 women upon us to strive for a deep and nuanced understanding of the world around us, especially when the stakes are high. We turn to experts, and it's really our privilege today to have Dr. Jennifer Dickinson, a true expert on Ukraine. She's an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at UVM, where she's also the Provost for Academic Affairs. Her research into Ukraine is deep. Please join me and the rest of the Champlain community in welcoming Dr. Jennifer Dickinson. Thank you so much for inviting me here today. I think from our side, people who have experience in Ukraine and have studied it for many years have an obligation to bring that knowledge forward and to answer questions that people might have about the situation as well as the country itself. So today, what I'm going to try and do is put Ukraine in context a little bit. I was asked to focus more on Ukraine and maybe some of the background to the current conflict. You know, this has been such a moment by moment evolution of what's going on there. I could spend hours trying to keep you up to the minute about everything that's happening. So we're going to focus on the context. And then during Q&A, perhaps we can answer either general or more specific questions, and I'll try my best to answer those. Okay, so I'm going to start off really quickly with who I am a little bit about my background and my work. I'm a linguistic and economic anthropologist. I look at economic change over time in Ukraine, and I focus on the intersection between language and culture. I have been working in Ukraine since 1992, so for the mathematical inclinements already 30 years now. I do research in both rural and urban areas and mostly in western and central Ukraine. I've also done research in Russia and the Baltic states in the past. I'm fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, and the dialects of the region of Ukraine where I work, and I'll show you that on a map in a minute. And I also have some knowledge of Ukrainian sign language. The photograph here is from my most recent research project where I'm working with experts in higher education for deaf and hard of hearing Ukrainians. And this is a group of deaf Ukrainian students in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv who are learning to be dental technicians. I was a Fulbright scholar in Ukraine in the spring of 2017 and 2018, and that's what this research project was mainly focused on. I've also been an international election observer for Ukrainian presidential elections in both 2014 and 2019. So, and this is my happy place. This is a view of the village that I have been working in in southwestern Ukraine since 1995, so it's been a long journey. So to get started, when I posted the poster for this event on Facebook and I invited friends to come, one of my Ukrainian friends posted this response. Jennifer, tell everyone about us, about Ukraine. The world should know about such a wonderful country. And this is someone who has fled the city of Kiev and is living in another location that is further from the bombing that's going on currently in Kiev. So that's how much she cared about me coming here and talking to you about this. So here, Ukraine, such a wonderful country. So this map shows Ukraine in context. And I think you can learn actually a lot from looking at this map, because you can see it first of all in the context of Europe where it's located. And to some degree, you can see it in the context of Russia, which is that larger country that's off there to the right side of the map. You can also, if you look in the corner, see Ukraine in the context of the larger European North African and Central Asian context. So I'm going to give you a few fun facts. Fun fact number one, as you may have been able to tell from that map, Ukraine is the largest country located fully in Europe. And in fact, there's a marker in Ukraine of the geographical center of Europe. And there is a picture of a much younger me standing in front of the geographical center of Europe. So I actually, I'll point out where I work. And where's the, is that this? So my research area is right here. And I just want to point out around here is where the border between Europe and Asia begins at the Ural Mountains in Russia. So I think from this, you can begin to understand how it's possible that the cent geographic center of Europe is actually located in Ukraine. So I ask us all to reorient our mentality about east and west with respect to talk about Ukraine. And also to realize that Ukraine is quite a bit larger than many of the countries of Europe. And I think it's, it's slightly larger than France. So you can get a sense of that as well. Second Ukraine fun fact, Ukraine has borders with seven countries. Four of those countries are in the EU. I feel like I'm doing, I'm doing a Jeopardy question for you all here. And the same four are in NATO. So does anyone want to throw out a couple of countries that might be those four countries? Yes. Poland's one. There's three others. Yes. Right here. Romania is another. Yes. No, no, almost, but not quite. Yes. Latvia. No, Latvia almost also as well. It's just switched out by Belarus. Anybody else? Slovakia. Great. And there's one more. Our favorite Moldova is one of the border countries, but it is not in the EU or in NATO. So Hungary, our friend Hungary and Orban is in NATO and the EU, but is also a border country. So if you can get to the next slide, if you go to the next slide, you can actually see how this plays out. So Lithuania is up here, Latvia is up here above Belarus. Belarus is here and you can see where the troops came in from Belarus into Kiev. So here we have Poland, we have Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. And then finally Moldova, Belarus, and Russia are the remaining countries. So