Russia’s Intentions in Ukraine—and America

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“They push buttons,” says Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale. “What button of ours are they pushing here? What are they trying to get us to do?” Vladimir Putin is posturing toward a costly invasion of Ukraine, on the false pretext of protecting Russian-language speakers in the country. Why? In a wide-ranging conversation, Snyder talks with David Remnick about how to understand Russia’s aggression, the idea advanced by Putin that Ukraine historically and rightfully belongs to Russia, and the dictator’s far-reaching goal of destabilizing NATO. Snyder is the author of the Second World War history “Bloodlands,” as well as “The Road to Unfreedom” and “On Tyranny”—which warn of the dangers that imperil American democracy. Running an oligarchy in which corruption is universal, Putin “is basically stuck with spectacle, distractions—the old bread and circuses idea,” Snyder says, “but also is working from a situation where you want to bring other countries down to your level. . . . With that, you can understand their intervention in our elections, or the way they talk about us: they want to bring out the elements of us, both rhetorically and in reality, that are most like the way they run the country.” Putin’s governance of Russia and his foreign policy, in other words, are intricately entangled. “I tend to think [the threat of invasion] is about the Biden Administration, in a pretty fundamental way,” Snyder believes. “If your goal is to undermine NATO—let’s accept that that is their sincere goal—who do you want to be President? Trump.” The crisis, he says, “puts Biden in a very bad position. It’s very hard for Biden to look strong. . . . Insofar as there is a strategy here, it’s about dividing NATO members and putting pressure on the Biden Administration.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:13.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Throughout the long, cold war,
0:18.9	which had consequences all over the world,
0:21.4	the Soviet Union and the United States and its European allies somehow managed to avoid a full-on military confrontation.
0:28.8	But 30 years later, that is the prospect we face.
0:32.5	Russia insists that the West has taken advantage of its weakness and is now threatening to invade Ukraine
0:38.0	yet again. And it's a terrifying prospect. At this enormously tense moment, I wanted to talk with
0:44.6	the historian Timothy Snyder. Snyder is a professor at Yale and the author of the bestseller
0:50.1	Bloodlands. He's long studied the dynamics of this part of the world, particularly Ukraine,
0:56.1	Russia, and the rest of Europe. Snyder's book, The Road to Unfreedom from 2018, is a study of Vladimir
1:03.0	Putin's effort to influence and undermine Western democracies. We spoke last week.
1:10.2	Sometimes people seem to forget when they ask, will Russia
1:14.2	invade Ukraine, that Russia has invaded Ukraine twice already. The first in 2014 to Crimea and has
1:21.5	occupied Crimea ever since. And Russian troops are in eastern Ukraine. They're all over eastern Ukraine, and many thousands of people have already died.
1:30.6	So what are the stakes now?
1:34.4	Yeah, I think it's interesting the way that Russia has set this up for us, because they are presenting us with this, as it were, shocking new development
1:47.2	that they might invade a country.
1:50.2	And then the discussion is framed about what we are supposed to do to prevent them from doing that.
1:57.3	And in that very shock, we forget that they've already carried out an illegal occupation for
2:03.5	for for eight years um and and then interestingly this this leads us to a difference between
2:10.9	how the ukrainians and let's say the americans react to all this which can be instructive
2:16.6	i mean the ukrainians are the ones who are about to be
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.