 This is Jay Fidel. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters. It's the movie show, as a matter of fact, at five o'clock on a given Wednesday. We have George Kasin to help us review another movie. And this movie is a very important movie called Winter on Fire, documentary made of the Maiden Square protests in the Ukrainian Revolution of 2013 and 2014. And it is very interesting and totally relevant to what is going on now. George, say hello to the people and tell us about this movie. Hello, you can hear me now, right? This movie is a documentary about the 2013 to 2014 Maiden uprising of the public in Ukraine when there was a thing with the president Yakovlevich had promised the public that they were gonna join the EU. And then he, because of Putin's pressure, they backed out, right? He backed out. And then he was gonna, they were gonna become part of the so former Soviet economic organization. So the public felt, you know, they were cheated. I mean, they expected to have Ukraine become part of the EU, which would help the economy, help bring up, you know, salaries and whatever. So they revolted. And the way this president reacted with Putin's backing is to bring out the Berkut, which is the military police. Initially rubber bullets, they had, there was shooting rubber bullets at the protesters, right? And then they brought in these criminals, something with a T to, you know, other than the Berkut. And then they infiltrated those criminals into the protesters to rile them up, which would give an excuse to, for the Berkut to go and be more brutal. And eventually the bullets started being real, you know, real bullets and shooting people and killing people. And this was all to put down this protest, you know, in the most brutal way. And then they show all the different stages, you know, in this documentary from the beginning and how it got worse and worse and worse and then all blood protest is being shot and beaten and killed and horrible. Yeah, that's the basics of the movie, from my perspective. Yeah. Yeah, I would just want to add one thought to your rendition, which I thought was a good thumbnail of the movie is that part of this involved snipers. The Berkut would position themselves on the top of buildings and, you know, architectural features that would look down on the crowd and they actually had sniper rifles and they would shoot unarmed people in a crowd. It was really disgusting what they did. And all of this was under the control of Vladimir Putin. That's what he was doing because Yanukovych, the puppet was his who belonged to him and did his bidding. And he was trying to control that his Putin was trying to control Ukraine through Yanukovych who was a spineless puppet just doing what Putin wanted him to do. So, you know, I mean, the thing is let me take a moment and talk about the production values, okay? It reminded me of a movie called Abacus Federal Savings and Long, which was the story of a Chinese bank in Chinatown, New York that was the only organization sued by Cyrus Vance, a recently retired district attorney from Manhattan, only organization sued after the 2008 financial debacle. And he sued them, I think he sued them criminally for really what was a ridiculous claim, ridiculous claim. All these Wall Street banks, but Cyrus Vance sued these small family bank in Chinatown, they defended themselves. And what they did was they got cameras and everything that happened, everything had happened in this suit which ultimately Cyrus Vance lost and the Chinese family that owned the bank won, okay? They took pictures, video of everything and then they made a movie of it and the movie which you can find on Netflix now, I think is called Abacus Federal Savings and Long, which was the name of the bank. And what was really important here is that they had the cameras, they took it real time. They took it as it happened and then they made the movie. Well, that's what happened in winter of fire. The Ukrainians had the cameras and they took real time pictures in color, really high value, high quality pictures everything that had happened between late November, 2013 and late February, 2014. All the meetings, all the crowds, all the protests, all the movements, all the police, all the beatings, all the snipers, it was all there every day. This was an everyday, some people stayed there in Maidan Square for all that time and the people with the cameras who you never meet, you never see them, they're there with them every single day, all the blood and gore, all the shootings and maimings and beatings, all the ambulances coming, all the incredibly brutal things that Putin did, it's all there. Just like the documentary about Abacus Federal Savings and Long. So that makes this movie special and they did it pretty much right after the protests were successful and Yanukovych left town, where did he go? He went to Moscow into the arms of Putin and the Ukrainians reorganized themselves, reorganized the government and confirmed their democratic values in their democracy right after he left. It was really heart-rending to see all of this in that movie. So I guess this is a special movie because it was actually created if the protests were over, the revolution was