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--:-- Shumita Basu: This is In Conversation from Apple News Today. I'm Shumita Basu.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Every weekend, we're taking you deeper into the best journalism on Apple News. This past week, what so many people feared became reality. Russia attacked Ukraine from the air and from the ground.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Russia overnight launched its long-anticipated attack on Ukraine, striking military posts across the country. An unprovoked war in Europe is now underway.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Within hours, Russian tanks were reported to be on the streets of Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv. Ukrainians' worst nightmare now realized.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Thousands trying to flee the capital, Kiev, either stuck in gridlock or unable to fill their cars with the gas needed to get out.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It's been decades since we've seen war in Europe on this scale. Just in the last few days, we went from serious talks about de-escalation and summits to Russian rockets dropping on Kiev.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It might seem like things suddenly escalated, but there are decades of history worth understanding here.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That's why I wanted to talk to David Remnick. He's the editor of The New Yorker, and he's covered Russia for a long time.
--:-- Shumita Basu: His book about the fall of the Soviet Union won a Pulitzer Prize. He is very familiar with Vladimir Putin's mentality.
--:-- Shumita Basu: I asked Remnick if he expected Putin to go after Ukraine with so much force.
--:-- David Remnick: Well, if you had asked me a year ago, no, of course not. But the pattern for Vladimir Putin is when he sets things like this into motion, obviously this is of a larger scale, he carries them out.
--:-- David Remnick: He did in Georgia, he did in eastern Ukraine, and now he's doing it full scale in Ukraine.
--:-- David Remnick: At the same time, I think it's madness. Madness.
--:-- David Remnick: What is the purpose here? To subdue a country that's of no threat to him whatsoever?
--:-- David Remnick: To capture the Chernobyl nuclear plant? To set off rockets into the streets of the capital, Kiev?
--:-- David Remnick: To further terrorize the people of Eastern Ukraine and Ukraine in general?
--:-- David Remnick: I mean, if the goal was to attract Ukraine away from the West, What thing could he have done better to unite Ukraine against Russia?
--:-- David Remnick: What could he have done that will further consolidate NATO?
--:-- Shumita Basu: I know on a show like this or some sort of column that I might write, the goal is to soberly tell you what the geopolitical, even moral strategy of a world leader is.
--:-- Shumita Basu: I can't for the life of me see the sense in this, even the dark sense of it.
--:-- Shumita Basu: I was not expecting that answer from you. I really thought you might be able to be uniquely positioned, in fact, to opine about where Putin's mind is in a moment like this.
--:-- David Remnick: I can try, Shumita, but the problem is I think journalists make a big mistake in saying things that they don't really know or predicting things that they have no way of knowing the outcome for.
--:-- David Remnick: And I think a certain amount of intellectual and journalistic modesty, if we've not learned that after all these years, then we've learned nothing, myself included.
--:-- Shumita Basu: That said, is there an origin story to this? Of course there is, and we can discuss it.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Is there a character behind this? Is there a political biography behind it? Of course there is, and we can discuss that.
--:-- David Remnick: Well, let's talk about the origins because I think particularly for younger people in America, people who didn't live through the Cold War are probably missing a very important puzzle piece of lived experience in understanding this.
--:-- David Remnick: So can you talk about what is key to understand about Cold War tensions in order to understand this moment?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, sure. Following the Second World War, almost immediately following the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the West found themselves at loggerheads over any number of issues, whether it had to do with ideology.
--:-- David Remnick: There were all kinds of tensions over which countries were friendly with which, and matters of imperialism.
--:-- David Remnick: Following the Second World War, the Soviet Union, under the force of tanks and other means of force, suddenly was the putative boss of, to name a few, Hungary, Poland, to some extent, Yugoslavia, Romania, et cetera.
--:-- David Remnick: It created a gigantic sphere of influence. One could call it an empire, an outer empire, but also an inner empire, right?
