pentagon did not stop aid on the eighth or ninth when they greenlit the next trench, which means—

Claire: But Biden is still saying no use to the long-range missiles in Russian territory, right?

Vladislav: Yeah. Correct. And the new reporting as of today, and today being Monday, 19th of August, shows that the Biden administration is still telling the Brits to not allow the use of long-range British rockets.

Claire: But the British have actually said, go ahead.

Vladislav: With some kinds of rockets, yes. With other kinds of rockets, no. And the Americans are telling them no. So the zombie policy set by the zombie president is still being carried out by the Pentagon, the State Department, National Security Council. It’s just that they really cant say no to the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians are all in and they’re winning. And everyone loves a winner. You know that.

Claire: Yes, of course. Everyone loves a winner. Were the Ukrainians at all concerned that they would trigger Russia’s nuclear defense doctrine in doing this?

Vladislav: This has been a concern for some time, but every time the Ukrainians go against Russian red lines, Moscow turns out to not have any red lines. First, it was bombing anything inside Russia. They did nothing. Then it was bombing inside Crimea. They did nothing. Then it was bombing the Russian Black Sea fleet inside Sevastopol dry docks. The Russians did nothing with nuclear missiles. Then it was Ukrainian troops inside Russia, which is why the Ukrainians used exiled troops, Russian proxies. Last time they did it with raids, last year, the Russians did nothing. Then this, they did nothing. Every time the Ukrainians or the Americans actually scratch the surface of these red lines, nothing happens.

Claire: Do you know anything about how the Americans have really reacted? Have you heard anything about what they’re saying to each other?

Vladislav: I don’t know for a fact, but they can’t be happy.

Claire: I wonder. Biden has now been liberated from having to seek re-election.

Vladislav: It’s interesting what he actually thinks. He has not doubled or tripled down on helping the Ukrainians, despite the fact that he is not seeking re-election, as you say. He’s not jettisoned the Sullivan Doctrine, whatever you want to call it. They’re just doing what they’ve been doing.

Claire: So do you think that the Biden administration is assuming that Kamala will win and therefore they don’t need to do anything now to ensure Ukraine’s victory before Trump gets in office?

Vladislav: I just think that they have, as one of my sources in the piece says, no serious policy. They’re just trying to pocket their gains. They have had gains because Ukrainians have outperformed all expectations, but they don’t have a policy and they’re just trying to muddle through and keep the Ukrainians from losing big time while also keeping the Russians from losing the war, which isn’t much of a policy at all. The Ukrainians saw that this attritional thing was not working and they decided to completely change the narrative and they did. And what’s interesting about this is they did so based on what they understood Israel was doing.

Claire: Have they had any contacts with the Israelis?

Vladislav: Yeah, the Israelis and the Ukrainians have a very complex and interesting relationship, which I write a lot about. Relations are closer and closer, more warm and more interesting than they have been. The Ukrainians have tried to shame the Israelis into supporting them. They’ve not been able to do that because of Netanyahu’s personal relationship with Putin and the Israelis’ calculation that they don’t need to do any more in order to look good or they don’t need to isolate themselves from the Russians and create problems.

Claire: Evidence of Netanyahu’s inability to grasp the big picture. Obviously, Russia is a problem for Israel. They’re Iran’s closest ally.

Vladislav: Correct. Yeah. And so he’s playing this kind of balancing game where he has input on being allowed to bomb in Syria and he has the safety of Russian Jews, their property, agreed to, but nothing much else. The Russians are making pro- two-state solution comments. They’re meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah delegations. They’re involved with the war in Ukraine, and with Iran, having closer and closer relations.

Claire: If he had any kind of vision, he would be fully supporting Ukraine.

Vladislav: I’m one of the people who's been saying that and pushing for that. I’m one of the people who has really wanted that to happen. But Netanyahu’s policy is what it is, and he doesn’t see any need to change it.

Claire: But do you know if Ukrainians were actually speaking to Israelis? Were the Israelis saying, “Hey, you can just do what you want and ask for permission afterwards?” Or was this completely based on their interpretation from open sources of how this had gone down?

Vladislav: Interpretation. I don’t think the Ukrainians trust Israeli intelligence and Israeli politics, especially with so many Russian Jews having portfolios in the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence circles. You have to remember, last summer, everybody knew about the Ukrainian offensive, and that went badly because they told everybody. So they made a decision not to tell anybody. The number of people who knew about this is very small, including a lot of my own friends in the Ukrainian parliament.

Claire: In your article, you alluded to this, and you made it sound as if the Ukrainians think that something is leaking from Washington back to Russia. Is that what you meant to suggest?

Vladislav: It’s leaking from everywhere. They just did not give information to anybody. Their own frontline troops have to be kept in the dark about this, let alone Washington, DC.

Claire: Do they think, though, that there’s something in Washington that is leaking back to Russia?

Vladislav: I asked that question and I was given no good answer, to be honest.

Claire: Right.

Vladislav: I just think they don’t trust anybody after what happened last time. “Stop telegraphing your intentions.” And that turned out to be the correct insight for this one.

Claire: Yes, certainly. They really maintained tight security on this. Came as a total surprise to everyone.

Vladislav: Including the Russians. The Russians really screwed up. Russian intelligence services had inklings of this. Some people in Russian intelligence figured it out and sent it up the pole, obviously. And the Russian command didn’t figure it out.

Claire: So what do Ukrainians say is the strategic goal of this operation?

They’re not. They’re not saying what the strategic goal of this operation is for all sorts of reasons, including operational reasons. They’re going to see what sticks, and then they’re going to explain what happened based on what succeeded afterwards.

Claire: Is your intuition that this is an operation aimed more at Russia or at the United States?

Vladislav: Both. And also, as a couple of my sources said, they really needed a peremoha. They really were starting to lose nerve, and this is the best situation in terms of morale inside Ukraine since the war started. People are over the moon. People are happy. This is really gaining another year or two of good morale for the Ukrainians. They really needed a victory.

Claire: Are you in touch with people close to the Trump camp? Do you know how they’re reacting to this?

Vladislav: I am in touch with Trump people. They’re obviously calculating, and Trump is obviously watching this very closely. I don’t think he himself knows what he’s going to do, but obviously this is a big issue for him. He’s stepped back from criticizing the Ukrainians in order to have more leeway for whatever he’s going to do when he comes to power. He’s obviously going to try to make a deal, but it’s not apparent whether that deal will be very good for Ukraine or very bad. It could go either way. It’s a radical situation with Trump. You can’t know what’s going to happen. He’s obviously observing. He obviously likes winners. He’s going to say whatever he needs to say in order to make this administration in the White House look bad.

Claire: Yeah, I noticed that a lot of ultra-vatniks like David Sacks, the lamentable David Sacks, have been extremely quiet since this began.

Vladislav: 100 percent. And that is policy in the Trump camp. The Trump people have been talking to a lot of European conservatives who’ve been making nice little trips to Mar-a-Lago. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, Orban, Lord Cameron.

Claire: Tusk and Orban are going to come with very different messages.

Vladislav: Correct. But he’s talking to every single European conservative. Lord Cameron went down there and he spent hours talking to him. And it seemed to me, based on my relationships with British diplomats and intelligence people, it was a very fruitful discussion. Trump does listen, weirdly enough. He’s a politician. He takes stock of the water and the polls, and he follows his instincts, which are politically pretty good. And he’s stopped attacking the Ukrainians because he sees that he could get more mileage out of making a deal when he comes to power, if he comes to power.

Claire: Changing the subject a little bit, what should we make of these stories about Nord Stream? Is there anything to them? I don’t think we know what actually happened. Mr. Pancevski of the Wall Street Journal had a scoop, reported a thesis on what happened. I don’t believe that is the case. I still think that the Russians did this. I don't think that the sitting ambassador to the United Kingdom of Ukraine, the former head of the armed services of Ukraine, did this, that they felt they could get away with this. I don’t believe that the Ukrainians did this. But the Germans do now, and they asked for extradition of a Ukrainian serviceman, intelligence agent, which the Polish president and prime minister denied. I don’t know if you saw Donald Tusk’s tweet from yesterday. Donald Tusk’s excellent tweet was: “To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2, the only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet.” The Poles are neither extraditing people nor are they backing down from their narrative. The prime minister of Poland didn’t necessarily need to tweet that himself, but he did.

Claire: Okay, back to Kursk. I’m trying to understand the Ukrainian endgame here, what they’re hoping for.

Vladislav: The endgame is the collapse of the Russian Federation and Putin being in The Hague, that’s the best case outcome. But there is a hierarchy of outcomes, right? They are not telegraphing what their endgame is. So we can speculate and I can give you all sorts of very clever answers and I can go through different outcomes from best to worst. But ultimately, no one knows yet because the Ukrainians are keeping their cards very tight to their chest.

Claire: I don’t know if you saw it: I responded to something that Garry Kasparov said yesterday on Twitter, where he was stating that the only possible explanation or at least one possible explanation that he favored for the Biden administration’s timidity and caution was they had some kind of backroom deal with Russia. And I responded that I just didn’t think that was the conclusion to which Occam’s razor would lead you. I think the Biden administration is just an exceptionally timid administration when it comes to foreign policy. What do you think?

Vladislav: I agree with you. I think he was just mouthing off on Twitter. That’s just how Russian elites talk at the bar.

Claire: How are Americans reacting to this? Are they even hearing the news? Because all I find in the US news, anytime I look, is the election. I never find any news of this.

Vladislav: I’m hoping that my reporting will have a sobering effect.

Claire: Why sobering?

Vladislav: Is it good that American allies are ignoring us?

Claire: Who are you hoping to sober?

Vladislav: I’m hoping to sober up large swaths of the American public who should understand that American allies are just ignoring American foreign policy edicts because they’re stupid. I’d like to sober up the National Security Council, but they’re going to be out in a couple of months anyway. They could do a lot of damage in those couple of months. It’s the American public that should be sobered up, American elites.

Claire: I’m not sure they’re going to take that message from it.

Vladislav: Really?

Claire: Yeah.

Vladislav: What would they take from this?

Claire: It depends where they’re already ideologically inclined. Someone like, in worst case scenario, David Sacks is going to say, “Look, these Ukrainians are risking nuclear war without our permission, using our weapons.”

Vladislav: Right.

Claire: And someone who’s pro-Ukraine is going to say, “Good for the Ukrainians,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean you think a different way than the way you already think. Except the one thing I take away from it is that it’s an incredibly dangerous situation to have the world wondering whether the President is compos mentis or paying attention to anything

Vladislav: Yeah, it is audacious, and it’s taking advantage of the fact that there’s a gentleman in the White House who should not be in the White House. If you’re actually a proceduralist, just resign. He should not have been president for already two years or 18 months, obviously, depending on how long he’s been this out of it.

Claire: It should lead the White House to be on the phone with people who can communicate to our adversaries that there’s enough intelligence at the top of the food chain in the US that we would notice if they tried to do something.

Vladislav: If our allies are going against our will, why won’t China or Iran?

Claire: Exactly, exactly. But they seem to be doing a reasonably good job somehow of deterring Hezbollah in Iran right now.

Vladislav: They don’t actually want a full-on war because that would be very bloody for everybody. I don’t think that either the Ayatollahs, having been embarrassed not being able to protect their own guests, nor the Hezbollah brass actually want a full-on war right now. So, you know, when the Americans bring in their aircraft carriers into the Gulf and into the—

Claire: That’s exactly what I mean. They don’t want to go to war because they’d be up against us. So we must have convinced them that we would be serious about using those aircraft carriers.

Vladislav: It’s interesting that we’ve been able to constrain them, but maybe it wouldn’t even take that much to constrain them. Maybe they just don’t want a full-on war with the Israelis. I wouldn’t if I was them.

Claire: All right. Anything else you would like to say about this remarkable story?

Vladislav: I believe this is an opportunity for course correction in Washington, DC. I think they should stop constraining American allies.

Claire: We should actually support our allies instead of indulging in this pathological fear of escalation.

Vladislav: Correct. Correct. So thank you, my dear Claire. I will see you in a couple of weeks in Paris.

Claire: Are you going to be here?

Vladislav: I’m passing through in a couple of weeks on the way to Tunisia, on the way back to Ukraine.

Claire: Where are you going in Tunisia and why?

Vladislav: I’m going to a Berber Jewish wedding in Djerba.

Claire: Oh, how nice.

Vladislav: Yes. I’m taking my mother to the Middle East. Her last vacation to Israel on October 5th of ‘23, where she went down to visit her relations in Ashkelon and got on a bus on the morning of October 7th in Sderot, did not go so well.

Claire: Yeah, no kidding.

Vladislav: She randomly survived an attack on her bus. She got off the bus, and 30 minutes later, all other 15 people on the bus except the bus driver were executed. Okay. Thank you, Claire. I’ll see you in a bit.

Claire: Thanks very much.

Vladislav: Bye-bye.

UPDATE: Some of you didn’t care for the sound effects, so here’s a version without them:

Since I have a philosopher in the family, I thought you might enjoy hearing a conversation with my father about what it means that we’ve built machines that can think and what we might learn from them about what it means to be human.

We discuss the way Large Language Models have altered our understanding of natural languages and learning algorithms, and the possibility that theoretical science may be obsolete: Perhaps it’s really data all the way down.

We discuss Chomsky and Skinner, human cognition, stimulus-response models, and the parallels—if any—between biological and artificial intelligence.

We also talk about the existential risks of AI, whether humans will remain the dominant species on this planet, and the broader implications for human knowledge. My father also reflects on the historical and sociological aspects of scientific innovation and the backgrounds of the key contributors to AI development.

I took the opportunity to practice my podcast production skills. I experimented with a few programs I’d never used before. If the sound effects strike you as peculiar, it’s because I couldn’t quite get them to do what I wanted, but also felt I’d devoted far too much time to trying to insert the sound of a flying bird at just right point and could no longer justify the effort. Let me know what you think: Should I keep trying to master the skill of professional podcast production? Or should I just throw the raw files on your plate from now on and say, “Eat. It’s what’s for dinner?”

I’m really unsure. Everyone tells me that journalists these days must have podcast and video editing skills, but acquiring them has proven awfully time consuming. On the other hand, I think probably I only have to learn once, and having learned, it won’t take nearly so much time.

Then again, I could just wait another year and have an LLM do it for me.

Russia has been hard at work kicking the United States out of Africa. It’s all but chased out France, too. But anyone who imagines Russia to be a kinder, gentler superpower is out of his mind.

The investigative journalist Philip Obaji has been following the activities of the Wagner group in Africa for years. He recently spent the months investigating human rights abuses by Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic, where he was abducted and tortured, only narrowly escaping alive.

His reports of the way Russian mercenaries are behaving in Africa won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been studying their behavior in Ukraine. Or Syria, for that matter, or Chechnya. It appears the Russians have gone full Mr. Kurtz, mass-murdering and raping everyone in their path with impunity, hauling off the gold and diamonds from the mines, and selling them on the black market. This is how Russia manages to sustain itself despite the West’s sanctions. Their motto, writes the Sentry, is “‘leave no trace’—in other words, kill everyone, including women and children.”

Because there’s so little journalism from Africa, this story is apt to be insufficiently appreciated in Western capitals. But unless you understand the African dimension of Russia’s war, you can’t understand what’s really happening and what’s at stake in Ukraine. Or vice-versa. When Ukrainians say they’re the victims of an unreconstructed colonial power, they’re absolutely right. The crimes Russia is now committing are exactly the ones for which France and the UK are incessantly apologizing. But neither France nor the UK (and certainly not the US) are committing these crimes right now. Russia is.

We discuss Philip’s very brave reporting on the Russian Wagner Group’s activities in CAR, his experiences of tracking them throughout Africa, and other major stories he follows. I hope he’ll come back to talk about some of the other stories he’s covered.

For those of you in a hurry, there’s a full transcript below.

Articles by Philip Obaji

* “Russians blindfolded us and made us dig mass graves to cover up their crimes.”Russian mercenaries dragged young men out of their homes and forced them to hide the evidence of a massacre of their friends and neighbors.

* Why Putin’s private army ordered soldiers to torture me. The Daily Beast correspondent Philip Obaji Jr. was abducted and beaten by soldiers while reporting on wrongdoing by the Wagner Group.

* Twins, 17: We were drugged and raped by Putin’s private army. A dozen girls have told The Daily Beast that they were kidnapped and sexually abused by Russian paramilitaries.

* Putin’s private army accused of sickening new massacre. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin may be dead, but witnesses say Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic slaughtered dozens of people to secure access to a gold mine.

* Putin’s private army filmed sex assault victims in Mali. Four witnesses describe their horrific ordeal at the hands of Russian mercenaries given a free pass by Putin’s regime.

* Putin’s private army accused of most heinous massacre yet. Witnesses in the Central African Republic are pointing a finger at the Wagner Group over a series of gruesome killings that allegedly involved disemboweling several women.

And more here.

Further reading

* All eyes on Wagner: Monitoring Wagner's activities across the globe

* Bois Rouge: How the Central African Republic gave away its forest to the private military group Wagner. Because of the inefficiency of the timber controls in Europe, Wagner conflict timber cannot be stopped from reaching European clients, despite existing sanctions.

* Architects of terror: The Wagner Group’s blueprint for state capture in the Central African Republic

Transcript

Claire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re here in the Elephant Cage with Philip Obaji, an extremely interesting Nigerian journalist who has had some remarkable experiences in the Central African Republic, which is why I’ve invited him to speak to us today. Philip, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Philip: So I live in Abuja, that’s the capital of Nigeria, and I have been a contributor at The Daily Beast, a news website based in New York. I have covered war, counter insurgency, and the activities of jihadist groups in Western Central Africa for The Daily Beast since 2015. In the last couple of years, I have focused my reporting on these issues, almost entirely on the activities of the Russian Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have spread themselves across Western and Central Africa.

Claire: It’s a huge story, which is getting so much less attention than it deserves. And certainly it won’t get any attention in the US right now because of the election. Nothing’s getting any attention. I wanted to ask how you became interested in the Central African Republic.

Philip: So in, 2018, three Russian journalists traveled from Russia to the Central African Republic to investigate the activities of the Wagner Group. At the time, not many people had heard about the Wagner Group. The government of the Central African Republic had just reached an agreement with the Russian Federation for the supply of arms and private military instructors to the Central African Republic. And the Russian Federation had sent a group of so-called military instructors, as the Russians like to refer to Wagner mercenaries. So these three journalists went to the country to look into the activities of the group. But sadly, they were killed somewhere around Sibut, in the central part of the country. And the journalists were close friends of one of my colleagues, Anna Nemsova, at the Daily Beast. And my then-editor , Christopher Dickey—

Claire: —You knew Christopher? We miss him so much here.

Philip: Exactly. He was my editor, yeah. Chris asked that I look into what really happened with these three journalists. And I started to make phone calls to contacts in the Central African Republic. And then I found that there was something interesting about this group called Wagner. So, since then, I took it upon myself to continue where the three late journalists stopped, to know exactly what these Russians were up to, and then how to report on the activities.

Claire: Who killed them?

Philip: It’s still not known exactly who killed them. The investigations by the Central African government didn’t come up with any clear reports. So the government believes that there were local rebel gun men who assassinated the journalists, but many accusing fingers still point at the direction of the Russians, the Russian Wagner group.

Claire: It wouldn’t be a surprise, but there are a lot of candidates as I understand it. Perhaps you’d start by giving our listeners a bit of an introduction to the Central African Republic, because it’s probably not a country they’re very familiar with.

Philip: That’s correct. Even here in Africa, not many people are really conversant with the country. So, it’s a small country in terms of population in the central part of Africa. It borders Cameroon to the West and the Sudan to the East. And it’s a very impoverished country. And although it’s very rich in gold and diamond resources, much of its wealth has been plundered by its leaders. The country has been under a civil war since 2013, when Christian militias and Muslim rebels, fought against each other. And soon after the civil war began, the UN imposed an arms embargo on the Central African Republic.

So an election was held in 2016 that ushered in the current president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Unfortunately for the new president, he inherited a country that was pretty much in the hands of rebels and other militia groups. Only the capital, Bangui, was under government control at the time he took office in 2016.

So he had only one option, to ask the international community for help. But he knew it would be difficult to come by, and so he ran to Russia, first, to get the Russians to ensure that the UN Security Council lifted the arms embargo, second, to get Russian military instructors in the country to provide training and even arms to fight against the rebels that were almost overrunning the capital, Bangui.

Claire: Two questions, excuse me for interrupting, but I just want to make sure I understand the story. The rebels, you said, are Christians and Muslims, are they fighting each other? Or are there other issues involved?

Philip: No, they’re fighting each other for control of power. It’s a country divided into Christians mostly in the south, and then Muslims predominantly in the north.

Claire: So did they live peacefully before the Civil War erupted, or was there some demographic change?

Philip: There were always some little pockets of conflicts in the country. But it became worse after Muslims defeated the Christian president

Claire: Which side does the government support?

Philip: The government supports no side, because, as we speak currently, the rebel groups have all somewhat come together to fight against the government. So it’s more or less about the control of resources right now, because these militia groups are seeking control of gold and diamond mines, and then the sale of gold and diamonds.

Claire: Is it a conflict between Christians and Muslims, or are they allied in some places on the same side?

Philip: In the beginning, it was a conflict between Christians and Muslims, but now a lot of them have come together to fight against the current government. Because they want to control resources.

Claire: Does the current government support one side over the other?

Philip: Not really, that’s not really the case. And so much has changed since the Russians came on board because right now, you have gold mines in the country that in the past were controlled by Christian rebels or Muslim rebels or Christian militiamen. But now, we have a situation where the Russians are targeting every gold miner, every artisanal miner, and every armed group just to take complete control of this.

Claire: What was France’s role in this? Because I know they were involved.

Philip: Yes, France’s role was more or less, initially, it’s supposed to be like a peacekeeping role where they try to protect the local population from attacks by, any of the armed groups. That was why they got involved in the first place.

Claire: And as I understand it, there was a massive information operation sponsored by Russia against France/

Philip: Yes. So much of this information targeted the French troops. That went on for a long time.

Claire: And this has been a Wagner pattern throughout Africa.

Philip: You’re correct. We’re still seeing such campaigns, especially in West Africa, where the local media is paid to spread disinformation targeted at not just France, but the West in general. There are many people who are susceptible to this, and it’s having an effect. In many ways, in many countries, you go to Niger, you go to Togo, Burkina Faso, you meet a lot of people who will tell you what they read or what they heard, which—based on what some of us have investigated—are clear disinformation sponsored by the Russians.

Claire: So the article that got my attention today, which is why I invited you on the podcast, was about some of the real atrocities that Russia has been committing in CAR, and also I know of others in Africa. And I think this is a neglected story. Have you found that people are paying attention to your reporting?

Philip: Oh, if you look at social media, my post on Twitter, you’ll find thousands of retweets and likes. And I’m having a lot of people reach out to me, to collaborate. Since last year, I have received numerous phone calls from many Western outlets, CBS, NBC in the US and then, in the Gulf region, Al Jazeera and the rest. So there was some bit of attention from late 2022 to early last year, obviously, because Wagner was so much involved in the war in Ukraine, so many people wanted to know. Many outlets didn’t know exactly how this group operated in Africa. Keeping in mind that many of the mercenaries that were active in Ukraine were pulled from Africa. So a lot begun to change after the death of the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. It didn’t seem like Wagner was so much involved, or the old elements of Wagner were so much involved in Ukraine. So there’s little attention paid to what the Russians were doing in Africa. But I’m actually very glad that of late I’m seeing a lot more interest, particularly amongst Ukrainians and some think tank groups who are focused on Russian activities here in Africa.

Claire: Yeah. Now that Prigozhin is gone, is Wagner answering directly to Putin?

Philip: Now they are having to take instructions from the Russian Ministry of Defense, which has taken over the operations of Russian paramilitaries in Africa.

Claire: The pattern is extremely important. We have to look at Russia in Syria and in Africa to understand that Ukraine is not an isolated story. It’s a global story. And this is incredibly important to understand, because certainly, many people who are susceptible to Putin’s propaganda in the West don't appreciate this and believe that this is some Eastern European conflict. It’s not. It’s a global conflict. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what you learned in Central African Republic about Russia’s activities?

Philip: First of all, the Russians have been able to take almost full control of the security apparatus in the country. You have a national security advisor to the president of the Central African Republic who is Russian. You have the communications advisor to the president who is also Russian. And you have dozens of Russian paramilitaries training the Central African Republic Armed Forces.

Claire: How many Russians are there in total?

Philip: I can’t say for now how many there are, but in the beginning there were—at some point before they were in Ukraine—there were up to 2,000 mercenaries. And in some of the reporting I did in 2022, about 500 were pulled out of the Central African Republic to Ukraine. But I do also know that some were also brought from Russia to the Central African Republic within that period, so it's hard to tell exactly how many there are, but I want to believe there are more than a thousand still in the country.

Claire: And based on your knowledge, how many would you guess are in Africa generally?

Philip: That’s difficult to tell. The Russians are most active in the Central African Republic and in Mali. We may be looking at some 1,000-something troops, or maybe two, in the continent. I don’t know for sure about Libya. Because I haven’t covered Libya so much. I have focused a lot on Western Central Africa, but I know that they have been active in Libya for some time now. But in terms of numbers, it’s difficult to tell, in Libya. But we’re looking at over a thousand troops, maybe up to 2,000, if you put together what we’ve seen in Mali and in the Central African Republic. So that’s a rough estimate. It may be a little less than that.

Claire: They’re getting a lot of bang for the buck, then, per troop. They’ve been incredibly effective with such a small force.

Philip: That’s correct. That’s because oftentimes they work closely with the local forces. So you could have Russian paramilitaries storming a particular community in Central Africa, or even in Mali, with hundreds of local troops.

Claire: When they arrive, they immediately target the natural resources. And they have absolutely no concern at all for the rights of any of the people they encounter.

Philip: That’s exactly what we have seen them do and what we’ve heard them do. And the situation now is, when the Russians first got involved, even before they sent troops on the ground in the Central African Republic, they had reached an understanding with the government to take control of the gold and diamond mines. But the problem they face is that all these mines are situated outside of Bangui, the capital. And they have been in recent years under the control of armed groups. So you just cannot go there and then take over these mines.

Claire: Why did the government agree to this? What are they getting out of it?

Philip: Basically what they wanted is control of the capital. When the Russians came, only Bangui was under government control, and even like that, Bangui was fragile. It was only a matter of time before it fell to these rebels. So that’s the game. So what they fear now is that if the Russians leave, they could face bigger problems in terms of control. And also with resources, too, because they didn’t have access to the mines.

Claire: They made a very short-term deal.

Philip: That’s correct. May not have been so short-term, but they made a deal.

Claire: And when they extract diamonds and other resources from the mines, is that staying in their hands, or is it going back to the Kremlin?

Philip: I did an investigation last year about where some of this gold gets to. Sometimes gold is sold in the Middle East. And even when Russia was under sanctions by the US and EU, they still found a way to sell their gold in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. So in the black market.

Claire: It’s a huge source of cash.

Philip: Yes, for the Kremlin, yes, it is. and no one even knows.

Claire: How much would you guess they’re managing to extract from just the Central African Republic, first, and then from Africa generally, including Sudan?

Philip: We may never know exactly how much, because, this information is opaque. This deal is done in the dark. And I have seen some outlets report about maybe over 500 billion dollars, or even above the billion dollars .

Claire: For a year?

Philip: Yeah, in the period of maybe around the year or so. But I don’t know. These are allegations, or these are information, that I haven’t verified yet. Because it’s so difficult when you don’t have access to documents.

Claire: Of course. But even if that’s ballpark correct, it explains how Russia is managing to survive the sanctions.

Philip: That’s correct. That’s correct. And they have many middlemen who are helping to evade the sanctions, for the good of the Kremlin .

Claire: Aren’t Africans enraged by this?

Philip: If you look at West Africa, for example, you find in the Francophone Africa, over the years, the French have been present in this region. And even after decolonization in the 1950s and 60s, the French never really left. You still have a situation where the currency is still being controlled in the French central bank. So people are believing in the region that France has got some level of manipulation or whatever. And that the involvement with France has not yielded any results. And to make matters worse, in some of the fragile countries that have been in conflict where there’s been French troops, we haven’t seen any kind of tangible results. Rather, things have got even worse. In Burkina Faso, in Mali, where the French independently came in to help fight against jihadists, these countries have even become worse in terms of the number of attacks and incursion by jihadist groups. It is the belief, generally, that France, rather than help[ing], exploited these Francophone nations. And the Russians, too, haven't really helped in terms of the kind of, disinformation that they have spread across the region.

Claire: So people don’t yet really understand the role that Wagner is playing.

Philip: Wagner is relatively new. So they don’t really get exactly what’s going on. So for some of them, it’s “Let’s give Russia a chance, maybe they become better than France,” but we’re seeing something different. Another problem, you look at the Central African Republic, for example, internet penetration is so low. If you live away from Bangui, you don’t really get to hear too much about what’s happening. And it is only recently that with the increase in attacks on artisanal miners by the Russians, that people are getting to understand exactly what the Russians are really up to in the Central African Republic. Not many people in West Africa really have so much to say against the Russians, because they’re relatively new in these countries. And they haven’t really done too much.

Claire: It’s pure old fashioned European colonialism without any disguise.

Philip: You put it very well. Yes, you put it very well. That’s what’s going on.

Claire: So that’s what surprises me, that people aren’t immediately able to recognize it. Have they provided any kind of security in any place they’ve been?

Philip: If I have to give credit to the Russians in Bangui, they’ve done it, in terms of what the government would like, like I said earlier, if they were not there, I can tell you for sure that Bangui would have been overridden by these men. And we will have had a situation where you have a rebel as the ruler of the country. So the Russians actually, give them credit for what they did in Bangui to keep Bangui away from the rebels.

Claire: And what about in other places they’ve been? Is there anywhere where they’ve made a significant contribution to local security? Because the jihadi issue in the Sahel has been terrible. Have they contributed in any way to reestablishing security?

Philip: When it comes to combat, they’re only active in West Africa, in fact, in the Sahel, they’re only active in Mali in terms of combat. And I can’t really say that we’ve seen so much of gains already. What happened at the weekend when dozens of Russian paramilitaries were killed by a Tuareg rebel coalition, that shows that, as much as the government will say, “There’s some gains with the Russians being involved,” it’s not exactly what we’re seeing. When you have so many troops and so many Russians being killed by rebel fighters, just at the weekend, that shows that there’s still a hot war going on there .

Claire: Tell me a little bit about the kinds of human rights outrages you’ve uncovered. I think it’s really important for people to understand just how global this is.

Philip: Yes, it’s enormous, horrifying, troubling—what have you. Now, you go to many parts of Central African Republic especially in the north, you will find at least one person who would have had an experience with the Russians, whether it’s a woman being raped on her own farm, or young girls being sexually assaulted in their own compounds or young artisanal miners who are captured and brutalized by the Russians. So it happens in many forms. Most times the Russians just show up unannounced in mining communities, and just begin to open fire on anyone they see, because they have this impression that every single person in this community is a friend or an accomplice to the rebels.

So they’re opening fire, killing people, arresting some others. And then torturing them to get them to confess to being members of an armed group. So it’s really torturous for the local population. And it’s so sad that even women and girls, some as young as 13, they’re getting raped, abused by the Russians. I did an investigation last year about young girls who were either taken from their compounds or rescued from rebels and then taken to the military base in Bouar. Bouar is the major town in the northwestern part of the Central African Republic. And in this military base, the Russians drug them, rape them, and administer contraceptives to these girls. There should have been dozens of girls who were victims of this Russian abuse in Bouar.

Claire: Administering contraceptives suggests that this is a policy, not just something that happened with troops who are out of control. It suggests that they just consider these girls and women a bonus.

Philip: Yes, you can put it that way because they’re having unprotected sex with these girls and they don’t want a situation where someone comes out the next day and say “I’m pregnant and I’m giving birth to a half caste baby.” It’d be difficult to deny.

Claire: It’s just appalling.

Philip: Yeah, it’s really appalling. So it becomes difficult to deny that they are the ones who are responsible. So the contraceptives are made to ensure that they don’t get pregnant.

Claire: And from the articles you wrote, these girls are just traumatized beyond words.

Philip: Yeah, beyond even our imagination. Because what they have faced—with not just one rapist, serial men who’ve raped them. So it’s really appalling. Horrific.

Claire: Horrific. It must be really hard to report on that.

Philip: Yes. Yes, the last reporting, I faced the most difficult time in my career as a journalist, because, one, myself, I was attacked, tortured by local forces who were acting on the orders of the Russians. And then also I still had to go, even with my injuries, go meet these young girls and listen to their stories. And in between, I was held for hours by rebels who thought I was a spy, so it was really very difficult, situation for me. But I have traveled too far and suffered too much to just give up, so I had to just focus and then complete the job.

Claire: Where else besides the Central African Republic have you spent a lot of time reporting in Africa?

Philip: Obviously in Nigeria, I started reporting in 2015 on the activities of jihadist groups, Boko Haram and Ansaru groups linked to both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. I also reported in Cameroon on the Anglophone crisis, in Cameroon. And then, yes I have reported in Niger too, on the battle with Mali.

Claire: I’m interested in all of this and I wonder if I could have you on the podcast again to discuss these stories, because these are all stories—in fact, Africa generally just gets so little coverage in the West. And it’s an absurd situation, because obviously this is the most demographically important part of the world, and it has so few journalists in it.

Philip: That’s correct. And, it’s even very difficult for we local indigenous journalists here, because the funding is so poor. Oftentimes you have to depend on one fellowship to be able to do these things. When I started this, I was spending my own money on this trip just to tell the story.

Claire: When you think about how many journalists are reporting on Donald Trump’s every twitch-- and what you’re doing is the real thing, it’s what journalists ought to be doing, and there are so few of you. It’s so important to fund work like this.

Philip: That’s correct. That's correct.

Claire: I will tell my readers that they should fund you.

Philip: Yeah, that would be great because it’s very hard, I have to tell you. And my trip to Central Africa was made possible by the International Center for Journalists, who just thought they need to hear something about what’s going on. Luckily for me, I’ve got the support of the Daily Beast. When it comes to filing stories, I always get the opportunity to file stories with Daily Beast. But in terms of getting funding for these projects, it’s difficult for a project like this. And I still have a lot to report on. I haven’t really touched on Mali that much, and that’s what I’d like to look at, going forward. But it’s very difficult to find the funds to do.

Claire: Do you speak French?

Philip: My French is poor, so I have to rely on interpreters, which is even more expensive for me, because I have to get somebody who's interpreting, either it’s French or the local language. I’m studying, I’m going back to school to improve on my French.

Claire: The French media publishes a lot more about Africa than the English language media. So that would be a good market for you if you do learn.

Philip: Yeah, you’re correct about the French media publishing more than English. Yes, you're correct.

Claire: My listeners, at least half of them will be American, and it’s an election year. So what do you think the United States should be doing, if anything, to counter what Wagner is doing in Africa?

Philip: In an election year, a lot of focus will be on what's going on in the US. But there’s something else that the Americans should not overlook, is the fact that Russia is using Africa to try to experiment a new pattern of disinformation, and that could also be deployed ahead of the US presidential elections. We all know that in the past, the IRA, that’s Internet Research Agency, founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, deployed, was used, as a conduit and as a source for disinformation targeted at the Hillary Clinton campaign. So that could return.

Claire: When you say they’re experimenting, have you noticed any experiments that we should be particularly aware of?

Philip: I have seen a pattern of disinformation in all kinds. Now, they’re not just talking about the fact that France or the West is bad and Russia is good. Before now, we were seeing this information targeted completely on France. But now, in the Central African Republic, and it’s not just in Central Africa, but across the West African region, we’re seeing more paid stories targeted at the US, saying the US is bad for central Africa, US investors are killing people quietly, and they’re ripping off Africa and what have you. And when they say US, they’re referring to the current, Joe Biden administration.

Claire: So they pretty much chased us out of Africa. We were forced to leave Niger.

Philip: That’s correct.

Claire: This is a big problem to lose your access to a whole continent. I wonder if there’s something that we could or should be doing to counter Wagner’s influence.

Philip: I think the best side of it will be on countering Wagner disinformation. I remember talking about this a long time ago, how the EU in particular must come together to counter this because we’re even hearing rumors that Wagner has been helping migrants cross across the Mediterranean from Libya getting into Europe. And in countries where the EU had tried to spend money to stem this migrant flow, the Russians now have a stronghold on the government in these countries. And whatever narrative is been pushed out there in the media in Western Central Africa is targeted at the West in general. So maybe France and the EU will have to look at sponsoring some fact checking, in terms of the information people hear out there, because it’s a lot. It’s enormous. I have done some investigation about this disinformation, here in West and Central Africa, and I can tell you that the major media outlets have been used as channels for this disinformation.

Claire: I didn’t see that article.

Philip: No. I haven’t written about it yet, but I did the documentary for Al Jazeera last year, going to be next month in August, it’s on disinformation. So that will tell you a lot about what’s going on. It’s a big report coming up.

Claire: Good. If you were to hear a foreign policy statement coming from a presidential candidate now, what would you be looking for to see if they understood the problem and see if they had any intelligent thoughts about it? If you get to interview Kamala Harris, for example, next week, what would you ask her?

Philip: I would want to know what plans they have for Africa in terms of collaborations and investments. Russia and China have been promising investments in infrastructure, investments in training. And this is where the local governments have been able to fully embrace Russia or China. Because of what they’re promising, even though some of us do know that some of these promises and some of these investments are not so much in the interest of the people , especially looking long term. But the fact that African governments are able to get some bit of monies now, somehow it’s having an effect.

Claire: Chinese investments are real, aren’t they? Russia’s not investing as far as I know, but China is making massive investments.

Philip: Yes. China is invested in Africa, but again, people are already skeptical about these kinds of investments because they need loans. And with conditions that are very difficult for the local government to meet. But they accept it now because we deal with a lot of corruption in governments, especially across Africa, because they want to see what they can gain now. And then if you’re looking at the future, again, the Russians have come with promises to invest in central Africa, so-called investing because you have Russian companies linked to Wagner that have set up in the central African Republic and are doing business. Some are even hiring the locals.

Claire: What are they doing? What kind of companies are they?

Philip: The companies that work on gold mining and also on the sale of gold. We have similar companies in Sudan that was set up by Wagner.

Claire: So nothing that would actually grow the economy.

Philip: Basically, something that will fulfill them in future. It looked like they’re supposed to be paying taxes to the government. I haven’t seen any records that they’re paying these taxes to the government, but they are meant to be companies paying taxes and employing locals .

Claire: And have you been following Wagner’s role in Sudan?

Philip: Right now, because of the war, we don’t really know exactly what’s going on. But we knew that up north, before now, there was a Wagner company involved in the sale, in fact, the processing and sale of gold. But since the war begun, it’s really hard to tell exactly, how far, how much is going on there.

Claire: It’s amazing that the war in Sudan is receiving so little attention internationally.

Philip: It’s sad, really sad. Yeah. Really sad.

Claire: And it’s just, an unspeakably brutal war.

Philip: Indeed. You have many people dying from both sides and even more civilians dying than even when the war started. So it’s really sad that we’re not hearing, even here in Nigeria, where I live, people hardly talk about the war, or even the coverage is not so much there.

Claire: One of the reasons, as you said, is because there are no journalists there. And it’s part of the larger problem of the disappearance of foreign news coverage. So people are barely aware that this cataclysmic conflict is underway there.

Philip: Yeah, you’re correct. You put it well. And I want to see more because in Africa, we need help in terms of investments in media and investments in journalists. The media in Africa don’t have the resources to do in-depth, long term, long-form reporting. So we oftentimes rely on Western outlets for help. The one problem I’ve had in the past is the fact that, oftentimes, some Western outlets will send a correspondent from Europe or from the US to come to Africa, then spend a few minutes doing interviews, and then they go back and then report on a situation that really doesn’t tell the exact story.