who lives in Ukraine? There are about 44 million people living in Ukraine. Compare that to about 150 million living in Russia. About 78% are Ukrainian. I think that percentage may have shifted, but there, I don't know when the last census data came out, but last I have a 78% Ukrainian, 17% Russian, and this is what is sometimes called passport identity. This is your formal, ethnic, or national identity that's registered. And then 5% is other. So actually there's a significant percentage of the population that is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. And about 70% of the population lives in urban areas. Again, this is a kind of a mushy number in part because of the very high rate of migrant labor out of Ukraine and into other countries, mostly countries in central and western Europe. A little bit about religion in the country. The most common religious affiliation in terms of large religious groups is Christian. And then the remainder belong in other groups. And actually all that white space there I believe are people who do not identify as having a religious affiliation. So you can see that there are several Orthodox churches present in Ukraine, and I won't go into that whole debate, but there is certainly some discussion to be had regarding the difference between the Kiev Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate and the the Oncephalus Ukrainian Church, which has merged with the Kiev Patriarchate. There are also Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic believers in Ukraine. Many of them live in the area of the country where I work, particularly Roman Catholics. There's a lot of Hungarians that are Roman Catholic. This is something that is actually going to be quite interesting because there's some new data about this. So as I said, I work on language, and always a big discussion in Ukraine is about language and identity. On the 2001 national census, 67% of people cited Ukrainian as their mother tongue. So at that time, that generally meant, well, if it says Ukrainian and on my passport, Ukrainian must be my mother tongue. And since then, people have done a lot of research to find out a little bit more subtle to you with respect to actual language spoken. 24% cited Russian as their mother tongue. And I do want to say that this is actually changing, and I'll talk about that in a minute. I also want to note that Ukrainian, Russian bilingualism rates are between 85 and 97%. And it actually, that has remained true. So although more people are speaking Ukrainian and are identifying as primary Ukrainian speakers, in fact, there is still a very high rate of bilingualism, the rate of passive bilingualism where you can understand the other language is extremely high. And then the rate of people who are able to switch languages and speak in both languages is also quite high. This is, these are some data from that are based on that older census, but you can sort of see this is where people start to get the idea that maybe there's a split, like one, one half the country speaks Ukrainian and the other half of the country speaks Russian. But in fact, that you can see even in the highly Russian dominated areas, there are about 25 to 30% of people identified as being native Ukrainian speakers. Whereas if you look in the western part of the country that gets much higher, it gets up into the 90s. And in Crimea, this was before Crimea was annexed. You can see that only 10% of speakers identified as being Ukrainian speakers. Now this map puts things in a slightly different light though. When you look at it at the regional level for the administrative regions, it seems very cut and dry. But when you look at it in this way, which is by city, town, and village councils. So in other words, kind of independent policies within Ukraine, you can see that the picture is a little bit different. I also want to point out that this is the area of Ukraine where I work. And there is a great deal of linguistic diversity here. A lot of Hungarian and Romanian speakers matter. And you can also see how that actually plays out in terms of Crimea. Most of these dots are native Crimean-Tatar speakers. And the remainder identify as primary Russian speakers. So I think it's worth asking the question, does language equal identity in Ukraine? This was something I got a lot more questions about in 2014, when there was another revolution in Ukraine. And there was a lot of focus at that time on a supposed division between Ukrainian and Russian speakers and Ukrainian and Russian identified people. But in fact, when we look at how people use language, region and whether you're in an urban area, which tends the urban areas tend to be more Russian language dominated in the center and the east and the south of the country, those are better indicators than ethnicity of your language choice. However, when I said things are changing, they are changing and they're changing from generation to generation. Younger people are more likely to identify Ukrainian as their mother tongue. So according to 2021 poll data, people under 30, 83.3 percent of them identified Ukrainian as their mother tongue. Whereas for people over 60, only 73.6 percent identified Ukrainian as their mother tongue. So you can see there's been almost a 10 percent change across time in how many people identify with Ukrainian, regardless of their nationality. Norms surrounding language use are also changing and this is very interesting to look at. When I first began doing research in Ukraine, the standard norm was people would speak the language that they felt most comfortable in. So people tended not to change languages to accommodate to the other person, unless it was clear that they really didn't understand. So if I started speaking Russian, someone else would speak Ukrainian and they would