 Jay Fardel, this is Tim Teckham, more specifically, Transitional Justice. We're going to talk today with Odin Verodesky in Kiev, in Ukraine, about sanctions against Russia. Odin, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Aloha, if I may. Good for you. So tell us about your training and what you're doing in your life these days. My main affiliation connects with National University of Kiev Mahilla Academy, where I'm studying students' international law, namely diplomatic and the law of treaties. At the same time, I help in Ukraine in peace, government in topics related to sanctions, foreign policy issues, inter-parliamentary assembly, and so on. So I'm glad and happy to see you here, to speak with you and to share the word about Ukraine, about the war within your community. Yes, OK, great. I mean, I'm likewise very happy to talk to you. It's very important that we keep in touch with people like you and we follow what's happening in Ukraine. Because the news cycle moves on before you know it, something else gets to the top of the priorities. And we want to make sure that Ukraine is always at the top of the priorities, always. What's happening to you is happening to the world. What's happening to you is what's happening to the liberal world order. And we must protect you. That's my view of it. So let's talk first about the sanctions. Some people say the sanctions are doing real damage to the Russian economy. Other people say, including Mr. Putin, that they're not doing a lot to the Russian economy and that he can tolerate them. What's your view of that? I was amazed a few days ago. If you remember, Putin gathered his so-called economic forum in St. Petersburg where he was calling, like he's always calling, that Russia cannot be isolated. And on the other hand, you always see his messages related that economic sanctions do not work and Russia will stay strong under sanctions pressure. So these two types of messages, as usually, are inevitable and are opposite to each other, which are promoted by Kremlin. And if we see deeper and if we see the underneath and all of this scape, we see that sanctions damages to the Russian economy are high and great, despite many factors surrounding what we may call sanctions on elitics, which now display in us that the Russian economy is getting back on its feet. The Russian economy put under control the volatility of rubble. Like the inflation rate is not so high, comparing to other European countries. The central bank is controlling emission of rubble. On the other hand, it blocked US and euro conversation rates at some degree. So it stopped falling down the Russian rubble. And so everything like they claim working well now. But we see other part of metal. We see other part of story when we go in deeper into details. And the first thing and first trap for Russian economy is that technologies, technological companies, high-tech companies, companies which are working in the fields in the critical fields of Russian infrastructure, companies like Siemens or companies which producing supply for Russian oil industry are now living country. And Russia state will never manage to remaster, to repeat this type of story. So technological, I would say, back step in Russian economy is now great. Even at the beginning of these three months, new bake of war in Ukraine. So the war is continuing for 80 years, not for three months, but it's a new stage of this war. I don't know if you get 60 minutes for the popular news TV program on Sunday nights here in the US. But there were two articles, two segments on the program just last night that relate to this. And I'm going to ask you about them. One is a new story about the oligarchs and how they are investing huge amounts of money in the UK. And they're buying properties in the UK and they're buying legislators, members of parliament in the UK, trying to establish greater influence in the government and change government policy so as it is not anti-Russian. And that was of great concern to a number of members of parliament who spoke against it in parliament. The other story had to do with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. He's a total autocrat, a dictator in the old fashioned sense. His opposition candidates disappear. The same way Navalny has disappeared under false charges in Russia, same thing. And it appears that Putin is also supporting Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and is building military facilities there and giving Ortega money and so forth. So what you have in the war against Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine is a hybrid. It's a hybrid war, an asynchronous war where it's not just bullets. It's not just kinetic military action. It is everything and anything, including this effort to compromise the UK and to develop an ally of Russia in the backyard of the United States in Nicaragua. What are your comments about that? Can Putin afford to do that? Is the other sanctions affecting that? Why does he do that? What does he hope to achieve by continuing his global effort to compromise other countries? Like, primarily we should recognize that as an initial phase of this new intervention, Putin gained defeated in Ukraine. And now he will look for other options to make the best in what he can to do in the hybrid warfare, which combines legal warfare, political warfare and military warfare. So there is combination. And his army shows that it is complete disappointing when Russia spends like budgets and budgets, billion budgets of dollars for its army and has no result which it pretends to like. UK, United Kingdom, London is a unique story because for a while Russian oligarchs, members of families of Russian elites, plus families of Russian political friends and Russian political officials, they will live and spend in their money in London and we know that the districts, they buy not only flats or houses, they buy districts there. And now the stance of London, of Prime Minister Johnson is very strong and appealing to the world. We see that he had visited Ukraine for two times now and it shows a great sign. Again, United Kingdom sanctions are now the toughest one and the strongest one. They recently put on the sanctions Patriarch Kirill, which is pretending situation because it was the first time we see on the sanctions list person from, which mainly affiliated with religion