Claire: That’s a terrible way to do it. And I’ve seen the effects of it. They’re so inaccurate. We need to fund local journalists, not parachute someone in who’s never been there before and who tries to understand the situation in three weeks.

Philip: Yeah. That’s true. That is very true. It doesn’t tell the true story, it doesn’t show the holistic picture of what’s going on there.

Claire: There should be a pan-African answer to Al Jazeera—a regional, very large professional news gathering organization. And I wonder who would fund something like that. Is that something the Nigerian government might want to sponsor?

Philip: The Nigerian government hasn’t shown so much of desire, even interest in funding the media. Maybe for fear that journalists will become equipped to go after the government itself,

Claire: Al Jazeera doesn’t report on Qatar, but they do good reporting in a lot of the world.

Philip: So you see, when government is funding you, you just cannot focus on the same government where you are getting resources from.

Claire: No, but it would be a really good resource for people who are doing work in other countries in Africa.

Philip: I know that the Global Investigative Journalism Network and I’m part of that network, we have come together and then we share some of our work together. And even ideas we share together. But the problem will always remain with the funding.

Claire: Yeah. All right. I would love to have you on the podcast again to talk about some of these issues.

Philip: I’ll be delighted. Yeah.

Claire: Okay. That would be great. I’ll put links to your stories in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. And I’m very glad you’re okay because that was a terrifying experience.

Philip: Yeah, the pleasure is mine. I’m lucky.

Claire: All right. Speak soon

Philip: Bye bye. Have a good day.

Claire: Bye bye.

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can,Deeds quite impossible for Man,But one prize is beyond his reach,The Ogre cannot master Speech:About a subjugated plain,Among its desperate and slain,The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,While drivel gushes from his lips.

—WH Auden

Belgium has suddenly gone wobbly about seizing Russia’s frozen assets, spooked by the thought of Russian lawyers. Pokrovst will fall imminently. The Kremlin is dismantling Ukraine’s electrical grid as the winter arrives. A sprawling corruption scandal is engulfing Zelensky’s closest allies, demoralizing soldiers on the frontlines, and handing Russia a matchless propaganda gift. Vladislav Davidzon joins me to discuss what this means for Ukraine and the war.

From Vladislav’s daybook:

Claire Berlinski and Judith Levy discuss the escalating tensions in northern Israel with Hezbollah, recent incursions, and the devastating impact of ongoing conflict. They explore the strategic and military implications for Israel, the psychological toll on citizens, and the political maneuvers of Israeli leadership.

Here’s an AI summary of the podcast:

Join Clare Berlinski and Judith Levy in this episode of The Elephant Cage as they discuss the Biden administration's inability to understand deterrence and escalation dominance. They provide updates on the Hamas deal, analyze the current geopolitical landscape, and critique the American foreign policy approach towards Russia and Iran. The discussion also covers the implications of the Ukraine war, the role of NATO, and the morality of abducting Ukrainian children. Additionally, they explore the interconnectedness of global conflicts and the strategic failures of Western leadership.

* 00:00 Introduction and Greetings

* 00:18 Update on Hamas and the Biden Deal

* 01:36 Internal Political Dynamics in Israel

* 02:09 Reflections on D-Day and American Decline

* 03:24 Biden’s Misunderstanding of Deterrence

* 08:19 Potential Consequences of Russia’s Actions

* 12:33 NATO’s Future and Ukraine’s Admission

* 15:38 The Iranian Threat and American Response

* 19:59 Kidnapping of Ukrainian Children

* 23:54 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

(It’s not a bad summary. It’s accurate. That’s pretty much what we talk about. It just makes it sound kind of boring—which it isn’t. But for a non-human intelligence that’s pretty impressive. Honestly, most humans couldn’t do that anywhere near as well. )

I was very sad that the elephant-trumpet sound effect on the program I use to edit this seems to have disappeared in their new upgrade. I’ve written to them to register my distress. Try playing this while you listen:

Show notes:

Who wants a two-state solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians.

Show notes

Detectives urgently investigating what led to man’s fatal sword rampage.

Truly impressive scenes from Tbilisi: Over 100,000 people are protesting against the Russia-inspired foreign agents bill in the capital, with protests also occurring in other cities. Georgians are rallying to defend their country from becoming a Russian satellite state:

John adds: “Think we are on the verge of something really happening there, and at a time where Putin would struggle to respond.”

Show notes

Found on the sidewalk, destined for the dump:

After my weekend’s ministrations:

My brother thinks I could make a lucrative side gig out of writing a newsletter about finding junk in the streets of Paris and restoring it. He thinks more people would subscribe to that than they would to the Cosmopolitan Globalist.

I don’t think I have the time to write two full-time Substacks—especially since writing a newsletter about scouring Paris for trash and restoring it would require that I actually scour Paris for trash and restore it, which is pretty time-consuming. But it’s nice to think I have a backup plan if it doesn’t work out for me in geopolitics.

It does occur to me that The New York Times is the only newspaper that’s managed to figure out how to turn a profit. The key is their recipes. Their reporting is financed by their cooking section, their games, and the Wirecutter, where they review things like sheets and air fryers. If I were to add the occasional premium feature about restoring some piece of Parisian junk, might that be the ticket to our riad in Marrakesh?

I do figure, though, that if I had to find junk on the sidewalk and restore it, I wouldn’t love doing it anymore. It’s only as fun as it is because it comes with the special frisson you get when you’re evading gainful work. As soon as I felt obliged to pick over my neighbors’ trash, I bet it would feel like work. Then I doubt I’d love doing it as much. And that would be a shame.

Blinken in China:

* China’s overproduction of clean energy goods needs to be mitigated, Yellen says

* China’s big factories had a terrible March, even as automakers roar to new highs.

* “It is desolate.” China’s glut of unused car factories. Manufacturers like BYD, Tesla and Li Auto are cutting prices to move their electric cars. For gasoline-powered vehicles, the surplus of factories is even worse.

* Xi warns Blinken: Stop being two-faced: America is “saying one thing and doing another,” Chinese leader cautions top US diplomat.

* Hyping “overcapacity” in China is the real threat to world.

“Some people in the US are hyping up the so-called overcapacity in China with the real purpose of suppressing the development of China’s emerging industries and of maintaining its long-standing monopoly position in the global industrial chain through unfair means. Yellen attributed the bankruptcy of US’ solar companies to Chinese suppliers lowering prices in the interview. Although the attribution was wrong, it also exposed the real intention. It is not difficult to see that the so-called overcapacity rhetoric in China’s new energy industry is nothing more than a copy of the ‘America First.’ In the eyes of the US, the rapid development of China’s green industry challenges the strength and status of the US, and China's competitiveness is ‘translated’ into a ‘security threat’ to the world (the US). It can be seen that the excess is not China’s production capacity, but US’ anxiety. … Shifting contradictions, smearing and suppressing, and decoupling will only lead to a “lose-lose” situation.”—Global Times

Goodbye, Niger. A continent-wide belt of Russian influence:

* All US soldiers are set to leave Niger, ending their role in the fight against Islamist insurgents.

* American troops withdraw from Niger while facing pressure from Chad. Washington’’s announcement on Friday that it is withdrawing 1,100 soldiers from the Agadez base in Niger marks the loss of a strategic point for intelligence operations on armed groups in the Sahel, coinciding with Russia;s growing influence in the region.

* Russian troop arrival spells end for US military presence in Niger.

* Russia has tightened its hold over the Sahel region—and now it’s looking to Africa’s west coast.

* The US is losing its battle in the Sahel as Chad joins Niger in demanding withdrawal of military personnel. With Russia lurking and diplomatic channels failing, Washington is preparing to redeploy its troops from Nigerien soil while pressure from the Chadian army threatens to end its operations

Al Hol

* Syrian Kurdish officials hand over 50 women and children linked to Islamic State group to Tajikistan.

* Syria’s Al-Hol camp: child inmates and false identities

* Iraq to repatriate over 700 ISIS-linked people from Rojava

Muskwatch

* Elon Musk lashes out at Australia’s prime minister after court orders X to take down church stabbing posts.

* “Arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above law, choses ego over common sense.”

* Elon Musk targets Australian senator and gun laws in deepening dispute over violent video. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose platform X has been ordered to remove video of a bishop being stabbed, called the senator “an enemy of the people” and promoted other posts attacking Australia.

One senator, Jacqui Lambie, deleted her X account to protest the publication of the footage and called for other politicians to do the same, saying Musk had “no social conscience or conscience whatsoever.” She added that Musk should be jailed.

In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro's far-right supporters are hailing Elon Musk as a “hero.” Here’s why. The tech-billionaire got himself embroiled in major controversies as he unleashed an attack on Bolsonaro’s arch nemesis, the Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes.

Brazil judge orders probe on Elon Musk after refusal to block accounts on X. Judge Alexandre de Moraes accused the owner of X of “criminal instrumentalization” of the platform.

Musk burns bridges in Brazil after calling for senior judge to be impeached. Tycoon threatens to ignore court order banning far-right accounts on X.

Elon Musk’s X removes general option to report misleading info about politics

Hey, it’s us! John will be in London for a while now, so you can look forward to receiving the Elephant Cage every weekday without further interruption.

Show notes:

Popular protests continue against Foreign Agents’ law

Rallies continue in Tbilisi against the Foreign Agents law, as citizens of all generations gathered again on April 21 in Tbilisi, again blocking Rustaveli avenue. Many demonstrators came with their families, representing several generations. The demonstration began with the Georgian national anthem, followed by the EU anthem, after which the demonstrators marched to the Supreme Court to demand a free and transparent judiciary.

The demonstrators chanted “Samachablo [Tskhinvali region] is Georgia!”, “Abkhazia is Georgia!”, “Yes to Europe, no to Russian law!”, “We are here to Slay, not to Obey”, “Where are we going? To Europe!”, “No to Russian law, No to Russian government, No to offshore law!”

For a full year, the bodies have piled up in Sudan—and still the world looks away:

… Even though it has been a year, there is still a sense of whiplash, of disbelief that it has actually happened, is actually happening. Every development expands the theater of war and makes a return to peace more remote. Writing these words is a halting, painful process, like stepping on shards of broken glass. Something similar plays out on an almost daily basis, where one tries, and fails, to trace and keep track of all the individual and national tolls.

And more jarring is that the world has gazed with indifference upon this crucible of war. The “forgotten war” is what it’s called now, when it’s referenced in the international media. Little is offered by way of explanation for why it is forgotten, despite the sharpness of the humanitarian situation, the security risk of the war spreading, and the fact that it has drawn in self-interested mischievous players such as the United Arab Emirates, which is supporting the RSF, and therefore extending the duration of the war.

One of the reasons for this is Gaza and the escalating Middle East conflict, and how they have monopolized global attention and diplomatic bandwidth for the past six months. And another is that for those reporting within Sudan and the few who manage to get in, doing so is difficult and fraught with danger, limiting the output of images and details that can be broadcast consistently to galvanize attention. But the rest, I suspect, is down to what to most will seem unremarkable: this is just another African country succumbing to intractable conflict.

How Mike Johnson’s faith changed his path on Ukraine:

In a letter last week, four high-profile Baptists—including Dr. Richard Land, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission—urged Johnson to “consider the plight of Christians” in Ukraine. Pastors there have faced threats, torture and removal from their positions by Russian forces, the letter noted.

“Despite Russian efforts to paint Ukraine as intolerant of Christians, it is the Russian government that has aggressively harmed peaceful law abiding faithful Christians in the occupied areas of Ukraine,” the letter added. “The Russian army has destroyed hundreds of Baptist churches where evangelical Christians once exercised their faith freely in Ukraine.”

Daniel Darling—who also signed the letter and directs Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s center for cultural engagement—told NOTUS the group felt compelled to send it after seeing distorted narratives spread that Russia is defending Christianity. Some of Johnson’s own colleagues hold that view. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the speaker’s fiercest Republican opponents, said this month that Russia “is not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”

For those of you who listen through a podcast player, here’s the edited, one-hour version of our conversation with Judith Levy about the failure of the Oslo Accords and the relationship between that and the present catastrophe. Make time to listen to it: You’ll find it worthwhile.

If you’d like to listen to the unedited version—and watch it, too—here’s all three hours. I had to cut lots and lots of interesting stuff to get the podcast down to an hour, so if you’re interested in the topic and have three hours to spare, you’ll enjoy this.

Show notes:

Vows of revenge mark a funeral for Iranian commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike in Damascus:

“Our brave men will punish the Zionist regime,” General Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, told the crowd attending the funeral in Tehran. “We warn that no act by any enemy against our holy system will go unanswered and the art of the Iranian nation is to break the power of empires.”

Prime Minister Oxley runs through the options for dissuading Iran from targeting dissidents on British soil. Secretary of State Berlinski is worried no one has an Iran policy. The PM realizes he’ll need to lead the Free World in devising a comprehensive plan to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, which will require him to call upon Defense Minister Oxley for a briefing. (The DefMin was in an urgent meeting today but will brief us tomorrow.)

Show notes:

* Iran is winning the war. Right now things look good for Israel. But the Islamic Republic is playing the long game. And its advantages, alas, are many.

* Iran executes 853 people in eight-year high amid relentless repression and renewed “war on drugs.”

* The EU compromise machine is breaking—and everyone’s blaming Germany. Berlin’s domestic spats are gumming up the EU’s delicate policymaking process.

* How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could doom Joe Biden

Fridays are the day we talk about happy and beautiful things, and what could be happier or more beautiful than our golden, wine-and-poetry soaked youth at Oxford and Cambridge?

I wrote a short story some time after I went down from Oxford. (You “go up” and “go down” from Oxford, and you pray that you’re never “sent down,” because that is very, very bad.) The story is a love letter to Oxford, its beauty, its history, its weirdness, and the dizzying excitement of being young. I still think it captures something true about the place.

I didn’t know what to do with it. It was and remains the only short story I’d ever written. But I was attached to it, so I turned it into a little book and self-published it on Amazon. Every so often, some curious reader buys it. This one liked it:

It’s a work of fiction, but every place I describe is real.

I have a special offer for you. If you subscribe today, I will send you a complimentary copy of Oxford on Acid. (When you subscribe, you’re given the option of sending me a note. Be sure to tell me that you’d like to read it.)

If you’d like to read it but you’re already a subscriber, you can buy it on Amazon. And if you’d like a signed copy—signed electronically, of course, but still signed—you can become a Founding Member. Remember that Founding Members are also entitled to a bespoke Paris tour.

Enjoy!

Become a Founding Member.

(It’s not your imagination: Oxford really is far more beautiful. Sorry, John.)

(Note: This is not Critical Conditions with Dan Perry. I just can’t figure out how to get rid of that logo.)

Recently, I had an exchange with our subscriber Josh Rosenberg—who on Substack goes by the name Josh of Arc, and writes at Sic Semper Tyrannis—about the use of violence in resisting authoritarianism. You’ll remember his essay, Force and Freedom: Contemplating the Unthinkable, in which he argues that those opposing Trump have become dangerously alienated from the fundamental fact of political life: It rests upon force.

Democrats may be capable of winning the most votes in the 2028 election, he writes. But this doesn’t mean they’ll retake the presidency, he continues, because they’re unprepared for Trump’s refusal to relinquish power:

… Whether the GOP puts Donald Trump on the ballot as a final insult to the Constitution, nominates JD Vance, or props up another Medvedev-style supplicant, Trump’s power, freedom, and reputation will again be on the line. Do we really expect him to relinquish power peacefully? Will his rogues’ gallery of cabinet members, chosen above all for their servility, suddenly discover they are patriots willing to imperil themselves to defend the Constitution? Will other administration officials tell the truth now that Trump has signed executive orders targeting people like Chris Krebs—the DHS official who refused to fabricate evidence to support Trump’s election theft lies in 2020?

He therefore offers the following advice:

The opposition’s strategy should become two-fold. A peaceful resistance movement should organize aggressively, with a scrupulous commitment to non-violence. But concurrently, we must assemble a network of private militias to serve as an insurgency-in-waiting. Like any deterrent force, its purpose would be to ensure that it is never needed. And it’s mission would be to convince anyone in a position of public trust who might enable a full transition to an American dictatorship, that such a world would not be an oasis in which they would prosper, but a hellscape in which they’ll be hunted.

I replied to this argument here in an essay titled Do Americans need an insurgency-in-waiting? Violence, non-violence, and getting rid of authoritarians. I am sympathetic to his moral point: I agree that if a usurper can’t be dislodged by peaceful and Constitutional means, force is permissible, and under some circumstances, morally obligatory.

But I argue that we have by no means exhausted the peaceful means available to us. Not even close. Not even close to close. What’s more, if it’s true that we have a moral obligation to confront a usurper, it follows that we have an obligation to do so in the way that is most likely to be effective. The empirical evidence about this is surprisingly clear. Historically, those who employ disciplined non-violence are far more likely to succeed than those who use physical force—even when confronting the most brutal authoritarians.

The benchmark study is Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. Studying an aggregate data set of all known major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006, they found that campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as likely to achieve their political goals. This was true even under even the most brutal and repressive regimes. The findings were neither subtle nor ambiguous: If you’re in any doubt about whether nonviolence is an effective way to confront a lawless regime, this should settle it.

There is a reason for this. Nonviolent movements are generally viewed as legitimate, both domestically and internationally. This allows a nonviolent campaign to attract broad public support and participation. Violent campaigns tend to be repulsive to the public. It’s extremely hard to convince a significant number to take up arms against the regime, even if it’s justified. All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Because the public recoils from violence, violent campaigns rarely achieve the numbers required to overwhelm an authoritarian government. Instead, they discredit their cause and offer the tyrant a justification for armed counterattack.

Nonviolent protest can, when sustained and focused, attract a very high level of public participation. It’s the rare regime that can ignore sustained civic disruption. The key to success, usually, is shifting the loyalty of core supporters, especially the military. But violent campaigns serve the opposite purpose, bonding the regime, its supporters, and the military together.

What’s more, successful nonviolent movements are more likely to lead to stable, durable outcomes. Compared to regimes that emerge from violent conflict, democracies that emerge from non-violent campaigns are less likely to regress to civil war. This is a particularly interesting finding: It seems that once people acquire a taste for settling their differences violently, they never fully lose it. Violent insurgency, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude, is therefore rarely justifiable on strategic grounds, never mind the moral arguments. Whether confronting a democratic or an authoritarian regime, a nonviolent campaign is far more likely to yield desirable outcomes.

Josh wrote another essay recently titled The Weak: Freedom’s Undertakers. He observes what he describes as a “collective malaise and paralysis among liberals in the West,” and suggests that this collective paralysis lies “at the heart of our present crisis.”

Western liberal elites continue to demonstrate an almost congenital inability to resist identity-inflected guilt trips, moral blackmail, character assassination, and other weapons of the weak—often wielded by low-level staffers. It’s as if, sometime around 2014, the editors of Teen Vogue stormed every newsroom in America, said “Alright, if nobody resists, nobody will get hurt”, and everyone just immediately surrendered.

Theories differ as to how this happened. But it appears that the introduction of viral social media combined with the already risk-averse, legalistic culture of many of these institutions produced a supernova of neuroticism, pettiness, and crippling fear. Leadership positions increasingly involved putting out (or avoiding) fires, minimizing negative publicity, and avoiding being sued. This tended to attract and produce risk-averse, rule-following bureaucrats who live in a perpetually defensive posture; small, unserious people consumed with trivialities. Is it any wonder that such “leaders” cannot recognize when defining moments arrive—when half measures must be abandoned in favor of giant historical leaps?

Consider the spectacle of the last few DNC meetings: In the midst of budding fascism they begin events with land acknowledgements, and meticulously document their compliance with official party quotas on the number of people from each marginalized identity group who must be appointed to leadership positions. A party that regards itself as the last bulwark against fascism turns the selection of its leaders into farcical public group therapy sessions that confirm every negative stereotype about Democrats and “the Left.” Can dingbats like this who cower in the face of the gender identity lobby rise to the challenge of reversing a process of authoritarian consolidation that is now well past its preliminary stages? Can people who flinch at the prospect of enforcing their own immigration laws or keeping violent criminals off the streets really summon the resolve to compel other people’s children to fight and die? This, I believe, gets to the heart of the crisis of modern liberalism. It has no answer to the following question: What’s worth dying for?

What does his argument entail?

What it means is selecting certain rules that tie Democrat’s hands in their ability to fight back in defense of their most basic rights, and setting them aside. …

While Congress reduces itself to a useless appendage and the six “conservatives” on the Supreme Court beclown themselves in order to sanction a ludicrous interpretation of executive power that would even make Aileen Cannon do a double take, Trump now largely governs around the Constitution by declaring phony national emergencies. The military is selectively redeployed to blue cities for domestic law enforcement purposes based on a so-called “crime emergency.” Trade policy is dictated from the oval office, upended on a whim, and altered in exchange for personal bribes that nobody is even bothering to conceal at this point—all predicated on the idea that it’s an “emergency.” The regime’s rationale for their ongoing unconstitutional crackdown on free speech—which they’re now escalating dramatically in the wake of the Kirk killing—is again justified on the basis of a so-called “national emergency.” There’s a name for this form of government, and it isn’t democracy—regardless of what the credulous Mr. Fetterman may believe.

Remarkably—starting with the outrageous immunity decision—the six monarchists on the court have sanctioned this anti-constitutional farce, and in so doing, have unleashed a bloodthirsty predator on the nation, completely unbound by law and empowered to use the military, the FBI, and every other part of the federal government to pursue his revenge fantasies against domestic enemies—be they individuals, corporations, or entire states. The monarchist majority has over the last 18 months, in effect, cancelled the Constitution in service to Donald Trump’s will to power and told those seeking their relief that their rights no longer apply when they collide with his royal prerogatives. Under these extraordinary circumstances that the court has created, it is time for Democrats to reject the cautious half-measures favored by unconditional liberals, accept that the monarchist majority has breached the social contract in abandoning their oaths, and embrace a bold new doctrine: There are no limits to how far blue state governors and legislatures can go to protect their citizens and their elections from the autocrat in the White House.

What does “no limits” mean? It can mean many things depending on how far the regime chooses to go themselves. Currently, officials in Chicago have arranged to have ICE officials followed and monitored to ensure they do not violate the rights of citizens. This is a good start. But it leaves a lot of open questions such as: What happens when federal officials cross the line? The monarchist majority on the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that they’re worse than useless, and that they now view their jobs not as interpreting the law, but rather as serving as six glorified notaries who rubber stamp Donald Trump’s anti-Constitutional revenge presidency. So when such a confrontation occurs—and it will—whichever Democratic governor or mayor is in charge will have a critical decision to make: cave or escalate? Should they hang their citizens out to dry in deference to a Court that has shredded the social contract, doesn’t even respect itself, and can’t even be bothered to come to the defense of lower court judges who’ve been under siege and subjected to constant violent threats as a result of the regime’s rhetoric and behavior? If “no limits” is to have any meaning, then the answer has to be no. And if you’re thinking that this sounds a lot like Supreme Court nullification, then you thought right.

We discuss this—and more—in the podcast. Listen, read his essays, and tell us what you think in the comments.

Who wants to come on the podcast next?

It’s a beautiful day in Europe. Jake Sullivan visits Ukraine and tells them the aid is coming. The EU is meeting in Brussels and going “on a war footing.” The Elephants are relieved by these faintly encouraging signs.

The German economy is in a world of hurt. Let’s be careful what we wish for, folks: The Elephants look at Germany and wonder if we should be excited about German rearmament.

Leaked Russian Education Ministry documents show Russia’s plans for “reeducating” kidnapped Ukrainian children.

A surprisingly hopeful poll suggests Gazans are rethinking “armed resistance.”

Below, an AI translation of Friedrich Merz’s speech. I’m impressed by him. He’s saying what needs to be said. (Does anyone know how he’s polling? Is there any chance we might see him as Chancellor?)

I know some of you would prefer to watch this in the original German, but I saved it several days ago and can’t for the life of me remember where I found it. If anyone knows, would you please let me know in the comments?

Darling but useless:

Hey, has anyone else had this problem? I received this message from a subscriber:

[T]he podcast episodes are no longer appearing in the subscriber podcast feed. Last week episodes for Monday-Thursday appeared and I listened to them but disappeared from the full list of episodes in the podcast app feed for all episodes.

Please let me know if you’ve had this problem, too. It will help me figure out how to fix it.

Show notes

European GPS-disturbance: multi-faceted. I have no idea if this is completely kooky nonsense or if there’s something to it. Does anyone else?

Discussing it put me in mind of the introduction to this essay:

Sweden scrambles to intercept Russian aircraft within hours of NATO flag raising. Swedish JAS-39 Gripen multi-role fighter aircraft were scrambled alongside Belgian and German aircraft to investigate an unidentified track over the Baltic Sea emanating from Kaliningrad.

Russia’s first strike weapon: It’s even more dangerous than an orbital nuclear bomb. (The whole essay is excellent.)

Threat of regional war intensifies as DR Congo rebels close in on Goma. Aid agencies warn of humanitarian catastrophe as resurgent M23 militia fights its way through mineral-rich region.

If you’d like a backgrounder on this conflict, try this:

World Happiness Report 2024

The rankings:

At least 22 million fake votes cast for Putin in presidential election

Cannibalism in Haiti? Fact-checking the unfounded claims:

The State Department told PolitiFact that it has received no credible reports about cannibalism in Haiti, and experts who study the country said they’ve seen no sign that cannibalism is prevalent among gangs or the population at large. 

(The cannibalism claims don’t sound hugely credible. But the “hell on earth” claims sure do.)

UNICEF chief: Haiti’s situation is like a scene from Mad Max.

It really doesn’t sound that far off of cannibalism. Poor Haiti.

Show notes:

* One year after Ohrid agreement, there is little commitment from Kosovo and Serbia to its implementation. EU High Representative Josep Borrell called the lack of progress in implementing obligations “regrettable.” To date, only the declaration on missing persons, the Joint Monitoring Committee, and the draft on the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities in Kosovo.

* Putin wants war in the Balkans. Russia is exploiting ethnic tensions as Serbia threatens violence against Kosovo and secessionists threaten a Bosnian collapse.

* Bosnian train massacre defendant dies before retrial gets underway.

Jovan Lipovac, one of four Serb ex-fighters being prosecuted in Belgrade for involvement in the abduction and execution of 20 non-Serb passengers seized from a train at Strpci in Bosnia in 1993, died before the first hearing in his retrial.

* KATE LOOKS GREAT. Princess Kate looked relieved and natural on shopping trip—she wasn’t trying to hide away, witness says. The Sun exclusively revealed the video of Kate during her outing.

Sorry folks, it’s Monday. We have to think about this again.

We decided that every Friday, we’re going to talk about things that don’t involve any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. From now on, we’re dedicating Fridays to the cosmopolitan part of the globalist. We’ll talk about great cities, great books, the world’s best gardens, Roman history, our favorite languages, travel by train, cooking, the best music by which to drive through the American southwest in a convertible, writing and literature, the world’s best restaurants, the world’s best recipes, navigating Paris by scent, the best martial art, how to train a puppy, how to hitch a ride on a cargo ship, how to renovate a Louis XV commode, circuses we’ve loved, circuses we’ve run away to join—or anything, really, but war, famine, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and death.

Museums we mention:

* Pergamonmuseum

* The British Museum

* The Museum of Innocence

* The Louvre

* The Orangerie

* The Picasso Museum

* The Rodin Museum

* The Uffizi

* National Museum of Denmark

* Imperial War Museum

* Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights

* Musée de l’Armée d’Invalides

The Scutum from Dura-Europos:

A Vilnius descent, by John

There’s something deeply unsettling about standing in a Soviet prison cell, even when it is part of a museum. The air feels dank. The walls are thick, the windows frosted out, and the heavy door can swing closed with surprising ease. There’s an unavoidable sense that with one shove, you could be disappeared, trapped, invisible to the world outside. Instinctively, you do not feel comfortable lingering too long inside. 

I was in the basement level of Vilnius’ Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights—known as the “KGB Museum” to the tourist tours. It’s housed in the building that played host successively to the Gestapo and then the organs of Soviet security who despite ever-changing names (NKVD, MGB, KGB) never altered their purpose or cruelty. Operational as a prison until the dissolution of the USSR, the newly independent Lithuania preserved it as a museum. …

Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, by Claire

… The novel is one of his great accomplishments, and the idea of representing the story in two forms is ingenious. Of course, the idea can only work if one writes a novel about a museum. The novel is about more than this, though: It is about love, and it is about Istanbul, and it is about the power of artifacts to evoke nostalgia. It is a long—perhaps excessively long—account of Kemal, an idle Istanbul playboy, and his florid obsession with Füsun, a lower-class shop girl 12 years his junior. Unable to possess her beyond the initial heady days of their affair, he spends years contriving simply to be in her presence, whereupon he pilfers and collects artifacts connected with her. He consoles himself by touching the things she has touched, ultimately transforming Füsun into a fully developed museum of objects consecrated to his obsession with her.

… To enter the museum itself is to feel that past evoked, and it is to feel the book—and indeed an entire era and culture—evoked. It is a bit like reading the script for a play and then seeing its performance. The museum is as carefully crafted as the book, presenting in meticulous display cases and boxes the items used and collected and discussed by the novel’s characters, and managing somehow to make them compelling rather than disgusting—not an easy trick when one of the exhibits comprises 4,213 cigarette butts, each supposedly smoked by Füsun. It is the minute attention to detail that spares this display from grotesquerie—the butts have been pinned to the wall like a lepidopterist's prized treasures; there is something fascinating about the author’s handwritten notes, beneath each butt, and the lipstick stains—each the same shade—or the lack of lipstick, and the way some cigarettes are half-smoked, others stubbed to the core in a suggestion of rage.

The love and memory on display here are not merely that of Kemal for the vanished Füsun, but Pamuk’s for the vanished Istanbul of his youth, the “irreplaceable mementos of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.” Istanbullus of a certain age roamed the museum with expressions of tender recognition—“Oh yes, we remember that”—the brand names, the film stars, the high-society gossip columns, the photographs of women from newspapers of the epoch with black bands branded across their eyes. (Such was the fate of women who had sex before marriage.)

On Paris Syndrome

Paris syndrome (French: Syndrome de Paris) is a transient psychological disorder encountered by some people visiting or vacationing in Paris and more generally France and Spain. It is similar in nature to Jerusalem syndrome and Stendhal syndrome.

Japanese visitors are observed to be especially susceptible. It was first noted in Nervure, the French journal of psychiatry in 2004. From the estimated six million yearly visitors, the number of reported cases is significant: according to an administrator at the Japanese embassy in France, around twenty Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome. The susceptilibity of Japanese people may be linked to the popularity of Paris in Japanese culture, notably the idealized image of Paris prevalent in Japanese advertising, which does not correspond to reality.

Paris Syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, etc. …

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France, is credited as the first person to diagnose the disease in 1986. However, later work by Youcef Mahmoudia, physician with the hospital Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, indicates that Paris Syndrome is “a manifestation of psychopathology related to the voyage, rather than a syndrome of the traveller.” He theorized that the excitement resulting from visiting Paris causes the heart to accelerate, causing giddiness and shortness of breath, which results in hallucinations in the manner similar to the Stendhal syndrome described by Italian psychologist Graziella Magherini in her book La sindrome di Stendhal.

Show notes

Background: Why I don’t trust news organs I usually find reliable to report the news from Israel and Gaza accurately:

*

What COGAT says:

The image above came from a video; here’s the full footage:

COGAT didn’t provide a translation, and I don’t speak Arabic. So I put the video through an AI program for translation and subtitles, which resulted in gibberish:

My best guess, from the context, is that they’re saying something like this:

First Man: We’re now living from day to day, and our daily sustenance depends on aid. Capone will give you a box. What do you do, under duress, about the things you’re deprived of? The things you see with your own eyes are impossible to buy. For example—you have a kilo of sugar for 80 shekels.

Second Man: These prices ruin people’s homes. People don’t have the money to buy it or do anything else. You can buy one or two. In Ramadan. How are we supposed to live? We won’t be able to live. I mean, in this time, there is no work or anything. We’ve been displaced from Gaza to here. We’re sent one place, then another. Fascists, I mean, the Jews, beatings and beatings on our heads, and there is nothing to eat or drink.

Third Man: A coconut for 15 shekels, a cabbage for 20, and I sell tomatoes for six shekels or five shekels, I brought peppers, but I can’t sell them, because no one is working. No one has a job. Not even one. Is there a job anywhere? Where can I get it? Where does the money come from? Where do we get it from? Where do we get it from? God, it is what it is.

I could be wildly wrong, but I think it’s something like that. (Perhaps one of our Arabic-speaking readers could help?)

The video certainly suggests that Gazans are enduring poverty and want. They’re saying, if I’ve correctly understood, that life in Gaza has been gravely disrupted, their circumstances are parlous, they’re miserable, and they bitterly resent it. But this isn’t a scene of starvation, which is, obviously, COGAT’s point. I don’t know how much disparity there is from one part of Gaza to another, but I don’t see famine in this video.

On the same day, the Washington Post published an article titled, “How Israel’s restrictions on aid put Gaza on the brink of famine.”

On Saturday, the United States airdropped 38,000 meals into Gaza—a territory controlled not by a hostile foreign power but by one of its closest allies.

The remarkable scene of American aid bundles floating down to starving Palestinians was the starkest illustration yet of the rift that has grown between the Biden administration and the Israeli government over the Gaza war. For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Washington to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave, even as it relies on US bombs and diplomatic support to carry out its punishing military campaign there.

Several paragraphs down, it says,

Israel says it is not limiting the delivery of aid to Gaza, and it has blamed the United Nations for failing to distribute it to those in need—or worse, diverting aid to Hamas.

So who’s telling the truth? Is Israel limiting aid or not? This shouldn’t be hard to answer. The Post could send a journalist to Israel to stand in front of one of the crossings that Israel says is open and see if any trucks go through it. Why aren’t they doing that?

On March 9, The New York Times put the image below on its front page. In the online version, the headline reads: “The 10-year-old boy who has become the face of starvation in Gaza.” The sub-heading says, “The harrowing image of a skeletal Yazan Kafarneh circulated widely on social media and has served as a graphic warning about the enclave’s dire food situation.”

It’s a shocking image. The article begins:

It is all too easy to trace the skull beneath the Gazan boy’s face, the pallid skin stretching tight over every curve of bone and sagging with every hollow. His chin juts with a disturbing sharpness. His flesh has shrunk and shriveled, life reduced to little more than a thin mask over an imminent death.

In one of a series of news photographs of the boy, Yazan Kafarneh, taken with his family’s permission as he struggled for his life, his long-lashed eyes stare out, unfocused. In that widely shared picture online, his right hand, bandaged over an intravenous line, contracts in on itself at an awkward angle …

Then they arrive at a detail that might easily be overlooked:

… a visible marker of his cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy is a dreadful disease. The majority of children with severe cerebral palsy do not reach adulthood. The malady is often characterized by difficulty eating and swallowing. This causes malnutrition, which has a major impact on life expectancy. Other symptoms include accelerated musculoskeletal aging, accompanied by severe muscle atrophy:

The clinical observation of muscle wasting has prompted a comparison with sarcopenia in older adults, and the term accelerated musculoskeletal ageing is often used to describe the hallmark phenotype of CP through the lifespan.

Obviously, it’s fully possible—likely, even—that this child’s death was hastened by malnutrition, lack of medical care, and the terrible stress of fleeing from bombardment. But is this truly “the face of starvation in Gaza”—that is, a typical, representative face in Gaza, a face that gives readers an accurate sense of life in the Gaza Strip right now? Or is this the face of late stage, severe cerebral palsy?

Is this face a warning about Gaza’s “dire food situation?” Or is it a warning that The New York Times will violate the dignity of a dying child just so it can tell you—yet again—that there are no depths to which Israelis won’t sink? “Look what the Jews did! They starved him to death!”

The article continues:

Five months into Israel’s campaign against Hamas and its siege of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are close to starvation, United Nations officials say. Almost no aid has reached northern Gaza for weeks, after major UN agencies mostly suspended their operations, citing mass looting of their cargoes by desperate Gazans, Israeli restrictions on convoys and the poor condition of roads damaged during the war.

Again, I’m stumped. They suspended their operations to feed people who are “close to starvation” because the roads are damaged?

Israel categorically denies that it’s restricting aid convoys. COGAT points out that private sector aid trucks aren’t finding the bad roads an insuperable barrier:

Either COGAT or the UN—as I say in the podcast—is lying. Neither the Times nor the Post seems to think that getting to the bottom of this question matters; they’re content with intimating, repeatedly, that Gazans are starving because Israelis are deliberately starving them.

Here’s the interview with the interesting Kurdish-Swedish journalist I mentioned:

And here’s Israel’s ambassador to the UK. (I take John’s point that this isn’t diplomatic, but man—I get where she’s coming from.)

Update: I have to say I’ve searched in vain for a clip that shows Tzipi Hotovely saying something with which I truly disagree. I have seen terrible Israeli diplomats in action (I could tell you stories—oy), but she seems fine to me. And her critics seem insane. (Anyone who gets Owen Jones as lathered up as she does can’t be all bad.)

Okay, so we changed the name. The new name was Thomas Gregg’s suggestion, and we love it.

I can’t tell whether I forgot to speak slowly, or if I made a mistake in the editing that sped up the recording. I don’t know what I could have done, if so. It’s not bad—but I’m not speaking slowly. I’ll work at that more.

Trump is “unhinged” but we love him, say Kremlin mouthpieces, by Julia Davis

Peace talks “just because” Ukraine is running out of ammunition are “ridiculous,” says Putin

Here it is: The long-awaited report.

This annual report of worldwide threats to the national security of the United States responds to Section 617 of the FY21 Intelligence Authorization Act (Pub. L. No. 116-260). This report reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community (IC), which is committed every day to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world.

This assessment focuses on the most direct, serious threats to the United States primarily during the next year. The order of the topics presented in this assessment does not necessarily indicate their relative importance or the magnitude of the threats in the view of the IC. All require a robust intelligence response, including those where a near-term focus may help head off greater threats in the future.

Midway through, I misspeak and refer to “Leningrad” when I mean to say, “St. Petersburg.” Old habits die hard. Dates me a bit. At least I didn’t call it “Petrograd,” right?

Show notes:

* India joins the elite list of nations with test of Agni-V MIRV tech

* Mission Divyastra: What Agni-5 missile with MIRV tech can do

* Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan: self-reliant India

* Why “poverty first, moon next” is an absurd argument

* IAEA: Iran is “not entirely transparent” on its atomic program

* West concerned over Iranian nuclear bomb in IAEA meeting

* Too close for comfort: Cases of near-nuclear use and options for policy

* Twenty mishaps that might have started accidental nuclear war

* Causes of false missile alerts: the sun, the moon and a 46-cent chip

* Black carbon lofts wildfire smoke high into the stratosphere to form a persistent plume

* What wildfire smoke tells us about nuclear winter

* Could nuclear weapons testing resume as global tensions rise?

* Several countries could be planning nuclear tests, India and Pakistan may follow suit

* Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing

Here are some of the articles CG has published over the years treating the (very real, and growing) risk of nuclear war. Many of you have read them already, but if you’re new to CG, be sure to have a look.

I’m writing a bit more, separately, about the latest news about Iran’s nuclear program. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, read that. ⬆️ It’s news you can use.

We have a name!

This podcast will from now on be called ‘Round the Globe with John and Claire. We like it because it’s simple and it says what it’s about.

From now on you’ll receive ‘Round the Globe with John and Claire every weekday. It’s a bonus, not a substitute for any of the other things we do. We’d love it if you subscribed:

What’s your verdict so far? How can we improve it?

The show notes are interleaved among the other articles, below. I’ve appended GLOBAL EYES to the podcast because these items are related to what we discuss.

