Genocide in Ukraine

Robert sits down again with Romeo Kokriatski, Ukrainian journalist, to discuss the Russian government's intentions in Ukraine.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about things
falling apart um and and some other stuff from time
to time. I'm Robert Evans UM and today we are
going to chat once again with Romeo Kokoatski. Um. Romeo,
you are a Ukrainian journalist and an anarchist. We chatted

(00:25):
with you right before the Russian expanded invasion of Ukraine. UM,
and now we're we're talking with you again now that
the war has entered UM certainly a different phase as
as Russian troops pull out of the north of the country,
pull out from around Kiev and focus their remaining on

(00:45):
blowed up forces to the fight around the dawn Bass. Um.
How are you doing, Romeo? Yeah, thanks for having me
on UM. It's been it's been tough. We'll get into
this a little later on. But obviously learning that Um,
a town not far from your own as undergone a

(01:07):
genocide is not the easiest thing to live through. Yeah,
and knowing that that is not even the worst of
the atrocities that we're going to discover in the coming
weeks and months is is put the put the mental strain.
Let me tell you, Yeah, I don't think I think thankfully.
Very few people understand the experience of learning that a

(01:29):
genocide has occurred next door essentially, um. And yeah, what
you wanted to talk about specifically, obviously, when when we
talk about the act of genocide, we're talking about the
massacre in Bucca UM. An exact count butcha, sorry, an
exact death count is not available right now. But I
think at least two civilians killed is the last number

(01:51):
I've gotten. Yeah, that's the last, like confirmed number. But
obviously a lot of these people UM have been tossed
into mass graves. They're lying around in various residencies. It's
it's gonna, it's gonna be a long time before, yeah,
able to to come to any kind of accurate account
of how many residents were killed. Yeah, And for a

(02:14):
brief overview of just kind of like what has been
seen in the executions there. We have civilians often hands
tied behind their backs, so they were clearly restrained, executed
after having been restrained. Some of them were just left
in the streets, some of them dumped into mass graves.
UH Satellite imagery from before the town was liberated by

(02:36):
Ukrainian forces shows corpses lying in the street in the
same position they were discovered in when the Ukrainian military
moved in, which is as solid open source confirmation of
the genocide as you're going to get with any kind
of genocide. Um. So that's that's the situation. Obviously, the
usual crew of bad actors and u USHI defenders have

(03:00):
kind of slid into the most common allegation I'm seeing
at least online as people saying it must have been
as Off battalion that did it, even though their four
hundred and forty miles away um encircled by the Russian army. Um. Yeah, yeah,
but you know it's the it's the you're seeing like
a lot of kind of bad open source responses to

(03:22):
with people being like, well, why would the bodies if
you look at the satellite imagery, why are the body
so evenly spaced, which is just like they're not. It's
it's it's just like people people recognizing that if you
like circle ship on a grainy image and and tweet
about how it's suspicious, you'll provide enough plausible deniability for
other people to to doubt a genocide. You know, it's

(03:42):
it's it's the same ship we saw with Syria. There
was some disgusting denial where someone was claiming that they
could see bodies being carted away um by the Ukrainians
for you know, investigation and reburial. Um, that the corpses
were quote unquote moving. You can see you can see
this guy's hand move. Yeah, you're looking at dead bodies.

(04:04):
Buggy there. And by the way, when you move dead bodies,
they move like pieces of the shock. It's you're driving
over a street that has been churned over by tank
treads and you're you're transporting human corpses. Those corpses are
gonna get jostled around. Yeah, it's uh, definitely. I don't know.

(04:27):
You know, I don't want to be labor on this
too much because I think we've talked a lot about
how this this distant foe works. I think what you
came on specifically to talk about and what's really worth
getting into in some detail, is, um, this manifesto that
was published on r i A, which is a large
Russian government controlled UH news agency. Um, it's this I

(04:51):
don't know how manifesto. It's fascist. You can find it
if you if you just google uh r i A
published is Russian fascist manifesto The New Voice of Ukraine
has a translation of it up um if you want
to read this thing, but it's it's pretty pretty striking,
um and um. The kind of focus of this is

(05:16):
on justifying the denazification campaign um and it opens one
of the opening lines is when the theory that people
are good the government is bad no longer holds true.
Admitting this fact is the basis of the Denazification party
all of its associated measures, and the fact itself is
the subject matter of the policy. And that this came

