News & Events A Virtual Discussion: Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

- Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us this evening for a very important discussion of the horrific situation in Ukraine. One week ago today, we, on campus, had the privilege of hearing from the three faculty members who are speaking this evening. And tonight, in addition, we have an alumnus. All of them will be introduced in just a minute. I wanted to make our alumni aware of the fact, which many of you will already know that we have students at Amherst from Ukraine and from Russia, as well as students who may not be citizens of either country, but who have family and friends in the region. And as you will know, these students are struggling. They're staying up very late at night so that they can understand what's happening at the height of conflict. The faculty here, and staff from a very wide range of offices are doing our best to support them, knowing how tough the struggle is for them, and for our alumni, who might be joining here tonight from Ukraine, from Russia, from the region, or who have family there. Our hearts go out to the people of Ukraine and to all those who are so horribly affected by this war. Among the things we're trying to do for our students is ensure they have accounts with the right phone carriers, so they can make free calls to families in Ukraine. We're trying to provide legal and immigration advice to those who need it, summer opportunities for those students who won't be able to return home, and who will need grounding to stay here. Everyone is at work doing what we can, which of course, given the magnitude of what's going on feels like much too little. Tonight's discussion is going to be moderated by Michael Kunichika, who is Associate Professor of Russian at the college. He's also the Director of the Amherst Center for the Study of Russian Culture, and in addition to all of that, he is Interim Director of the Mead Art Museum at the moment. Michael is also on the board of the international non-profit Humanity in Action. He has worked tirelessly along with others at the college to organize several events, and I thank him for everything that he's doing. Michael, I'll turn it over to you.

- Thank you very much, Biddy. Thank you for your support, and often finding the words we need to describe what we are experiencing, and what others are experiencing far more gravely. Welcome everyone to tonight's event. I wanted to first welcome all of you, thank you for joining, and just to let you know that the event tonight is going to be recorded so that it can be shared later for anyone who is unable to attend. Just to give you a sense of the overall structure of the event, we'll start with panelists who are speaking for around eight minutes, and then we'll offer some time for questions and please use the Q&A feature on your screens in order to submit your questions. As you know this event is to really think about the significance of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russia's war in Ukraine. We gathered together a week ago, somewhat in shock by what had happened the previous Thursday for an initial assessment of trying to think through both the significance, the cause of the war, and also where it's going. And to help us do that we were joined at this previous occasion by several faculty members, three of whom are here tonight. In order to introduce them, as well as our newest member of the group who is helping us think through this event, let me just introduce them. The first speaker will be William Taubman who is the Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus. Sergey Glebov, who is the Five College Associate Professor of History, and the Chair of the History Department. Eleonora Mattiaci, the Assistant Professor of Political Science. And Samuel Charap, who graduated from Amherst in 2002, who is the Senior Political Scientist of the Rand Corporation. So Bill, I'm going to turn it over first to you, and then to Sergey. Bill, please.

