YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen Kotkin

lines on the record: 166
first: 2022-05-25
most recent: 2022-05-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“A war criminal is a legal determination and it requires evidence and due process and the ability to defend oneself. Don't just decide in the Twitter sphere or on a podcast that somebody is a war criminal. Can be a suspected war criminal, and we can gather evidence to try to prosecute that case. And then the issue for us, Alexis, which court does it go to? What's the appropriate place? Does it happen in Ukraine because they're the victims? Does it happen in the Hog because there's an international criminal court there? Does it happen inside Russia because there's regime change at some point? And some of these people become, let's say, they get arrested by their own people inside Russia.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see a lot of stuff under tremendous stress, and in the long term, there's no obvious way they can rebuild the military-industrial complex to produce those weapons because they're reliant on foreign parts that they can't get anymore and there are no domestic substitutes on the immediate horizon. At the earliest, a two-year proposition to have domestic substitutes. And for some things like microelectronics, they've never had domestic substitutes going back to the Soviet times, as you know well. And so there's that pressure on Russia from the technology export controls, which if you're in the security ministry or the defense ministry, if you're in that side of the regime, you're feeling that pain as we speak and you're wondering about the strategy.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is the Western executives fleeing, giving up their positions. So Russia's ability to resupply its tanks, resupply its missiles, resupply its uniforms, resupply its food to its soldiers in the field and their boots”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conscripts or their fed dog food or they don't have any weapons anymore because there's no resupply. So the disintegration of the army can't be excluded. And then, of course, all bets are off on the Putin regime. More long term, there are these technology export controls. We were talking about how the military-industrial complex in Russia is dependent on foreign component parts and software. And so if you have export controls and you have firms voluntarily, even when they don't fall under export controls, leaving Russian business, refusing to do business with Russia, And we see this not just in the civilian sector like with McDonald's or many other companies. We see this in the key areas like the oil industry with the executives fleeing.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their sons or their husbands or their fathers are either missing an action or the regime won't tell them that they're dead, as you know, from the sinking of that flagship mosque by the Ukrainians And so a disintegration of the Russian military because their orders that they either can't implement or don't want to implement is also not excluded. And so you have these two big variables, the Ukrainian army in the field and its ability to move from defense to offense at scale. And we're going to test that soon. And then the Russian ability in the field to hold together in a war of conquest and aggression where there”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gonna ignore that order, or I'm gonna sabotage that order, or I'm gonna flee the battlefield, or I'm gonna injure myself so that I don't have to fight, or I'm gonna join the Ukrainian side. And so it could be that's what's left of the Russian army in the field begins to disintegrate. Even if the Ukrainians are not able to mount that counteroffensive at scale, that combined arms operation, The Russian military in the field which has taken horrendous casualties as far as we understand, something like a third of the original force. So you're talking about 50,000 to 60,000. That includes both dead and wounded to the point of being unable to return to the battlefield. Are big numbers, those were a lot of families, a lot of families affected.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Quietly, not necessarily publicly. I may not implement that order because that's maybe a criminal order. Or my grandma is Ukrainian, or my wife is Ukrainian. Or I don't want to go to the hog. Want to spend the rest of my life in the hog or whatever it might be at any point along the chain of command from the general staff all the way down right to the platoon, you're a desperate provided they implement your orders. But who's to say? Somewhere along the chain of command, people start to say, you know.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do think it's possible, but it's very worrisome, just like you're saying. But if Putin were to escalate like that, he's firing that weapon at himself and he's potentially provoking a direct clash with NATO's military, not just with the Ukrainian military You're sitting in the Kremlin looking at those charts, Lex of NATO capabilities. And you can't conquer Ukraine, which didn't really have heavy weapons before February 2022 at scale. And you're thinking, okay, now I'm going to take on NATO. That would be a bold step on the part of a Russian leader. And let's also remember, Lex, that there's another variable here. A despot as long as everyone implements your orders. And so, if people start to say”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could well have Europe signing on to NATO direct engagement, both Washington. Brussels direct engagement of the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Russia can't actually use a nuclear weapon tactical battlefield one in Ukraine without also firing it at itself. And in addition, it's that same dynamic I alluded to earlier, which is to say you bomb a hospital, you bomb a school, there's more heavy weapons going to Ukraine from the West.