Bonus: Digging deep on the war in Ukraine with The Daily co-host Sabrina Tavernise

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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question. I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend. I haven't talked this morning, That's why my voice is so low, but I wanted to tell you about a fascinating conversation I had yesterday with New York Times journalist Sabrina Tabernisi. I wanted to share it with all of you as the special bonus episode. Sabrina was recently named co host of The Daily and has been covering the war in Ukraine with a series of dispatches that offer a searing glimpse of what life is like. They're right now on the front lines, but Sabrina's time in the region extends all the way back to the nineteen nineties, when she was a recent Barner grad and made her way to the countries of freelance journalists. She ended up working as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times based in Moscow a few years later. So much of the coverage of the war in Ukraine concentrates on the day to day I really wanted to take advantage of Sabrina's rich perspective from living and working in the region for so long. So we dug deep and covered everything from what life was like in Russia just after the Wall came down and Putin's rise to power to how Russians today perceived this war and how things might play out in the months ahead. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Oh and if you hear barking, Sabrina's dog Clementine also made a few appearances. Hi Sabrina, Hi Katie. So here we are first and foremost. We have so much to talk about, but I have to say congratulations on being the new co anchor of the Daily How jast are you about this? Very excited, so excited. It's um. Yeah, it's a medium I've really admired for a very long time, and I feel incredibly lucky that The New York Times chose me to be one of its voices. So um, it's uh, it's yeah. It's just it's a it's an area of journalism that they are investing heavily in right now, And you know, I think it's a it's a medium that at its best, in some ways, I think is better than print. It's um, you know, it really connects with the part of someone's brain that is that has an emotional response to things, and I I think that it is for that reason very powerful. It is so immersive, and yet it is quite different than print. Are you concerned about translating your skills as a reporter and a writer into an audio space? Well, yeah, they You are right to point out that they are very different. Um, and I am. I am concerned about translating my skills. I mean, I think I've been practicing for quite a while since I've been with them on and off, you know, really going back to Uh so it's you know, it's it's it's a very different medium. Uh, there are certain things that are the same. I mean in terms of basic journalism. You know, I just spent three weeks in Ukraine, um, and that was in some ways kind of me returning to my old life and what I used to do. I used to spend a lot of time in Russia and I spent a lot of time in war zones, and this was kind of combining of those two things that I'd spent a lot of reporting time on. And you know, it's most basic. You are kind of going to people, listening to their stories, trying to reflect back some sort of a picture of what is actually happening in that place. Um. You know, so fundamentally audio is trying to do that as well. But you know, it's just I think for our show, you know, I was watching the print reporters do what they do, which is, you know, having to can firm lots of things. You know, this bombing not bombing, Um, you know what is happening all the time all over the country. And I because we had you know, we have a show a day, we could we picked one big target, uh, and then we were doing you know, quite a number of them on Ukraine. But I could really take my time and step back a little bit and say, Okay, what are the emotional notes I want to we want to be hitting in this particular episode. We're not. We don't have the burden of having to run around confirming every last bombing. We can really kind of take our time and pick our targets. Um. And you know, and I can spend a whole day in a train station talking to kids and their moms and really plumbing the depths of that. And Matt is something that I really love. I've always liked deeper in journalism and not faster. Um. And more wider. Yeah, Like I I like this sort of the narrower lens because you get to go deeply into someone, uh, you know, give get a sense of the psychology, what you know, what is driving that person. I do think a lot of the wise come from deep exploration, um, deep inquiry and I and I love that about audio. It seems singularly focused on that. I agree, And I think by telling a specific story and by really digging into the human emotion, it can be much more effective and reflecting the bigger story. Yes, in a way that sort of harder factual news can't necessarily convey. Yes, let's talk about Ukraine in a moment, But first I want to give our listeners and viewers a sense, Sabrina, of your crazy background, because I'm sort of like Sabrina grew up in a rural tu in western