- Thank you, welcome everybody. I'm going to talk about three things that help to explain why Putin has invaded and brutalized Ukraine. The first thing is international geopolitics. The second thing is the nature of the Russian regime, and the third thing is the psychology of Putin himself. This may sound somewhat analytical, academic, I hope it's going to be useful. I spend a lot of my time watching news about Ukraine and I'm heartbroken by much of what I see, but I'm going to try to be as objective, coolly objective as I can be tonight. International geopolitics, great powers create spheres of influence. In the American case, I don't have to tell you that our country has spent a lot of time trying to keep foreign powers out of Latin America. We've all heard of the Monroe Doctrine, and people as old as I am, or even a bit younger, remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Nikita Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba and we didn't stand for it. And we came very close, in retrospect, to a war which might have gone nuclear in order to keep the Russians out of Cuba. Now the Soviet Union, in its time, had a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, a big sphere of influence. But beginning in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO, the Western Alliance, began expanding into the former sphere of the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. I'm going to rattle off the countries into which NATO expanded, and the dates when they joined NATO. 1999, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic. 2004, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Lavia, Lithuania, and later Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia. When you look back at this, it's really quite incredible. The whole former Soviet sphere, is now under NATO, or almost entirely the whole sphere, including three former constituent republics of the Soviet Union itself, the Baltic States. Now it's important to notice that Putin is not the only one who has not been overjoyed, but has in fact been unhappy with this expansion of NATO. As a biographer of Gorbachev, I've talked to him about this, I know that he has not liked it either. Yeltsin didn't want it to happen, but Putin is the one who has been seething, raging, and has turned out not to want to take it anymore. In 2008, this expansion of NATO, in the eyes of the Russians, became even more threatening. That was the year in which President Georgia W. Bush declared that Ukraine and Georgia, former Soviet Republics, would eventually be welcome in NATO. This shock to the Russians was somewhat eased by the fact that the then President of Ukraine, Yanukovych, was actually pro-Russian himself. But when he was ousted in 2014, and replaced by a pro-Western government, Putin's rage boiled over. He seized Crimea, he moved into Eastern Ukraine, and helped Russian separatists take over some of that area. And for my last comment on this geopolitics, I want to point out what strikes me to be a self-fulfilling, self-validating prophecy in all of this. That is to say we, and the Europeans, the rest of the members of NATO, expanded NATO to guard against a resurgent, revanchist Russia at some point in the future. But lo and behold, that expansion contributed to the development of just such a Russia under Putin. At which point many of us were tempted to say, "You see, we were right to expand NATO." As you can see, I was not keen on the expansion of NATO, any more than very distinguished Russian experts like George Kennan were not. The second thing I said I would talk about is the nature of the Russian regime. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state. I think Putin's Russia is an authoritarian state. In both these kinds of systems, small groups, or even at times one man has an extensive amount of control over society. But in both of these kinds of systems, leaders have feared dissent and unrest from their own people. And this has two consequences, which are related to what's happened in Ukraine. One is that a regime like this needs external enemies to justify the repression that they're imposing on their own people, to try to mobilize those people in the service of their regimes stability and future. And the second consequence is a fear of liberalization, or democratization, especially in large neighboring states like Ukraine. My third subject is Putin himself. Top leaders make a difference, especially in totalitarian or authoritarian states. As a biographer of Khrushchev and Gorbachev, I've asked myself, is it possible that Putin has more power than they did, Khrushchev and Gorbachev? And believe it or not, my inclination is to answer that he does. Both Khrushchev and Gorbachev were constrained to some degree by their colleagues in the Communist Party Politburo. Khrushchev was actually ousted twice by his colleagues. The first time in 1957, he reversed the move against him and prevailed. The second time, in 1964, he was thrown out. In Gorbachev's case, as we all remember, a coup against him was launched in August, 1991. By many of his Politburo colleagues, and others. Putin, in that sense, is not constrained by that kind of group, and therefore it's particularly important to try to understand him. If you'd asked me two weeks ago to characterize Putin's personality and his psychology, I would've said he was smart, he was shrewd, he was tough, he was brutal, but he was cautious. He had been very careful about when he used force and had gotten away with it. But this invasion of Ukraine is a huge, wild, reckless gamble. So we've got to ask ourselves what has happened to Putin? If you've been watching the news, you know many people are speculating, both in and out of government in the United States and Europe, that Putin has changed in the last two years, that the pandemic has increased his isolation. I've heard the word unhinged, and that he's moved off the rails, in commentaries on this. And we've all seen those endlessly long tables in the Kremlin, at which one end of which he sits, and his advisors sit, it seems, an eternity away at the other end. But I don't think the story of Putin's psychology is exhausted by whatever has happened to him in the last two years. I would point out that in 2014, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel said of Putin, "He's living in a different world." And in fact, I would go back even farther with the help of a couple of clues, and that's all they are, but a couple of clues which are in his autobiography, which is called "First Person," which I'm holding up. This is a book in which he talks about himself, and people who were his friends, and teachers, and others early in life talk about him. And there are two quotes from this book that I'm going to mention. The first one has to do with the place he lived, which was a rundown communal apartment, overpopulated by people, in a rundown apartment house in Leningrad. Where the stairs weren't safe, anymore safe, there were holes in them. And here's what Putin has to say about one incident on that staircase. He says "There on that stair landing "I got a quick and lasting lesson "in the meaning of the word cornered. "There were hoards of rats in the front . "My friends and I used to chase them around with sticks. "Once I spotted a huge rat, "and pursued it down the hall "until I drove it into a corner. "It had nowhere to run. "Suddenly it lashed around and threw itself at me. "I was surprised and frightened, now the rat was chasing me. "It jumped across the landing, and down the stairs. "Luckily I was a little faster "and I managed to slam the door on its nose." The second quote is from Putin's fifth through eighth grade teacher. Asked about him, she says, "I taught Volodya," short for Vladimir, "from the fifth through eighth grade. "And then we had to decide what school to send him to," blah-blah, she goes on, and she said, "I think the Volodya was a good person, "is a good person," she said, "But he never forgives people who betray him, "or are mean to him, that's what I think." Well, as I say, these are clues, but I think they point to a man who is capable of nursing a grievance, and seeking revenge, and I think that's what he was doing. That leads me to two final comments. One is on a second self-fulfilling, self-validating prophecy. Putin sees the West, led by the United States, as plotting against him and using Vietnam. Vietnam, I'm sorry, Ukraine, to threaten him. And then what does he do? He reacts by invading Ukraine. And what does that do? It produces the very Western mobilization against him that he assumed was coming all along. And then he points to that mobilization as justifying his invasion, which has produced that mobilization in the first case. Those are the three things I wanted to talk about, but I want to say by way of segueing to our next speaker that I think he's going to talk about another big factor motivating Putin, a factor which has become so big, that it perhaps has become the biggest influence of all. Thank you.

