Tactical retreat: North Korea withdraws troops from frontline
en
January 28, 2025
TLDR: Analyzing Russian attempts at encirclement around Pokrovsk, North Korean retreat in Kursk, and impact of war on Ukraine's environment; contributions by Francis Dearnley and Dominic Nicholls; content referenced includes talks about Ukraine's changing landscapes and Russia's revised history textbook.

In the latest episode of the Ukraine: The Latest podcast, hosts Francis Dearnley and Dominic Nicholls dive into significant developments on the battlefield, with a particular focus on Russia’s strategic maneuvers and a recent North Korean troop withdrawal in Kursk. Dr. Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at Harvard, joins the discussion to highlight the profound implications of the ongoing war on Ukraine’s landscape and civil society.
Key Highlights
1. Russian Military Movements
Dominic Nicholls reports on the latest military activities in Ukraine, emphasizing:
- limited movement on the battlefield: Russian forces are attempting to encircle the city of Pokrovsk, engaging in strategic assaults.
- Tactics evolving: Russian forces are deploying small groups, showcasing a shift from direct assaults to a more strategic approach. This highlights a shift from human-wave tactics to more calculated military maneuvers.
- Casualties: Reports indicate significant Russian casualties, with estimates ranging from 1,200 to 1,500 daily, raising concerns about the battle’s sustainability for Ukrainian forces.
2. North Korea's Troop Withdrawal
Amid the conflict, reports emerged that North Korean troops have temporarily withdrawn from the front lines in Kursk:
- Short-term retreat: Colonel Alexander Kidretenko referenced North Korean military presence which is expected to resume shortly, indicating ongoing military collaboration.
- Future deployments: North Korea may reinforce its troop presence soon, particularly with artillery units rather than infantry.
3. The Impact of War on Ukrainian Society
Dr. Emily Channell-Justice reflects on how the continuous warfare has transformed Ukraine:
- Environmental Damage: The war has not only resulted in human tragedy but has also drastically altered the country’s landscape and ecosystems. The upcoming Harvard conference, called "Landscapes of War, Landscapes of Victory," will address these consequences.
- Civil Unrest and Activism: Instances of local discontent highlight how the war fosters new forms of activism among Ukrainians, as citizens engage in grassroots efforts to respond to their government and advocacy for their rights.
4. Censorship and Historical Revisionism in Russia
The Kremlin has introduced a new history textbook that frames Russia’s invasion as a justified response to Western aggression:
- Educational Propaganda: The curriculum propagates the narrative of victimhood and justifies military action as a continuation of historical grievances against NATO and Western influence.
- Historical Narratives: This attempt to reshape public perception helps solidify support for ongoing military actions and further entrench the ideological divide between Russia and Ukraine.
Military Strategies and Future Implications
The podcast underscores Russia's evolving military strategies as they shift from brute force to more nuanced tactics involving drones and small-unit operations. This could pose a substantial threat to Ukraine's defense, resulting in a need for adaptive strategies to counterattacks.
Conclusion
As Ukraine continues to navigate its turbulent reality, marked by military engagements and socio-political upheaval, the insights from the podcast illustrate the resilience of the Ukrainian people and their adaptive strategies in the face of adversity. The ongoing discussions reflect not only on military developments but also on social and political shifts that could shape the future of Ukraine for years to come.
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I'm Francis Dernley, and this is Ukraine, the latest. Today, we analyze Russian attempts at encirclement around Picrossk, new stories of Russian activities in the occupied territories, and discuss how the landscape of Ukraine has been forever transformed by the violence of war. Bravering takes you through the most unimaginable hardships to finally reward you with victory.
It's the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II. Absolutely fascinating. We are with you, not just today or tomorrow, but for a hundred years. Nobody is going to break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians.
It's Tuesday, the 28th of January, two years and 333 days since the full-scale invasion began. And today I'm joined by our Associate Editor for Defense, Dominic Nichols and Dr. Emily Channel Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at Harvard University, where she's creating a major new conference you're about to hear about. But first, over to Dom for the latest news from the battlefields of Ukraine.
Well, thanks, Francis. Aloe Emily, delighted to meet you. So, not an awful lot of movement on the ground, continuing the theme of recent weeks. However, what movement there has been, I think, is fairly interesting, and the commentary about that is also worthy of note. So, right, what am I talking about? Let me stop waffling, get on with it.