successful when late February, early March of 2014, the movie was made and released in sometime in early 2015, okay? Which is really saying something. This is an historic documentary and so we should talk about exactly what happened from November on. The crowds filled the square. There were hundreds of thousands of people. It was the biggest protest imaginable and men, women, children, children were there every day, every night, living in that square. They weren't gonna give it up. They weren't gonna let go. They weren't gonna let Yanukovych control them or Putin control them. And it was as a statement of their character and their courage and their loyalty to each other and to Ukraine as a country. This was a defining moment for Ukraine. And you have to watch this movie to understand them and what motivates them and how together they are if you wanna understand their courage today because it all kind of began, this kind of courage began in the 2013, 2014 in Maidan protests and revolution. No. Yep, this is just a repeat performance in some ways of what happened in 2013, 2014. It is. And it shows you the violence that Putin lashed out at with them. It shows you the brutality, the murderous brutality. It shows you their response and their strengths. It's really interesting to see it through the lens of what is happening today. And sometimes, I'll tell you my experience with it, sometimes I forget that the movie is about something that happened seven years ago. But you think, well, maybe this movie is what's happening today. It could easily be happening today. It could be a picture of what's going on today. Although today it's not just snipers shooting people in a barrel. It's tanks and planes shooting them in a barrel, killing, brutally murdering people, civilians, citizens, unarmed citizens. That's what he was doing then. And you know, I don't think the world really took note then but it helps us understand what happens now. Wasn't it 2014 that they also went into Crimea and took Crimea? I think it was 2014. Yeah, it was after the revolution in my time. It was after the protests in Kiev. And I guess that was his way of recovering. This is way of saving face. This is way of continuing his crazy, mad attacks on Ukrainians. So when this was over, he went and did that too. What a guy. My reaction, and people disagree with me about this, but he's really got it out for the Ukrainians. It's a grudge match. And it's an inescapable possibility when you watch this movie, Winter on Fire, because you can see how they were so stalwart, so strong, so committed, so courageous. And he kept on trying to kill him and undermine them and ruin their revolution in every way possible and prop up his puppet Yanukovych so that you understand him better. There's a lot to understand with him. It's not easy, it's not simple. But what you get is the man likes to murder people. But why now? I mean, that's my question. Why did it take seven years for him to do this? What, you know, ostensibly what's going on with the negotiations between Putin and Ukraine, the leadership or the foreign minister or whatever, is that he says that he doesn't want Ukraine to become part of NATO. He wants them to remain independent. And then Crimea, that they have to give up Crimea, and then those two breakaway republics, that's pretty much what Putin is saying on his side, right? So the thing is, my question again, why now? Why did it take seven years for this to happen? You know, I mean, was there anything that triggered him, you know, to do this? Has Stoltenberg been trying to increase NATO? You know, I mean, I know that they include, a lot of the Eastern European countries have become part of, and then the Baltic countries have become, you know, a part of NATO, right? Why now, Jay, what triggered it now? What caused Putin to do this now? That's- I don't think it was a single triggering event. I think he's been planning for this for a long time and perfecting his power in Russia, you know? A year or two ago, Navalny challenged him and successfully, until Putin poisoned him a couple of times and put him in jail, with ridiculous charges where he is now. So, you know, he was perfecting his power, effecting his power over, you know, the government and the people who work for him, the ministers and whatnot. And there was a meeting not too long ago where you could see that he completely overwhelms them and they have no say, they just listen to him or worry about getting poisoned themselves and losing it all. Losing the money, losing, you know, family, losing their properties, losing their accounts. I mean, he's a very threatening individual, very dangerous man. So I think he spent the last, well, from 2014 to 2022 preparing for what he did a few weeks ago. And I think the full answer to your question is last night, okay? And this is another great documentary on PBS. There was a documentary played called Putin's Road to War. Okay, this is an hour and a half or so. It just played for the first time last night on PBS, I think. And it's actually more than PBS because it's on YouTube. George, you can go to YouTube right now today and see a movie that premiered only recently and watched the whole thing for free on YouTube. And I