This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Batchler. And it'll leave and return from Ukraine to

interview and write about his experiences there, which were partly accidental and dire.

He wounded himself in a fall, but it gave him time to reflect on the experience of the

Ukrainian people under bombardment and not in this second year of the war. And it'll

very good even to you. You're in a view at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft,

where you are a very important member. Reflects on how the Ukrainian people are experiencing the war.

We all look to the next moments of negotiations or war fighting. We're told all the time

there's a counteroffensive where there's an offensive underway. But what you witnessed was I

would say the Prince and the Popper. The Popper are the people in the destroyed cities in the east.

And the Prince are the people in key that you witnessed going to well-to-do restaurants and

enjoying life as best they could in wartime. So let's just start with the princely side.

Did that surprise you to see people carrying on their lives with a display of prosperity and

confidence? Good evening to you. Hello, John. At first it did surprise me, yes.

Also because I'd expected Kiev to be, you know, worst damaged than it was. And to be, you know,

much more of a sense of a country at war, which you don't really much get in Kiev, to be honest.

But after that, I reflected on history. And, you know, if you read about the first world war while

French soldiers were dying at Verdun, Paris, the upper classes of Paris were still in some ways,

you know, leading the high life. But, you know, that could be storing up-travel, political

trouble for the future. Because, of course, the veterans, the men who've done the fighting,

who have perhaps been wounded, who have seen their comrades die, will not be too happy, I think.

I looked into a casino in Kiev and I was reminded of a phrase of a British politician about

the newly elected House of Commons in 1919 that it was full of hard-faced men who looked as if

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