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What Next - The Russian “Collaborators”

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For Ukrainians who remained behind when the war began, choices made in the fog of occupation come under scrutiny when the invading army leaves, and neighbors once divided by the Russians again must live side by side.  

 

Guest: Joshua Yaffa, contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia.”


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:05.5

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0:34.3

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0:46.9

Joshua Yafa has been reporting in Ukraine.

0:50.3

And when I spoke to him earlier this week, it was as if he'd taken on this unofficial project, chronicling all the things the war has broken in its path.

1:00.7

He'd been spending time in an eastern city, known as his Yom.

1:04.5

What immediately struck him as he arrived was that it wasn't just Russia making a mess of this region, pushing Russians out. That was messy too.

1:14.5

Well, the first thing I saw on the way into town was a highway littered with trappinol glass burnt out Russian tanks by the side of the road.

1:27.5

Essentially the remnants of what had been this lightning fast, super successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that pushed Russian troops out of a zoom and basically chased them all the way down the highway.

1:38.5

And you could see the after effects of that chase on the way into a zoom.

1:43.5

But when I got to the actual center of town, the destruction is apparent immediately.

1:51.5

The apartment buildings had clearly been bombed, shelled, caveated on themselves, rubble around town, holes and buildings where they had been shelled.

2:01.5

Buildings pockmarked with trappinol bullet casings.

2:05.5

I mean, it was clear that war had swept through town. That was sort of unambiguous, just in the physical look and feel of the city.

2:17.5

While he was in town, Joshua stayed in an abandoned apartment. There's plenty of available space. About half the city's residents fled the occupation.

2:27.5

And they were only just beginning to return. He found himself living side by side with people who seemed just as broken as the city's infrastructure.

2:37.5

People who in order to survive had twisted themselves to an invader's whims. And now they're trying to pick up the pieces.

...

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