“We are surely approaching a moment for Europe in which it will be necessary not to be cowards.” —Emmanuel Macron, March 5, during a visit to the Czech Republic

The situation along the front in Ukraine is absolutely critical, with Russia bearing down on the front with its mass in several directions, said the chair of Estonia’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Marko Mihkelson, after a visit to the front:

“I’ve been here for three days, and moved around along the entire front together with volunteers; I’ve met with troops and officers from around a dozen different fighting brigades, from Kupiansk to Lyman, Bakhmut and the Avdiivka region, and currently I’m on the southern front toward Orikhiv. … In each of these directions, Russian forces now have absolutely massive initiative, massive firepower and massive manpower, which is pushing the Ukrainian front in all of these directions, both to the east and the south … Everyone I’ve spoken to has the message that they’re catastrophically short on artillery shells as well as quite a lot of other equipment. And Russia’s quantitative force is what's currently very troubling on the front.”

According to the Estonian committee chair, many people are very angry about what’s currently being said in Europe and the US. “They can see that the West doesn’t comprehend the current extremely critical situation in this war, where what’s needed is actions, not words … This morning, in one part of the southern front right here, there was such a barrage of Russian artillery fire from 5-8 am that there wasn’t even a second of silence. … Along one part of the front, Russians have a 100:1 advantage in artillery fire. In a situation like that, it’s easy to understand why the Ukrainians are questioning what Western powers want to achieve.” The MP also noted that despite the incredibly difficult situation, Ukrainian morale still remains high.

Commenting on French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent statement about how the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine should not be ruled out, Mihkelson described Macron’s words as ill-considered rhetoric. “Talk regarding whether to send ground troops to Ukraine should first and foremost be worked out among ourselves, and not argued publicly,” he said. “This isn't exactly the best rhetoric at a time when Ukraine needs actual military support in order to curb Russian pressure.”

(This is the only video I could find with English subtitles. It should search to the important part automatically.)

Blast from the Past: Remember this? Macron’s behavior toward Putin had been so delusional, for so long, that in 2002 I wrote this article:

…. He has spent the past five years trying to draw Russia into his embrace, evidence be damned. Apart from Germany, the rest of Europe—the Baltic states and Ukraine, in particular—have viewed Macron as a preening, Putin-loving nincompoop, at best; an outright menace to European security and NATO’s integrity at worst.

Leaked files reveal Russian military’s criteria for nuclear strike. (The article I mentioned to John.)

Macron tells party leaders France’s support to Ukraine has “no limits.” French President Emmanuel Macron met with leaders of the opposition to discuss the war in Ukraine. He has suggested that Ukraine’s allies should not rule out sending troops.

Macron urges Ukraine’s allies not to be “cowardly.” The French president is on a visit to Prague to clarify his country’s standpoint on a Czech plan to buy weapons outside Europe for Ukraine.

Macron ready to send troops to Ukraine if Russia approaches Kyiv or Odesa. At a meeting with a range of political parties, the President of France floated a scenario that could potentially lead to French troops deployed in Ukraine.

* Prime Minister Kaja Kallas: Ukraine has asked for ammunition and air defense—not ground forces.

Troops for Ukraine: Macron’s big moment, by Nicolas Tenzer. Macron ended the taboo on discussion as part of a carefully considered switch in policy. He means what he says—the question is whether others will follow.

French ambassador: We provide a lot of support to Ukraine, but don’t always announce it.

[Ambassador Mignot said], “I think he really said that on purpose. To create, to show that we have resolve and determination, and we are not afraid of going further in supporting Ukraine. There were many issues in that Paris meeting; in particular, I think there is an assessment that Russia is becoming more and more aggressive. This is clear in France, where we see disinformation campaigns orchestrated by Russia. We see also Russia being more aggressive and creating chaos in Africa and the Middle East.” …

According to the French ambassador, the attitude of Paris towards Russia has changed significantly, and this is also reflected in its support for Ukraine. “In France, we have tripled the production of ammunition for Ukraine. We have increased our training capacity. We are training more specialists, so we are doing more and more. But it takes time, I think to adapt the industry to produce more capacity …to produce Cesar guns, I think this has now decreased from 30 months to 15 months; we are delivering cruise missiles, and President Macron announced a new batch of cruise missiles and bombs to be delivered to Ukraine. … “We are doing a lot, and we are not telling everything about what we are doing, that's why we are in international reports, we might be a little below.”

I have been talking a lot about this in the foreign media lately and used the expression that before things get better, they usually get worse. But Estonian people are more direct and maybe have a slightly more realistic attitude towards the war in Ukraine. The reality is that things get worse before they get better. Then they get even worse. And then they suddenly go completely crazy. And only then do they slowly get better. Today we are somewhere between bad and getting worse.

—Estonian Ministry of Defense Permanent Secretary Kusti Salm

Estonian Minister of Defense: Europe needs to take a bigger, stronger and more aggressive role in supporting Ukraine:

… “[I]t is possible that Ukraine can lose this war. This is a sentence that is considerably more complex and difficult to say. It is all the more important that we say it. Because the prospect of Ukraine losing this war is absolutely catastrophic for Estonian security, for European security, and for NATO security. …

One of Ukraine’s biggest problems is a “catastrophic” shortage of ammunition that is “getting worse every day. As it stands today, of all the artillery that has been given to Ukraine, one-third is in use. The daily norm per artillery piece is six to eight rounds. This is total starvation when we are talking about winning a war. Russia has a huge surplus. They have many times more artillery and dozens of times more ammunition.” …

Salm said Ukraine has been able to spread its artillery over a 1,000-kilometer front with the help of allies, intelligence and targeting. But ammunition stocks are quickly diminishing. The rapid recruitment of soldiers also means their training is “insufficient.” … “This will lead to even greater loss of human life, which in turn risks greater territorial concessions. This adds some fuel to the Russian war of attrition victory theory.”

He said Western allies struggle to provide ammunition for many reasons, such as logistics and production, but the focus should be on political will and money. “Today, there is not a single head of state in the Ramstein coalition who has not stated the need to support Ukraine and spoken at length about it, made a speech, or taken a selfie with President Volodymyr Zelensky. There is plenty of political will. What is lacking is the capacity. The capacity to put enough money on the table for Ukraine to win this war.” …

Salm said if the US does not want to finance Ukraine’s victory, then Europe must step up. “And if Europe, for whatever reason, does not want to, then we [Estonia] have to do it. It is as simple as that. And that is what this existential threat means for us.”

Former Estonian diplomat Harri Tiido: Macron is acting this way because of Scholz’s weakness:

“When I examine Britain’s views, and now those also held in France, it seems there is actually a completely rational explanation as to why Macron is acting as he has been. This is because Scholz has shown weakness, but Europe needs a leader. This is particularly the case in a situation where America’s leading role in this may evaporate,” Tiido continued. “Plus I think Macron has been aspiring for some time to get France in place as a lead country, and to be at the helm of that leading country. So he’s looking to play that role,” Tiido added.

… “Indeed, actually every herd needs a leader of that sort. And I think that the ‘herd’ of European politicians needs such a leader, one who could point them in the right direction.” … Tiido said he believes that France will be ready to fulfill Macron’s pledges. “I think that Macron wants to back up his words with something concrete. But the question is that the lead ram can bring the flock in one direction, but the flock may prefer to head to the slaughterhouse.”

Mujtaba Rahman:

Macron today produced maps of a possible Russian breakthrough towards Kyiv or Odessa which could oblige the West to act to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine. In talks with French opposition leaders, Macron said there should be no more “red lines” on French involvement in the conflict.

Macron summoned leaders of all French parliamentary parties to talks at the Elysée Palace to explain his controversial remarks last week in which he said the deployment of western troops in Ukraine should no longer be excluded. Participants in the meeting said Macron had explained his theory of “strategic ambivalence”—keeping Moscow guessing. Since Vladimir Putin clearly knew no limits, he said, the West had been handing him an advantage by fixing or “interiorizing” limits of its own.

But Opposition leaders of the Far Right, Right and Left said they had been left worried and unconvinced by Macron’s approach (which has also been rejected by the US, UK, Germany and several other NATO countries). Jordan Bardella, the president and de facto Number Two of Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, said threatening to send French soldiers “to fight a nuclear power like Russia is irresponsible and extremely dangerous for world peace.” The Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel said that he feared that Macron was “ready to engage in a bellicose escalation which would be very dangerous.”

Today’s meeting was the prelude to a two-day parliamentary debate next week to discuss a ten-year defense pact signed by Macron and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, last month. Macron told French journalists on Wednesday that he hoped this debate would “make it clear” which political forces in France supported Ukraine and which supported Russia.

Elysée officials deny domestic politics and June EU elections have influenced Macron’s new rhetoric on Ukraine. They say he is driven by the difficult situation on front line, Navalny’s murder, and Kremlin talk of a possible attempt on his own life when he visits Kyiv later this month.

Macron is, however, evidently hoping the new rhetoric will embarrass Le Pen, who had a long history of Putin worship before the Ukraine invasion. The government’s spokeswoman, Prisca Thevenot, says it is “quite evident” that Le Pen, unlike Macron, is not “committed to Russia’s defeat.”

How a deepfake launched a rumor about a plan to assassinate Emmanuel Macron in Ukraine. This is in French, but you can set it to show you English subtitles. I noticed this was being widely shared on Twitter by the kind of people Elon Musk finds very persuasive.

With Sweden in NATO, the alliance has new ways to strike Russia’s prime targets.

Nima Khorrami, an analyst at the Arctic Institute, [said] that Sweden’s membership “extends NATO’s missile range, putting strategic locations in Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg within reach. This adds another layer of deterrence against potential Russian aggression, as NATO forces can effectively respond to threats in real time.”

St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city, has long been the base of Russia’s Baltic fleet. Kaliningrad was formerly named Königsberg and was seized by the Soviet Union from Germany in World War II. It extends Russia’s capacity to project its power into the Baltic region, containing air defenses, electronic warfare units to scramble GPS systems, cruise missiles, and more. It would likely play a key role in any Russian attempt to attack the Suwalki Gap and Baltic nations. “Degrading Russian assets there is critical for NATO operations in the area. That would, in particular, need a saturation of Russian air defense systems. … Sweden is important for both safely receiving NATO troops and capabilities and by being hard to target for Russian forces, while being close enough to Kaliningrad to launch long-range precision capabilities. At its closest, Sweden is 280 kilometers away from Kaliningrad which is a good distance.”

★ Sweden joins “NATO lake” on Moscow’s doorstep. All countries with shores on Baltic Sea except Russia are now part of western defense alliance. (An excellent article.)

Sweden finally joined NATO on Thursday, meaning the western defense alliance has nearly ringed the entire Baltic Sea, a significant oil trading route for Russia and home to one of its fleets. “The Baltic Sea becomes a NATO lake,” said Krišjānis Kariņš, Latvia’s foreign minister and a self-declared candidate to head NATO. As it formally becomes the 32nd member of the US-led alliance during a ceremony in Washington, Sweden brings with it the mid-Baltic island of Gotland—dubbed a “giant aircraft carrier”—which makes the defense of the three small Baltic states easier.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has announced plans to reorganize Russia’s military and beef up forces in the region to “neutralize threats” he said arose from Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that “all the long decades of good neighborliness have gone to dust” because the US military “has the right to do whatever they want in Sweden—visit any site and create any of their own.” Russia’s response would include “additional systems that will be appropriate to the threats that could appear on the territory of Finland and Sweden,” he said.

Russia’s interests in the Baltic Sea are both economic and military. St. Petersburg, which has substantial oil refineries, ships its exports via the Gulf of Finland through the Baltic Sea. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is home to Russia’s Baltic fleet and nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles. Russia has threatened to change the region’s “non-nuclear” status in the past but has not said whether the weapons carry nuclear warheads.

In case of a conflict, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania up until now would have relied almost exclusively on securing reinforcements and supplies via the Suwałki Gap, a narrow and vulnerable 100-kilometer strip separating the Baltics from Poland. By joining NATO, Sweden provides new possibilities via the sea, as Gotland is less than 200 kilometers from the Latvian coast. “It reduces the vulnerability of the Baltics through only the Suwałki Gap. The entire security of the region is made stronger because it makes the eastern Baltic less vulnerable,” said Kariņš. …

The Baltic states may be the biggest immediate beneficiaries from Sweden joining, with Stockholm set to send a battalion to join the multinational presence in Latvia. But the deepest changes over time are likely in the Nordic region itself. Cooperation between the four main countries—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland—has long been close but is now set to become more intense. A taster was provided last year when the four Nordic air forces announced their intention to operate their fleet of about 230 fighter jets as one seamless operation, making it larger than the RAF in the UK or Germany’s air force. Already, Norwegian F-35 and Swedish Gripen fighter jets have practised landing on Finnish roads. ... “The airspace over the Scandinavian peninsula is important and always has been if you look at World War Two or the Cold War. If you control the airspace over the Nordics, you really have an advantage.”

NATO’s new map: Sweden officially joins alliance in blow to Russia.

Sweden’s inclusion in NATO will enhance the alliance’s strategic breadth and depth:

Sweden’s membership in NATO brings several advantages, key among them its comprehensive defense capabilities, strategic influence over the Baltic Sea and a robust defense industry. Expertise in navigating the Baltic Sea, particularly due to the strategic significance of the Swedish island of Gotland, enhances NATO’s control in the region. This is increasingly vital in the context of any potential conflict with Russia. Sweden has the third-largest navy in the Baltic Sea after Russia and Germany. Together with the air force, it will contribute to securing the transport of troops and materiel across the Baltic Sea.

Sweden’s contributions to NATO: Bolstering the alliance’s defense industry and air capabilities:

What Sweden brings to NATO. The traditionally neutral country has built a formidable military-industrial complex:

… It makes everything from Saab JAS 39 Gripen single-engine supersonic fighters to Carl Gustav recoilless rifles, AT4 shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, Gotland-class submarines, and RBS15 anti-ship missiles. It also cooperates with other military producers, with one example being the Stridsvagn 122, the Swedish version of the German Leopard 2 tank.

★ Sweden and Finland add both muscle and risk to NATO. In a bigger NATO with waning leadership, new members could bolster a political appetite for dialogue with Russia. The alliance must prepare all members to reinforce a collective defense vision:

… worryingly, unlike in past crises, time is not on NATO’s side. China and the Global South are growing, and Russia is on a war footing. The United States is wavering; Germany lacks a geopolitical compass; France talks of Europe but delivers more words than action; and Eastern European allies know that “Europe” cannot extend deterrence to protect them.

Sooner or later, some allies will be tempted to open a dialogue with Russia—to take the pressure off and buy Europe time, and to bow to the reality that without the United States, Europe must recognize limits to its community. Such a dash for dialogue would be both a reversal of NATO’s Harmel legacy and a dire sign of waning political will.

(Although the author, Sten Rynning, raises reasonable points, I’m not worried that Finland and Sweden will undermine the alliance by wavering in their resolve toward Russia. It’s the US I’m worried about.)

Sweden’s membership will strengthen NATO, but the delays associated with its accession has revealed several concerns about the credibility and future of the alliance. … In the short term, the alliance will want to complete the work on preparing for the defense of its eastern members. In the longer term, the key question that needs to be settled is that of a more global role for NATO: Is it merely the security guarantor of Europe or the bedrock for the wider defense of the West and the liberal international order?

Also notable:

★ Escalation Management in Ukraine. Assessing the US Response to Russia’s Manipulation of Risk:

… As failures on the battlefield and domestic criticism intensified, US intelligence overheard a conversation among senior Russian military commanders about when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. Putin was reportedly not part of these conversations. That intelligence was circulated inside the US government in mid-October. Almost at the same time, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, in one of his calls with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accused Ukraine of planning to use a “dirty bomb.” The vagueness of the threats along with an increase in their frequency deepened concern that Russia could be manipulating risk in the face of a tactical defeat. The available evidence cannot establish whether Russian generals were deliberately manipulating risk, as Schelling would have recommended, but the effects were similar in many ways.

As tensions grew, the United States made multiple efforts to clarify and reduce the uncertainties directly with Moscow. In a long phone call, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, discussed Russia’s doctrine that governed the use of nuclear weapons. Gerasimov made clear that Russia would use nuclear weapons only in the narrow set of enabling conditions made clear in Russia’s strategic doctrine. That shared understanding helped to reduce somewhat the uncertainty between the two most senior generals in Moscow and Washington. In this case, doctrine played a larger role in reducing uncertainty than strategic analysts expect. Gerasimov’s willingness to put some boundaries around these conditions simultaneously reduced uncertainty and made a threat to use nuclear force more credible should these conditions occur. At least at that time, although the Russian army was under pressure, Russia’s military leaders chose to focus on reducing uncertainty rather than on manipulating risk through a threat that left something to chance.

Claire—this is a fascinating study. It helps—very much—to explain Biden’s decisions about which weapons to send and when. Reading it made me feel more sympathy for his decision-making.

Estonian Defense Forces Colonel: The Russian Armed Forces are still holding the initiative on the ground, and the tempo of their operations have begun to pick up again.

★ How a little-used parliamentary maneuver could decide the fate of Ukraine funding, and perhaps the war. House members are trying to bypass Speaker Mike Johnson by forcing a floor vote on the aid package via a discharge petition:

Oleksandr Batalov, a 39-year-old member of Ukraine’s armed forces, says he would not have lost his leg on the battlefield if his country’s armed forces had more artillery. The delayed flow of weaponry to Kyiv meant the Ukrainian forces couldn’t reach him and evacuate him quickly enough to save his leg. Instead, he lay wounded for more than six hours as bullets whizzed above his head. …

Batalov traveled to Washington this week as part of a delegation of Ukrainian veterans to address officials in the Pentagon and lawmakers in Congress … Johnson did not meet with the Ukrainian veterans due to a tight schedule. Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.

… “You just can’t do this and think you can get it all done in a week or two,” O’Donnell said. “They need to get all of the actors on the outside, the interest groups and everybody else on the outside, to put together a plan to lobby these members on this stuff. To get somebody to sign a discharge petition, you’ve got to have your targets and then you’ve got to lobby the party,” he added. “You need time. You need a whip team for the Republicans and a whip team for the Democrats.” So far, neither McGovern nor Fitzpatrick are attempting to whip votes. And even getting a vote in the House isn’t a silver-bullet solution. If one of these bills gets enough signatures and passes the chamber, it must head back to the Senate for approval. That would further lengthen the process.

Lithuanian intelligence: Russia preparing for long confrontation with NATO:

… The report noted that the Kremlin has initiated a major reform of the armed forces, which expands Russia’s military capabilities in the Baltic Sea region. Planned structural and leadership changes have already begun, with some of them being implemented in Kaliningrad and western Russia. “This reform is a long-term project that requires significant resources and is expected to take up to ten years,” representatives of Lithuanian intelligence noted.

They stated that the overall pace and scope of the reform depend directly on the course, duration and outcomes of military actions in Ukraine. It was also noted that Russia has sufficient financial, human, material and technical resources to continue hostilities with similar intensity at least in the short term, with intelligence estimating up to two years.

Thirty years ago, Estonian President Lennart Meri delivered a speech at a formal ball in Hamburg. Vladimir Putin, at the time relatively unknown, was in the audience. He stormed out in fury. Three decades later, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas returned to give the keynote address:

… From a subjective point of view it is understandable that the breakdown of the Soviet Union caused the West to feel a kind of triumph; it is also understandable, subjectively, that the West concentrated all its hopes and empathies on the true or ostensible forces of reform in Russia. This attitude, however, has brought the West to a risk of wishful thinking.

These are not actually my words. These words were spoken 30 years ago in this very room by Lennart Meri, Estonia’s first president after we escaped from the Soviet prison and restored our independence. … What exactly did President Meri say that so upset Putin? It is clear by now that his speech reads like a prophecy of what has gone on since then. Putin’s storming out revealed his true colors, very early on. Many just didn’t get that message, however, or didn’t want to pay it any attention. …

I come here almost directly from the Munich Security Conference. There, President Zelensky rightly posed the main question we should be asking ourselves now: “Please do not ask Ukraine when the war will end. Ask yourself why Putin is still able to continue it.”

We need to answer that question—not just in words but actions.

What I missed in Munich this time around was a spirit of triumph.

Estonia’s mantra during our Singing Revolution within the Soviet prison was: One day we will win, no matter what (Estonian: Ükskord me võidame niikuinii). This is what we all should be calling for at the top of our voice, for Ukraine, and for ourselves. Without real belief, no real action will follow. It’s a losing game to build your strategy upon pessimism.

… Fear is the trap that Putin has set up against all of us in the Free World. Threats by Russian leaders and images of nuclear explosions on Russian state TV are aimed to scare our people and influence our decisions. By sowing fear, they want to change the perception of war in our societies. By getting rid of political opponents—as Alexei Navalny's death tragically reminds us-- they want to kill all hope.

I keep receiving questions about what Putin would do if Russia loses. My answer: We should worry more about what he will do if Russia wins. And it makes no sense to keep asking if Estonia is afraid, or if Poland is next. Don’t forget, that question really is one asking whether NATO will be next. We all have skin in the game. But if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, there is no need to ask this question any more. So let's not blur our focus, but do everything to support Ukraine in pushing Russia back to its own territory. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the 1930s. Our mantra should be that defense is not escalation. Resistance does not provoke Russia—weakness does.

… We must tell the truth to ourselves. The truth is that Ukraine will run out of ammunition unless we come up with quick deliveries. Long-term commitments are important, but it is also a fact of war that the side having the most ammunition will win.

Unity is our hardest currency. Together we can help Ukraine win this war. We have the resources, the economic might, the expertise. Our strength outweighs Russia’s. Let’s not be afraid of our own power.

Dictators also know that democracies have elections. They think that makes us weak, but if we have a clear goal of victory and a winning strategy in place, our democracies are also our strength and force. This means our focus should also be on making sure Ukrainians receive help regardless of party-political distractions and realities within our own countries. Regardless of the comings and goings of elections. For that, we need to have our public on board, so it is highly important to keep them informed of how our adversaries act and what they think—in short; of what the threats around us are.

… has become increasingly clear that the front line of Putin’s so-called shadow war runs through the hearts of our own democracies: universities, parliaments, media and other institutions. The Kremlin’s disinformation is reaching wide audiences via social media; it sits literally within our pockets, phones and apps. The aim of Russia's influence operations is to influence democratic decision-making—including decisions we make at the ballot-boxes.

… To return to where I started—this room, thirty years ago. Listen to Putin’s footfalls as he stormed out. Really listen. Are we now going to let him walk all over Ukraine? Are we going to let dictators call the shots? Or are we going to finally learn from history? ...

A letter to Mike Johnson from the speakers of the parliaments of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, the Netherlands, North-Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine:

Dear Mr. Speaker,

In recent days, a solemn anniversary loomed large, commemorating the two-year mark since Russia and its dictatorial regime invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked and unjustified act of aggression. This invasion has obviously endangered not only the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, but has also challenged the entire democratic world, jeopardizing the security in the whole European and Euro-Atlantic area.

Over these past two years, the countries that remain committed to our shared values and believe in a world based on rules and respect to the UN Charter have united to help Ukraine and its people in repelling the brutal aggression that is claiming hundreds of lives every day. Our joint assistance has helped to stop the aggressor and liberate a large share of previously occupied territories of Ukraine. We welcome the indispensable and prominent role of the United States in this joint effort. The US has consistently demonstrated strong bipartisan support for Ukraine’s victory in its fight against the Russian invasion.

We also observe that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a significant impact on the development of the security situation in the world. We see that while Iran and North Korea have begun to provide direct military support to Russia, the criminal actions of the Kremlin regime have inspired other dictatorial and undemocratic regimes, become a catalyst for the escalation of old conflicts, and put us on the brink of new confrontations. Today, the world is rapidly moving towards the destruction of the sustainable world order.

We see it as our responsibility and our task to prevent this descent into chaos and impunity, and therefore our countries are committed to further increasing our support to Ukraine and its defense forces, seeing it as a considerable investment in our individual and collective security. The axis of evil must be defeated, and all perpetrators brought to justice. This will serve as a significant deterrent to further conflicts and will return a sense of control and security to our peoples.

We believe that thanks to your personal leadership, the Congress will demonstrate historic bipartisan unity in support of the collective efforts to assist Ukraine; therefore, we ask you to take the next step toward adopting a historic decision on HR 815 that will secure US assistance to foreign countries and provide Ukraine with the necessary funds to continue its fight.

With faith in our common democratic values, sincerely yours.

I hate Mike Johnson in a way I’ve never hated a politician before. He is condemning the brave, valiant Ukrainians to rape, murder, and servitude. He is ensuring a wider European war—a wider global war—in which countless young Americans will die. I look at my nephew, who will be of draft age in a few years, and I think—actually, I don’t think I should finish this sentence.

A spooky thing happened today. Zoom’s AI assistant sent this to me:

Meeting summary for Claire Berlinski’s Zoom Meeting (03/08/2024)

Quick recap

Claire warned about the possibility of a Russian attack on NATO and urged Europe to prepare for this eventuality within the next three years. She expressed concerns about the potential loss in a war against Vladimir Putin and the severe consequences that could arise.

Summary

Russian Threat: Europe’s Three-Year Warning

Claire issued a warning about the potential threat of a Russian attack on NATO, suggesting that Europe only has three years to prepare for this eventuality. She indicated that it could lose a war to Vladimir Putin, painting a dire picture of the potential consequences.

Next steps

Next steps were not generated due to insufficient transcript.

What’s wrong with that, you may be asking? Here’s what’s wrong: I never had that conversation. With anyone. I wasn’t speaking to John, or anyone else, at the time this conversation supposedly took place. Yes, I’m certain of that.

Make of that what you will.

Chris Alexander, whose Substack I recommend with the highest enthusiasm, joined the Canadian foreign service in 1991. He spent six years at the Canadian embassy in Moscow: He was the deputy head of mission during the first three years of Putin’s presidency. He’s also the former Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a former Parliamentary Secretary for National Defense, a former Canadian Conservative MP, and the former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan and Deputy Head of UNAMA.

You’ll remember him from our conversation about what went wrong in Afghanistan:

For those of you who prefer audio-only, here’s a podcast version:

This was another blockbuster conversation. I’ve annotated the transcript below with links, comments, and examples.

Claire: Hi, this is Claire Berlinski, and you’re listening to the Cosmopolitan Globalist Podcast. And we have with us, again, Chris Alexander, former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan—but much, much more. Chris, among other things, you spent much time when you were in the foreign service studying Russia. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background there?

Chris: Sure. Thanks for the chance to chat again, Claire. First, I went to university—I studied history and political science. I had learned some languages, but actually, in university, I never studied Russia directly. I really didn’t want to take international relations, because even then, I thought a lot of what was being taught was dogmatic and not very interesting. And this was end of the Cold War period and then edging into End of History time—the fall of the Berlin Wall, and so forth, when you and I were together [at Balliol College], but my experience of Russia, my learning about Russia, my knowledge of Russia is that of a practitioner.

I was there starting in 1993, learned Russian in the Canadian Foreign Service before going. Worked on the desk literally weeks after I joined the Department of External Affairs. There was the coup, attempted coup, against Gorbachev. People needed to watch CNN all night and stay in touch with our embassy for updates to ministers and so forth. That was the kind of thing I was doing from day one. So my life as a diplomat was totally swamped with Russia, post-Soviet dynamics, transition from the Soviet Union to Russia, and then from Soviet institutions to Russian institutions through that difficult period that gets forgotten in 1993, when Yeltsin shot up the White House.

I saw a lot of that firsthand. And because I had learned Russian, I was talking to everyone in that period of 10 or 15 years when Russians would talk to us frankly, because they weren’t afraid of the KGB, which was gone, or Putin and his repressive machinery of government, which hadn’t yet been put in place.

So it was a really interesting time. A time of insight, a time of building new relationships with Russians, a time of hope. But to be honest, I never had that much hope for what was happening in Russia in the 1990s. Moscow was a city awash in organized crime. Privatization had been done in the dirtiest of ways across the country—“Sale of the Century,” Chrystia Freeland’s book has that hard- hitting title.

Standards of living were in free fall for Russians. And so this democratic moment, when they actually had the chance to vote, to choose different candidates, was associated with economic disaster in the minds of Russians—which as we now know set the stage for Putin, and set the stage for Russians actually to like his strong man, anti-democratic approach right from the beginning.

There was hope, but it was false hope in the 90s. But there was a drama playing out that has come to affect us all, because even if we didn’t believe in the end of history, a lot of people believed Russia was out of a central role in history, actually, in the 90s. And they weren’t.

I just looked at this photo of Putin with his KGB buddies, in 1999, I think, when he’s Prime Minister, about to become president—acting president. Just a couple of months after all the apartment buildings had blown up in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, with their involvement, I would say. And they’re looking pleased as punch. On the march. They’re gonna get Russia back to where they needed it to be. And they didn’t go to war in Georgia or Ukraine for another 10, 14 years.

But even then, they were plotting to build influence in our countries that would help them influence decision-making in European capitals and in Washington, and if they could, pull the rug out from under democracy in our countries, which they’re now trying to do. So they were out of history. They didn’t have a lot of formal, obvious influence in those years. But they never stopped having these grand ambitions, which are the Putin version of Marxism. They really think that if they engage in enough subversion, disinformation, enough political corruption, that the whole house of cards of US society, the US Constitution, will come crashing down. And similarly in France, Germany, the UK. And in the late 90s, early 2000s, you and I would’ve laughed at that idea. Now, we’re actually involved in trying to defend our institutions against an attack that has proven to be much more formidable than we ever imagined it could be.

Claire: Yeah. I’d like to talk about—first, I want to talk about why you put “Putin” in quotation marks. Let’s just start with that. Whenever I cross-post one of your posts, my readers must be wondering, “Why does he always put Putin in quotation marks?”

Chris: This is a hard issue to share with anyone because it’s a judgment that I’ve come to—I’m certainly not alone: Many Russians have come to this judgment. Many other Russia watchers have come to this conclusion. But it stems from my personal experience with Putin. In Canada, I think I’m one of the only people who actually spent quite a lot of time with Putin, speaking Russian to Putin, in person, both before he became Prime Minister and then as President.

Claire: How many hours in total do you think you spent with him?

Chris: I would say a couple of days. Like, in the same rooms, in the same talks. The longest time I ever spent with him was at the Kananaskis G8 Summit, 2002, just after 9/11, in Alberta—where the G7 just met again, but obviously without Putin, thankfully, replaced by Zelensky, in that case.

And he was not involved in all the meetings because it was the G8, but there were still G7 meetings of leaders on financial and other issues in which Russia was not included. So he had downtime, hours of it, in fact, and he didn’t really want to talk to his own people, which was amazing.

I think his real friends are that old crew from St. Petersburg, the KGB officers he came up with that have stayed with him. But they weren’t on that trip. This was the Foreign Ministry types, the G7 Sherpa types, G8 Sherpa types. He wasn’t interested in them. So we walked around in the forest in Kananaskis, literally for hours, talking about nothing in particular. I think he thought he was recruiting me; I was obviously squeezing him for everything I could. But he asked about, “Where are we on the map of Alberta? Where are the Indians, Chris?” he said, meaning First Nations. And I had to get a map and show him these things.

Claire: So it was just the two of you? No translator?

Chris: No, I was speaking Russian to him.

Claire: Yeah. So just the two of you.

Chris: Just the two of us. There were security people around. We weren’t alone, but we had long, meandering discussions about lots of things. And he sounded to me pretty dumb. Like he was asking very simple questions.

Obviously, he’s not dumb. People later said to me, “Oh, he’s playing that way, Chris. That’s a KGB thing that they do.” I think the truth is somewhere in between. But suffice to say, from that occasion, from seeing him in talks and translating for our prime minister, Jean Chrétien, on a couple of occasions, doing this big Team Canada visit to Russia, where we played a hockey game, reenacting the 1972 Summit Series—which kind of influenced Putin to want to learn to play hockey, which he later did. We bonded in a way that few other international players did. Canada was there a lot. A few of us, as diplomats, were there a lot.

We got to know each other in those early years. So I had a strong sense of his physical presence, how he talks, how he is in conversation. And fast forward to the pandemic—maybe even a little before the pandemic, but especially the pandemic, I haven’t seen Putin in person since 2014, when I was a Canadian minister at a commemoration of the Armenian genocide in Yerevan. So by Covid, he’s looking a bit different. He’s obviously older. Lots has happened, especially with their first invasion of Ukraine.

But it becomes obvious to me that sometimes, when you see these videos and photographs that are put up by the Kremlin, it’s not Putin. It’s somebody else. And, sure enough, you start to see articles, including by authoritative journalists, saying, “The Kremlin is using a double. Maybe more than one. For security reasons.” Stalin did it. Other Russian leaders have done it. Gorbachev apparently did it. Castro did it, for security reasons and so forth. But in Putin’s case, there was an additional reason, because he seems to have been, of all world leaders, one of the most paranoid about infection, germs—Covid in particular.

Today’s discussion:

* Vladislav Davidzon joins us to give us the expert view on Transnistria. The situation sounds more minatory than John and I initially thought: There may be a purpose to the provocation that goes beyond, “distracting NATO.”

* Welcome, Sweden!

* Boo, Germany! What’s wrong with you?

* The Sudan catastrophe is apocalyptic, no one has the bandwidth to deal with it, and now Russia, Iran, and Ukraine are involved, too.

* It’s Vlad’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Vlad!

We still have no name. I’m getting worried about this.

Sorry, Scott! Not only did I blank on your last name—it came back to me, at least!—we just didn’t love the name you suggested. We’re looking for something that clearly explains what it is and why you should listen to it in about two catchy and clever words. (I like the name “GLOBAL EYES,” for example, because it tells you what it is and it’s a pun.)

TRANS-NISS-TRIA

(Say it three times fast: I challenge you.)

* WARNING: Transnistria may organize a referendum on annexation to Russia to support Russian hybrid operation against Moldova.

* Transnistria appeals to Russia for “protection,” reviving fears for Moldova breakaway region. US says it is closely watching situation in key region on Ukraine border after officials asked Moscow for help against the government in Moldova.

* Is Putin opening a second front in Europe? The chaos in Transnistria is ripe for exploitation.

* Moldova rebuffs Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on Transnistria, says it has no right to lecture anybody on democracy.

* Russia can’t reach a pro-Russian region in Moldova easily—but there are ways it can cause trouble. “They could disrupt power from Transnistria to the rest of Moldova (that already happened at one point last year). Further, gas transit from Russia to Transnistria via Ukraine is up in the air because there’s a good chance a Gazprom-Naftogaz transit deal doesn’t get renewed when it expires at the end of the year. So there’s reason to put pressure on. With Moldovan pro-Western President Maia Sandu facing re-election later this year, Putin sees an opportunity to make the regime maximally uncomfortable.”

ISRAEL AND HAMAS

* Israel must decide where it’s going—and who should lead it there, by Ehud Barak.

* Biden administration skeptical of Hamas’s desire for a deal.

After it vetoed three ceasefire resolutions in the UN Security Council, the US presented its own ceasefire resolution, one that would involve the release of the hostages. Hamas objected to the American proposal. Russia is expected to veto it because it condemns Hamas. America is said to be tired of vetoing.

* Hamas official: “We don’t know which of the hostages are dead or alive.”

* Hamas appears to reject deal. Mediators are said to be taking a days-long pause to build trust. Israeli officials are increasingly pessimistic about the likelihood of reaching a hostage and truce deal before Ramadan.

* Sinwar’s goal: Turning Ramadan into a regional October 7. Hamas’s leader wants to set the region ablaze during the holy month. This is the reason—or at least one of the reasons—that he is obstructing the talks on a deal for the release of the captives. After all, a deal would entail a lull that would lower the flames, deprive Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah of the excuse to attack Israel, and reduce the fervor and tension across the region.

* Vice President Harris’s speech proves the importance of Gantz’s visit. (This seems a very naive editorial to me. They seem to think that a bit of time with Gantz will set Harris straight. They’re wrong.)

* David Cameron: The UK is losing patience on lack of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

* We need to talk about the two-state solution.

* Hamas says a permanent ceasefire must be in place before any deal is implemented for the release of the remaining 134 hostages, in a statement that seemed to run counter to optimism from Washington that an agreement was possible before Ramadan.

* The US conducted its second airdrop of food over Gaza as its officials continued to hammer Israel over hunger in the enclave and Biden said he was doing everything possible to help Palestinians there.

* The IDF says troops have captured hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives in an ongoing raid in Khan Younis.

* IDF reveals 450 UNRWA workers affiliated with Hamas in damning audio. A recording of a call showed an UNRWA teacher describing his role in the October 7 attack. “We have female captives. I caught one,” the male voice is heard saying in Arabic. A man on a second call, alleged to be a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who Israel also claimed was an UNRWA teacher, is heard saying, “I’m inside with the Jews.” 

See also:

Gaza residents turn on Sinwar:

Despite fear of Hamas reprisals among Gaza Strip residents, unusual criticism has emerged on social media in response to a video published by the IDF on Tuesday evening, showing the terrorist group's leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar fleeing with his children through an underground tunnel under the city of Khan Younis in the territory’s south.

“This rat, Yahya Sinwar, quickly ran to hide underground,” wrote Mustafa Asfur, a resident of the Strip, on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Asfur has a significant number of followers on the platform, and the IDF Arabic spokesperson’s account was quick to share his comments. “He built tunnels to hide in for him, his children, his wife and those who surround them. He left the men, women and children of his people to struggle with death above ground, while he enjoyed himself with his family below.

… “Didn’t you say that one day you would go home on foot, without guards, and challenge the occupation to assassinate you? Where are you today? The occupation is at your doorstep—so go out and confront them, instead of dying while you’re underground like a rat. Hell, you are a cowardly leader who sacrifices his country and his people for himself.”

Another reaction to the video that generated much attention on X came from a Gaza resident named Ghassan. “My dear Sinwar, you and your family are hiding while the rest of the people are dying as usual. Oh right, I forgot that UNRWA is the one who is required to protect the people. Curse be upon the cleanest among you,” he wrote, referring to an interview senior Hamas figure Musa Abu Marzouk gave to Russian network RT in Arabic in late October in which he said that the elaborate subterranean tunnel system the group constructed under Gaza was meant to protect its fighters—and not the residents of the Strip. “It is the responsibility of the UN to protect them,” Abu Marzouk told the interviewer.

Wissam Al-Khalidi, a member of the Palestinian National Council, also expressed his dismay at the video. “This psychopath, called Sinwar, is hiding in the tunnels with his family while there are over 2 million innocent souls above the surface of the destroyed earth. Does this satisfy Allah, Sinwar?” he wrote.

* “Go away, Sinwar!” Gaza protests swell as crowds rally against Hamas. During a protest in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, demonstrators voiced anger against Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh and terror leader Yahya Sinwar. While Palestinian media is trying to hush the growing popular resentment against Hamas and its leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip, footage of desperate Gazans calling for the downfall of the terrorist organization continues to surface. In one clip from the protest in Jabaliya, protesters can be heard calling out, “Sinwar, Haniyeh, the people are the victims. Down with Hamas! Down with Hamas!”

While Hamas leader is deciding on hostage deal, his niece gave birth in Israeli hospital.

Whoever controls aid to Gaza undermines Hamas’s rule, so why is Netanyahu dragging his feet?

Could October 7 have been prevented? The head of the research division of the Intelligence Branch of the IDF, Amit Sa’ar, said in an interview with KAN news that just before the attack, he wrote an emergency letter warning that Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah saw it as an opportune moment to attack because of the internal conflict in Israel and the IDF’s readiness level. He also said that senior Iranian officials had been pressuring Hamas and telling them the moment to attack Israel had arrived. After reading the letter, the head of the Intelligence Branch and the chief of staff gave Saar permission to send the letter to Netanyahu. Then the massacre occurred. The letter was never sent.

