Ted Audio Collective

Hello everyone, this is after hours. I'm Felix. I'm me here. I'm Rowie. Rowie. Welcome back, Rowie. It's back. It's nice to meet you back.

What are reunion? Reunion indeed. Speaking of reunions, there's an alumni reunion on campus this week. Yes. And you know what I saw in the program?

The three of us are presenting at the same time. We are in competition. Oh my God. I think we know how that's going to go.

Rowie is going to be talking big world issues. Yeah. And I'll have coffee with half a soul. Yeah. Exactly. We have brought you back for a serious topic. It's now I think seven, eight months since we talked about the war in Ukraine. Yeah.

And you provided such great insight on the historical roots of the conflict, how to think about it. And it's high time to have you back and tell us what's been happening. Where do we think the war will go? I have a million questions for you. Indeed. Me too.

And we might as well before World War III begins. This is starting off on an optimistic. Yes. Very nice. It's going to go well.

So Rowie, tell me about the surprises for you as you've seen this conflict evolve. What do you think you've learned that maybe you didn't know before?

One of the surprising moments was when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York froze foreign exchange reserves that the central bank of Russia had in deposit there,

which the Russians experienced as like, hey man, you stole my foreign exchange reserves. I didn't even know that that was a thing that you could do, which is led to a lot of innovation around the world of trading various commodities not in dollars trying to avoid the dollar to relieve some of the pressure from the secondary sanctions.

I think another surprise has been how robust the Ukrainian defense has been. I don't think there was anyone outside of Ukraine who thought that the Ukrainian military and the civilian population too would be able to withstand this assault from the Russian military.

And then I think perhaps the biggest surprise is that European unity on this issue and transatlantic unity on the support for Ukraine has exceeded my expectations, which are probably low to begin with.

They were low to begin with. Now we're in a very different place. What about you, me here? What surprised you?

So I'm much more naive about these issues than rowy, but certainly the fortitude of the Ukrainian people and their defense the civilian as well as military has just been completely remarkable.

I think Russia remains a mystery to me rowy in so many ways up until the draft was announced. It seemed that Russia despite all these sanctions was kind of going on its way.

And there was large chunks of the Russian population that were just not really incorporating this reality into their lives. And I think that was surprising to me as well.

And then it just continues to be surprising to think about how Putin thinks about the world and trying to game out what he may go for next. It's this weird appreciation for his rationality but also his irrationality.

I think those are the three things that have really struck me. Felix, have you been surprised by things?

Yeah, I think I was surprised by the partial mobilization because that always seemed to be part of what was working for Russia to basically keep the war invisible.

Yeah.

And then like everyone else, the relative success on the battlefield after Ukrainians.

There's no question that the Russian regime expected this to go much more quickly and much more smoothly in part because so much money had been poured into the modernization of the Russian military during the Putin era.

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