What’s Russia Planning

Jonah vs. KGB

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On today’s episode of The Remnant, Jonah attempts to live out his closeted dream of becoming an American spy by diving into a report titled “The Kremlin’s Occupation Playbook: Coerced Russification and Ethnic Cleansing in Occupied Ukraine.” He is joined by Karolina Hird, author of the report, to discuss the Kremlin’s heartbreaking tactic of deporting and forcibly adopting Ukrainian children, a ploy designed to alter the demographic fabric of the occupied territories. Hear about the critical issue of delayed aid to Ukraine, Russia’s strategic use of timing on the battlefield, and the strictly censored Russian media landscape that stifles authentic discourse on the conflict.

Show Notes:
—Karolina Hird’s profile at the Institute for the Study of War
—Interactive Map: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
—ISW’s Ukraine Conflict Updates page

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Comments (28)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Kimbaukusfitzgibbon

    Jonah, thank you for this informative podcast as well as ending it with a succinct summary of if you think Israel is bad and you don’t understand what is going on in the Russian v Ukrainian war. Thank you!

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  2. Hartzlk

    As Jonah was pushing for information about deported adults, a feeling of dread started building up. And then Jonah voiced the exact thing that way alarming me. No stories of escaped adults? That's incredibly unlikely. Alarmingly so. Holocaust-category alarm bells.

    I still think there might be a few reasons why it's too early to conclude that there are death camps in Russia.

    Ukraine absolutely has spies in Russia. If they had found death camps, we would know. I'll concede this is not proof that they don't exist - Russia is a massive place.

    My second reason is rooted in a lack of information, which is not a place I stand with confidence: I think Russia is targeting children more than adults. Maybe there aren't stories because the adults aren't getting deported unless they choose to go? This can't be true for every case, but it might drive the number down to the point where the stories can be kept under wraps.

    The third reason is less optimistic. Maybe there are no death camps in Russia because the adult civilians are executed in Ukraine. We wouldn't find the graves for as long as the territory remains in Russian hands. And the mobile crematoria, as seen in Mariupol, make the evidence even harder to get.

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    1. Kent Larson

      I'm glad that Jonah pressed on this question and I had hoped that Karolina Hird would have had better answers available for the question of deported adults. I suspect that the answer has at least three components. First, I think it likely that Russia seized Ukrainians in leadership roles in all areas that they either occupy now or temporarily occupied earlier in the war. These Ukrainians would be in some kind of camp and not able to easily communicate with the outside world. The second group would be Russian collaborators/sympathizers in those areas temporarily occupied. They would likely have needed to retreat with the Russian forces to escape retribution. The third group would be anyone living near the front line , who would seek to relocate for their own safety.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Narwhal

      If Russia was operating concentration camps right now then there would be reports of it. It isn’t 1935. Just think through all of the possible ways such news would leak out and get confirmed.

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      1. Hartzlk

        I'm going to be that obnoxious nerd and say a "concentration camp" is not the same thing as a "death camp". Nazi concentration camps were often for forced labor, while Nazi death camps were for, well, killing people as efficiently as possible.

        I think "gulag" might be the Russian equivalent of a concentration camp. I have not read much into this.

        It's well known that Russia imprisons its own people today for things that are not actually crimes. All you have to do is say something that Putin doesn't like.

        So, I'm not so sure. Maybe we DO know that Russia has concentration camps. But it's such old news we don't talk about it anymore.

        China does. That's where they sent the Uighurs.

        If what you meant to say was that we'd know if Russia had death camps, I do think that's the safer bet. And certainly not at the scale of the Nazis in WWII. However, there are things that satellites can't see. Siberia itself is also massive.

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    Paul Montagu

    Like with Dr. Guelzo, I'd like to see Ms. Hird come back and give more updates.

    The thing that truly bothers me is the lack of general recognition that Putin is the terrorist leader of the Russian terrorist state. Hamas sympathizers complained loudly about Israelis bombing a half dozen Gazan hospitals (and they were attacked with good reason because Hamas operates out of them) while Putin has bombed hundreds of hospitals in Ukraine, and those hospitals have no military value, they're civilian targets, which makes them purely terrorist attacks and war crimes.

    Putin's terrorist acts are getting short shrift, and it's long past time to win that propaganda battle.

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  4. BaklavaHavel

    I think Jonah’s intuition about what “Nazi” means to Russians differing from American ideas is spot on. I visited a WWII museum in Moscow in 2014 and was surprised by differences in how the war was portrayed from what I’d expect at an American museum. When Americans think of Nazi atrocities, we think Auschwitz. When Russians think of Nazi atrocities, they think Stalingrad. We think of mass killing of Jews; they think of mass killing of Russians. Honestly, we in the west probably do underemphasize how much the Nazis harmed the Russians.

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    Kyzyl Tuva

    Thank you for keeping focused on this issue Jonah. If Ukraine loses this, we will face a more vigorous Russia at a later date.

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  6. Viki

    Loved this episode, and I too support Ukraine against Russia as well as Israel against Hamas. Thank you for having Karolina on program to unpack all the questions surrounding Ukraine and Russia

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  7. Kent Larson

    Thanks for this important piece on Ukraine. We need to keep this important issue alive. There are some great experts out there, but you can't go wrong when you turn to ISW.

