On today’s podcast we discussed the current events in Ukraine from many perspectives. I happen to speak several Slavic languages (a remnant of a previous life!). We were also able to glean details from someone in Estonia who called into the show.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW!
TRANSCRIPT
(uncorrected for spelling)
That is the national anthem of ukraine welcome today on this saturday glad for all of you to join us we'll to have a few people join up I'd love to hear your questions in a little bit
As I mentioned is a national anthem of the ukrainians the lyrics to it are very much like the lyrics of any anthem of a former soviet state I happen to know the polish one very well
Which is poland is not yet destroyed and that true is the lyrics of the ukrainian national anthem which is ukraine is not dead nor its glory and freedom
Luck will smile on us brother ukrainians and there are a bunch of foreign soviet states which have anthems that are similar to that which are very dark in their outlay as far as they set out
Maybe our own national anthem is kind of that way too the stars and stripes are still there in the midst of war and everything else there but truly the people of eastern europe are one of the most trot upon areas of world history
There's a very famous history anthem anthology I should say of poland and it's called poland god's playground and basically it talks about how poland was completely vanquished from the earth like three or four times over as far as borders go
And you have to know that between poland lithuania estonia latvia ukraine those were all one country at one point during the 1617 hundreds it wasn't until the 1800 that those things started getting chopped up
There now a little background here just so you know I woke up and had a good nap at a holiday inn express so I can speak cogently about any topic no
I actually do have some experience here I was a missionary for the church of jesus christ of latterday saints the mormon church I was a missionary there from 1990 to 92 in poland
Now this was kind of exciting this was right after the berlin wall had come down right after parastroyka right after solidarnosh which is solidarity in poland
Right after all these momentous events of the late 80s had occurred and so this was the first time that mormon missionaries were being let behind the iron curtain
And it started with poland yugoslavia czechoslovakia eventually it moved to where many of the missionaries were sent into russia and these were kind of virgin territory for us
Whenever you're a missionary there are a lot of preconceptions that people have about mormons and I remember the best conversations you always start are people when you're on the bus looking at your neighbors
Tag right you know the ubiquitous name tags either you've seen it in person or on broadway or what have you and the name tags you look at it you stare and you do a double take
And you use that moment as a missionary to say oh have you heard of this church and they'll typically say no and then at that point we used to say
Well have you heard of the mormon church and they would say oh yeah okay you're mormons but in poland when you're out there it was like no I don't know anything about that either
Well okay that's great I love not having preconceptions about my faith so poland obviously is a very catholic nation historically ukraine also had a lot of conversion over to catholicism
Though I believe eastern orthodox is still the primary one there I have to go look at my notes again and I happen to speak fluent polish I speak pretty decent russian
I speak okay serbian and between the three of those languages you can kind of make out the rest now the differences are that ukrainian and russian and a few of the other eastern european slavic languages use the cyrillic alphabet
The greek letters as you come to know them right the cyrillic alphabet whereas poland uses a roman alphabet so the same alphabet that you and I use in english
There is a lot of commonality between ukrainian and russian more than there is polish and ukrainian although you can make the case in different linguistic fashion
That's the way and sometimes that sometimes confuses what's going on so for example the recent issue around how to pronounce the capital of kiev right now
Really it's kind of a non controversy it's like for example the equivalent of saying well we should pronounce warsaw varshava because that's how you pronounce it in polish
Right it's nonsense no americans going to call the capital of poland varshaw okay they're going to call it warsaw and we've been calling kiev kiev for years
And I recommend that we don't stop doing that it's just english phonetic pronunciation of the capital but for political purposes people like to give a homage to the slight deviation of how ukrainians pronounce it versus russians
So russians pronounce it with kiev because their I and their e are more pronounced whereas the spelling of kiev in ukrainian is ki and it has an e and a v
So instead of an e it's an I with an omelette if you will all right I'm getting that wrong because that's the german equivalent but anyways I think it's more political than anything else
I just recommend that unless you're willing to say varshaw is varshava or you're willing to go into german and change all those names right it just doesn't make sense
So we still for example call auschwitzfitz even though it's in poland and the correct pronunciation in poland would be oshfienchim but no one I'm not going to teach any of you how to say oshvianshim
So I'll give you my take real quick when I arrived in poland I came the week that lexa was elected president you remember there was this huge flush
We had the fall of the berlin wall we had the combination of east germany and west germany and around that same time you had lek foweensa who was a long shorman unionist up in the north of poland and gadensk and the germans would call it don zieg
Right so you go up there and they had this huge movement and eventually led to the solidarity political party and they were allowed to hold democratically elected elections in lecture one and he became the first democratically elected president of poland well before then
Actually it's not quite true poland and ukraine by transference because it was the same area had one of the first democratic governments of world history
