95: The October News Roundup
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Hello and welcome to the October 28th edition of Ukraine Without Hype. I am Anthony Partaway.

Our listeners may notice is actually our first episode of the month coming in at the very end. There are good reasons for that, but I would like to apologize. In our previous episode, I mentioned that I would be going to America and...

there would be interruptions in scheduling because of that. So that's why I am in America and there were interruptions in scheduling. But because of that, I've been having my notes going this entire time. And I thought to myself, should I pare these notes down, have a more tight and logical kind of episode rather than just doing literally everything that has happened in the month of October?

But I figured I don't deserve that. I don't deserve that mercy. So I'm going to go through all of my topics for the month of October. I'm seeing 10 points here, including multiple subcategories for each point.

So the only way to do this is to begin. So yeah, I guess our introduction here is describing what I'm doing in America. Well, nothing really in particular. I'm visiting family. I have not been back to America to visit family since the beginning of the full-scale war or before the beginning. It's been almost exactly three years since the last time I was in America.

And the trip this time was very, very different from previous trips. Typically, I live about half an hour away from Boryspil Airport outside of Kiev. And getting to the airport in time is never a big deal. You know, just get right on to the highway. And I'm just, there's only one time when there's a freak snowstorm that actually became a problem. This time, however, I had to go through Poland.

And to do that, because I don't handle long trips especially well, I decided to take a day break in each of the locations. So starting from Kiev, a five-hour bus trip to Lutsk,

Spent some time in Lutsk. There's a castle there. From there, another five-hour trip crossing the border to Lublin, Lublin, Poland, and from Lublin to Warsaw and fly out of Warsaw. So leaving Ukraine with Poland being my first port of entry made it a very kind of soft debrief from Ukraine, I'd say.

The streets of Poland right now are full of Ukrainian things, flags, businesses, restaurants. In fact, my very first night staying in Poland in Lublin, my dorm room mate at the hostel was a former Ukrainian soldier. So he was demobilized due to various reasons and got to talking with him. There's

a lot of Ukrainians in Poland. There always have been, especially in these border towns. There have always been a very high Ukrainian population. Ukrainians make up a lot of the Polish workforce, but now with the war and the refugees, you definitely still get the Ukrainian experience when you're in Poland, which made me feel comfortable because I was feeling anxious about leaving the country and

feeling anxious about things being too different. And of course, they're extremely different. There's no war in Poland. That's kind of a pretty big change. But having a soft landing, as it were, was mentally pretty useful for me. And in America, I don't know, I may figure out some profound things to say at some point. But as of right now,

The change is, of course, very extreme. I'd say that people are much more angry now than they have ever been. Lots of unpleasantness, just on a vibes level more than anything. Haven't had too many real negative experiences per se, but everything just seems off. Maybe by the end, like I said, I'll think of something. I'll think of something to opine about here.

I am a writer, I should be able to opine on such things. But until I figure that out, I'll just have to quote the medieval Spanish Jewish poet, Judah Halevy, my heart is in the East and I in the evermost West. So that explains some of the delays, the process of getting to America took

a while that was a week on its own and since then just various interruptions so this i'm guessing two hour two hour episode let's see how that goes turns out next announcement is that a documentary that i narrated for at key of independent has gone live it is called shadows across the river it tells the story of a singular torture facility in the occupied hairstone region

At this one torture facility, Kyiv Independent journalists were able to track down how much territory it covered, what its jurisdiction was, some of the victims of this torture facility, as well as the perpetrators of the torture. I have narrated most of the Kyiv Independent war crimes documentaries.

If you have followed my instructions to go watch them, it's a very similar, you know, feels similar team, similar production. They're very high quality. I enjoy working with them. So go to the YouTube channel of the key of independent and look for shadows across the river. Next announcement regards new voice of Ukraine. So key of independent, then new voice getting all the big,

English language media in Ukraine, because this is the podcast you go to for all the big English language news of Ukraine.

So new voice of Ukraine, as I've previously announced, I'm doing a lot of the development side there, some of the community management. Recently, we've been hosting live Q&A sessions for Patreon followers. Previously, we were talking about the recently announced victory plan that Zelensky did, as well as the introduction of North Korean soldiers to the Russian war against Ukraine. Both topics we'll be talking about in this episode.

We've also had live sessions on the attempted assassination of Trump, as well as the state of the Jewish community in Ukraine. Those are our three introductory topics. Please go to patreon.com slash nvua to support The New Voice of Ukraine, one of Ukraine's largest independent news outlets.

and who, Romeo, is the editor-in-chief of the English edition, and I am heading up some of the development, as well as Envy is usually where I publish things, where I write. So if you've been listening to us, I've been directing you to Envy quite a lot as well, because that's where my articles show up.

However, like all English language media in Ukraine, it is going through some financial straits. So any memberships, donations, Patreon, that would all be wonderful to keep independent English language media in Ukraine alive. And speaking of supporting independent English language media in Ukraine, I would also like to direct you to the Patreon for this podcast, patreon.com slash Ukraine without hype.

where you can support us. I feel guilty about pushing that so much right now due to, again, the varsity of content this month, but that is something that is being fixed literally as I speak. But with that as the announcements, we now move on to the first of our news categories. And this is one that very much comes with both the bitter and the sweet.

We've been following the stories of two Ukrainian journalists who have been within Russian captivity for most of the last two years. These are by far not the only two Ukrainian journalists who have been in Russian captivity.

But we at the pod do have some connections to these ones in particular, especially regarding their working for Hromadske, which is Romeo's previous place of employment, as well as crossing paths in so many other ways. The kind of civil society world in Ukraine is a tight one.