think that's a real public service. Now, this is a very carefully, you know, frontline is an excellent documentary filmmaker and they showed you the whole thing from the time of Mud and Square. In fact, we from before that and how actually it's Putin's whole life, his whole professional life back to the time when he was there in East Germany as part of the KGB and the wall came down and the formative experiences that he had. And then, you know, going forward, you get to understand him and you get to understand some of the brutal and murderous and criminal things that he's done over and over again and gotten away with. You know, they say that, you know, if you're a psychopath and you get away with something it emboldens you. And so this movie tracks all the things that he's done and each one of them, he succeeded. He killed a lot of people in his life. It isn't just a poison for Navalny and others. It's all these other things where he's bombing and strafing and killing unarmed civilians. That's what he does, okay? And the whole thing comes together. The movie shows you how these very interesting threads in his life have all pointed to Ukraine now. And I say, I think it's in ways, it's a grudge match out of 2013, 2014, but it's ways in other ways. This is what he's been planning for many years and more than that, this is what his life has been about. It's all pointed to what he's doing now and it's murderous and it's war criminal and it's atrocity, that's what he is. But that is also the history of Soviet Union. I mean, with Trotsky and Lenin and all these guys, people getting killed, Stalin is purges of people by the hundreds of thousands, people disappear. They're sent to Siberia or they disappear off the face of the earth. So there's sort of a tradition there in Russia for this and he's following it. But also, if you look at some of the, like I mentioned Georgia, that was 2008, the two breakaway republics because Georgia was flirting with the West, with the US and he put a stop to that. And also Armenia, when they had that recent war, last year, he sort of, usually they side with Armenia because that's geopolitics for him, right? And he pulled off and didn't do anything because he was angry that the people had voted out his stooge, Kotaryan, or Sarkis Sarkskid, and put in Pashinyan, who is more Western oriented and started to put out feelers to Europe. So he's basically, he's got the power to do what he wants and he's not happy when his stooges are put out of office or being threatened. So then he does what he has to do, you know? So there's a tradition of both of the murdering that's like you mentioned, and there's also a tradition of him finding other ways, you know, military, you know? I think they went into Georgia in 2008 too, right? Or they were threatening Georgia. So it was also a provocation, it's the same kind of thing. You know, a false flag provocation. The most interesting one is where he, through agents, he destroyed a school of young children during school hours and he killed a lot of young children. I know just enormous number of young children in an elementary school, I think it was. And then he blamed the Chechnyans for that, even though it was him. And then of course, what you have is him bombing Chechnya and killing a lot of people in Chechnya. So it's always followed the same pattern. It's a false flag, the phony attack and then turning it around to his benefit. Now, what's different about Ukraine is that Ukraine and a lot of writers have said this, commentators have said this, is that it was a miscalculation on his part. He thought he could get away with it again, that same kind of MO, but the world got involved. And Zelensky has reached the world, he's touched the world and the Ukrainian people have touched the world. So you have the EU, NATO and the US all say, wait a minute, this is war crime, this is atrocities. You can't do that. But the fact is, and you gotta look at this documentary, Putin's Road to War, which is on YouTube right now. If you look at that, you realize he's been doing this over and over again and the West hasn't really paid attention. He got away with it and it emboldened him every time, but not now. And that's the miscalculation. He went too far this time and he's using the same techniques to try to double down and win and destroy them. But it's harder this time and he may lose this time. Where was that school Jay that he attacked and killed all those children? Was it in Ukraine or another? No, it's not in Ukraine. It was, I think it might have been in one of the stands or in Georgia. It was very brutal. And they go into some detail in this documentary about that, because it was so outrageous. First you killed the children and then you kill the people you blame for killing the children, even though you killed the children. I mean, I don't know where you put that on the list of evilness, but it's there. So, I mean, if you catch that and you catch this one, you begin to get an idea of what we're dealing with here. And the reality is that he's got the Russian government. He's got the Russian press, although it seems to be kind of a fragile control of them right now and that may not work for him. And he's been bamboozling