(05:38):
out within a day or two of the discovering of
the elements of genocide and and um, which is yeah,
is pretty predominant, I would say, like pretty noteworthy. Yeah.
So I had to translate this and let me tell
you it took um a pretty big, pretty big tone

(06:01):
in my sanity for a couple of days here um.
And I'm gonna be honest as Ukrainian reading this, this
was If you have ever I don't know if some
of your listeners may have like been at protests UM
counter protests against UM fascist or far right demonstrators where
they're chanting that they will murder you. This is exactly

(06:23):
how I felt. This is this is nothing less than
someone reaching through the screen and telling me that they
want to kill me and everyone I love personally, Um,
because I am, because I want their independence. So there's
this the kind of theme of this article. The tern
that they use most often is denossification, and I think

(06:48):
it really um, it is incredibly vital to explain just
what this denotification means, because normally, like you and I, Robert,
I think we both call our else anti fascists and
we are pretty anti Nazi. Um that I think that's
a that's a pretty mainstream position to do not like

(07:09):
Nazis and be anti Nazi. So the Russians use this
term denazification to someone that has no context, no idea
of what it refers to beyond the obvious meaning. Get
rid of Nazis sounds like something even laudable. The problem
is what the Russians mean by Nazis is not what
you and I or any other normal, same rational human

(07:30):
being would consider a Nazi. This article does not justify uh,
it's it's thesis that Ukrainians are Nazis at all. In fact, um,
there are there is a whole series of paragraphs um
that states that Ukraine does not meet like any critidia

(07:50):
of being Nazi. UM too. To quote a bit from
this um, as horrible as it is, UM, it reads,
there isn't, after all, a single important Nazi party, no fewer,
no fully racist laws, only their curl tailed variance in
the form of oppressions against forms language. As a result,
there's no opposition in resistance to the regime. A particular

(08:12):
feature of Nazified Ukraine is it's a morphosis eminent and
ambivalentness which allows for the masking of Nazism as a
desire to move towards a quote unquote independent and quote
unquote European, uh Western and pro American path of development,
in reality towards degradation, while insisting that quote unquote Ukraine
doesn't have any Nazism, only private and singular excesses. So

(08:38):
the micle itself an it's that Ukraine is not Nazi
in any way that we would recognize the term. Yeah,
and it's it's basically saying that like it's Nazi, it's not.
There's no fewer and there's no race like racialist laws. UM.
But the thing that makes it a Nazi is want

(09:00):
in closer union with Europe as opposed to Russia. UM.
And of course it it notes like the so called
laws against the Russian language, which I'm not aware of
anything happening. I think what they're referring to is like
attempts to encourage the Ukrainian language in Ukraine. Yeah, there
are no laws or sanctions language in Ukraine. There never

(09:21):
have been. And in fact, when I was there, one
of the difficulties I had with my interpreter is he
he only spoke Ukrainian. And so you can, obviously you
can speak with people who speak Russian if you speak Ukrainian,
but it's a little bit like confusing, and most people
we were talking to spoke Russian natively. Like it's the
the idea that it's somehow like been that the Russian

(09:44):
language has been somehow like attacked in Ukraine. Um feels
very silly as someone who like repeatedly encountered the Russian
language while in Ukraine. Yeah, it's it's it's simply propaganda, um.
And the fact is that the Russians define Ukrainian Nazism

(10:06):
not as having Nazi values or a Nazi party or
anything that we would associate with with Nazism, but in
fact simply the simply that Ukraine wants to be independent
of Russia. That in itself is proof positive to the
Russians of our Nazism and nothing else. So when when

(10:27):
people hear this word denossification, what they don't mean getting
rid of like far right elements in Ukraine. No, they
mean being anti Russian or being or simply wanting to
be separate from Russia. Is itself a far right position
in Russia's eyes, and that is enough to call for our,

(10:48):
um pretty much complete extermination. Yeah, and you know, to
kind of go into this article a little more. One
of the things that I find m interesting about it
is this line here, The fact that the Ukrainian electorate
shows Poroshenko's piece Porshenko is the president before Zelinski and
Zelinski's piece should not be misled. Um, I think they

(11:09):
probably meant misread. Maybe Ukrainians are quite satisfied with the
shortest path to piece through blitzkrieg, which the last two
Ukrainian presidents transparently hinted at when they were elected. I
how I don't understand how anything Ukraine has done could
be considered a blitzkrieg um since they never invaded Russian
territory and in fact lost territory to Russia in two

(11:32):
thousand and fourteen. Um, that's a weird definition of a blitzkrieg.
I'm wondering if you can shed some light on what
they might even mean on that, or is it just
just complete fallacy. What they mean is basically that Ukraine
in so within Russian probably and you have to understand,
we're talking about a completely separate universe, a different reality.