You tend to either know someone or know someone who knows someone. So these instances are all extremely personal. So with both good and bad news, I'll begin with the good news. And that is Maxim Butkevich. He was a journalist, social activist turned soldier.

who volunteered to defend his country during the Russian full-scale invasion. He was captured in June of 2022, and the Russians accused him of all kinds of war crimes to treat him as a common criminal rather than as a prisoner of war. He was accused falsely of firing on civilians in Severodonetsk,

though he was not even in Severodonetsk at the time of the accusations. And a Russian court, a kangaroo court, as they all are, sentenced him to 13 years in jail for this made-up crime. We've all been very worried about him. It was not known if he would make it, but in this most recent round of prisoner exchanges that happened earlier this month,

Maxim Butkevich was released. So after over two years of captivity, again since June of 2022, he is now free and back in liberated Ukraine. Though like all prisoners of war, his health is worrisome. Looking at the before and after photos of his captivity, it's

It is shown on his face and he does need that support, which he is receiving. However, going to the bad news is Victoria Roshina. Victoria had gone into occupied territory on several occasions in order to report on human rights abuses.

and other goings-on that are happening in occupied Ukraine. This included once being arrested in Berdyansk while doing an investigation in that city, the Azov Sea Coast. She had been released that time, but later, in July 2023, she was once again entering occupied Ukraine and

via Russian territory. While she was doing so, she was arrested by the Russians.

and not seen for almost a year. In April 2024 was when her family was finally informed that she was in Russian custody. In the time of her custody, we know that she was in Penal Colony No. 77 in Buryatonsk before being sent on transfer to a pretrial detention center No. 2 in Tagnarok. These are both facilities infamous for

for torture, and it can be presumed that she suffered the same. And then on October 11th of this month, it was finally announced that she had been killed in September. Fika Roshina is no longer with us. She was murdered by the Russians in a torture camp. Ukrainians have been asking for her body to be returned, which the Russians have denied, even though

There would have been a possibility for that during that most recent prisoner transfer when Budkevich was released. We can make presumptions about why the Russians would not return the body of a dead woman

And that's mostly because they do not want evidence of their crimes being released, for one. And for two, they want to cause additional pain. That is really what they only ever want to do, is find ways to cause additional pain. They are sadists. That is, everything that they believe in and are about is pure, undiluted sadism. Perhaps her body can be returned at a later date so her family

could have a proper funeral and whatever can pass for closure as a part of that, but it will likely not be for a long time. And the Russians can hope that we've all moved on to another story, another murder, another crime that they have committed to the point where worrying about what happened to someone a while ago is no longer a headline-grabbing affair like it would have been.

So we have two people who knew each other, who many in Ukraine knew, sharing two very different and divergent fates. Maxim Bukhevich, he is free. That's fantastic. We are so glad to have him back and safe. Vika Roshina did not make it. She was murdered. She was murdered.

Next will be our combat update. And quite frankly, I have very little in the way of good news in that regard. The month of October has been a very bad one for the Ukrainian defenders, especially in Donetsk region. And the most important thing to talk about was the fall of Vulidar, which concluded on October 1st.

In our previous episodes, I had been warning on the seemingly imminent fall of Uladar about how the Russians had gotten behind the city's defenses, about how the attack on Pokrovsk had pushed the Russian lines in many directions in that sector of the front.

how the withdrawal corridors that the Ukrainians could use are coming under increasingly tight fire control by the Russian attackers. And to repeat the importance of what Fultonar meant, it was, as I said,

the pin that held together the front lines of when the front lines go east to west in the southern part of Ukraine to north to south in Donbas and Kharkiv regions. Well, yes, it finally happened as I said it was happening. The defense of Volhodar was eventually made pretty much impossible while they were being attacked from nearly all sides by the Russians.

It was, as many Russian attacks are incredibly costly on their behalf.

Throughout the nearly two years of the Battle of Vulhidar, this has been one of the places where more Russians had died than anywhere else, where their seemingly endless suicidal attacks on Ukrainian positions happened again and again and again, costing them who knows how many thousands of dead just for that one town. But as...

We all can point this out time and time again. The Battle of Bakhmut, very costly. Everything the Russians do is very costly, but thus far it has been a cost that they have been willing to pay.

And though I see that the end of paying that comes closer all the time, they cannot keep this up forever. Thus far, they have not been overly bothered by it. And looking at the Russian telegram chats about this in the aftermath of the Battle of Vulhidar, taking the city essentially rendered the units attacking it combat-free.

unready from the extraordinarily high casualties. Multiple Russian units have been dashed across the rocks of Volhodar, but there are more behind them, and eventually in that sector they won. We also know one instance where a Ukrainian unit was retreating from Volhodar as they frankly had to do in order to survive, while their commander, who had been holding the line

killed himself. One more tragedy among so, so very many. In the short weeks that have passed since the fall of Volhodar on the 1st of October, that whole sector of the front has been laid very, very vulnerable. And the Russians continue to make advances with this new series of Russian advances outside of Volhodar.

joining the ones that came outside of the fall of Avdivka, making the southern part of the Donetsk oblast the most vulnerable and most concerning front of the war. If this was more regular of a podcast this month, and again, I have to apologize, I would get into more detail about the

procedure of the fall of southern Donbas region in this way, but we have too much else to talk about to get into the details of what is happening in which village. But right now, we just have to see how much the Ukrainians can ground down the Russian advances before winter hits. Looking just north of there to the Pokrovsk front,

And once again, they are not advancing so much towards the city of Prokhorovsk at the moment.

Once again, they are mostly focusing on the area south of Pokrovsk. This area between Pokrovsk and Bulhidar is where most of the combat action is taking place. With many breakthroughs, cauldrons, near encirclements that have happened along the way. The town that we really have to keep an eye on for now is Kurohovo. It is the next logical stronghold in this region.

If we look at territory all across the front in the southern part of Donbas region, on the combat maps where Russia is marked in red, we see the red tendrils stretching up in all kinds of directions. A front has to be reestablished.