--:-- David Remnick: You had the Soviet Union itself, which is 15 republics. One of them was Ukraine.
--:-- David Remnick: And not so much because of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan said he won the Cold War.
--:-- David Remnick: Well, that was because the West was more prosperous and free and successful despite all its problems and errors and idiocies and all the rest.
--:-- David Remnick: The Soviet Union found itself as it came into the 80s poor and lagging behind the rest of the world.
--:-- David Remnick: And many of its wounds were self-inflicted.
--:-- David Remnick: You know, for example, there was no intellectual freedom.
--:-- David Remnick: If you have no intellectual freedom how do you develop intellectually or technologically?
--:-- David Remnick: So a man named Mikhail Gorbachev who grew up in the Communist Party apparat in the Soviet Union became the general secretary.
--:-- David Remnick: He became the boss and he knew that in his own phrase, we could no longer live this way.
--:-- David Remnick: That the Soviet Union could not only not be an adequate rival to the United States and the West, but it was spending all its money, all its time, and all its obsession on the military and not developing.
--:-- David Remnick: And if you were to go to the Soviet Union, I'm afraid even now to a large extent, but then it was poor.
--:-- David Remnick: It was a disaster. And the only way to develop was to open up.
--:-- David Remnick: And so Gorbachev began to open up the Soviet Union, and with it came all kinds of unexpected consequences.
--:-- David Remnick: And one of them was in the various regions in the various republics, an efflorescence of nationalism, of national feeling.
--:-- David Remnick: So the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, wanted to be free again as they had been before the Second World War and independent.
--:-- David Remnick: And unexpectedly, and most consequentially, Ukraine, now a country of 40 million people, with a rich culture, a language that's related to Russian but is not Russian, began to feel itself a distinct entity.
--:-- David Remnick: And in 1991 it voted in a referendum for independence of over 90 percent and that was the straw that broke the camel's back and within weeks of Ukraine voting for its own independence the Soviet Union dissolved like that like a sugar cube into hot tea.
--:-- David Remnick: Ukraine has been an independent sovereign nation with all kinds of troubles all kinds of problems but sovereign and independent for 30 years.
--:-- David Remnick: Vladimir Putin doesn't think it's a nation and he doesn't think it's a people. There's the rub.
--:-- Shumita Basu: What should we understand about the people in Ukraine, how Ukrainian people are feeling in this moment in relation to how people in Russia are feeling in this moment?
--:-- Shumita Basu: How do people in these two countries regard each other?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, traditionally, Russians and Ukrainians are deeply tied together in a way that's maybe hard to describe to an American.
--:-- David Remnick: Lots of Russians in Russia have relatives in Ukraine and vice versa.
--:-- David Remnick: They're deeply tied together. They're not inextricable, but the ties are profound and that's a complication.
--:-- David Remnick: But they are different countries, just like at this point, Canada and the United States are sovereign, different countries.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Now, how do Russians feel about this?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, Russians live in an information universe where they are told 24 hours a day by official media, which is most of what they get, that Ukrainians are carrying out a genocide, that Ukrainians are not a real country, that the Ukrainian government is just a puppet regime of the United States.
--:-- David Remnick: That's the propaganda.
--:-- David Remnick: Nevertheless, certainly Russians are asking the question, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this?
--:-- David Remnick: Now, will that develop into an opposition or an anti-war movement? Well, it's hard to say.
--:-- David Remnick: And you live, Russia is not a country that has politics as you and I understand it.
--:-- David Remnick: I mean, I have seen Russians who are daring to hold signs like, why are we doing this? Out in protests being dragged away by police violently.
--:-- David Remnick: We're seeing those scenes playing out right now in Moscow and other places in Russia.
--:-- Shumita Basu: You recently wrote in The New Yorker, you described Putin as being immune to the pressures of normal politics, right?
--:-- Shumita Basu: Because he doesn't have an opposition he feels accountable to.