- Sergey, please.

- Thank you. Thank you, Michael, and thank you, Bill, for the lay of the land, so to speak. As you know, we met last Thursday to discuss the invasion of Ukraine. And I just wanted to say, before I move to a discussion of the historical motivations behind the current crisis, that two things really struck me during this time since Thursday. The first thing is the extraordinary mobilization of the Ukrainian Civil Society. We knew that Ukrainian Civil Society is remarkable, that it is able to mobilize with very, very little reliance on structures of state support, or economic support, but what people are doing is quite incredible right now in facing this invasion. The second thing that I wanted to say is that in the last several days, in the last week or so, the landscape in Russia has been also transformed dramatically. Over 10,000 people have been arrested so far, for participation in protests. We already heard, today in particular in news, about beatings and torture in police stations, in Moscow. In downtown Moscow, really, of those who participated in these protests. We also know that the media landscape in Russia has been transformed dramatically in the last week with the last independent media going off the air, and most of the independent websites being blocked by Russian State agencies. So just to go back to the discussion we had last Thursday on the motivations behind this conflict, one of the paradoxes of this horrendous war is that it has no beneficiaries. From the rational point of view, obviously no one in Ukraine can possibly benefit from this war. The Russian political regime just entered the period of dramatic instability, and tremendous challenges, economic, political, domestically, and internationally. Obviously there is an enormous hit at the Russian economy, which is going to experience multiple shocks in the coming month. Putin's foreign policy goals, whatever they might have been before, like a block to the expansion of NATO and NATO's influence, or some kind of greater influence in the Ukraine have all backfired. There is, if anything from that standpoint, Russian security has decreased, Ukrainian society are mobilized once again, in the war effort against Russia. And what pro-Russian forces might have been in Ukraine before, they are not going to be of any importance going forward. So what does this all mean? How do we understand this very irrational action, which goes against the interests of the majority of political players in Russia, and to some extent even Putin himself. And my explanation, or my suggestion, is to look very carefully at what Putin himself has been saying, in particular in the last two years. He has been increasingly focusing on history, and just before announcing the recognition of the two pseudo-separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, he actually went on Russian TV and delivered an hour long lecture in history in which he debated not so much with the post-Cold War order in Europe, or with NATO expansion, he debated with Vladimir Lenin himself. And he really challenged this idea that Ukraine is a really existing country. He presented Ukrainian history, the modern Ukrainian State really, as being cobbled together from what Putin called "Gifts of the Bolsheviks." That is various kinds of territorial arrangements that the Bolsheviks made in the 1920s during the national demilitarization of Soviet Republics, and territories that Stalin conquered during World War II. Now, this is of course strange, bizarre, and surprising. It's very hard to find a foreign leader who would go on TV and deliver an hour long lecture and justification of his goals. We really have to go back to the 1930s to find something like that. But I think what is important to keep in mind is that Russia actually is a new country, like Ukraine. And it is what we call a nationalizing state, a state that is in the process of producing a nation. And in order to do that, it needs to rely on historical narratives, it uses historical narratives to substantiate its existence. And of course there are many historical narratives one can use in the process of nation building. But Vladimir Putin in particular has been using a narrative that we call story. The scheme of Russian history. A 19th century kind of, invented in the 19th century, sequence of periods in Russian history that begins with the so called Kievan Rus, the period of medieval prince led states, and then proceeds through Moscow Tsardom, to the Russian Empire, to the Soviet Union, to post-Soviet Russia. This is a narrative of the development of the state, and the territory, rather than the people and its institutions. It substantiates a notion of the nation that is not based as Ernest Renan called it "Everyday plebiscite." It's not based on the idea of a nation as constituted by the exercise of political rights, as a politic community. It is based on the notion that there is some historical Russia, that derives from this period, medieval period, of "Kievan Rus," the term itself was invented in the 19th century. And then it sort of continues as an ontological reality, as an essence through time, to become post-Soviet Russia. In this vision of the past, there is no space for independent Ukraine. Of course, by doing in that Putin is really omitting a number of extremely important historical developments. Some of which happened in the 17th century with the emergence of the first early modern Ukrainian State or the Hetmanate. Some of it had to do with the omission of the beginning of the Ukrainian national consciousness in the 19th century, and the spread of Ukrainian movement. It completely omits the revolutionary events, and the proclamation of the Ukrainian People's Republic, in 1918. It misses the development of Ukrainian National Movement outside of the Russian Empire and the USSR, both in Austria, Hungary, and in interwar Poland. And it misses entirely the impact of 70 years of the existence of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, as a really existing entity with territory, people, boundaries, culture, and so on and so forth. The problem, the main problem with this interpretation, or rather the terrible outcome that one can foresee from this interpretation, is that it's not so much about the security of Russia, it's not about the expansion of NATO, and it's not about even satisfying the domestic audience in Russia with some kind of a grand victory. It is about the construction of a new national Russia, which leaves no space for independent Ukraine. I'm looking forward to hearing what my colleagues have to say about this events, and I am looking forward to commenting on your questions later on. Thank you.