Massachusetts. You picked blueberries in the summer to make money, You went to Bernard, and suddenly you decide, Hey, I want to move to Russia. What up with that, Sabrina? So I think, you know, in a lot of ways, I think it was it sprung from my coming from a small place and feeling like I wanted very badly to see the world. Um. I didn't grow up in a big city. I grew up in a town of people. My eighth grade class had twelve people in it. And for the longest time, really as early as I can remember, I wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world. UM. I wanted to be able to experience what life was like in different places for different people. So yeah, So my first stop was a big city in the U. S. So that was New York, and that's where I went to college. And then in college, I had to take a language requirement. It was something that I had to do. And I my my my other side of my family came from Italy in the nineteen fifties. Um, so there are a lot of cousins who were Italian speaking, and I thought I wanted to do something different. Um. And it was nine and the Wall was falling and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, and there was a lot happening in Russia, and so I took Russian really kind of on a lark. I thought, different alphabet, you know, something different, this is where you know, there's some history happening in this part of the world at this point and Um, yeah, and that's what and and so I took that as my language. Um, I have a pretty good year for languages. So I got pretty good at it. And and then I went after graduating, I guess when I think on my around my twenty four birthday, I went. I moved to eastern Russia, to a city called Magadan, which is on the eastern coast. If you know the risk board, it's kind of um on the under arm of the Kumshaka Peninsula. It's and it's under it's under there. It's most people don't know it, but it's very far. It's kind of above. It's it's it's, it's it's in the far East. That was pretty brave of you, Sabrina, to just kind of, I mean, to go to eastern Russia at twenty four, Did you go by yourself? So when I first went, you know, I was calling around after I graduated from college, let me want to go to Russia with me? No, No, I didn't. I didn't particularly need anyone to go with me, but I did a job, so I was kind of calling around. You know, those were the days of faxes. You would still fax your resume place. I was faxing my resume to like law firms and places like that, and yeah, there wasn't No one was hiring me. I mean probably understandably. I was someone with basically no skills, UM who was faxing them there my resume, and I called at some point Alaska, UM, some nonprofits up there, and then some national parks up there. And then at some point one of the national parks, a big um um national forest called chugat To National Forest told me that they had some educators who were going to Russia on a summer to teach in a summer exchange program for high school kids, and they and they needed a translator. They weren't paying, but they would pay the way, and I thought, oh, that sounds great. So I went and did that and that was it was I think the summer of ninety four. So I spent a couple of months with twenty high school kids, UM, a couple of Russian teachers, and then this American teacher. UM in a very remote place of UM. It's a place called Magadon Oblis, so it's it's the region of of Magadon again. I mean, it's an eight hour flight from Moscow, so it's very it's very remote even for Russians. UM. And then I on my way back to the US at the end of that summer, I met someone who was UM working on a U. S. A i D. Funded program in the city of Magadon, and she said, you know, we're looking for someone to kind of help organize things and be a bookkeeper and do some administrative things for our program. Would you be interested? And I said yes, So I I stayed. So I was in Mogadon for three years. And then you did you move another place in Russia? Yeah, so I so in nine seven, so that in n I moved to Moscow UM. And that was you know, in that era. Yelson of course was president. Still it was kind of the wild nineties. They were having all these currency collapses and and you know, it was very very difficult time for Russians. UM. The stock market was going wild and there were a lot of sort of foreign investors in Russia. UM. And then the year after I began, they had a big default and currency collapse in and that was sort of the beginning of the end of the era of the nineteen nineties sort of wild free but very economically painful for Russians. Kind of democratic era. The people came to it, so see it with just misery and poverty and lack of control over their lives. Um and I so I was working at Bloomberg, which is you know, as you know, a financial newswire. Uh just actually just when they just started their bureau um and I worked there from nineties seven and to two thousand when I and then I started The Times in two thousands. So so yeah, so I was I was basically working in journalism from on. So you were a freelance writer in Russia in the late nineties after going there in the early nineties to to do various things in a remote part of Russia. But when you got to