It’s been three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and while President Donald Trump’s spreading of disinformation aims to rewrite history, Ukrainians on the frontline of the war refuse to forget the truth. On this week’s episode, we see how Ukrainians in the U.S. are marking the anniversary and honoring those fallen back home. Plus, a conversation with national security expert and Pod Save the World host Ben Rhodes on what’s at stake as the Trump administration continues to cozy up to Russia’s authoritarian agenda.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Alex Wagner: Hey, everyone. This is just a note to you wonderful listeners. I have been sick, like really sick, but the podcast must go on. So I apologize in advance for the vocal fry.
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Marina : Hi, my name is Marina . I live in Kyiv.
Alexander: Hello, my name is Alexander Prokhorenko. I’m from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Katerina : Hello, my name is Katerina .
Denys : My name is Denys .
Anton : Hi there, my name is Anton .
Ksenia : Hi. My name is Ksenia . I’m from Kyiv and I’m 20 years old.
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Alex Wagner: What you’re hearing are voice memos recorded this past week by ordinary Ukrainians. Teachers, engineers, students, soldiers. People who were in the country at the beginning of the war living in Ukraine.
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Alexander: On the 24th of February, 2022, well, I do remember that day, and I will never forget it.
Denys : I remember like super precisely what happened early morning of 24th of February, 2022.
Marina : At the time of the full-scale invasion, I was studying in the 10th grade. I remember it so clearly on February 24th.
Ksenia : When the war started, I was on the 16th. I remember that day almost second by second.
Katerina : The first day of the war, I remember it very clear like it was yesterday.
Denys : I’m lost for words to explain the feeling. And it’s not the language issue. I would also find it super difficult to explain it in my native language.
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Alex Wagner: This past Monday marked three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s a day that Ukrainians cannot forget. For weeks in early 2022, the Biden administration sounded the alarm about Russia’s plans to invade.
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Joe Biden: Right now, Russia has more than 150,000 troops encircling Ukraine and Belarus. And invasion remains distinctly possible.
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Alex Wagner: In 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin had illegally annexed Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea that had been recognized as part of Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But this time, it seemed, Putin was eyeing the entire country.
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Unknown: Russia has positioned about 100,000 troops that could invade Ukraine from the north, east, and south.
Unknown: Tonight in what’s left of the battered port city of Mariupol, fear that at any hour, the strategic city could finally fall completely under Russian control.
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Alex Wagner: Ukrainians who lived in that moment remember fear.
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Alexander: It was painful, scary. So I woke up almost at five o’clock in the morning because of the siren, this sound of violence, sound of danger, sound of explosions as well. I called my mother straight away and my first words were like, mom, it started. And she was like, what? And I was like, the war, it started.
Ksenia : That night I fell asleep next to my mom because we had been watching a movie together and in the morning I woke up to her suddenly jumping out of bed and running to the window, you know, and I remember the sound of explosions and missiles filled the air and it was like, it was almost a ridiculous moment because the first thought that ran through my head was like, this can’t be real.
Katerina : I remember that I couldn’t breathe normally. We’re not thinking about yourself, you were thinking about your kids. What will happen to them?
Anton : I remember that we called all our family, my parents, my sister and her husband, some friends, and all we can do is pray all day. We pray, pray and pray.
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Alex Wagner: But of course, this wasn’t just one horrible day for the people of Ukraine. It would go on and on and on.
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Katerina : Part of my family was trapped in occupied territory for almost two months. I had absolutely no contact with them. I had no idea if they were safe, if they had food, if they were freezing because it was winter. And I didn’t even know if they were alive.
Anton : It’s hard to lose your friends, lose your loved ones. It’s hard to see your cities destroyed, your cultural heritage leveled. This has been the everyday life of every Ukrainian for these three years.
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Alex Wagner: Against all odds, Ukraine has endured three long and painful years of relentless Russian aggression. And they’ve done it in no small part, thanks to the resilience of the Ukrainian military, the support of European allies, and the military and financial backing of the United States.
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Alex Wagner: Under the Biden administration, the White House secured funds for Ukraine and united NATO to stand firm against Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. But fast forward three years and the situation is unrecognizable.
