45. The Big Interview: Philip Ittner on the Realities in Ukraine
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail. Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine podcast's big interview. Today we're talking to veteran war reporter Philip Itner, who worked for CBS News for 15 years and is now a freelance. Bill speaks Russian and covered the rise of Putin in 2000, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, and now the war in Ukraine. This is what he told us.

Phil, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell us where you are now and what you've been up to recently? Well, I am currently in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, and have been in country in Ukraine, except for a short stint when I had to go back to the States.

since the beginning of the war. Now, I started in Lviv before we kind of, I mean, the first week of the war, I crossed over, I flew from San Francisco and flew to Warsaw, got on a train to Krakow, got in a taxi from Krakow and drove across. And that was the first week of the war when we couldn't predict how it was going to go. So I decided to go as far as Lviv so that I could be inside Ukraine

But until we knew what was going to happen in the battle for Kiev, that was as far as I was going to go. And I lived in Lviv for the first, I'd say, roughly three months of the war. Then I moved here.

and have been, as I can, moving around the country with colleagues. And, you know, we're all kind of freelancing. We're all kind of doing our own thing. So we kind of, you know, bandy together. And, you know, I have been mostly vlogging, doing podcasts, radio stuff. I'm a veteran broadcast guy.

journalist with over 25 years of experience in the region. And well, not just in the region, but also, you know, in America's wars and the post 9-11. I was the deputy bureau chief for CBS News in Baghdad, for example. I was the bureau chief for Voice of America for a year in Kabul. And well, split my time between Islamabad and Kabul.

So I've seen my fair share of conflicts. I was just about to hang up my spurs, so they say, when this war kicked off. And I have a very strong connection to Ukraine. I've been coming to Ukraine for 22 years. When I first started my career, I was a radio correspondent for CBS, among others, in Moscow.

And I came down here for the visit of Pope John Paul II in 2001 and have been coming here ever since and fell in love with the country, fell in love with the people, deeply interested and intrigued by the history, was on Maidan in 2014. And this is where my story takes a little bit of an odd turn, made promises on Maidan to Ukrainian people who knew this was coming. They knew this war was coming. I can't reiterate that strongly enough.

And I had an encounter on my Don in 2014 with the two elderly women weeping and tearing at their clothes, begging me not to let Ukraine fall from the front pages when the eventuality of this war would happen. And it was an extremely emotional moment. And I made a promise on that night, on that day, during my Don, the Don Revolution, that indeed I would come back.

So as much as I am loathe to be in a war again, I'd hoped I'd never see another one. I made a promise and I believe in keeping one's promises. So,

I'm here and I'm going to stick it out until the end. And one of the things that has been interesting in this year so far is the fact that I thought I was giving something to Ukraine in trying to tell their story. But what's really happened to me is I have been deeply humbled to bear witness to the birth of a nation that is long overdue.

in gaining its independence and self-determination. So that's my shtick. Thanks so much, Phil. We're a little bit later to the party than you, as I think you probably know. Patrick's got experience of this sort of thing, not so much me. I tend to look back at history with a good 20-year gap, so this is quite unusual what we're doing. But

We're also winning it for the long haul. We feel a responsibility, frankly, to keep covering this through the podcast until the resolution. So we're going to range about a number of things recently. But of course, the big news over the last week were the Pentagon leaks. Can you give us a sense for what effect they've had in Ukraine, particularly the revelation that the US is not particularly optimistic, or at least wasn't when the document was relevant a couple of months ago about the much anticipated counteroffensive?

There's a lot to unpack about the documents. I think, you know, not unexpectedly, many Ukrainians are just disappointed that this information was leaked. You know, how much can we tell our American partners? Because they do not have open disclosure to the Americans. We've run into this in the past.

where the Ukrainians do one thing, the Americans, say, do the other. And, you know, it is not completely open between the two. So the question that I'm hearing here in Kiev an awful lot is how much can we tell the Americans if indeed their intelligence is not secure? It's just not a good look. As far as the American military is,

saying that they're skeptical of any gains that Ukraine can make. Well, the Ukrainians, of course, don't like hearing that, but they've been hearing it for a year. They've been hearing it for longer than a year, and they kind of shrug it off as, you know, well, they just don't know what we're capable of, and they don't understand that we're fighting for our existence, the future of our children, and for countless generations down the road. I mean, this is roughly 500 years in the making.

in many ways, this war. So they're not terribly surprised that Western military leaders underestimate them. They certainly hope that the Russians keep underestimating them. And then lastly, I think they also use the Pentagon leaks to say, so you do know

that we are running out of ammo. So you do know that we need many more, you know, one, one, one five, five millimeter shells. When you show you, because part of the, the leak indicated, we do know that there are these deficiencies.

