Ukraine Invasion Listening List

So, here we are again, with a big threat hanging over the world like Covid, and I have again this feeling of anxiety and needing to have a lot of information, a lot of context, to make sense of the dire and constantly evolving situation. I bet a lot of people feel the same, and many of us are listening every day to interviews with experts or old documentaries.

I decided to collect up some of the most smart and in my view helpful of the bunch I’ve been digging into this week. Things that I keep sharing to people around me, all collected in one place. I hope it helps you as well.

I have friends on both sides of the border and there’s nothing like watching people close to you as their future evaporates in from of them.
All their plans, all their hopes, all their dreams…
Not just for the next five years, but for the next week, for the next month. Just Gone, In a Day, up in smoke.
And… a total inability to help them, to console them, watching my Russian friends flee Russia, with whatever they have on their backs.
I have a Russian friend, I hope she got across the border, but was gunning in her car to the border trying to get to Latvia before Putin declares Martial Law.
It’s infuriating.
For what? For One man’s mistaken reading of history? For his own ego? For his own warped understanding of Legacy?

Julia Ioffe - From about 42 minutes in the below video.

Frontline is doing an absolutely amazing job (as they did in 2018 as well) collecting experts and context as to what is happening as Russia invades Ukraine. Next week they will release a new documentary about it, from which the extended interview above was taken from Putin’s Road to War, which premiers March 15.

More from Julia’s Interview:

Interviewer:

How dangerous is this moment right now and how dangerous is Putin in this moment? There’s obviously all these non-veiled threats about nuclear weapons. And there's talk of other countries being dragged in by mistake or on purpose

Julia:

I think He's (Putin) is more dangerous than he has ever been at any point in the last 22 years.

I think he did not expect to lose in Ukraine, and therefore he will not lose. He will grind the country down to a fine fine ash. And it doesn't matter how many Russian Soldiers die in the process, How many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians die in the process. He will not be humiliated by people he calls 'Little Russians'.

What that means for Europe, even if you set that tragedy aside, that blooming tragedy aside... again a million people in a week, fled to some of the most xenophobic countries in Europe. who right now are greeting them with open arms because A they're neighbors and B they're white and Christian and look like them, but how long does that last, how many more refugees can the west absorb? We saw with the refugees from Syria, they gave us Brexit, they gave us the rise of the governments of the far right in Germany, in Hungary, in The Czech Republic and France... is this going to keep emboldening the far right?

And when Putin Threatens the use of nuclear weapons, he threatened it the first time when he declared war on Thursday morning, he threatened again on Thursday of the war when he saw it wasn't going well, he threatened it in 2018 when he went to that air show and he gave that crazy presentation about all the new nuclear weapons that could strike the US. If people think that he wont use them? I think they are mistaken. Everything Putin has showed us at every step of the last 22 years, is that every time we think he wont go that far, he does. We think he wont come back for a third term, he did; He wont annex Crimea, he did; He won't invade Ukraine, he did; He won't try to kill Navalny, he did; He wont try to subvert an American election, he did; And so why would we believe that this time he wont do what he says he'll do?

I mean its unthinkable, what he has opened up with this invasion is unthinkable. And because he is losing, and because the sanctions and the Ukrainians are humiliating him, because he's backed into a corner, he is the most dangerous he has ever been because it is now existential for him.

And if you think he doesn't know that everybody in the world understands that the only way to end this is to put a bullet between his eyes, he knows. and that makes him also much more dangerous.

++++

These are intense words. Heavy things to think over. And I encourage you to read up for more context. I’ll post more stories and interviews that I find helpful in this same post.

And there’s also Frontline, as always doing a great job explaining the world, released Putin’s Road to War, and a bunch of extended interviews with experts on Putin Russia and the Soviet Union, as they did in 2017.