Biden aides tell Gantz that the Gaza aid convoy disaster shows why Israel needs viable postwar plans:

Top aides to US President Joe Biden told visiting war cabinet minister Benny Gantz during meetings this week that the recent disaster in northern Gaza in which dozens of desperate Palestinians were killed while rushing a convoy of humanitarian aid highlighted for Washington how Israel has failed to properly plan for the war, two US officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

Last Thursday’s incident would not have happened if Israel were doing more to ensure humanitarian aid was reaching civilians, according to the US officials. The pair spoke on condition of anonymity regarding the messages that US Vice President Kamala Harris, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, White House Mideast czar Brett McGurk, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed to Gantz during closed-door meetings on Monday and Tuesday.

The US officials argued Tuesday that the administrative vacuum in northern Gaza that was exposed by the deadly stampede offers a window into what the entire Strip will look like after the war, if Israel won’t put forward a viable alternative to the Hamas rule it’s seeking to dismantle.

The Biden administration has sought to advance a broader regional initiative that would see Gaza rehabilitated by neighboring Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which would also normalize relations with Israel on the condition that Jerusalem take steps to establish a time-bound, irreversible pathway for a Palestinian state led by a reformed Palestinian Authority governing over both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has all but rejected the proposal, declaring that he will not allow Gaza to become “Fatahstan” — a reference to PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s political party and highlighting his long-held effort to buck international efforts to establish a Palestinian state. Instead, he is seeking to install local clan leaders unaffiliated with Hamas or Fatah to provide services for Gazans instead of the terror group, while leaving Gaza politically cut off from the West Bank.

Israel has been engaging in discussions with clan leaders in Gaza, proposing that they assume administrative responsibilities and manage aid distribution. But the leaders in question aren’t keen:

Arab media sources reveal that only a select few leaders were open to considering the IDF’s proposal for aid management. Among them, two prominent clans have acknowledged some level of contact with Israeli authorities. “We are not willing to cooperate with the occupation on any issue,” said a member of one of the clans. Another clan member, who did not deny that his family had contact with the IDF, was concerned about potential Hamas reprisals against families accused of collaborating with Israel. “Some families are worried that the cease-fire will allow Hamas to settle scores with them.”

Hezbollah is getting stronger and its threat is growing: What can Israel do? Israel embraced diplomacy and the “reward” was thousands of rockets fired at northern Israel, 500 homes damaged, 80,000 people evacuated and a dozen people murdered by Hezbollah in the North:

An attack in northern Israel on Monday killed Patnibin Maxwell, a thirty-one year old from India working in Israel with a wife seven-months pregnant, India Today reported. Nine others were wounded. “The incident happened near Margaliot, targeting agricultural workers, Israel confirmed,” the report said. It’s not known if they were the target, but Hezbollah’s attacks are calculating.  In addition to thousands of unguided rockets, it has also used anti-tank guided missiles to target many specific locations on the border. It has damaged 500 buildings in this war, since October 8 in support of the Hamas massacre the day before.

IDF general outraged over safety failures. Maj.-Gen. (res) Itzhak Brik excoriated the IDF’s performance after Israeli soldiers were killed by the detonation of explosive charges while performing a search operation. The knives are clearly out for Netanyahu and the IDF command—as they should be. I have no way to assess what he’s saying here, but it doesn’t sound good at all:

“The IDF went into combat without pre-planned operations, creating an absurd situation where each unit decides for itself how to enter suspected houses. This happens frequently and there’s no learning from mistakes. The events keep repeating, and apparently, there hasn’t been practice for safe entry.

“This is an unprecedented scandal in Israel’s wars, a complete neglect in operational discipline. Every company commander does as he chooses when the higher ranks are disconnected time after time. This is happening because of the malicious negligence of the army’s senior command, a disgrace and a shame. This is not how you win a war.

“Today we are losing assets in the northern Gaza Strip that we only gained two months ago at the heavy price of casualties and injuries. Hamas fighters have returned in droves. The public doesn’t understand that if this continues, we will not achieve the suppression of Hamas, we will not secure the safe return of our captives, and hundreds of people will be killed. I have been in the wars of Israel and have not encountered such a severe organizational failure. This cannot go on.

“Since the IDF entered combat without pre-prepared plans, with reserve units that haven’t trained for years, on an urban terrain that they are not familiar with ... an absurd situation was created. Each unit decided on its own procedure of how to clear urban areas, how to enter houses suspected of being booby-trapped, and there are many units that do not adhere to basic safety guidelines.

“These incidents repeat themselves. Just on Friday, IDF troops entered a booby-trapped building, and apparently no safety procedure was carried out. Three dead and 14 wounded, five of them seriously. Commanders decide for themselves how to act according to their understandings without any briefing from their superiors, while the upper ranks are completely disconnected, allowing this to happen again and again.

“Soldiers are killed and severely wounded wholesale; this is not a twist of fate. This happens because of the criminal negligence and laziness of the senior military echelon. For example, 21 soldiers were killed inside a house while engineering troops prepared the house for detonation. This happened several other times. In two words: shame and disgrace! This is not how you win a war!

“Today, we are losing assets in the northern Gaza Strip, areas that just two months ago the IDF captured at a heavy cost. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant already declared two months ago that we have absolute control over these territories, above ground and in the tunnels beneath. Only two months have passed, and we are losing complete control in northern Gaza.

“Hamas terrorists have returned en masse through the tunnels to the north of the Strip where the IDF evacuated all its soldiers from and did not replace them with reinforcements due to lack of standard operating procedures. Hamas is again controlling Gazans, rebuilding its capabilities in the area. Our soldiers conduct raids on them, and they get killed and wounded by explosives and traps that Hamas had prepared. The majority of our dead and seriously wounded are not wounded from face-to-face combat with Hamas but from explosives and traps. In other words: Months after we captured the northern Strip, we are losing it again.

“The public does not understand that if this continues, we will reach a terrible and menacing situation: We will not dismantle of Hamas, we will not safely return the hostages, and hundreds more of our people will be killed. Every day we go to the cemetery, every day there are people seriously wounded, who have lost their legs and eyes.

“For 20 years, the Iranians and their proxies Hezbollah, in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, have been building an envelope of 250,000 missiles and rockets around the State of Israel. We’re talking about a regional war on a scale of 3,000-4,000 rockets and missiles per day, including missiles aimed at population centers, water infrastructure, power lines, and economic centers in the heart of the country: the Gush Dan area, Haifa Bay, Beersheba, and Jerusalem. Since 2002, our chiefs of staff have decided that the major wars are over, we have peace with Egypt and Jordan, and there is no need for a large army, so they cut the army by six divisions and basically brought it down to almost nothing.

“They talk about a small and hi-tech army, but it isn't even hi-tech, because they didn’t implement the technology. The reservists were not trained, and they also didn’t maintain the equipment depots ... The next regional war, if it breaks out against Hezbollah, will be in five arenas simultaneously ... and we are a tiny army incapable of being in two places at once.

“We can’t wait for the day after. The day after is a war that could last months and years. We need to enlarge the IDF now, and no one is dealing with it. The same political and military leadership that led to this terrible chaos are the ones not dealing with what will happen in the future.”

We’re living in the most worrying period for Jews since World War II, yet Netanyahu is politicking while Israel burns.

Opinion: The condemnation of Israel for the deadly stampede that killed multiple Palestinians illustrates the selective fact-checking by world leaders, revealing attempts to turn Hamas’ actions into a narrative of Palestinian victimhood:

… Incredibly, a surreal scene eluded the eyes of the critics: IDF tanks and troops safeguarded the Palestinian civilians while Hamas did everything it could to prevent the movement, fearing it would compromise its fighting against the IDF. Hamas used roadblocks to stop the movement, and its snipers and operatives even targeted their own population with fire and IEDs. Hamas’ Ministry of Communication accused fleeing Gazans of “colluding with a second Nakba.”

Disinformation attempting to sabotage Israel’s war on terrorism is nothing new in this war: the same goes for the claim that 30,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel in Gaza, of which 70 percent are women and children, widely echoed by the UN, the EU and some media outlets—only these figures are provided by Hamas’ fictitious “Ministry of Health.”

… This pattern simply keeps repeating, yet those of us who don’t usually keep track or pay close attention might get lost in the daily spiral of news to be able to detect it. The “100 UN aid workers” killed by Israel were, in fact, Hamas operatives in disguise; many of the claimed “94 journalists” turned out to be known Hamas or PIJ affiliates and operatives, such as Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Washah and the senior PIJ operatives whose salary slips were published by the IDF.

Hamas savvily identifies golden PR opportunities and leverages them, knowing which strings to pluck, and the receiving end of that music happily resonates its tune. …

Every world leader, journalist and social media user needs to be acutely aware of Hamas’ and Iran’s clever disinformation methods, and take caution. The easy choice is to ride on the already-provided track. The less-than-obvious choice, however, happens to be the right one: the choice to seriously question information coming out of Gaza, and recognize the real danger to the safety and security of the democratic world – terrorism and the Russia-China-Iran axis. Extra fact-checking and caution against disinformation are of the essence in this war—even when it comes to Israel.

Yahya Sinwar and his brother, Muhammad, military leader Muhammad Deif, and Marwan Issa, Hamas’s deputy military commander, seem to have made the decision to launch the attack without consulting other Hamas leaders or the political bureau, leaving the rest of the leadership uninformed. This has led to internal discord within Hamas.

On social media, there has been a 1,200 percent surge over the past year in posts with antisemitic content. In November-December 2023, most were detected on Twitter (68 percent). On TikTok, Facebook, Telegram and Instagram there were far fewer cases of antisemitism. 

My father didn’t understand what a “Cosmoberjoxlicast” was, and who can blame him? Pop, it’s short for the Cosmopolitan Globalist Claire Berlinski and John Oxley podcast, but just a placeholder until we think of something perfect, catchy, and memorable. A month of the Cosmopolitan Globalist on the house to the reader who comes up with a name that makes both of us immediately say, “Yes! That’s perfect.”

We discovered today that twenty minutes isn’t a long time. We had a long list of things we wanted to talk about, but being disciplined, we cut it short exactly when we said we would.

Tell us what you think.

* Goodbye, Sergei Kotov: Another Russian warship sunk in Black Sea

* By the numbers: How conflict in the Red Sea disrupts global trade

* The Red Sea data cables cut as Houthis launch more attacks in the vital waterway

* Red Sea cables have been damaged, disrupting internet traffic

Echt Galloway:

The video below should seek to Sunak’s speech:

The title is just for now. Until we think of a better one.

Give it a try. It’s only twenty minutes. It’s an experiment. We’re thinking that if you like this—or if you can imagine liking it, if we make it better in some (achievable and realistic) way—we’ll do it daily.

We figured we could both spare about twenty minutes every day to talk about the global news stories that stand out most to us. So today, we talked about Germany’s OpSec Screwup of the Century and Haiti’s descent into even more total anarchy.

If you like it, let us know. If you don’t like it, let it grow on you a bit before deciding you’ll never listen to it again. We’ll almost certainly get better at it with practice.

Read about it:

* Gleeful Russia relishes German Taurus leak scandal: The Kremlin is jubilant after humiliating Berlin by revealing top-secret missile talks.

* Haiti declares state of emergency after double jailbreak allows thousands of inmates to escape.

While you’re at it, read every word of this analysis for RUSI:

It is obvious that if Ukraine loses support from the West, Putin may well achieve his goal of destroying Ukrainians as a people and erasing the largest country from the map of Europe. Despite the obvious tragedy of this situation for Ukraine, the consequences of its defeat for the West and especially for the US as the leader of the free world would be no less catastrophic. …

Every word of the analysis is correct. We’re on the edge of the abyss.

Vladislav Davidzon has for almost a decade been one of the most acute observers of the Ukrainian–Jewish relationship and of the place of Ukrainian Jewry within a developing political nation. His stylish reportage has been invaluable for understanding the dynamics of the Jewish Ukraine in a historical moment. This volume will surely enter the canon as an important document for anyone who wishes to understand this moment.—Wolf Moskovich

A masterful chronicler of the real odyssey of the Ukrainian Jew amidst revolutionary times!—Simon Sebag Montefiore

Claire: Hi! This is Claire Berlinski with the Cosmopolicast. We have Vladislav Davidzon back again to discuss his new book, which I just read, and Vlad—I loved it. I loved it. 

Vlad: Oh, wonderful! Thank you. 

Claire: I have to say, I was sort of wondering, “Am I really going to enjoy reading this?” Yesterday evening, when I thought I was kind of under pressure to read it quickly and just wasn’t sure I was in the mood for a book about Jews and Ukraine and Ukraine and Jews—I couldn’t put it down. I loved it. It’s so … well, let me back up a little bit. Why don’t you introduce your book, and I’ll add a few comments after you’ve told people what it’s about?

Vlad: Hi, Claire. Thank you so much for having me on again. So. To my neighbor Claire and friend—we live close to each other in Paris, in an undisclosed neighborhood, although I’m sure every intelligence agency that wants to know where it is that we live already has our locations. 

We are celebrating the publication of my second book. It’s called  The Birth of a Political Nation. It’s about Jews and Ukrainians. It’s a selection of my best and most interesting pieces on this perennial theme between 2013 and 2023. So, ten years of my best pieces. I selected 20, 22 of my most interesting articles—the ones I think are most useful—and added new stuff, padded them out, and created a narrative. 

Claire: Yeah, it all fits together. It fits together as a book. 

Vlad: Absolutely, right? You can tell that it does, right? That’s the point.

Claire: I mean, it’s really linked—anyone who’s in any way interested in modern Ukraine, and who, because of the war, has heard a great deal about Ukraine but doesn’t really know what this country is like—this book will—well, I feel like I’ve been there now. 

Vlad: No writer could get higher praise. 

Claire: Oh, well, they could, actually. I mean the introduction from Bernard-Henri Lévy is pretty good. 

Vlad: I love it. I rather love it, but some people might think I’m a bit of a character having read it.

Claire: I'm sorry, I interrupted you. You were telling people about the book. 

Vlad: So the book, yes, the book is a collection of my thoughts. It is about …

It is about politics. 

It is about memory politics. 

It is about trauma. 

It is about minority rights. 

It is about politics with a big P and politics with a small p. 

It is about history. 

It is about Russian propaganda. 

It is about Putin’s obsessiveness. 

It is about the key to understanding this conflict, which is [that there are] two different conceptions of a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional Slavic state, post-Soviet. 

On the Russian side, you have a markedly totalitarian, authoritarian, centralized autarky that has difference—in terms of particularity—subsumed to an autarkic idea of the state.

On the other side, you have a liberal, democratic, very messy conception of a modern polity, in the middle of Europe, one of, actually the most liberal, in many ways, and one of the most multi-ethnic, certainly in the terraformed-after-Hitler lands of the bloodlands in Eastern Europe, whatever you want to call it, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, right? 

So you have two different conceptions of how to run a Slavic, post-Soviet state with a lot of different kinds of people living in it. That’s the same with Russia.  Russia is also a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, multi-racial, multicultural, multi-religious state. 

And you have two different ideas of how to run it. And you have two different generations of people. One, a Soviet regime—the Putin regime in its sixties. And then you have the liberal, democratic Zelensky political regime, a liberal regime, which is in its forties. 

So you have two different ideas and two different generations fighting over what the future of an Eastern European post-Soviet state will be. And the Jews, as people, as an idea, as an apparition, as a figure of speech, and a figure of image—of literature and history and propaganda—are in the middle of this. So you have, you know, even if you’re not interested in Jews, it’s a very interesting book about memory politics. 

Claire: Absolutely. The central thesis of the book is that if you understand the story of Ukrainian Jewry over the last decade since the Maidan Revolution, you understand the development of Ukraine as a modern nation-state. And as I was reading it, I thought—

Vlad: —Absolutely. Well said. Thank you. I wish—can I actually have that?  I'm sending the last proofs in to the editor today. I can actually get that on the back cover. Would you like that? 

Claire: Yes, absolutely. Um—you’re sending the last proofs? Because I found some typos. I wasn’t going to mention them to you. 

Vlad: Would you please send them now? 

Claire: I didn’t realize. I thought it was too late. Yeah, I’ll send you a complete—

Vlad: —Please send me the typos immediately, Claire. Immediately. 

Claire: —I didn’t realize that it wasn’t too late, so I just wasn’t going to tell you. 

Vlad: You’re working with a pre-final edit PDF. We’re sending the last edit to—

Claire: But the draft I have is the one you’re working from?

Vlad: The draft you have is—yeah, indeed, it is the one that you’re working on. I mean, I copyedited it, my friends copyedited it. I mean, the people on the podcast don’t care about this.

Claire: —If you order this book today, how long will it take to get to you? 

Vlad: The book will be out in a month. I imagine people will get it in six weeks, five or six weeks.

Claire: But they can pre-order it now. 

Vlad: Totally, they should pre-order it right now. 

Claire: They really should pre-order it. I just wanted to say something about that. It is not an inexpensive book. It’s US$42. 

Vlad: Speaking of which, right before this, since we’re right in the final things, we are lowering the price. 

Claire: Really? 

Vlad: I think US$31 or US$30, because the people at the Columbia University Press decided that I’m just that cool, that I can sell—

Claire: And I think a book like this—the price is going to be very elastic. A lot more people will buy it if—

Vlad: Yeah, I mean that’s why we’re lowering the price. …. Come, step right up, step right up. We’re lowering the price. One time only. Come to Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. Home of the Dodgers. Home of Vladislav Davidzon. Home of Donald Trump and Frum Trump. Come, step right up, step right up—

Claire: Get your Jews, get your Ukrainians—

Vlad: Get your Jews, get your Jews, get your hot dogs—

Claire: I was just saying, for me, US$30 is still an expensive book. For me, that’s not an impulse purchase. An impulse purchase, for me, is five dollars. That’s how much I think a book should cost. But I’m aware that I’m—that this is completely out of step with with modern book publishing. Nonetheless, I’m going to tell people—

Vlad: —You could steal books, also, Claire. There are people who believe that— 

Claire: —Yeah, that’s grotesque. You should buy it because it’s a beautiful book, first. Because it’s got lots Vlad’s artwork in it, and it’s really worth it. I mean, most people will need to be convinced, a little bit. But I really think it’s worth US$30 to read this book. It’s given me a better insight into Ukrainian culture than any other book I’ve read. And I think that’s important, because people outside of Ukraine are connecting to Ukraine as a culture war totem, or an abstract idea. But this brought the people alive, and it brought the culture alive. And perhaps now I think of it, a little bit too much, like Brooklyn. But it really brought a rich, vibrant culture to life. 

And to the extent that you can measure the health, the moral health of a society by its treatment of Jews—

Vlad: —and minorities in general. It’s a heuristic for treatment of minorities. Jews are of course the ultimate minority. 

Claire: I think Jews are a really good measure because Jews are always the ones who are persecuted first. Right? 

Vlad: So, we’re noticeable. 

Claire: Yeah.

Vlad: We’re complicated. And we’re economically productive. 

Claire: It’s not a huge community of Jews—a quarter of a million, right? 

Vlad: Look, here’s the thing, no one really knows the numbers. I mean, some people say as much as a million if you count a lot of people who don’t know that they’re Jewish, who find out that they’re Jewish late in life.  There are a lot of people who are halfsies, who are quarters. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Ukraine—much less now because of the war, because the population of Ukraine has been emptied out by refugee flows. There are a lot of Jews, now, from Ukraine in Brooklyn and Florida and Israel and Russia, if they were on the other side of the divide—if they were on the other side of the border. It’s like three million Ukrainian refugees into Russia because they were on the other side of the country, that’s where you could fly to. A lot of them in Poland, because there are millions of Ukrainians in Poland and Ukrainian Jews are Ukrainians, after all. 

Claire: And the way you describe it, it’s a big, boisterous community. It’s a very Jewish Jewish community with lots of—you know, no one’s hiding it.  No one’s ashamed of it. 

Vlad: Some people are. And some people for them, it’s not important, including some people who’ve been prime minister recently. No names. The current president, of course, is a Jew and he doesn’t hide it.  He’s very elegantly deployed it during the war for the greater good. 

And there are a lot of Jews. Unlike Poland. unlike Hungary. Unlike other Eastern and Central European states where the Nazis were more successful in terraforming the landscape. There are a lot of Jews in Ukraine, and it’s a Jewish country, with a large Jewish diaspora still, just like Russia. 

Claire: What’s remarkable is that this has occurred in a country that is, for most Jews, synonymous with anti-Semitism. 

Vlad: Which is something that I’d really like to change, by the way. 

Claire: Well, you can’t change the history. But certainly it sounds as if Ukraine has changed—

Vlad: —I would like, to be very precise, for Ukraine to stop being synonymous with Jew-hatred. That’s something that I’m working on. That’s something that I think of as my mandate. That’s something that is part of my life’s work.  I’m not the only one who cares about this, but it’s important to me. 

Claire: It’s important. It is important. Gosh, just the other day, I think, we had a reader cancel a subscription because he had lost relatives in Ukraine and found the idea of supporting Ukraine, militarily, intolerable. 

Vlad: Please give me his email and phone number. I will personally email him and call him and have a nice conversation with him. He could be Polish. If he’s a Jewish gentleman, I would like to have a personal conversation with him. I will hunt down and have a personal, intimate conversation with every single Jew in the Ashkenazi, English-speaking, Russian-speaking, Ukrainian, French-speaking world and explain to them why this is important, one by one. 

Claire: All right. Well, let’s talk about the book, because there’s lots of points here that I really wanted to talk about with you. First of all, this introduction by BHL [Bernard Henri-Lévy]—it’s just beautiful. He really got you. 

Vlad: He likes me. 

Claire: He does, he loves you. 

BHL is a French intellectual, a very well-known French intellectual who, well—perhaps this will be demoralizing for you to hear, but when he shows up at a conflict, you know someone’s about to be genocided. He’s usually on the [morally] right side of things. 

Vlad: He’s great. 

Claire: He’s absolutely great in many ways. 

Vlad: I love him. 

Claire: Except when it comes to cats. 

Vlad: Look, it’s okay. Maybe he has an allergy. It’s okay. 

Claire: I realized that to read BHL and appreciate him, you have to read him out loud.  If you just read him on the page, to the Anglophone ear, he’s unbearably pretentious. But I discovered—because I was reading a book I was supposed to review out loud—that he sounds much better if you read him out loud. 

Vlad: It actually is the way it’s meant to be read. Because he’s an orator. He’s an orator and an oracular writer. 

Claire: Exactly! Exactly!

Vlad: He’s telling a story in an eighteenth-, nineteenth-century oracular oratory tradition. And it just doesn’t translate perfectly from French, because of the cadences—it just doesn’t translate perfectly from French. And if a lot more people ever read him in French, or read the better parts of his of his oeuvre—which are more poetic parts, less political parts—out loud, they would understand that this is a kind of oracular syncretic storyteller, who’s singing a beautiful song. 

Claire: Can I read a little bit of the introduction? 

Vlad: Please do.

Claire: It’s just a wonderful introduction. He says, “Vlad came into my life upon my return from Ukraine in 2014.” I’m going to skip a little bit. “... From Paris to Kyiv, from Tangiers to the south of France and New York, I have gotten to know this start-up intellectual, as mischievous as a child and fascinated by rakes, with a devilish laugh and a taunting gaze, arrogant and clever, impulsive but never credulous, ambitious but indecisive, erudite and poetic—” I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever received a love letter nicer than that. 

Vlad: I mean, any woman who got a love letter like that has to go to bed with a man who sent it to her. 

Claire: “ … Was he a poet or a dilettante, a devil or a dandy? … Was he American or European? Uzbek, Russian, or Ukrainian? Was he bragging when he declared that on the day Russia invaded Ukraine (for he was one of the few people I know who, like me, never doubted that the day would come) he would tear up his Russian passport in front of Putin’s embassy in Paris?”—Well, we know you weren’t bragging because we went together to do that. 

Vlad: Thank you yet again, Claire. 

Claire: [reading]—“Solid as a rock, brave, funny … ”

Vlad: I’ll take it, I’ll take it!

Claire: Yeah, I want to keep reading from it because it’s just so lovely. Oh! “Here was straight Oscar Wilde—the straight Oscar Wilde—converted overnight into the most curious, intrepid, and acute of war reporters without ever giving up the stylish pouch he wore with the bullet-proof vest, without forgoing his matching jacket and socks, and, above all, without sacrificing anything of his humor and composure.”

He goes on—I don’t want to spend the whole time on this—but he goes on to say that for certain people, a certain historic event brings together all of their talents and all of their insights and—um, how does he put it exactly? Where does he say it? ….

—A historical event that everything within you sensed approaching, an event that once it occurs pulls together the scattered thoughts, brings back dreams from childhood, awakens unused strengths, imparts an aspiration to greatness that prior circumstances had not allowed to emerge. In short, an event that mobilizes and crystallizes the most secret and noble part of the soul.

And he says: The war in Ukraine is your war. 

Vlad: And by the way, it’s totally correct, by the way.  I went full Lord Byron. I mean, I didn’t even know how crazy and how intense and how amazingly insane I was, and how deeply Slavic I was, and all the ways that my grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought during the wars. Yeah, the war. You really discover who you are at war. I had no idea how focused and intense and just like—I felt no fear. I just, you know, I just moved with total brazenness until I burned out after about six months. But of course, everyone does. That’s why we rotate people out.

Claire: But you just came back from Ukraine. 

Vlad: Yeah. Yeah. 

Claire: And I think you should tell our listeners about that. 

Vlad: Well, you know—I just came back from Odessa and Uman. I was there for Uman. 

Claire: Yeah, tell them about Uman.

Vlad: Oh my God, I’m writing an article now about my dear friend Luzer Tversky, who played the Baal Shem Tov, he’s an American actor in a film called Dovbush and we went to Oman for Rosh Hashanah, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, in order to find his long lost sons. He got divorced at the age of 21. He lost custody of the boys and he hadn’t seen them until his late thirties. He wanted to find the 17-year-old son and tell him that he had his blessing before his wedding day. 

Claire: Tell our listeners about Uman. I mean, you’ve got a chapter here describing it. You describe it as the Burning Man of Jews. 

Vlad: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Burning Man of Jews is about right. Yeah, it’s just an insane place to be. It’s full of searchers and very religious, very frum people, but also just a lot of hippies—I mean, someone asked me to translate for the cops. She was this large-bosomed Persian-American girl, with an Israeli passport, who’  was just a hippie or a weirdo of some sort. And I translated for her for the police, because she was arguing with a German camera guy. And in exchange for my help she said, you know, “I have an NGO called ‘Weed the Homeless,’ and in exchange for your help, I’d like to give you this brick of hashish.”

There’s a lot really drugged up people. There’s a lot of people who are high on narcotics.

Claire: Really?

Vlad: Oh yeah.

Claire: So it really is like Burning Man.

Vlad: Oh yeah, yeah. There are a lot of people high on their own supply, which is fantasia and mysticism, and on the atmosphere, but there are a lot of people who are running around are just really high on drugs.

Claire: That kind of surprises me.

Vlad: Why?

Claire: I don’t know. Maybe it shouldn’t. Yeah, it shouldn’t.

Vlad: It’s mysticism. There are a lot of secular Israelis, a lot of Israeli guys, Sephardi guys come, tough guys who like a good party.  They’re fairly secular, very traditional. It’s really interesting how this Ashkenazi mysticism, this Hasidic mysticism became kind of an Arab-Jewish-Sephardi thing. 

Claire: For those of our listeners who might not know who Nachman was, or why all these people are making this pilgrimage, why don’t you just briefly explain what this is? 

Vlad: So the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, was a mystic from the Carpathian Mountains in the eighteenth century, early eighteenth century, about 300 years ago, 350 years ago, something like that, maybe 320, and he had a great-grandson, one of the many expositors of his values. The mystical expositor of his values was the Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who codified a very happy version of mystical Judaism, where you worship God not by studying and textual criticism, studying the Torah, but instead dancing and drinking and fornicating and having fun and being close to God through your mysticism. So it was a very peasant form of mysticism. 

Claire: Did Jews not dance before that? Because I thought dancing was always part of being a Jew. 

Vlad: I think it was always a part of being a Jew, but not like these guys did it. These guys just really made dancing into a theology. I mean, they stripped the theology and they kept the dancing. 

Claire: Yeah, so it’s a much more intense, personal, mystical kind of Judaism. 

Vlad: Correct. 

Claire: And this is kind of the world from which Isaac Bashevis Singer comes, isn’t it? 

Vlad: Sure, yeah, and a lot of other people. This is a very mountain Jew, Eastern European phenomenon, which reached its hypothesis in the nineteenth century and then of course was destroyed by Hitler. They were very badly prepared for Hitler. They were wearing black coats, they didn’t have an education, they didn’t know languages outside of Hebrew and Yiddish. Some of them knew Russian and Ukrainian. But the Hasidim were the most open toward—I mean, like open target. Not open, but they were the most openly targeted because they were easiest to get. They were wearing black hats and black coats, and they were not very worldly. They were either eradicated or wound up in Israel, or Antwerp, or the UK—or mostly New York City, New York State. 

Claire: Well, some obviously survived in Ukraine. How many actually survived and have been living there continuously? 

Vlad: Well, some of them survived and had to give up their religiosity and become Soviet citizens. They couldn't operate as Hasidism throughout Soviet times.  There were no black hats in Soviet times, obviously. There was an interregnum, about eighty years, where you couldn’t behave like that. And in that same way, when Uman was forbidden as a place of pilgrimage, during Soviet times, very intrepid and very brave dissident types would go there on Rosh Hashanah. It was a place where in the eighties, I think by the late seventies, certainly by the early eighties, a lot of very intrepid travelers would travel. 

Claire: What happens? The Soviet Union collapses, and then do people who have been—

Vlad: It dissolved, Claire. By the way. One of my pet peeves is when people say “collapse.” It dissolved, actually. Relatively painlessly, until now. Unlike Yugoslavia, or the Turkish Empire, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet dissolution was actually relatively bloodless. There were regional wars between Georgia and the Armenians and the Azeris, there were wars in the Caucasus. And there was a war, obviously, between the Chechens and the Russians. But for the most part—other than, clearly, the invasion of Moldova and all that—for the most part, the Russians took fifteen years off before inflicting the pain of the collapse, of losing the Empire, on the rest of us. The invasion of Georgia, the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians—you know, they took fifteen years off in order to deal with their own stuff. Obviously, these are the final earthquakes of the collapse of the Empire. The Empire has been dissolving for thirty years. It didn’t happen overnight. Empires are very big. They live a different lifespan than people do, right?  So I don’t like it when people say “collapsed.” It dissolved. At first peacefully, but it turns out, not so peacefully. We thought—and I say this in the introductory article—that we had avoided the bloodletting of Yugoslavia—and the Austro-Hungarian, Turkish Empires—upon its dissolution into national states. That was not the case. 

Claire: Explain to me, when the Soviet Empire dissolves, were the Jews in Ukraine—had they been practicing this secretly? Or did they return from Israel, or from abroad, to come back to revive this tradition? 

Vlad: Well, so here, so for the most part, they were all secularized. Like, let’s say, 97, 99 percent of them were secularized. Some, obviously, a million and a half, have been killed during the Holocaust. Let’s say another million or so left to Israel and America, including my own family in the eighties and nineties. And then a lot went to Germany. You had a couple of hundred thousand people left, out of a community of several million. Hitler had his solution to the quote-unquote “problem.” Stalin’s solution was to make them good Soviet citizens and destroy their culture. And some of them went to America, from the safety perspective. That was, actually, over the twentieth century, the correct choice. Some of them went to Israel and they became Israelis. That was a Zionist solution. And the ones that stayed had to give up Judaism in order to become Soviet citizens. 

Claire: How did they revive this culture? I assume there were no pilgrimages under the Soviet Union? 

Vlad: Well, I mean, the rabbis and Israeli Mossad guys that I talked to who started doing it started doing it in the late eighties when the system was collapsing.  They started coming in the late eighties. There was a kind of general, let’s say, American—the gold rush for souls, to mix metaphors. In the nineties, there were a lot of people who came, from all religious backgrounds, especially evangelical, to fish for souls in the former Soviet republics. And there was a general religious revival in all fifteen Soviet republics, because religion is part of human nature and part of a normal, ordinary, orderly human society. And people need clerics, and it has a special place in social structure—obviously, you’re not going to get rid of religion. We tried, in the Soviet Union. That experiment failed. And all across the Soviet Union, you had religious revival. Uneven: In some places more than others. In some places, the church or the mosque became captured by the state—let’s say, Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan. Or Russia, for that matter. In some places that process was stalled, because they never went through decommunization: Belarus. In some places it was normal, because people just returned to having a normal country, like the Baltic success stories. In Ukraine, it was a mixed story, because so many people just didn’t come back to religiosity.  Most people in Ukraine are still mostly secular, and most Jews are mostly secular. And when the American missionaries came in the nineties, they mostly did their work not in the West, which was deeply Catholic and Greco-Catholic; they did their work in the south and the east, both in the Christian and the Jewish missionary communities. They worked mostly in the Donbas and in the south. 

Claire: Was the pilgrimage to Uman invented then? Or had that been a regular occurrence before the Soviets? 

Vlad: I think it was a regular occurrence. I don't know about Russian Imperial times. It’s a great question actually. It was something that people did during late Soviet times and during the nineties, it became a big thing. So I’ve been a couple of times. 

Claire: So it’s possible that this historic annual pilgrimage is something—sort of a recent invention? 

Vlad: In its modern version of 35,000 people and, like, a Jewish discotheque of drugs, yes, certainly that’s very modern. 

Claire: So did you feel the religious … did you feel the mysticism? 

Vlad: Yeah, yeah, it’s very, it’s always very intense. I mean, it’s very, very, very intense. It’s like a—it’s like a little, very intense version of Bnei Brak in Brooklyn plopped down—Bnei Brak is where the Orthodox live in Jerusalem—plopped down in the middle of Ukraine. It has a very Israeli atmosphere, I would say, despite the fact there’s a lot of Hasidim and Brooklyn Hasidim. It’s just a very Israeli, kind of harried, atmosphere—like the kebab stands are run by Israelis, andrun in Israeli fashion. The businesses are run Israeli-fashion. It’s very—it’s very deeply Israeli, in that sense. Like you know, a secular-religious version of a syncretic-secular-Jewish culture. 

Claire: Well, it sounds like things are going better in that regard in Ukraine than they are in Israel, if you’ve seen the news. It’s just awful.  Fights broke out on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv over Yom Kippur over the segregation of the sexes. 

Vlad: Yes, I did notice that. I mean, there’s segregation of the sexes in Uman also, but that’s voluntary. Go ahead— 

Claire: —No, go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt. 

Vlad: I went to find my friend’s sons with him. He had not seen his sons in two years. I’m writing an article about this now. It’ll come out in Tablet. 

Claire: You just got back how many days ago? 

Vlad: About three days ago, from Ukraine. 

Claire: I want to talk to you about this great interview that you have with Borislav Bereza. Is that how you pronounce it?

Vlad: Bereza, yeah, yeah. My friend who’s now a member—he lost his parliamentary seat in 2019, he was a member of the Ukrainian Parliament 2014 to 2019. He was, like, a straight-up—he was the spokesman for Right Sector. He was a Jewish guy. He was the spokesman for Right Sector. Right Sector is a nationalist, a very nationalist organization. 

Claire: Well, when people say that the far-right isn’t very powerful in Ukraine, they’ll say things like, “Look, the Right Sector only got this tiny percentage of the vote.”

Vlad: —And their spokesman was an Orthodox Jew. 

Claire: And that’s the part that's mind-blowing. The spokesman is an Orthodox Jew. So these Nazis—I mean, this is the group that makes people say, “Ukraine is full of Nazis”—

Vlad: —I was like, “What about the Nazi stuff?” And he’s like, “Bro.” He’s a tough guy, he served in the Israeli Defense Force, he’s a tough guy. He says, “Bro, what are you talking about? We have ultra right-wing patriots of every race, of every creed, of every color.”

Claire: The interview itself conveys how surreal this is. 

Vlad: Yeah, that was from 2014. I think he’s really playing it up to the crowd. But yes, it’s not unrepresentative of that moment, of his moment and him.  I have to point out the Right Sector has been somewhat folded into other organizations. It’s declined. Other right-wing patriotic organizations are much more important now. It was run like a McDonald’s, unlike Azov, or something else. It was run like, basically, a chain franchise. And every Right Sector, in every town, was run by different guys. And a lot of those Right Sectors, it was just a local militia, paramilitary, crime groupuscoule that took on the name Right Sector. There was not one Right Sector. And by 2017-18, Right Sectors decline, now it’s not really as important.  There’s still people in organizations that call themselves Right Sector, but a lot of them have been dismantled by the Ukrainian intelligence services because they became, basically, foreign bandit structures. 

Claire: What I found, among the things that I found interesting about the interview was his defense of Bandera. 

Vlad: It’s great, yeah. 

Claire: It’s great. I mean, it’s obviously a bit revisionist. But it does suggest how Ukrainians view Bandera. It’s so repellent, from the outside, because we know who he is. But they obviously do not have an accurate historical portrait of him. 

Vlad: Well, first of all, yeah—there’s a lot to say on that. Yeah, they don’t know who Bandera was, first of all.  Secondly, there’s a lot of Soviet propaganda about Bandera, so when they embrace Bandera, it’s like a “Screw you” to the Russian-Soviet mentality and Soviet narrative. That’s one thing. Another thing is that Bandera is a pet project of certain ideological people, without naming their names, who came to power in 2014 with the Poroshenko administration. And it was really a regional phenomenon that captured, in national memory politics, the country overall. So Bandera is not something that anyone in Chernihiv or Odessa, in the South—Chernihiv is in the north—or certainly in Kharkiv, care about. He has nothing to do with the history of the Donbas, even very, very, very right-wing Ukrainian nationalists from Donbas cities like Mariupol or Lugansk or Donetsk.  They have other heroes that they’re more into. You talk to really, really, really right-wing Ukrainian guys or, you know, whatever, patriotic guys from these—you know, groupuscules or, you know, the guys who fight in the military conflicts—and they don’t care about Bandera. Bandera is very much a Western Ukrainian thing that was hoisted, in terms of memory policy, onto the rest of the country. In a perfect world, that would not be the historical antecedent for resistance that the Ukrainians would look at. 

Claire: It’s not doing Ukrainians any favors, because people who want to—

Vlad: Well, here’s the thing. As a Ukrainian Jew, I accept Bandera. It’s  Shukhevich and other people who I don’t like. They’re much worse characters. than Bandera, one. Two, I like the Zhytomyr-Bandera flag. I wore my red-and-black Zhytomyr-Bandera flag with a red-and-black Magen David in Uman and I had—Israelis were like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m a Zhytomyr-Bandera.” And they’re like, “What the hell? Bandera is good?”  I said, “No. I mean, this is post-Bandera. This is appropriation.”

Claire: There’s two Banderas.  There’s the historic Bandera and there’s the Bandera who symbolizes something modern, and has nothing to do with the historic Bandera. 

Vlad: Correct. I mean, yes. 

Claire: But I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t read your book. 

Vlad: Yeah, that’s right.  The valorization of OUN is, as the kids nowadays say, problematic. But also, you know, there’s a war on and I’m not going to tell Ukrainians whose statues to put up. I went to see Zelensky’s first prime minister, without naming his name, a week before the war started. I was doing the rounds in Kyiv, seeing politicians, you know, seeing who’s going to do what during the war. It was already obvious that there was going to be a war. And it was, like, a week before the war started, and I went to see Zelensky’s former prime minister, a technocratic prime minister. I said, “What do you think about Bandera?”

We had a long conversation. He’s like, “Well, it’s our history.”

I was like, “Yeah. I know. I know.”