Trenchworks have to be built, strong points have to be guarded, and Western support is needed to do all of that, as well as some serious reconsiderations in Ukrainian command. The other area of the front that really has to be looked at is Kupyansk. We've been following the slow grinding development of this Russian salient

That began as a small little bump on the Kupyansk front and has slowly expanded and wiggled around and developed in kind of some crazy directions on the way out, but by now has finally reached the Oskil River, meaning that the Ukrainian defenses to the north and the south parts of this Oskil River front are now separated from each other.

and can no longer be properly supplied from either direction except at some of the rather difficult crossings at the Oskil as most of the bridges and such crossing the Oskil River, one of the larger rivers in the Kharkiv region,

have been destroyed, making transport to one side or another complicated. That happened to the south of the town of Kupyansk, while to the north of Kupyansk,

The Russians made a small but I think important advance around the town of Sienkiewka. This had been the front line of the war since the Kharkiv region was recaptured from the Russians. And for most of this time, the front there had not moved hardly at all. So this advance around Sienkiewka is not a large one, but...

When the comparison is not moving at all, it is very noticeable. And we've been seeing this time and time again in the previous months of a small Russian breakthrough.

expanding and taking over much more than Ukraine can handle at any particular point. So they are once again moving on the town of Kupyansk from two different directions. Now, I don't think that the Russians have much capability to cross the Oskol River themselves. They are historically not great at crossing rivers. But for Kupyansk to become the very front line again, which it could within a matter of weeks or months,

Hopefully months is another worrying development, though not as bad as South Donetsk region. We really need to keep an eye on South Donetsk region.

I suppose we should talk a bit about Kursk region as well, the part of Russia that Ukraine is currently occupying. The Russians had been able to make some counteroffensives there a few times this month, especially the western end, though it seems as though the front lines have once again more or less stabilized, though that is of course always subject to change.

So that is the summary of the major happenings on the front. The situation, again, Soudnetsk, very worrying and no obvious place that that can stop. And Kupyansk, again, the front lines around Kupyansk have slowly deteriorated. However, the Russians actually capturing the city of Kupyansk.

that would be long in the coming and very, very costly in their regard. So I don't see a huge change in that sector in a strategic way for quite a while. And Kursk, not huge.

huge, huge, huge changes there. I don't think anyone expects that to hold forever, but the Russians have been dedicating far more resources there than they have in the past, which means resources not being used in more worrying places, which has always been probably the main goal of the Kursk incursion. This next story is a little bit more recent.

from October 20th. And that deals with the front of the war, which is certainly interesting to talk about, but also difficult because answers are very scant about anything that happens. It's the behind-the-front-lines war of assassination. The most recent target was a Russian pilot named Dmitry Golenkov. Dmitry is a pilot to the 52nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment

in the Russian Armed Forces. His team is responsible for countless bombings in Ukraine, though most famously the Amstor Mall in Kremenchuk in 2022. The

The Amstor Mall in Kremenchuk, in the central part of Ukraine, was hit on June 27, 2022, leading to the deaths of 21 people and 59 injured. This was still early enough in the war that Russian disinformation tried to pretend that this attack never took place or that the mall was really a weapons storage facility or something stupid like that. This was back when the Russians still felt like they needed to provide security

some kind of plausible deniability for their war crimes. Now they just do it and don't even bother most of the time to give anything a cover. But that was one difference in the early war. The Russians still felt like they needed to hide their crimes from time to time, when now it turns out they never really had to. They can just get away with them. But not everyone can get away

scot-free. Dmitry was tracked down in the town of Suponevo in the Bryansk region of Russia, where he was murdered via hammer. Repeated trauma to the head with a hammer. Not a pleasant way to go, but maybe it is one that he deserved. Dmitry Golenkov, the latest success story of the Ukrainian revenge program, and will not be the last. But speaking of Russian pilots committing horrific war crimes, and hopefully the

getting their justice for that. We now will talk about Herson. Now, this is a story that has been ongoing for a very long time since the liberation of the Herson region and a story that I saw for myself firsthand.

and one of my more perilous moments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And that is what is now being called the Kherson Safari. Essentially, what this safari is, a term that comes from Russian culture

Of kind of what it sounds like in Russian culture, especially in the kind of far right space of the 2000s, 2010s, what would happen is that you'd have these groups of thugs who would go around beating up gay people, minorities, Caucasians, Central Asians,

filming it and referring to it as a safari. One of the, I think, important build-up points of the creation of the modern version of Russian fascism are these groups of Russian thugs who would stage meetups with young gay men and then when they showed up they would be humiliated on camera, beaten up, had their stuff stolen from them, and yes, this would all be posted online as entertainment. So

I think that is some important context to the naming convention here because to Russians, the term safari means hunting down people. And that's what it was now. In Kherson, we have Russian drones flying overhead most hours of the day. Kherson is a city that is very, very close to the Russian lines. The only thing that separates Kherson from Russian occupied territory is the Dnipro River.

and some of the contested islands on that river. But that is all within drone range. So these drones that the Russians are using, they fly them towards the city of Kherson with a camera and some grenades, and they videotape themselves hunting down civilians, just going about their day, getting on and off a bus, going to the store, trying to go to work,

doing anything that you might do during your day but without the ever-present threat of suicide drones hunting you down so they have these cameras record the russians have these cameras on the drones recording themselves chasing after these people and i mean literally chasing they will see these civilians the civilians will see the drone they start to try and escape

And they're purposely hunted down on this safari before being bombed with these grenades. That is what it is.

to live within striking distance of the Russian world. The sick, sadistic games that they play because, like I was talking about with the story of Victoria Roshna and the other prisoners of war, this entire war is nothing but a massive act of sadism on the part of Russian society. They want to cause pain, and that's all

all they want. And this story has been building up for a long time. I would just like to especially direct you to the journalistic work of one Serena Zabriskie, I hope I pronounced her name correctly there, who is a journalist who lives in Herson and has been documenting this every single day, often with her work going very underappreciated. So please go to Serena if you want to know what is happening in Herson. She is the great, great source doing amazing work down there.

very dangerous work. And as the story changes now, it's that the leaves are falling. And in many cases, the only defense to hide from these drone attacks is under trees. But with those trees no longer providing cover as the leaves fall, there's fewer places to hide, which means the Russians can kill more. And the winter in Kherson

is looking very, very bleak because of that. These hunts, these safaris will only get worse. And the people of Herson, the ones that remain, have dwindling ability to hide from them. But that gets into a meta discussion that I want to talk about because this story became very, very big this month.