Moscow, what was the what was the vibe? Like, I mean, how what was it like being in Moscow in what and with this whole adjustment to this new way of life for many Russians, right, Yeah, it was very um it was different than Magadan Magadon, you know, of course was this very remote place even for Russians, And it was very um. There was sort of the sense that people had kind of become stranded out there. It was very expensive to live out there. After the Soviet Union, collapsed and all of the kind of price supports and the sort of the subsidizations of life out there fell away. It was expensive to buy groceries, it was expensive to heat houses, and you know, people didn't have the money to do those things. So it was very difficult time living out there for a lot of people in Moscow. Coming to Moscow, I mean, you know, it was such a wild time in a lot of ways. It was you know, they were sort of mafia stories, and there was the privatization going on in which you know, a small handful of of um of people were sort of fixing the privatization process and making you know, coming away with fortunes. While while most was going to say, would those be the oligarchs, Yeah, they were the early ones, So they were the you know, the nine nineties oligarchs. Then of course, there was a whole other iteration after Putin came to power and you know, established his own networks and had his own kind of groups of people getting rich off the state. But these were the you know, it was it was Freedman, it was Hutarkovski, it was a Gramovich. Um. You know, some of these names are still around, but a lot of them, aren't Kusinski. He had the big media empire. But I remember there being this kind of real free, willing sense of foreigners coming and people making a lot of money. The stock market was going crazy. Was like, oh my goodness, this capitalism thing. Everybody's kind of into it. But really for the average Russian it was just a very painful, frightening time because people, you know, became impoverished. Um, they weren't getting pensions, they weren't getting salaries. Um. You know, there there was this kind of saying at um. You know, the word democracy in Russian it became this kind of curse word in a way. Um, And you know, people associated that the period of the nineties, it was a very searing period. They associated with loss of control, you know, poverty and and and real fear that they were not going to have food the next day, terrible growing pains, it sounds like. And did the word democracy become less of a sort of four letter word eventually, I mean, I don't think so, you know, I think it's I think it's I think Russia is still finding its way and trying to understand what it is and what it wants. And you know, now, of course, with the war. Um and, with Putin in power so many years, you know, it's um. I think it's pretty confused. UM. I think that it never really had much of a muscle memory of the democracy anyway, So it was always kind of an abstract notion. Uh. You know, I think we sort of imposed that on them, that we think that they We thought they must have wanted that because we have that, and of course they would want to be like us, because our system is very good. I think that you know, we all are now experiencing a degree of um seeing democracy and what it means in a new way, including in the US. UM with the past couple of years. But but you know, in those days, I think it was just a very frightening time for a lot of Russians. Um and and and I think in a lot of ways explains the rise of Putin in two thousand. Why people we're so receptive to this man that I think, you know, from the outside, people look at look at him and say, why would anybody want that? Um And if you experienced Russia in the nine nineties as the ordinary Russian, did you understand exactly why you would want that? You want someone who's going to bring order. You want someone who's going to make sure that your pen is paid. You want someone who's going to make sure that those rich guys who stole everything after seventy years of this communist telling you that it was property of the people, realizing it was property of only seven people. You wanted those guys not to get away with murder. Um. You know, you wanted some pretty practical things, I think. And but power in Russia is um, you know, is absolute, and Putin came in, took it and consolidated, and you know, and essentially kind of recreated, um, this very corrupt system that that had existed before. It's just a different set of people coming up more with New York Times journalists and The Daily co host Sabrina TAVERNESSI, you were a reporter for the New York Times. You started at the Times in two thousand, the same year Putin came into power. Did you ever have any interactions with Putin or what were your impressions of him, um, other than he was obviously a strong leader that people were looking to to, as you mentioned, restore order and and give them h I guess a baseline quality of life. You know, I never was one on one with him. Um. I've been to a couple of his you know, he had he would have big kind of end of the year press conferences. UM. Been to a couple of those. I you know, I've interviewed lots