And so the Ukrainians have said, aha, you know it too. Now let's do something about it. So they've capitalized on it in some ways. I think those are the three most important salient points when it comes to the leaks. Is there a sense in Kiev, Phil, that some kind of climactic is approaching, a sense of sort of anticipation about this, you know, much, much heralded situation?

counteroffensive. Is that a buzz you feel on the street? Absolutely, 100%. There's a feeling of anxiety and waiting for the shoe to drop. I remember years ago, I interviewed a woman who worked at Bletchley Park, and she was involved in the build-up to D-Day.

And I kind of equate these two things because she said to me, this woman, Jean Toker, who worked at Bletchley cracking Nazi codes and also prepping for D-Day, we knew it was coming. We knew it was coming and we were so, we were excited for it to happen, but we were terrified of what might go wrong. And we were so very anxious about all the young men that were about to die.

And I find a similarity here with this offensive, because this is an incredibly important counter-offensive, offensive, however you want to refer to it. There is a sense within Ukraine of, boy, this better work. We better, you know, not only do, of course, we want these military gains, but there is a recognition of,

that they have to show some results. Otherwise, their international partners might start to fray, which is the primary objective of Vladimir Putin. I mean, all along this thing, he has been hoping to

you know, fracture the alliance supporting Ukraine. And so the Ukrainians know that having been given the support that they have been given for months and months now, it's time to deliver. And there's that. And, you know, obviously they want to liberate their country. So it is by and large, and not just here in Kiev. I was down in Zaporizhia about a week ago.

Very much a frontline city. I mean, that will be a state that is a staging. I saw it with my own two eyes. That's a staging area. You could see the mobilization happening. Well, I suspect we saw the tip of the iceberg of a very larger shaping operation. But, you know, down there, it was the even more palpable, the sense of like, okay, the you know what is about to hit the fan.

And boy, let's hope it goes our way. Phil, like everyone else, we've been discussing the battle for Bakhmut for months now, it seems. I saw on your vlog that you visited the front line there not long ago. Do you get the sense that the Ukrainians are determined to hold on to the city because, frankly, they're killing so many Russians there? Why wouldn't they? And it's going to make it easier for them to break through somewhere else.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so much to unpack and discuss about the Bakhmut salient. And I got to a town called Chasiv Yar, which is just the next town along the road after Bakhmut, which the Ukrainians are using as a staging area. And then they're also firing outgoing artillery into Bakhmut. And it's just most of the people have left, not all. There's soldiers everywhere. I got to talk to some of them. Their mood changed.

They're despite what they're going through. And look, it's tough. It's a month ago, it was mud and rain and, you know, cold. And these guys were coming off the trenches to get a hot meal to basically maybe get a couple of hours of good sleep.

and then they would go back out into the trenches. This was really hard fighting. You could tell these guys were battle-hardened. They'd been inactivity. And again, I'm somebody who's been – I've covered many conflicts. Well, I wouldn't say – I'm not a soldier, so I don't have that perspective. But as a correspondent who's covered many wars, there's telltale things about the mental state, the morale, all that –

There's no doubt in my mind that those soldiers, despite what they're going through, still are very much determined to make the Russians pay for every inch that they try to take away. And you're absolutely right. For some reason, and people have speculated about this, and there's all sorts of different ideas about why the Russians are so determined to

to take Bakhmut. Now, it might be because of its strategic location and the roadways that connect it with other places than the Donbass and the fear the Russians might have of being split, you know, if the Ukrainians are able to kind of break north and south their Donbass offensive strategy.

But at the end of the day, what it is is just a spot where they're just killing so many Russians. And the Russians have a term for this. And we do as well. Of course, we call it cannon fodder. It's important. It gives a sense of where the Russians come from in that they don't refer to it as cannon fodder. They call it cannon meat. Meat. That's what they refer to their soldiers as.