And that was—that’s symbolized, for me, the reaction, which was like—shrug—“Well, that’s our history.” And I said, “We respect that. Yeah, I respect that as a Ukrainian Jew.” Ukrainian Jews mostly don’t care. It’s outsider Jews who care. It’s Russian Jews who make an issue of it, and it’s Poles for whom it’s a real problem, you know? 

Claire: Yeah.

Vlad: Look, I have a friend who is a hipster, he’s an Odessa-born conceptual artist, he’s a hipster, he lives in Berlin, he makes conceptual art, he’s my friend, and he once made a jocular—it was very hilarious—Bandera-themed musical, and the theme song of the song, written by my friend, a Jew from Odessa, a conceptual artist, was, “Was he a villain or was he a hero?”

Claire: I just want to read one little bit of this interview before moving on to the next chapter. You ask him, you say to the Right Sector spokesman, “The Right Sector is also often accused of being quite reactionary on the question of LGBT rights, gay rights. What’s your relationship personally and also as a party toward gays?” And he says:

The infringement of LGBT rights is, much like anti-Semitism, a real and substantive problem. But I don’t know of a single country where homophobia doesn’t exist. I do not know of a country where there are no homophobes or xenophobes. Such people exist everywhere. Personally, I have no issues with LGBT and think this is a matter of personal freedom. … Yet even more than that, I, personally, want to go on the record as saying that I love the work of Freddie Mercury.

Vlad: Yeah, he’s a deeply parodical character. He’s got a left earring, and he’s got a cool jacket on. He’s like, “I love the gays. Right Sector, we love the gays.”

Claire: You tell him, “You come off as an honest guy and I believe you.” Did you believe everything he said? 

Vlad: In the moment, I don’t know what to think. 

Claire: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Vlad: I now know better. Anyway, he was reprimanded by the Central Committee of Right Sector right after this interview for unsanctioned statements about the gays. And then he was like—he was saying that about Freddie Mercury. Right Sector’s Central Committee and Politburo does not favor these comments in favor of Freddie Mercury. 

Claire: Alright, so the next chapter—I really admire the way you do this, it flows pretty naturally because you introduce Sheptytsky, is that how you pronounce it? 

Vlad: Yeah, Sheptytsky. Teah. And I write a lot about Sheptytsky in the book, yeah. 

Claire: Yeah, and it seems like you did a lot of archival research? Is this all your own research or are you drawing on the work of other scholars? You don’t have to answer that. 

Vlad: Look, I did talk to scholars. In fact, one very pedantic scholar accused me of, “This is such primitive reductionist garbage … ”  And I was like, “Welcome to journalism, brother.” I read everything that there was. A scholarly history in English, some in Ukrainian. I don’t read Polish very well, so I talked to sources who were au courant of the Polish scholarship. 

Claire: Yeah, yes. I just wanted to mention this—skipping around a little bit, but just before I forget it, there’s the incredible fact that on invading Crimea, Putin announced proudly, “The Jews there can now celebrate Rosh Hashanah again.”

Vlad: He’s like, “We’re doing it for the Jews. Now our brothers, the Jews, can celebrate Passover.” It was great. 

Claire: They’re looking at each other and saying, “We do this every year.”

Vlad: They do this every year. And what was funny was that the Chabad rabbis, it’s split Chabad down the middle, because the Chabad rabbis, they’re cousins, brothers, and brothers-in-law, and they’re all married to each other. And you literally had a split between the Russian and Ukrainian Chabad.  I don’t write about this in the book. It’s fascinating. And the rabbi in this aforementioned synagogue in Sevastopol was literally like the cousin of the rabbi in Kharkiv and the second cousin of a rabbi in Odessa by marriage. And they all had to put out competing statements in order to make the secular authorities in their new country happy. Which is always the case with Jews, you know? 

Claire: Did you see the, what is his status, the chief rabbi in Ukraine?  He put out a Frank Sinatra—him, singing Frank Sinatra, for Yom Kippur—

Vlad: Which one? Do you mean Dov Bleich? 

Claire: The one with the big bushy beard. 

Vlad: Oh yes, he’s very nice also. He’s a star now. I guess he wasn’t expecting that. So there are a couple of chief rabbis. We’re talking about Moshe Asman, Giuliani’s great friend. 

Claire: Hold on a second. I’ll find it for you. It’s Moshe Asman, yes. 

Vlad: It must be Moshe Asman. He’s a star. 

Claire: Do you know him? 

Vlad: I know all the rabbis. Yes, I know Moshe. I know Rabbi Asman, yes. Rabbi Asman is a real fighter. Moshe Asman, yeah. Rabbi Osman became a star in Ukrainian social media for his, like very over the top—

[Sound of singing rabbi ... ]

Claire: It’s great isn’t it? 

Vlad: Yeah, it’s funny because all the chief rabbis of Ukraine were either born in St. Petersburg or served in the Israeli Defense Forces. It’s all very funny. He’s become a media celebrity all over Ukraine for his over-the-top patriotism. Literally like a shotgun in one hand and a Torah in the other one. No Pasaran! They will not kill us! They will not take us to the nether regions! They will not pass!

Claire: Yeah, and God bless him. It’s so astonishing that Putin has managed to convince the number of Americans he’s convinced that he’s fighting Nazis. 

Vlad: Yeah, what’s astonishing about that? 

Claire: What’s astonishing is how effective the propaganda is. And how weak we’ve been in the face of it.

Vlad: Well take a step forward. You literally have a kind of, a new version of fascism. It’s very complicated. I’m not one of these people that refers to the ruzzists, the fascists, to Russian fascism. It is a postmodern regime with a new version of fascism. It’s not a complete Hitlerite-style regime in terms of political economy of the country. It doesn’t have total control, the regime, in the way that Hitler did. It’s not totally— 

Claire: I’m not fond of using the word fascism to describe these—

Vlad: —I’m not either. It’s fascism-light, or whatever. 

Claire: Fascism is a particular movement, in a particular period of time, that only made sense as a contraposition to Bolshevism. 

Vlad: That’s right.  There’s no more Bolshevism. And this regime does not have a—

Claire: —It doesn’t have a fascist theory.

Vlad: It doesn’t have a mystical, essentialist, vitalist component to it. Doesn’t have a theory. It’s a mishmash.  

Claire: It’s a tyranny. We have a good, old-fashioned word for that.

Vlad: It is a tyranny. Both forward-looking and backward-looking at the same time.  It's very interesting.  The reason I’m saying this: I don’t like the misusage of the word fascism. I don’t like it in America. I don’t like it in Eastern Europe. But it is kind of fascism. We do have a kind of fashy country, a dictatorial regime which is committing basically genocide against its neighbor in order to denazify a country run by Jews, basically. Yeah, I mean Ukraine, yeah. 

Claire: But did you see—was it yesterday? 

Vlad: I mean, I say, run by Jews, in a funny way. But like the president, his chief of staff, and the defense minister upon the invasion were Jews. And when he got rid of the Jewish defense minister, he put in a Crimean Tatar Muslim defense minister. That’s not a Nazi regime, obviously. And you do have a kind of Nazi regime, a light-fashy regime trying to denazify aa country led by a secular Ukrainian Jew. 

Claire: It’s so distressing that Putin’s—that Russian propaganda has been as successful as it has been.e—

Vlad: That's how propaganda works. It’s successful. No? 

Claire: You would think that—when you have a climate of freedom of expression, the truth is supposed to rise up and defeat the lies. But it doesn’t seem to be. Rand Paul, yesterday or the day before, was standing up and going on about how Ukraine was corrupt—and, I mean, it is corrupt, but he was suggesting that Ukraine’s corruption and its repression of Christians and its—

Vlad: Well, he’s an opportunist. I mean, he and the people who make those arguments are opportunists. 

Claire: Well, he’s an opportunist along very particular lines. He just echoes Moscow’s line. 

Vlad: Yeah, that’s right. 

Claire: Cathy Young replied that this was objectionable in some way. I don’t remember the exact words. And the number of people who jumped in to echo what Rand Paul had said—very certain of it—they’re just certain that Ukraine is full of Nazis, profoundly—no better than Russia, certainly. No different from Russia. This is just some sort of conflict between one authoritarian thug and another. How can so many Americans believe something that is so abjectly stupid? 

Vlad: Because the legacy media has collapsed. 

Claire: No, the legacy media is not promoting this. 

Vlad: Well, look, you really want to get into media? No, the legacy media has collapsed. Because, after a couple of years of Russiagate, another stupidity, and the general collapse of the standards of the legacy media, no one trusts the legacy media. I mean, the media has only like 25 or 28 percent of American people who say that they respect it or trust it. It’s the least trusted institution in American life. So people have retreated into their own little epistemic bubbles, and Ukraine has become a heuristic for other sorts of culture war. And it’s cost-free. Everything that you, as a Republican or as a Conservative, might attack within America, there are costs and benefits within internal American culture war stuff. Ukraine is far away, most people have never been there. It’s cost-free, you can just bloviate about it and no one cares, right? 

Claire: We’re also in the age of instant communications on social media. You would think that people who are in doubt about this would just speak to a Ukrainian. 

Vlad: They’re not in doubt, they just don’t care, Claire. It’s different. 

Claire: You don’t sound as angry about this as you should be. 

Vlad: It’s funny that the Ukrainian nationalist is explaining to you why … the Ukrainian patriot is explaining to you why he’s not … I think some of those people are deceived—

Claire: The military aid is being held up, and might in fact stop completely if Trump is elected, because of this crap. 

Vlad: Yeah, it’s true. I mean, it doesn’t make me happy. I mean, I’m fighting against it. But, like, I understand the deep roots of it and the deep roots of it are partly the failure of American elites to tend to their own garden and keep up the credibility of their own institutions. And, you know, Ukrainians become a political football, especially with the Trumpets base. 

Claire: I don’t buy that this is the elite’s fault. It is the moral responsibility of people who refuse to inform themselves and get their news from enemy propaganda. 

Vlad: People are idiots. People are idiots. I don’t believe that the public has more responsibility or like even—

Claire: You mean they’re like dumb oxen? 

Vlad: Yeah, I’m kind of a misanthrope. I’m an Eastern European misanthrope. I don’t—I believe that, you know, like, the people who are spreading the propaganda, who should know better—everyone’s—the people who don’t understand Russia-gate or Ukraine-gate—those things are hard to understand. You have to have a lot of insider information and a good sense. And people have a lot to do. They have kids, they have busy lives. They rely on experts like me to explain things to them. And some of those experts failed, and some of those experts were in the media that spread Russia-gate. 

Claire: One thing that I was thinking reading this thought is, “It’s just going to go completely over the heads of the people who most need to read it. It’s just—it’s literate. It’s … they’re not going to read a book like this. 

Vlad: Look, if I sell 10,000 copies of an academic book about important things, about choosing Ukrainians, I’ll be happy. I didn’t get into this business—I would have gone into banking, like my father demanded, if I wanted popular success, you know? 

Claire: Yeah, but you just said, “It’s for me to explain these things to them.” So how are you going to explain it? 

Vlad: You found the contradiction, yes. The contradiction is internal. I believe the provenance of God and Claire Berlinski will get us through the long dark night.

Claire: I wish we had a president who was capable of using the bully pulpit to explain this. 

Vlad: Well, the president is playing a double game because he doesn’t want the Ukrainians to win. That’s the thing. He doesn’t care. I mean, he... I know so much. I know so much. 

Claire: Tell me what you know. 

Vlad: Some of it’s off the record. 

Claire Well, can you give, like, hints? 

Vlad: So, in a particular way, the failure of the Biden administration is the failure of Biden himself. Because he was the Obama Administration’s point man in Ukraine, in 2014 to 2016, until the Trump Administration came in. And it was his portfolio. Obama gave it to him. And since the Obama Administration did not want the Ukrainians to fight back. They said, “There’s no possible world in which we care about Ukraine more than the Russians do”—they kind of always, from the very beginning, tied the hands of the Ukrainians and how they could respond. So the Ukrainians muddled through and the Russians didn’t use enough force because they weren’t willing to go all-in. 

I mean, in order to achieve his policy objectives, Putin really should have invaded in this way in 2014. He would have taken the country. There was no army. He should have done that nine years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago. It’s too late. The Ukrainians had the chance to build state capacity and a very serious military apparatus, as people have noticed. Not nearly as serious as the Russian one, but, you know, serious enough to give a good fight. 

Claire: Well, without a navy, they’ve taken out the Black Sea Fleet! 

Vlad: They had a navy in 2014. Some of it defected and some of it was blown up by the Russians, sunk by the Russians. They don’t have a navy now, they did in 2014. 

The Biden Administration is in some ways doing a good job, in other ways it did not prepare the Ukrainians for the war, and it’s prolonged this war by a lot, by slow-rolling it. So I’m not one of these guys who thinks Biden’s doing good. I mean, I’ll defend him to Republican conservatives because—

Claire: We agree about this, but you suggested that you had some insight into Biden’s thinking. What happened to the Biden who was so outraged by what he saw in Ukraine that he said, in Poland, “This man cannot remain in power,” and his aides had to walk it back?

Vlad: Yeah, that was a great moment. I was there. I was there when he said it. Yeah, I wish that we still had that guy now. But the National Security Council around him is just too timid, and they are too afraid of the Russians and escalation, nuclear war, escalation in the Black Sea. You know, they’re just not ready to go full in. So they’ve made certain decisions that they want to slow roll this. They don’t want the Russians to win, but neither do they want them to lose too badly. 

Claire: That’s insane. It’s insane. It’s just the wrong posture, strategically. And what drives me crazy is that there’s no alternative. This is where a normal Republican Party should be making this criticism, and should be trustworthy with national security, and instead they’re a complete catastrophe and a disaster. 

Vlad: Yeah. 

Claire: I mean, I’m not saying that the fear of nuclear war is an insane fear. Of course I think it’s a very real thing to be afraid of. But the idea—you know, you either trust in deterrence or you don’t. I mean, going halfway is the worst strategy. Well, not the worst strategy. It’s the second-worst strategy. And I just don’t see that … you know, I think Trump will withdraw from NATO in his first day in power if he’s reelected. And I just don’t see Americans having a conversation about how serious this situation is and what this would mean for the security of the entire world. 

Vlad: Yeah. 

Claire: I don’t know what to do beyond what I say and what I do to get people to take it seriously. 

Vlad: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I mean, will people read my book? Will it change any minds? If I change the minds of fifty people, if there are fifty good men? Should we level the city? I don’t know. Do you think fifty people will read my book and change their minds? Fifty, probably. Five hundred, yes. Five thousand, possibly. 

Claire: The book certainly changed my views and explained a lot to me. 

Vlad: Well, good, so okay, so let’s keep going, right? Do you believe in the power of a text? Do you believe in the power of a text, Claire? 

Claire: Absolutely, I do. 

Vlad: Very Jewish of you. 

Claire: Tell people about Andrey Sheptytsky.

Vlad: Andrey Sheptytsky was this very heroic and remarkable man. He was a giant, a gentle, beautiful giant. He was like a six-foot-nine Polish-Ukrainian aristocrat. He was the head of a Greco-Catholic Church during the war and he saved a lot of Jews. And he was pivotal for Jewish-Ukrainian relations. His brother Clement did a lot, also. 

Because of politics he was never named Righteous Amongst the Nations by Yad Vashem, which is of course a great oversight. It seems they very deliberately decided no not righteous enough. 

Claire: Its seems like more than an oversight. It seems they deliberately decided, “No, not righteous enough.”

Vlad: There’s a lot of politics there. I mean, the book gets into the politics. I wholeheartedly agree with the campaign to make them righteous amongst the nations. This is a good thing and we should do it and that would be one way of paying back debts. And there are a lot of very important and smart and influential people who work on that campaign. and I'd like to count myself amongst those people. But, you know, a lot of the people who ran Yad Vashem were Soviet Jews from the Russian side. The previous gentleman—

Claire: —Oh, Vlad. Page 80. You’ve got a big whopper here. “If Zelensky actually does become president of Ukraine?” 

Vlad: Well, I mean, this is a reprint. Right. In what context did I say this? Yeah, I didn’t notice that. 

Claire: You’re talking about Poroshenko and you say he’s not the only candidate playing the Jewish card. “Zelensky, the current frontrunner, is a 41-year-old Jewish comedian and actor whose primary suitability for the job is his experience having played a schoolteacher.”

Vlad: Well, I mean, it says at the end of the book—at the end of that essay—it was reprinted from 2018. I should put that at the front. 

Claire: Yeah, you should put it in the front. You should put it in the front. 

Vlad: Page 81, you say? My book is being edited in real time. Thank you so much, Claire.

Claire: You’re so welcome. You’re so welcome. One other thing before you go, you made an observation which I think is really important, which I'd never thought about, saying that the Holodomor should be understood as a Jewish catastrophe as well as Ukrainian, and I had never thought about that. I had never thought that that’s our history too. 

Vlad: So the Holodomor, of course, killed hundreds of thousands of Jews who were Ukrainians also. They were also in the countryside. You know, if you can’t get bread, you can’t get bread, doesn’t matter which religion or what color your eyes are. There were hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews who starved to death during the Holodomor because of the fact that they were Ukrainian peasants, rather than Jews, first and foremost. 

Claire: I wonder why that’s not more a part of Jewish memory. Is it because what happened subsequently just blotted out all other memory or is it because no one survived it to tell the story to their kids? 

Vlad: No, a lot of people survived it. The Jews who were in the countryside starved. The people who were in the cities didn’t have—I mean, the people went from the countryside went into the cities looking for food and they were more likely to survive in the cities. It’s in the countryside that people starved to death, right? Although, I mean, some people died in the cities also. But it did purge the countryside of the people who were living there. And so the Jews in the countryside were the ones that starved along with their Ukrainian farmer—peasant, whatever—neighbors. And a lot of it—

Claire: By definition, if you starve, you do not emigrate, you do not pass the memory of this down to your kids and your grandkids. 

Vlad: Yeah, but a lot of people who starved just ran away to the nearest city and found food there. Not everyone who’s starving died, some people survived. I mean, like millions of people died during the starvation, It was terrible. It was a Ukrainian catastrophe, but starvation does not target people based on religion or culture.

Claire: How many Jews perished in the Holodomor?

Vlad: I imagine it’s 100,000? It’s a question I’ve never seen interrogated. But you’ve got to remember that the large-scale starvation and the entire population of Ukraine watching people eating their children, eating their dog, dying in is streets with bloated bellies—the trauma of that, and the trauma of the communists going around killing peasants and taking away their land, it led to the preamble of what happens six years later. You have to understand that the Holodomor led to the trauma that partly allows the Holocaust to take place. I’m not saying that is the cause, clearly not, I’m not some sort of revisionist—

Claire: It led to devaluation of life and the toleration of obscenity 

Vlad: Well, I mean, like, it’s just—you’re living in a psychotic place. You’re living in a crazy place where people are dying, in a place where communists are running out of guns, where you just survived a brutal war and civil war ten years ago, nineteen years ago, your parents survived a brutal war. And then ten years ago, seven years ago, six-and-a-half years ago, people were starving to death. And now there’s an occupation and another war, and people are dying again—well, it contributes to an atmosphere of death. Of devastation, of destruction, of trauma. You know, it’s a cascade effect, that’s what I’m saying. 

I’m no way—please do not, anyone, call and accuse me of saying that the Holodomor led to the Holocaust in any way. What I’m saying, I think, and I’m trying to say it very precisely to not cause any historiological or revisionist issues, is that the suffering of the Holodomor created the atmosphere of trauma and, you know, being able to ignore trauma as a survival mechanism, that led to the capacity of the Nazis to kill people. Obviously, not the only reason. Clearly, it’s a multi-vector, multi-origin story, but it’s an underplayed aspect of a story that you don’t hear spoken about very often, which it should be. 

Claire: And as you point out later in the book, when you’re looking at contemporary Eastern Europe, especially when you’re looking at the emergence of far-right groups across the region, it has roots in the absence of a proper mourning of what has transpired in the past century. 

Vlad: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, like the OUN. Even the OUN was a response to the loss of democratic self-governance. The Polish and the Ukrainians in the borderlands, Poland-Ukraine, started killing each other, whereas they lived harmoniously, more or less, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and they had devolved educational rights and cultural linguistic rights. Yeah? So a lot of the Polish-nationalist stuff and Ukrainian-nationalist stuff—with the Jews in between, of course, always, without guns—was an outcome of, you know, the destruction of democratic norms. I’m not saying the Austro-Hungarian empire was the most democratic place. It was sometimes very liberal. Especially in the outposts, like in Chernowitz, where my family was from, where Jews, Ukrainians, and Poles live together in some sort of productive, harmonious way until World War I, until the Bolshevik War, until the Communists, then the Nazis, the Polish Partition, all this. The Jews fall victims to various very nasty, very nasty things that happened because of—not them. I think that’s one way of putting it. Like the pogroms, the 1905 pogroms were peasant pogroms, but they were also—this was an effusion of unhappiness with the Tsarist state, right? These are the urban riots that the Tsarist regime was so petrified of. They didn’t want pogroms against the Jews. It was an effusion of the same kind of peasant rioting that would bring down the regime. Right? So UPA and the Volhynia massacres, this is an outcome of, you know, basic tribal warfare, right? I mean, I’m not apologizing for any of this. I’m trying to—

Claire: No, I’ll just read right from the book. You write, 

Arguments over who has suffered the most ultimately debase everyone involved. The extension of mutual empathy need not exclude anyone. The Jewish diaspora in Israel can do more to acknowledge the local particular history without undermining the unique horror of the Holocaust, just as Eastern Europeans need to be responsible and sensitive to historical realities as they craft post-Soviet national identities. But all that will require overcoming contemporary geopolitical realities on top of the already heavy burden of history. 

This is the thing. This war. The blood had barely dried when this war broke out. No one is getting any chance to come to terms in any way with any of these horrors. 

Vlad: Yeah, that’s right. That’s absolutely right. Yeah. 

Claire: All right. On that note, let’s draw this to a close because—

Vlad: Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much, Claire. I’m very grateful. There’s a lot to say. 

Claire: There is. 

Vlad: This book is a culmination of ten years of my work. I’m trying to—you know, having returned to the land of my ancestors, I’m a repatriate, of course. I’m a repat. This is where my ancestors are from. This is where my wife’s from. This is where my people are from. I have a deep identification with the Ukrainians and the Jews. These are my people. I’ve been criticized, by some Jews, for being too soft, but I don’t think so. 

I’m very empathetic to the understanding of the fact that what happened during World War II took place without the Ukrainians having their own states, you know, like the Germans had a German state, what they did was under the auspices of a German state. Neither the Poles nor the Ukrainians can be held to the same level of responsibility as can the French or the German populations who are governed by Frenchmen and Germans, right? Whatever happened during World War II, it happened under the auspices of occupation, and so the Ukrainian political nation, just like the Polish political nation, I—as a Jew—do not feel has the same level of responsibility as—

Claire: When you compare levels of responsibility with Hitler, it doesn’t suggest that there’s—there’s plenty of evil to go before you’re at Hitler's level of responsibility. 

Vlad: Yeah, but they did have their own state, is the point. And I’m very empathetic to that argument. Obviously, you couldn’t have those arguments, those historical arguments, before 2014. And the Ukrainian state went very far in having a very long-sided conversation, dialogue, within the country about all this, right? Not as much as it could have and also at the same time they were celebrating people like the Canadian gentleman, the Waffen-SS guy who stood up for the parliament. 

Claire: That was a screw-up. 

Vlad: That was a screw-up. That was a terrible, terrible screw-up. 

Claire: What does it say about Canada that no one present thought, “If he was fighting the Soviets, that means he was not a good guy?”

Vlad: Yeah, it’s kind of weird that they didn’t—that they don’t know the history. I I don’t know Canadians, but it’s obvious to me if he was fighting the Soviets he was on the bad side of things. I mean, obviously, a lot of Ukrainians were fighting the Soviets because they wanted their own country. They were fighting—

Claire: You know, our listeners might not know what we’re talking about 

Vlad: Claire, explain please. 

Claire: I don't remember his name, but when Zelensky was in Canada, they honored someone who was portrayed as a Ukrainian war hero, and—

Vlad: This gentleman’s name was Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian who fought in the Waffen-SS. He was a veteran of the Waffen-SS and it was like the Galicia 1 division. The division was put together after a lot of the Holocaust, and historians say that the Galicia 1 Division didn’t actually, as a unit, do anything against the Jews. Obviously, a lot of the auxiliary policemen and soldiers and volunteers who joined up did kill Jews and did kill Poles. I mean, it’s an entire mess. 

Claire: Well the main thing is that you don’t honor a member of the Waffen-SS in the Canadian Parliament. But no one figured out that that’s what he was, because they just didn’t put two and two together. 

Vlad: Yeah, it’s like, you know, how do you not understand that a Canadian who fought against the Russians was fighting in the woods against the partisans, you know? 

Claire: It’s the kind of historic illiteracy that—do you remember when Reagan went to Bitburg? 

Vlad: I don’t because—

Claire: —right. For some reason, he was scheduled to go and lay a wreath at Bitburg. Where all these Waffen SS were buried. And there was a huge controversy about it when people realized this is not a good place for the American president to be going. But there was also this real worry that if he pulled out at the last minute, it would be very offensive. And no one was quite sure what protocol demanded. 

My grandfather had the solution to the problem. He was very proud of it. He said he should go. He should put down the wreath. Then he should unzip his trousers and piss on the grave. 

Vlad: That’s a … that’s a position. 

Claire : All right, I’m going to let you go. 

Vlad: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for this great talk. It was really, really nice to talk to you about it. 

Claire: Everyone go out and buy this book. 

Vlad: It’s trending on Amazon.com. 

I’ve taken the paywall off this post to encourage you to share it widely. Do you have friends who think the Ukrainians are Nazis? Try sending this to them. What can it hurt?

Claire—I think you’ll find this was an especially interesting conversation. I’ve included a transcript for those of you who don’t like listening to podcasts, but I particularly recommend listening to this one.

CB: This is the Cosmopolitan Globalist and I’m Claire Berlinski, the host, and Vladislav Davidzon is my dear friend, neighbor as well, who is now Ukrainian. He is married to a Ukrainian woman. He was born in Tashkent, emigrated to the United States at the age of seven. So he is an authentic Cosmopolitan Globalist and he has been going back and forth from Paris to Ukraine since the beginning of the major war. We’ve had many, many podcasts with him, but we have a lot of new subscribers, so I’d like to introduce you a little bit more thoroughly for their benefit. Perhaps you could say a little bit about who you are, Vlad.

VD: Claire, so lovely to be back on with you. You are a wonderful journalist and a great thinker and a great writer and a very good Substacker. And I value our friendship. And it’s always nice when one of your friends is your neighbor. So many of the people that I like are not my neighbors. And some of the people that I do not like are my neighbors. So it’s always good when someone I like and want to spend time with is a neighbor. That is the case with you and me. So I am glad to be on, I think, for my fifth or sixth appearance on this august podcast.

And I am a writer. I’m a journalist. I’m an artist. I do many things. I wear many hats, as they say. I cannot sit still. And so that is why I do four or five or six or twelve things—not always perfectly, but I do them often competently, and often, I think, even in an interesting fashion. Some people think so. Some people don’t. Interest is subjective.

I have been writing about Ukraine for a very long time, more than a decade. I’m about to publish my second book on Ukraine. It’s called The Birth of a Political Nation, Jews and Ukrainians, 2013-2023. It’s a decade worth of my pieces on Ukrainians and Jews, which is a perennially fascinating theme and topic, and of course, now very topical because it is a very important theme to understand if one wants to understand the origins of this war.

CB: When is the pub date?

VD: What did the Pope do?

CB: The pub date.

VD: Oh, the pub date. The Pope said some very silly things today. That’s what the Pope did. The pub date is ... the joke about the Pope is that he just made some very imperialist, Third World-ist comments today in the news about Ukraine and the Russians being the inheritors of the patrimony of Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. And, of course, Ukrainians don’t think Catherine the Great is so great. They call her Catherine the Second because she repressed Ukrainian culture. Understandably. The pub date of my book is in about two months.

CB: Are we going to have a party?

VD: I would love that. Would you throw me a party?

CB: I would absolutely throw you a party. I would be delighted to throw you a pub party.

VD: We need a pub party. One in New York, one in Kyiv, one in London, one in Paris—

CB: Is my place big enough for you?

VD: I mean, yeah, let’s see. Yeah, I mean, we can have a little reading, I think, you know, thirty of our best people. What do you think?

CB: Well, we want everyone who might buy the book to come. Do you think we can fit them all in my apartment?

VD: I’m not sure, but you do have a nice courtyard.

CB: That’s true! We can do it in the courtyard if the weather’s—I mean, if it’s pouring, that won’t be any fun, but it would be an awfully nice place to do it, in the courtyard.

VD: We should definitely do it.

CB: We’ll either do it in my apartment or perhaps I could ask my father if we can borrow his apartment. But before that, you should also mention that you’ve written a book about Odessa, a collection of essays about Odessa, which is both beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking because we now know—this was all written before the war and every word is now pregnant with with horror and irony, because of course the life, the city, that you’re describing is—

VD: —being bombed. I have a big piece in Tablet, 4,000 words, which I think is long-form now, on the future of Odessa. It came out on Independence Day, August 24th, which is already about four days ago. It is a very long piece if one wants to understand what is happening to Odessa, before, of course, buying my book. It’s on Tablet Magazine.

CB: I’m so sorry, I didn’t see it and I didn’t know about it, even though I of course follow you on Twitter. And I ascribe this to the complete mess Elon Musk has made of Twitter. I would have very much liked to have read that before speaking to you. I’m really indignant that I didn’t.

VD: Well, it’s alright. There’s a lot there. I haven’t been to Odessa in a month. I just came back from Kyiv and Chernivtsi, so I have more to say generally about the counteroffensive, the political situation in Kyiv, the political thinking of normal people in Kyiv, than I have about Odessa, than I have about Odessa, which I haven’t seen in about a month, which I won’t be able to get to for another two weeks. So in two weeks we can talk about Odessa if you want.

CB: I want to talk about everything you just mentioned. They’re all on my list of things that I wanted to ask you about, as well as about the thinking of elites in Washington.

VD: Sure.

CB: So let’s go one by one. Tell me what you’ve seen. Tell me what you’ve seen and the impression you have and what you think it means.

VD: So … I spent just now ten days in Ukraine. I go in and out and I’m based in Paris, and when I have big pieces to write I go into Ukraine and I’m often in Poland, I’m often in other places, I’m often traveling. I popped into Kyiv for a week, not having been there for a month and a half, to see what the political situation is. Kyiv is continuously evolving and the political situation is in flux. Except also very stoic and stable in many ways. It’s very interesting. A lot is changing and a lot is happening, except also not a lot. Things are very much the same as they were six months ago, in some ways, and in other ways not at all. Ukraine is culturally changing very quickly, and in a lot of ways it’s hard to predict where those changes are taking us.

CB: In what ways?

VD: Regional identities—like the internal debates between Ukrainians about various things, various issues, what people think the outcome of regional identity issues will be—the Ukrainization is taking place quicker in some places than others, you know—

CB: I feel like this is a bit euphemistic, can you explain in really simple terms what this means?

VD: What Ukrainianization taking place in different—so basically, my beloved Odessa was very ambivalent about the war, because they were deeply embedded in Russian culture and they didn’t particularly like the center, so they didn’t particularly try very hard to Ukrainianize, in either the linguistic or the cultural sense, but once the Russians started hitting the center of town with rockets—

CB: —Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.

VD: Correct. And I have a line, which I think is kind of amusing, in my piece where I say that there were many people who were ambivalent and remained ambivalent about Ukrainianization or their fidelity to the centralized Ukrainian state … even if they did not particularly agree with the Kremlin’s view that their apartments should be destroyed with cruise missiles.

CB: Right. So the debate in Kyiv about the pace of Ukrainianization, you say that it’s changed quickly—

VD: In Kyiv, it’s been the case that there have been no innovations in that debate in about a year. There are innovations in the way people are living in Kyiv, which is very interesting. They have two American patriot systems with anti-missile defense over the city, and so, unlike the rest of the country, missile defense is more or less not a problem in Kyiv, because obviously, it’s the capital and where all the ministries and everything are. They have almost total control of the airways there. unlike the rest of the country where you can get killed anytime, in Kyiv, people have more or less internalized the fact that the Russians can’t hit the city with anything except Kinzhal rockets, and even those can be sort of shot down two-thirds of the time now. So they party like it’s Tel Aviv, you know? It’s very much the part of Israelization, or the Israelification, or whatever you want to call it, of Ukraine. That the people in the capital have internalized the fact that they can go to discos and restaurants. The restaurants are full. You know, it’s really interesting.

CB: Yeah, I’ve heard that from other people too, who have been surprised by it, but of course anyone who’s been to Israel isn’t surprised by it, because that’s the classic dynamic—that people want with especial vigor to be part of life when death is so close by.

VD: Oh, absolutely. There’s a really vital element, but it’s really vital. I mean, there’s a stoicism, and a hedonism, and a camaraderie; it’s below the surface, but they know that at any moment this can be frustrated, or ruptured, by a rocket from the sky. It’s very interesting. It’s not, in any case, a form of evasion or anything of that sort. They know what’s going on. It’s not like they’re ignoring the obvious. But it’s very much like, okay, we’re gonna—

CB: —It’s completely to be expected, and of course there’s these idiotic propaganda memes on the internet to the effect of, “Look what they’re doing with our money, they’re going to discos.” Obviously anyone who has ever been anywhere near a conflict zone understands perfectly well the psychological dynamic at work … and the propaganda machine is in overdrive.

VD: People have to drink just to deal with it. People are in so much post-traumatic stress. Just three examples, I walked past a guy with a big dog and the dog was just all over the place. And it was a big fat dog. And the dog, I was trying to walk around the dog and I just, I kind of skipped and danced around the dog, but the dog was so either silly or stupid or fat that it just walked into me. And the guy just almost yelled at me, “Hey, watch my dog!” … Okay.

And then the next day, I see just a girl just walking around, poor thing, walking and just talking to herself, and just—her hands are trembling, and she was obviously mentally unstable. And my wife says to me, “There will be a lot more people like that, who are mentally fragile, who’ve been pushed over the edge.” This is just a girl in the middle of Kiev, you know?

CB: Of course, of course.

VD: So it’s a lot more mentally fragile people.

CB: It’s so goddamned unfair. People just lived their lives—and this catastrophe visits them. This catastrophe. They didn’t start, they didn’t want, they did nothing to deserve it—and these vulnerable people are attacked by this monster and it’s so goddamned unfair.

VD: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. And they’re so strong and so resilient and it’s so noble and they’re so amazing. I got there on the first night, and then I was supposed to see my friend Rebecca Harms, who’s a former German MP in the European Parliament, and we made plans to have breakfast around there in the hotel, and we embraced, and then at 3.30 in the morning the rocket alarm came—and you know, I usually ignore it, but you know it was the first time back in Kyiv for a long time so I went down into the basement of this four-star hotel.

CB: I saw the photo—

VD: There’s a photo of me lying in a parking lot and they set up these nice plush beds, really plush—

CB: Yeah, it looked very comfortable.

VD: It was very comfortable, but you’re in the middle of a very cold, freezing parking lot—

CB:—with a lot of strangers—

VD: —with a lot of strangers, and they put cookies out, and water out, and it was a very VIP way to live in a bomb shelter. I’ve been in many worse bomb shelters, much more uncomfortable. But, you know—

CB: It’s still a bomb shelter.

VD: It was still a bomb shelter. And all my Kyiv friends are like, “Oh, that’s so chic! Maybe I’ll go to the Radisson next time.” I was like, “Yeah, you should.” And people are writing me, “Oh, do they have mints on the pillows?” And then my friend, Rebecca Harms, the MP—I was thirty minutes late for breakfast because obviously I slept in the cold. And she said to me, “I saw you and I were the last ones who didn’t go up.” After they called off the alarm, I just decided to just roll over and sleep for the rest of the night in the parking lot. And she said, “I think you and I were the last ones in the parking lot.”

CB: Well, I mean, among other things, everyone’s been suffering from interrupted sleep for months and months, and that will do a number on your brain.

VD: That’s actually why the Russians shoot the rockets at three in the morning and not three in the afternoon.

CB: I mean, that’s no joke. It’s extremely difficult to retain your emotional stability if you’re not getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, basically, most nights. And I can only imagine how many people are feeling as if they’re just losing it because of that.

VD: But again, the Russians know that very well, and they’re doing that because they’re torturing the population into fleeing and surrendering, obviously.

CB: It’s become impossible to think of the Russians as anything but monsters.

VD: I mean, there’s this viciousness to what they’re doing. It’s just absolutely brutal, and brutalist, and it’s just really hard to understand for people who are not from the region.

CB: I don’t want to dehumanize any people. And I do feel that the conscripts who are being plucked up from the boonies and sent there as punishment, who are completely unwilling, are to be pitied, but—

VD: Some of them.

CB: Some of them. But the people making these decisions, and the Russians who are perfectly aware that this is happening, and celebrate it, I can’t feel anything for them but utter rage and contempt.

VD: Contempt, yeah. Contempt, yeah. Contempt is the only correct emotion.

CB: And rage. Rage.

VD: Rage and contempt. Yeah. That’s right.

CB: And I don’t like feeling this way, but I feel it all the time.

VD: Well let’s talk about the politics.

CB: Okay. First of all, Prigozhin.

VD: Oh, Prigozhin. So I left Ukraine, sadly, the day he died. And so I didn’t get to talk to Ukrainian MPs and watch their glee on the day he died. I would have preferred to have seen the glee and to have been there for the party when he died. And of course, he died on Ukrainian Independence Day.

CB: Well that’s fitting.

VD: Yeah, it was great.

CB: It’s kind of surprising, though, because, you know, Putin really likes anniversaries and you wouldn’t think he would choose that one.

VD: Well, it was the two-month anniversary of his putsch and mutiny. It wasn't the two-month anniversary of ... It wasn’t the year-long anniversary.

CB: Usually, though, he likes to give himself an assassination on his birthday or something like that. So to do it on Ukrainian Independence Day is a little bit atypical. Who the hell was stupid enough to get into a plane with him?

VD: Well, I mean, the Wall Street Journal has excellent reporting today on him returning back to Russia, frantically trying to run around and retain control of the militia as the MOD, the Ministry of Defense, was closing in and taking over. I mean, they were competing missions, he had to run around Africa talking to the same Arab and African warlords and dictators and presidents assuring them that he was still in charge just as the Deputy Minister of Defense [Yunus-Bek] Evkurov, or whatever his name is, was flying around saying from now on, this is a military-to-military, state-to-state operation and you have to stop talking to these people. So [Prigozhin] flew in just the day before from Africa and he was trying very hard to keep his corporation from being swallowed up by the states.

CB: It sounds as if he sincerely believed the promise that he would be left alone. I mean, he’d have never returned anywhere near if he didn’t.

VD: He miscalculated. I think he miscalculated. He freaked out and he was given, I think, rock-hard assurances. There were two meetings in the Kremlin with Putin, apparently. And I just think he thought that he was too important to Russian needs in Africa, obviously. This isn’t going to change anything in Niger, where I’m told by my people it was the Russian intelligence services. The GRU military intelligence guys who fomented that coup and took over that country, like in Mali.

CB: That’s worth a podcast in itself. I would love to talk to you more about that. But—

VD: Let’s put that aside. Obviously, you’re in the middle of a world-historical pivot in Africa from post-European, post-colonial stewardship. Let’s call it that.

CB: What the demise of Wagner means for Africa is such an important story and so under-covered. But I want to try to organize this podcast in a logical way. So let’s put this toward the end of it, because I want to just run through some more obvious things. What does his death mean for the war in Ukraine?