and lots of Russians who really love him. UM. So I understood his power. Uh, if not kind of you know, If not through my own mind, certainly through the experience of Russians who were experiencing him. Um. But you know, I I remember clearly, I remember clearly the night that he was elevated. It was it was y s u k. It was it was New Year's Eve from two thousand and you know, all of the American news organizations, all of the nitors had tasked them with basically calling every single nuclear power plant across Russia's eight time zones because they all thought that there was gonna be a nuclear meltdown, because like the computers were all going to go in the fritz and there's another American on the phone. Will you talk to her? Oh? God, like, no, we're fine. Our computer didn't, you know. So we were all kind of like rolling our eyes at this assignment. And then that night Yelton abdicated yelled, since made this unbelievable speech in which he said, you know, I thought we were going to have this great leap to some bright, civilized future, and we got stuck in the middle. And and I'm and I'm sorry, um, and I am installing this guy, Vladimir Putin, who has been my deputy prime minister, to run the country. And they will be an election in May and which you will decide whether you agree that he should be president or not. And in May he won overwhelmingly. And Harry is twenty two years later, and we're going to talk about Ukraine. But I do want to ask you another question about Russia, because twenty years ago, Sabrina, you wrote Russians quote miss feeling like a great superpower, and they've had to swallow this bitter pill of being weak. So I'm wondering, as we transition this conversation into Ukraine, do you think that sort of inferiority complex somehow permeated the Russian psyche and might have contributed to this invasion of of Ukraine that that started on February. So I think so there are two layers, right, I mean, I think certainly for Putin, I think the Putin always saw the Soviet collapse as a humiliating tragedy. Um, there was not a and Albright just died and we were looking at and I was reading through her oh bit, and she said that she was the first American officials actually meet with Putin as after he became president in two thousand and she said she was left with the impression that he he claimed to understand why the wall fell and why that was happening, but at the same time she was she had the impression that he felt embarrassed about the Soviet collapse and did see that as a tragedy. Um and weakness, humiliation, which I think is such a good word because it's so visceral, right, It's powerful, it's powerful, it's a driver of a lot of things, I think, particularly in conflict. Um. So I think that for him it was always, you know, this was always the case. I mean, if we remember back um to, one of the first things he was really known for in the Russian government was that was the second Chechen War. Of course, so he kind of came in, guns blazing in to really put down uh for a second time, this kind of independence movement in this little republic that was that's in the south of Russia called Chichnia um quite brutally um in In in a way, you know, is uh sort of a similar playbook that they're using right now in Ukraine. But but I think so, I think that Putin as a leader was really animated by that idea, you know, the humiliation and the kind of sense that Russia was somehow sort of less than and not not had had given up something that was rightfully that rightfully belonged to it, and that this was this was uh, you know, this was a sorry, that's okay, that that that it like it had been cheated out of something that rightfully belonged to it, and that there was there was a sense of a real sense of grievance in that Well, it's hard to go from a superpower two less than right and if you think, you know, even even in the US, we have we we we understand now this sentiment, right that that make that make America great again? That that you know, when I first came back to the United States from Russia, um well, from being abroad in and there was the kind of the beginning of I'd see the very early Trump stuff, you know, the tea Party was starting to happen, and I recognized a lot of what I remember in Russia from the nineteen nineties. You know, if only the factory could come back, if only, you know, we could have what we had, you know, in the nineteen fifties and sixties and seventies, if only we could go back. That was when times were you know, simpler and better, and we could rely on having our salaries. And it was a time when they, you know, perhaps they weren't entirely able to you know, be free quote unquote as we would understand it, but they knew that they could buy the sausage in the shop that was near their house, and they could afford it, and they knew that they could probably afford to take a vacation to Bulgaria, and they knew, you know, that they could depend on these basic kind of middle class things that made life worth living. And that when we came along and told them, oh, but you must want freedom of the press, because that's the most important thing, they would look at you blankly and say, why it's not more