The only real movement on the ground in Ukraine at the moment has been a very small movement by Russian forces heading west in the area south of Prokrosk so they're not going directly for the city. I think they'd like to but Ukraine have managed to put in that hard shoulder that's been there for a number of months and as we know,
Russia has prioritised trying to get around to the west and increasingly to the northwest of the city. But meanwhile, further south from there, they have been moving west from Khurakov and also in the last few days have taken Valika Novasilka. So that bit of the line, directly south of Bakhrosp, is a very straight north-south line of Russian forces running for about 20 kilometres before it then veers southwest and heads off through the rest of Donbas towards Zaparizion and so on. No movement there.
So that edge of Russian forces continued to move west. Now, Viktor Travinov, spokesperson for Ukraine's Korea Group of Forces, speaking yesterday on national television, said that Russian forces have now intensified their assaults in the area of Prokrosp, deploying small groups in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops. So on TV, he said, for the first time, they started to fight smart.
not just with direct human waves, but with attempts to cover, with attempts to bypass a large city and force Ukrainian forces to leave it. The situation is as follows. This is still Mr Travinov speaking. There's a large number of small-scale clashes near Prakroft because Russians are trying to enter and surround Prakroft from the West in small groups. There are many, many clashes there. Now,
There obviously are many, many clashes because the daily casualty figures from Ukraine's general staff, which as I've said before, we take as pretty much accurate, are still saying it's in the circa 12 to 1500 Russian casualties a day. So if Russia is now fighting smart, and I'll come on to what that might mean in a moment,
and trying to encircle per cross, but if not go directly into it, there's obviously going to be a huge concern for Ukraine. It's a big logistic hub still per cross, although we think most of the population have left. But back to the old Sun-Zu days, the sort of art of war, what might be interesting to see is if Russia allow kind of one obvious route out of the city,
which then becomes very enticing for a defending force to think, do I try and save some of my combat power and get them out of there? Are you seeding the ground without a fight? If you totally encircle a position, then the troops inside have got one of two choices, surrender or fight, and generally they fight as we've seen in this war. So, you know, if Russia are fighting smart, they might try
to leave one area, one axis of advanced slash withdrawal retreat, open for Ukrainian forces there. So we'll have to see what they do in the next few days. Now, I'm not sure if it's part of the fight smart that Mr. Trebinov referred to, but I do note the independent defence analyst Conrad Maseka, a tweet in this morning, said Russians are likely forming military district level UAV regiments, UAV being
unmanned or uninhabited aerial vehicles, drones, as we know them. He said, so far, we've managed to find one. I think he works for Rushan Consulting, but they've managed to find one of these military district level. That's the way that Russia organizes its military forces.
one of these UAV regiments, one of these drone regiments. So far, we've managed to find one, but given how Russians roll out organizational changes, i.e. formations of new units, it is likely that similar units have been or will soon be created in other military districts. So what Comrade Mizzica is saying there is that if
Russia are now forming drone units to work very, very closely and in a coordinated manner with the infantry, then that will have a much greater impact than just the human meter salt, human wave rushing at the enemy type of salts that we've seen.
If you have a line of a wave, if you like, of drones, first person view drones going ahead of any such assault like that, that is simply going to clear the way for the infantry that do get through behind to then take the positions. So if those two things are speaking of the same development that Russia is now changing their organizational structure to have drone units embedded at a much lower level, and if they are seeking to now try and encircle per cross, then I think that could be a very worrying development for Ukraine.
Now elsewhere, just a couple more, Francis, up in Kursk. Sky News put out a report yesterday citing a commander of a detachment of the 73rd Naval Special Operations Centre, an individual with a call sign, Pulse, saying that North Korean troops have temporarily withdrawn from the contact line.
Now, Colonel Alexander Kidretenko, who's a spokesperson of Ukraine's Special Ops forces, clarified what, to a certain extent, what was going on. Speaking to the Kyiv Independent today, or speaking to them, and Kyiv Indy have put the story out today, said that North Korean troops appear to have had to temporarily withdraw, only from one of the axes of cursed oblast, where the 73rd Special Ops Forces Center is deployed.
Now Paul, in his report this guy news, had assumed that this break will not last long and that the North Korean military will be back soon in his words.
The soldier also noted North Korean troops' high motivation and that they continued the offensive despite heavy losses, and we've seen that over the last few weeks. Then, as we reported last week, Ukraine's military intelligence chief, General Karela Badanov, said that North Korea is preparing reinforcements, but mainly gun and rocket artillery units rather than infantry.