--:-- David Remnick: He has shown that he's willing to pay a high price for what he wants.
--:-- Shumita Basu: What does that mean for the rest of the world and how do you contain a ruler like that?
--:-- David Remnick: Hmm, that's not only an excellent question, it's the question because it's not that he doesn't have an opposition he's repressed his opposition.
--:-- David Remnick: His most vivid political opponent, Alexei Navalny, is sitting in a prison camp right and should another Navalny pop up well that person will end up in the same paddy wagon in prison cell as Navalny did.
--:-- David Remnick: There are glimmers of independent media on Thursday for example, Dmitry Muratov, the editor of a independent newspaper, he won the Nobel Prize, you might remember a newspaper called Novaya Gazeta, the new newspaper.
--:-- David Remnick: He came out with a statement saying, essentially, that we who don't believe this war is proper are powerless and ashamed, and that the only thing that will end such a war is a true anti-war movement in Russia.
--:-- David Remnick: But those are very faint glimmers.
--:-- David Remnick: And remember, it's early days. It's early days.
--:-- Shumita Basu: So who knows what kind of information can leak through in the modern world.
--:-- David Remnick: In 1968, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to what was called the Prague Spring, a kind of liberalizing what was called socialism with a human face.
--:-- David Remnick: And Moscow had had quite enough of that, thank you, and sent in tanks.
--:-- David Remnick: Do you know how many people protested in the Soviet Union who felt that they could?
--:-- David Remnick: Seven or eight people came out to Red Square, unfurled banners saying, we are with you, Czechoslovakia, et cetera, et cetera.
--:-- David Remnick: And within seconds, not even minutes, seconds, KGB was on these people.
--:-- David Remnick: They beat the hell out of them and they suffered the obvious consequences.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Now, let's talk about the dynamics in the region and really in the world at large.
--:-- Shumita Basu: How do you think what we've seen unfold in the past few days will factor into the growing destabilization that we've seen in Europe, right?
--:-- Shumita Basu: The rise of autocrats, the return of populism, isolationist policies that we've seen really take popular hold.
--:-- David Remnick: Well, let's put the question of Europe to the side for a moment.
--:-- David Remnick: The previous president of the United States, which had long been the strongest and most continuous democracy in the history of the world, our previous president, Donald J. Trump, his description of what Putin did, I can barely say it, what Putin did in Ukraine this week is the word genius.
--:-- David Remnick: He called Putin a genius. That's right.
--:-- David Remnick: Tucker Carlson, the foremost voice on our foremost conservative media outlet, Fox News, gave a soliloquy of unquestioned support and admiration of Putin and just basically excusing this.
--:-- David Remnick: It's extraordinary what's happened in the world.
--:-- David Remnick: You asked about the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War, democracy was on the rise.
--:-- David Remnick: And now, of course, in recent years, certainly in the last decade, we've seen something else.
--:-- David Remnick: We've seen autocracy on the rise.
--:-- David Remnick: And I think the kind of symbolic leader of this in ideological terms, as well as political terms, and as a military is, or at least one of them, one of two, is Vladimir Putin.
--:-- David Remnick: He's widely admired by right-wing parties throughout Europe, And that should be deeply disturbing.
--:-- David Remnick: I mean, some people have described this, and not jokingly, as maybe the early powders of a World War III.
--:-- David Remnick: Does that feel like an exaggeration to you?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, I hope so, because we live in a nuclear age.
--:-- David Remnick: I mean, Russia is not a particularly wealthy country, considering its scale, its economy is about the size of the state of Texas.
--:-- David Remnick: But Putin, as he has reminded us a number of times in recent days, is the commander of a vast nuclear arsenal.
--:-- David Remnick: And he's swung it around, as they say.
--:-- Shumita Basu: You have written about how Putin is waging, we're watching him wage a pretty sophisticated attack.
--:-- Shumita Basu: It's not just troops on the ground in a very literal sense. It's also cyber attacks on Ukrainian government.