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you know, Lex, there's no tactical nuclear weapon fired at Ukraine. That's not also fired simultaneously at Russia. If the Kremlin is 600 miles from Ukraine, And if the wind changes direction or the wind happens to be blowing east, northeast? The fallout hits your Kremlin, not just Ukraine Moreover, you have all those border regions which are staging regions for the Russian offensive, and they're a lot closer than 600 miles. They're actually right there. And so you fire that weapon on Ukrainian territory and you can get the fallout, just like the Chernobyl fallout spread to Sweden, which is how we got the Kremlin to finally, first they denied. They said, oh, we don't know why there's a big nuclear cloud over Sweden. We don't know where that came from, but eventually they admitted it.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know if anybody knows the answer to that. Will those people flying those bombers, if they get the order from, if the dual key system goes into action and both keys are used in all the codes are implemented? Will those young guys fly in those bombers, let those bombs go? Will those at the missile silos? Decide to engage and fire. We don't know, but you can see that it's more than one man making the decision here in a system of strategic nuclear weapons. As far as the tactical, the so-called low yield or battlefield nuclear weapons, Not sure the system that they have in Russia these days for their use of such tactical nuclear weapons. It could well be that Putin and just himself He alone can fire them or order them be fired.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're intercontinental. We watch that very, very closely. We watch all the movement of that and the alerts, etc. We have tremendously, let's say. Tremendous insight intelligence on that, but dual key means that President Putin alone cannot fire them. He has one key which he must insert, he must then insert the codes for a command to launch, that then goes to the head of the general staff. Must has his own key and separate codes and must do the same insert that key encodes for them to launch. And so, will the general staff chief go along with the destruction of the world over a battlefield loss in Ukraine?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's necessary to pay attention to that possibility. That possibility existed before the February 2022 full-blown invasion of Ukraine. The doomsday arsenal that Russia possesses is enough to destroy the world many times over. And that's been the case every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And so, of course, we're concerned about that. We do know, however, Alex, that they have a system known as dual key. Dual key for the strategic nuclear weapons. Strategic nuclear weapons means the ones fired from silos, the missiles, the ones delivered from bombers, or the ones fired from submarines, right?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will acknowledge that he's lost the war because the Ukrainians won it on the battlefield or he'll try to announce a full-scale mobilization, conscript the whole country, go back and instead of acknowledging defeat, try to win with a different plan, recalibrate, remains to be seen. Will the Ukrainians negotiate any territory away or must they capture also Crimea, which puts a very high bar on the summer counteroffensive that we're going to see, which could last through the fall and into the winter as a result? We don't know the answers to that. Nobody knows the answers to that. People are guessing, some people are better informed because they have inside intelligence. People are also worried about Russian escalation to nuclear weapons or chemical weapons if they begin to lose on the battlefield to Ukraine.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back towards the 1991 borders, which is their goal, their stated goal, and which we support them properly in trying to achieve. However much they achieve of that in this counteroffensive that we're anticipating, Will set the stage for the next phase, and either Russia, which is to say one person, Vladimir Putin,”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But whether you can evict the Russians from your territory with a combined arms operation where you have a massive superiority in infantry and heavy weapons, but more importantly, you coordinate your air power, your tanks, your drones, your infantry at scale, which is something the Ukrainians have not done yet. It's something the Russians failed at in Ukraine. And they come from the same place, the Soviet military. We hope this Ukrainian counteroffensive at scale, this combined arms operation, succeeds. And if it does succeed, there's the possibility of a battlefield victory. Whether that also includes Crimea. Which, as you know, is not hostile. On the contrary, to the Russian military, remains to be seen. But however much they regain territorially.