VD: The death … on the war in Ukraine, in the short term, nothing, because the Wagner guys have already been pushed off the front. They’re not fighting there anyway. So it seems that the Ministry of Defense in Russia has made a choice that the Wagner guys who participated in the coup will not be allowed to take contracts with the Defense Ministry. So, like, the 2,000 to 4,000 who actually marched on the Kremlin will probably not be allowed back into the Ministry of Defense unless that means that they can only join the newly-formed Russian mercenary units. That might mean that they can only join mercenary units and not the army proper.

CB: But is there anyone else who has ever had any success fighting there?

VD: Where? In Ukraine?

CB: Yeah.

VD: Yeah, well I mean look, not all the Russian battalions are bad. Some of them are really bad and some of them are really competent or moderately competent. The Naval Infantry is good. The Spetsnaz is fine. I think the 76th is fine. They have very competent units and then they have very green units full of mobilized men. The Kadyrovites fight fine, even though they’re more interested in taking selfies of themselves than fighting.

CB: How many Kadyrovites are there now?

VD: I mean, it’s below 20,000, I suppose. I mean, totally. I think there must be 5,000 to 7,000 now in Ukraine, from what I hear. They get taken in and out, and they often get into, like, screaming matches, fistfights, and shooting matches with Russian guys. So nobody actually wants to serve with them from the Russian army. And a lot of their job is actually to stand behind mobilized Russian conscripts and shoot them in the back if they run, so like, no one likes them—and in fact, I’ve been told over and over again by by Ukrainian officers, that are like, you know, committed to not shooting their enemies, that one of their issues is keeping their soldiers from executing Kadyrovites instead of taking them POW. So … you know, it’s an understandable problem, when someone behaves very badly.

CB: Is there any concern among the Kadyrovites that leaving home might not be a good idea because there’s no one to repress them back home?

VD: Well, I don’t talk to many Kadyrovites. The Chechens I talk to are typically on the Ukrainian side, so I have no special insight into what the Kadyrovites are thinking. It’s an interesting expansion, extension of the Chechen Civil War, but you have Chechens on both sides. And they like killing each other.

CB: Yeah, I’m sure.

VD: Often the Ukrainian Chechens ask to be on the spots on the front line where they’re killing Russian Chechens. They really like shooting at each other. It’s a great pleasure.

CB: Well, I mean, Chechnya is being held together by sheer terror, and if these are the best forces, and if they’re all out of town, doesn’t that present interesting opportunities for people who want to get rid of them?

VD: I mean, I don’t think that there is any kind of possibility at this point to get rid of him by using force. I don’t know who, internally, would be doing that. But I’m not sure that that is plausible at this point.

CB: My next question is—it’s a combination question, two questions. What is actually going on in the war? And why are we seeing these bizarre leaks from the US Defense Department? To what end are we seeing them? And what do they mean?

VD: Okay, more great questions. Okay, so obviously the counteroffensive was just not going as quickly as people want it to go, and the Ukrainians both overhyped it to themselves and to the Americans, because they needed support, and then the Americans and the media overhyped it, and then the Ukrainians felt pressure because they wanted to get gains and the gains weren’t happening quickly enough, and then the Americans started pushing them to get gains quicker, and they said, “No, we don’t want to mincemeat our soldiers, because unlike the Russians we don’t have reserves of men.” So there’s this really kind of unpleasant cycle of over-expectation, bartering for expectation, pushing for more results, resentment, followed by bad leaks from the Pentagon, followed by unpleasant resentments. You understand. You understand, I think.

CB: Yeah. I’m wondering, though, is there any truth to the planted stories that the Ukrainians are disregarding specific advice from the US and the UK and from NATO for a decisive maneuver operation, you know, sort of a Schwerpunkt initiative, in favor of smaller unit actions to attrit Russian forces—is this—do we know for sure that this was the advice they were given?

VD: This was the advice that was given. This has been widely reported and I believe it’s probably true. And also from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, and even from what I’ve heard from American trainers of these guys, volunteers, all— obviously there’s no on-the-ground American troops—was that the Ukrainians were just not good at combined arms maneuvers. They just couldn’t get that right. And so it was the case that at a certain point, the Ukrainians were being given the wrong kinds of strategic advice and actually—

CB: Especially because we were refusing to give them F-16s and ATACMs.

VD: Yeah, exactly. I mean, what NATO general would expect results with that kind of Iraq War I or even Iraq War II—

CB: I mean, how do you pierce their main defensive lines if you can’t hit the logistics and the supply depots?

VD: That’s right. It’s just too hard. And so the Ukrainians are like, “Let’s just go back to what we’re good at, which is using long-range attacks to attrit armor and to attrit the artillery and destroy logistics, to attrit logistical hubs, to make logistics harder, to make Russian repair and reconstruction more difficult, to get troops to collapse.” You know, these are these are very difficult choices that they have to make. These are really difficult choices—

CB: No kidding.

VD: And you know, in some ways these are roughly equal forces, in some ways, one side has morale, the other one doesn’t. One has Western intelligence, one doesn’t. One has more numbers, which is the Russians, one has the capacity to send their men to their certain death, without caring about them. One is able to replenish quicker than the other. I mean, obviously, Russia has three-and-a-half times the population. So in some ways, the Ukrainians have the upper hand, they’re fighting on their own territory; in other ways the Russians have upper hand. And so by some criteria the Ukrainians should be doing better, by other criteria, they’re fighting a really tough war—

CB: But it is not, as reported, a stalemate. The Ukrainians are making steady but slow progress.

VD: They are making steady and slow progress, and they may very well just break out somewhere in the South. And hit the Azov Sea by September, at which point they’ll be able to target Crimea with long-range artillery, right?

CB: You think that’s still plausible?

VD: It is plausible. It’s becoming less plausible, but I think it’s possible at this point that they’ll still reach the Azov Sea by the end of September. It’s not outside of the range of possibility.

CB: Did you—we republished a terrific article by one of our writers, Thomas Gregg, [also] one of our readers, comparing the situation to the one faced by the German and Allied armies in Normandy after the consolidation of the Allied bridgehead. Did you read that piece? Because I thought it was super-insightful.

VD: No, I did not. Well, tell me what he said in a few brief words and I can tell you.

CB: I can actually read the key paragraph. D-Day was 6 June 1944, and by early July that bridgehead extended from the vicinity of Caen in the east to the Atlantic Ocean south of the Cotentin Peninsula. From that point forward, the Allied objective was to break out of the bridgehead. The German objective was to prevent a breakout, or more realistically, to delay it as long as possible. The Overlord Plan had called for the early capture of the city of Caen in the high ground beyond the city, to ensure that the British Second Army sector of the bridgehead was sufficiently deep to accommodate follow-on forces in preparation for a breakout. The Germans, for their part, realized that an Allied breakout in the Caen sector would open the way to Paris and trigger the collapse of their whole line, so they fought hard to prevent that.

On D-Day and for weeks afterwards, the defenders managed to repel every British attempt to take the city. Even when Caen itself was finally captured, the Germans still clung to the high ground beyond. And you can see all these parallels here. Now this was under Montgomery, who was the primary author of Overlord, and the failure to take Caen compelled him to modify his plans. So, in his view, from then on, the British would continue to act offensively on the Allied left flank, threatening a breakout and attracting German reserves to that sector, in order to facilitate a breakout by the US First Army on the opposite flank.

The American attack was codenamed COBRA. It would go south, then east, and it would unhinge the German left flank, and if all went well, it would encircle and destroy the German defenders of Normandy, the Seventh Army facing the Americans and the Fifth Panzer Army facing the British.

VD: Yeah, that’s great. That’s absolutely great because it gives you a flavor of just the kinds of strategic choices that the Ukrainians have to make. Like, do you put half your army at Zaporizhia in order to keep the Russians from pushing into Zaporizhia while not putting enough troops on the south? Do you put all of your troops into one combined push and then you put them into a Russian kill zone? Or do you put more troops than you need to in Bakhmut in order to keep the Russians there?

CB: Exactly. It’s a really good analogy. It’s one that hadn’t occurred to me and I thought it was extremely, extremely shrewd of him to point it out. And he also points out at the time that Montgomery was taking incessant criticism He was infuriating the Americans because he was saying, “Everything’s going to plan,” and the Americans, who saw that the original scheme had failed, were beside themselves. And Churchill was just as irritated. He wanted to see [Montgomery] sacked.

But behind the scenes, as Gregg points out, the military situation was developing as Montgomery intended, and the threat in Caen forced the Germans to commit most of their Panzer divisions there, and the German strength against the Americans gradually dwindled away.

Now here’s the point of difference: The Allied air superiority was effective in isolating the battlefield by interdicting the movement of German reinforcements and supplies. So when COBRA was launched, on July 25th, the Americans soon scored a deep breakthrough, leading to the collapse of the German line. So the encirclement of the defending forces didn’t come off, but the German army in northern France was shattered. And the retreat of its remnants only came to a halt on the western border of the Reich.

Can this be done without the kind of air power brought to bear in that situation?

VD: I mean—whoops, so my computer fell on the ground. That’s okay. That happens. See, this is what happens.

CB: I didn’t even hear it.

VD: That’s good. Obviously, it’s a very similar situation, in that you have to make very, very, very complex judgments. And then also you have to lie to your allies as well as to your enemies. And the Americans and the British are micromanaging the war in a kind of uncomfortable way—but they are giving the rockets and the intelligence coordinates. So in a sense they do get a they get a veto on where the shooting takes place. I wish—I wish they would just be more patient. I wish there’d be less of these articles continuously attacking Ukraine—

CB: Alright, yeah. What the hell is that all about? That is the last thing the world—

VD: Yeah, it’s so bad. But also the casualties are so stunningly bad and so crippling to the Ukrainians that the morale in Kyiv is, kind of, a sense of understanding that every week the Ukrainian army is losing a thousand to a thousand five hundred KIA, and they can’t take those kinds of casualties for very long. So, you know, you don’t get to do this again. The Ukrainians do not have the manpower. And the West does not have the tech, the guns, the ammunition, the planes. Well, I mean, we do have the planes and the tanks, but we just don’t have the capacity to give them another shot at it.

CB: I mean, these leaks themselves are a disaster. They’re a disastrous example of the administration’s—well, I mean, there was an article about this in, I think it was The Bulwark; it was written by Eric Edelman and I can’t remember who his co-author was. Did you see it? He said—

VD: No, I didn’t. I wrote for them at the start of the war, I haven’t seen what they’ve been covering.

CB: He just published it, and it’s excellent. And they write, it’s a disastrous example of the administration—the Biden administration’s “seeming inability to understand the information environment in which the war is taking place and the requirements for sustaining public support for US engagement commitment over the long haul.”

And they’re absolutely right. They’re just handing ammunition to detractors in Congress, for allocating supplemental funding. And it’s an already parlous legislative environment, as they point out. Members from both parties are balking at approving additional support. And now they’re giving their opponents their talking points! Right? I mean, they’re saying, “Why throw good money after bad? The counter-offensive is failing.” And this is going to be endlessly repeated on Tucker Carlson and by Vivek Ramaswamy. And why are they allowing this to happen?

VD: Because they’re allowing this to happen because they want this to go away before the election. They’re allowing this to happen because they’d really like the Ukrainians either to win something big and for the Russians to sue for an armistice so this goes away before the election—

CB: If they want them to win, give them the f*****g—I’m sorry, excuse me—if you want them to win, give them the weapons they need!

VD: I couldn’t agree with you more, Claire, but I’m explaining how they think. I don’t work for the administration, thankfully. I mean, they don’t want the Ukrainians to lose, but neither do they particularly want them to win.

CB: I don’t understand this. I mean, winning would be great for the election.

VD: I don’t think that in their hearts of hearts, they do think that the Ukrainians are capable of winning before the election. I just don’t think that ... You know, there’s a great comment from ProfessorPhillips P. OBrien—

CB: Yeah, I admire him very much.

VD: He’s good, yeah. He writes, “After the last two weeks, I think Pentagon anonymous sources need a proper holiday. Not just a long weekend, but two weeks at the beach. No phone. Would be better for everybody.”

CB: These “anonymous sources” are causing real damage to American national security. Can’t they control them? Because—

VD: I think they are controlling. I think they’re doing it to shape operational and strategic expectations.

CB: But why? Why are they acting against American interests?

VD: I just think that their interest is to get re-elected. I don’t think that they think that the Ukrainians can win this.

CB: How does this get them re-elected? I mean, how does making it sound as if this is just another Afghanistan get them re-elected?

VD: It shouldn’t, but it doesn’t look great, honestly.

CB: What do you think is the narrative they’re trying to create?

VD: I think that they want to allow the public to think that they did this very well and then just have a kind of armistice somewhere around spring of 2024 before the elections really get going, so you could say, “Look, we’ve brought an honorable peace to this.” They can’t allow this to go on and on. And they know that at a certain point, Republicans will run with this and the public will get tired—

CB: An armistice? An armistice? You think they really just want an armistice that allows Russia to rearm and then take this up again as soon as they’re rested and ready?

VD: I think at a certain point, if you’re someone like Mr. Jake Sullivan or his people, you start to think, “Well, even if that is the case, we’ve destroyed 50 percent of Russian military capacity. And even if they take three, four years to rearm, by the time we’re back in office in ‘25, we’ll be able to deal with this better.” I think in their heart of hearts, they think like that.

CB: I cannot imagine thinking like that. I can’t imagine being so unpatriotic that you would think that this is going to be something that Americans will be in a position to face better then than they are now.

VD: For them this is a distraction from what they really want to focus on, China and going back to the JCPOA. The deal with the Iranians.

CB: Well, as for the latter, I have a lot to say about that. But if this is supposed to be a distraction from China—anyone with a brain can see that China is watching this.

VD: Of course.CB: And if we fail to support an ally who is an actual country, a UN member, appropriately—with whom we signed the Budapest Memorandum—the Chinese are really going to believe that we’re going to sacrifice American blood for Taiwan? Come on.

VD: Yeah.

CB: I mean, it’s just … I can’t imagine that people who have been around as long as they have, and who have as much experience as they have, and seen as much of the world as they have, and who have—in Sullivan’s case—a background in national security, who’ve read quite deeply in the field, and are being advised by some pretty smart people, I suppose, could really think this. It’s inconceivable.

VD: Yeah. It’s inconceivable. My sense of talking to people in Kyiv at the MP level, and elite bureaucrats, and strategic people is that they don’t want to look ungrateful, and they’re still thinking that things could be okay, and that they got enough—but they really, really, really want those F-16s. And if this goes badly, the population isn’t going to turn on the army. I asked a couple of MPs, “If this goes badly, will the population turn on the Army?” And they said no, but they could become very, very, very aggrieved in ways that would not be great for American standing the world.

CB: Yeah.

VD: Can you imagine what the commentary in the international media would make Americans look like if Ukrainians were saying, “Well, look, we got screwed over, we got stabbed in the back, you didn’t give us what we needed to win, now we’ve had to make this armistice with the Russians”—

CB: They don’t even need to say it, it’s just obvious! They wouldn’t even need to say it, but I mean … do you think that Ukrainians... I don’t know whether anyone would talk about this openly, but of course my first thought is, if I’m Ukrainian: “I want the Bomb.”

VD: Yeah, there was a lot of talk about restarting the Ukrainian nuclear missile program after they didn’t get what they wanted at the Vilnius NATO conference, which was some sort of rhetorical elucidation of—

CB: A lot of talk among whom?

VD: Ukrainian Twittersphere—

CB: Yeah.

VD: —Ukrainian elites mouthing off on Facebook for about 48 hours. There was a lot of talk about, “We need our own nuclear arms, blah, blah, blah.” But it was it was obviously serious, in that these are elite people. These are people in the ministries. These are high-level civil society people. These are MPs—

CB: How could they be thinking otherwise? This is another thing where I just don’t understand what the US security establishment is thinking, because it’s so obvious that this is what’s going to happen if we don’t get our fingers out of our asses—and that is it for the NPT. Poland would be next, obviously.

VD: Sure, sure.

CB: And you have an arms race.

VD: Sure, sure. I get that from Poland. I have to tell you, this example, there will never be another country ever again that willingly gives up its nuclear weapons Never.

CB: Never. Never. We now have Libya and Ukraine as the examples of what happens if you do.

VD: And to some extent South Africa.

CB: South Africa actually is the counter-example, I would say. But South Africa wasn’t facing the same security environment.

VD: Yeah, not at all. Just to say, there are three or four examples of countries who had the technical capacity to break through but did not go all the way with their nuclear program.

CB: And under these circumstances we’re trying to negotiate with Iran?

VD: Right, it’s laughable. I spent a lot of time just explaining to Ukrainian MPs and foreign MPs over the last week and a half what the effect of the Obama JCPOA was on Iran and on Israel, and they nodded gravely, and I had to explain to them—even the very smart ones who just didn’t understand how the dots linked together—that the Syrians and the Ukrainians were just collateral damage to the JCPOA.

CB: Exactly.

VD: But once I explained it to them, no one argued against me. They were like, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds right.” I had that conversation with one former and two or three current MPs over the last week and a half. And it was interesting because they’re like, “Oh, okay, that sounds right. Oh, f**k.”

CB: F**k. You know, the problem is, I just don’t see how the United States is capable, in its current condition, of pursuing an intelligible foreign policy that’s in the American and global interest, from administration to administration, given its level of not only total dysfunction and polarization, but the level of complete ignorance of the rest of the world. I mean, the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy is the most depressing thing I’ve seen since the rise of Donald Trump.

VD: Well, yeah. And in some ways he makes Donald Trump almost look noble. It’s insane.

CB: Well, at least Donald Trump is stupid enough that you can’t blame him for being stupid—he isn’t capable of understanding anything more sophisticated than what he says.

VD: And Donald Trump also has some, like, old-man, set-in-his-ways policies that he first stumbled his way into in the ‘80s. Like, you can almost kind of understand. With this Vivek guy, it’s like …. what the hell. You know?

CB: I’m not going to defend Donald Trump. But Vivek Ramaswamy is someone who is pure fraud. I mean, whatever we may say about Harvard, you don’t get to graduate cum laude from Harvard and be an idiot. And he also graduated from Yale.

VD: So you think he’s not an idiot?

CB: He’s not an idiot at all. He’s highly intelligent. And he is a complete charlatan who has seen what Trump was capable of achieving and decided he wants to do the same. And he will say whatever it takes.

VD: Well, I’m sorry that the Republican Party is in that space. But let’s talk more about Ukraine. I also just went to the Chernivtsi, the Odessa Film Festival in exile in Chernivtsi. I spent three days watching contemporary Ukrainian film and writing, and I’m putting out a piece on the state of Ukrainian film in the world now. That was interesting.

CB: What did you see?

VD: I saw, like, six documentaries. I saw three fiction films and a couple of—three or four fiction films. The Ukrainians are now screening the last of the major fiction films and non-fiction films, which were made right before the war started. So in fact I’m actually in two of them as a minor bit player. My friend has a film called Do You Love Me? Tonia Noyabrova, a Kyiv-based Ukrainian filmmaker, nice Jewish girl by the way, I’m in the film playing myself as Drunken Intellectual Number Two.

CB: Yeah, you mentioned that on the last [podcast], are any of these films—

VD: Good? Yes.

CB: —of the kind that could be shown in Europe and in the United States, and make it clear what the situation is?

VD: Well, so here’s the thing, the Ukrainians are stopping to make, if I can use that phraseology, are ceasing to make, fiction. But they’re making tons of documentaries, all of them noble, all of them well-intentioned, some of them good, some of them well-made, some of them not as great, some of them utterly brilliant, all of them very noble and well-intentioned. One that I saw was particularly melodramatic. And manipulative, actually. In the Q&A, some people accused it of being manipulative, rightly. So there are the reenactment melodrama versions of the war which are, you know, very cheap documentaries. But there are a lot of remarkable documentaries coming out of Ukraine, they will be all over the film festivals, and there will just be many many many more of them —

CB: Are they going to be widely screened in the US?

VD: I don’t know, I’m going to write about them in Tablet in my column—

CB: Are there deals with Netflix, for example?

VD: Some of them are like made-for-Ukrainian-TV quality? One was 42 minutes long and it was shown on evening Ukrainian television—all of Ukraine watches the same television because the six major TV stations joined forces for one marathon, and every Ukrainian watches the same news, which is good for stitching the population together.

CB: It’s actually, it’s really important. Because I was thinking about this. I was thinking Americans learned about the Second World War—those who didn’t fight it—from the movies. And that’s why Americans knew, have always known, that Hitler was the bad guy. And they’ve always understood the general contours of the conflict, what happened. And one of the reasons is because Jews did control Hollywood, and we did

VD: —Claire, we’re not going to be talking about the Jews controlling Hollywood.

CB: No, it’s just a fact. They were just severely, you know—they were, wildly overrepresented in Hollywood. And this ensured that a reasonably accurate portrayal of the Second World War was common to the average American. Now, of course, you don’t get all Americans sitting in front of the same film anymore It’s completely, the film environment is completely …. How would you describe it? It used to be that once upon a time, everyone went to see the same movie. Well, I guess they sort of did just now, with Oppenheimer and Barbie, but it used to be for all movies, there was this kind of simultaneous release, and then everyone was talking about the same movie.

VD: There was one culture as opposed to many.

CB: Yeah, exactly. So everyone would see The Bridge Over the River Kwai at the same time and everyone saw Schindler’s List at the same time. But this is the way to communicate with Americans in a way that they might understand the stakes a lot better than some article in Foreign Policy.

VD: Some of these documentaries are, like, not bad—Ukrainian-evening-news quality—and some of these are Oscar-level works of art. They’re really interesting. And there will be a lot more of them.

CB: Will they be accessible to Americans?

VD: I think some of them will be forgotten by time, and some of them will get lucky and will get good distribution deals. And I hope maybe my article will help with that a little bit. We’ll see.

CB: I feel such a sense of desperation at trying to counter the onslaught of Russian and fellow-traveler propaganda in the United States, which is so powerful. And you know, I don’t think Americans are bad people. I really don’t think these people in the heartland who have come to believe that Ukraine is a Nazi country that’s totally corrupt, and the Russians are the good guys, I don’t think they believe this because they’re evil people. I think they’ve just been systematically misled.

VD: Well, I mean, look, there are a lot of issues with the fact that Ukraine was just in all sorts of bad ways on the wrong side of the Trump political thing, in the last three years. Some Ukrainians behaved badly during the 2016 elections, some Ukrainians tried to intervene on behalf of—

CB: Yeah, but it’s also a massive information operation onslaught, just massive.

VD: Sure. Correct. But also, not to defend them, but I understand the National Conservatives are thinking, “Well, what’s in it for me? No one’s taking care of me. Why are we taking care of these Ukrainians?”

CB: I could sit down with any one of those national conservatives and explain what’s in it for them, and if they were—

VD: Sadly, I don’t have 50,000 Claire Berlinskis to send to every town in America.

CB: That’s the problem.

VD: If I did, the world would be a better place, but I don’t.

CB: This is what I’m preoccupied by. How can it be the case, especially because God knows why, but not one of our politicians is capable of explaining it. And I have no idea why it is that our politicians are incapable of sitting down with the American people—I mean, Biden hasn’t given one single damn speech—incapable of sitting down and explaining, “Look, here’s how the world works. Here’s what happened in the wake of the Second World War. And this is why we are prosperous and we are powerful. And it comes with certain responsibilities and obligations, and it is very much in our interest to keep up our side of the bargain, because if not, we’re going to be like any other American country, which is to say, like Mexico, or like Brazil, or like Peru. We’ll be that irrelevant and that poor. This is the world we made and we benefited from, and not only did we make it and benefit from it, so did everyone else—because you know, otherwise, the Code Pink narrative has completely infected the National Conservative side, where they’re completely willing to believe that to the extent this is true it’s because we’ve created a system of imperialism that benefits only us. And when you consider the amount of wealth and peace that the world has been blessed with since the Pax Americana, and consider going back to the world before that …. it is so horrifying. It’s so horrifying. It makes me utterly sick to think that so many Americans do not understand this. And I don’t know how to get it across to them.

VD: Yeah, I don’t either. I really don’t either. I’m hoping that, I’m hoping that this film that I worked on, that Sean Penn made, about Zelensky, which will be out on September 18—

CB: In America on September 18?

VD: The superpower film, the Sean Penn documentary about Zelensky, on which I was a producer, that is out in two weeks.

CB: In America.

VD: Yes, in America. It’s been bought by Universal, it is going to be out on Universal Plus or whatever it’s called. I forget the name of the streaming that Universal owns. I believe it’s called … it’s called … it’s called Paramount Plus. It will be streaming on September 18th. The film is done. It’s going to be great. We premiered it in Berlin. I’m in the film hanging out with Zelensky the night before with Sean Penn, right as he goes to see Zelensky. I’m with Sean Penn the night before the war having dinner with some journalists and some writers and we’re arguing—

CB: How did the audience react to it?

VD: I think the audience really enjoyed it, because it’s a really powerful film. I was at the premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. There are a couple of scenes where people laugh. He really got a great sense of civil society. He got really good people into the film and it was very compelling, this film. And I think people will think the same.

CB: Chris Christie has been doing a good job. I mean, he wasn’t great in the debate, but he has been doing a good job of going to—

VD: Fine, yeah. I’d vote for him.

CB: I’d vote for him. He’s been doing a good job with—well, I can’t really forgive him for his four years of kissing Trump’s ass, but—

VD: A lot of other people did, also.

CB: It doesn’t make it right. But he would certainly be a more powerful spokesman for the global order that Americans created than Biden seems to be capable of being.

VD: Yeah, Haley and Chris Christie are the reasonable, sane, competent foreign policy wing of the of the Republican Party—

CB: Yeah, and Pence, but you know, they hate them.

VD: Well, what can you do? I mean the party will right itself. This is a Thermidorian reaction to the neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party This is a backlash. They’re trying something else. The Republican Party—

CB: What happens to Ukraine? What are people in Ukraine saying about what happens if Trump is reelected?

VD: I’m gonna put this in my piece. I went to see a bunch of MPs and I talked to a lot of them, and I went to see one of Poroshenko’s top guys. Poroshenko only has 27 MPs in parliament now. His faction is not huge, but it’s still influential. He’s in the opposition and the fact that he was winnowed down from 125 MPs to 27, he kept his best top 20 percent of his party in the slots that he got.

CB: He’s behaved well, he’s behaved honorably.

VD: Yeah, he’s fine. Yeah, he’s done very well. And I think he would have done just as well as Zelensky, although probably he wouldn’t have been as successful at channeling the country and the world into helping—

CB: Zelensky has a world historical talent for—

VD: Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

CB: In some places, yeah.

VD: And Poroshenko has only kept 20 percent of his MPs, so he kept the best top 27. So his 27 MPs are, you know, they’re talented people, right? The less talented, the less intelligent, the less powerful thinkers and orators, they were not given party seats on the list because obviously, he got wiped out in 2019.

But I talked to a bunch of his MPs. And I went to see one of his top guys, who’s very bright, and I’ve had a relationship [with him] for many years. And I said, “Are you concerned about Trump? Is everyone concerned? And he said to me, “Everybody. Everybody. Everybody.” And then emphatically one last time, the fourth time he said, “Everybody is concerned about Trump.” He said it four times.

CB: Well, rightly so. Rightly so.

VD: He said “everybody” four times, like he was crossing himself, you know?

CB: And that’s true throughout Europe. It’s true throughout Europe. I mean, do you think that if the US basically drops off the map, that there’s any possibility of Europe being able to unite itself, get itself together, and continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs?

VD: Europe simply does not have what is necessary in terms of arms production. We’re not—we’ve, by “we,” I mean the Americans, kept the Europeans from having enough arms production and military industrial plant—

CB: But there is no plan in Europe to begin producing. That’s what appalls me.

VD: Right, yeah, but there’s no plant. Even if they were going to do it, it’s not possible. With the exception of the Brits and the French. The Brits have the capacity and they’re doing stuff and they’re doing a lot of stuff secretly and they’re recalibrating their factories to make the kinds of things that the Ukrainians need. But again, it’s just not enough.

CB: You can’t tell me that an advanced technological society like Europe is incapable, if the will were there, of embarking upon a massive rearmament program.

VD: Yeah, but it’s not going to be soon enough for the Ukrainians to win the war. That’ll take two years or three years minimum. They’re buying up what they need from the South Koreans because the South Koreans make a lot, a lot of shells.

CB: And the South Koreans sure understand what’s at stake.

VD: The South Koreans are being very helpful, but it’s not enough. The amount of shells that the Ukrainians need is just gargantuan. And if the Americans fall off, it’s not apparent that the Estonians or—you know, the Latvians, who are giving like 2 percent of their GDP to the Ukrainian army. Even if you get 50 percent of the Latvian GDP to the Ukrainian army, then what? It’s still not enough.

CB: If the EU was capable of coming together for the Covid fund, and capable of coming together, not particularly well, but capable of coming together to deal with the refugee crisis and the financial crisis, surely they should be capable of coming together for something that’s about a hundred times more important.

VD: You’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’d think so.

CB: I don’t understand why they aren’t.

VD: Well, they’ve done about as well as could be expected. Some countries are worse. The Italians and, well the Germans are okay now. The Hungarians are, of course, a problem.

CB: So the Germans are not really okay. Are you looking at the statistics on the AfD?

VD: Well, I mean, that is real. But I mean, they’ve started giving a lot of weapons and a lot of support. I mean, it’s not anywhere where it should be. And it took a year longer than necessary. But, you know, again, the closer you are to the Russian border, the more you’re willing to give up one or two percent of your GDP to the Ukrainian army. That’s obvious. But again, it’s about the Americans. It’s just not there. The capacity is not there. It’s an American fight, you know.

CB: But I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why there’s not absolute panic. Why there’s not a realistic understanding that Trump could win. Why they don’t see this as a life and death issue—which it is.

VD: It is, yes.

CB: Most people, when someone mugs them in a dark alley and puts a knife against their throats, have a fight-or-flight reaction. Where’s the fight-or-flight reaction? Where’s the adrenaline dump?

VD: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know, noble Claire, I just don’t know.

CB: Who would know? Who could explain this to us?

VD: I mean, you really have to go country by country to talk to different Europeans. I think that a lot of European bureaucracy is starting to understand in a way that they didn’t a year ago. Even Macron really, I think, based on my conversations with people who talked to him and his people, they really understand that the Russians need to lose now. I think Macron really changed.

CB: Yeah, Macron has, you know, he has come around with the vigor of a convert.

VD: Yeah, that’s really interesting. That was not the case three months into the war.

CB: No, it sure wasn’t.It sure wasn’t.

CB: He has just ... he’s had a come to Jesus moment. I don’t know exactly what triggered it, but he gets it now.

VD: He does get it, and I think if you’d been the one ...

CB Maybe from Africa?

VD: Yeah, and too little too late. I mean, the French really screwed that up. I mean, it’s a really big problem, for the French especially, because this is their backyard and it’s their nuclear energy—for the resources that they need was coming from Africa.

CB: Yeah, well, they’ve lost Françafrique. And that’s, I mean, that is a stunning loss. It’s a stunning loss and part of it is entirely their fault. But another part of it is Russia’s fault.

VD. Well, I mean, they were told. By French intelligence. “You should just rush the gendarmes, the special forces to surround the palace,” you know, and they didn’t do it.

CB: Were they? I thought the controversy was they weren’t told by the intelligence.

VD: There’s different views on that, but I think they made the wrong decision at the wrong moment. They could have stepped in. And, you know, there are American bases there. I mean, the Americans use that country to fight terrorism all over the region.

CB: I know.

VD: Also, very badly. Terrorist attacks are up like 30,000 percent since the American bases opened up.

CB: Yeah, I mean, causation isn’t correlation, but certainly whatever the West has been trying is not working. And this is a huge problem. It’s never, ever reported anywhere in the US. I mean, it’s ISIS redux all over a, again, a completely innocent population is being brutalized. Brutalized isn’t even strong enough. It’s being massacred, it’s being tortured, and no one cares. No one cares. And now we’ve lost a very significant military base. And I don’t think Biden’s calling attention to it because, you know, it’s not the sort of thing you want to advertise, but it’s a foreign policy setback on the order of losing Afghanistan.

VD: Yeah, it’s like the closing of the third American embassy in the course of a year and a half, you know? Like Kabul, then Kyiv, which obviously is thankfully working again, on a voluntary basis—nobody’s working there who doesn’t want to be there, and they’re working really hard, and they’re really, you know, overpowered—but they’re doing their best. And now they’ve lost in just a year and a half, what is it, three American embassies had to be shut down? That’s kind of a catastrophe in terms of running foreign policy.

CB: It is a catastrophe. And this is the moment, with Wagner’s fate up in the air, to be trying to recoup those losses.

VD: Yeah, I think it’s a bit too late. I think the Russians have made inroads. And also, just like—I think the Africans—well, there isn’t one African polity or group, but I think a lot of—

CB: Well, there is almost like a single African when it comes to France. They just hate France.

VD: Yeah, I guess that’s right. Yeah, you look at you look at Libya where the Russians are doing very well, you look at Mali, you look at Central African Republic, you look, major Russian inroads everywhere, the Egyptians are are back on board with the Russians … it’s just a catastrophe. We’re just losing. It really is like a domino effect—

CB: Yeah.

VD: —like the Vietnam-era domino effect, all over again. In some ways it’s like the Soviet Union minus communism, you know—

CB: And I just don’t think we are fully appreciating the effect of the information operations. I mean, the French certainly have screwed themselves. And also there’s, you know—the colonial past has an infinite power over people’s minds. But it doesn’t help that Macron has been just stupid in the way he’s approached them. I mean, Macron has a particular gift for alienating people and for not understanding the sensitivities of a situation. So, I mean, in part you can blame the French for their own fate, but the bulk of Russian information operations are being directed toward Africa, and they work. They work.

VD: They’re doing fine, yeah. They’re doing very well. I mean, this was a coordinated operation. Niger, I’m told, by people who know a lot about it, took six months.

CB: What else did you hear?

VD: That the French were caught flat-footed, that the French were being squeezed out. I mean, they got rid of the French ambassador, they got rid of the American ambassador very quickly. The African countries around who were willing to send in a force were told by Nigeria to stand down. It’s just—I know that the word “shitshow” was popularized and made bourgeois by one Barack Hussein Obama, but let’s call it a shitshow.

CB: Yeah. Well, the ECOWAS intervention idea was lunacy from the beginning. But the signs were there beforehand and people weren’t paying attention to them. They weren’t taking them seriously. And why they weren’t taking them seriously after everything that's happened, I do not know.

VD: I don’t know. Maybe Ukraine, Russia, distracted a lot of people. I just don't know. Maybe we really can’t chew—

CB: —can’t walk and chew gum at the same time?

VD: Yeah. Maybe we can only look at one part of the world at the same time.

CB: But we have—different parts of our bureaucracy are dedicated to this. We have Africa Desks in the intelligence agencies, in the Defense Department, in the State Department, we have—

VD: —sure, but then you have to get the army and the civilian command to make decisions based on that information. You could have perfect information on the Africa Desk and then no one does anything about it because the political elite just doesn’t have enough bandwidth to concentrate or isn’t smart enough to know what they should be doing somewhere.

CB: But I mean, we used to be able to do this. Nixon would not have allowed this to fly under the radar.

VD: Totally. And that’s right. I mean, and even in many ways, Reagan wouldn’t have.

CB: No, not at all.

VD: Even Clinton probably wouldn’t have dropped the ball on something like this either.

CB: Yeah, I don’t think he would have. And certainly Bush wouldn’t have. The first Bush wouldn’t have.

VD: First Bush was not the kind of man who would not have been able to concentrate on four or five different policy areas at once. Yeah. Let’s start wrapping up because it’s getting late here. Anything else you want to ask?

CB: Checking my list of questions so that I haven’t forgotten something important. I have on my list, “Can Ukraine do this without the materiel they need?” Do they have—is it theoretically possible for them to push Russia out with what they have?

VD: I think it’s very difficult. I think they could push them out of particular areas and make Crimea unlivable, and make the Russians, in certain instances, come to their senses and make a deal. But obviously they need some sort of pervasive victory. Otherwise, the Russians are just not going to take the lessons that they need to and decommunize and de-imperialize, or whatever … de-de … using all the “de-” words. Obviously, it will be a Black Swan event that brings this to an end. That cannot be predicted by anybody. I’m sure it’s not going to be a coup d’état or a revolt of Russian elites as people keep—

CB: Who did you speak to in Ukraine?

VD: Sorry?

CB: Who did you speak to in Ukraine?

VD: I talked to a lot of people. I talked to ... I tried to talk to ordinary people, also. I went and I saw some old male friends I hadn't seen in a while, just regular guys who I like. One of them was telling me what he was doing to avoid conscription. Just a nice coffee with an ordinary pal I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. He lost his job in logistics and he had to work shucking oysters and he was just telling me that he was just really concerned about conscription. He didn’t want to go to fight. There’s a lot of guys like that.

I talked to intellectuals. I talked to a well-known philosopher. I talked to policy people. I talked to some diplomats. I saw six to eight former and current MPs in a week. I saw a former finance minister. I saw a former minister for foreign affairs, I saw some government people, think tank people. You know, I make the rounds.

CB: Among the higher-level people, the people who might actually know what's going on and be in charge of making policy, what five adjectives would you say describe their state of mind?

VD: Oh, that’s such a great question. … One, befuddlement. Two, stoicism. Three, resignation. Four, leniency, with the army and American elites and even with me, the way I was talking to them.

CB: Leniency, you mean like indulgence?

VD: Yeah, just like understanding. Like, okay, you know—I asked a former national security advisor who had also been a finance minister—it’s actually entirely obvious to Ukraine hands who this is—I said to him, “So, are you resentful of the Americans?” And he had to think for a second, and he was like, “Actually, not really.” He said, “Ultimately, they could be doing more, but you know, they’re doing enough, and we’re doing our best.” He was actually wearing fatigues. He was in the middle of—you know, he was actually wearing fatigues and fighting. I ran into him in my hotel and we sat down, we had lunch, and whatever … he was taking calls, buying up drones, between talking to me and doing deals for drones. So he had left civilian life and political life in order to go into the army.

Among Zelensky’s opponents, there’s a lot of frustration. Politics is about to start up again. Politics was submerged for a long time and it was taboo. But the taboo on politics is about to come off.

CB: How so?

VD: There’s a lot of the beginnings of maneuvering. It’s been two, three months where Ukrainian internal politics has begun to rekindle. You can’t really go out and criticize the president or the foreign minister or Yermak or any of these people yet. But you can—

CB: What’s the gravamen of the complaint?

VD: Well, the Poroshenko people have sort of hysterical complaints about this being a dictatorship and blah blah blah. And they have a point that, you know, they’re not being really consulted with. But you do have martial law, and Zelensky does have a supermajority in parliament, so you don’t really need to consult with an opposition that has 27 seats, you know? Or 15 seats, in another party.

And that, you know, there’s internal ... I’m almost skeptical about relaying these things because it’s a lot of the usual b******g, but they will have rather overblown and overwrought versions of reasonable complaints.

CB: But are they complaining about the way the war has been prosecuted?

VD: No, no, no, they’re not. No, no one is.

CB: Right.

VD: No one is. No, no one is criticizing the army. No one is criticizing Zelensky’s decisions. It’s entirely about internal stuff, like corruption, or—and Zelensky is trying to fight corruption.

CB: He is coming out swinging against it.

VD: Well, yeah, Burns went in there, the CIA guy, telling him you have to go hard against corruption, because for a long time the West was looking the other way, because we didn’t want to delegitimize the Ukrainian state in the middle of a war. It’s a really difficult thing—are you going to criticize the Ukrainians about corruption in the middle of a war? Obviously, Zelensky’s not corrupt. And Ukraine being what it is, there is corruption and they’re doing what they can. They’re trying to make corruption treasonous in the middle of a war.

CB: Yeah, I just read that this morning.