just expect that I would understand their Ukrainian. I would continue to speak Russian and they would continue to speak Ukrainian. However, there's some evidence from looking at these poll data that people are beginning to change their practices and to accommodate more to the language that the other person is speaking. This is a really interesting social change and it has to do with ideas and expectations around what it means to speak a language and how flexible you're expected to be in communicating with other people. Here's fun fact number three. As many of you may know, the current president of Ukraine became famous as a comedian. His biggest success was as playing the president of Ukraine in the popular show Serpent of the People and there's a poster for it. What I like about this is that in the show he's a school teacher and his students kind of play a prank on him and they sign him up for the presidential elections and he is elected and then he becomes the president and he's kind of this average guy who ends up in charge of the country. But the whole point of the show is that in the end he is the president that Ukraine needs at that time and I think in that sense he is the president that Ukraine needed at this time. I don't think anyone expected him to do as good as he has. He was a skit comedian. He came up through traditions of improvisational comedy. He can think on his feet. He's very smart and he's really good in front of a camera so his work recently has been in creating short inspirational videos that provide information but also kind of draw the line around what the Ukrainian response will be on a day-to-day basis to events and the current battle status within the country. So in some ways a comedian has ended up being really the best president that Ukraine could have elected in 2019 and I did think it was sort of like it was very meta. His show is called Servant of the People and then he named his political party Servant of the People and then he got elected and by a very large margin I'll say as well. Now this brings me to one of the points I want to make about Ukraine. A couple of people have asked me well why did you I started my doing my research work in Russia and then I switched over to Ukraine and people have asked me well why did you do that? Why was that? What was it about Ukraine that was interesting to you? And I said one of the things that's interesting to me about Ukraine is the cleverness and the the ability of Ukrainian people to kind of find the humor in almost any situation. So even now in the worst possible time people are circulating daily all kinds of new cartoons, plays on words, jokes that are designed to help people see the everyday humor in their situation and to keep going and I think that's a really good way of summarizing the will of the Ukrainian people. So this is a joke that's actually from 2014 and it kind of is pushing it back on this narrative that Ukraine is Russia. So it claims for Ukrainians the ancient history of Kievan Rus as being the foundation of not Russian history but the foundation of Ukrainian history. So it's saying you can't claim us for yourselves. This is our history and it belongs to this country. So I am going to give kind of a race through history from 1991 to the present just to give a little bit of background on events that kind of set the stage for where we are right now. I want to start though with in a 2017 poll we learned that residents of Ukraine like Borscht and they like dumplings as opposed to other foods and that they prefer meat dishes to potato dishes. So there's a little bit of extra color and history for you and here's a not so fun fact. So in 30 years of independence Ukraine has had two revolutions but it's also had six presidents. So they've had peaceful in general peaceful change of power across a number of different leaders and if we look at other countries in the region like Russia and Belarus we do not see that kind of change in leadership over time. Ukraine while it's a young democracy is very invested in its democracy. There's a public sphere. There's open debate and discussion. Since 2004 when they had their first revolution the so-called Orange Revolution presidential elections in Ukraine have generally been judged to be free and fair elections. These are some pictures from the Orange Revolution in 2004. So just to take us back to what led up to that in August of 1991 Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union. So this was sort of at the time that the coup happened in Moscow and it was clear that the Soviet Union was going to come apart at the scenes. In December of that year there was a referendum vote on leaving the USSR and every area of Ukraine including Crimea voted overwhelmingly to leave the USSR and establish an independent Ukraine. So then it took a few years it took about four and a half years before Ukraine got a new constitution so the Ukrainian constitution dates from 1996. There was a president who served two terms and then there were the first kind of the first change of power. So a big moment for young democracy happened and there were a lot of accusations that the election was stolen. So you had two candidates and the accusation was the one of the candidates had you know been guilty of things like ballot box stuffing and so forth. And in support of the candidate that had been named the loser Viktor Yushchenko there was a mass sort of coming out into the streets and demanding that the justice and demanding free and fair elections. So the Supreme Court ruled that new election a new runoff election had to be held and in December of 2004 the Yushchenko was elected in a fresh runoff election. So the Orange Revolution ends real peacefully and you have new elections and a new president is elected. He's not a particularly even