(11:58):
So the way every every single aspect of what you
and I know does does not apply, like they don't
live in our consensus whatsoever. So what they mean is
that Ukraine blitz creaked the elimination of Russian speakers and
um pro Russian culture and pro Russian sentiments in Ukraine
during the year of my don Um in Russia's in

(12:21):
Russia's reality, Ukraine carried out of genocide against these people
in Ukraine in everywhere except the puppet authorities of the
Luhanskan Danetsk People's republics. So basically Ukraine carried out this
blitz creed. The reason Ukraine is so quote unquote nazified
is because in the this Russian alternative reality, Ukraine genocide

(12:47):
at all of the Russians, all the ethnic Russians, the
writing speakers and even with pro Russian sentiments. And this
is what they mean when they refer to this uh,
this blitz creed that they that well um Ukraine went through.
They quickly killed everyone who was pro Us and now

(13:07):
uh and now everyone else, everyone who has left is
a Nazi um like the The latter part of this
paragraph really makes that clear. They say it was this
method of quote unquote appeasement of internal anti fascists through
total terror that was used in Odessa, hark evening for
tost Mariable and other Russian cities. So not only are

(13:27):
are these Ukrainian cities Russian, this quote unquote appeasement that
they're referring to is a sarcastic way of referring to
their um supposed genocide of these people, of of Russian speakers,
of um ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Again, that is not
only untrue, it's also ludicrous because everyone in Ukraine is

(13:49):
has some Russian ancestry, because it's a mixed country. Everyone
is everything, Like the entire Eastern European region is not
some make enclave. It is in fact a melting pot
um which the Soviet Union worked very hard to change.
One of the things I kept encountering in f Difka,
which was still under fire today and was under fire

(14:12):
in two thousand fourteen, for an idea of like how
long chunks of the country have been in Like now
it's spread all over Ukraine, but parts of Ukraine have
been under continuous artillery fire for nearly a decade. UM.
But I kept encountering these old ladies who had grown
up in the Soviet Union, and we're saying, like, Um,
I don't understand why they're doing this. They they like

(14:33):
I've always considered myself Russian, and and now this is happening,
like I don't understand it. I don't understand it. It It
doesn't make any sense. And in terms of like the
denialism that we've been seeing lately. UM. One of the

(14:56):
reasons I I argued for because we had a debate
in the UM in the editor's room at Envy when
we were UM, when we were looking at this piece,
we had a debate over where whether we're going to
translate end UM publish it, and I pushed really hard
UM to do so because I think there is no
greater way to push back these UM claims of genocide

(15:19):
denial that we we are seeing popping up um across
various parts of UM of the Western laughter and the
anti imperialist left or whatever you call it UM. And
I think there's no better way to push back against
the arguments than to present the Russians own words to them. Yeah,

(15:41):
like this is such an openly genocidal fascist peace um
using pure the pure logic of of quite like of
just fascism. That is impossible. I think to really um
say that they is like a fabrication or the like.

(16:03):
The Russians aren't like this. Well, they're telling you in
their own words, this is what they're like. Yeah, And
I think the like putting focus on this isn't This
wasn't written by you know, some um like far right
extremists for some minor like online site that has like
an audience of two thousand, like Russian fascist whatever. No,

(16:25):
this was a major article published in one of the
Russian main media outlets by a respected political scientist within Russia. Yeah.
And that's that's the thing that I think really needs
to be gotten across is the degree to which I
think there's a desire to believe that the Putin regime

(16:47):
is like on its last legs and that most people
recognize how fucked up the political status quo is there,
and that's support for the regime is like pretty minimal
as a result. Um. And I I'm not I'm not

(17:07):
seeing the evidence of that. And when I talked to
I just we just did an interview with the Russian
anarchist who his attitude was very much that like, yeah,
most people broadly by the propaganda. Um. It is not
like the it's possible that's going to change over time,
because again, the severe casualties Russia has taken have not

(17:28):
really had a chance to totally filter out socially into Russia.
I think people are still becoming aware of the scale
of losses, and it's going to take some time for
that knowledge to to release circulate. UM. But I think
this article represents how a very large chunk of the
Russian populace are are seeing what's going on in Ukraine. Um.