They called it the liberum veto and let me tell you why it failed the liberam veto meant that they had a democratically elected political set of parliament that could come in and could represent the people and there was a president there and everything else that was honored there in in warsaw and it was elected by the people
But the problem was in order to get anything done you had to get 100% of the vote one person could object to something getting done in poland and ukraine
And it would never get done because someone would object so it wasn't a true democratic thing it was like a pure we're going to have everyone agree to it
And it was a little crazy so in that same realm though the break off of poland also gave rise to the ukraine in to that time there have been a lot of mixture
So if you go to ukraine I think even today I was there just a few years ago passing through on the way to serbia and the signs are all in russian and ukrainian in many instances
Because about maybe a third of the population speaks both russian and ukrainian equally I would say if you're over 40 there in the ukraine you probably speak russian without any problem
That's typically if I come across someone who is ukrainian I usually just speak to them in russian because my ukrainian is so bad but we go through that and they didn't seem to mind
But I'm guessing more and more so it's going to be a very strong ukrainian presence linguistically as they move forward especially for the next generation
So that's kind of just an interesting take one thing you also need to know is that it was deeply embedded within the strictures of the ussr and the soviet regime
Primarily because a lot of the leadership there was both russian ukrainian but deeply soviet nikita khrushchev married ukrainian he was the head of the soviet political party in the ukraine for decades
And so he was able to really quash any sort of semblance of nationalism on the ukrainian level and make it more hart of the soviet state that continued for many
Many years until the break off says they had it in when yeltsin gave up the ghost and said okay we're no longer doing this and people were able to run and flee
Now I will give you before I get into some of the local happenings and everything that's going on there I will talk about just one of the interesting analogies
During the time that I was there in poland in 1991 this was I think june 1991 the gulf war had just started and that was obviously taking on all of the dues
It was a news vacuum everything was about the gulf war it was huge of course and at that point yeltsin who had seen poland dismay into its own post soviet state and was seeing all these other soviet satellite states decide that they were going to take that way too
So lithuania decided they were going to have their own presidential election and go democratic if you will and leave the ussr yeltsin didn't like that
And he used the cover of the news vacuum that was happening towards the middle east to invade lithuania in june I think that was right maybe it was january
I can't recall but they invaded lithuania and they brought in the federal troops dozens of lithuanians were killed trying to defend themselves there but eventually the national community caught up with him and the former soviet states
Especially poland since poland and lithuania were definitely one country and very close to each other and I remember that night distinctly it was a sunday night and typically we were coming home
Typically the buses would be completely empty but at this point they were full and we had no idea what was going on now I was the junior companion as we call them in the mormon church there so my polish was okay but my senior companion
Elder dayton was really good at speaking polish and he took it upon himself to say hey let's go find out what's going on it was a little mischievous but we did it anyways
We got off the buses with everyone else and they were in front of the russian embassy and they were pulling on the gates of the russian embassy and everyone was chanting volt for a free lithuania free lithuania and it got a little rocky
At one point someone lit a car on fire and sent it through the crowd the crowd dispersed but it was quite the foray into some of the protests that you could see and that's exactly what we're seeing right now are the former soviet states stepping up to help the ukraine poland especially I'm looking at a video right now online masses of ukrainians waiting for the train to take you to poland and I love the people of eastern
While they come across very harsh and cold at times it's just sort of the nature of the stuff that they've had to go through and it's something that we take for granted as americans
I remember one time I was up now in the north of poland in the shipyards there in gadgets soapote and when you have the most beautiful bread in the world
It's just delicious right there's no preservatives in these bread it's not wonder bread they make it by hand and it's just beautiful and so you get a loaf of bread
But if you don't eat it it's hard as a rock within three days and I remember we had forgotten about a loaf of bread that was hanging on the door at the apartment
We had and we got it and it was a hot summer day and so I remember we used the very hard loaf of bread as a doorstop well our landlady who was also a member of the mormon church
She came down to see us and she saw what we were doing and she saw the loaf of bread she picked it up and she gave us a berating and I don't think I caught all of it in polish
But she dressed us down for doing that she says you have the parts that I recall you have no idea what it was like during the soviet years and how precious sometimes a loaf of bread would be
And it really was I caught the tail end of communism there I remember it took a while to sort of get up to speed on all things sort of westernized I got to on a high school visit
I got to visit russia in 1989 and I remember one of the distinct things that I saw there during the communist days was how inefficient things were right
It seemed like an efficiency but it was my gosh this must be the most boring job in the world I got a record of course so I wanted the vinyl we didn't have any cds