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In July or August, whenever they launch. Right now, the heavy weapons are coming in and they're being moved to the battlefield and more are coming, you know, the dynamic. Russia bombs a school, Russia bombs a hospital, Americans and Europeans decide to send even more heavy weapons to Ukraine, right? That's the self-defeating dynamic from the Russian side. They commit the atrocities. We send more heavy weapons. Once those heavy weapons are on the battle lines, we'll see if Ukrainians cannot just defend, which they've proven they're able to do in breathtaking fashion, not just conduct counterattacks Where the enemy moves forward and you cut behind the enemy's lines and you counterattack and push the enemy back a little bit.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's hope not because the Ukrainians. Resistance deserves to prevail here. Russia deserves to lose. No war of aggression like they've committed here against Ukraine should prevail if we can do anything about it. I support a thousand percent the continued supply of heavy weapons including offensive weapons to the Ukrainians as long as they're willing to resist and it's their choice it's their choice when to negotiate it's their choice how much to resist it's their choice what kind of sacrifices to make And it's our responsibility to meet their requests more quickly than we have so far and at greater scale. Ultimately, wars only have political ends. They never have military ends. You need a political solution here. So if the Ukrainians are able Conduct a successful counteroffensive at scale.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he's on Ukrainian territory unless he's evicted and he's got a stranglehold on their economy and he's got the possibility that the West doesn't stay resolved and doesn't continue to pay for Ukraine's economy or supply those heavy weapons. And so you could argue that maybe he's deluded about all of this and maybe he should go on Twitter. You know, I'm not on Twitter, but maybe Putin, who famously doesn't use the internet, should go on Twitter and see he's losing the war. Or you can argue that maybe he's calculating here that he's got a chance to still prevail.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dragging its feet on the oil embargo against Russia, and you got Turkey dragging its feet on the recent applications of Sweden and Finland for NATO expansion. And you're saying to yourself, Lex, maybe I can ride this out. I got a lot of problems of my own, and we can go into the details on the Russian side's challenges.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The economic piece of that is a month and a half, two months of Ukrainians covering Ukrainian expenditures. That's it. And they're asking the G7. They're asking everybody for this. So you have no economy and no prospect of an economy until you evict the Russians from your territory. And then you have a Western unity, Western resolve. It lasts or it doesn't last, Lex. So you're President Putin, and you've got more territory than before. And you've got a stranglehold over the Ukrainian economy. And you've got a lot of the world neutral, and you've got the Chinese propaganda supporting you to the hilt. With those Oliver Stone and Mersheimer lines about how this is really NATO's fault You've got Hungary”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a lot of money per month. And that's indefinite. That's as long as this blockade lasts. And so you don't have any economy anymore. You're indigent. And even if you take the lower number, $5 billion as opposed to Zelensky's asked for $7 billion. $5 billion is $60 billion a year. That's $60 billion this year. That's $60 billion next year. And so who's got that kind of money? Which Western taxpayers are ready? And if you use the $7 or 8 billion, you get up to $100 billion a year. The Biden just signed, President Joe Biden just signed. The bill making it law $40 billion in aid to Ukraine. It's just an enormous sum.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're still fighting in Lukansk for full control over at least half of the Donbass, and Ukrainians are resisting fiercely. But nonetheless, you can say that they've been driven out. On the contrary, farther penetration than the beginning. Ukraine doesn't have an economy anymore. Have somewhere between 33 and 50% unemployment. It's hard to measure unemployment in a war economy. But their metallurgical industry that Azovstahl steel plant in Mariupol is a ruin now. And a lot of farmers are not planting the fields because the harvest from the previous year still hasn't been sent, sold abroad because the ports are blockaded or destroyed. So, you don't have any economy, and you need five billion or seven billion or eight billion dollars a month. To meet your payroll. To feed your people, to keep your army in the field.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never captured Kharkiv, but they came close, but now the Ukrainians drove them back to the Russian border in that very large and important region. So those look like battlefield losses that are impossible to explain away if you're the regime in Russia, except by suppression of information. And as you know from Russian history's leaders in Russia have an easier time with a state of siege and deprivation than they do with explaining a lost war. Let's look at some other facts that are important to take into account One, the Russian army has penetrated farther into Ukrainian territory since february twenty two. Including in Herson region, the famous Mariupol siege that just ended. They have built a large presence in areas north of Crimea on the Sea of Azof, the Black Sea Latoral ultimately, that they didn't previously hold.