The Ukrainians have this sense, again, with a high morale, but also they have this sense of like, if this is the hill you want to die on, Russia, we are happy to accommodate you. I am aware that there was some internal struggles within the Ministry of Defense here in Ukraine where Zeluzhny or Sirsky, the kind of commanding officers on the ground –

There was a period where they were going to Zelensky and saying, you know what, maybe we want to fall back. That was the kind of discussion in the military groups here in Kiev.

And apparently the consensus was made, no, we're going to hold here and we're going to make them pay for it. And that's apparently what they've been doing. But despite obviously some grumbling, soldiers will grumble. That's part of soldiering, I believe. But they know that they're going to have to kill more Russians.

And so why not pin them down? And oddly enough, what drives me nuts about the Russian tactics is they don't change. This is Mariupol again. They pinned them down in the initial invasion in Mariupol. There were months and months of fighting. Those tragic, awful visuals we saw coming out of Mariupol, the theater that was flattened, all these terrible things.

But they got fixed there, and they didn't keep mobile. The Russians didn't keep mobile. They got very static for some reason, and then just threw soldiers at it. It's almost like they didn't learn their own lessons from Stalingrad. But for some reason, they did, and they'd done it again in Bakhmut. And the Ukrainians are like, okay, if this is where you want to die, this is where we'll kill you.

We all know that the Russian attitude to death and to losses is very different from a kind of Western perspective, the amount of punishment that a military unit can soak up before it cracks. But from your knowledge, Phil, of the kind of Russian way of doing things, do you think the moment might arrive?

when all the regular army people, let's leave Wagner to one side for the moment, might just say, look, I've had enough. We're out of here. I mean, historically, it has happened in the 20th century, in the First World War. Do you think that is a possible scenario? Yeah, I have said this in the past, and it's kind of...

My go-to when I'm asked questions like that about Russia, and again, I lived in Russia. I speak very bad Russian, and I have a little bit of knowledge in this area. And what I say about Russian history is that there are long periods where nothing happens, nothing happens, nothing happens. The power structure is the way it is. Nothing happens, nothing happens, and then everything happens.

It all happens at once. I mean, we saw, of course, you talk about the Bolshevik Revolution, but you can also apply that to what happened in 1991, right?

where there was this long period of stagnation of the Soviet Union. And then all of a sudden, I mean, if you were reading your tea leaves and maybe if you were deeply on the inside, but generally what happened with the Soviet Union was this long period of stagnation and oppression. And then finally people said, no, we're not going to take this anymore. I think the possibility of that happening is,

for Russian soldiers is real. I don't want to overstate it because, of course, I'm not on that side of the front lines. I'm on the Ukrainian side of front lines. I can tell you how the Ukrainian soldiers are in general terms of how they're functioning in their morale, but

But what we're hearing and what we're gleaning from the other side of the equation, the Russian side of the equation, there is already massive dissatisfaction with the way the war has been conducted. Of course, the Russians are drinking themselves. And I've seen evidence of that. I've seen direct evidence of their alcohol consumption.

This is a big problem societally within Russia. And when I've had Ukrainian soldiers or foreign legion fighters come back to me and show me photographs of Russian camps, base camps, and they're piles of vodka bottles, just enormous piles of vodka bottles.

So there's already, I think, the seeds for some sort of, I don't want to overstate it. I don't want to say a rout. I don't want to say a collapse. But there might be, maybe more analogous to the French in World War I and the issues that they had with desertion. That might be more applicable.

But, you know, it is not going well for them. Their leaders are using terrible tactics, absolutely ridiculous. I mean, just in the 21st century, the tactics they're using are reminiscent of their 20th century tactics. Again, not being a soldier, but having studied war and having been at war a few times. I mean, they don't even have air superiority. I mean, the first thing we do in a NATO military, whatever NATO military, I mean, day one,

You know, you get the skies and they don't have the skies. It's amazing to me. I've seen Sukhois, Ukrainian Sukhois, Ukrainian high-end helicopters, Ukrainian, you know, anything flying. And we're, what, 14 plus months into this thing? I mean, that's inconceivable to a NATO military. I mean, you take out command and control and you control the skies. And the Russians seem to have just absolutely paid very little attention to that.

have relied on Russian military doctrine because I've seen that as well in the past. And that is basically vast numbers of conscripts and artillery. Their armored corps is, of course, it's respectable, but it's not well

woven into their military doctrine. That's why NATO has been training so hard with the Ukrainians to do combined arms so that, and I've, I've seen that working here in Ukraine where it's armor supported by, you know, infantry fighting vehicles that then dismount soldiers and they all work in conjunction with air and artillery and intelligence and,

and signal intelligence and human intelligence and now the drone capacity, you know, they're just a better fighting force. So that's a long way around for me to basically say, I don't know what the Russians are going to do when they come under the pressure of the counteroffensive. I think there's a possibility that they will route or rebel or say, I've had enough.