important than being able to buy sausage. And so I think that was the you know, that was the sort of um the conversation we were having with Russians in the nine nineties, and they just weren't understanding, you know, what was what was it that was so important about this democracy thing. It just didn't really make sense to them. And it brought only it had brought this this era had brought only misery. Um. And so I think back to your original question, Katie, this good question of kind of humiliation and that sort of feeling less than I think that for a lot of Russians that was true as well, that you know, we used to be great people, used to respect us in the world. They used to be afraid of us. And now look, you know, they laugh at us, and that hurt. And I, you know, I think that again, I don't think this is a particularly Russian thing. Perhaps it's a big powers thing, or it's a declining big powers thing. Again, you know, I feel like we were it's a human nature thing involving no. I think countries can have egos too, And you know, interestingly, I mean, I remember one of the first times I came, one of the first assignments I did when I came back to the US in two I was covering mid terms in Delaware. Of all places. There was a Tea party candidate there that I was following, And I remember what going to a kind of a big, sort of secondhand market on a Sunday in southern Delaware, and I was talking to people there and saying, you know, I was talking about the election and and then I was just sort of talking about life. And I remember asking this one guy, you know, why do you come here on a Sunday? You know, you could be just at home watching TV or relaxing. What's what's what's what's why do you come to this this market? And he said, well, I of being in a place where so much of the merchandise was made in America. And he was really animated by this idea that you know, the US was in decline, that that China was more powerful, that we used to be great, and now we're just limping along in this kind of pathetic way. And I and I tell you it could have been. It was the same conversation I would have had with a Russian person in any provincial city at any point in the nineteen nineties. Well, let's talk about this invasion of Ukraine. Um, how much of that, either by Putin or perhaps by the Russian people has been tangled up in this notion that we need to be a better you know, we need to be a version of our former selves. I think, you know, for Putin a lot. I I'm actually trying to write an essay right now about this, just kind of remembering, you know, back through my years in Russia. And I remember I spent a bit of time in Georgia in two thousand and eight, which of course was the previous that the you know, before Russia started doing all of these things in Ukraine, and it did, it had an invasion of Georgia, country of Georgia. And I went back to the pieces I wrote from there, and I quoted one Russian officer is saying, since Putin has come, you know, essentially, we feel like men again, We we feel like we are um. People respect us again, and this is a great feeling. And so I think that there is you know, there there definitely is um is something to that. Now. You know, this invasion of Ukraine was entirely an invasion of choice, and it was an invasion of choice that came out of one man's brain. So I can't exactly say that, you know, the people of Russia were sort of driving him to this. I don't think that there was some kind of you know, I think that the most people in Russia were very you know, obviously there's a big propaganda campaign going on into the extent that people even understand what is actually happening in Ukraine. You know, many people don't. But um I'd say that certainly, you know, Russian people we knew were very were shocked that this had happened. Um So, I don't think that there was a big you know, it's very different than in which Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula in the southern part of Ukraine and then you know, sort of stirred up some nationalist trouble in the eastern part of the country. I think that I was in Russia around that time, and you know, it was a very nationalist surge. You know, there was this phrase pretty nash Crimea is ours, this kind of you know, people there was a real public ground swell backing that, and I don't that is not the case in this current invasion. Well, let me ask you about that, because I've tried to read and understand the Russian how the Russian people feel, which of course is ridiculously monolithic description, right, But I've read that it's urban versus rural, that it's young versus old. People who have access to the internet and understand how to get information, uh may feel one way. People who don't, who are older and maybe perhaps less tech tech savvy, feel another way. Um, can you give us a sense or is it impossible to know about public support of what's happened in Ukraine? So I actually spent quite a bit of time trying to sort this out because I myself was also very curious about this. Um so UM, I mean you have to sort of start with that there aren't really public opinion right well, at this point, there's there are some very good organizations