There were multiple articles about it. There was a good mini documentary about it. But as often the case, these stories kind of

build off of each other. We even got some international attention on it, especially I think The Guardian did a story. But that's because editors saw a story getting legs and saw that they had to do that. So even though this safari has been going on for months and months and months, really since the liberation of Herson, although intensified more recently, it was only now that it became a big story in the press. And right now it's taking place

My notes, what I wanted to say was that it led to some breakthrough in coverage of Kherson, that this city who has been under siege and attack and all horrible kinds of deprivations would finally get the coverage that it deserved. It went away as fast as that. Tsarina, of course, is still covering it. Other Ukrainians are still covering it. But international attention lasted all of about four days.

And it deserves so much more. Even in this world where everything seems to be going wrong at all times, Erson deserves better. Our next story about a particular area of Ukraine that has faced a very particular series of Russian crimes that, again, received some media coverage that has since faded away, is the travesty in the Desna River. We talked about this in our last episode.

I was doing a lead-in to talking about the Russian eco-side of Ukraine, the efforts that Russia is taking to poison and destroy the very land that Ukrainians live upon as an introduction to a university-

open course about the very topic. But what happened was what we know in August is that the Russians intentionally poisoned the same river in Russia by having a sugar factory release its various toxic wastes into the same river, which mostly included ammonia, magnesium, and some others. This river, because rivers don't, you know, listen to international boundaries,

flows into Ukraine and when it does that it becomes a tributary of the Dezna River, the river that runs through the northwestern part of Ukraine, especially the city of Chernihiv. As these poisons flowed into the Dezna River, it led to a mass die-off of most of the life in that river.

Various measurements taken have shown that at times the oxygen levels in the Desna even dropped to zero. So the ecosystem of the Desna, which let me tell you is one of the more beautiful ecosystems in Ukraine. It's a lovely, gently flowing river with gorgeous riverbanks.

people fishing all over the place. That's, that's all done now. All, all dead. Everything that river died. There have been attempts since then to re oxygenate the river, to recuperate in some way. The Desna is not healthy at all anymore, even with these efforts in this monitoring.

But the update that can be given here, because it happened in August, a lot of the testing was happening in September, and I was going to talk about it in early October, but here we are. What we know at the end of October is that the worst case scenario was avoided, which was the desna flowing into the Dnipro and poisoning the Dnipro. The desna flows into the Dnipro River immediately north of Kiev.

and becomes part of the drinking water used in Kyiv. Thankfully, that none of the Dnipro River seems to have faced the effects that further upstream on the Dnesta faced. Kyiv's water supply is secure. Very thankfully, that was something that everyone was very, very concerned about, that if these poisons reached all the way to the Dnipro River, what would Kyiv do? The largest city in Ukraine having poisoned water

In Chernihiv, the city north of Kiev that the desna flows through, they had to close their beaches to make sure that no one could get poisoned in this way. If that made its way to Kiev, that's a lot more people that could potentially be affected. And again, drinking water. Even if it's treated, you can only do so much. Though then, that story still needs to be...

looked at. This problem has not gone away. It has to be monitored. It has to be treated. But it's just one more example of Russia committing ecocide. In the final topic we'll go over before getting into our international section, which...

Oh boy, he's loaded as well. Will be President Zelensky introducing the plan for Ukrainian victory. So this victory plan has actually been something that has been very much in demand by Ukraine's allies. One of the main things that especially the American Republicans have been complaining about regarding Ukraine

Why they don't want to give aid to Ukraine is by saying that Ukraine doesn't even have a plan for how this war is going to end. Please just give us an idea of when you want to wrap things up so we know how long we have to give you money. Kind of an absurd demand in my mind. Ideally, the war would be over tomorrow. Ideally, the war would have been over in 2022. Ideally, the war would have been over in 2014.

Ideally, the war would have been over with the end of the Soviet Union and the Russians deciding that they did not need their empire anymore. But that can't be where we live in the past. We have to look in the future. And there is no great plan for how to end this war. The only way to do it is to beat Russia. And that is what Zelensky said in so many words.

And so he gave a five-point plan of victory. The first, invite Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance. Two, strengthen Ukrainian defense against Russian forces, including getting permission from allies to use their long-range weapons on Russian territory. This idea of strengthening Ukrainian defenses has six kind of sub-points that others have pointed out, which is first, helping in equipping reserve brigades.

The Ukrainian army needs reserves, and right now they're going through the process of getting the manpower for those reserves through the process of mobilization, but Ukraine is not able to fully equip these reserve brigades. So we can mobilize as much as we want. They will not all be equipped properly without support. Next is elevating Ukraine's air defense.

Ukraine's cities need to be protected. And I did not cover it in this episode, but of course there were multiple strikes throughout the month of October that did cost lives, including in apartment building in Kyiv that was hit by a drone. Next, joint operations with European neighbors to down Russian missiles and drones, something that for some reason I can't understand in any logical way.

why neighboring countries aren't doing. If a Russian drone flies into Polish or Romanian or anyone else's airspace, shoot it down. They're violating your airspace. It's not an act of aggression or escalation or anything like that. It's a Russian weapon heading your way. Shoot it down.