We're about four or five years old but they all had vinyl there so they had the vinyl of john lennon's recording of his concert in moscow and so I asked for that from the shelf
I pointed to it one lady at the record store dutifully attending to me just watching me she pulled it down and gave it to me or I should know she pulled it down and gave it to her colleague
The second person then wrapped it up and put it in a bag who gave it to a third person who put a stamp on it who gave it to a fourth person who then checked me out
Right it was the job of one person being done by four people and you realize that it was just super inefficient and I have tons of stories from those post soviet days which are really interesting
Like they would show up with some german march all of a sudden started popping up in poland and warsaw where they wanted some variety of foods and it was good for us
Too as americans wanting a variety of food when we had to deal with a set of foods out of poland that we weren't quite used to and so seeing some german frozen foods and everything else there was really interesting
And then I remember going down the aisle and there was on top of the frozen foods of this brand new german mart a frozen rabbit fully furred rigamaritis
Just sitting there on top of the frozen other meats and I asked the lady about it she said well we just caught this the other day I figured I'd sell it here
Too these are things that they had to sort of get used to and be efficient at but they were anxious they were hungry they were hungry for freedom they were hungry for everything that would be brought to them from the western world
I remember we were outside of warsaw at the dime but the first mcdonald's was opening up in warsaw and in order to apply there you had to have like
An advanced degree everyone wanted to apply there to be part of the first workers of mcdonald's and I tell you never had more efficient service there at the mcdonald's than when that was there
But we are excited about the mcdonalds too here's the mcdonald's we want american food let's go try it out and I remember we were with some members of the church
Our mission president the head of the mission was there with me and we were just outside of warsaw and they have the tv on so we're watching tv and the newscast comes on and says
The first mcdonald's opened up today in warsaw and here are the first customers six white shirts with tags who had been waiting there at 04:00 a.m to be the first customers at the mcdonald's and warsaw
The first mcdonald's to open up in poland that was a little embarrassing but that's okay we had some incredible times and the history of the polish people and the ukrainian people is one that craves freedom
They had saved the butts of europe several times over over the past 400 years and then they went into just complete dormancy from about 1700 to about 1991
Where they tried to do what they can to stay and survive they were cut up in the late 1800s they were cut up in 1918 they were cut up and of course
During world war ii so it's a really interesting history and I'm really proud to see that sort of camaraderie across the former soviet states as putin sort of brings to light those same things that you've been trying to do
Other news that I'm seeing from my ukrainian list there there was a really interesting fight that was going on let me see I have right here this is in ichnya
Chernov and they're russian takes that were pulling up into the town and the video is simply of about two dozen citizens of that town none of them look armed
But they're all standing in front of the tanks and eventually they say they motion to them get out of here get out of here and the russian tanks move around
Turn around and leave and I thought that was really interesting right I don't think that putin quite counted on the spirit of the ukrainian people what they were going to do
And I think that comes from true leadership here is a clip real quick of the ukrainian president zelensky and I'll just sort of narrate as best I can to translate here what he's saying
Let me see if I can get this queued up right here here he is he says good evening I'm here the leader of the party is here here by ukrainian is rusty
But here let me give you the translation so he's standing in front of the camera and here I got the translation here he says leader of the party is here
The head of the presidential administration is here prime minister shimmer is here mikhail pollinate advisor the president is here we are all here all our soldiers are here
The citizens of the country are here we are all here protecting our independence he goes on our country and we're going to continue to do so glory to the defenders of ukraine
Both men and women glory to ukraine I thought that was really interesting and we have seen the pictures of these women saying I'm going to pick up arms right now
And I think there's some real miscalculation that putin has done on this endeavor and we'll see where this ends up my own prediction is that I don't think anyone quite expected a countrywide incursion
And currently I don't believe he holds any major significant city right now and I think that's what he's going to find is that the kindest interpretation was that this is a strategic maneuver on putin's end and that he's going to
At some point pull back and just ask for the two offsets down in the south that he's been going for donesk and hulves anyone want to chime in I see some great ukrainian colors on some of the icons there
Go ahead and request to speak I'd love to chew on this for a little bit and you get some thoughts on where you think things are headed what you think is happening here
In other news on my ukraine list as I look over it there has been a significant amount of damage done to russian forces I'm hearing as many as 500 to 3500 troops killed or captured there's some interesting video of some captured russian troops and when questioned
They said why are you here in the ukraine they said we didn't know we were in the ukraine we were just told we were going on a training mission and here we are
And while that seems I think a little obtuse it's not entirely implausible because frankly as I said before there are a lot of ties between ukraine and russia and a lot of families
Probably every third family maybe even every other family in russia has some type of family in the ukraine and so to send your sons to war on that seems to be a real misgiving