VD: And it’s very controversial, because if you call it treason, that’s something that goes not to the anti-corruption court, but to the security services which are controlled by the executive branch, so that is a checks-and-balances issue. I mean, obviously, I think corruption is treasonous in the middle of a war, but if you give it to the internal intelligence services to decide what that means as opposed to the anti—

CB: Well, it’s definitely treasonous, because it’s treasonous inherently, because it’s detracting from the war effort, but it’s also being used as propaganda—

VD: Totally. Yeah, totally. It is treasonous. I mean, I agree. And Zelensky saw that a lot of young men on the front were resentful of other young men who were not on the front paying US$6,000 to get out.

CB: Imagine that, yeah, of course, of course.

VD: Of course they were. Like, you’re fighting and dying and giving up your health in the trenches and some kid from a wealthier family than yours gives up US$10,000 to an army recruiter—

CB: Yeah, that’s outrageous.

VD: And Zelensky fired, unilaterally, every head of recruitment—-

CB: Yeah, yeah. Head of the regional recruitment offices, yeah, I saw that.

VD: And that was very popular, but that was that was an internal move that wasn’t for external consumption. That was to make people internally understand that they were fighting corruption. It was a good move.

CB: It was a good move externally too, though.

VD: I don’t know, you tell me.

CB: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know whether anyone in the US pays the slightest bit of attention to the actual news from Ukraine or whether they just get it all from, you know, Gateway Pundit. All right, before we wrap up, what would you—what are the five things you would like our listeners to understand about the situation that you think they might not know?

VD: Five things. Oh, like five more adjectives. Okay, one, the Ukrainians will not blame themselves or blame their troops or their generals for things going wrong. Things could still go wrong. The Russians famously do very bad at the beginning of the wars and then they get their stuff together, and then they beat back the French or the Germans.

CB: Or the Finns. Exactly.

VD: They’re famously haphazardly organized and really bad at the beginning of a conflict and then they get it together. So you just have to keep with the Ukrainians for another year and a half.

Two, any conversation about a ceasefire outside of the Ukrainians’ timetable puts lives at risk, because it makes the generals have to rush battles when the civilian elites tell them, “Look, you really have to deliver something or else the Americans, or Trump, or whoever, are going to stop delivering weapons.”

CB: And it encourages Putin.

VD: Yeah, it encourages Putin. So all the stuff about a ceasefire and putting pressure on the Ukrainians to negotiate, that is almost sadistically terrible. It’s almost horrible.

CB: Yeah.

VD: Three, the Ukrainians are running out of men. They’re really running out of men who are willing to fight. Everyone who wanted to go fight is already out the front and many of them are already dead. Ukraine does not have reserves of manpower. It just does not. The Russians do. The Russians are capable of full mobilization, of war mobilization, of conscription, of sending more ethnic minorities to fight. They are willing to grind this out. The Ukrainians are going to run out of men, men and women, sooner rather than later. So that’s where we are. That’s number three. Number four …. You know, this really … well, I wanna say something cliche about changing the world historical order, blah blah blah … Let’s skip that.

CB: No, let’s not. This is a pivot point. It is the most important story in the world. And the next century, at least, will be determined by the outcome. And if Americans do the wrong thing, the consequences will be so dark, so unfathomably dark for so many millions of people, for so long, that—61 percent of the people listening are Americans, according to my stats, and I just want them to understand that this is so much more important than any other issue that’s being discussed in the US right now.

VD: Yeah, it really—I mean, I don’t know. I really am a one-issue voter at this point—

CB: Me too.

VD: —so maybe my perspective’s being, you know, I have skin in the game, I have family in the game—

CB: I don’t. But I feel the same way.

VD: I’m glad to hear that. Aren’t I your family, Claire, in a way?

CB: Yes, but that doesn’t mean that, you know, if you told me the most important issue in the world right now was—I don’t know—fusion power, I would say, “Yeah, that’s a nice hobby horse and maybe it’ll happen,” but I wouldn’t get as excited—well, fusion power would be a really big deal. And that’s a bad example.

VD: Let’s try alien invasion. The alien invasion really puts this Ukrainian-Russian thing to—

CB: Okay, no, no these are bad examples. Let’s choose a good example. If you told me the most important issue was transgender bathrooms, okay, I mean—I’d say “Yeah, with you with the transgender bathrooms, but it just doesn’t matter compared to this.”

VD: Correct. Transgender bathrooms matter somewhat to some people in some places and it’s—

CB: —we’ll get that sorted sooner or later, but the world does not depend on getting it right.

VD: I do want to figure that out, in some way, but it’s not, it will not determine the course of our civilization, liberty and all that, in the way … This war really is good against evil. I despise when people use that rhetoric, but—

CB: —But this is the clearest case of it we’ve seen since Hitler.

VD: Correct. In every other conflict, everyone has a point. The Russians have no point in this situation.

CB: I want to caution Americans that anyone who tells them otherwise is never to be listened to or trusted again.

VD: Yeah, Mr. Tucker Carlson has a lot to answer for.

CB: And Vivek Ramaswamy. And yeah, I mean, it’s a bright line.

VD: They’re opportunists, they’re grifters and opportunists. Last question, what do you think? Last point, last question?

CB: No, I want your view about what is the last point that you don’t think they know.

VD: Last point that they don’t think they know.

CB: That you don’t think they already know. The thing you want to communicate. that you think they might not know, about what’s going on.

VD: You know, the traumatic stress that is on a society, I think, will spread into Europe, and I think will demoralize Europe.

CB: You mean literally, in terms of the refugees? Or—

VD: Yeah, I mean there are eight, there are like six to eight million Ukrainians, or five million, or whatever, I mean that’s between 1-2 percent, that’s not nothing. They’re obviously grouped in some countries, not others; they’re obviously in Romania and Poland, and Germany. There’s a million, there’s a million Ukrainians in Germany, and half of them have been honest to pollsters that they’re not going back.

CB: Or in a larger sense that Europeans, even if they don’t consciously admit it to themselves, understand that if Ukraine falls, they’re next?

VD: Well, I think it could very well in a couple of years, if Ukraine falls, make NATO obsolete. And, I mean, the Russians will try some salami-style tactics on Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia or whatever.

CB: Oh, absolutely.

VD: But I just think that that kind of trauma, with six to eight million people, and if the Ukrainian state falls, there will be, obviously, millions more refugees into Europe. I think it will just do something to demoralize the European project.

CB: Well, you know that shudder of horror that you always feel when you read First World War poetry?

VD: Yes.

CB: When you read, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” those lines, and you think about it, and you think about the trenches, and you think about the gas masks, and how it gives you that shiver, that kind of sense of a hand coming from the grave around your neck. That’s happening for real, right now.

VD: It’s happening for real, it's happening to my friends, to my family, to everybody that I know. And again, if this war is fought successfully from the Russian side, this is just going to be a crippling add-on effect to a really bad ten years for the European Union. You have 2015, Syrian refugee crisis, then you have the Germans and the Greeks, then you have Brexit, then you have Trump and NATO. It’s like body blow after body blow after body blow every couple of years, right? And how many of these body blows can an institutional idea which is based on an optimistic, humane, idealistic view of the future—how many such body blows can it take? I think this will just maybe tip the European project over. You think I’m wrong?

CB: And I want to interject here. There is a large cohort of Americans who will say, “Well, so what? Why do we care about Europe? We pulled their chestnuts out of the fire twice in the last century. It’s time for them to go it alone. Why is this our business?” And I would answer—

VD: —Why is it our business, Claire?

CB: —Because it’s the West. Because this is us.

VD: This is us. Yes. Americans are descendants of the European project.

CB: This is our people. And the difference between America and Europe is—any belief that there’s a difference is the narcissism of small differences. This is the Western tradition. This is where we come from. This is where what we believe comes from.

VD: Like the Latin Empire protecting the Greeks because that was their patrimony and their historical—

CB: Exactly. And, you know, with our allies, we are mighty. With American allies, we do not need to worry about China and Russia. Together, we are so much more powerful. But if they break us up, they win, and the world belongs to despots, tyrants, and authoritarians. And the whole thing is ever so much more sinister, as Churchill said, by the lights of perverted science.

VD: Amen, Claire. Amen. And I think I cannot possibly say anything more honest or correct or germane or articulate. So I’m going to say thank you so much for having me on again. I hope I’ve said something of interest and I’ll see you Sunday, yeah?

CB: Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you Sunday and bring anyone you want.

VD: I’ll only bring nice people.

CB: Okay. Here’s a hug for you.

VD: Thank you to all our listeners for listening to us. Bye bye.

CB: Bye bye.

If you enjoyed listening to this Cosmopolicast, you might also enjoy these earlier conversations between Claire and Vladislav:

* The CosmoRussyaCast (feat. Monique Camara, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Scott Abel, and Jon Nighswander)

* The View from Kyiv (feat. Olga Tokariuk)

* From Kyiv to Chernowitz Vladislav rescues his relatives.

* The News from Odessa (feat. Monique Camara and Vivek Kelkar)

* Burning Vlad’s Russian Passport (feat. Toomas Hendrik Ilves)

* Ukraine and the Ghosts of the Iraq War

* The Angels and Demons of Odessa (feat. David Patrikarikos)

* Ukraine, Russia, the War, and the West (feat. Regina Maryanovska-Davidzon)

* The Ukrainian Literature Cosmopolicast (feat. Kate Tsurkan)

* The Counteroffensive and the Dam

* What the Hell was That? (feat. Ariel Cohen) On the Prigozhin mutiny.

Please join me in lavishly thanking our reader Michael Greenspan for donating his time today to helping me edit this podcast. I’m so grateful for the favor, and you will be too when you listen without hearing Vladislav and me ask each other repeatedly, “Are you still there? Still there?”

To follow along, I recommend looking at the Ukraine Livemap, which is an invaluable resource for visualizing the war and following the news in real time:

Here’s Vladislav’s book: From Odessa with Love: Political and Literary Essays from Post-Soviet Ukraine.

Here’s his Cannes Diary.

Here’s the intercept in question:

Here’s the speech Ronald Reagan gave after the Soviet attack on KAL 007—the kind of speech Biden should be giving, but can’t.

Don’t miss David Patrikarikos’s report from Odessa:

Thousands are trapped in the flood zone — an estimated 230 square miles — and thousands of animals are dead. It is the single most damaging act of the war so far. “This is hell—but instead of fire we have water,” a local told me yesterday, before adding, as the people here so often do: “F****** Russians.”

Reports of fresh horrors reach me almost hourly. Contacts send videos and images of everything from sofas to the corpses of pets floating through towns and cities. Many of the elderly, disabled and those with large families, are trapped.

Some are contemplating the prospect of either a quick death by drowning, or the agony of a slower end if no one can reach them.

Even by the standards of this war, what is unfolding out here is horrific.

(Clearly the reports of “five dead” are completely inaccurate—some kind of artifact of the way they’re being recorded, not reality.)

“ … unfortunately we show that the AI control problem is not solvable and the best we can hope for is safer AI, but ultimately not 100 percent safe AI, which is not a sufficient level of safety in the domain of existential risk as it pertains to humanity.”

Roman Yampolskiy is a computer scientist and professor at the Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville who works on genetic algorithms, neural networks, artificial intelligence, and the alignment problem.

Our conversation surprised me for two reasons. First, he’s the only researcher to whom I’ve spoken who argues that GPT4 is conscious. Second—much more gravely—he believes that we’ll not only fail to solve the control problem before we build a dangerously intelligent AI, but that the problem is inherently and formally insoluble.

As I’ve reflected on control problem this week, I’ve had the growing and uneasy suspicion that this must be so. That said, had you told me five years ago what Large Language Models would be doing in 2023, I would have said that was impossible, too. My intuitions about which problems in AI engineering are soluble aren’t trustworthy. It takes years of working on problems like these to develop good intuitions, and I haven’t done that.

That can’t be said of Roman, however. This is his life’s work. We have every good reason to take his intuitions seriously. So when I heard him say that, my heart sank. He may be wrong, he tried to reassure me. He hopes he is. I hope he is. But he doesn’t think he is.

Our conversation was perfectly calm, as you’ll hear, but that’s because I just can’t bring myself to believe in any of this, despite the evidence. This exchange and its implications seem no more real to me than a thought experiment in a graduate philosophy seminar or a science fiction movie. That I feel this way shows that awareness of one’s cognitive biases is no proof against them. In reality, it’s neither a thought experiment nor a movie; it’s perfectly plausible that he’s right, and if so, we’re in indescribably big trouble.

As hard as it is to take this in, we have to, because this hasn’t happened yet. It may be difficult to stop it at this point, but at least it’s not formally impossible. Once it happens? Too late.

So it’s worth thinking about now.

Nothing should be taken off the table and limited moratoriums and even partial bans on certain types of AI technology should be considered. “The possibility of creating a superintelligent machine that is ethically inadequate should be treated like a bomb that could destroy our planet. Even just planning to construct such a device is effectively conspiring to commit a crime against humanity.” Finally, just like the incompleteness results did not reduce the efforts of the mathematical community or render it irrelevant, the limited results reported in this paper should not serve as an excuse for AI safety researchers to give up and surrender. Rather, it is a reason for more people to dig deeper, and to increase effort and funding for AI safety and security research. We may not ever get to 100 percent safe AI but we can make AI safer in proportion to our efforts, which is a lot better than doing nothing.

It is only for a few years right before AGI is created that a single person has a chance to influence the development of superintelligence, and by extension the forever future of the whole world. This is not the case for billions of years from Big Bang until that moment and it is never an option again. Given the total lifespan of the universe, the chance that one will exist exactly in this narrow moment of maximum impact is infinitely small, yet here we are. We need to use this opportunity wisely.—Roman Yampolskiy.

Further reading

On the controllability of artificial intelligence: An analysis of limitations, by Roman Yampolskiy:

The unprecedented progress in artificial intelligence over the last decade came alongside multiple AI failures and cases of dual use, causing a realization that it is not sufficient to create highly capable machines, but that it is even more important to make sure that intelligent machines are beneficial for humanity. This led to the birth of the new sub-field of research commonly known as AI safety and security with hundreds of papers and books published annually on the different aspects of the problem.

All such research is done under the assumption that the problem of controlling highly capable intelligent machines is solvable, which has not been established by any rigorous means. However, it is a standard practice in computer science to first show that a problem doesn’t belong to a class of unsolvable problems before investing resources into trying to solve it or deciding what approaches to try. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge no mathematical proof or even rigorous argumentation has been published demonstrating that the AI control problem may be solvable, even in principle, much less in practice. …

Yudkowsky considers the possibility that the control problem is not solvable, but correctly insists that we should study the problem in great detail before accepting such a grave limitation. He writes:

“One common reaction I encounter is for people to immediately declare that Friendly AI is an impossibility, because any sufficiently powerful AI will be able to modify its own source code to break any constraints placed upon it… But one ought to think about a challenge, and study it in the best available technical detail, before declaring it impossible—especially if great stakes depend upon the answer. It is disrespectful to human ingenuity to declare a challenge unsolvable without taking a close look and exercising creativity. It is an enormously strong statement to say that you cannot do a thing—that you cannot build a heavier-than-air flying machine, that you cannot get useful energy from nuclear reactions, that you cannot fly to the Moon. Such statements are universal generalizations, quantified over every single approach that anyone ever has or ever will think up for solving the problem. It only takes a single counterexample to falsify a universal quantifier. The statement that Friendly (or friendly) AI is theoretically impossible, dares to quantify over every possible mind design and every possible optimization process —including human beings, who are also minds, some of whom are nice and wish they were nicer. At this point there are any number of vaguely plausible reasons why Friendly AI might be humanly impossible, and it is still more likely that the problem is solvable but no one will get around to solving it in time. But one should not so quickly write off the challenge, especially considering the stakes.”

Yudkowsky further clarifies meaning of the word impossible:

“I realized that the word ‘impossible’ had two usages:

* Mathematical proof of impossibility conditional on specified axioms.

* ‘I can’t see any way to do that.’

Needless to say, all my own uses of the word ‘impossible’ had been of the second type.”

In this paper we attempt to shift our attention to the impossibility of the first type, provide rigorous analysis and argumentation and where possible mathematical proofs, but unfortunately we show that the AI control problem is not solvable and the best we can hope for is safer AI, but ultimately not 100 percent safe AI, which is not a sufficient level of safety in the domain of existential risk as it pertains to humanity.

Detecting qualia in natural and artificial agents:

In this paper, we described a reductionist theory for appearance of qualia in agents based on a fully materialistic explanation for subjective states of mind, an attempt at a solution to the Hard Problem of consciousness. We defined a test for detecting experiences and showed how computers can be made conscious in terms of having qualia. Finally, we looked at implications of being able to detect and generate qualia in artificial intelligence. Should our test indicate presence of complex qualia in software or animals certain protections and rights would be appropriate to grant to such agents. …

… There seems to be a fundamental connection between intelligence, consciousness and liveliness beyond the fact that all three are notoriously difficult to define. We believe that ability to experience is directly proportionate to one’s intelligence and that such intelligent and conscious agents are necessarily alive to the same degree. As all three come in degrees, it is likely that they have gradually evolved together. Modern narrow AIs are very low in general intelligence and so are also very low in their ability to experience or their perceived liveness. Higher primates have significant (but not complete) general intelligence and so can experience complex stimuli and are very much alive. Future machines will be superintelligent, superconscious and by extension alive!

Like yesterday’s essay by Tecumseh Court—Year Zero—this Cosmopolicast with Vladislav Davidzon considers the war in Ukraine in the context of the Iraq war. For those of you who don’t like podcasts, I’ve provided an (imperfect) transcript below.

Claire: Hi, it’s Claire with the Cosmopolitan Globalist, and this is the Cosmopolicast. We have Vladislav Davidzon with us again. Welcome, Vladislav.

Cat: Meow.

Claire: That was my cat. 

Vladislav: Yes, I don’t meow like that cat. Although I still have some of the qualities of the cat. The more masculine ones. 

Claire: The nonstop demand for attention. 

Vladislav: No, come on. C’mon—no, cats actually can be—come on, Claire. 

Claire: Well, what other qualities do you have in common? 

Vladislav: That’s—

Claire: You’re not six inches tall. You don’t don’t crap in a box. 

Vladislav: —a certain elegant grace— 

Claire: Which one are you talking about? 

Vladislav: —a certain cunningness, a certain ferociousness— 

Claire: Elegant grace, like my tripod—

Vladislav: Alright, sustained. Sustained, Claire. 

Claire: All right. We’re going to talk about Ukraine and the Iraq War anniversary. Because our listeners haven’t been privy to our conversations, we’re going to have to repeat ourselves—because they haven’t been overhearing what we’ve been saying for the past couple of days. So why don’t we begin by telling them what you’ve been up to since our last podcast? 

Vladislav: Oh, Claire. I’m so manically busy that I can’t sit still, so I don’t even know where to begin, to be honest. I put together a big Jewish conference in Washington, DC. In February, I went to America. I did some talks about Ukraine. I flew to Berlin for the premiere of the Sean Penn Zelensky documentary film, which I was a producer on. And that was fun. Spent two days in Berlin, saw some Berlin people. The Berlin Film Festival stuff, including some nightclubby stuff with the Ukrainians, after my friend Tonya Noyabrova had her film premiere at the at the Berlin Film Festival, she’s a Ukrainian lady who had a wonderful film called, “Do You Love Me,” appropriately enough. I had a cameo role in that film, playing Drunken Intellectual #2. 

Claire: Are you in the credits as Drunken Intellectual #2? 

Vladislav: Indeed I am. I was trying to get Drunken Intellectual #1, who is standing on top of a table and screaming about his party ticket in 1990, trying to rip up his Soviet party membership on New Year’s year in 1990 in the movie … I'm trying to get him off the table, saying, “No, no, don’t rip it off. Don’t do it, man.”

Claire: OK, right. So you were in Ukraine, what, 13 days ago? 

Vladislav: Yes, after the Berlin Film Festival was over, I flew through Romania into Moldova. There was no coup d’état, as we were all promised, in Moldova. So after about a day of hanging out waiting for the coup d’état, I realized there would be no coup d’état and I went straight to Odesa. I spent about about a week and half there and left through Poland on the other way out. Because one can’t fly into Ukraine again. 

Claire: How’s the mood in Odesa?

Vladislav: Oddly placid, oddly resilient, scattershot anger, plus the fact that the city isn’t a ghost town, but it’s so sparsely populated that most of the population that I know is gone. Oddly, the suburbs are more populated than the city center. A lot of the apartments in the city center belong to welfare people, or they’re up for rent by the people who come into Odessa. They’re sitting there empty, so you can walk around the city center at 11:00 o’clock, right before the start of martial law, and you’ll see nobody. And it’s really creepy because there’s no electricity on at 11:00 o’clock. 

Claire: What should I understand about what’s going on in Ukraine that hasn’t been widely reported in the last week or two? 

Vladislav: What’s hard to understand is that it’s different from city to city. It’s really hard to understand what’s going on, even for me, or for anybody. The country’s in such flux that it’s really difficult to understand what’s happening from place to place. It’s like little different countries from place to place. What’s going on in Chernivtsi, where my ancestors are from, to Poltava, to Kiev, to Kharkiv, to Odesa, to Mariupol, to Nikolaev—it’s all completely different, or completely different situations. Lviv is a boomtown, an absolute boomtown.

Claire: Everyone’s gone there, right? 

Vladislav: Correct. Everyone who wanted to stay in the country, who didn’t want to flee, has gone there, right? Everyone who had money to buy an apartment or to rent something long-term and to take their capital out of Kharkiv and Melitopol and Mariupol and Kherson—all those people went to Lviv. So Lviv is an absolute boomtown. It’s full of international aid people. It’s full of international diplomats, people from organizations who have to operate there—

(Silence)

Claire: You just disappeared. Sorry about that. He just disappeared.

(Vladislav returns)

Claire: I lost you. You were just saying what a boomtown it was. And all the aid agencies are there. And the diplomats— 

Vladislav: Yeah, all the all the diplomats, all the aid agencies, all the people from the international NGOs and all that, all those people who are doing something useful—or or trying to do something useful, or if we’re going to be more cynical, are quasi-useless—they’re there for whatever reason in the country, they can’t operate out east, so they all sit there. So I’ve heard that a one-bedroom apartment in the outskirts of Lviv is now renting for US$2,500 a month. Which is nuts. 

Claire: Well, are you getting any sense at all of how the actual war is going, or is that impossible to tell from where you’ve been? 

Vladislav: You know, when I pass through the South, I do talk to military people. And I did get up to Nikolaev, which is quiet now. The South is quiet up to Kherson, right? And there are different places with different relative amounts of fire, like Kharkiv is more quiet now than it was a couple of weeks ago. The electrical infrastructure grid attacks are down because the spring is upon us and the Russians basically were not able to destroy the electrical infrastructure, right. So the country survived the winter, which was a historically mild one. So Mother Nature is on our side. 

Claire: What’s had me concerned is there’s been a flurry of articles of a very different tone. For example, one recently, in the Washington Post, talking about how despair is creeping in on the front lines. 

Vladislav: Yeah, they’re tired. The guys, and ladies and in the very very very front lines are very tired. Not surprisingly. The casualties around Bakhmut are horrific for both sides. They’re much worse for the Russians, but they’re in the business of taking five casualties for every dead Ukrainian soldier. And it’s an attrition war. They have the casualties, and they don’t care about casualties in the long term. They don’t care about about human capital. They don’t care about their people. So they can get away with that, whereas the Ukrainians really do care about casualties, and every dead Ukrainian does—in the long term—create bad things for the society. The attrition is really bad from the middle classes and the intelligentsia and the wealthy. The Russians, their intelligentsia, the middle class, the elites—they’re not fighting. Their kids aren’t fighting every day in Ukraine. 

Claire: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

Vladislav: Whereas every day in Ukraine, you see, on social media, pictures of people from classes that don’t fight in in the West. Just yesterday, I saw a prominent archaeologist and professor of history from Kyiv—was killed in Bakhmut. The day before that, I saw my acquaintance, who’s a former minister in the in the Zelensky government, and an economist, and someone—I mean, do you need the gentlemen’s name or not?

Claire: No, no, I get the—

Vladislav: It doesn’t matter. He was just putting out photos of his graduate students in economics, from Kyiv’s Higher School of of Economics, who had been killed on the front. He put out like 24, 25 photos of his graduate students in economics who have been killed in the last year. That’s remarkable, isn’t it? 

Claire: It’s unbearable. 

Vladislav: It’s unbearable, and that’s just the dead economists, right? There are also dead liberal arts people, there are dead historians. They’re dead people from all different levels of government, from the upper echelons to the City Council. The society is being wrecked. If there really are 100,000 dead and wounded Ukrainian soldiers—which is entirely possible and perhaps even likely—in a country of 40 million, that means everybody knows somebody. 

Claire: Of course. 

Vladislav: And you know, the intelligentsia and the middle class is not particularly large in Ukraine, compared to how big a society it is. It’s a very small elite. 

Claire: And hugely important human capital for rebuilding and for recovering— 

Vladislav: 189 athletes who were supposed to compete in the Olympic Games next year are dead. Can you imagine? It’s just unbearable. 

Claire: It’s just— 

Vladislav: It is unbearable, and it’s a disproportionate loss of the best people in society, to the point where you’re going to have to make comparisons to the killed intelligentsia in the ‘30s—Stalin famously shot all the writers and artists and the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the ‘30s in Kharkiv—

Claire: And I don’t want to be depressing, but you know Russia never recovered from that.

Vladislav: Well, Ukraine never recovered that. I'm talking about the Ukrainian intelligentsia that was killed, not the Russian intelligentsia. Clearly, they were also shot. But the Ukrainians, for nationalist reasons, to keep a national awakening and a national middle class and elite class from forming or congealing, the Soviets just shot a couple of thousand, like six or seven thousand, in Kharkiv alone, if I remember my history, not that I do, but whatever it was, it was thousands and thousands of writers, poets, translators, historians, academics, intellectuals, etcetera, etcetera. And so the Russians are doing that in slow motion now by killing off swathes of the fighting elite. 

Claire: Well, are we getting the weapons there too late to stop— 

Vladislav: Yeah, already it’s too late—a lot of these weapons should have been here in the summer of ‘22, clearly.

Claire: Why aren’t they? Do you have any insight into that? 

Vladislav: Because the Biden Administration is still playing this double game. They don’t want to go too fast. They don’t want to incite the Russians to— 

Claire: What are they thinking? 

Vladislav: What are they thinking? They’re thinking that if they go in too fast and give too many weapons, the Russians will become even crazier, and then then they'll use chemical weapons— 

Claire: Why do they think that? Do they have some intelligence reason for thinking that, or are they just operating on a gut feeling? 

Vladislav: It’s a doctrine. It’s a doctrine. 

Claire: It’s immoral. It’s utterly immoral.

Vladislav: I believe so, also, yes. 

Claire: I mean, to have both Afghanistan and that on his hands is not a good record for a president. 

Vladislav: We are living through the time of imperial decline, my dear Claire. 

Claire: What can ordinary people do to get it through the Biden Administration’s heads that this is not a joke, they’ve got to get their fingers out of their—

Vladislav: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I’ve been away from America for so long that I don’t really know what it is that we can do, or we can counsel ordinary people to do. I really don’t know. I'm sorry to say I just don’t have any idea of what would do anything. I mean, this is the one thing on which there is a consensus in America, which is a very divided and polarized place of course—

Claire: Well, no, there isn’t consensus about it. I mean, the Republicans are rapidly becoming disenchanted, largely thanks to Tucker Carlson, who’s been just an incredibly effective propagandist. 

Vladislav: Is it really Tucker? Is it really just Tucker Carlson? 

Claire: I think it is. 

Vladislav: It’s just—? 

Claire: I think it is. Tucker Carlson, and there’s, you know, a few other prominent figures who reinforce it. But I think Tucker Carlson is having a very disproportionate impact, and you can track his influence. Support for Ukraine was up at like 80 percent among the GOP six months ago. But now it’s down to 50 percent, or 45 percent, and it’s really, really closely tied to Fox News. 

Vladislav: Look, I don’t know. I’m not in America. I haven’t really looked into it. I know that he’s a malign influence. I do. I wouldn’t put an entire policy shift on his on his doorstep. I just don’t have the information to do that, perhaps that’s— 

Claire: Well there’s a reason that Ron DeSantis revealed his big Ukraine policy to Tucker Carlson. 

Vladislav: Yeah, I’m not gonna be—I flirted with the idea of voting for Ron DeSantis. I won’t be doing that now. 

Claire: Yeah.

Vladislav: I am an American citizen. I briefly thought about voting for Ron DeSantis. You know, I’m not a particularly partisan guy. I’m not a member of any political party. I don’t even believe in the two-party system. I don’t like that. And I vote for policy over personalities, over party loyalty. I have particular policies that I care about. At this point, I’m a single issue voter, and that issue is—

Claire: Yeah, me too. Me too. It makes me sick to my stomach. I almost can’t think of it because it’s so distressing to think of the real odds that Trump or DeSantis will be the president and will allow not only Ukraine, but I think Europe, to fall. 

Vladislav: I do believe that De Santis is just in it to win it, he’s just a cynical politician who is careening and cavorting and aligning his policies as to what he thinks he needs to get through a primary. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is just cynical. I can work with cynical. That’s fine. 

Claire: Yeah, except that he—his policies reflect his cynical impulses. I mean, this is the guy who actually banned private companies from having mask and vaccine mandates—on private property, right? I mean, he’s willing to get his own supporters killed if he thinks it’s politically advantageous. He’s not someone who says something immoral and then does the right thing. 

Vladislav: But he’s executing the policy of his voters—that’s what a politician should be doing, essentially, right? I mean, he represents his voters. 

Claire: No. Politicians lead. A politician should lead his voters. He shouldn’t follow them, especially when his voters are dead wrong. 

Vladislav: Well, you know, he wouldn’t be in power if he was continuously misreading his voters’ intentions and desires. I mean, you know, this is not a question that political scientists and you and me are going to settle tonight, here in Paris, in the Marais. But you know—whatever. Yeah, I agree. 

Claire: So the point is, it makes me really ill to think that Biden might be the best chance we have—and he’s not good enough. 

Vladislav: Correct. Yeah. I mean, I’ll probably have to calibrate to voting for Biden—but this isn't about me. This is about Ukrainians. It does seem to be the case that the consensus that we had for the first year of this terrible, terrible war—this Blitzkrieg total war—is about to disintegrate. It does seem to be the case. 

Claire: Yeah. And if it disintegrates in the US, Europe is going to fall apart. 

Vladislav: It’s actually interestingly surprising that it lasted this long, isn’t it? 

Claire: It depends. I mean, from one point of view, I would find it unbelievable if there weren’t a consensus. I mean, Europe is really under threat. If you can’t get it together to recognize a mortal threat and protect yourself, you kind of have to wonder how these people managed to survive billions of years of evolution to get to this point in the first place. On the other hand, yes, it is surprising that Europe kept it together for this long and I don’t quite—

Vladislav: What Europe has kept together almost doesn’t matter. It’s the Americans who lead. Without American weapons and American wherewithal and American attention and Americans— 

Claire: —telling people what to do. 

Vladislav: Right, correct. I mean it’s just not going to last without America in the game. 

Claire: Yeah, right. I’m just worried that America is is losing focus. Losing focus, and that Americans don’t understand how important this is. They just don’t. 

Vladislav: I think they did, actually. I’m not sure if that’s the case, or maybe it was the shock of how brazen this was, that we had that political consensus in the country for as long as we had it, for about the first year of the war. And things really are falling apart now because the shock has worn off and and people don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to understand why this is important. Maybe that’s the case. But maybe it’s also the case that American political elites, including Biden, are not making the case—

Claire: Biden is not making the case. 

Vladislav: Maybe it’s the—

Claire: —He has not given one major—I mean, FDR would have been talking to the American people every weekend, in a fireside chat. Biden is not making the case, and I don’t know—is it because he recognizes the limits of his abilities as a speaker, or because he doesn’t see the importance of doing that? 

Vladislav: Yeah, that’s a great question. I haven’t thought about why he isn’t doing it. Maybe it’s just that they don’t want to antagonize the other side—but no one has made, on the Democratic elite side, a forceful case for why we should continue supporting Ukraine—

Claire: Yeah—

Vladislav: Like, an hour-long speech.

Claire: Biden can’t choke it out. But at least Pete Buttigieg—he’s the only member of the administration who’s capable of giving a speech where he doesn’t stumble over his own tongue—

Vladislav: But you know, there are others. People like Charles Schumer. Senator Schumer, who was very nice to me when I was his intern, at 17, he was great. I knew him very well when I was 17 years old, which is already twenty years ago, when he was a young senator. 

Claire: Would he remember you well enough that you could call him up and ask him what’s going on? 

Vladislav: I mean—I could get through using my my sinecure, family connections, and my, like, quasi-importance in the world if we want to call it that. Yeah, I could— 

Claire: I’d just like to know whether, in Washington, they appreciate that they’re running out of time. There’s no reason for these weapons to be held up. They need to be there yesterday. 

Vladislav: They need to be there, not yesterday, but last summer, actually. Not yesterday, but six to eight months ago. Yeah, it would have made a real point. And the Ukrainians could have knocked the Russians out in the war if we’d just prepared them—the Biden Administration has as much as the Trump Administration to answer for. The Biden Administration has a lot to answer for, for not preparing the Ukrainians enough when they knew it was going to happen, right? They were right. History has proven them correct about the intelligence. But if that was the case, why didn’t they spend six months feverishly arming the Ukrainians, because you know—whatever. Yeah, we need the weapons right now, and we need someone very important on the Democratic, and the Republican, side to make a— 

Claire: —make the point that Ukraine could lose, which would mean Ukraine would be obliterated as a political entity, forever. There’d be a genocide, another one, in the heart of Europe, and it wouldn’t stop there. 

Vladislav: It wouldn’t stop there, and it would collapse, it would collapse all sorts of stuff in Europe. It would be incredibly bad for Europe. 

Claire: It would be incredibly bad. It would be, probably, a mortal blow to the West and to the project of liberal democracy.

Vladislav: Yeah, I mean we’re really at the point where the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians are on one side of a a war against the entire liberal democratic world order and—

Claire: —and either they’re pushed back here or they’re not going to be pushed back. 

Vladislav: I don’t know. I don’t know why we don’t—why we don’t stand up and and have a world-historical process of rearming, and just giving everything—

Claire: I don’t either. I don’t understand why Europe isn’t frantically rearming. I don’t—

Vladislav: Well, they’re trying. They’re trying. I mean, they spent so many decades disarming that even trying to rearm, it still takes years to reestablish a military industrial complex, plants, and all that. I mean, the Americans spent decades disarming, also—it’s going to take until 2024 or 25 just to produce the amount of shells every six months that Ukraine is eating up in a month and half, right? We’re buying that stuff up from the South Koreans, or scouring the world looking for it, but it’s too little, too late.

Claire: Who’s the “we” here? You mean the United States? Or Ukraine?

Vladislav: Well, I certainly am. I don’t know what other people are doing. A lot of people are looking around Africa, South America, Asia—looking to buy anything that’s available. The Americans are going around emptying bases in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, getting as much out as they can, off the shelves in the warehouses, to Ukraine. They’re trying to figure out how much they can give up of their supplies in America, without running low for a conventional war that they might have to fight on the Korean Peninsula or potentially Taiwan. They are ramping up production, but too slowly, and it’s just not possible. And they’re also trying to figure out how to keep the Russians from getting that stuff. And they’ve also been doing a lot of very creative stuff, like trying to figure out if they can give over stuff that they capture from terrorist regimes and from the Iranians shipping them to—

Claire: I saw that. That I saw it doesn’t mean listeners have heard about it—

Vladislav: Why don’t you tell the listeners—

Claire: They’ve seized stuff in international waters. They’ve sanctions-busted stuff going to Iran and they’re giving it to Ukraine.

Vladislav: Well, they’re trying to give it to Ukraine. It’s actually very difficult from a legal standpoint to do it. They actually have to reclassify it. There’s all sorts of arms control stuff. We can’t actually take stuff from terrorists and just give it to our friends, or use it.

Claire: Why not? 

Vladislav: It’s very, very, very complicated.

Claire: One thing we meant to talk about is the long shadow of the Iraq War. 

Vladislav: It’s been twenty years. My Ukrainian, my French-Ukrainian wife just asked me about this. She’s like, “So what’s the point about Iraq and and Ukraine? I really don’t understand.” And my wife said this as a Ukrainian citizen, a patriot. So—right. 

Claire: I think you have to go back to the eerie parallels to the America First movement in the wake of the First World War, which was widely seen in the United States as a complete waste—many very similar conspiracy theories about how we had entered the war thanks to the war profiteers, and it was all based on a lie, and a general anti-war sentiment that was based in a sense of disillusionment, after the First World War, because it hadn’t lived up to the promises that people had been being given about what would happen—you know, a war to end all wars, a war for democracy. And then, when the real threat came in the form— 

Vladislav: —Yeah, right. 

Claire: —of Hitler, Americans couldn’t recognize it. They thought, “This is just another passel of lies, like the ones we were fed the last time.”

Vladislav: Yeah, and they were fed a passel of lies twenty years ago in Iraq— 

Claire: Well, no, I don’t think they were. I think that’s one of the conspiracy theories, that we were fed a passel of lies. We were fed a passel of mistakes. But I think they were honest mistakes. 

Vladislav: I’m friends with Judy Miller. I'll call her up and ask her what she and others say. I mean, there are a lot of really self-exculpating essays being published this week by people who should never be heard from in polite society ever again. You know? I’m not of the opinion that American elites made more mistakes than they were malicious. They had some really, really, really bad ideas, also. It wasn’t just the mistakes. It was bad policy coupled with utopian fantasies and American psychosis of a kind that they go in for— 

Claire: In the wake of September 11th, yeah. 

Vladislav: Well, you know, look, after September 11th—I mean, I was in New York as a 16-year-old kid during September 11th. I remember it very well. Obviously, something needed to be blown up after that. No self-respecting country in the entire world, with nuclear missiles and a large army, would not blow something up after that. No government in the world could survive without some sort of police action after September 11th, right? Something did need to get blown up. That or someone needed to be overthrown, or someone needed to be killed, or whatever. It was the kind of thing that had to be responded to in order to keep one’s position in the world and keep one’s own people from going crazy, right? That’s a very serious attack on America, on the Pentagon, on New York City. I remember it very well as a kid growing up in New York as a teenager. The problem was that they fell under the delusion—by then, the neoconservatives, the Republican Party, whatever—that they could reformat an entire civilization, which they didn’t quite understand, in the middle of a desert. 

Claire: Which they didn’t understand it at all.

Vladislav: Well, that was, yeah, that was that was a euphemism. That’s a euphemism. 

Claire: But I mean, people might be young enough to not remember this. I should stress that Saddam Hussein was considered a very big problem, as indeed he was, well before September 11th. I mean, I was teaching the problem of Saddam Hussein in my Introduction to Middle East Politics class well before September 11th. It wasn’t that this suddenly was invented out of whole cloth. 

Vladislav: No, this is real. This is all real enough. But the the fact that you have real geopolitical issues that you need to deal with doesn’t also mean that you need to go in for psychotic, apocalyptic fantasias of your belief in your own capacity to restructure a civilization far away, that you do not understand, in your own image. 

Claire: But I think you’re exaggerating what happened. I mean, it went very badly because we made some specific mistakes. If we hadn’t made those mistakes, we might be talking about this very differently, but—

Vladislav: I don’t. I think it was overdetermined, actually. 

Claire: No, I don’t think it was. See, that’s where we really disagree. I don’t think was overdetermined. I think it was very much contingent. It could have gone differently. 

Vladislav: It could—look, things turned out about as about as bad as they as they could have. I agree that things could have turned out slightly better. I mean, we’re gonna play hypotheticals—what if we had allowed the Ba’ath party to stay intact? What if we kept the army together? What if we kept the civil service together? What if we partition the country? 