community. But like everyone knows outside Russia that he's only one other agent from KGB, but he mainly affiliates himself with religion. So I know that in European Union, according to many reports, there were huge battle between Hungary and other member states to put Patriarch Kirill on the sanctions too, but they failed to do so now. And London takes this step and shows a result. And so despite now the value of Russian money there, it's obviously great. They proved to be independent in matters of foreign policy. There are many reasons why they're doing so. First reason and the obvious one is that they leave European Union and they need to show that they are still the global power, that they are still a global financial center and they still can dictate the rules. Not to follow and not to obey, but to dictate and to be like great again but in the United Kingdom variant because what they're showing now it's the highest level of being independent. And the second reason is that they were dependent because of money of Russian oligarchs but the structure of British economy shows little dependency on the Russian economy. It's not the case of Hungary, it's not the case of Central part European countries where like Russian economy ties might be much more stronger than Britain. So it can be several other reasons to add to this and they did well and Ukraine respect their decisions so much. And do you mean sanctions against Nicaragua? I just wonder like to interconnect somehow the discussion around sanctions mentioning not Nicaragua but Venezuela if I may, because we see this recent reports regarding that President Biden, his administration is now in contact with Venezuela, informal contacts in Venezuela and they asking them in change of lifting certain oil embargo limitations on the oil embargo and like to lift in certain economic sanctions against them. Why is they doing it? Because they see that if sanctions against Russia continues, prices in global oil market will rise. And I believe it's a good decision because sanctions is not a panacea, it is not a solution for any type of threats but basically the threat to the peace is the main one and the most important one is international relations and international law. So if like joint Western world including United States, United Kingdom, Europe doing together in response to the threat, it should consider the fact that threat to the peace is the main one. And we cannot simply think about protection of human rights or like a rule of law because once Russia capture here territories, there will be territories without any rule of law and human rights at all. So they did great that they do great because they now considering how to contract to Russian oil prices and to find other solutions which they may trigger where they can impact and where they can put more pressure, economic pressure on Russia because oil prices will go down if sanctions against Venezuela will be lifted. Well, one question that comes to my mind, Bodan, is what other, maybe you can help me with this, what other sanctions would be appropriate? If you could give advice to the coalition and to President Biden, would you advise them to apply additional sanctions? And what would those sanctions be? I would say that like now the sanctions portfolio sanctions portfolio is almost full and the United States sanctions track does a lot of stuff and I guess that like it's more than 50 or 60% that it can do now by now. It should be continued like with sanctions of persons, individual sanctions against Russian oligarchs because as recently I see that not all oligarchs it's only like about 10 out of 20 oligarchs are now under US sanctions. Again, it should be targeted against family members who are living now in the United States and spending corrupted, their corrupt assets in the United States. It should be a separate track and to know that it was created special task force. And the main one idea is that the sanctions and it was discussed between Biden and Congress and Synod that assets which are now frozen under sanctions should be under certain type of international agreement or under informal agreement, let's say so, be transferred to the recovery of Ukraine as compensation for the damages that is causing now by Russia. So like the third point now I believe is the main one and it now goes aside somehow and is disturbing notion because like almost all types of sanctions are now placed which the United States and Europe can propose, we can only expect from Euro gas embargo for instance, but it's a long story we see now. And I believe that the role of United States now is fitted better within international diplomacy when the president Biden like defense Ukraine abroad when talking to Asia region and saying that if Ukraine doesn't stand, it will be the next war there and all countries in the Western Pacific should not in the Eastern Western Pacific should understand that how aggressive put to responsibility is a practice and this practice will be the following one in case of next war there. Well, you know, there was an oligarchs yacht worth something over $300 million seized in Fiji at the request of the Biden administration and which was then taken to Honolulu, where I am. And it is sitting three or four miles away from where I am sitting tied up in Honolulu Harbor. And as you say, what should happen is this yacht should be sold and that's 300 plus million that could go, should go to compensate Ukraine for the damages that it has incurred. And however, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the full extent of the damages that Ukraine has incurred. And you get two points of relief on that beyond these oligarch yachts and funds in whatever banks is first, you get lawsuits by individual Ukrainians in the courts of other countries where Russian assets exist seeking compensation. Second is you get war crimes investigation, war crimes tribunals, which can from the civil side provide compensation to Ukraine and the people who have been the victims of war crimes. And I wanna ask you about that. For me, I would like to see those civil suits on behalf of individual Ukrainians whose families have been killed, tortured, what have you, when properties destroyed, sent back to Russia and the like, and various other war crimes on a civil basis. And then I would like to see the investigation of war crimes in