after that grand entrance he's not a particularly successful president and somewhat to the West's surprise in January of 2010 his original rival Viktor Yanukovych reelected in what actually was considered to be a fairly free and fair election. However Yanukovych was not a particularly successful president even in his second chance and the kind of the tipping point was when he was on the brink of signing a trade deal with the European Union and at the last minute backed out and turned towards an alternative trade deal that he wanted to sign with Russia. There were mass student-led protests in November of 2013 and this they all began to gather in an area of Kiev that's called the Maidan so it's referring to the to independent square and then a nearby square called the European Square. So in November that that gathering began and it became bigger and bigger until there were thousands of people camping out and protesting in this area. However over the next few months the situation deteriorated there were state-sponsored violence and the the Maidan protests ended with snipers shooting some of the fighters on the Maidan. Yanukovych may or may not have abdicated and he fled Ukraine for Russia. During this period and immediately after that Russia invaded and annexed the area of Ukraine known as Crimea so that peninsula at the bottom of Ukraine. So and here is an example that you can just see the sheer masses of people and there were barricades of burning tires that were used to maintain control over this area by the protesters. Starting from that moment of that second revolution there President Yanukovych fled Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea. Immediately after that two republics in the far east of Ukraine declared independence and Russian-backed separatists you know began to engage with the with Ukrainian troops in an armed conflict over control of those areas. At this time Poroshenko a new president was elected and he's a candy magnet. I had one old lady tell me that she was voting for him so she could get a bag of sugar so she felt like he was going to give her he's going to bring a nice big bag of sugar to her house and drop it off. So escalating sanctions against Russia primarily for the annexation of Crimea began to be imposed in 2014. There was a ceasefire that was negotiated in Minsk and then the one that ceasefire broke a second ceasefire was negotiated in 2015. In 2016 a UN report asserted that Russia was involved in the conflict in Ukraine which had not necessarily been made clear Russia had denied it. However there were some evidence regarding the weapons and so forth that were being used the uniforms of the people in the area and so forth. At the same time that EU began to impose increased and renewed sanctions on Russia they also began to open up opportunities for Ukrainians to have more interaction with the EU. So they approved visa free travel for Ukrainians and I can tell you this was an enormous change. So now Ukrainians could travel freely to the EU and stay for I believe 60 days without a visa and that had not been possible before it greatly increased travel and communication. So there was there were some back and forth there's always been constant fighting in that area since 2014 but in 2017 the ceasefire failed again fighting broke out in Ernest and Donbas and there were you know serve repeated attempts to to discuss and to negotiate a new peace. In 2019 and early 2020 there have been series of new negotiations and ceasefires established and then broken. However over the past two years there have been escalating tensions and increased fighting. Then 15 days ago Russian forces invaded Ukraine from the north through Belarus and I will say that for many experts this was very surprising. The expectation honestly was that Russia would invade would take Donbas completely would occupy it and that part just like Crimea would simply be cut off and added to Russia leaving the remainder of Ukraine as a buffer against the EU. That's not what happened. So to conclude this little piece of history I'm just including an example from the 2014 elections. These are people engaged in a carefully defined process for reviewing ballots and electing the next president of Ukraine in May of 2014. So I chose to use this graphic I think it's a similar one that many of you may have seen. It just shows the relative territorial size of Russia versus Ukraine and as I mentioned before Russia also has about three times the population of Ukraine and this of course is not to mention the fact that Russia is a major nuclear power. They have enormous military capabilities and including a large air force. So what was expected to happen was that Russia would sweep in would crush Ukrainian resistance and would take control of the country. But here we are. It's 15 days later and Ukraine is still not capitulated and Russia has not been able to gain control of any major cities let alone the entire country. So a little bit by the numbers and I will say that it's incredibly difficult to get good numbers regarding what is going on in the Ukraine war right now. We do know that 516 civilians have been confirmed killed as of Tuesday. Some quote much higher numbers some quote lower numbers but there's confirmation by independent sources of 516 civilians. Estimates also very widely on Ukrainian soldiers killed the Ukrainian government does not release those numbers but several thousand Ukrainian soldiers have been killed including both soldiers in the army and volunteers and there's somewhat I think numbers agree that somewhat more Russian soldiers than Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. The Ukrainian government claims 12,000. The US government claims something closer to 4,000 to 6,000. As of today as of this day 2.3 million refugees have left