I'm watching video of ukrainians in the northeast town of bachmock trying to stop tanks and just trying to stop them again with their bodies based pulling
Page out of the book of the protesters in tiananmen square and standing in front of the tanks we see this again as well there are a lot of really unfortunate killings that are happening across the board in the ukraine because you could see some errant missiles that are happening here
From what we understand though things have pulled back a little bit if you want to chime in I'd love to hear from you you can request to speak and I'll pop you into the queue
Give me your thoughts on where things are going in other news the us is going to provide the ukraine with about $350,000,000 of military assistance it looks like france
For example has given the go ahead to pull russia out of the swift banking system which would be a significant chunk of what they're doing but I don't think that putin is a dumb guy
He probably has counted on a lot of measures being taken against him there now other things that are troubling there is the what they call the mrs the talk box
Or the theramobic tos one a this is a particular type of vehicle that the russians have which sends a type of flamethrower weapon and if you send that into like a crowded area
It basically sucks up the oxygen out of the entire like 50 yard radius and so anyone in their radius would totally suffocate there's some really big weaponry that they're happening there
And that's the thing that I think we have to look to which is what is putin going to do is he going to just keep this force going there and continue to make these incursions
Or is he going to realize that his best play is to wield for some type of pullback and just win the breakaway regions down there this certainly is not what we've witnessed in previous wars where I think the wars that I've witnessed as a kid
Whether it's as an adult whether it was the first gulf war which was absolutely one sided whether it was the second gulf war which was also one sided with the shock and awe
Whether it was the efforts post 911 and everything that happened there this doesn't feel like that at all in fact it feels like a little bit more of resistance
You remember when the first gulf war ensued it was the incursion of saddam hussein's forces in iraq into kuwait that prompted that and we basically had a seven day campaign
If I remember correctly which just decimated iraq's forces they started hightailing it out of kuwait they set fire to a lot of oil pumps on the way out
But on the way out they all had there was I think this whole documentaries done on this thing where they are forming basically a line on the one road out of kuwait back into iraq
And so basically military from the us shot the person and trucks in the front of the rows and then took out the trucks in the back and everyone was stuck in between and they just basically strafed everything and destroyed massive amounts of armory and military and saddam hussein would be still years later
But he eventually will be captured in shame and then of course we had shock and awe and that was basically a night of bombing that was done during the second gulf war and that was really something incredible over iraq
This was when after 911 it was supposed that iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction of course they touted it they said we've got these that are coming after you but our intelligence was woefully inadequate and so shock and awe was also known as rapid dominance was the name of it
But it was basically a doctrine that was put into force during the second gulf war and it allowed for a huge night of very targeted bombings in the 2003 invasion of iraq and this is where we took on and preemptively took out to decapitate the leadership there in iraq
Yeah I kind of expected that's what we would be seeing here over the skies of kiev in the next few days but that hasn't happened there's been some fighting
Some bombing but nothing like we saw in that sort of demoralization that we gave towards iraq and their efforts there so it was really interesting to see what's going to happen in the next few weeks here
My gut feeling tells me is this might be short lived I don't know even if the russian forces can hold a specific town in kiev or how they hold onto that geography over a significant amount of time
Especially when you have leadership really callin people towards to stand up to the russians as they come into their towns and again this isn't like if our american troops encountered citizens there in the streets of baghdad
Unless they spoke english they probably didn't understand it but here I'm looking again at this great video from ichnya and the citizens you can see them motioning and yelling and talking to these russian drivers of tanks
And eventually the tanks move out and turn around and I think that's extraordinary we'll have to see where this goes to the next little bit but you see also a lot of western countries really coalescing around this issue
We've got for example youtube is blocking russian tv author russian channels from generating revenue so that will be an interesting piece there but you notice that there was a little bit of controversy as over the past week or so
We've been building up sanctions against russia and it was all in the effort to deter them from actually taking on this war but in the end right it didn't
And when biden was asked about he said no one believes these would ever deter anything what are these for in the end then and frankly even the state department had to admit that the sanctions they're putting on will not diminish the flow of oil from russia
Which so many people including ourselves are dependent on we import some 530,000,000 barrels of oil from russia right instead of doing our own oil independence
And so when 40% of the russian economy is from oil when you have deterrence that don't touch that what are you going to do right here's the latest report
Russia losses in the last 24 hours in its war against ukraine an su 30 firefight aircraft eleven helicopters two su 25 aircraft 276 fighters a column of equipment
A few echelon according to the air force command of ukraine's armed forces so we'll see there was a descriptor document up online at the department of defense for russia