Just note on that the New York Times citing an undisclosed US official yesterday said fresh North Korean troops could arrive within two months. So if there's any pause at all in Kursk it may only be temporary and in one small area although I note there's been no change.
on the ground in the last 24 hours and just finally Francis overnight last night 100 drones fired by Russia targeting 14 or blasts across Ukraine 65 were shot down 28 lost to electronic warfare or with dummies and just pulled into the ground didn't do any damage one decided to head back and was last seen heading towards Belarus and one went back to Russia
Odessa was hit again with drones last night. There were injuries, no deaths, but strikes across the rest of the country did kill four people. So still that nightly, quite sizable aerial use of drones by Russia, but the vast vast majority are shot down by Ukraine or brought down by electronic warfare. However, those that do get through are still causing casualties. And I'll take a pause there, Francis.
Well, thank you very much, Dom. It's a rare, quiet day today on the political front. So I'm going to use this opportunity to do a deeper dive on a few subjects we've explored in recent episodes before ending with some news out of a region we've not discussed in detail for a while.
So in Friday's episode, Dr. Jay McLinn steered the first of our new regular segment on resistance in the occupied territories. And I want to start with reports out of the port city of Marupol in the Donbas. That city seized of course by the Russians early on in the war and later turned into a sort of show town by the Kremlin to display the benefits so-called of occupation, including investment and rebuilding. Long-time listeners will recall Putin's visit there in March, 2023.
Now, before the war, that city had an estimated population of around 425,000 people. Now, it's estimated to be somewhere around 120,000. But despite that, Russia demolished damaged apartment buildings and handed the land over to real estate developers.
And it seems to be, well, a pretty chaotic situation. So these developers are now understood to be constructing mortgage housing and profiting from the situation, surprise, surprise, while the original residents whose homes were destroyed remain homeless. As a consequence of this, more than 10,000 families are reportedly still waiting for housing. And in desperation, some aerial poor residents have actually resorted to recording video appeals directly to Putin. I watched one this morning of a group of
elderly lady standing in front of a sign that they were holding up, and then, as it says, directly pitching to Putin why they feel that they have, of course, been abandoned. It's an act of, in a sense, resistance in the occupied territory, though obviously with a little bit more complexity thrown in there.
Now, at the same time, reports have emerged of pensioners disappearing under mysterious circumstances in the city. According to the former advisor to the mayor there, and now head of the Centre for the Study of the Occupation of Ukraine, these disappearances have been occurring since September of last year. Neighbors and acquaintances have noted the absence of these missing elderly people, though no relatives have filed official reports.
insiders within the local police speculate that the pensioners may have left for other regions or Ukrainian controlled territories, but this explanation remains unverified. What is particularly alarming is that the apartments of the missing pensioners have already been transferred to new owners. At least three such cases have been confirmed, yet there have been no advertisements or involvement from estate agents in these transactions.
The situation naturally raises questions about who is benefiting from these disappearances and whether this is part of a larger coordinated effort to exploit the vulnerable residents in Malayupal. So an interesting story, one no doubt we will return to as part of our deeper dives into the occupied territories.
Now we know that re-education is another pillar of the Russian occupation playbook and we had a brief spontaneous discussion yesterday about Russia's narrative of victimhood in history and how that's been exploited by the regime at home and abroad.
While Reuters and the Kyiv Independent have reported this week that a new textbook introduced in Moscow following a pattern of course we've seen in previous educational material since the war began, frames the conflict as a continuation.
of the Soviet battle against Nazi Germany, portraying the invasion as a necessary reaction to Western threats that have been ongoing for decades in even centuries. So this three-volume textbook targeted at schoolchildren claims Russia was forced to invade Ukraine in 2022,
citing long-standing grievances such as NATO's Eastwood expansion, and the 2014 Alstin of Ukraine's pro-Russian president, which the textbook characterises as a Western-backed coup. Now, as the key of independent rights, edited by Vladimir Biddinsky, a presidential adviser and architect of Kremlin propaganda,
The textbook aligns with the Russian government's narrative about the war. It describes Ukraine as an aggressive anti-Russian bridgehead and emphasizes battlefield heroism while drawing parallels between modern Russian military tactics and those employed by the Soviet Army during the Second World War.
It's also part of a broader Kremlin effort to reshape public perception through education. In 2023, Russia's Education Ministry updated school history textbooks to include sections on the war in Ukraine, referred to still there as the Special Military Operation, including the annexation of Crimea and the impact of Western sanctions.