(17:52):
And that's problematic for a number of reasons. For one thing,
with this kind of logic that we see in this article,
there's not much you can't justify, right, Like, there's very
little that uh, if you if people believe what's being
said in this article, there's very little you couldn't do.
There's very few weapons you couldn't deploy. Right. That's one

(18:14):
of the arguments this is making is that you have
to exact soldiers who have been notified, Um, have to
be wiped out completely. Um, there's there's no soldiers that
who have been notified. Anyone who has ever taken arms
against Russia and anyone who has ever supported anyone who

(18:36):
has taken arms against Russia, which at the current moment
is over of the Ukrainian population must and I quote
from this must be liquidated. Yeah, not not. Um. It
makes an argument a little higher up that these people
can't be re educated, so they can't even be sent

(18:56):
to camps two goologs. Um, they can't be made to
do forced labor. They must be liquidated, eliminated. Uh. And
this is nothing less than simply saying, well, we are
going to have to kill the grand majority of Ukrainians. Yeah,
and I don't I don't know what more like you

(19:19):
can for the folks who are kind of on the
because there's there's this tendency I think within the chunks
of the left that are not they haven't lost their minds,
They're not they don't buy the Russian propaganda. They do
see what's happening in Ukraine is terrible, they see the
war is terrible, but they still have this attitude of, well,

(19:41):
the best thing is to end it quickly, and like,
you know, we should, we should push for some sort
of negotiation. And first off, I'm saying, like, whatever the
Ukraine as a country decides is acceptable to them in
terms of peace. I'm not going to argue against one
way or the other because that's not my place. But um,
I don't I don't see how you can negotiate with

(20:05):
people who have this attitude towards you, um and and
towards the existence of your people. Like, I really don't
see long term where there's kind of an option for
peace for Ukraine with this kind of rhetoric existing in
Russia outside of smashing the Russian military to the greatest
extent possible. Yeah, I mean I feel the same way,

(20:31):
And that is a very terrifying thoughts. It's not crazy,
like yeah, because my general latitude towards wars is that
it's best when they're over. Yeah, exactly right. I have
no I have no strong desire to see to like
bomb Russian cities. Well, I mean, okay, that's that's that's
a little bit of lie. But no one, no one,

(20:53):
no one can blame someone living in Ukraine right now
for feeling a bit of a desire for for vengeance,
even though I don't think that's particularly likely to help matters. Yeah,
probably not. And I generally don't want to um see
like a world war in Europe or anything like that.

(21:15):
But I I really when I racked my brains of
what can be done, like how you can live with
like the these people aren't you know, thousands of climbers
away or on the other side of the continent. They're
literally the neighboring state. Um And I I just I
don't have any answers of how Ukraine is supposed to

(21:37):
move forward while Russia remains in its current configuration. Like
I don't see a future, um a coexistence of any
kind that's possible when they are literally calling for our extermination.

(22:00):
I think that's also kind of the question of how
do we have There's this this phrase that you heard
a lot, particularly kind of in the in the post
World War two period of like the need for rules
based international order, and the United States was as much
apart as anyone of making sure that that was never
anything more than a than a friendly lie. Right, you

(22:23):
had a couple of brief moments here and there where
it was attempted to be imposed, um, Yugoslavia or well,
you know, Bosnia being kind of a clear example, but
it was always you know, in between a bunch of
illegal wars on behalf of a bunch of different states,
and illegal fundings of of insurgent groups and all sorts
of sketchy stuff and kind of culminated. And I think

(22:47):
you can we keep going back to Syria, which is
an important part of like what allowed what's happening in
Ukraine to happen. But the invasion of Iraq by the
United States was another one. Right, This idea that like
and and the things that like torture and stuff by
US force, is this this the fact? I mean, that's
what the Russian diplomats. Yeah, that's what Russian diplomats always

(23:08):
bring up in UM, in the U N and in
other like international bodies whenever they're pressed on this question
human rights. They always invariably pointed the US and say, well,
the US did this, this and this and the rock. Um,
how come the US gets to do whatever it wants
with no pushback, and the implication being that Russia also
believes it should be able to do whatever it wants