everybody with his threats of nuclear war and chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction. So, what is interesting is that he's setting the agenda he's setting the agenda for these quote, peace talks, end quote, which are not real. And he's setting the agenda for the attacks and the threats against anyone who would try to stop him, even though this is Ukrainian airspace. This is Ukraine, a sovereign nation. And he just claims it. He just claims it. Don't touch Ukraine. I own Ukraine. Even though the Ukrainians really own Ukraine, it's their country. But this helps you understand when you start making sense of this, you realize that he's been doing it and only now are we catching him. And one of the reasons we're catching him is because of this movie that you and I are reviewing today. It reveals what he was doing and what they were doing and what kind of people they are. I like to open another aspect of this and that's courage. Courage is the ability, the willingness to fight knowing that you may die. And that is one interesting aspect of all of this. It was in the movie that we are reviewing, winter on fire. It is certainly in this documentary last night, Putin's Road to War. And I guess what you have to conclude is when you wanna deal with a monster like this, you have to have the courage to put your life on the line. And the Ukrainians have that. And I think they gained that in the course of this movie that we are looking at. Don't you agree? Oh yeah, I mean, they're not gonna just buckle down. They want freedom. They have an independent country and he thinks that he's still back in the Soviet Union where it's under Russian tutelage, right? And now he's threatening nuclear war, whether it's an idle threat, but from what you're telling me, and I know that he's a little crazy, he may just do nuclear war. He's backed into a corner. If he doesn't care about his own people dying, his own soldiers dying, or civilian deaths in Ukraine or anywhere else, then he may just, I mean, he's got the nuclear warheads to threaten. Is he gonna do it? Is he crazy enough to do that? You tell me, do you think he's crazy enough to do that? Well, he's way crazier now than he was in 2013, 2014. You know, the point of that documentary Winter on Fire is that the Ukrainians won. They had the revolution. Yanukovych left by helicopter in the middle of the night and there's actually footage of him leaving. And the whole country was opposed to him. The whole country was opposed to Putin. This for them, it is a grudge match, you know? And so, you know, what we see is a guy who lost the last time. And then on top of that, he says, you know, he believes he lost, that Russia lost its, you know, Soviet properties. But in fact, he did lose the last time. And this movie shows that, you know, the people can win. Now he's back and he's a different fellow. He's much more murderous. It's not just snipers shooting people in the crowd. It's blowing their whole society apart, building by building, destroying their infrastructure intentionally, killing women and children and pregnant women and babies, extraordinary. It's different. It's not just a revolution in mind and mind and square. It's genocide. He's gone to the next level, you know? Georgia, Armenia, you know, Armenia is threatened by Turkey and Azerbaijan. So they sort of buckle under, you know, to his demands. But I think there was some changes there too, you know, with the Putin's allies were thrown out in those two Caucasian nations too. But Ukraine is a big country too. It's the largest country other than Russia itself. And so, you know, he's gonna, he's trying to make a point that he's gonna buckle them and he's gonna control them, you know? So, and the people are not willing to just buckle under and then do that. So they've got this fortitude, you know, of will, you know? And there's fighting him, you know? Where, you know, so we don't know, I don't know where this is gonna go. Hopefully, you know, he'll back down, you know, with all these threatens economic sanctions and stuff. But I don't know. I'm clear. He hasn't backed down before, you know? He's a double down guy, just the way Trump is a double down guy. And there is a really unholy relationship between the two of them. It's like they both read the same playbook. That's what makes Trump so scary in this country. And I would be, if I was in Ukraine, I'd be terrified that if Putin took over Ukraine, oh my goodness gracious. I don't know if you remember, but when this invasion first started, one of the big news items was that Putin had a list. He had a little list. It's out of the Makato. I have a little list. And he had a list of all the people he was going to, you know, incarcerate, maybe murder, disappear, and treated like Navalny or all those protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He has a little list about the people in Ukraine. And he's already, you know, kidnapping mayors of cities in Ukraine. So that's pretty terrifying. And it'll be something like out of the 30s, you know, with the Nazis in Europe, in Western Europe, where they're gonna break the society up and then do terrible things to the people who oppose them. That's what's in the cards here. But