The Ministry also launched an initiative, Conversations About Important Things, which was launched pretty soon after the war in 2022, promoting themes like patriotism, traditional family values, the nuclear family, and indeed it was targeting even children as young as six in discussing these subjects.
Now, this intensified focus on historical revisionism and ideological education reflects the Kremlin's attempt to solidify, of course, domestic support for the war, casting Russia as a defender of sovereignty against a hostile and decadent West. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard the phrase decadent West over the past few years, and not just from the Russians.
I can say there's not much decadence here at telegraph towers. The tea's out of the bag and the coffee's morally suspect to put it mildly. But anyway, I digress. Let's turn to a country and a region that we've not explored for a while. It is another of Europe's so-called grey zones, often targets of course of Russian interference due to their not being in NATO or the European Union.
Serbia is often talked about as being one of those countries that's closer to Russia than many other European countries, and all is not well in the government there, in that country, in the central Balkans. So the Serbian Prime Minister Miloszfüldovic resigned this morning following weeks of protests over a deadly awning collapse in November that killed 15 people.
an incident that's acted as a spark for wider unrest in the country with people angry at systemic corruption and authoritarian measures. His resignation came just a day after President Alexander Vucic said an urgent and extensive reconstruction of the government was in the works in response to the demands posed by striking university students.
Now, beneath the surface, there are other issues boiling in the country. In Serbia, tensions are running high after the controversial reinstatement of a multinational Rio Tinto's mining permit in July following an annulment in 2022 that triggered mass protests. This decision came after a Belgrade court ruling and was celebrated with a high-profile summit featuring European leaders and corporate stakeholders.
Future promised transparency and environmental protections, yet those assurances failed to quell the public anger. Protests erupted, uniting pretty diverse groups across the country, from artists to rural farmers, all rallying behind slogans like, we must not give Serbia away.
As Francisco Garcia writes in the New Statesman, the protests reflect broader discontent with the government as critics see the mining plans as emblematic of corruption and the country's interests being sold to foreign buyers.
For context, Serbia's political landscape under future is marked by entrenched corruption, media control, close ties between the government and organised crime, very close to Russia in that regard. He portrays Serbia as open to foreign investment that has of course come at a cost to workers rights and the middle class in the last few years. Mining plays a contentious role in the economy with projects like
a Chinese owned copper mine creating jobs but also causing environmental destruction impacting wages etc and so despite increasing foreign investments inequality is actually worsened fueling public anger that tragedy in november that i referred to which was a spark for a lot of this were really
indicators of how corruption and sub-par construction is leading to deadly consequences and probably acted as, in a sense, the straw that broke the camel's back being the perfect example of what a lot of people in the country have been complaining about for a very long time. We will, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely because, as we know from European history, while when there are problems in the Balkans, it tends to echo elsewhere and not in a good way. 1914 springs to mind.
But the subject of protests offers us a neat segue to our guest today, Dr Emily Channel Justice Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at Harvard University. Now, Emily, we're going to talk to you today about a new conference you've created delving into the profound environmental consequences of the war and the ways in which Ukrainians are responding to those challenges.
Given your expertise in political activism and social movements in Ukraine, perhaps first you can offer your reaction to the story I've just been reporting on there of small incidents that can quickly spark a mass movement. I imagine my Dan immediately comes to mind. Interested to hear your thoughts? Welcome, Emily.
Thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be here. It's interesting that you bring up that segue because I've been thinking a lot about Georgia and particularly lately, Slovakia as well, having huge protests about staying part of Europe.
Maidan happened over 10 years ago in Ukraine and just seeing the same things and people coming to the streets to fight for the same things. I think we can't underestimate how meaningful that is, especially in the context of increased Russian aggression. In Georgia, one of the things that we've understood is that the threat of real Russian incursion is having a major impact on how the government responds.
But Ukraine is sort of, you know, that's the protest movement that kind of sparked the possibility to protest on mass in terms of asking for what people want for the future. We've really understood how important the Maidan was for Ukraine today, how it's
defined people's willingness and abilities to put themselves on the line to respond to this full-scale invasion. And so I think one of the most important things that protest scholars study is the kind of shared tactics of protest, how tactical responses can be translated or shared across space and time. This ranges all the way to Taiwan, Hong Kong, right? Latin America, there's all kinds of examples of how these shared protest tactics.