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Unknown: Promising to end the biggest war in Europe since World War II, President Trump is now blaming Ukraine for being invaded by Russia three years ago, saying Ukrainian President Zelenskyy should have made unspecified concessions to placate Russia and avoid the war.
Donald Trump: You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed.
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Alex Wagner: Last Tuesday, President Trump alleged it was Ukraine and not Russia that had started this war. He also called the duly-elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a dictator. Not Putin, Zelenskyy. Trump was asked about that on Monday, whether he would use the same adjective to describe Putin.
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Unknown: If you called Zelenskyy a dictator, would you use the same words regarding Putin?
Donald Trump: I don’t use those words lightly. I think that we’re going to see how it all works out. Let’s see what happens.
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Alex Wagner: Trump’s reasoning was that Ukraine hasn’t had an election since the war started. That is true. President Zelenskyy declared martial law when Russia invaded. But Zelenskyy’s decision was dictated by Ukraine’s constitution, which doesn’t allow for elections in wartime. A rule reaffirmed just this week by the country’s parliament. Whatever Trump was saying or trying to do, Ukrainians have refused to abandon the truth.
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Alexander: The suggestion of President Donald Trump that it was President Zelenskyy and Ukrainians, but not Russia, who started the war is totally bullshit.
Ksenia : Trump’s statement, my God. For the first time in my life, I truly understood the phrase no words, only emotions. It was surreal. It was beyond comprehension.
Alexander: Donald Trump’s words about our president, well, this is, I don’t know, it hurts a lot because it’s not true, you know. It’s like the betrayal to whole people. You don’t have to be Ukrainian to support Ukraine. You just have to be a human.
Anton : Putin and his closest are very happy about what President Trump says. Because you don’t have to spend billions of dollars on propaganda, on spreading fake news all over the world. If you can just call the U.S. president and minutes after he would repeat all your lies.
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Alex Wagner: President Trump later backpedaled on the claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that started the war. But it would seem that Trump’s efforts in the past week to spread misinformation about Ukraine, insisting that its president is a dictator and that Ukraine was the aggressor in all of this rather than Russia, it would seem that there’s a point to all that. By trying to rewrite history and poison the American public against Ukraine, Trump is weakening Ukraine’s position. Which helps Russia, of course, but maybe also America. Trump’s now calling for payback, asking that America be compensated for its military aid by gaining access to Ukraine’s mineral resources. And earlier this week, Ukraine reportedly agreed. The question now is what else Ukraine agrees to and what role the American president might play in forcing Ukraine’s hand.
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Alex Wagner: On this episode of Trumpland with Alex Wagner, the Ukrainians fighting to keep the truth alive.
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Unknown: I know that war is 100 percent physical experience. You would not understand it if you would not leave it inside.
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Alex Wagner: And the consequences if America decides to ignore it.
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Unknown: We’re not at the beginning of the spectrum of a transition to authoritarianism. We’re pretty deep into it.
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Alex Wagner: In the past week, there were gatherings around the country to mark the three-year anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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Crowd: Stand with Ukraine. Stand with Ukraine.
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Alex Wagner: There were rallies in cities with large Ukrainian and Ukrainian-American populations like Philadelphia and New York City.
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Crowd: Russia is a terrorist state. Russia is a terrorist state.
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Alex Wagner: On Monday, the actual anniversary of the Russian invasion, we went to a different kind of event. One meant to keep the truth of the last three years alive. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, people filed into a small 80-seat theater for a sold-out performance of Diary of War.
Musa Gurnis: Thank you, everyone, for coming. Thank you for showing your continued support for Ukrainian independence.
Alex Wagner: Musa Gurnis, who is Ukrainian-American, is the director of this performance.
Musa Gurnis: Some of you, like me, are most proud to be American when we help others in the world. We’re not here to be entertained by a fiction. We’re here to listen to true stories and respond.
Alex Wagner: The inspiration for the event came from a podcast featuring voice memos, just like the ones you heard in our open, voice memos that Ukrainians made as the war began three years ago. Darya Kolomiyets is the woman behind the podcast.
Darya Kolomiyets: This is very special, important and painful day for all Ukrainians.