Ukraine through border crossings into all of those EU countries that we talked about earlier through the border crossing in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and mostly into Poland. I wanted to include this photograph. It's one that that I posted a few days ago. It shows civilians being helped out of the suburban city of Irpin. It's about 20 miles away from Kiev and it's a place that people you know they it's like a bedroom community. They live in Irpin and they often commute to Kiev for their work. The bridge connecting Irpin was destroyed in a bomb attack rendering it impossible for civilians to leave safely. So you can see this is an operation to help people leave. A good friend of mine lives in Irpin and I've been messaging with her trying to find out whether she wanted to stay that was before the bombing. Then after the bombing I didn't hear from her for a while and she was able to tell me that she was able to get out. They found a window. They were able to get out. They had to walk from there to the train station in Kiev where they were able to get on a train. They went to the border in Poland and from Poland they were able to head to Italy and where they are now with refugee status. So I hear a lot from people. What can I do? I see this horrible news. I read about it or I hear about it. I would like to be able to do something to help. One thing you're doing you came here today. You learned a little bit more about Ukraine I hope but here's some other things that I would like you to consider doing. They fit with with things that you are are willing to give a try to. The first is to name the war and to name the aggressor. You can call it the Russian Ukrainian war. The war in Ukraine. Putin's invasion of Ukraine. You can refer to civilian casualties of Russian bombings but at this point to talk about things like conflict in Ukraine greatly underwhelm and do not convey what's going on here. This is a full-scale war and it involves armed combat on both sides. You can honor the country and the capital. So say Ukraine and not the Ukraine. There's a long history as to why people prefer Ukraine and not the Ukraine but suffice it to say that that is the way the country itself prefers to be referred to and that's the instruction that it gives to foreign journalists for example when they write about Ukraine. Use Kyiv and not Kyiv. I know this is hard for people to pronounce and I was going to ask whether there are any native Ukrainian speakers here who would like to stand up and pronounce the name of the capital city and if not I'll take you through an Americanized easier way to say it. Anybody? Do you want to stand up and say it? Yeah. So the thing is that there's a sound in this name that we don't have in English so we can only guesstimate and try and get it right but one thing it is not is Kyiv. That goes out the window. So it is pronounced more like Kyiv and not like Kyiv. So if you'd like to practice with me does anyone want to try to say after me? Kyiv. So you are much closer now than if you said either Kyiv or Kyiv. You can also refer to the the president as Volodymyr Zelensky. I hear a lot of people say Vladimir which is not correct although he was born into a Russian speaking family. His formal name that he presents as the Ukrainian president is the Ukrainian version of that name Volodymyr and so I also hear people say Volodymyr which makes him sound a little bit like Voldemort so I would say I would say Volodymyr so if you can put that accent on the D then you'll be a little bit closer and it's not Zelensky. It's Zelensky but that's okay and the last thing I'll ask is that you strive for empathy and not just empathy so it's important to remember that all refugees deserve compassion. We've seen a lot of refugee crises over the last several years. We've seen Afghan refugees, Syrian refugees, refugees from Yemen and we have to remember that all of them deserve our compassion including refugees from Ukraine some of whom do not necessarily fit our ideas of what Ukrainian refugees might look like. There are people of African origin there are people there are Romani people all of these are fleeing Ukraine and they all are equally deserving of our compassion. I also want to point that out that no matter how much we can imagine what the origins of this are or who we should assign final lay inform no matter how we look back on that there's no way that anyone deserves what is happening right now in Ukraine. I also want to point out that only women children and men with special exceptions can leave Ukraine right now meaning a lot of families have split up so you see mostly women with individual children or with children maybe one of their own and a sibling crossing the border and they've left their husbands and other relatives behind. Finally humanitarian corridors have been very difficult to negotiate and maintain so this is one of the reasons that people are so concerned about the situation in Ukraine. It's been difficult to get food into cities because they can't open humanitarian corridors those convoys keep getting bombed. It's been difficult to get people out of the cities because the only corridors that Russia is willing to open lead into Belarus or lead into Russian territory whereas these people probably would like to head in the opposite direction from the people who are bombing them. Finally I'm sure that you expected me to say what can you do you can give to organizations. I wanted to give you a couple that I think are really deserving so if you're interested in donating money United Help Ukraine and Rosenfor Ukraine are two Ukrainian organizations that work with partner organizations so they collect funds and materials and they help to distribute them through their networks within Ukraine. Sunflower Peace is a