--:-- David Remnick: Meanwhile, we're hearing Biden putting a lot of stock in what some might call a kind of old school foreign policy tactic, which is sanctions, right?
--:-- David Remnick: Is Biden making the right bet here?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, but it's coupled with – you're right, and I think maybe I'd put a little pressure on that point in this way, Shumita.
--:-- David Remnick: I'd say this. Yeah.
--:-- David Remnick: On the one hand, he's using sanctions and not military defense because who the hell knows what madness and bloodshed that would lead to, particularly with an irrational opponent.
--:-- David Remnick: But also Ukraine is not a NATO country. Article 5 is not enacted on the behalf of Ukraine.
--:-- David Remnick: Right. And so what leverage do you have?
--:-- David Remnick: I think Biden is not deluded into thinking that sanctions, which have been levied before, by the way, are going to bring Russia to its knees in five minutes.
--:-- David Remnick: And any sanctions that are going to have any effect take time to have effect because the Russians have built up an enormous reserve.
--:-- David Remnick: And believe me, it's not a reserve that's there to take care of the needs of kindergartners and pensioners and the rest.
--:-- David Remnick: It's a reserve to float the boat for the loyal oligarchs and security chiefs and industrialists that surround Putin who are loyal.
--:-- David Remnick: I think it's fair to say, Shumita, that in the short run, that if Russia is determined to do this, if Putin is determined to do this, which is to say, take Ukraine, it will do so.
--:-- David Remnick: It will do so. If it's determined to march into Kiev and even do violence to the Ukrainian leadership, arrest them, replace them with pro-Russian lackeys, puppet government, it will do so.
--:-- David Remnick: And then comes Wednesday and Thursday.
--:-- David Remnick: And we have learned, as have many other nations learned to their pain, that it is relatively easy with a strong military to, quote unquote, take a country.
--:-- David Remnick: It is a great deal more difficult when you try to prolong that occupation.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Do you think Putin understands American leaders generally and how to play them better than American world leaders seem to understand and play him?
--:-- David Remnick: That's also what he's willing to do. It's what his politics and his moral universe allow him to do.
--:-- David Remnick: I don't think it's because he's Bismarck or the greatest grand strategist of all time.
--:-- David Remnick: And think, in fact, I really am always wary of, and I will always say that prediction is the lowest form of journalism, but this is not gonna end well.
--:-- David Remnick: What's the lovely outcome of invading Ukraine and trying to occupy it and rule it?
--:-- David Remnick: What have you done and how long will it last and what impact will it have?
--:-- David Remnick: Putin failed, and he's been in power for 22 years, failed to, if he ever intended to, to create a prosperous and freer society.
--:-- David Remnick: It was never any intention of the latter certainly
--:-- David Remnick: This is easy by comparison
--:-- David Remnick: You press a button and your military does what you tell it to do
--:-- David Remnick: But then what
--:-- David Remnick: Building a society building civil society, operating in politics, facing opposition instead of crushing it.
--:-- David Remnick: These are immensely difficult things to do.
--:-- David Remnick: Building a middle class takes decades.
--:-- David Remnick: That's not what he was about.
--:-- David Remnick: That's not what he was ever about.
--:-- David Remnick: He was about restoring some order to post-Soviet Russia, but now it's about the imposition of power.
--:-- David Remnick: And this is a crucial point, preserving his personal power, because there's nothing that Vladimir Putin fears more than what he saw take place in Cairo, in Kiev, in so many other places, these so-called color revolutions.
--:-- David Remnick: And when he saw it come to Moscow in 2011, the demonstrations on what's called Bolotnaya Plush, the swampy square it's called, he saw that as not only a potential threat to his power, but he saw it as a plot from the West.
--:-- David Remnick: He cannot fathom sincere, contrary popular opinion.
--:-- David Remnick: He cannot fathom that.
--:-- David Remnick: He's so cynical that these people must be getting paid.