I wanna go to one other thing we really should discuss. And it's the power of, I don't wanna say social media only. It's more than social media. It's the power of documentary films. It's the power of video. And it's the power of distributing that video on social media. It's a whole new system. And this movie that we're reviewing, Winter on Fire, is an example of that. It's a good movie. It's an honest movie. It's a detailed factual statement of what happened. Clearly you can't say that it was anything less than that, really it was made by the people. It is a story of the people. And it went on for months. It's hard not to believe it, not to be affected by it. And it's out there. It's out there in many ways. And so we are in a time now, George, where political events, political inflections in our world between, between autocrats or bi-autocrats can be affected by statements of the truth as reflected in videos just like this one. Exactly, exactly. You can actually see what's actually happened in the Maidan situation and get sensitized to all this. And that's what happens when you get sensitized to it. Then politically, we can tell our president in Congress to try to reel Putin in, you know. I'm really worried. I mean, he's a megalomaniac. He's gone crazy, you know? And he's, what's he gonna, what's gonna stop him? It will, you know, he's- Well, arguably a movie like this has an impact on it. But let me go further. So, so now we have claims of war crimes. As a matter of fact, there's a case that was opened yesterday or today for war crimes against him in Russia, in the Hague and the criminal court of justice there. And what is, and by the way, the spearhead is Harold Koh. He's Harold Koh, he used to be the Dean of the Yale Law School. Harold Koh represents Ukraine. Okay. And so the question is, if it's war crimes, how do you prove that? Because you'll, lest we forget, you can't do much with war crimes unless you can prove them. So we have these videos. We have the one winter on fire. We have a lot of the material in Putin's road to war that we saw last night, and we can see today on YouTube. And we have the daily feed in video, real time, live from so many places in Ukraine, so many newscasters, some of whom regrettably have been killed. But they are documenting what is happening. This is the new world of real time video demonstrating what's happening on the ground, including war crimes. Some of the video that you and I have seen on MSNBC and CNN, and even Fox News. And BBC, don't forget them. Some of that video, maybe a lot of it actually, is pictures of war crimes. And it's going to find its way into the courts, not only the international courts in the Hague, but the courts that will seize Russian property, the courts that will double down on the sanctions, the court of public opinion already affected. So it's different now. I think, you know, Winter on Fire existed in 2015, but it didn't really sink in. It didn't really take root this movie, this really important movie until now, because it's somehow, you know, it's doubled down. It's affected by the existence of what we see every day and the shocking events that take place in Ukraine. We want to know more. We want to know more about that. We want to know more about Putin's road to war. We want to know more about him, about Russia, about the propaganda machine. We want to know more about the internet research agency and his attempts to change election results in this country, to use disinformation and misinformation on our public opinion. All these things, it all sort of comes together. He is a man without morality. He's a monster and he's doing all this and somehow all of these things are coalescing. But one of the most important things is the movie we're reviewing and other movies and all the TV footage. It's hard to argue. It's hard to argue with that TV footage. Now Putin has said, all these Americans, they just make this stuff up. This isn't true. This is all fake news. It's all fake video. Give me a break. Nobody is gonna believe that. It's true, for the garbage, yeah. That's not true at all. Yeah, he played into this whole election thing too, you know, with the first election in 2016 with Hillary and Trump. And then the second one with Biden and he lost this time, you know, Trump lost. So yeah. What you have, what you have is people in the Maidan Square Revolution became stronger and by virtue of the fact that they succeeded, by virtue of the fact that they stayed there over how many months, you know, 90 days plus. And then by virtue of the fact that the movie was made and circulated to give them more courage yet, okay? And then you have other movies that were also not that popular between 2015 and now, but have become popular because they show us the trends. They helped to put the story together. And the TV footage, all of this has to change the way we look at things. Has to change the way we see the world. Has to change the way autocrats and monsters are treated by public opinion, by international organizations and the like. And it not only emboldens the Ukrainians, it emboldens those who would potentially support the Ukrainians, the EU, the people in all the cities of Europe, including, you know, the Balkans