Next, expanding operations on using Ukrainian missiles and drones. And this is something that has been showing a lot of promise. Ukraine has been developing its domestic defense industry quite rapidly. And that is something that our European partners have been very important in helping happen. Next, lifting partner-imposed restrictions on the use of long-range weapons across all Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia.

get rid of the targeting restrictions, let Ukraine use long-range missiles to take down Russian airfields, Russian logistics, Russian strong points within Russian territory. It's all the same war. It doesn't matter what side of the border the Russian equipment or personnel or bases or anything like that are on.

It's all the same war. And provide Ukraine with real-time satellite data and intelligence gathered by other means, which is something that has been happening this whole time, yes. Western intelligence has been very important in Ukrainian targeting. The next of the five points, so past those subcategories into the next category, the containment of Russia via non-nuclear strategic deterrent package deployed on Russian soil. And frankly, I don't know what that's supposed to mean.

Except I know what they're trying to say here, which is that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weaponry with the understanding that America and Russia would both recognize Ukraine's internationally recognized sovereign borders and not to do anything to harm them. Ukrainian disarmament, both in the case of

nuclear and conventional weaponry, and a lot of conventional weaponry. Ukrainian disarmament was done with the understanding that they would not be facing these threats, and that the new post-Cold War international order would keep them safe. Something that I very obviously didn't do, which means falling back to the previous option, which is nuclearization. Zelensky said that if Ukraine could not have NATO,

then it might need nukes. I'd prefer NATO, but it might have to go with nukes. This third point is touching on that. If Ukraine's partners don't provide some kind of deterrent, then Ukraine has to develop its own, which means nukes. And since we just had an episode about nukes, I'm not going to delve too deeply into that, but if the choice is between extermination or nuclear armament, go with nuclear armament.

We discussed this point in more depth when we talked about the victory plan on the new voice of Ukraine. So once again, I point you to patreon.com slash nvua. Next point, joint protection of the U.S. and EU of Ukraine's critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential.

developing Ukraine's economy with a bit of touching on protecting the Black Sea trade routes. And fifth point, for the post-war period only, replacing some U.S. troops stationed across Europe with Ukrainian soldiers. I said at the start of this segment that a lot of the reason why this victory plan needed to be published was demands by the U.S. Republicans, and this kind of gets to that as well.

A lot of the concern with Ukraine is this isolationist idea that they are concerned about having to provide American troops to defend all corners of the world, and especially Europe. Europe should be able to defend itself, and honestly, I can't argue too strongly against that one. Europe does need to have its own independent defenses that don't rely so heavily on America.

America is not reliable and we have an election coming up and that election might go poorly. If that election does go poorly, if Trump wins, if this isolationist group takes power, even though they're not isolationists, they want to invade Mexico, lots of other reasons they're not isolationists, but that's what they're being identified as. This group of people is

doesn't want to protect Europe anymore. So yeah, Europe needs to protect itself better. Everyone who's obtained attention knows that. So this is an offer to use Ukrainian soldiers in the place of American ones as part of a broader European security structure, which to me makes sense. Europe has money. Ukraine has battle experience. Ukraine can use that battle experience as by far the most experienced and

best trained military on the European continent. At this point, I could definitely see an advantage in Ukrainian soldiers becoming the new guardsmen of Europe.

But that is, again, post-war, not a victory plan, but kind of throwing some meat out there, hoping for some bites. And then there are a few secret annexes that have been described as the specifics of what Ukraine is asking for as far as equipment, quantities of equipment, and other sensitive intelligence that doesn't need to be published for everyone to read.

So that's the plan and some of the logic behind the points of the plan. How is it accepted? And the answer is not particularly well. Even Ukraine's closest allies treated it as with lukewarm support at best. Some parts of it they agreed to, some parts of it do not. And really the problem to most of them is Ukraine joining NATO. No one really wants Ukraine to join NATO, it seems.

There are some supporters in NATO, of course. Lithuania is now, as in ever, been Ukraine's biggest champion for NATO membership. But the Germans and the Americans and a whole lot of others who are more than happy to let the Germans and Americans take the blame have not been jumping to the cause of NATO membership.

expansion into Ukraine. They do not want to be drawn directly into this war. They do not want their own people to be killed. They do not want their own cities to be bombed. Though European and American hesitancy and I'd say cowardice has led to the possibility of that happening in the future only increase more and more. They did not stand strong when it was needed to in 2014.

If they had, then, these problems could have all been avoided. So at some point, they have to take a stand. But apparently, not yet.

And the biggest problem, as is always the biggest problem, and we'll get to them more later, is Hungary. That little gnat, Viktor Orban, has once again decided to take the opportunity to cause as much trouble with Ukraine as possible. His country, well defended by NATO and within the economic embrace of the European Union,

doesn't believe that comes with any responsibilities, only endless flow of them sweet Brussels bucks, and who has taken the opportunity now to push for more direct negotiations between the European Union and Russia, avoiding Ukraine entirely. So not many good responses to the victory plan, but Orban always finds a way to be the worst.

So on that point of Orban being the worst, moving on to our international section. And our first international topic is the one that has been discussed probably more than any other news story this month, which is the introduction of North Korean soldiers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is something that has been kind of...

already in existence in a way. North Korea has had observers. It has had civilian employees in the occupied territories. Some North Koreans had even been killed in a Ukrainian strike. And I want to say Donetsk, though I could be wrong on that. North Korea has also played a very, very important role for Russian logistics.