Alex Wagner: She’s a well-known media personality in Ukraine but travels back and forth to raise money for the war effort at events like this one.
Darya Kolomiyets: Just want to remind you, these are real people. Thank you for being with us. Welcome.
Alex Wagner: The original diary was in Ukrainian, but tonight American actors read these accounts in English.
Unknown: I work as a combat medic for the Marines with the Hospitallers, a volunteer organization of paramedics.
Marat Shevchenko: My name is Marat Shevchenko. I’m from the city of Kupiansk, Kharkiv region. I’m 35 years old. I want to become a sound engineer.
Olena Nikulina: My name is Olena Nikulina. My husband, Maxim, serves in the Azov regiment, which is a specially trained part of the Ukrainian military.
Alex Wagner: Seven actors sat on the stage in a line. They introduced themselves and then slowly revealed more about their lives as the war ramped up.
Unknown: I live across the street from Okhmatdyt, the largest hospital for children in the Ukraine. I’ve been working as a hospital clown for more than three years with children who have cancer, ones under palliative care, and those who are undergoing severe treatment.
Unknown: And every time I go to check on my home, I visit my neighbor. And every time I bring her water or food, she won’t let me leave without something. It’s very Ukrainian. You know, she gives me candies. I count the time of war in candies. Fifteen candies have already passed.
Alex Wagner: The room was set up like a cabaret with an informal bar. But nobody was getting up to order drinks. They were focused on the actors.
Olena Nikulina: My husband, Maxim, called and said that in 15 minutes, the last bus with women and children will depart. Run and get on it. Please, I beg you, he said. It will become very difficult in Mariupol.
Unknown: I took two bags. The one with things and the other one with vinyl records. I mean, my friends were like, are you out of your mind? The records? And I said, I will never have a collection like this again. Unknown: There were international journalists who came to cover the war, they were wearing bulletproof vests, while people were on buses going to work, thinking that life would stay the way that it had been. It was such a strange paradox.
Alex Wagner: There were war stories, but there were also stories about life during war.
Unknown: So I had this dog, a pug, named Agamemnon. He was very cheerful. He was very fawny. Where we were hiding from the war, something bit my dog. And without gasoline, we could not get to a vet for a long time. And I found myself sitting on the side of the road with Agamemnon, and I had him wrapped in my scarf. And I was waiting for my friends, and they were off, waiting at the gas station for a long, long time. And then my pug died in my arms. And I remember I was crying, and I was hugging him. I don’t know how long that lasted. And a woman from the military in a military uniform came up, and she asked me if I was okay. And I said, no, no, I’m not good. My dog died. And then she started crying too.
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Alex Wagner: Towards the end, Darya came back out on stage and stood beside each actor, reading an update about each person.
Darya Kolomiyets: Ukrainian photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Julia Kochetova received an Emmy Award for her project, War is Personal.
Alex Wagner: One by one, the actors stood up, took their chairs, and walked off the stage.
Unknown: Olena Nikulina gave birth to a child. She named him Kostantin. This is the name her husband, Maxim, chose even before her pregnancy. The boy is now two years and four months. Maxim has been in captivity for two years and nine months. Olena hasn’t heard from him yet.
Alex Wagner: Until there was just one woman left in the middle of the stage.
Unknown: Combat medic, public activist and my very close friend Iryna Cheka Tsybukh was killed by Russia May 29 in Kharkiv region while saving lives during her mission in Battalion Hospitallers.
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Alex Wagner: We’ll be right back.
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Alex Wagner: Our next guest needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway. He’s an author, a political commentator, and a national security analyst. He was a senior advisor to President Barack Obama, and he is currently the co-host of Pod Save the World. He’s also my very good friend, Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes: How long do you usually go, Alex?
Alex Wagner: We’re thinking like three hours, like Rogan style.
Ben Rhodes: Yes, yes. You’re going to start with my childhood? Yes.