    I thought it might be useful to provide some additional information on your question on what goes through a Russian's mind when they hear Ukrainians called "Nazis." World War II was an existential war for the Soviet Union. Stalin and the Party turned early and often to calling those opposed to their regime, "Nazis," as an effective way of delegitimizing opposition to communist rule. This tactic was helped because once the Nazis invaded, if you opposed the regime or if you were a nationalist for any group other than the Russians, there was really no one to turn to for assistance other than the Germans. Plus, we need to remember that any Ukrainian still alive in 1941 had survived the Holodomor. The result was that there was always a kernel of truth to Soviet propaganda. There really were Ukrainian nationalists who fought on the side of the Nazis and there were Ukrainians who willingly aided in the Holocaust in Ukraine. Everyone who came of age under the Soviet Union had this drilled into them...that Ukrainian nationalists were Nazis who wanted to kill Russians and kill Jews (Jews were considered a nationality and not a religion in the Soviet Union), i.e., not just "bad people." This mindset never disappeared and has now returned under Putin.

    I've lived and worked in the area for most of my adult life and I ran into this mindset regularly in conversations. The propaganda is more effective than we can imagine here in the West.

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    1. Clark.Monson

      I thought the same thing and would have liked to hear a discussion about it. As Alina mentions below, most of them were allies of the Nazis purely for convenience in fighting the Russians, but there were a decent number of them who bought into the ideology as well. But yes, you can't have a truly meaningful discussion of what it means when Russia calls the Ukrainian government and its supporters "Nazis" without understanding that backstory.

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      Alina M.

      It's important to note that when one says that Ukrainian nationalists fought "on the side of Nazis", it's not because they espoused Nazi ideology, but because they fought against the Soviet regime, so the Germans were their "allies" in that regard. Besides, most Ukrainian nationalists were from western part of Ukraine, that was under Austro-Hungarian, and later Polish occupation, so the Germans treated them differently than the Ukrainians on the Soviet territory. In essence, the two groups used each other to reach their goals. As far as the claim of Ukrainians who willingly aided in the Holocaust, that is a controversial issue as there is no way of knowing how many willingly participated in it, and the Soviets used it to discredit the nationalists.

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      1. Kent Larson

        I agree entirely. The situation was complicated and the Ukrainian national movement was nationalist....not Nazi. I was trying to answer Jonah's question of what Russians think of when they are told that the Ukrainians are Nazis. Russians have been subject to consistent propaganda starting with WWII that to be a Ukrainian nationalist was to be a Nazi....by definition and this definition included participation in the Holocaust. Unfortunately, it is difficult to counter simple propaganda with a truth that is all too complicated.

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  8. Avatar photo
    OJFL

    Russia is indeed evil and people should see it clearly. This kind of podcast is important to make more people understand the extent to which Russia will go. What they are doing to Ukraine reminds us of the Stalin ideas of shuffling people around the Soviet Union to create the motherland, and erasing local cultures and languages. That was not exactly successful, as we have seen after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but the idea is the same. If countries cannot see the obligation to prevent this or exerting a heavy cost for doing it, the morality of those countries need to be questioned.

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  9. Clark.Monson

    I found this episode almost unbearable to listen to, and not because it was bad--it was very, very well done. But the subject matter was simultaneously infuriating, revolting, and heartbreaking. I've long been a fan of Russian classical music and Russian literature. I think Russia has contributed a lot of good things to the world.

    But on balance, if Russia and all vestiges of Russian culture disappeared from the earth tomorrow, the world would be substantially better off. Russia is a sick, morally bankrupt, kleptocratic, mafioso, degrading, evil country, and it is so in no small part because of its culture and its people.

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    1. Jo Jijive

      Do you know any Russians? (I do.) I think the government of Russia is vile, as was the Soviet Union, but I wouldn't go as far as you have. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "culture", but there's a lot of what I'd call Russian culture that's not really in tune with what you and I find vile about Russia.

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      1. Clark.Monson

        I've known a few Russians; more Ukrainians, to be honest. Mostly decent people, the few I've known, though I can't claim to have known any of them well. But my comment was "on balance," not "in totality." I don't want Russia destroyed or wiped off the face of the earth; my comment was to say that on balance, the country has been a net detriment to the world.

        By culture, I mean the historical Russian combination of apathy, fatalism, corruption, nationalism, and cynicism, among other qualities, that have enabled a country that had a decent shot at putting its brutal past behind it to instead actively support (at least until it was too late to force him out of power) its most awful ruler since Stalin.

        Again, I'm not saying there aren't good people who are Russians, or even that your average Russian is evil. Not at all. But the country, its government, and its culture on the whole are a net detriment to the world.

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        1. Jo Jijive

          I agree about the country and the government. I think we probably also agree about what you mean by "culture", though I'd say that's not all of Russian "culture". Navalny was exemplary of a certain strain of Russian culture.

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          1. Clark.Monson

            That's certainly true. I admired Navalny greatly, as I admired Nemtsov and as I admire Kara-Murza and anyone else who has the superhuman courage to stand up to the evil of Putin and his mafia. I have no doubt much of their courage is due to what is good about the Russian character.

            I just wish there were enough of them to have helped Russia avoid its current fate--and that your average Russian had preferred people like them to the Putins, Medvedevs, Lavrovs, Shoigus, and others of their ilk that have been allowed, bit by bit, to strangle the last vestiges of democracy and accountability out of Russia for at least another generation.

            Gotta go to bed, but good chatting with you. Have a pleasant evening.

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    2. Avatar photo
      Scarlette Tarte

      I agree. While I love many Russian things like onion domes, Russian ballet, Russian authors and composers, there is a courseness to their soul I find off putting and not something in which I can find much good.

      They hate a lot of people and things. Their racism is off the charts, as is their homophobia and their sexism. They don't treat animals well either. It's a brutal place that has bred a brutal people.

      Having been there, I can attest to their almost complete reliance on crime, low level crime, as a way of life.

      I am glad I was not born there. Almost anywhere on earth is better than Russia.

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    Cthocas

    Two in-depth interviews on foreign matters in a row--I'm a big fan of this week.

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