(23:30):
with no pushback. And obviously like the fact that the
United States committed war crimes does not mean that Russia
should get to commit war crimes. But from like a
point of view of like, if we're looking at things
from an international perspective, yeah, if the United States is
going to do ship like that, well other countries are
going to do ship like that, and see it as like,

(23:52):
well there there isn't like why why are we bound
by an international order but not you and I. One
of the things that so fright about the kind of
rhetoric coming out of Russia is that it it shows
those kind of dreams that people had in the wake
of World War Two, which again there was no like
Golden Age after World War Two. The United States went

(24:13):
right to regime change in Africa and Latin America, all
sorts of fucked up ship. But it shows that like
any kind of international hope of something like that ever existing,
has has fallen apart. We are we are if people
want something like that. And I do believe that some

(24:34):
sort of rules based international order. And I'm not talking
about like you and global government. I'm talking about broad
ranging international agreements that, for example, you don't get to
fire chemical weapons at civilians, you know, Like, um, I
think that would be nice, a nice thing to exist,
And I think part of what we're seeing here is

(24:54):
that any chance of having that has kind of been
reset to zero. Um. Not that it was ever a reality,
but I think the kind of I think the rhetoric
around the fact that ever existed has completely dissolved now. Um.
And maybe that's not like particularly bad, because it's bad

(25:16):
for people to believe something exists when it doesn't, because
that that international order never did really exist, But um,
I think what we're seeing here is kind of the
final collapse of any belief that, uh, there's an inner
there are international standards of morality and behavior for states. Yeah. Absolutely.

(25:39):
I mean there's a lot of reasons why. UM. Ukraine's
President Lanski gets a lot of props from from a
lot of people right now. But one of the things
that has absolutely I personally rate as absolutely as the
kids say based in recent days was the Lensky's addressed
um in from the u N where he called them
basically cowards. If they don't kick Russia out and they

(26:02):
can't even enforce their main um, their main goal, which
is peace, um, then they should dissolve. And honestly, I
don't see any any issues with that argument. That seemed yeah,
completely rational. What what is the point of this organization
if it cannot even do something as simple or not simple,

(26:24):
but if it cannot do something as straightforward as punish
the perpetrators of John side, what exactly is the point
of it? That's exactly kind of where I am, which
is like, why are we like right now we have
this issue where like after Russian evidence of Russian genocide
was uncovered, Russia is set to the the UN, the
Human rights uh what you call it? Um that they

(26:46):
are yeah, herman rights canceled, that they're a permanent member
of and like like basically filed a complaint against Ukraine
for doing the genocide that they did. Um. And uh,
you know there's talk about we could dissolve and reform
the Council without Russia, we could kick like there's there's options,
I guess in a parliamentary sense, but broadly speaking, when

(27:10):
one of the people sitting on that Council has is
in the process of carrying out a genocide, which they
are justifying in this way through their through their media organs.
What is the fucking point of having that. It's just
like it was like the night of the invasion. I
sat and I watched everything happening in the U n

(27:31):
UM and my my thought the whole time, as like
every all of these international representatives were like, you can't
do this right, you have to stop. You have to
stop like try like begging for there to be some
sort of peace in Russia. Just going ahead and doing it.
It was like, you know what we what we saw? UM.
It not dissimilar to some of the ship that happened

(27:52):
and then leading to the Iraq War, where it was like, okay,
well a lot of people agreed, this is fucked up.
I guess that doesn't mean anything. Um. And it did
mean anything. Uh. And uh that's why have it? Like
why why pretend that it means anything? UM? I guess
that's where I am. I mean, it's it's the same

(28:15):
um to draw parallel to to US politics. It's it's
the same as UM like the Democratic Party during the
Trump era saying oh, Mr President, you can't do all
of these obviously legal things you're doing that's bad. You
should stop, Like here's here investigations that prove that you're
doing the bad things. Please stop, Mr President, with all

(28:37):
the violated the Emoluments Clause, okay, like okay, are you
going to enforce it? Enforce any of this? Like without enforcement,
all of this condemnation is literally just noise. It doesn't react,
It doesn't result in anything in the material world that
will have an effect in curtailing or restricting this behavior

(28:59):
now or the future. And if you cannot do that,
then what I like to call it, what you have
the job program for yuppies. Yeah, yes, international rules based order.
I when I was in Iraq during the war against
Dices and hanging out primarily with not just Kurds, but