general as war crimes under international law pursued. And I understood last time around, there was something in the order of 5,000 investigators from outside Ukraine in Ukraine doing that investigation. And I wonder how much investigation is necessary. This is like the insurrection investigation pending in Congress, in the US Congress right now. We saw it on television and we saw what happened in Ukraine and Bukha on television. So the proof of the war crimes and that the Russians did the war crimes is very clear. And so query, how much investigation do we need? How much investigation do these individual Ukrainian plaintiffs need? Victims and those who have lost family, lost businesses, lost property. Don't we already know what happened? What else do we need to do to pursue all these claims? You know, you should go and see this yacht in your harbor and to take the picture for sure, because I believe for Russian solid stocks, owns the best yacht in the world, the longest one, the biggest one and so on. But returning back to victims of war and war criminals, you know, it's a long story which will not end in even next few years. Why I'm a bit skeptical about civil suits in other jurisdiction? It might work for big companies like international companies, companies which have foreign branches, but it will not work for the majority of people who are victims of the war. They simply cannot, let's say, charge and employ American lawyer, European lawyer to make the civil suit there. It will not work as an option to cover like expenses, to cover damages that victims of war gained. And again, the best option is international agreement, international body, specialized international body, trust fund, which be specifically devoted to managing Russian frozen assets. Which are now counting around, I would like not to be saying mistake here, but the recent numbers were about half of damages Ukraine calculate. So it at least can compensate half of these damages. And we can send our how to cover the other part of these damages. But again, this option will work much more better because it will be international mechanism approved and adopted and supported by at least G7 countries plus European Union. So we have basically, we have Saudi and then we can join Japan or South Korea and other countries which now put sanctions on Russia and having like at least 40 countries on board. It will show, it will show the result because you see that it will be a consequences for any aggressor. Okay, the aggressor may consider like to withdraw money before the invasion, but on the other hand of the story, the aggressor will show that the international community will find mechanisms to make money of aggressor for compensation of the victim of aggression. So basically I believe the best option is international agreement for frozen Russian assets. I know this complicated story, but I know that United States devotes so much attention to money, which I say now supporting Ukraine and Russian money should be central one here because Russia is only state and country responsible for that. So what has to happen before we get to an end game on these claims, these claims of war crimes? Now investigation online and I even see the first sentence on war crime in Ukraine. It will be continued, but again, there is not a high level war official like military officer. So we will see in the nearest future many other cases with many other dramatic stories behind them. You know, and you see that international groups of investigator walking around and walking in Ukraine and helping Ukraine and prosecutorial team to collect and find evidences. It is going on, it will be going on, it will be results, but again, I hardly believe that we can bring Putin's showdown, his company to the responsibility, saying at least in the nearest year to even five. So we're almost out of time, Bodan, and I wanna ask you one last question. You know, we see all the news every day in the New York Times, the Washington Post about how the Russians are making advances in Donbass. We are seeing all the damage to Ukrainian properties, especially including residences. We are seeing the refugees fleeing West. We are seeing the country being damaged to a profound degree, economically, socially, culturally. Can you tell us what you teach in your classes in Kiev? Can you leave a message with the American people here about the status of this and the expectations of this and how you feel and your students feel and the people you know in Kiev? How do they feel about this? Where do they see this going? How strong is their resolve? How do they feel about the Lord Amir Zelensky and his leadership? What's the state of affairs? Like the best news for us now is new and new weapons and new arms from United States, including and especially from United States and here Ukrainian people, more than grateful for the people of the United States because of their help and military aid. It's beneficial one, it's a positive one, and we expect some time to have 300 kilometers range missiles on the Hemar system, MLRS system, and again, Russia can continue its offensive operation on the bus, but you see no one is willing to be defeated here. We know Russia will make genocide, which is now making and President Biden confirmed it. Genocide is a crime about all other crimes, evidently, and it's basically the role of the United States is to support us more in terms of weapon, in terms of financial support and to find way to bring Russian responsible. It will show again the leadership of United States. I know that people of United States probably are concerned much more about like the domestic topics, which is evidently too, but you cannot simply ignore genocide happening somewhere in the world, happening close to the country, which always was in strategic cooperation with United States. Okay. Biden, it means from God, right? Hmm? Yeah. Oh, John Bernadeski, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for your views and your call to action. Let me say that although you and I are half a world away, we here in Hawaii support you and we want you to prevail and succeed and remain a beacon on the hill of the liberal world order and to preserve democracy, if you will, around the world. It's appreciated so much. And we feel it. Thank you so much for that. Aloha. Bye-bye. 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.