Alex Wagner: Yes. The first thing I want to talk to you about, Ben, is the disinformation that Trump has been spewing. I mean, infamously offering that Ukraine had started the war, not Russia. And then today saying that NATO is probably the reason the war in Ukraine started and that the U.S. has given Ukraine three times the amount of money that Europe has, calling Zelenskyy a dictator. He didn’t repeat that today, but he has said that earlier. I feel like the disinformation here is serving a purpose, right? And it’s not just, well, there’s an immediate purpose and probably a broader purpose. But as someone who has looked at autocracies and the rise of fascism around the globe, I wonder what role you think disinformation plays in furthering illiberal ends.
Ben Rhodes: Well, ultimately, the purpose of disinformation is to get somebody to do what you want them to do. So in this case, the purpose of disinformation is to get the United States to both validate the Russian view in the eyes of the world, but also to favor Russia on the battlefield.
I’d actually break it into kind of three categories, Alex. First, there’s these broad themes about the cause of the war, the Russian argument being that NATO and Ukraine essentially caused the war by existing, I guess. But then what’s even more worrisome is that there’s actually some very specific things Trump has said. Like he said a couple of times that Zelenskyy had a 4 percent approval rating, which may seem like a smaller thing than NATO causing the war. But what’s so alarming to me about that is that’s a very specific claim that Russia has made, that’s on Russian channels, right? That doesn’t actually exist in any public opinion poll. So it’s like, where did he get that piece of information from, right? Because the NATO thing is something you could absorb in the discourse. The idea that Zelenskyy has a 4 percent approval rating is an incredibly specific piece of Russian disinformation with no basis in fact.
And then the last piece of this is the U.S. demand issued by Trump that Ukraine hold an election. That’s a Russian, talking point that’s been on Russian media for a while now that Putin has repeated. And nobody thinks that Ukraine can have an election. They can’t. They’ve got millions of people out of the country. They’ve got millions of people at war. They’ve got millions of people in territories that are occupied by Russia. How could they possibly hold an election? They’re being bombed by Russia. Russia wants an election to destabilize Ukraine. And so it’s not just a narrative problem. It’s actually bleeding into substantive negotiating positions of the United States. And that just tells you how powerful the disinformation has been.
Alex Wagner: I spent some time in Russia a couple years ago and there was something that was happening there kind of a nascent movement to undermine the credibility of all information. It actually reminded me of what happened in Burma, which is where my mom is from. It’s a very Orwellian tactic of destabilizing the information ecosystem so that people no longer know what’s right, what’s wrong. It’s a great way to quell resistance, right? It’s a great way to effectively like end any kind of robust civil society conversation when people don’t even know kind of which way is north, which way is up, which way is down. And this was beginning to happen in Russia where there was so much confusion and swirl.
And I remember talking to Russians and they said, be careful because that’s where you guys are headed. This idea that you can so muddy the waters that it effectively erodes any real resistance. And it sort of feels like not only is Trump aligning himself with Putin and the sort of goals that Russia has for Ukraine, but in that Russian style authoritarianism and autocracy where citizens are so disempowered because they no longer have a handle on the truth. That seems to be the most nefarious element in all of this, that Trump is trying to do what Putin did to Russia.
Ben Rhodes: Yes. I mean, and as you know, this was like the topic of my entire last book, the authoritarian playbook that is being run here, that has been run in Russia and Hungary and plenty of other places. And they’re running it to a tee. I mean, to your point about Russian information, the Kremlin dominates traditional media, right? Television, et cetera. But they also dominate the online space, either through their own, you know, trolls and bots, but also just through their own, you know, fellow travelers, to the point that there’s no truth, that, you know, Russians have no basis for evaluating what is true and what is false, right? And just think of the conversation we’re having here, Alex. We just had a very fact-based point. You know, Donald Trump is echoing Russian talking points on things as specific as Zelenskyy’s fictional approval rating.
There are a huge swath of Americans who would hear this conversation and roll their eyes and say, oh, there they go again with the Russia hoax. It’s Mueller time all over again. Those crazy libs, you know. No, this is just —
Alex Wagner: Facts.