You kind of got a spot on, right? We might see this as a really kind of small localized protest in response to one small thing, but that's how people called my down as well. And that's not really how that ended up, especially in the context of these multiple protests across the European space. I think this is really important to keep on eye on.
fascinating. I know for a fact that there will be veterans of Maidan who are listening to this as we speak. Now, you talked about that social activism being key to how Ukraine has fought this war. Of course, we've seen the grassroots movements building drones and that bottom-up spirit has been absolutely vital over the past three years. But when you reflect on the duration of the war, how do you think
that social activism will evolve once we get closer to some kind of settlement if we do. How might it become more critical of the government or is it already?
This is something I've been looking at too. So just to take us all the way back, I like to think about Maidan as bringing out this idea and this process and this practice of self-organization in Ukraine. So the focus of protesters was on what people, each person can contribute based on their own skills. So rather than asking a political party to come in and fix what's wrong with Ukraine, we're just going to do it ourselves. We're going to make the demands ourselves.
And this was something that was practiced on Maidan. It was successful on Maidan, and it allowed people to really buy into the idea that they hadn't influenced the Ukraine's future. So then when the first invasion started in 2014, this whole idea of self-organization becomes a really important part, first of all, of the volunteer battalions that end up on the front lines, but also on all the ordinary people, a lot of whom were Maidan protesters.
but who end up supporting the troops on the front lines because the Ukrainian military at that point, of course, hasn't fully experienced reforms. And then also connected to this is the self-organized response to the mass displacement that happened from Crimea and from Eastern Ukraine in the wake of 2014.
So, it's again, we don't see large organizations or political actors. We see ordinary people who say, okay, what are we going to do to help these people who left Donette's gunder bonds? They don't have anything to their name. I'm going to put out a post on Facebook and ask people to bring bedsheets and towels because that's how, you know, people don't think about bringing towels when they're forced to leave.
So we have all of this in 2014. When the full-scale invasion starts, these networks are reactivated. So people already understand how to mobilize their own networks. Again, we see this personal sourcing of supplies of aid, not only to displace people, but also to those heading to the front lines. Obviously, we saw just this massive upswell of people, ordinary people doing absolutely extraordinary things. And that became part of the rallying cry behind Ukraine.
So the thing that I think has been most interesting for me watching this as somebody who came to study Ukrainian politics from a very kind of critical of the state perspective is to see how state criticism has continued over the course of the past few years. I would say that this is something that I think activists are now starting to think a little bit more about, you know, what does it mean to do this kind of self-organized mobilization
to support Ukraine and Ukrainians and especially our loved ones who are on the front lines while also holding on to a criticism that, okay, maybe this elected administration isn't actually meeting our needs in the way that we need them to. So how do we continue to criticize our state institutions while not contributing to the idea that we don't want to live in Ukraine or that we don't like Ukraine or that we don't want to fight for Ukraine?
One of the most interesting things that I've started to follow is independent student unions. These are groups that I was involved with in the very early days of my research going back to 2012 and they've remained really critical of policies and higher education. For example,
the unwillingness to fund the renovation of dormitories of student dormitories are often in really terrible conditions. And the Ministry of Education is just sort of not doing anything about this. So that's a huge policy issue for them as well as other reforms in higher education that, for example, cut down stipends or cut down the number of places and universities.
So we have that kind of criticism, which I think is really important that that continues to show that there's this really democratized conversation happening about what the future of Ukraine should look like. Well, at the same time, these are the same students who will run a fundraiser to make sure that one of their comrades at the front lines has the right kind of tourniquets, or they will post something as any kind of university gets damaged in an attack. They'll be the first ones to say,
This is what has happened. How can we help clean up this area, raise attention, raise money, that sort of thing. So I think we've seen a really interesting, I don't want to say tension necessarily, but this idea that we can call out the practices of the state that don't serve us while also absolutely putting ourselves on the front lines for that same state. I think personally this bodes well for Ukraine's future. I mean, that's what democracy is.
It's that civic participation. It's not how many political parties there are. So I really hope that that's something that continues to be a trend. The activists are willing to make these kind of criticisms because that discussion is really essential. Emily, when we reflect on the future of Ukraine, are all of the
so-called educated social activists of left and right, broadly in agreement as to what that future looks like, i.e. democratic, closer to the EU, or as in other western countries, are there quite contrasting visions of what that future should be?