U.S. organization and it is focused on humanitarian aid so if you're not interested in supplying any kind of military aid or military defense aid sunflower peace provides primarily medical aid but other aid as well. As you may know there's a huge crisis with animals animals that have had to be left behind issues with shelters animal shelters that are unable to move their animals out of Ukraine if you would like to help them. EFA is supporting animals shelters in Ukraine. There are other international organizations that are also providing support specifically to our refugees and coordinating relief efforts and those are the big ones that you're familiar with their UNICEF the UN commission on the human I'm sorry the UNHRC CR I'm sorry I'm forgetting what that stands for and then the IRC the International Rescue Commission as well but I wanted to end with just a final thought I was looking at some recent polling from Ukraine yes even now they poll so love the sociologists and they did a poll of Ukrainians on the eighth and ninth of this week and they just released the results today when Ukrainians in different parts of the country were polled earlier this week 91% answered hope when asked when you think about the situation in the country which do you feel more hope or hopelessness so if 91% of Ukrainians who are living through the situation can say that they have hope I think we all can too thank you so I wanted to open it up to questions I know that there are people on zoom so um did you want to switch back and forth or Lyle do you want to handle zoom and I'll very back and forth the microphone if people in here have questions if you want to kind of line up on the stairwells I'll bring the microphone to you is this one cool um I suppose my question would be how do you think this is going to end because I don't see any way that Putin wins this if I'm perfectly honest because even if he does install a puppet government in Ukraine they're never going to accept it and even then it's still be a rebellion across all of Ukraine apparently they're saying the Ukrainians are claiming it's something like 11,000 12,000 killed and that's almost more than I think it is more than the amount of US servicemen who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over 10 years so I just do you I mean how do you think this is going to end um I think there are a couple of ways that it that it could end um on the on the kind of the the bad scenario side um as you may have heard the they're hitting hard on particular towns one of them is the town of Mariupol which is uh one of the you know one of those port cities that they'd love to get access to so that they can begin bringing in troops from the ocean or from the sea um so if Mariupol were to fall or one of the other black sea cities giving them a clear way to bring in troops um directly uh from the sea that would allow a huge influx into the country and um that might overwhelm Ukrainian forces I agree with you though I still don't see it see it ending well um it is very clear that uh you know I think I saw something recently that said 80 percent of Ukrainian adults and that wasn't just a Ukrainian males but 80 percent of Ukrainian adults said that they were ready to take up arms in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty so you're fighting a really uphill battle there when you have 20 million adults and 80 percent of them are willing to fight for Ukrainian sovereignty um I I hate to speculate on the other end of how this could end well because I also really am struggling to see that I you know I'm trying to take it one day at a time but but I'm not you are not the only one who does not see a way for this to end that does not involve destabilizing if not all of Eastern Europe than than all of Europe itself did you have a follow-up that's just my opinion on the I mean did you hear that okay I um I the one thing I want to say one of the reasons why I gave you that 30 years of history I think you are correct that where Ukrainians were in 1991 or in 2000 is not where they are now yeah but that has not been the result of the events of the last two weeks it has been a long trajectory and in particular has accelerated since 2014 so it became very clear that a majority of Ukrainians in 2014 I'm not saying 100% but that a majority of Ukrainians were in favor of turning towards the west and developing a stronger relationship with the EU for those who did not want to do that and wanted to turn towards the east and to closer ties with Russia it kind of did set off a bit of a culture war as well as that conflict in eastern Ukraine but that process since in the last eight years has definitely created a different sense of civic Ukrainian identity that is not based on nationality or on language for that matter what's a no fly zone and why is it important so um the no fly zone currently the the vast majority of civilian casualties as well as property damage and what is preventing people from leaving the cities civilians from leaving cities and and being able to get out uh and either become an internally displaced person or an international refugee is the airstrikes that are coming so I think the idea of a no fly zone is to prevent Russian planes from being able to to bomb Ukrainian cities and civilian targets um it so it would be important in order to protect the civilian population and to reduce the damage that Russian troops can cause however um there are a lot of consequences to that there's it's uh what NATO is saying is it's not possible to create a no fly zone without NATO intervention that would bring them directly into conflict with you with Russian airplanes which would you know be an act of war so trying to maintain a certain level of not being actually engaged in active fighting with Russia is the primary reason