Ben Rhodes: — reality that we’re talking about. I’m not even saying Donald Trump is a Russian asset. I’m just saying the fact that Donald Trump is repeating Russian talking points in half the country at least. If not more, we’re just think, oh, these guys, these libs, they keep going back to this Russia point. That’s because they’ve been conditioned by the information space in this country to think that. Because Donald Trump has repeated for eight years now, Russia hoax, Russia hoax, blah, blah, you know. And I think Americans are not aware of how much. We’re not at the beginning of the spectrum of a transition to authoritarianism. We’re pretty deep into it.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Ben Rhodes: And that, I think, is what’s hard for people to get their heads around. The clock didn’t begin after Trump’s election. The clock has been running for a while now, and we are pretty far on our way, not necessarily to being Russia, but we’re certainly in hungry territory already.
Alex Wagner: I think about the sort of position Ukraine is in, I guess the position America has taken and you know, where Russia is and all of this. Like, do you foresee how this all ends? Do you have a sense of, you know, what the code is?
Ben Rhodes: It’s hard to predict in Trump world, but I think that the most likely scenario is over the course of the next few months, Russia keeps taking more Ukrainian territory. Then there’s some agreement kind of rammed down the Ukrainian’s throats because they know that they can’t survive on the battlefield with no U.S. military assistance in which Russia consumes annexes the parts of Ukraine that they are currently occupying. Ukraine does not get NATO membership. Maybe there’s a nominal European force that goes to Ukraine on some training mission. And Putin is emboldened. And he waits a couple of years and then tests the waters, either trying to take more of Ukraine or trying to back, quote unquote, Russian separatists in the Baltics, which are NATO allies, to test if NATO Article 5 collective defense still applies or tries to swallow up like Georgia, another post-Soviet state that Russia sought to, basically, Putin wins on his terms in Ukraine and tries to destabilize Ukrainian politics and pushes the envelope further in other places. And meanwhile, the U.S. has left the world order of democratic allies. Europe has to develop its own defense capabilities. And the U.S. is in this transactional law of the jungle with the Russians and the Chinese and the Gulf countries and Israel. And then what I worry about is, what’s the message to Israel about annexing the West Bank or parts of southern Syria where they have troops right now? What’s the message to China about, it’s okay to go take Taiwan? That’s the knock-on effects that obviously Trump doesn’t seem to care about.
Alex Wagner: Yes, and I guess we’re seeing the sort of strategy for getting the American public to go along with him on this, which is just to tell them down is up and up is down, that Zelenskyy is a dictator, that our friends aren’t the aggressors or the people that Trump has aligned himself with aren’t the aggressors, and to basically cast a shadow over the truth and the facts and hope that people don’t see past that.
Ben Rhodes: Can I say one thing about that, Alex? This small thing, but on Taiwan, which not a lot of Americans spend a lot of time thinking about, but you already see Trump saying things like, Taiwan stole our semiconductors. That’s something he says regularly. What he’s referring to is Taiwan makes 80 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors, which are vital to the global economy. Well, they didn’t steal them. They just developed a really effective semiconductor industry. But that’s a Chinese, you know, like you could see how the Chinese would be like, you know, if there’s a military invasion of Taiwan or blockade of Taiwan, Trump using that talking point is already he’s seeding, whether consciously or not, useful disinformation for not just Russia, but for China as well, certainly for Israel. And the way he talks about Gaza is if the people that live there have occupied some real estate development that is his, you know, so he’s creating narratives that just think about how they could be acted on in the world.
Alex Wagner: Thank you, my friend, for offering some dark, dark wisdom.
Ben Rhodes: Sorry, yes. Understanding things is empowering.
Alex Wagner: Totally.
Ben Rhodes: So if people think it’s hard to hear certain things, just remind yourself that they want you to not hear them.
Alex Wagner: Exactly. I completely agree. Thanks, Ben.
Ben Rhodes: Thanks, Alex.
Alex Wagner: We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode of Trumpland with Alex Wagner. And hopefully, my voice will be a lot better by then.
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Trumpland with Alex Wagner is produced by Max Jacobs along with Julia D’Angelo and Kay Guerrero. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez. Our crew included Bill Hennessey on audio and Greg Purpura and Andrew Dunn on camera. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory, Katie Lau and Mark Yoshizumi. And Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Matthew Alexander is our executive producer and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. I’m your host, Alex Wagner. We’ll see you next week.
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