North Korea is basically a giant weapons warehouse. North Korea's strategy since the end of the Korean War has basically to have had as many artillery pieces pointed at Seoul

that they could decimate that massive city of Seoul within the opening hours of any conflict. So even without nuclear weapons, and North Korea has nuclear weapons now, they had their own version of mutually assured destruction by way of artillery shell, which of course involves a lot of artillery shells kept in storage. A lot of artillery shells

made by the Soviet Union to Russian specs, exactly the kind of ammunition that the Russians are using against Ukrainians now. So especially within this last year, North Korea has been a major supplier of especially artillery shells, but other forms of materiel to the Russian war front and have been a key ally of Russia in the war.

I'd say the key ally, more so than Iran, more so than certainly Belarus. And to say a little bit more about these artillery shells, the sheer volume of those being used cannot be kept up with by a modern economy. Even the Russian Federation, which has a large industry for this,

They still do not have a fantastic consumer goods industry, but their artillery shell productions are still going and have been trying to increase just as Ukraine has been trying to increase its production of artillery shells. But the amount that is needed for an industrial war

does not exist in the modern world. A modern neoliberal economy cannot do it because who's using the artillery shells? Which is why both Russia and Ukraine have had to dig deep into these Soviet era stocks in order to have enough to use. Both the literal Soviet stocks that Russia had for the longest time, but also going around the world to countries that have similar stocks, mainly for them, North Korea.

Ukraine has sourced from Egypt, from Pakistan, from Iran.

around Eastern Europe with their old Soviet kit, around Africa, and around South Korea. Because South Korea is another one of those few countries that has the mass of artillery shells needed to have an artillery war. So there have been some important purchases of South Korean artillery stocks to be used by Ukraine. Because they're just not being made in enough quantities nowadays for what is necessary. They were in the 60s.

But not now. But yeah, on point. North Korean soldiers. Not just their artillery shells, but now we have news of North Korean soldiers joining the war. This initiated as originally a Ukrainian intelligence report, but since then has been corroborated by the South Koreans.

by the Americans, by the Brits. Everyone is saying that, yes, this is certainly what's now happening. We know that at minimum, 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been prepped to join the Russian war. We saw them entering into Russia to be trained in Vladivostok, the nearest big city near the Russian-North Korean border.

They have been transferred across the country and are currently in the Kursk region. Very possibly, though not confirmed yet, taking part in hostilities in order to push Ukrainian soldiers out of the Kursk region. We know they are at least in the region, not sure what they're doing there yet.

This would mean that Ukraine is now fighting against a second military, not just Russia's, but North Korea's. And this is a second nuclear military. They both have nuclear weapons against Ukraine, which has none. And so far, again, the international response has been very muted.

We heard from the Americans that if it's confirmed that there are North Korean soldiers joining the hostilities, there have been, quote, no new restrictions placed on Ukraine.

Not that restrictions would be lifted, just that there'd be no new ones. Well, thank you very much. What other restrictions did you have in mind? Though obviously the South Koreans have shown a bit more concern that their, you know, hated existential threat of an enemy is now at war, gaining military experience.

And we'll have commanders who may want to use that experience to finish off the Korean War. So we may see more support from them in one way or another. There have been some reports that South Korea might want to join the war themselves. I'd be serious. That's highly, highly unlikely. But there needs to be some kind of real international response

From this war going from, strictly speaking, a kind of one-on-one where, yes, Russia has mercenaries and recruits foreign soldiers. We have episodes about this, of course, but proper introduction of a second military power on their side, it should be looked at as a big game changer, which thus far it hasn't been.

but we'll just have to see. We don't know what the North Koreans are doing quite yet. It's still early. The intelligence is not completely caught up to what is happening, at least the intelligence that has been made public. And there's always a difference between public intelligence and private intelligence. Obviously, that's the nature of the game. But hopefully, if the North Koreans really go at this with full conviction, we'll say,

It has to lead to something or what do you think the world's going to look like? This next international issue is a lighter one, which is odd to say because it's about the Second World War and genocide and all that. But things that happened a long time ago and not right now, which in my mind makes it easier to deal with. And it involves Poland. I said at the top of this episode, I was going through Poland and really saw the solidarity that the Polish people were showing towards Ukrainians.

So keep that all in mind. I am going to do some criticisms here, but keep in mind that even now, even after the Polish farmer border blockades and all that nonsense,

The Polish people overall are supportive of Ukraine, and it is very obvious that's true when you're in Poland. With that said, Ukraine is trying to join the European Union, and what happens when a country tries to join the European Union is that everyone tries to extract their price for that. We unfortunately saw this a lot with North Macedonia, a country that literally changed its name to make Greece happy.

and join the European Union, who Bulgaria decided that the Macedonian language does not exist, and they demanded that to join the EU, North Macedonia. I want to call it Macedonia, but they had to throw the north in there because of this exact thing I'm talking about. The Bulgarians said that the Macedonians had to acknowledge that their own language doesn't exist and is just Bulgarian.

Apply the comparisons to Russia and Ukraine with that. But basically, whoever's joining the club has to get hazed on the way in.

And in the Macedonian case, that led to a lot of loss of enthusiasm for the European Union over time. Understandably so, I believe. But this Polish demand relates to the Volhyn genocide. We did have an episode in the past that focused on Polish-Ukrainian relations, and we touched on this very issue when we did so. It is something that comes up a lot when dealing with relationships between Warsaw and Kiev. So in World War II...

Very brief description of this is that at the tail end of the Eastern Front of World War II, as the Soviet army was approaching, there was a smaller war happening between the Polish and Ukrainian residents of the regions of Galicia and Volhynia, the two regions that stretch across both countries. And during the Second Polish Republic, the interwar period were part of the Polish Republic.