But until that starts, I don't know. But I would rather take one Ukrainian soldier for 10 Russian soldiers. I'll tell you that. Well, that was very illuminating. Do join us in part two for the second part of Phil's interview.

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Welcome back. Well, this is what Phil had to say next. Can we switch directions just slightly and talk a little bit about what we've described or other people have described as the culture wars? I mean, I saw your vlog about the removal of the Orthodox monks from the monastery near Kiev, Phil. There's been a certain amount of criticism of this in the West, as you acknowledged in that blog. So can you as succinctly as possible put it into a little bit of context for our listeners?

Sure, I'll try to focus on brevity. But I will make one quick point. Just in the last 24 or 36 hours or something, there was an announcement that the Russians exchanged, I think it was 28 Ukrainian soldiers for one Ukrainian Orthodox church pastor or priest. That tells you something. The UOC, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, is still beholden to the patriarch in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, who was a former KGB agent.

And it is well known within Ukraine that the UOC is just a fifth column pretending to be, you know, a church. Right.

And so that's why they kicked him out of the Pacharsk Lavra, which is this revered spot within Eastern Orthodoxy, because basically they were stockpiling money. They were stockpiling propaganda. They were, you know, giving the aid and comfort to the enemy. And so why would you let them stay in the Lavra? They have not outright said that the UOC is an outlawed religion, but they are highly skeptical of them. There are raids around the country and many of them have produced things.

And also in addition to that, this goes back about, I think it was 2016 or 18. Pardon me for not knowing the exact date. When the Ukrainians after Maidan went to Istanbul where the ecumenical head of the Orthodox Church exists. And they said, hey, we don't want to answer to Patriarch Kirill. We want to have our own patriarch because we are divorcing from Russia. And they were granted that. So there is the...

The UOC, I always have to double check myself on this, the UOC, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and then the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. And that's the one that has a Kiev-based patriarch.

So, look, I am very well aware of the propaganda that is used surrounding this thing. Religion is not being shut down here by any stretch of the imagination. They just celebrated Eid. Okay? It was officially recognized within the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, signed off by the president, that every year the Ukrainian military will officially observe Eid as part of Ramadan. There are Muslim fighters in Ukrainian uniform, particularly Tatars from Crimea, who

And there's not five minutes walk from me, there's the central synagogue for the Jewish community here, and Zaluzhny on Passover celebrated with the chief rabbi of Ukraine.

The propaganda is so ham-fisted coming from the GRU because it's so easily debunked because you can see it. And it also discredits this idea of fascism because fascism cannot exist in conjunction with pluralism. And this is a pluralistic society for reasons that go way back in history.

are very, really, really difficult to go into. But the UOC thing is their fifth columnist. They're not... It's not the religion. It's the fact that they're supporting the Russians. Well, the Russians are killing Ukrainians. Yeah, thanks for that illumination because it's a sort of murky subject. And as you say, it's sort of become part of the culture wars. It's something that the pro-Russian lobby seized on big time at this end. Can we talk a little bit about Zelensky? It seems...

From here, his grip on power is completely firm, that there's very little visible internal opposition to him in the normal way that you get even in quite unified societies as in Britain in World War II. I mean, Churchill came under a lot of pressure. There were votes of no confidence, etc., in him.

while the war was raging. Can you give us a little kind of idea of the internal politics as you see them, as you hear about them from your vantage point in Kiev? Well, not being Ukrainian myself and not speaking Ukrainian, I'm sure that it's more complicated than what I'm about to say from my perspective. But living here and spending time with Ukrainians

including, you know, people who kind of have not an ardent hatred of Russia. They might have Russian relatives, all that kind of, so there's a, it's very complex. Ukraine is a very complex country. As I say, it's multicultural because it used to be a colony of Russia and other empires. So the multiculturalism is integral to Ukrainians' feelings and opinions and all the rest of it about their government.