that is being given for not creating a no fly zone sorry about that um heard a lot of different reasons for Putin's motivation on this of either it being he just doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO um the his ideals of bringing back the USSR going down in history from your experience what would you say his actual motivation is I mean is all of the above an option I mean I I think that um anyone who can who could like see fully see inside Putin's head would have been able to help resolve this conflict sooner he's definitely a mystery to many outside analysts um but but my sense is that he very much would like to restore um a shape to Russia which is more similar to um to the Soviet Union and one of the reasons might be because he is uncomfortable with how close the the expanding size and the encroachment and his opinion of NATO onto territory that that he feels should be under Russian control so I think it could be both um one wonders whether he is being fully rational and the choices that he's making and also one wonders whether he's being given whether he was given accurate information regarding the combat readiness of Russian troops before he was told that it would be a brief and successful war to invade Ukraine so I think that perhaps he also did not have accurate information on the about the situation on the ground as well thank you so a lot of the things about this war are unprecedented particularly in regard to how it's being played out in social media and in particular one thing that struck me and and and especially in light of the way um uh the Ukrainian president said he doesn't want to ride he wants ammunition um but is the thing that struck me was that there's actually kind of the equivalent of go fund me fundraising for the Ukrainian military and I'm wondering what you have been hearing about that from your contacts there so in um in 2014 uh I knew people who every time they went to Ukraine they packed their suitcase full of um materials for the Ukrainian military obviously they weren't you know packing it through you know they were they're packing non-lethal military aid like um you know medications uh coagulating agents like those things that might be needed for people who had been injured in active combat um so it's kind of crowdfunding the Ukrainian army is not a new thing it is um it is neither a rich country nor one that has much you know you would think they they don't they don't spend a lot of time they get sent as UN peacekeepers here and there but they're they're really not going out there trying to conquer other places they're primarily a defense force so they are not sufficiently resourced to maintain um this long-term kind of engagement and furthermore they have they're dealing with thousands and thousands of new volunteers who have not been equipped yet so they're trying to kind of keep up with with that as well um most of the the fundraisers I have seen are they're also um they're they're buying military gear but it's actually for civilians it's things like helmets and flag jackets and these are for people in cities like Kharkiv that are under active attack where civilians have no protection against shrapnel or other kinds of results of of these attacks and shootings let's go to somebody new and then we'll come back right yeah um is this one yeah okay so excuse my pronunciation is it Volodymyr Volensky Volodymyr yeah Volodymyr um so he's been you know supporting the the fight right as a uh excuse me I'm a good nervous the um excuse me he's posting these videos right but how is his actual ability as like a commander in chief in this time that's more or less what I'm getting um I think I don't I mean I actually I don't know very much about who is directing the tactics of the Ukrainian army I assume it's you know various generals um but I I think they seem to be doing an excellent job at disruption uh so for example one there are a number of reasons why that convoy the military convoy north of Kiev is stalled um but one of them has uh it's been surmised is that Ukrainian troops are sort of attacking them in a way that prevents them from moving forward so they're strategically um choosing to take out vehicles that block the movement forward or taking out fuel vehicles to block the movement forward so there's a lot of um of good strategy going on there to make use of limited forces and the home ground advantage so to speak um but I um if the if the need of a country in this situation is for a president who can get 91 percent of the people to think that they can win um then he's doing a great job and I do think that that is an enormous part part of a war like this is to keep people engaged to keep them willing to fight most of the people I know in Ukraine including ones living in places like Kiev and have you have chosen to stay they have not chosen to leave and they are choosing to stay so that they will be available um to help defend the city if that becomes necessary okay thanks um I suppose I just wanted just to finish off with more of a more of a positive note and basically the way I see it is that in Europe we've had a history of wars and usually after a war there's always a desire for a better society to come out of it there's always been a an urge after a war for it a not to happen again and b for something better to come out of it so I'm hopeful that something better will come out of this both for Ukraine and the rest of Europe and maybe even for Russia as well my um the way I see it it can either end in free ways signed similar to what happened to khrushchev after the Cuban Missile Crisis where Brezhnev got in contact with the Politburo and also the military and also the KGB and deposed him because that he thought that he was getting a bit crazy basically because he almost started World War