This was, I'll give it in terms of narratives. In the Ukrainian telling of events, this was a two-way war with both committing atrocities. As the Poles would prefer to tell it, is that it was a one-directional genocide of Polish civilians by Ukrainian paramilitaries, particularly Poles.

the Ukrainian insurgent army. There is truth to both these narratives, and it depended a lot on the region. In Galicia, it was a bit closer to evenly matched, so there were less wanton killings, I should say, and more

both sides to it while in volhynia the ukrainian paramilitaries absolutely had the upper hand and used it to commit horrific crimes against polish civilians that's just how it went but yes the polish paramilitaries did the same thing back just not in the volumes in volhynia at least

or Wolin. So what Poland is asking for now is access to the graves of Wolin genocide victims. This has been a very long-standing demand that the Polish government has had, but Ukraine has always wanted to make it a matter of reciprocation. Yes, we'll give you access to these graves. However, we want this to be a two-way kind of process. We want it to be a partnership, which involves us also going to Poland into certain sites that are

sensitive to us, sites of where Ukrainians were killed, sites of remembrance and statues and graveyards and that kind of things that we would like to be protected. We want this to be a two-way street. And again, I see both sides of this. Ukraine should allow access to the Polish government to these grave sites, but also it should be part of a larger process of reconciliation.

and shared historical memory that should include actions by both sides now poland has more of a position to twist an arm or two and so

the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, its head, Anton Trebovich, who has told me in an interview actually several years ago that he was fully willing to accommodate for polls as long as the polls were willing to accommodate for Ukrainians. Basically everything that I just told you, he told me. And he finally kind of relented and said, yes, just let them do it. This is not a huge political story. It did not last very long, even in Ukrainian press.

And I am someone who cares deeply about these historical memory issues. I've talked about them a lot on this episode, but I'm still left with a very bad taste in my mouth here because the Poles had an opportunity to extract a concession that was pretty much entirely a matter of dignity and took advantage of that.

This should be an issue where historians and civic activists are able to talk to each other as equals. But in this case of Ukraine trying to join the EU, the politics of it are inherently unequal. Poland can make demands and Ukraine can either accept them or stunt its ability to join the EU. And they made the correct decision, I suppose.

to just relent on the Polish demand here. Because again, it's a fine demand. I'm not opposed to the demand. But these issues of historical reconciliation have to be bilateral and based on the idea of dignity. And I just didn't see that happen in this case. And we'll close off this news roundup with the tale of two elections in Moldova and in Georgia.

So starting in Moldova, where the Moldovans were voting for both their president as well as a referendum to join the European Union, or should I say to declare an intention that they wanted to join the European Union. Let's not get over our skis on that one. So the president of Moldova, Mayo Sandu, she was running for re-election against a few opposition candidates.

Most of them pro-Russia in one degree or another. The non-pro-Russian opposition candidates were not so important. But Maya Sandu has been trying to lead Moldova through a period of westernization, modernization.

trying to join the European Union and preparing her country to do so. Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia for the last many years have been kind of trying to join the European Union as a grouping, though as we'll get into our next segment, it's a problematic grouping to be in at the moment and have mostly decoupled their ambitions, though Moldova is one of Ukraine's strongest supporters.

Partially because Russia occupies a sliver of Moldovan territory, Transnistria, and Russia bankrolls and supports a lot of this anti-European opposition. And for these last months leading up to the election, this is exactly what the Moldovan government has been warning about. Russia has been pouring money into Moldova to influence the election, both

in more legitimate and illegitimate ways. And what we saw was a lot of illegitimate ways. The oligarch Alon Shor, a Moldovan politician who was born in Israel and maintains Israeli citizenship, and Israel is where he fled when he was about to be arrested in Moldova, though he's currently in Russia. Alon Shor has been

one of the leading oligarchs in basically just straight up paying people for their vote. We saw on that day that as many as 10% of the Moldovan vote was just straight up paid for. In fact, there was one monitor standing outside of a polling station and a voter went up to them and asked where they're supposed to be paid.

why some people were being told they'd be paid in different ways. An election monitor hearing this directly is, it's curious of how completely unhidden this all was. But yeah, so Russian money, Russian-backed oligarch money such as through Alanshor had been going into Moldova to finance all kinds of disinformation, direct vote buying, it's

in saying how widespread just direct vote buying was. But also, going even darker than that, there have been multiple coup attempts against the Moldovan government in the past few months backed by Russia. None of them successful, obviously, but Russia keeps on trying everything. And the Russian occupation of Moldova in the Transnistria region means that Russia has been able to use Transnistria as a...

kind of staging point for a lot of these illicit activities and more so than the misinformation and

And the vote buying and the coup attempts, it's come down to just straight up thugs. Russia deployed its mafia toughs into Moldova to harass people, to intimidate voters, the whole deal. And this may sound curious to some of you, but this election was also held in Transnistria itself because Transnistria claims to be an independent country, but...

really is completely connected to Moldova in every pragmatic way possible. And the Russian-backed authorities there, despite play-acting at being an independent country, still demand to be able to vote independently.

in Moldova and on Moldova constitutional issues as if they were just a part of Moldova, which they are. But even with all these problems, even with all this interference and thuggery and attempted coups, the EU referendum was able to very narrowly win. And a lot of this had to do with the expatriate vote.

A very large percentage of the population of Moldova lives outside of Moldova. They work in the European Union. They have better jobs in Germany or Britain or France or wherever than they can have in Moldova. They see the benefits of the European system. They know that if they're a part of the EU, their own lives will be much better because they're just going to a different part of the European Union.

which is very, very easy to do as a worker. And they know that the benefits to the European Union has given to its member countries in Poland, Czechia, Hungary, all of Eastern Europe has seen benefits from joining the EU. And so this expatriate vote voted very strongly in favor of the EU referendum.

So where they were much harder to be interrupted by the Russians and do not live on a Russian media diet and are not being constantly pelted by Russian interference at all times, where they live more free of that kind of thing, and where they see the actual benefits of the European Union, they voted in favor of the European Union, obviously.