that try to do it, but it's just become, you know, quite dangerous. There are lots of arguments about how even you know, the best ones when they all up people on the phone, would you honestly answer anything at this point in Russia? So you know, there's a lot of a huge amount of skepticism about the polls that are out there. Having said that, I did call a number of those organizations for the purpose of this piece of writing I was doing, and you know, it's it's it's anywhere between half to two thirds of you know, nationally of Russians, UM say that they support whatever it is they think that Putin is doing in Ukraine. So you know, the support is pretty high, but you need to understand along with that that it's it's um you know that for the most part, they don't there's really not a clear picture anywhere of what is actually happening. Certainly most people are still just television washers and on Russian television. You would never know what was happen. You know that there was a war going on in Ukraine. Really not at all. Well it's a small you know, it's a contained, small sort of humanitarian um you know, mission that's very massification because the Russians were being mistreated, the Russians in Ukraine, or I mean, is that what they're thinking? I mean, you know, when you say that, what they're thinking, it's it's hard to I think that for the most part, the best way to understand it is that Russians. You know, there obviously are some you know, very nationalist people in Russia who say, oh, you know, down with those Nazis, good on you Putin. But I think that for the most part, the most common reaction is something's going on over there. I'm not quite sure what it is. It's one big power against another big power. Big powers were all corrupt. Who can possibly sort out what where the truth is? It's too hard. I don't know. Everybody's lying. I'm just gonna go by to me. Does it's that, you know, It's it's the kind of like, probably they're not entirely telling the truth, but I'm just one little person. I'm never going to be able to truly understand it. And you know, the West has always had it in for Russia anyway, so I certainly I'm gonna I'm not gonna believe what they're saying. I mean, it's this real kind of like just you know, it's just post fact society, which again Katie, I mean, you know, I feel like we we are you know, we're we're not entirely we're not entirely ignorant of that, you know, And again I recognize Russia and in a lot of these tendencies in the US, it's that you know, no one you can't. It's it's it's the making of it's getting society to the point where it's so cynical and so exhausted that it's not going to listen to anybody or anything, so true, false, whatever, I'm not going to bother my head at try about trying to sort it out, because it's never going to be clear for me and it's never going to be working in my favor, and I don't care. And that's kind of where they are coming up more with New York Times journalists and co hosted The Daily Sabrina TAVERNESSI so you have done some incredible reporting, telling these microcosmic stories that I think are very illustrative of what's happening over and over again in Ukraine. And I know you spent time, as you mentioned, with with mothers and their children, and that they were just I think in a complete state of shock. Tell me what it was like talking to those women and many of them, I'm assuming, Sabrina, are your age, small kids, and I'm I'm curious, what did many of these women tell you. They were in that early stage that I do remember from other conflicts, of being so shocked that what was happening had happened to them that they couldn't quite It's like their brains hadn't caught up with their bodies. You know, I mean it was sort of interviewing them. They sort of had this dazed look that you know, really literally just last week, I was taking my kid to piano lessons or you know, I was um, I was going to work, I was looking for a parking place. I was living my life in my town with my family, and in a million years, I never would have believed that this could ever happen in my town. And you know, it happens really quickly. I mean I remember this in that that you know, one day you're taking a run by the river and there, you know, there's lots of middle class life bubbling around you, little espresso trucks and little um, you know, yoga studios and people having beers after work. And then one day there's just a crack in the sky and and and all of that stuffs and then all middle class people try to leave and then it becomes an empty, dead place. And I mean that was what was happening in Ukraine the weeks that I was there. And it's very painful to see because people can't process it, um and so they're kind of in the process of leaving still saying, oh, you know, I'm we're definitely going back. This is just you know, this is this is just kind of temporary. We're going to be gone for for a couple of weeks because in many parts of Ukraine, or this was my impression and maybe you can help me understand this. In certain parts of Ukraine anyway, they'd be come used to sort of uh military maneuvering and kind of trying to live their lives riding their bikes