and the cities up north, they're all affected. This is a pan-European kind of reaction. And to some extent, we'll see how much over the next few weeks, the people in the US who get a daily feed of what's going on there. And if they care about humanity, and then furthermore, you get people who are sending money, sending medical supplies and traveling themselves from the United States and from Western Europe. And they're all motivated, in my view, by the fact that there's these technicolor feeds, these graphic images of people being killed and dying and attacks and buildings destroyed residential buildings. I mean, this is hard to take. And some people, not everyone, but some people, they react to it by going over there. They wanna participate. They wanna see if they can stop it. They care desperately. You can see the reaction in the New York presentation of the Ukrainian national anthem. They played it, I forget, where Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center. And people went wild. You could see in Congress, when Zelensky spoke how they stood up and applauded him with standing ovations. It's because, as you said, George, they've been activated. So let me ask you, where does it go from here? Are we gonna see more movies like this? Are we gonna see more of the, what do you wanna call the political social effects of those movies? Well, the article you sent me that I read, talking about the bigger picture of where we're going, I think there's gonna be more of this because the public with articles like that will start to understand what the bigger picture is between China, Russia, and America. Those are the three big players. And where we're headed. If we don't do something, and these autocrats, including Erdogan, who's a lesser level, if they succeed, China, Russia, basically, where will this world go? We've gotta stop this autocratic kind of business to protect ourselves down the line. China's got billions of numbers of people, right? And Russia has nuclear weapons. So we've got to, we can't isolate ourselves in today's world from what's going on overseas. We can't be isolationist. Trump tried to be an isolationist. So not gonna work. So yeah, definitely there's gonna be more of this and rightfully so get the public more engaged into how this is gonna impact them over time. It's technology, you know? The internet, social media, that's technology. These little cameras fit in the palm of your hand and take big screen pictures. That's technology. It's the ability to distribute them around the world. It's technology. And although autocrats can use technology and they do by shutting down social media, shutting down the internet and using surveillance cameras and all kinds of database programs to attack people and attack societies and communities. That's on the one side. Autocrats can do that. They have the money. They have the governmental leverage to do that. On the other hand, these videos like this movie, Winter on Fire, they get out and they affect public opinion. Then at the end of the day, there's a tension, a dichotomy between this kind of movie, this kind of content and the autocratic efforts to stop it and repress. Those are the two things that are fighting for attention and power in our world of big powers. And you don't know, George, which one is gonna prevail. I like to think that movies like this will proliferate and they will knock down any autocrat. But I can't be sure of that because autocrats have their leverage also. All we can do is encourage the people who made this movie, encourage the people at Frontline who made the movie on PBS and everyone else to make sense of it and publicize it and teach us what is really going on in the world and what we need to do to protect ourselves from autocrats and tyranny. So it doesn't, like catching Hungary, Poland, also becoming more autocratic. So if you can't stop it, it's gonna proliferate because then autocrats can think that they have the power. And yes, public, the social media of today can definitely have an impact. Totally, totally have an impact, which would be good. So that's why this movie is so important. And George, we are, you know, commit to reviewing and talking about any other movie that comes down the pike that is of the same character. Because those movies are the ones that we care about much more than fiction, much more than comedy, although comedy plays a role in Zelensky's popularity. Much more than the standard, you know, violent late night movies that people watch during COVID. This is the kind of movie that educates us about world events and inflections. Thank you, George. You wanna know, I give it a 10. Do you give it a 10? I'll give it a 10. If I could give it 11, I would. Will you take an 11? I'll take an 11 or 12. It's really a good movie, a good documentary. It's the real world, it's real. There's no fakeness here. You see what you see is what you get. So I liked it, yep, big time. All right, we'll be back, George. George Kasin, movie reviewer par excellence. And we'll do this again. We'll find more movies to talk about with you. Thank you so much for watching the movie show on Think Tech. Thank you, thank you, Jay. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.