And they admitted to many losses as well but that was quickly taken down and in fact we see lots of protests across russia st petersburg moscow this younger generation wants nothing to do with it
It was really interesting someone pointed out that the children of some of the members of the cabinet there with putin in russia they were posting on their instagram anti putin imagery and everything else there
A lot of russian celebrities as well are like this guy doesn't represent us and I would say I didn't think that putin was going to go full bore like this with a countrywide incursion
I thought maybe he was going to go into those lower elements and maybe like I said his approach is I'll go full bore I'll get some land and then I'll negotiate that back so I can take the breakout regions to the south so I have better access to crimea because that's really what this is about
Access to the sea there it's about access to crimea perhaps there's a big wave a vein that putin wants to see the russia return to its glory days I don't think he could or has the capacity or whatever try to invade the baltic states again
Including poland I think that would be a huge mistake especially since poland is part of nato and we would all be called up in the action and that's part of the equation here too is that russia does not want ukraine to become part of nato because if it does
There's basically the nato alliance the primary mechanism for that is one of our members of tax is a tax it's an attack on all of us and we have to go
Whim so that would automatically necessitate americans agreeing to that nato treaty and getting in there to help the fight there and maybe that's part of what we know that putin's been trying to negotiate ukraine and make sure they've that they are not part of that
And I think he really wants access to those southern regiments those breakaway regions of southern ukraine there now we're hearing that the kia central railway station has gone dark
It might be because of electricity it might be because they don't want it bombed we're hearing word now germany is going to send 1000 anti tank weapons
Substance air missile defenses apparently the air defenses around kia have held up pretty well from some of the stuff that we've given them and beyond
And so that will be really intriguing here's something from an hour ago from vladimir this is the president of ukraine he says in a phone conversation
I think andre duda for his personal leadership in granting the ukraine that's the president of poland and granting the uk membership in the eu the concrete daily assistance of poland to our country is invaluable the ukraine polish relationship is a common history
And I am sure a common european future that's bold that's a great bold assessment there and one of the things that poland has on top of the ukraine is that it's a younger country
I think the median age of poland is about 41 years let's look at the ukrainian it may be the same thing ukraine median age is about 41.2 years as well
Although I wonder if the fertility rates because that's always a thing too all of these countries in eastern europe and especially down to the baltic states and europe in general
Their fertility rates are dropping off a cliff poland is 1.4 there you go ukraine is 1.2 once you drop below 1.3 births per woman that is a typical woman would have
On average across the population of a country so many births and if a woman has two births now you have a population replacement that is she's replacing herself
She's replacing the man who gave her the baby right jenny don't fault me on this language I know I'm kind of tripping over it but just so you know
Kind of one of the interests that I have is the fertility rates and if anyone wants to claim one of my eight children as their own for the equivalent of carbon credits
If you don't have children of your own we can negotiate that there's a good fee for that I will still raise the child but you can pay me to say oh
I have a child which is replacing me in this life if you don't have kids but my high recommendation is that you go out and have kids because when you drop below one
Three births which is where russia is far below ukraine is below that is what they call the demographers call the lowest low that is no country no modern country that we have records for has ever returned from a rate that low because at that point basically you have to account for rolling deaths and everything else there
To give you an example right now I think the population of russia is something around 130,000,000 I saw you though and the population of tiny little yemen which is about the size of the state of georgia down in the middle east I think theirs is about 70 million
Maybe 60 million I can't remember 50 million well by mid century yemen will have a population equal to russia why because the fertility rate in yemen is something like four or five meaning every woman is having four or five children and the median age goes down dramatically
Right if you want to ask this is why this is an important factor in this whole russian ukrainian eastern europe and european thing in general one of the problems that greece had was that they didn't have anyone to stick the bill to they had lavish
Lavish social programs where you could retire at age 55 if you were one of 700 professions whether it was a coal miner obviously that's someone who might want to retire early but because hairdressers deal with chemicals they surmise but they can also retire on the state dime at 55 and their birth rate is just plummeting
So with that case you can have social programs or no kids but you can't have both if you don't have birth kids you don't have anyone to stick the bill to and that's why greece completely just been decimated over the last decade because they have no kids 75% of italians will have no aunts
Uncles brothers or sisters by midcentury that famous film from the nineties right my big fat greek wedding this is taken from one of my favorite books
Mark stein he said mama endlessly spooning the spaghetti down the table is really a fiction you have this woman who marries into a waspish only child of an american family
The truth is kind of inverse when you go to greece when you go to these mediterranean countries they don't have any kids they don't have replacement rate kits