and that Lindsay and Dario is a friend of mine, and she talked about how people just sort of you know, hit the ground in certain cases. Was that why it spread or is that just in pockets of Ukraine? I think it's really just I mean in it was it was in this kind of a small small part of the eastern part of Ukraine, so dnie Can Lukans and this is actually a place I spent a bunch of time. Um, you know, the war had come there in shortly after Russia and x Crimea. So you have kind of the events were you know, revolution essentially in Kiev Moscow. Friendly leader collapses and flees and you have a new government. Russia comes in and takes over the Crimean peninsula. Remember the Little Green Men that was that was that period. Um, no one knew who they were, and then suddenly it was obvious that they were Russians. And then um, in the in the on the eastern sliver of Ukraine along the Russian border, there was this sort of nationalist uprising, which you know it wasn't uprising and it was nationalist, but it was very much backed by Moscow. So you had kind of local governments in a number of places fall to these Moscow backed separatists and so those regions also fell in So you know, so that that eastern flank was a place that was used used to but it was a place where there had been war for eight years and it was kind of bumping along, but the rest of the country was living. Yeah, I mean people were not used to war at all. That you know, Ukraine had you know obviously, you know it had a memory of it, I suppose from the Second World War, but it's been a very long time since Grainians had been you know, in in conflict. Um. So it was it was a deep shock to people. Um and you know you just saw them kind of ghost like wandering, you know, in these long lines of of traffic and you know this whole kind of It's like the whole country emptied out into this one river trying to leave um And we did a um An app We did an episode about it because I was so struck by You know what happens when you know millions of people get on the road at the same time too, to leave their own land. It looks like that UM four million. At this point, four million people have left Ukraine and so many journally displaced as well, I mean many many more internally displaced. So what what is going to happen? I know you don't have a crystal ball, but I think that's what everyone is wondering. The first off, I mean, it's taken much longer or for the Russian military to do this. I think they really underestimated the pride and the fierce loyalty Ukrainians had for their country and their way of life. But it does seem like it's a matter of time before I don't know, maybe that's not true. I don't know. UM, what do you think is going to happen? I think that's the question everyone wants to know. I mean, what what does Putin want? Will he just keep going? Will it even if it's a slog, Uh, what's going to happen to Zelenski who's just impressed people all around the world with his his defiance and courage. I mean, how do you see all of this planing out? Sabrina. Yeah, it is a million dollar question, and you know, unfortunately, to be able to answer it accurately, one would need to be inside the brain of Leni mur Putin, because, um, you know, we he's he is the only one that matters in the situation, and he is the one that we know at least about. Um, you know, we have some sense of what the Russian Defense Ministry is saying, and we're making a lot of guesses about what you know, their statements mean visa vie what might happen. You know, there are these talks that have been happening, But are any of those people empowered to really talk on behalf of Putin? We don't really know. He's also being protected from the truth. That sounds like he is getting a rosie uh scenario when things are not going well right, which has been kind of a long proud history of of of Russian autocrats that you know, people don't want to tell them the truth. Um, you know, it's very I think that. I think the thing that I've been most surprised by is that Ukrainians have really rallied and really shown that Ukraine is an idea that they are willing to die for. I was, I was not. I didn't really know what to expect. But but you know, certainly like that has been very much something that has come out of this. I mean it's like every you know, going around Ukraine those weeks, it's like every single person in the country was rowing towards the same point on the horizon. I mean, it was this amazing kind of social act that was going on, um, everybody. So that was quite something. You know, in terms of the Russians, again, I can't pretend to know what's in Putin's head. Um, you know, it's obviously not going very well for them, But I don't think that that means that he will back off or say, okay, I'm crying uncle. I mean, he believes that Ukraine cannot you know, go west. I mean that that, you know, it's it's very fun to mental and and I don't think that, you know, some military setbacks are going to change that. So you know, maybe there's a scenario in which you know, he Russia resets and it's more about taking the eastern and southern parts of the country, which is you know, on the other side of the Nipper River. Um. You