But there are those who are highly critical of Zelensky and were highly critical of Zelensky before the war for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with his relationships with different oligarchs and some high-profile business deals that were done. Now, when the war started last February,

A lot of that was stifled and willingly. A lot of Ukraine, I have a very good, my very first fixer that I had in Ukraine. He's a lovely guy. He's hypercritical, Zelensky. And even he said to me,

This is not the time. This is not the time. We will go back to politics after the war, but now we need to be unified. And I will tell you that Zelensky's performance has been lauded domestically here. Of course, there are still criticisms. Some of them do bubble up every now and then. But by and large, this country...

is so unified. I have never, ever experienced anything like it. Everybody is laser-focused on one objective, and that is repelling the imperial interests of Russia and becoming a colonial slave state or a vassal state to Moscow again. And that consumes everybody's waking hours. I know people who are...

If they're a chef, they worked to get food to the front lines. If they're an electrician, they're making sure that the lights are kept on and they're lauded for it. Even when I was in Kharkiv about two months ago, about three months ago, they were putting these propaganda posters up around Kharkiv of these women cleaning the town square and just saying, we're all in this together. So when it comes to the leadership, when it comes to Zelenskyy,

They are unified behind him. I do not know how long that's going to last after the war ends. But right now, despite some grumbling here and there, for the most part, everybody recognizes that right now the enemy is the Russians and not internal within Ukraine.

So turning to Russia for a second, Phil, what's your take on this bizarre power struggle that's been ongoing between Prigozhin and Wagner and the senior military figures in the Russian military like Shoigu and Gerasimov? I mean, is this a classic case? I mean, one sort of relatively unsophisticated reading of this is a classic case of Putin dividing and ruling, the sort of Hitler-like encouraging his subordinates to compete so that he retains, you know, the position as ultimate arbiter. Or is it just a little bit more chaotic and fluid than that?

Well, no, I actually – I think it's – I wouldn't equate it to Hitler's general staff. I would relate it to the czars and the boyar class. Historically within Russia, there were the boyars, the guys, the landowners and the kind of the elite, the aristocracy class.

And whenever, you know, oftentimes what would happen is the czar would come under pressure. But there's a tradition within Russia called if the czar only knew. And it is a way to abrogate responsibility. It's not that Putin messed up the war. It's that the guys who he trusted, they're the ones that messed up because obviously the czar can't be at fault. You know, that would call into question the entire thing. So what he does is he allows these guys to

The second strata below him, the Shoigu's and the Grasimov's and, you know, Progozhin and what have you.

to squabble amongst themselves. Now, this does a couple of things for Putin. Again, it elevates him above the boyar class fighting one another. It also allows him to solidify loyalty because whoever comes out of that scrape is going to be, you know, he's now your man sort of thing. And he can scapegoat. So let's say Gerasimov loses to Prokosin. Then Putin can say, it wasn't me.

It wasn't our great Russian military. It was Gerasimov who let us down, or it could equally be Prigogine. It's just a function for Putin to elevate himself above the fray and then also find a scapegoat and also solidify his control because, you know, once you've won that fight, you're all in. You're all in. You are now part of the Kremlin power structure. So I think

That's a lot of what's happening here. But obviously, there's a lot of murkiness in the Kremlin as well. Let's talk a little bit again about the counteroffensive, where it might take place. Fascinating reports over the last couple of days about this foothold that the

are said to have now on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, just below Kherson. Obviously, you know, one way to look at this is a possible launch point for a counteroffensive aimed at severing the land bridge to Crimea. You've already alluded to that. You know, what have you heard about this? Are we now pretty confident that that is actually the case? The

Kersan might be the launch point for the counteroffensive or? Or indeed that they definitely are on the Eastern Bank and that it's a possible launch point. And it could be multi-pronged, of course, this offensive. One thing I certainly know is that everybody raves about Volodymyr Zelensky as they should. He's been an amazing leader. He's been an international success. And also he's been amazing in keeping his country and his people together and optimistic.

But as much as we rave about Zelensky, we have to talk about the military command in Ukraine. And they have lucked out with some absolutely amazing commanders. I mean, to start with, you know, Zelensky. Zelensky, you know, is this bigger than life guy. He's a military career. He's obviously a career military guy. And I hearken back to the offensive that was expected at the end of last summer.

Everybody thought that they were going to go for Gerson. That was the obvious objective.