So ukraine is essentially facing extinction russia is at 1.5 they were down low and they're slowly coming back up but these last two years have not helped at all
In fact that will probably be another post that I have at some point in the future just showing how the pandemic affected dramatically birth rates and how it's going to be devastating
Even elon musk says our biggest problem in the near future is going to be a lack of people and that's true when you ask for example why does most of the financial world
All of the tech world a good portion of the modern western world speak the language of a set of islands off the northwest coast of europe well during the 18 hundreds
England was the first to conquer infant mortality I should probably wash my hands after I'm in the cadavers working on stuff like oh people aren't as sick
And by 1850 the median age of a living brit was about 15 years old and so you had all of this excess energy and manpower to export across the world and eventually the sun never set on the queen's kingdom
They went to india they went to australia they went to hong kong they were everywhere right it's because they had lots of people to send across the world
Well I'm afraid to tell you this but there's only like one place in the world where the median age is 15 years old and that's the gaza strip and so we have a problem where the fastest growing demographic in the world has
As markstein puts it a somewhat fractious relationship with the tenants of western society right and so the only people that are having children don't really take kindly to our western liberal democracies
And that could pose a challenge right mark stein uses the analogy if you have eight people and they want a revolution but they're all over 80 I think the quote for the book is you might be able to throw that molotov cocktail and get to the other side of the street before it melts your prosthetic hip
But if you've got 30 million people and they're all under 30 you're in business right and so that's where one of the big factors that we're seeing here is that there's a very low fertility rate in the ukraine
And part of that is due to just opportunities people are like why would I bring a child into here and so I would expect that there's a bit of nationality uptick here and I hope to see that as well
So we'll see those are some other factors there any thoughts if you want to chime in and ask a question my eastern european history is pretty good and focused primarily around poland russo relations but part of that is always understanding what's happening in the ukraine
I love the people of eastern europe most of the youth the equivalent of millennials and gen zeers they all speak really good english especially like in serbia and in ukraine
Part of that is due to the flux of technology there was a huge amount of outsourcing that was done for coding and for offshore purposes to poland to ukraine
To serbia in the last 20 years maybe 15 years or really took off you would always go to india if you needed something done just turn around get me the impact there
But in serbia in poland and ukraine we were using those for offshore sales offices as well when I was chief marketing officer of a company in la I've had about 40 people or so under my command there in la but I had about 200 people that worked for me in serbia so I would go over there for every other month or so
Spend a week or more and that was really just fascinating they all spoke perfect english and basically we use them for los for sales purposes they would be our first line of sales and of course
We paid them really well but it was still hugely economical for us to do some of this outsourcing versus paying someone to live in la it was a great opportunity for them
And I know a lot of those folks I see them on facebook and they're anxious about this too because they know they could be next and they heard the horror stories from their parents and they've seen the damage that has been done by these things
Yeah well those are my thoughts right now in ukraine I think one of the things that we're going to see it'll be key in these next few days if things do not escalate
That is if in kiev we don't see massive bombardments it means that putin is probably going to try to dig into whatever holds he has but then use some type of out so that he can walk away with these things
Ms. jenny here I see you in queue taking you as the next caller come on and tell us what are your thoughts on this where you find yourself today jenny
I can't quite hear you let me see if maybe it's my phone go ahead can you speak up can you hear me yes I can still a little bit late
This fixes it is that better much better okay my sister in law and her husband adopted two older children from an orphanage in ukraine in 2006 and they were part of a group of families in the salt lake city
Utah area who had heard that in the ukraine when a child ages out of that situation at age 15 pretty much the only way to support themselves is to engage in prostitution
Yeah and so there was a large group of families who adopted one to three children from the same orphanage who were all kind of in the same community in utah
And they raised these kids all together and many of those children right now are standing on the steps of the salt lake capital demonstrating for their home
I was just on my niece's instagram she's gotten married and has a daughter and she's living a beautiful life now but I was just weeping watching all these people stand up for their homeland
It was so touching and you think about the good that that group of people could potentially do for their homeland in the coming years it just makes my heart melt
That's really neat and of course in the salt lake is one of the key areas one of the reasons why they have a big international hub there while the us government will bring in a lot of people there to meetings is they know they can find a translator for any language within 15 minutes
And I think it's amazing I knew a couple who had planned to adopt a child out of russia and when they got there the girl cried and they asked her what's going on
And she translated and said I have two brothers that are here too so they came home with three kids and the trauma that those kids have been through was extraordinary
As you said a lot of sexual abuse and so to see those shiny faces have a chance in america here is extraordinary thanks for that jenny I appreciate it