Well, I would say maybe not contrasting. I mean, I would say first of all, the bottom line is that people believe in Ukrainian sovereignty and they support Ukrainian sovereignty, right? That's the main point. I think leftists continue to have a criticism and are rightly concerned about the potential of foreign investment and how that will influence the political
sphere in Ukraine, especially as reconstruction becomes a much bigger part of the conversation. We do obviously know that the far left or even center left parties aren't very politically popular in Ukraine, never have been since independence, since the shift away from the socialist party, the communist party.
So I think the question of how representation looks in the future, before the full-scale invasion, I would say that leftists were largely active in much more, I don't want to say apolitical, but they weren't necessarily having a lot of influence in party politics. That can also be said about the far right, by the way, also didn't have political representation in government.
And so I think these kind of like very far ends of the spectrum probably have little that they agree on in terms of the actual what Ukrainian democracy will look like, but they would agree on that kind of sovereignty basic idea.
So how the Ukrainian government looks in the future, I think, depends a lot on what the promises from international institutions are. For example, if you accession, full accession for membership becomes an option, I don't know where the NATO membership questions can end up. But these international institutions impose or expect a lot of different practices and kind of democratizing practices, and they have their own standards. And so from what I can see now,
A lot of civil society groups have kind of accepted those external standards as the direction that Ukraine should go in. Coming from Europe, North Atlantic, that sort of thing, not toward the Russian direction at all. And so I do think that those will probably continue to have the most influence.
how the criticisms of those types of international standards come out of leftist activism, rightist activism. I think that remains to be seen. I just think it's really important that we don't assume how political groups will... We can't assume that their position about Ukraine's future is predetermined.
You know, we can't say that, well, far right is going to do X, Y, and Z. They'll try to have a party. They'll try to do this. You know, they'll try to do that. We don't actually know, right? So we, I think it's really important that we leave open how Ukrainian democracy looks. We have to kind of leave it open to Ukrainian actors to decide once that victory has happened. What does that look like? Who is kind of left?
needing to make additional demands on the state, right? Like what populations are actually most in need and who's actually serving them? Is the state doing that? What are state priorities? And who can advocate for those who are being left behind at one point or another? I think all of these things will be resolved largely.
through civil society groups, which as you have rightly said, are extremely proactive and have been since before 2014, but especially after 2014, those are the groups that have also been holding Ukraine to those international standards, understanding that we don't know which way things are going to go and how the makeup of Ukrainian democracy will look, but we can trust that people all buy into that concept of sovereignty for Ukraine. And that's really the starting point that we get to work with.
That's fascinating. Thank you, Emily. Well, let's turn to the conference then, which is called Landscapes of War, Landscapes of Victory. Interesting term. I'm sure we'll get to that. Ukraine's changing environment. And I know it's connected to your own research about internal displacement in Ukraine. Where do you want to start in terms of summarizing the conference and its objectives?
It's a topic that I am personally not any kind of expert on and something that has been impacting Ukraine since the first invasion in 2014. My current research project deals with internal displacement and I have this amazing set of interviews that a Ukrainian anthropologist did with internally displaced people between 2014 and 2016.
And listening to these interviews, it's largely people from the next city, the next all blast, Wuhan school blast. And I had this realization that I didn't really know that much about these parts of Ukraine. I think they've been very understudied and underrepresented in academics.
And so I wanted to have this conference that kind of combined this everyday life, how do you live in a life where you don't have any control over the safety of your environment? While also attending to this massive political problem, I see these things as all connected in this kind of bigger picture of that, what does a safe environment actually mean, but also how has this environment in the sense of,
the landscape and ecosystems and that sort of thing become this target by Russia in Ukraine as part of its genocidal campaign. I think to me all those threads go together really clearly and that's what motivated the conference and so I hope that all of that will come together in a really fruitful way in that discussion in the panels.
Emily, hi, Dom here. Thank you so much for joining us today. A couple of questions, if I may, probably a bit unfair, asking you ahead of your conference. But we often hear, and we get very frustrated with this phrase that we hear from a lot of national leaders about, we're with you for as long as it takes. It's hackneyed old, for as long as it takes. No one ever kind of describes for as long as it takes to do what? What does that mean? In your research, and putting together this conference and with the people you speak to,
Have you ever seen a serious, considered attempt by policy makers, political leaders, defence and security officials, et cetera, to really describe what victory is or what for as long as it takes means?