Free or maybe signed similar to what happened in the First World War when the Russian army because of their poor logistics they all fed up and fighting for bazaar and then they just they just went back home frankly and we're seeing a lot of that with Russian soldiers and even in Belarus they're refusing the Crimean Crimean units refused to go because they were like no we're not going to attack what were our at one point our fellow countrymen and basically that the third outcome that I can see probably is the more likely to outcome is something similar to the Falklands wars so the military junta that were in charge of in Argentina they were losing popularity so they so the junta fought let's start a war let's go to the Falkland Islands they were part of Argentina let's take them back and then obviously the British we came along and we we pushed them out of our Arjun sorry out of the Falkland Islands and the difference between that conflict and this one is that on the day when Argentina invaded the Falklands even the opposition in Argentina were for and even they were supporting the government saying this is one of the best days in Argentinean history they were claiming stuff like that and we're seeing in Russia Russian people most Russian people they're either afraid or they're protesting or they're I think it's about 50 50 from what I'm hearing from some most of my Russian friends it just depends on the media that you're looking at but basically I just yeah I I hope something better comes out of this I really do yeah and I yeah I will say I was looking at another poll today that was done you know last week I think last Tuesday or Wednesday which is Ukrainian attitudes towards combatants or towards you know the countries that are involved in this war and what was extremely interesting to me is that the perception was that about 50 or a 70 percent you know more than 50 percent of Russians supported the war but in terms of Belarus that very few people actually supported the war and that it was being done sort of outside of their will and I think we do have plenty of evidence that that that is the case there what was more interesting to me when you talk about consequences no matter how this ends they asked people can you see a way for Russians and Ukrainians and by this they meant that the people in the two countries as opposed to having anything to do with nationalities inside the country can you see them having amicable kinds of relationships in the future and about 40 percent said no which I hope would correct over time but the remainder were divided as to they said yes and and about a third of them said yes in but in 10 to 20 years and another similar portion of the people who said yes said yes but in 20 to 30 years so the level of anger and unwillingness to forgive right now is extremely extremely high and I if you have a chance to look at I don't even know how they can rebuild some of these cities it's the kind of destruction where there's no asphalt left on the roads of major metro metropolises it looks a lot like Poland or it looks a lot like Poland or London after the blitz so I've seen some of the images they're pretty shocking I think something similar to what happened with Belgium France and Germany after both world wars will probably happen they'll be you know mistrust and hatred but after a few generations this sort of the interest of time I just want to get to the questions from zoom we're almost out of time we just got two questions and then we'll finish up there yeah I didn't realize that there were questions on zoom our first question is from Lionel and it is to what degree do you believe that the American foreign policy actions i.e. NATO membership have increased tensions increased tensions I will say that I think that the really deliberate collaboration with NATO partners have created a much stronger international wall of opposition and isolated Russia much more effectively than if the United States had acted individually I think that has been a huge factor in making it extremely clear which I will say was not done after the annexation of Crimea but making it very clear that Russians actions violate international law and that they are not acceptable awesome and our second question is from Spence and is it true that there is a great deal of corruption in Ukraine in business or government oh yes Ukraine is a country with a great deal of corruption but you know so is Russia I'm not quite sure like yes it is quite true but but that is true of many countries in the world and I'm not sure that that actually directly affects what is going on whereas in Russia that degree of corruption creates cronyism where people are very very invested in maintaining allegiance to Putin and keeping them happy that's not the way it's working in Ukraine there has been really unified response and support against this war among corrupt elites in Ukraine okay I think we are technically out of time Jennifer are you okay with staying around there's any more questions uh yeah I can take one more okay uh last one yeah I have two questions my first question is is Mexico part of NATO um I don't think so no yeah I don't think so oh I thought it was north it was like the thing with the my second question is by corruption is it like money embezzlement or like what kind of corruption it's a full rainbow of the corruption spectrum um everything from every day you have to you pay the fee to go to the doctor and then you pay the fee on top of the fee to get the doctor out to actually treat you that's like the everyday thing all the way up to embezzlement money laundering offshore accounts and so forth it runs the full spectrum and does healthcare in Ukraine is it like provided by the government yes it is okay let's give Dr. Dickinson a big walk thank you for being here