Thanks for taking my call all right I've got yarl tell me where you're calling from I think you just have to press unmute and give access to your microphone and it'll pop you on here
Can you hear me yarrow there you go yes my first call ever where are you calling from I'm in estonia I have family like in ukraine right now have you spoken to them
What do they tell you it's surreal
It's surreal
It's hard to place yourself in their shoes because they wake up to an explosion and then they turn on the news and it's war
And my cousin
I call her my sister she gets her kids and they start driving out of the city and it's chaos and they've been holed up at their daughter for like two days now and they're hiding in their basements
The ugly truth may be I don't know people may not want to hear of this but many people don't want to fight this war that's why there are so many refugees
And everybody who can get to the border they're stuck and they've been ordered to mobilize so everybody 18 to 60 has to I think by law or whatever they have to go fight
So they're hiding out of town or they're hiding out where yeah they're hiding in a dachshund like out of town and they have explosions like 10 km away
And today they had tanks roll by their houses and everybody was in the basement and they don't know who is who because everything is so fluid like everybody seeks russian
Right for those of you who don't know a dachsha for eastern european is basically kind of their getaway the equivalent of vacation home but it's usually a very small shack which has a garden in it and everything else there on the front of them
Sometimes they can be larger but basically it's sort of a place to get away for the weekend and I'm sure a lot of people have retreated to those a lot of people going to poland
Did you meet any ukrainians neighborly there to you in estonia coming up your way yeah there's quite a few a lot of people are organizing volunteer groups to help and in any way that they can
There's a lot of energy I feel it I guess my only kind of concern is that I see a lot of kind of very escalatory and warlike rhetoric
And just looking at this from even my own selfish perspective like I don't want my cousin and her family
She has little kids there and everybody I don't want them to die for that and definitely wouldn't want like nato going in right now into ukrainian territory or stuff like that
Because that's going to get real bloody real fast yeah tell me from the estonian perspective obviously you're up there with the trio lafayette lithuania
Do you guys have any fears of something happening like happened in 1991 where the federal troops moved into lithuania otherwise is that something you're concerned with at all
People coming into callin otherwise
Well
People are concerned with that for sure I think people are afraid again I think it's really disturbed a lot of people and a lot of people are very emotional and they are very active and they want to help
And I think that's fantastic I think we should help for sure we should do everything we can to help and I just hope that people can channel it to kind of deescalate the situation instead of escalating it
Right yeah what do you hear from your neighbors I mean there's a lot of connections up and down the eastern european front then just basically being a former satellite soviet state yourself
What are your neighbors thinking about this whole conflict are they talking about it or is it more like wow this is just crazy well
Yeah I mean people do talk about it
People definitely want to talk about it I think it's like high in everybody's mind everybody's calling like people their friends and family and kind of talking about it and I see everything
Like I see people getting into arguments and very high voices and shit like that so it's definitely tearing apart the fabric a little bit hopefully
I don't know how it's going to proceed got you well hey thank you for checking in I hope you're doing okay and safety to you and your family keep us abreast
My contact information is there on twitter if you find me justin underscore heart love to just keep touch and see how you're doing awesome thank you
All right thanks charlotte wow yeah I love hearing from people on the ground exactly what's going on there just so you kind of get a sense where estonia is compared to ukraine
It's probably about twelve 1200 miles so what like the equivalent of new york to maybe orlando yeah it's probably about maybe down to miami so it's a distance away
But all these countries are related to each other in very significant ways and all have that very strong shared history so we'll see what happens I think this is a topic we will continue to cover just because it's timely and we have some notion we have some connections
In fact if anyone knows of a good charity for the ukraine that's out there and running we are actually one of my professional groups is looking to help promote that
And we've been trying to finding the right one to do that with so if you contact me over twitter we'd love to hear from you all right I want to be a good steward of your time
We're here on saturday it's 01:00 p.m on the west coast yeah again everything I see right now is a lot of people kind of in a mode of waiting to see how hard and fast the russian army goes each night during the day
They don't seem to make a lot of headway so we'll see what happens over the next little bit there's also a good deal of propaganda going around that you just need to be careful about
Even on both sides when you see a source like I know there was this really touching video of this father daughter embracing for what could be the last time a meeting
And I was told that it was a ukrainian father daughter but actually it was a russian father daughter a lot of these russians don't want to be there either
But there'll be some interesting things I know a chechen general who's part of the russian armed forces was reportedly killed in last night's fighting
And he was a real feared ally of the russians there so that would be interesting there but I mean the ukrainians are taking up arms there they're not going to lay down
I think putin thought this was it I think he thought that he was going to be able to just get out of this with a quick and easy burn through and just trudge his way into kiev