know, certainly we know that he won't leave Ukraine alone, so it won't you know, Ukraine will not be in a position in which it would be able to you know, join the EU, get foreign investment. I mean, Ukraine will be this kind of hobbled thing, and that of course suits his purposes very well. So I don't really know territorially what it will mean, but it is not good for Ukrainians, and I would honestly be surprised if you know, in a couple of weeks there's some diplomatic solution and we all go back to the way we were. And I just don't I just don't see that happening. So you think it will just continue to be a slow and painful and violent shipping away of this country and its people and any civilians that may get in his way. Yeah, I mean, I don't think that matters. In fact, I think that that's part of the strategy, right that that was certainly the case in Chichia. You know that you you make up for what you can't achieve in a functioning ground campaign by bombing things. And that's certainly how they ended up taking that city and subduing that territory. Um. Ukraine obviously much bigger, you know, chas Um. You know, Grows needs a couple hundred thousand people and and he is four million people. Um, but you know they've got time. They're not you know that they they he thinks at a time totally different time horizon than we do. So I just don't I don't. I know that we're kind of um, you know, as journalists always sort of being asked to kind of you know, be authoritative about what will happen and kind of where this is all going. But I just think I just don't think I think it's I think it's um. I don't think it's necessarily going to a good place, and it's going to be it could be you know, muddled and unclear, but certainly painful and grinding for a very long time. And in your view, is Putin here to stay? I think people fantasize about, you know, what if Putin just was taken out or OUs did or whatever assassinated even and uh uh do you get the sense that he's not going anywhere? Yes, yeah, I don't. I don't think there's any I don't think there's any danger with Putin. I mean he's you know, he's very well insulated, he's popular. You know, it's he's not I think this is mostly kind of fantasy of people. I think it's people projecting what they wish, what they wish would happen, uh, and not what is likely to happen. And do you think he's crazy enough to use nuclear weapons? I don't know. I don't know. I really don't. I mean, it would be just pure speculation. I'm it's not It's not part of what I report, So I would need to ask what are my Pentagon colleagues? I mean maybe, um maybe, I don't know. It's a really um scary new world, isn't it? In many ways very strange. I keep looking at it, thinking is this happening? I I don't. I keep squinting and just not recognizing it, though I should. You know, because um, as many people in Russia will tell you, you know, there have been signs of this for a long time. I mean, there was a grows the invasion in two thousand and eight, there was Crimea in eastern Ukraine in two thousand fourteen, there was chick On two thousand um. But yeah, it's like we kind of I guess, we're always trying to tell the world that Russia in a lot of ways was lovable and good and interesting and like a place that they should admire. Um And you know, perhaps we should have spent more time on the on the parts that you shouldn't. It's kind of like what, you know, what's in the mind of one man, because it's I can't really say that, you know, Russians themselves were desperate for this. I mean, in a lot of ways, it was a very it's a very radical thing that he's doing. I mean, for Russians to be killing Ukrainians that was not that's not and has never been something that would popularly fly. It would be like would it be like Americans killing Canadians? Yeah, like that. It just I mean, I can't even I mean, it's so deeply shocking, which is why I think people have this kind of phones mechanism that it's you know, it can't be it's it's got it's like it's not really that there's something else some way I can justify it because it's too horrible to actually contemplate. If I have to, like stare at into the sun of it, I can't. I actually can't get my head there. So it's radical what he's doing. Well, I'm glad that we have your intelligence and sensitivity to help us, to help guide us through this this very scary and uncertain time. UM. That sounds like it has potential to kind of shift the world order in some ways and present a challenge that Americans really haven't thought about for a very long time. Very much so well, Sabrina, thank you, it's um, it's so fun to talk to you, and good luck with everything. Thank you, really enjoyed talking to you, you too, Katie, thank you so much. That was New York Times journalists and co host of The Daily Sabrina Tavernisi. Thanks for listening, everybody, and you'll hear me next time. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of I Heart Media and Katie Curic Media. The executive producers Army, Katie Curic, and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie Couric dot com. You can also find me at Katie Curic on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,