--:-- Shumita Basu: We're supposed to study history in order to learn from it.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Is there any other moment in history of this region or elsewhere that you're thinking about right now that you think is worth reflecting on and learning from in this moment?
--:-- David Remnick: You know what I'm thinking about.
--:-- David Remnick: It struck me, Shemita, that in 1987 the Soviet Union had really for the first time a true reformer came up through the communist party ranks and rose to power Mikhail Gorbachev.
--:-- David Remnick: And in 1987, Gorbachev, who realized the country had to open up if it were ever to be successful, if it were ever to compete, if it were ever to feed its kids and educate and develop technologically and culturally and all the rest, that the study of history had to open up.
--:-- David Remnick: That in order for the Soviet Union to develop, it needed to understand its Soviet and Russian past and see it clearly.
--:-- David Remnick: And look at us Americans. To this day, we're fighting really serious battles over history.
--:-- David Remnick: The argument over the 1619 project, over textbooks, over what's in our libraries or not, what we're teaching our kids about the legacy of slavery or Jim Crow.
--:-- David Remnick: But there's no dictator in place to be the official historian.
--:-- David Remnick: And Gorbachev came along and opened up the study of the past.
--:-- David Remnick: And it was painful. It was painful for ordinary Russians to learn about the gulag for them to learn about Stalin who was the great leader in World War II but he also obliterated the officer class and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop protocols and scooped up Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, you know, crushed the Poles, so many, many, many things.
--:-- David Remnick: It's very painful to learn about the darkest episodes of of your national past but it was necessary.
--:-- David Remnick: And along comes Putin and eventually he begins winnowing that aperture. He begins to close that window.
--:-- David Remnick: And now you're seeing him spin out historical narratives on television about Ukraine and how there is no Ukrainian nation.
--:-- David Remnick: It was just an unfortunate piece of business by Lenin. It's just, you know, nonsensical history making. Total disinformation.
--:-- David Remnick: Absolutely.
--:-- David Remnick: As if it's his right to not only dictate history, but to then impose it on the people of Ukraine themselves.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Look, I admire Barack Obama in many ways.
--:-- Shumita Basu: But when he debated Mitt Romney and dismissed rather sarcastically the idea that Russia was a very serious adversary in contemporary foreign policy, it was a mistake.
--:-- David Remnick: It was a mistake.
--:-- David Remnick: You know, we desperately want to pay attention to Asia and in particular how to deal with a rising China and to have some sort of peaceful, workable rivalry with China instead of something far more calamitous, which is a complex development in the world.
--:-- David Remnick: But Putin, in the most violent and bloody way, is insisting that we keep our eyes on him.
--:-- Shumita Basu: Last question for you. How worried should Americans be at this moment?
--:-- David Remnick: Well, I think it would be the height of foolishness to think this is a minor incident that's going to go away very soon.
--:-- David Remnick: You know, is it possible that he realizes at a certain point in coming days that he's gone too far and the price is too large?
--:-- David Remnick: And before many thousands of people are killed, he pulls back.
--:-- David Remnick: Well, that would be better, but still look at what he's done.
--:-- David Remnick: Still look at what he's done.
--:-- David Remnick: And that effect, a line has been crossed, an enormous line has been crossed.
--:-- David Remnick: It hasn't been crossed to this degree in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
--:-- David Remnick: So the repercussions of this are going to be very long lasting.
--:-- David Remnick: And it is not unimaginable that it goes much deeper, goes on far longer.
--:-- David Remnick: And Ukraine is not merely destabilized, but it's the scene of a killing field.
--:-- David Remnick: I hope, desperately hope to be wrong.
--:-- Shumita Basu: David Remnick, thank you so much for your time.
--:-- David Remnick: Thank you.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: You can find updates and analysis on Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the Apple News app.
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--:-- Shumita Basu: And for the latest from The New Yorker, check out our show notes page.
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