Install his own dictator but the one thing that really concerned me was how all the advisors around putin are shaking in their boots it was soviet style shaking
They had this meeting that was televised of putin and his cabinet and the head of his intelligence got up there and because I speak russian I was able to understand it
And you could hear the shakiness in his voice you could see putin just kind of dismissing him and there was like this small little sort of conflict between putin and this guy
As putin said we're not here talking about that question we're here talking about that question oh yeah I totally agree with that question mr. president
That's obvious what we're doing here are you sure that's what you agree with yeah I totally agree with that and you can see it was just like well I don't know what's happening here
Mateo we have another speaker here I'm going to pop you in here unmute your phone you should be good to go mateo
Tell us what you thought where are you today I'm in the pacific northwest
The most beautiful part of the us
Man
All around best part of the lower 48 and the most my daughter is up there studying she's at puget sound university and my wife's been up there she tells me it's amazing
Yeah and it's more genuinely purple than the reputation there's a lot of weaponization of place in political rhetoric lately where kind of florida and san francisco in la and portland are kind of turned into these tropes more than actual places people live
But the north west as a whole is much bigger than a trope
It's many different kinds of places
Well tell us what your thoughts what sort of thoughts do you have on this incident here well I hit the call button just because I noticed the body language
Him dressing down as spy chief of course you know the backstory you know russian you know that he was basically with the spy chief guy like well
Are you talking specifically about the independence of the dnr like you were talking to a child right yeah to me my big takeaway as much as anybody has any genuine takeaway
I mean fog of war is a very real thing but what I see is one I don't say this around my family because it's disturbing I think we're very close to world war ii
I think putin is crazy enough to let nicks fly and that's really worrisome and the exact phenomenon you're describing where all of his subordinates are kind of dumb and afraid of them
That's incredibly scary so my whole takeaway this week is I'm really of two minds is on one hand I'm very very happy that a lot of people I consider tremendously damaging bad faith putinites on the right wing and our media are all kind of exposed at once and kind of forced to take sides at once
And I really like that but I really really dislike the physical tragedy of the russian conscripts and the people being terrorized by the guided munitions and the fact that they're probably going to start if things continue
Then putin will be more gross and start using the unguided stuff right so I'm really in a mixed spot I'm really kind of happy that I'm happy to see orbit splitting off from putin and orban kind of finally
Like facing the toxicity of that world I'm happy to see the russians callin out israel for golan heights openly as a violation of international law and kind of take that whole dirty game that kushner and murdoch and putin were playing in the background in terms of giving the russians that card to bring up in terms of crimea and dnr and whatnot very happy to see that exposed
Because that whole thing I think is really pernicious and problematic for the west and really grates very hard against american interests especially in terms of just basic transparency
We need to be safe but it's also a bummer just to see two nations one thing I realized is kind of the deeper thought and you know russian so you obviously have real background here
But it really is a sad thought and that is the madon really was a poison chalice that really kind of cursed both russia and ukraine in many ways in terms of how it left things unresolved
When you look at russian demographics you look at the ruble you can see there was that kind of ruble shock from like 40 down to 70 and the russian middle class responded by not having babies at all and having a kind of a cratering fertility rate
And of course know you the region you know the deeper you get towards trans nissia the worse the demographics and the worst the brain brain gets so
I mean obviously that's in the back of my mind in terms of I wonder like is a new kind of galicia with a new identity whether or not justin justin losses it is that going to have some momentum to pull out of that kind of death spin that they've been in with demographics and brain drain
Sending all their young people to poland in italy
I don't know I'm sure you yeah it'll be really interesting I know there was a proposal I can't remember who it was some elected leader here in the us saying
If you really want to hurt putin offer immediate citizenship to anyone over there who has a phd in engineering and otherwise right and that would truly give them something to speak of
I think there's some interesting things that you said there absolutely I think it's been a clarifying moment look poland is well underway as a very successful democracy
It has its problems for sure ukraine is still struggling in a mighty way to make good on its promise to be in a westernized society so it's a muddy place over there
Okay but it's absolutely a white smoke compared to what putin is bringing to the table so in comparative terms it's easy to pick sides on those things
But there are still some issues that ukraine has to sort of deal out with and I think it's going to be an interesting few weeks to see what happens obviously we've seen a david and goliath figure emerge here in all this and I think it's good to see that play out
So we'll see now whether or not that aligns directly with our interest to send boots on the ground it's a totally different story but obviously there is some interest in keeping putin at bay and I'm shocked that he went so far and strong into the country there
So we'll see what happens and that together with no one around him standing up to him does make me very nervous all right folks have a great saturday into the weekend and we will catch you on monday
My head is still spinning after reading this.