Claire: What if we hadn’t tried to do it with the light mobile force, what if we if we had provided security in the country—the looting—if we did all of these things …

Vladislav: Right, exactly. 

Claire: I mean, these were unforgivable mistakes. Each of them, because they reflected total unseriousness. If you’re going to invade a country—especially, if you’re going to invade a country in a way that the entire world finds finds deeply suspicious—you better get it right. 

Vladislav: Correct. So, but even the 18-year-old me who was marching against it, exactly twenty years ago, did not believe that that they were capable of doing it correctly. I mean, I probably wasn’t quite articulate enough to express it in the ways that I would now, at the time, even though I think I was fairly precocious politically. But it didn’t seem like they were capable of doing it. And the arguments of the critics who were saying that we didn’t have the capacity to do it—although we had all the capacity in the world to win the war and to overthrow the regime—those were very convincing arguments at the time, and— 

Claire: There were convincing arguments on both sides. I mean, people forget them now. There were also very convincing arguments to the effect that it was highly likely that he had reconstituted his weapons program. And we were shocked that he hadn’t. Remember in the first Gulf War, we discovered he had, and we’d missed it. 

Vladislav: And this is something— 

Claire: That he’d already tried to swallow up Kuwait. So I think there was—in retrospect, with hindsight, we know what happened. But at the time I do not think that it was a crazy thing to think, “Well, maybe this is the right thing to do,” and neither did, you know, everyone in Congress. Everyone voted for it except for Barbara Lee. 

Vladislav: Right, everyone except Barbara Lee. Yeah. I remember when I was 17 years old, I actually asked Senator Schumer about it. I had a conversation with Senator Schumer as a 17 year old, which in retrospect is completely wild. You know, the fact that Senator Schumer explained to me and some other interns what his thinking was twenty years ago, when I was a 17-year-old kid.

Claire: Why is that wild? You know what? Over the weekend we were talking about what it is that every American has in common. I think that’s absolutely the essence of American culture, that a senator would explain to these 17-year-old interns what he was thinking about this. Don’t you think? That’s something that Americans would not find strange.

Vladislav: Would the French—

Claire: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any other culture that’s as un-hierarchical as the US that way. 

Vladislav: I imagine—although my friends in the House of Lords actually don’t have interns or assistants, and they complain about it. They all complain that they don't have any help. Imagine a French senator. Could he have, theoretically, a bull session with his young interns? 

Claire: He would lecture them about it. “Alors, j’explique … ”

Vladislav: He wouldn’t listen to their concerns and have a conversation with them, right? 

Claire: No, he wouldn’t. He would lecture them. He would explain how the problem has three parts. And the first part has two parts, and— 

Vladislav: Right, and he’s going to solve the third part. Yeah, right. Yeah, that seems right. But that hypothetical French senator who is, of course, intellectually robust and thinks of himself as a real thinker, whether he is or not—could go either way—he would certainly lecture his young interns, but he probably wouldn’t listen to them, right? 

Claire: No, he wouldn’t listen to them. I mean, I think it really is—Americans are much less hierarchical. We really took that whole business about all men being created equal much more seriously than people grasp if they’ve never left America.

Vladislav: Yeah, it’s true, but yeah—I’ve spent a lot of time in lots of different places, certainly Ukrainian and Russian elites would not listen to their 18-year-old interns and and explain themselves to them. I mean, that’s completely wild. The United States senator, who was my senator when I was 17 years old, we asked him about it and he gave us a compelling explanation of what he was thinking. I don’t even remember exactly what he said, but he sat down and he gave us the arguments. And in retrospect, that’s kind of an amazing experience to have, right? 

Claire: It’s amazing in terms of the history of the world, and the rest of the world, but it is not unusual for America. 

Vladislav: Would that happen—I mean, you know, Senator Schumer is a Jewish intellectual. From New York. Who got 1600 on his SATs. And—

Claire: But I bet most of the senators are willing to talk like that with their interns. 

Vladislav: Back in the office, they’ll have a nice conversation, and then they’ll answer the questions?

Claire: Yeah. Because you’re inculcating democratic habits, and because Americans talk to each other like equals. 

Vladislav: Yeah, there’s no aristocracy. I mean—how do you even address the United States senator? Right?

Claire: Well, how do you, actually—did you call him “Senator?”

Vladislav: I didn’t call him “Chuck.” Because some of some of the stuff called him Chuck. 

Claire: Yeah, no, I wouldn’t. That would be inappropriate. 

Vladislav: But yeah, I, at 17, never called Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, “Chuck.” I just want to note for the record. 

Claire: Yeah, I think that’s appropriate. 

Vladislav: I think clearly so. Clearly so. Yeah, I mean, he was nice. I still think. very highly of him and I like him. 

Claire: If you can, get him to come on the podcast and explain what’s going with the speed of our weapon transfers to Ukraine, we can talk to him about why this is important, and why we’ve got to get on the stick. 

Vladislav: Of all the things I would ask Senator Schumer if I was to put in the effort—I mean, I could get access to him, if I put effort into it. Should I put the effort into it?

Claire: Yeah, absolutely. He needs to hear from his constituents that something’s going wrong. 

Vladislav: He needs to hear from his constituent, Claire Berlinski. His constituents in Paris. 

Claire: Well, you’re his constituent. My senator is in Virginia. Senators.

Vladislav: Oh, you’re from Virginia?

Claire: The last place you voted, if you’re absentee voting. And that’s where I last voted. 

Vladislav: OK, well, he’s certainly my senator. I think of him as my senator. He was very nice to me, anyways. Let’s return to Ukraine. Right now, we’ve gotten off topic a little bit. 

Claire: So the [Iraq] war has left such a profound disillusionment, such a sense of American incompetence, reinforced by Afghanistan, such a sense that no matter what we touch, it turns to s**t, that we’re using that as an excuse for failing in our responsibilities. 

Vladislav: Yeah, this is the problem with crying wolf. Cause no one believes you when you actually do the right thing later on—

Claire: When there really is an emergency of this nature. 

Vladislav: When there really is an emergency, no one will believe you. That’s the problem with crying wolf. Don’t do it, kids. Don’t cry wolf. No one will believe you. Credibility is a real thing, and it is a thing that you can taste and you can you can smell and touch with your fingers, almost. It’s almost a thing that surrounds us, envelops us like a fog. Credibility is real and it’s not to be taken for granted.

Claire: Yeah, I’m just thinking about that. I’m thinking that’s true, but also it’s a very convenient excuse for people who are basically trying to indulge the desire to be cowardly and to not get involved in in something that could demand something of them. 

Vladislav: Americans aren’t cowardly. Of their many negative character traits, that’s not one at all. Americans are strong. They’re vibrant. They’re virtuous. They’re full of vigor, vim and vigor. All these words that start with letter V: virtue, vulgarity, vim, vigor. 

Claire: Well, how do you explain Tucker Carlson trying to persuade Americans to sour on supporting Ukraine? I think it’s pure cowardice. 

Vladislav: I don’t think it’s cowardice. I think he has a deep set of psychological grievances that have to do with his own relationships with people in American politics. I think he is deeply enveloped in his own grievances and he’s taking positions, and being a proud man—which I do believe that he is, I believe that he’s a proud man—he feels left out, or whatever. 

Claire: He has said repeatedly that he feels profound guilt for having supported the Iraq war and— 

Vladislav: Well, that’s honest. That’s honest. No one else has said this. The American political leaders never had that conversation. People who were completely responsible for the worst kinds of miscalculations are writing, this week, essays everywhere saying they underestimated how screwed up Saddam Hussein left Iraq, and how screwed up civil society was. 

Claire: Who are you thinking of, because I didn’t see those essays. Which ones are you thinking of? 

Vladislav: Let me—

Claire: I’m including a selection for our reading list today and I didn’t see that. 

Vladislav: You didn’t see them? They’re everywhere. Let me look for them. 

[Vladislav searches.]

Claire: Send them to me afterwards, because people aren’t going to be real patient as you’re searching, but—

Vladislav: Yeah, OK. I've seen a lot of them. There are a lot of self-exculpating op-eds, and we should be much less tolerant of these people. 

Claire: And I’m seeing a lot of, “Iraq twenty years later,” how terrible it was and what a mistake it was, and—

Vladislav: There’s a lot of that. 

Claire: I’m seeing that being used as an excuse to do the wrong thing here— 

Vladislav: There’s a lot of that. 

Claire: —which is completely self-indulgent. 

Vladislav: It is completely self-indulgent, but it was a a bipartisan case. And you know, Robert Kaplan just wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal. I just looked it up. He says, “I hadn’t sufficiently understood that Saddam’s absolute rule had destroyed every vestige of civil society in Iraq.” Well, you know. Sorry. That conversation never took place in America about what went wrong and all the many things that went wrong over the last twenty years—the deindustrialization of a country, two lost two wars, the financial bailout—

Claire: What do you mean the conversation hasn’t taken place? It’s all we talk about. 

Vladislav: Who? Look, who was talking about this eight years ago, five years ago? Granted in 2008, large swaths of the American population voted for Barack Obama, which you could say was a huge response to what what was going on, and and then he—

Claire: But what kind of conversation do you think is “a national conversation?” If you have newspaper articles about it, if you have people talking about it, is that not a national conversation? 

Vladislav: We’re having it now, but like it’s not like anyone in the Bush administration was pushed out of public life or publicly pilloried in the way that [the politicians associated with] Vietnam were publicly pilloried. I just don’t think the society really kind of dealt with it, with the trauma. 

Claire: I kind of understand what you mean, because I just saw opinion polling that suggests fewer than 4 percent of Americans even think about the Iraq war on a regular basis. 

Vladislav: It’s ancient history. It is ancient history. 

Claire: Which is peculiar. Only the United States do things pass out of memory as quickly as that. 

Vladislav: Look, in in Europe when you say, “That’s history,” what you mean is “That’s important.” And in America, when you say, “That’s history, it’s ancient history,” what you mean is that’s of no importance whatsoever to things now. Is that right? 

Claire: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s kind of the difference between the New World and the Old World. But I don’t know whether the fact that we don’t think about it or talk about it means that we’re not processing it at all, or that we really just don’t think about it. 

Vladislav: There’s—no, no, we’re definitely processing the trauma as a society and the way that things really went bad. I think— 

Claire: Well, we’re processing it, perhaps we’re displacing it onto Ukraine, which is a sign of a repressed memory that’s causing you harm because it’s not being dealt with consciously. 

Vladislav: Yeah, sure. That’s right. Yeah, that’s basic psychoanalysis. I mean, look, we, as a country, are acting out.

Claire: Yes, exactly. 

Vladislav: Things have gone really bad. Things got really bad and I think large swaths of the population are really unhappy. I think if you asked lots of people, “Do you think the country is on the right on the right path, have American political leaders”—

Claire: Oh, I think no one would say yes. 

Vladislav: Well, American political elites, I actually I do meet people who yell at me, say who say, “Well, in every age things go wrong. This is all your Trumpian worldview. You’re kind of adjacent to Trumpism when you say that we and my generation failed. In every generation, some things are bad and some things are good—”

Claire: No, I think it’s a uniquely anxious age. For some reasons that are not the fault of policymakers, but some that are. 

Vladislav: I think that American political elites got a lot very badly wrong. And in my observation of them, in my dealings with them in in DC, they are, or seem to be, of noticeably poorer in quality than the generation 25, 30 years ago. 

Claire: That’s absolutely manifest.

Vladislav: Am I wrong?

Claire: No, it’s clear as daylight. I can document it. I can show you the difference.

Vladislav: I mean, I wasn’t there 25-30 years ago, but these people seem to be extraordinarily mediocre compared to the people who ran the institutions 30 years ago. 

Claire: Well contrast—have you seen the speech, for example, I linked it a few weeks ago, of JFK speaking during the Cuban Missile crisis? Compare that speech to anything Joe Biden says, but especially to what he’s said about Ukraine, which is actually nothing. 

Vladislav: Look at the last three American presidents. Granted, Barack Obama is seen as a very good president, still, by large swaths. 

Claire: Yeah, but he was actually catastrophic. And one of the problems is that people don’t recognize this. 

Vladislav: I know, I know. 

Claire: So again—they’re bifurcating. They’re not thinking about this problem correctly, because part of the problem is trying to understand why we came up with so many bad presidents in a row, including Obama. And if you exempt Obama from it, you don’t see that part of the reason that Iraq was a catastrophe was that Obama’s decision making was as bad as Bush’s. 

Vladislav: Yeah. He was extremely bad at foreign policy. I mean, whether you like his domestic policy or not, it seems to me obvious that he was extraordinarily bad, as a president, on foreign policy, and he was an isolationist. He wanted it quietly, but his instincts and Trump’s instincts were were completely aligned. As are Biden’s. The third. Yeah. 

Claire: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And because we’re so polarized, we aren’t asking the right questions about why our leadership is so lousy. 

Vladislav: Yeah. This is the correct mode of direction that we should be going in, not talking about whether the poor redneck hick yahoo yokels, God bless them, in flyover country who still believe in Jesus, and for their sin of still believing in Jesus and living traditional lives, are voting for horrible people. You know, that’s a very silly worldview.

Claire: Well, no one, I don’t think, seriously cares whether they believe in Jesus. They do care whether whether they elect Trump again, because Trump is a disaster for the American experiment. 

Vladislav: I mean, I see that whole thing as acting out. I see voting for Donald Trump as no different from a teenager screaming at a psychotherapist in the middle of the session. That’s acting out.

Claire: Yeah, but the psychotherapist doesn’t have nuclear weapons. 

Vladislav: Maybe yours doesn’t. Do you need a recommendation? I have a guy who has a who has his own tactical nuclear weapons. But you know, I just don’t see the looking down on normie American—for the sins of a self-indulgent and weak and cowardly and oligarchic, self-dealing, political elite—to be necessary. I just don’t. I just don’t think it’s a healthy way of of dealing with reality. You know? Donald Trump is many things, but he’s not the progenitor of all these problems. He’s just a very canny political animal and an entrepreneur who saw that you could cobble together a coalition of aggrieved people—correctly and legitimately aggrieved people—to take power. I mean, I’ve never voted for him in my entire life. But you know, this isn’t about Donald Trump. This is about the fact that this country has been radically, radically, really badly run. For a very long time. 

Claire: I’m not sure I think it’s that it’s been really badly run. I think it’s been badly run because we have lost the civic virtue to put people who could run things better in those offices. 

Vladislav: It’s so funny you say that, because I was reading a Maggie Thatcher biography today on the way to to the office, and this very bright writer who wrote this, this lady by the name of—do you know her, Claire Berlinski?—she writes— 

Claire: I’ve heard of her. Is it any good? The book?

Vladislav: Yeah, it’s great. Well, I only read the first two chapters on the way to work, but she writes that they had lost greatness because they had lost the virtues of greatness. They’ve lost their greatness, the Brits, because they’ve given up on their good virtues. So first you give up on your virtues and then you lose your greatness, not the other way around, right? So what is it that we can do, so to speak, to make America great again?

Claire: Stop electing a******s.

Vladislav: We should stop electing a******s, but maybe the a******s are us. 

Claire: And pay attention to what’s going on in the world, and stop getting— 

Vladislav: Maybe the a******s are us, Claire. 

Claire: Well, of course they are. They’re our representatives. That’s the point. It’s a representative democracy.

Vladislav: Clearly I don’t, by the way, agree with the virtuous and prim and very kind of throwback-to-the-’50s Senator Romney when he says the congressman from Long Island, who’s a con man, Santos, doesn’t deserve to be in in Congress. I think that’s very unkind and nasty and unrepresentative of Senator Romney. He represents his constituents. Maybe his constituents are the problem, not this con man, right? The people deserve it good and hard, a great American said. Right? Who said it?

Claire: Wasn’t it Mencken? 

Vladislav: It was Mencken. Mencken did say that, yeah. The people deserve what they deserve, and they deserve it good and hard. So if these are our leaders, maybe the problem is us. 

Claire: Yeah, the problem is us. That’s just true. 

Vladislav: Is it? 

Claire: I mean, these people are not getting into those positions by accident. We’re putting them there, over and over.

Vladislav: We’ve gone very far from where we were going to begin this discussion. What is the source of our oligarchic decay, of our democratic deficit, of our lack of virtue, of our decline in qualities and qualia. What is what is the source of it, Claire? 

Claire: It’s at this point where my grandfather would have said, grumpily: “It’s kids these days taking that L-S-B.” 

Vladislav: The kids these days—

Claire: Taking L-S-B. 

Vladislav: I do think about the kids these days. All the time. Is it their fault, the kids these days? Are they really more narcissistic than I was at their age? I don’t know. 

Claire: Yes, they are. Social media has been socially revolutionary. And it’s not for the good. 

Vladislav: So things really are much worse?

Claire: Yeah, they really are. And now, we’ve just seen the beginning with AI. What’s going to come next is going to blow our minds. 

Vladislav: Is it going to be bad?

Claire: I don’t know if it’s going to be bad, but it’s definitely gonna be different. 

Vladislav: So is the old world—

Claire: —yeah. You are alive to see maybe like the biggest revolution in human history since—what? Well, certainly, since the advent of the nuclear weapon, and probably since the printing press. I mean, it’s just it’s going to change everything. And no one knows how, yet, but we know it’s going to change everything. 

Vladislav: And we should probably prepare for it being worse than things were.  

Claire: Well—I’m cautiously optimistic. I find it exhilarating. I mean, I think there’s a little bit of the revolutionary in me. I think things do need to change and this is sure going to change things. 

Vladislav: Things should change, but they should also stay the same, no? 

Claire: Yeah, there’s a little bit of the conservative in me, too. So I don’t know. I’m hopeful because it’s better to be hopeful than despairing. 

Vladislav: I don’t. I misspent my twenties reading Adorno and all these Frankfurt school people. Why did I do that? Was it fashionable when I was growing up in the early aughts? 

Claire: I think it was, or something like that. 

Vladislav: I think it was. Why did I spend time reading Löwenthal, and Frankfurt School stuff. Why did I spend time on Horkheimer, and Adorno. Did it make me smarter? I mean, I read the academic stuff, the third-rate Adorno explainers published now—it doesn’t make them any smarter. They’re just regurgitating Germanic nonsense. And it it it did make me kind of, you know, misanthropic. Maybe I already was misanthropic, which is why instead of reading better books, I was reading Horkheimer and Adorno. I mean, I was reading a lot of stuff at that age. Yeah, I read the wrong books, Claire. 

Claire: Yeah, I think you did. Well, we'll sort you out. Look, we should wind this up. Remember that people will have listened to this because they wanted to hear what’s going on in Ukraine, so I wonder if you have any other thoughts you want to share with them—

Vladislav: Oh, yeah. OK, look, let’s get back to Ukraine, not to our grumpy old conversation in the Marais—these Jewish intellectuals in the Marais today, things aren’t what they used to be. Senator Schumer, twenty years ago, he told me—yeah, yeah. We’re annoying, Claire, no doubt. But Ukraine is still not a lost cause. It’s still very much to be determined who’s going to win. And I have to tell you: The Russians can still pull this out. 

Claire: Yeah, I know. 

Vladislav: You know that, right? 

Claire: Right, yes. 

Vladislav: They could still pull this out. They could. They could still have a traditional victory. They could still break the back of the of the Ukrainian armed forces. 

Claire: Maybe we should have started by saying that. In case anyone’s unaware of it. 

Vladislav: I have spent the last weeks talking to people in Ukraine and to people in London and to policymakers everywhere, and they all asked each other the same questions, as as if anyone knows the answer. The conclusion I came to is this—being a betting man. These are the numbers. We have a 10 percent chance, on the spectrum, of a substantive Ukrainian victory, of a major Russian collapse. We have a 60 percent chance, in the middle of the spectrum, of a stalemate—which is the most likely possible outcome. Of the Ukrainian counteroffensive sputtering to a halt, Russians reconstituting the gaps in their lines, holding some territory, gaining Bakhmut, driving the Ukrainians out of certain positions in the Donbas, and there being just a kind of natural stalemate. 1917 on the Eastern Front. 1916, 1917—

Claire: Or the Iran-Iraq War.

Vladislav: You have a 15 percent chance of of a minor Russian victory, and you have a 15 percent chance of a major Russian victory. That’s how I rate the odds. 

Claire: We’re running a piece today saying that this is formally not calculable. But yeah, I agree with you. 

Vladislav: It is not formally calculable. There’s so many different criteria that go into into running the algorithm on who’s gonna win. It’s just really difficult. You have to multiply foreign support by morale by demographic numbers by troop numbers by artillery by the number of artillery shells fired by the—you know, just so many different things that you have to plug into an algorithm in order to get the correct number of what’s going to happen right? And it really is attritional warfare, where you have to multiply humans times time, and factor in the fact that the that the Russian economy is not collapsing and the Ukrainian economy is collapsing, and it’s on life support from Western donors. You have to factor in the fact that the Ukrainians might also run out of shells before the Russians run out of humans. You have to factor in the the fact that Putin’s gamble, which six months ago looked ridiculous—that he could outwait the West—now seems to be much, much— 

Claire: And he’s been heartened by the kind of discourse we’ve heard recently. I mean— 

Vladislav: Of course. He would double down. Of course he would double down because he—

Claire: And I wish people understood that. I wish Ron DeSantis understood that he is doing real harm to our interests by talking that way. 

Vladislav: Well, yeah, that’s right. I mean, Putin’s not going to stop until the costs of not stopping are higher than the cost of stopping. And even if he does stop, it’s easier just to let it simmer rather than declare—why would he declare that he’s lost? He’s never going to do that, right?

Claire: Exactly. Exactly. 

Vladislav: So he could keep this going on simmer for a very long time. I saw Kofman, who’s very bright, Michael Kofman, the designated driver of Ukraine war pontificating—he has excellent access to information, even though I think he did make some mistakes early early on, in overestimating the Russian army—I saw him in DC a couple of weeks ago. We had a nice breakfast and he basically told me that, yeah, we’re going to give the Ukrainians until the summer to see how far they can go and after that, if things are going badly, we’ll sue for peace quietly—by “we,” I mean the West—although the Russians are not interested in talks whatsoever at this point, they’re doubling and tripling down. And in the long term, he told me, wars that last more than one year—interstate wars between evenly or almost-evenly matched military powers that have large industrial war machines that can mobilize, and large populations—typically, those wars that last more than one year, they last more than three years. So Iraq-Iran, 1980 to 1988 is the worst-case scenario. 

Claire: Yeah. 

Vladislav: By which point Ukraine will be devastated, will spend fifty to a hundred years rebuilding, and we’re not going to have what we started with anyway. Is that a very depressing note to end on? 

Claire: It is depressing, but it’s also the truth and people need to hear it. People need to hear it that if we don’t get them the weapons they need soon, like, really soon—and all of them—we’re going to have another massive defeat on our hands. 

Vladislav: A massive defeat, yeah. 

Claire: It will be even more dishonorable than Iraq and Afghanistan, and the consequences will be so much worse. 

Vladislav: Look, whenever Ukrainians and Ukrainian MPs who pass through Paris have a night off, they they take me out to dinner. I had dinner with three different Ukrainian MPs in Paris over the last ten days, from three different parties, interestingly enough. Whenever they come to Paris for a meeting, a PACE meeting, or a meeting at the French Parliament, or Ukrainian-French Parliamentary Assembly or whatever, they take me out to dinner. And we exchange gossip and information, and it’s always very nice. And I always ask them, basically, the same set of questions, and whichever party they’re in, when they’re drunk and and their hair is down, they all give me the same answers. And I always ask them how many people are there in Ukraine. And they typically tell me, off the record, it’s now between 25 and 30 million—well, no one really has statistics, right? And I always ask them, can a society survive so many of its young people being killed? And they’ll tell me, you know, “We don’t have a manpower lack yet, but everyone who wanted to go fight is already on the front lines.” You know, you don’t have reserves of men that are excited to fight in Ukraine who are not already on the front lines. There’s already conscription-dodging going on, you know. Young men that I meet, Ukrainian young men, tell me, “I just got my—” I forgot the the word—call-up orders?

Claire: Mobilization orders.

Vladislav: Yeah. “My mobilization orders in the mail.” And I always tell them like, “I can’t tell you what to do.” But you know, they don’t want to go. The guys who want to go, they’re already up at the front, right? So at a certain point, Ukraine will have a manpower crunch. It no longer has a manpower advantage over the Russian army. So again, all very depressing. Sorry to leave you with this. 

Claire: We need to do more to get people in the West to understand this. 

Vladislav: What can I do? I write articles, I talk, I go on TV. 

Claire: Yeah, I know, but I’m just trying to think. 

Vladislav: I do what I can. Claire, tell me, what more can I do? me.

Claire: I don’t know. I’m thinking. I’m thinking. 

Vladislav: Have your have your listeners call in and tell me what else I can do. Whatever they tell me to do. I will do. 

Claire: Yeah, me too. 

Vladislav: If I have to run through the straight streets naked, I will do it. 

Claire: Let’s get Schumer on the podcast. 

Vladislav: I think Senator Schumer has better things to do. 

Claire: I don’t.

Vladislav: Really?

Claire: I don’t. I mean, he’s someone who’s got considerable amount of power and influence in Washington, and he needs to hear this. 

Vladislav: From me?

Claire: From both of us. 

Vladislav: I think he has, probably, if he wants it, he has good access to information. 

Claire: Yeah, but he’s not hearing it. Because this would be the only thing he talked about if he understood it. 

Vladislav: OK, Claire, I’m going to go and I’m going to call in all my favors and all my accumulated capital and try to get a conversation going with Senator Schumer. 

Claire: All right. Sounds good. Thank you, Vlad.

Vladislav: OK. Thank you, my dear. Thank you, my good neighbor. 

Claire: Bye.

I’m so sorry: I meant to post this last night, but fell asleep while writing the show notes. (I don’t know why everyone goes on about the importance of not looking at screens before bedtime: I fall asleep in front of mine all the time.)

Here’s the article Dan wrote for The Forward:

There was no sign that the US understands what it will actually take to bring Hamas to heel.

Vance, Witkoff and Kushner’s rhetoric was managerial, not martial. It conveyed commitment without urgency. The measured tones implicit in the warnings that “time” and “hard work” are needed betrayed a deeper failure to grasp what the moment demands. Because words will not disarm Hamas—the single step most necessary to any effort to create a lasting peace.

Now is not the moment for carefully explaining how complex disarmament would be. It’s the moment for applying all possible pressure to get that disarmament done. If this does not occur soon, President Donald Trump’s peace plan will not just fall apart but become a joke. The best-case scenario would be the embarrassment of a prematurely declared victory. The worst would be an echo of Neville Chamberlain proclaiming “peace in our time” amid the failed effort to appease Hitler in the run-up to World War II.

If the US is serious about ending this war on terms that deny Hamas any path back to power, it must respond to Hamas by replacing rhetoric with leverage. What is needed now is not patience but a dramatic and public escalation of pressure—a demonstration that Washington is prepared to wield the world’s biggest baseball bat until Hamas yields.

The US should start by declaring, publicly and unequivocally, that no reconstruction money or aid will enter Gaza while any part of it remains under Hamas control. That is the red line, and it must be enforced, not implied. It’s essential to take every step possible to show Hamas that the material and political costs of them keeping their guns substantially outweigh any benefits. …

And for more about Hungary’s economic, demographic, and political decline, consult the most recent edition of GLOBAL EYES. (That link will take you to the right section.) Here’s the key part, but there’s more; I recommend the whole article, which is by Attila Juhász and Bulcsú Hunyadi. (You’ll notice I didn’t even try to pronounce their names in the podcast. I know my limits.) They published this article on VSquare—the name comes from “V4,” for Visegrád Four—which was founded with a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy:

Today, the network consists of the top non-profit investigative journalism centers in the region: Fundacja Reporterow and its Polish-language outlet Frontstory.pl; Investigace.cz from the Czech Republic; Átlátszó.hu and Direkt36.hu from Hungary; and The Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak from Slovakia. In 2022, VSquare set up its core team and extended into collaboration with the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and Belarus. Our aim is to be Central Europe’s leading English language investigative platform.

I hope they survive the death of the NED, because they’re outstanding. They’re also one of the few places left where you can read truly independent reporting about Hungary. In any case, Attila Juhász and Bulcsú Hunyadi write:

Viktor Orbán is facing political challenges the likes of which he has not seen in 20 years. His system is cracking on the levels that matter most: stability, economic performance, and governance. Consequently, the “Orbán model,” considered successful in recent years, is looking less appealing around the world. The 2026 parliamentary elections will have implications beyond Hungary. National leaders with similar political systems will likely be watching closely to see if Orbán, who has established a unique information autocracy within the European Union, will remain in power.

… In recent years, the Orbán regime has devoted major public resources to promoting its political system as an exportable model and boosting its global influence. … [T]hese efforts have been successful from the regime’s perspective: Viktor Orbán has attracted far more attention than Hungary’s international weight would suggest, becoming the standard-bearer of illiberalism and a star of the global populist and far-right movement. … While this playbook has done little to advance Hungary as a country, it has worked from the regime’s perspective. The strategic goal of exporting illiberalism is to secure the long-term survival of Orbán’s political system by shaping a foreign policy environment favorable to it. With the backing of like-minded populist forces, the regime seeks an “illiberal hegemonic shift”—one in which it no longer faces criticism or sanctions for dismantling the rule of law or for systemic corruption.

… Many pillars of the Orbán model have crumbled. The Hungarian economy has struggled for years, eroding the system’s stability. A cost-of-living crisis—driven by the EU’s highest inflation—has fueled voter frustration. Over the past year and a half, the opposition party TISZA (short for Respect and Freedom—and also the name of a river in Hungary) has emerged as a credible political alternative, channeling public discontent. Hungary’s political system still falls far short of fair competition, so next year’s election remains highly unpredictable. Yet those in power are clearly uneasy about the regime’s future.

… Real wages began falling in late 2022, and by 2023 Hungary had the highest inflation rate in the EU. In the first quarter of 2023, real wages dropped by 15.6 percent, compared to an average 3.8 percent decline in OECD countries—the sharpest fall in Hungary in a decade. This collapse in purchasing power caused consumption to plummet, at times dropping to levels last seen during pandemic lockdowns. As always, the Orbán government deflected blame, pointing to external factors: the war, EU sanctions on Russia, “Brussels,” even the Biden administration. By 2025, the government went as far as claiming that EU funds—suspended years earlier—were blocked because of the opposition TISZA party, founded in 2024. But after 15 years in power, this ever-changing list of enemies and endless finger-pointing have lost credibility with many voters.

… [T]he myth of “political governance”—the idea that professional expertise could be sidelined in favor of one man’s willpower—began to fade in 2023. Dissatisfaction has since grown sharply, especially over healthcare, social policy, public services (child protection, housing subsidies), and public transportation. On these issues, the government has lost the support of much of society. It’s no coincidence that Péter Magyar and his TISZA party have made them central to their political platform since 2024.

Two areas are even more crucial for the declining international appeal of the Orbán model: migration and demographics. The regime has long presented itself as a model in both fields. … The data, however, tell a different story: the Orbán government has neither stopped migration nor reversed population decline. … Demographic policy has fared no better. … In 2024, just 77,500 children were born in Hungary—the lowest number since 1949. [D]ivorce rates are climbing, and emigration—especially among young, educated Hungarians—continues to rise. As a result, Hungary’s population is shrinking rapidly.

… Paradoxically, in today’s political climate, the Orbán regime—so proud of its so-called national sovereignty—appears to be looking abroad for help to stay in power. … Fidesz openly hoped for Donald Trump’s return, expecting that it would deliver salvation: an end to the war in Ukraine, economic recovery, and a “peace budget.” … But almost none of this has happened. … Meanwhile, Trump’s trade war has created a worse environment for Europe’s economy, including Hungary’s, than before. Orbán, despite his reportedly close personal ties to Trump, was unable to point to any concrete achievements in US–Hungarian relations in his annual Băile Tușnad speech. … Instead of the expected “peace budget,” Hungary is implementing crisis measures to cope with US tariffs.

… Hungary’s weakened international position is not just the result of failed diplomacy but also of its economic and military weakness. It is doubtful Hungary can meet the NATO target—agreed at the June summit in The Hague—of raising defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2030, with 3.5 percent for core military expenditures. Orbán himself has warned such spending would damage the economy. Systemic corruption further tarnishes Hungary’s image abroad.

The next part is a bit puzzling:

… It hardly reflects well on a country when its prime minister’s friends and family become inexplicably wealthy in just a few years. This, combined with frozen EU funds, slows economic growth and makes the Orbán model far less appealing compared to its regional peers. According to VSquare, right-wing populists from Eastern Europe—including those facing legal trouble at home—are now looking to Trump’s America for inspiration and protection, not to Hungary.

I’m not sure why they’d turn to the US if they’re looking for a country whose leaders aren’t becoming inexplicably wealthy at a breathtaking pace. Well, whatever—good luck being inspired by Trump, right-wing European populists!

Also on VSquare (and in GLOBAL EYES), by Kamilla Marton and Bence X. Szechenyi:

Not only is Hungary experiencing population decline, it’s losing its most talented citizens to brain drain:

[M]igration within the EU has had a dramatic impact on Hungarian society and its economy, leading to the countries’ increased reliance on foreign “guest workers.” … While the population of Hungarians in Hungary has declined, the population of Hungarians in Europe (excluding Hungary) has increased by nearly 141,997, a growth of more than 60 percent from 2014 to 2024. … Ágnes Hárs, lead researcher at the Kopint-Tárki Economic Research Institute, told Direkt36 that one of the main reasons for emigration is “the lack of prosperity and perspective.” She added that emigration trends could slow significantly in Hungary if politics and the economy offered workers and students similar prospects to those in other European countries.

I wish someone would tell CPAC. But of course no one will.

Note: This is not new! You’ve probably heard this already. I’ve republished it because the original version wasn’t showing up on people’s feeds.

(If you haven’t heard this already, though, it’s great. Peter Zeihan was such a good sport.)

Thank you to everyone who sent questions for Vlad and Regina. They were good questions. We decided to answer them in a podcast today because I was just exhausted last night—I hadn’t slept at all the night before. My three-legged cat slept like a log, but every time she yawned, stretched, purred, chuffed, or snored, I bolted awake, worried she’d split open at the seams or toppled headfirst into her water bowl. So I threw my guests out after dessert and told them we’d record the answers in the morning.

They answered all your questions. Vladislav did most of the answering, Regina being much less interested in politics. We talked about Tucker Carlson, the far-right’s romance with Russia, how Ukrainians imagine the end-state of the war, how Ukraine will be rebuilt and by whom, George Kennan, Turkey’s value to NATO, Stepan Bandera, whether Putin will resort to nuclear weapons, and a bit more, too, as a bonus.

I was looking today for good articles explaining exactly what’s happening in Iran, and growing increasingly frustrated because I couldn’t find any—even though it’s obvious that what’s happening is massively significant. So I asked Shay Khatiri to come on the Cosmopolicast to help me make sense of what’s happening there.

Shay’s an immigrant to the United States from Iran who studied Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies—but you’ll learn all about his background from the conversation.

You can read more by Shay at the Bulwark, and as I discovered during this conversation, he also has his own newsletter: The Russia-Iran File.

I learned so much from this conversation. So will you.

Here’s a video of Mohammed Esfahani, who we discuss.

Some of you have asked me to put our podcasts on the RSS feed. I thought that happened automatically, but apparently it doesn’t. I think—but I’m not sure—that if I post the podcasts under the “Podcasts” tab, they’ll show up on the RSS feed. I’m trying this today with our first podcast with Dina Khapaeva, which I initially published along with this article:

* The West doesn’t realize how much danger it’s in: Dugin, The Third Empire, the Cult of Stalin, Neo-Medievalism, and the Sources of Russian Conduct: An Introduction to Dina Khapaeva.

Let me know if this works. I’m sorry for sending the link to absolutely everyone when it may only be a few of you who want it. But I assume that for everyone who wrote, another twenty had the same complaint. I hope this fixes the problem.

If you haven’t listened to this yet, today would be a good day, because later today I’ll be posting our second podcast with Dina. We take up where we leave off—with Dina’s suggestion that contemporary Russian society is haunted by the repressed and distorted memory of the Gulag. We discussed this and much more.

You don’t need to listen to this podcast to appreciate the next one, but it would help. Both are timely in light of Putin’s speech yesterday in which he announced a call-up of 300,000 reservists and (yet again) threatened to nuke us.

Overnight, I’ve seen an efflorescence of articles debating whether he means it. This discussion of Russian culture—and the ideology of the people who surround Putin—is worth considering if you’re trying to answer that question.

Dina’s recent article, Putin the Terrible, is an excellent compliment to the discussion.

Vladislav Davidzon was in Odessa last week. He at last managed to persuade his elderly father-in-law, a salty old sailor, to abandon the hooch in his garage and leave for Romania with him. When we spoke to them last night, they’d just finished the exhausting sixteen-hour journey from Odessa by taxi, ferry, bus, taxi, and train. Volunteers at the border told them they were the first refugees they’d seen carrying their art collection.

Vladislav has been doing superb reporting from Ukraine recently. I’ve put in a few links further down so you can watch his interviews and read his articles.

But when I finally got him on the phone last night, he didn’t feel like doing the same podcast about the war he’d already done fifteen times this week. He felt like talking about literature. So he invited Kate Tsurkan, who’s in Chernivtsi, to join us on the podcast.

Kate’s a writer, editor, translator, and editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian literary review apofenie. Kate and Vladislav co-wrote this article in Tablet about the six writers who are shaping the future of Ukrainian literature:

An old guard of contemporary Ukrainian writers such as Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhiy Zhadan and Yuri Andrukhovych have become canonical and even world-renowned, but an intriguing new generation of young writers has also emerged in recent years. Some of these young writers are extraordinarily talented and seem as if they are about to have their moment in the West. The war has brought out the best in these established and emerging authors alike.

Kate recently wrote Cancer in a time of war: the Kyiv oncologists dispensing refuge and hope. We discussed this first, thinking a bit about the metaphorical richness of the subject. The podcast may get a little bit hard to follow at this point because Vlad’s father-in-law weighed in at some length but he doesn’t speak English.

This is Philharmonic Square in Chernivtsi. When Kate speaks of the beautiful Austro-Hungarian architecture, this is what she means:

Links

* apofenie

* A conversation among Yuri Andrukhovych, Norman Nawrocki, Bohdana Neborak, and Kate Tsurkan.

* Vasyl Stus: Life in Creativity

Vladislav discusses the mood in Odessa and the strike on the airport where his late mother-in-law worked. He praises the volunteers on the border and describes making the trip, repeatedly, to bring members of his family to safety:

Odessa locks down over fears of Putin’s saboteurs on painful anniversary. Monday marks the anniversary of a deadly clash between pro-Russian and pro-European activists in the city that killed 48 people and injured dozens more in 2014.

By Vasyl Stus

I wandered around the city of my youth,vainly searching, in the new blocks, for yesterday’s buildings, parks, and paths,  for familiar patterns on pediments,geography is lost.The city had become prettier and grown,new avenues had appeared, new hotels, streets,monuments, stadiums, and trees,yet not a single familiar face in the crowd, not a single facethat would evoke your vanished youth.I hoped at least to run into myself,right where the fountain flowed,hemmed by artificial marble.All in vain.Nothing.Disappeared without a trace. The light high-rises took off into the sky, and you so very small next to them,not visible even to yourself,let alone to passers-by. A taxi driver stopped his car and walked up to the fountain,which sprinkled wateron a gentle, unfamiliar poplar,he washed his hands,got out his handkerchief,carefully dried his palms,then got behind the wheel and sped off,leaving a little cloud of dust behind.Watching him drive away,I realized for the first time: I failed at life.