I think the overall answer would be that, you know, I've not really heard one single suggested idea, you know, like one amazing cat-tall solution. So basically one of the big motivations behind how I organize this type of conference is to bring academics and policymakers together so that hopefully they listen to each other a little bit more.
And I'm more optimistic, if I'm totally honest, about some kind of smaller scale achievements. In the bigger picture, I think it's really difficult to kind of know who is going to have influence in some type of resolution, right? Because those US policymakers that I tend to work with tend to be
those who have a long-term experience working in Ukraine. And so they understand the context quite well. They understand Ukrainian spheres that some kind of imposed resolution is not ever going to actually stop Putin in the future. Those aren't necessarily going to be the people who have the seat at the table this year. So I think from my perspective, that disconnective, what are the people in the room actually going to advocate for?
How are they going to push Ukraine to negotiate in one way or another? That's not necessarily the same prioritized interests that other policymakers who have served in Ukraine, who have worked on the Ukraine desk or the Europe desk in the US government, that sort of thing. I think the best hope is that Ukrainians get to make the major decisions about any kind of resolution. So I did avoid your question a little bit. I hope you'll come to the conference and maybe get some insight from some of the experts.
Yeah, it was an unfair question for which I apologize. I blame Francis. No reason to do that. I just do. I guess, I mean, my frustration is that we hear this phrase for as long as it takes. And as I say, it's easy shorthand. It gets on to the next sentence, but I don't detect often behind that the individual saying that I don't detect a huge intellectual curiosity as to what that means. I can forgive people for saying that if there's, if I think they've actually
tried to pass it and work out what their position really is, but I think it's too often used as just a very easy glib end of a sentence, false dot, right, move on to the next photo call. Anyway, my next question, if I may, my final question, back to what we were saying, you were saying right at the start and about the civil society, the involvement with
politics, basically. I just wonder, for all Putin's attempt to frame his rule and the history of Russia and the war in Ukraine in terms of identity and history, I just wonder if you think he would desire Ukrainian society to be more
politically aware and have more political engagement, hoping that that would unseat Zelensky or call domestic strife or what have you, so that he could play on him. Democracy is a messy business. But just calling attention to that and showing that Ukraine is a very politically engaged society, if that's actually of more damage to Putin in the long run.
It's an interesting way of framing that question. I think one of Putin's greatest faults is that he doesn't really understand Ukrainian democracy. Maybe he doesn't understand democracy at all. I have no idea. But I think it's not that different from what we saw in the end of 2021, the beginning of 2022.
Zelensky's approval ratings had fallen to their lowest point since his election, and my understanding is that Putin interpreted this as Ukrainian society not going to be willing to stand by their elected president. I don't think there are many Ukrainians that would have seen it that way anywhere. So when I talk about
Ukrainians fighting for the Ukraine that they want to live in, that's actually stronger than Ukrainians buying into a political party in the long term if Putin thinks that the student activists who are criticizing the Ministry of Education is going to lead to those same student activists
creating some kind of entry point for a Russian takeover. I think he's really sorely misunderstood what Ukrainians are about. Ukrainians' willingness to fight for the democratic vision of Ukraine, whether that means that they will agree or disagree with a president, that's part of it, right? That's why we have elections, so that
people can support their candidate and advocate for their priorities. I just don't see having diversity in political views being any kind of asset to Russia at all. I think that's what we've seen in the past three years. If we want to look at the Georgia parallel, for example, we see this democratic uprising being an excuse for the Georgian government to crack down and say, we don't want to risk what's happening in Ukraine, so we have to take a stronger hand and be friendly to Russia, that sort of thing.
I absolutely don't think that that will fly in Ukraine in any capacity. Ukraine is too far away, I think, from that Russian influence, and people have made their position known for quite some time going back to 2014. Even in 2014, people on all parts of the political spectrum were not advocating for Ukraine to join Russia or some resurgence of the Soviet Union. They were already talking about Ukraine's path and their ability to make their own choice.
Democracy and democratic practices and kind of diversity of political voices is ultimately good for Ukraine in the long term. And I don't really think that that benefits Putin unless he really misunderstands what that means.
One final question on social activism, an area that I know is a subject of expertise for you. You edited a volume on this on LGBT narratives from Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Of course, we've seen President Zelensky quite early on in the war as part of his pivot westwards into a more sort of liberal style democracy.
There's been more of an openness to talk about LGBT issues and inequality with regards to treatment in Ukraine. I just wonder if you can briefly comment on how the war has transformed that area of Ukrainian society.