(29:19):
like Kurds who were natives of mosle Um when we
were kind of back in her bill away from the front.
The number one organization, the number one group that they
complained about, was not the United States, nor was said isis.
It was the United Nations, who were generally viewed to
be a bunch of you like they saw them the
way like people see like trust fund kids. They were

(29:41):
a bunch of rich assholes tooling around in land rovers,
staying in nice hotels and burning money on fucking bullshit. UM.
And and that's I don't know. It's so the idea
of the United Nations as what it was supposed to be,
which is like, yeah, we should things like what then
Bazis did shouldn't be allowed to get nearly as far

(30:02):
as they did. And perhaps if all of the Nations
were sitting together and saying, well, that's bad, right, we
don't want people doing that, um, maybe some of these
bad things would stop happening. UM. And what it has
turned into is, yeah, it's a jobs program for fucking yuppies.
It's it's not that there aren't individual things within the
U n I've certainly been to a lot of places,
particularly refugee camps, that had infrastructure because of u n

(30:26):
h c R, even though that's a very flawed organization. UM.
I can't deny that a lot of people got access
to basic survival gear that was necessary because of u
n h c R UM United Nations Humanitarian Crisis Relief. UM.
But overall it's just it's nothing. You know, there was

(30:47):
there's a really I think my favorite piece of graffiti ever, um,
which was spotted in um Sarajevo during the Serbian encirclement
and and shelling of that city. Um. And it's uh
spray painting of you in in the style of the
UN's logo, and then underneath it united nothing um. And

(31:09):
And that was the attitude of a lot of people
in the city as they like watched the UN bicker
over what was to be done about the fact that
an army had surrounded a city full of civilians and
was pounding the high rise apartment buildings with artillery and
tank cannons all day long. Man, that sure sounds real familiar.

(31:29):
It's a good thing that never happened. Again, I don't
know what that sounds, um, but I mean, yeah, it's
it's anyway, Um, Romeo, has anything else you wanted to
get through today as we stare at this thing, this
bad thing. Honestly, I just as much as normally I

(31:51):
would encourage people to not pollute their brains with with
thatcher stage prop in this case, I would recommend people
read through um my translation at the New Voice. If
you don't trust me for whatever reason, you can pull
up the original and google translated machine translate it yourself.

(32:11):
It'll be a serviceable translation, and just read it for yourself, UM,
because I want to make it very clear that Russia
is no longer simply like some hyper capitalist, kleptocratic oligarch state.
It is literally fascist. It is using fascist rhetoric and

(32:33):
fascist techniques to eliminate an ethnic group it considers to
be inferior to its own, um, in order to take
its land and resources for itself. It is. There is
no greater distillation of fascism on this planet right now
than the Russian Federation. Yeah, they're doing and I really

(32:55):
would like people to understand, especially if you consider yourself
anti imperialist or anti fascist or anything, the Russian Federation
is a fascist government um, on the level of Nazi Germany,
and it is attempting to uh to literally this article
is called is called what shall we do with the Ukrainians? Yeah, um,

(33:19):
the Ukrainian question, you know, um. And this article is
proposing a solution to the Ukrainian question. So again UM.
Mostly that's what I would like to leave your listeners,
Robert with an understanding. UM. And again you don't have

(33:42):
to trust me, you can go and read this for yourself. Um,
that the the greatest fascist threat on this planet right
now is not the United States of America, as shocking
as that may sound, um, and as hard as that
maybe to buy. Uh, it is the Russian Federation and
it is right now trying to genocide the country and

(34:04):
the people that I belong to. Yeah. Um, so I
don't know, maybe make a note of that, folks, put
that in here in your mental rolodex. Um. It's uh,
I don't know. I I I hope you continue to
stay safe. I'm glad your area of Ukraine is at

(34:25):
least less under under the gun than it was earlier
in this war. Um. I'm glad broadly speaking, that the
Russian Federation has bitten off a hell of a lot
more than they were able to chew um, and now
are doing their chewing without nearly as many teeth. Um.
And yeah, I hope that process continues, and I hope

(34:49):
the siege of Mariopolis lifted. Yeah, thanks a lot. I
really appreciate um letting letting me make an appearance, and
um going through us with me, and uh, yeah, I
think we share the same hopes here. Yeah, all right, everybody,
that's the episode, Go go away. It Could Happen Here

(35:12):
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