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three months into the war. If you had made a judgment about, let's say, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, a definitive judgment after three months, you might have got the outcome wrong there. If you had judged the winner war, the 1939-40 Soviet invasion of Finland after three months, you would have got that wrong too of what the outcome was going to be. So we're early in the game here, and we have to be careful about any definitive judgments. But it is the case that so far they failed to take Kiev and they failed to capture the entirety of the Donbass. Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, eastern Ukraine. A part of eastern Ukraine. And they've been driven out of Kharkiv and the area immediately surrounding Kharkiv.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got to talk a little bit about China too, but let's answer your Putin question directly. So on Twitter, you've lost the war. Or as they say, you know, there are these two Russian soldiers having a smoke in Warsaw. And they're taking a break, having a smoke, and they're sitting there in Warsaw on top of their tank. And one says to the other, yeah, you know, we lost the information war. There they are sitting in Warsaw having that smoke, right? So, yeah, on Twitter, Russia has completely lost the war. In reality, they failed to take Kiev. They failed to capture Kiev, and they failed in phase two, as they called it, or plan B, which is to capture the entirety of the Donbass.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they haven't always joined in a full-throated condemnation. Maybe they've been neutral or maybe they've been playing both sides of the fence like Turkey, for example. But are they rushing in to join Russia, to join Russia's aggression, to supply? And the answer is no. And the answer is no for two reasons. One, they actually don't want to be party to that. And two, they understand that Western power and they don't want to be on the receiving end by crossing the West and then getting caught up in a sanctions regime or worse.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Russia's domestic civilian Aerospace aircraft industry, right? Civilian aircraft industry is in big trouble now because of the export controls on spare parts and software. Brazil is a major power in aircraft manufacturing. Did they rush in and say, you know, Vladimir Putin. We didn't condemn necessarily your actions in Ukraine. Okay, that's one thing. And how about we give you all of our aircraft technology and we help you rebuild your domestic aircraft industry? And you can have the aviation at the West, did that happen, Lex? Didn't happen. And you can look at India and you can look at China and you can look at South Africa and you can look at what they've done in practical terms.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it's great to rediscover the West and rediscover its values and rediscover its authority and credibility and power. But that's not sufficient. So we know this now. We know that the rest of the world is not necessarily jumping on the Western bandwagon to condemn Russia for its actions because the West can do things like sanction your central bank, take away your reserves, deny you technology. It pretty much can do whatever it wants, and it can say that it's legal and it can go through various mechanisms and it can freeze your property. And you say to yourself, should anybody have that much power? And when do they come after me? Now there's a caveat here. And the caveat legs is Don't like the West having all of that power, and they didn't join in the condemnation of Russia. They also didn't join in Russia's aggression.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're in big trouble now. And so this is something which we fail to address. It's very hard to address. It's very hard to reform international institutions. It's very hard to share power. It's very hard to acknowledge that you have too much power. And that maybe having too much power is not good, not only for the rest of the world, but for yourself.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also to exercise that power legally and with restraint, and also to think about how it can expand institutions to be more encompassing so that other parts of the world are not. Being dictated to. But instead, are on the inside. Too often, right? Western power is not consultative. In a decision making fashion. It's consultative after the fact. Okay, you know, we got together in the EU or we got together in NATO or we got together at the Federal Reserve. And here's our decision. And we're announcing it today. And so your economy gets destroyed because the Federal Reserve decides it has to raise interest rates. Or you now go into default. You can't pay your debt because Western banks lent you money. And now the West has changed interest rates or other considerations.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those things are true simultaneously. And that's the world we live in, meaning that non Western countries Envy and admire the West, but they also resent the power of the West Western hypocrisy, right? The West invades countries when it wants, but when others do that, it's illegal. The West arrests you for money laundering, but it's Western money laundering that is where you go when you need to launder money, right? So they see the hypocrisy, they see the excessive power that the West has. And they resent it. And they say, who elected you to run the world We have a billion plus people, or we have a 200 plus million people. And we don't have a say You're the self appointed guardians of our world. Who did that? And so it's incumbent on the West not only to remember the power that it has.