Yeah, this is a good example of one of these populations that I think, you know, what's the advocacy for LGBTQ people going to look like after some kind of victory. So I always give this example that there are many LGBTQ self-identified LGBT people who are serving in the armed forces of Ukraine. They have a battalion. You can find them online. They have a whole shiver on and everything.
They are doing a lot of advocacy even in the context of full-scale invasion. Now we still see examples of homophobic violence in Ukraine. We see homophobic violence in democracies across the world, by the way, not unique to Ukraine. So the LGBTQ battalion has been doing a lot of advocacy for changes in legislation, so the right to same-sex partnerships, that sort of thing, which is relevant to those who have been in the armed forces because, of course,
one's health care and, you know, right to visitation, that sort of thing goes to spouses. And so if LGBTQ people can't be married, then they're not allowed to see their spouse who might have had an injury on the battlefield for one example. So there is an element where changes in legislation are being asked for from this population who's advocating largely for themselves now on the back of some Ukrainian PMs who have been really supportive. In 2013, the whole idea that
the EU was imposing gay marriage on Ukraine was a rallying cry of the pro-Russian anti-Europe crowd, right? That the EU is going to force gay rights on Ukraine and that Ukrainians don't support gay rights and that sort of thing. The shift among the broader society that I've seen since the full-scale invasion has been really dramatic in the fact that people are really willing to entertain the idea of legalizing gay marriage
as something that is just the right thing, whether European or not. And so instead of seeing this European standard as a threat to their well-being, they're seeing it as a way to signify that they're, in fact, different from Russia, that they're making this kind of anti-colonial move to not accept the Russian ideas of homosexual propaganda and that sort of thing that have previously been relatively popular in Ukraine.
So I do see that the full-scale invasion has kind of opened a channel of advocacy for certain populations. I really, really hope that does not reverse when the war is over and there is some kind of resolution.
I think there's an open, and maybe I sound naive and too optimistic about this to listeners, but I really, I think there's a real opening here for Ukrainians to invest even more than they have into what Ukraine looks like in the future. And I think LGBTQ activism is a really, really great example of the potential for that.
Well, thank you very much, Emily, for a really interesting and wide-ranging discussion. I'll come back to you in a moment in case there's anything else that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention, but Dom, over to you for your final thoughts first.
Thanks, Francis. Just want to point out, we often say here, I often say how the war is much bigger than what's just happening on the ground. There's not an awful lot happening on the ground, but what there is is generally heading west, so I'm not denying that in any way at all, but look at the air war, look at the naval war, etc, etc. I note with interest Uzbekistan Airways has announced that they're going to change their flight routes between Uzbekistan and Europe to avoid
Russian airspace. They cite for safety reasons. I wonder if that's nervous Russian air defence units. You remember in December the Azerbaijan Airlines crash. It crashed in Kazakhstan, December last year. We haven't been shot by Russian air defenders. We've seen a number of Russian fighter jets shot down by their own air defenders. So, I'm surprising that some airlines get a bit twitchy flying over Russian airspace.
Or it might also be because of greater use of the air by Ukraine in terms of long range drone strikes. We've seen it in recent months. Anyway, for whatever reason, Uzbekistan is now taking the long way around, going over to Kia and coming into Europe from that side, from the southeast, which might put at risk some of their routes up to the Baltic nations. For example, it's going to be a lot more expensive to go over there.
They say they're also going to reduce flights to Russia over the next couple of months as a result of low demand and a sliding Russian ruble. But I'd just highlight that it's not all about the ground. There's some other interesting little snippets of information which indicate what's happening in other parts of this multi-dimensional conflict. Thanks, Francis. Thanks very much, Tom. Emily, you have as our guest the final thought for today.
Well, thank you. And thanks for all the insight that you've brought on here. Just I wanted to make sure that everybody knows that our conference since February 7th and 8th, all the panels will be in person in Cambridge. So if you're local to the Boston area, please do join us. But for those of you who are not local, we do stream everything online as well. We made that decision a long time ago that we wanted to make sure that our conversation reached Ukraine. So we also have a Ukrainian language simultaneous interpretation for every panel.
I know most people in Ukraine could probably listen to the original, but we wanted to make sure that those, if you want to share with folks at home who'd rather listen in Ukrainian, we have that option. Hope to see all of you there and thanks for the interest in the topic, and I'm sure we're going to learn a lot at this conference.
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