And they let the Russians believe that that was where the offensive was going to be. And then what they did was seize back Kharkiv in a totally unexpected feint. I mean, it is analogous in my mind to what the Allied powers did when it was, you know, it's either Normandy or Calais. The Zhelezny, like Eisenhower and the rest, played their opponent like a fiddle.

And the Russians really thought it was going to be Kherson because that does make sense. That is where the canal that feeds the water to Crimea is. Kherson, you know, has some issues with, you know, a Russian population, but it was thought to be a malleable and a possible, you know, place where Ukraine could make advances. And indeed they did once they wrapped up Kharkiv. But that feint towards Kharkiv took everybody by surprise. And it was...

It was a heck of a thing to see. And I think we're going to see it again. I have stopped speculating. We, my friends and I and colleagues here in Ukraine and around the world, we'll kind of, because just, you know, that's what we do. We'll talk about, you know, where do you think it's going to be? How's it going to go?

I've kind of stopped doing that because Zelensky is going to do what Zelensky is going to do. He's got a battle plan. And in addition to that, we know that they are going over to Germany and gaming this out with the help of the Americans and other NATO leaders. They are playing out

Every scenario, I am told, you know, like if A happens, then B. If A happens and we don't want to go to B, let's go to D. If D doesn't work, we'll go all the way down to Z. Whatever it takes. But they've gamed this out. And now in a quick addendum to all that, when talking about the offensive is the NATO weapons are here.

The striker, the strikers are here. The Bradleys are here. I see M113s, a kind of older generation armored personnel carrier, but it still works and it still functions within that combined arms doctrine. I see M113s all over the place. I mean, I, you know, I go out to the Bakhmut or I go out to Zaporizhzhia.

They're all over the place, these one-one-threes. So, you know, things are coming. Things are online. You know, more and more are coming. I think that the Ukrainian army has, you know, they're getting all their ducks in a row.

Because, again, it comes back to what I said earlier. You cannot lose – this offensive cannot go badly for the Ukrainians. It will set the pace for everything else, whether this is going to be – whether this war drags out into 2024 or, God forbid, more. Or it's going to set the pace. It's going to set the way the international community responds to Ukraine that is not on the defensive but rather on the offensive side.

and how Ukraine handles taking territory and holding territory. They have the advantage because it's their own country, and they will be, in essence, liberating fellow Ukrainians. So they won't have that problem, which the Russians have had.

But at the end of the day, all of this combines into the importance for this counteroffensive to show real tangible successes. And whether or not that is from the planning of Zeluzhny and the gaming it out with NATO military officers in Germany somewhere –

or whether or not that is the intensive training on new weapon systems that the Ukrainians have received, or indeed their infrastructure and their prepping for this offensive. Whatever all of these elements are, when they come together, boy, they better show results because the Ukrainians, they're not ignorant people. They're well aware of what is happening around the world

and they're glad for the support, but they are aware that, you know, that could change.

that support for the Ukrainians could diminish if they don't start to actually do something with these weapons systems. Well, apologies for this, but at the end of our call with Phil, the connection dropped. He is speaking to us, remember, from Kiev, and the audio quality unfortunately diminished a bit. But we feel it's really important that we include it, so sorry for the reduced quality in what comes next.

Let me just make a quick point, and I take this opportunity because I really want to re-emphasize and push back against Russian propaganda. This is not a war against Nazis. This is not a war against NATO expansionism. NATO didn't expand. The countries that were liberated after the collapse of the former Soviet Union came running away from Moscow because they don't want to live under that kind of authoritarian system.

And it's equally not about Nazism, even if there are far right elements within Ukraine, which I would argue there are far more far right elements internally within Russia. If Russia wants to combat Nazism, they should look in their own backyard. What this war is about in so many different ways

is the end of Russian imperialism. This is the crown jewel in Russia's empire. And it's a very strong part in their sense of self, of who they are. And the Ukrainians

who have been abused for centuries, have finally said, look, this has happened in the last 100 years plus, roughly a century. This is the third Ukrainian war of independence, and this is the one that has to stick. This has to be finished. This question of who controls the territory in Europe between the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the Black Seas has been this destabilizing factor in European relations

history for centuries and it has to end. This is the war that has to draw that question of who controls that triangle of territory to a close. The era of empire is over and it's essential that we support Ukraine. And Ukraine is fighting for nothing short of its sovereignty, its sense of self-determination, and they want to be a member of the Democratic Party of Nations.