Maya Sandu, however, did take first place in the presidential elections, but not win an absolute majority. So in many countries where they have a multi-party system and there are multiple candidates for president, there will be a first round where if nobody gets in full majority in the first round of elections, they'll have a second round of elections with the top two candidates, which means that on November 3rd,

Just before the U.S. elections will be the second round of the Moldovan elections where Maya Sandu will be going up against the Russian-backed opposition politician Alexander Stoynoglu. Again, difficulty with Romanian names there, but Alexander Stoynoglu in ethnic Gagauz, which is a Turkic-speaking people. It's complicated. I'll skip over that for now.

But he is supported by Russia in the elections. He only won 26% of the vote in the first round, so he seems like a severe underdog. But if all Russian-backed candidates kind of group things together and they all get behind Alexander, then it will be a very difficult race for Maya.

And hopefully this expat vote will come out for her and defeat the forces of Russian influence. Which, of course, brings us to Georgia, our last topic of this October news roundup. And it's something that we have been covering pretty extensively as the situation has developed in Georgia. Georgia is a country that is very close to Ukraine, historically, politically joined with Ukraine's fate in many ways.

So this is something that has also gotten a lot of attention in the Ukrainian press. Protest movements have been building up in Georgia over the last year, longer really, but especially this last year with the introduction of the so-called Russian law. The Russian law is called that because based on the Russian laws, the laws in the Russian Federation, they were implemented especially during Putin's third term in order to crack down

on civil society. In the 2010s, Putin made his return to the presidency after an interregnum as a prime minister rather than as president, though still always running the place. And when he came back, he was met with a mass protest movement, a mass protest movement that he put down with severity and effectiveness to the point where

Some of those protest leaders are not so politically reliable these days. But it led to a huge crackdown that led to the current system of Russian authoritarianism, where they initially just called for NGOs and education and cultural organizations that had foreign funding to just follow closer reporting standards.

which was then followed by them being closed down and basically everything that represents a threat to the Russian system of authoritarianism being closed down and imprisoned or exiled or something gotten rid of in one way or another. And that process has started to happen in Georgia. This Russian law would have on the surface just been about reporting standards and

for NGOs that take foreign funding, but in practice would have made civil society extraordinarily restricted in its activities. And as we've explained in our Georgia episode, that civil society has played a very key role in Georgian anti-corruption, westernization, that kind of thing. So with the passing of that Russian law,

The opposition decided to basically punt the question down to the elections to get off the streets, take time to organize, to fight the real fight with the election. And unfortunately, that time has come and they officially lost.

Now, the exit polls came out with the opposition showing at least a small majority when they were able to put together a coalition. Basically, Georgia Dream would be out of power, though exit polls are exit polls. They tend to be OK in Georgia. This time, they were quite wildly divergent from the the end result.

With Georgia Dream, the Georgia Dream Party, backed by Russian oligarch Vizina Ivanishvili, once again holding power. However, those elections were so obviously dirty. We saw videos coming out of just straight up ballot stuffing of Georgia Dream representatives going to a polling station with a giant handful of votes, kind of pushing people aside and jamming them into the ballot box.

Just obvious, just vote rigging in its most base form. Beyond that, government thugs have been harassing election monitors, harassing opposition activists and voters, lots of violence and intimidation. And though the opposition coalition won quite handily in Tbilisi and the major cities, in the rural areas of the country, there is just absolutely rampant

Vote rigging. These areas that in the past would vote in favor of Georgia Dream, maybe 60% or something, we're now seeing North Korean levels of support for Georgia Dream of like 80, 90%. And that just didn't happen naturally. They just had party officials going, especially in some of the ethnic minority regions of Georgia, is going around

making up ballots themselves, just not obeying any rules. This was a dirty, dirty election. We saw a video of this. Every election observer of any level of seriousness was able to point this out. This was a rigged, dirty election, which is why President Salome Sorobashvili declared the vote was illegitimate, that the

incoming Georgia Dream government into parliament was illegitimate, the prime minister was illegitimate, and that there had to be another election with full international monitoring and without any of this criminality that marked the Georgian elections. That happened just Saturday, the 26th. Today, as I'm recording, was the first day of protests.

There was no serious violence that I saw, but this fight is going to be for the long haul. This is not something that Georgian society can accept and not something that the opposition can accept at all because one of the promises of the Georgian government, should they win re-election, was that they said they would just ban the opposition from existing. This is a politically existential fight in Georgia marked by foreign billionaires and

outright doing vote buying, just telling people to vote for them through tampering with ballot boxes, through installing corrupt election officials and monitoring groups, all at the behest of tying their country closer to Russian interests. But enough about Elon Musk.

This is part of the political polycrisis that I want to talk about next episode, I believe. The European Union needs to be throwing their support behind the Georgian opposition right now. If they care at all about democracy or anything like that, it is essential. But I don't know if they have the focus and the will to do so at the moment.

There are too many crises, especially with Moldova happening at the same time, of Ukraine, of everything else in the world happening right now.

that I'm deeply concerned that no single problem can be dealt with effectively. And no single problem being dealt with effectively, that means no problems are dealt with effectively. And they just spread and spread and everything gets worse. When lines could have been drawn sooner, and now in a period of chaos, chaos agents are taking advantage. And there's no great way to find your footing

to take a stand on any one issue, let alone dozens across the world. But still, this fight needs to happen. The people of Georgia must be supported. The people of Moldova must be supported. They cannot be taken over by these corrupt, violent, socially and politically retrograde forces.

that want to ruin everything for everyone. That goes for Moldova, that goes for Georgia, that goes for the United States. And for that, I will close off this episode. I'll try to get an episode out before the American elections. Again, if you'd like to support this podcast, and again, I'm apologizing, but this is a big old episode to make up for it. Please go to patreon.com slash Ukraine Without Hype to support this podcast, to support Ukraine. Of course, go to the link in the description.

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