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it's a Western dominated world. And the West, remember, is not a geographic concept. It is an institutional and values club. The Japanese are not European, but they're Western. Just like Russia is European, but not Western. European is a cultural category, and Western is an institutional category. Where you have rule of law and separation of powers and free and open public sphere and dynamic open market economy. And then we have another thing which is pretty clear. West is powerfully resented, powerfully envied and admired simultaneously. PJ O'Rourke, the comedian who died this year. Fantastic, it was a big loss for the culture. He said there are two things that are always characteristic of any American embassy abroad One is a political protest outside. And the other is the longest line you've ever seen for visas.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The UN is the most encompassing and of course we know that it has five members of the Security Council with a veto, one of which is Russia, one of which is China, and the others are the US, Britain and France, not India. Not South Africa Not Indonesia. Not all of these other countries where the people live, the bulk of the population of the world and where the population is growing like on the African continent. So it's not a multipolar world. We talked already about the international financial system. That's Western, not multipolar. We talked about the US military and NATO, where we could talk about the Japanese military, which is just very formidable. enormous number of platforms. Even the Australian military we could talk about Lex, right?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are no major important multinational institutions organizations that are run on behalf of or led by a South African, a Nigerian. Person from India, even the Chinese don't run these institutions, they would like to, and they're trying, but they don't. And so whatever you pick, the IMF, the World Bank, Federal Reserve, which is the most powerful multinational institution which is actually only a domestic institution and doesn't have a legal mandate to act multilaterally, but does. It's got the most power of any institution in the world. NATO Bilateral alliances that the US has up and down Asia. What organizations that have tremendous leverage on the international system, on the international order, are non-Western?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It felt like it might be, but it wasn't. And so this is not a comparable moment in terms of what happened, but it has the feeling that it might be a watershed. And maybe we'll squander it the way we squandered the post 9 11 rallying around the United States. Maybe we'll actually consolidate it and it'll endure, or maybe it'll endure despite ourselves. And we can't tell and we can't know yet. And it depends in part on what we do and what we don't do. Here's a few things that we understand already. The idea that the West was in decline and that the rest of the world had risen and was more powerful and that we lived in a multipolar world, that turns out to be empirically false It's not true. I mean, it's just factually not true.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would maybe elaborate a little bit on that point, Lex. I think you're right. The feeling that we're in an inflection moment, you know, an inflection point, I think that's widespread. And I think it's widespread for good reason. We might be. But I also share your, let's say, modesty about where it's going and how hard it is to predict where this might go. It's only an inflection point if the trends continue, right? If the trends endure. There are plenty of non-inflection points. After 9-11, the whole world rallied around the United States. After it was attacked, after the bombing of the towers here in New York City and the hitting of the Pentagon. And that didn't last. And it was not really an inflection point, was it?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the 90% approval rating. I mean, I think they stopped doing the. Polling. Once he hit 91% or whatever it was in the previous poll, I think they all understood that now they didn't need any more polling, that it's pretty clear the nation. So 25% to 90-something percent. And just like the 25% was deserved, the 90-something percent is also deserved, fully deserved.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's something that wasn't foreseen. I certainly didn't foresee that. I foresaw the Ukrainian society being courageous and resisting. But I didn't foresee a television production company being exactly what you want to run a country in a war. President Zelensky willing to sacrifice lay down his life and rallying others in the country to do that. And then the country being so effective, not just at a courage, but at battlefield resistance to the Russian invasion. So I stand corrected by the Ukrainians and I'm ecstatic that I didn't proven wrong.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biden administration was poised to do another Afghanistan moment that ignominious exit from Afghanistan. Was almost what happened in Ukraine when the Biden administration offered him that ride out of there. And fortunately, he declined and helped rally and the people from below also rallied to stop the invader without the presidency and without the government in Ukraine. Saving the Biden administration and the European leaders who latched on. Fortunately, they had the presence of mine to latch on to this gift, the bravery and ingeniousness of Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainians and flipped and decided to support Ukraine's resistance first with 5,000 helmets only. As the Germans initially promised, and now with really heavy weapons.