So that is my diatribe there. That's my little soapbox moment saying, you know, we cannot lose our resolve. This is really important. And the Ukrainian people are worth supporting. We agree totally, Phil. Thanks so much for coming on. It was great to hear your thoughts.

Well, I have to say, Patrick, I've been waiting quite a few weeks for someone to be talking in such an impassioned and optimistic way about Ukraine's chances in this war. And we certainly got that from Phil. I mean, he explained himself, of course, that he's emotionally invested in this in a way. I suppose you might say, Patrick, as a journalist, you know, you need to kind of keep an Olympian detachment.

But I'm fully with him on all of that. And it's just so interesting to hear someone write, you know, with a proper feel for what's going on in Ukraine, to talk about the determination of the Ukrainians on the one hand, and the fact that the Russians, frankly, are in serious danger of falling apart on the other. Yeah. Well, not on that question of journalistic detachment. It kind of depends on which war you're in. I mean, if you're

in the Falklands War, you know, you want your side to win, obviously, not just for patriotic reasons, because you want to stay alive. Thinking also of things like the siege of Sarajevo, where everyone was basically, all the journalists were basically on the side of the Bosnians. You know, there were kind of good guys. It was a mixed picture, but by and large, it was the Serbs who were the aggressors and the

And the Bosnians who were on the receiving end. So, yeah, again, you know, one's sympathy is just naturally in those circumstances do tend to slide in one direction. Just on what Phil was saying, you know, very good to hear that kind of buzz around town and that analogy with the build up to D-Day, which I thought was very apt and telling.

Yeah. And also, you know, although, of course, it was there was a lot of optimism and steely determination and everything else in his comments. There was also kind of proper a sense of perspective, wasn't there? He talks, you know, very interestingly about the culture wars, the fact that basically, which I think we mentioned before, Patrick, that the, you know, the Russian Orthodox or at least the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, it reminded me a little bit of Monty Python, the way they keep changing the titles around. Right.

But the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is really an agent of the Russian government. I mean, I don't think there's any doubt about that anymore. And therefore, the criticism is really misplaced. But also, he was very honest, I think, about Zelensky. Not super popular when he came to power. There were some question marks about links with some dodgy characters. But basically, the country is absolutely united around him at the moment. He's the right man in the right place. You know, he talks about the country being laser focused on repelling Russia and preventing Ukraine ever becoming a

a slave state in the way that we can see Belarus has become. Yeah, good to hear that the preparations are so thorough as well. I didn't know about this war gaming that's been going on at NATO headquarters, which sounds very promising, doesn't it? The way that this has been thought through, really, with every option being covered and

weighed and measured. And of course, you know, hopefully this puts them in a much superior position to the Russians. I'm really struck by his reference to the vodka bottles. I mean, that to me is an encouraging sign. If the mountains of empty vodka bottles is climbing, then that's good news for the Ukrainians.

Wasn't it an interesting parallel he used with the sort of Russian power struggle going back to the Tsars? You know, this idea that the Tsar stands above everything. He lets the power struggle play out beneath him. And the winner sort of, you know, is then locked into being a creature of the Tsar.

And yet the Tsar doesn't take responsibility for anything. It's a great historical parallel. And I think it has real relevance in this case. Now, if we flip to the other side, you know, so interesting, his talk about the Ukrainian military commanders who, frankly, haven't got the credit they deserve from America or elsewhere for actually the operations they've launched before.

Prior to this point, he talks about the sort of, you know, the extraordinary feints that was a little bit like D-Day when they took Kharkiv or the huge area in Kharkiv in the summer of last year and how that augurs well, frankly, for what's to come. So, you know, generally speaking, Patrick, it was a fascinating conversation, but fills me with a lot of confidence.

Yeah, and full marks to Phil for staying the course. I was very struck by what he said at the beginning that for him, it was kind of fulfillment of a pledge all those years ago back in the Maidan demonstrations that he would stay with the story, stick with the story, keep telling the world what's going on, which is what he's done for us brilliantly today. Thanks very much, Phil.

Is it encouraging you to get out there and do the same thing, Patrick? Are you happy carrying on with the podcast? We'll be there. We'll be there sometime this summer, listeners. We're planning a trip, so we'll keep you posted on that one. In the meantime, do join us on Friday for the Friday episode when we'll be digging, as usual, into all the latest events and offering our thoughts and analysis. Goodbye. Bye.