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biden administration, as you alluded to, offered him an exit from the country. They didn't say, you know, you want to stand and fight, we'll back you. They said, we'll get you out. You want to come now? And famously, you know that quote, right? What he said about how he doesn't need a ride. Remember that?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a TV production company and a TV personality. That's exactly what you want running a country because they're crushing in the information war. And he's spectacular European Parliament, US Congress, Israeli parliament. There's no room on Zoom, let alone in person that he can't win over. He's just so effective. You know, this is the first time reality TV has been about reality instead of fake. Reality TV is just as completely fake nonsense. But Zelensky, this is real reality TV. And he means it. And the nation is behind him. And they're just as courageous and just as ingenious in many ways. And it's spectacular. And so, yeah, who saw that coming? didn't see that coming lex in fact the bid didn't we talk about putin' miscalculation”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you're thinking, maybe having a major, large size 40 million plus population European country run by a TV production company is not the best choice. And then what do we see? We see President Zelensky decides to risk his life on behalf of his country, Ukraine. He decides to stay in the capital. Not going to flee, they're going to stay and fight. And he could be killed. He can die. It's a decision where he put his life on the line. Obviously, he's Jewish descent. Russian speaking, childhood and upbringing, Russian speaking Jewish descent puts his life on the line for the country of Ukraine. It's a pretty big message, don't you think? It's crucial. And it turns out not only that, Lex, but they're good at TV. They're good at information war. And in a war,”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's a mutual hon So Ukraine before the war is run by a TV production company. You're one guy running this fantastic, incredible podcast. There's 20 guys or so running a country the size of Ukraine. And one's a producer and one's like a makeup person and one's a video editor and they're fantastically talented people if your country is a TV production. So before the war, Zelensky had what, 25% approval rating and he couldn't get much done and it wasn't working. He got elected with 73%, as you know. And then he was down to 20. That's a pretty big drop.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll see if it endures, but this shift comes from the Ukrainians. And so it's no longer getting away with murder lex. And we thank the Ukrainians for that.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We knew that we had the Orange Revolution in 2004. We had Maidan in 2013-14, where they rose up against a domestic tyrant. And they were willing to die on behalf of their country then, let alone against a foreign tyrant invading their country, right? So we knew they would resist. We didn't know just how successful, certainly I didn't know, they would be on the battlefield. It's been breathtaking to watch. That sacrifice, that gift enabled the West to rediscover itself, to rediscover its power, to revive itself, to say, to hell with this energy dependence in the long term, to hell with this money laundering and reputation laundering, the hell with this running back and forth to Moscow to try to see what Putin needs in order for him to feel respected, what appeasement he needs, right?”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody's fighting it with them. Yes, we are giving them weapons so they can conduct self-defense, which by the way is legal under international law. Unlike the Russian invasion, which is illegal under international law, Western supply of weapons, including heavy weapons, including offensive weapons, to Ukraine for its self-defense in the invasion by Russia is actually legal under. Thank God the Ukrainians surprised everybody. Surprised me, they surprised Putin and the Kremlin. They surprised the Biden administration. They surprised the European Union. Not with the fact that they would resist.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you can get away with murder. But what happens, Lex, if it's a Harry Truman-like response? What happens if somebody says, you know, we're going to stand up to this? Not going to allow this to happen. We're not going to launder your money anymore We're not going to be dependent on you for energy in the long term. We're going to make a transition. Going to punish you for that kind of behavior instead. And the West is now switched to that only because of the Courage and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression Was one of the greatest gifts the West has ever received. The sacrifices that the Ukrainians are making right now as we speak. Meaning they're fighting a war By themselves against the major military power their neighbor Russia.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And invest in further corrupting and further weakening and further dividing the West. Because as I said, if the West is weak divided lacking resolve, you don't invest in your people, you don't build infrastructure, you don't improve your governance, but you'll muddle through. That's Russian grand strategy.”
2022-05-25 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #289 – Stephen Kotkin: Putin, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source