- Thank you, Sergey. Eleonora, please.

- Hello everybody, my name is Eleonora Mattiaci. I study wars, nuclear weapons, and international politics. In the next five to eight minutes I want to share with you two things we already knew about the war, two things we have been finding out, and one takeaway. First, what are the things we already knew about the war? Well, wars are complex adaptive systems. That is to say, wars are environments where multiple agents interact, and their goals shift. Even if you knew everyone's interests and agendas, you could still not predict what happens next. In happier times, I urge my students to think about the quintessential complex adaptive system, your Thanksgiving dinner. There you are sitting with your extended family and friends, rubbing elbows, drinking, and eating way too much, actually unable to predict the consequences of your actions. Not unlike at your Thanksgiving dinner, in war it is impossible to accurately predict outcomes. The second thing we know about wars is that wars follow the power law distribution, just like earthquakes do. The power law distribution suggests that the majority of wars are rather small in size, but a few wars are really huge. Think about first and the second World War. Big wars do happen, just like big earthquakes happen, and wars that start relatively small often become very big by chance. Okay, so two things we already knew, wars are a little bit like your Thanksgiving dinner in that the outcome is very hard to predict, complex adaptive systems. And wars are a little bit like earthquakes, in that, "The big one" is in the realm of possibilities, unfortunately. What are the two things we learned as this war unfolded? First, the Ukrainians have been masterful at storytelling. In other words, the Ukrainians have been masterful at sending a clear message that resonates, that connects to our emotions. The story that we are told is a story of an underdog, and it goes like this. Ukraine is a relatively small, peaceful country being brutally attacked by a big bully. Ukrainians are fighting back in a war they did not want. Ukrainians are fighting for survival. Russians are not helping their cause by rolling tanks into an independent state, by attacking civilians, by being so literal as to bomb Freedom Square in Kharkiv, just a few days ago. By being so literal as to arrest Moscow primary school children laying flowers in front of the Ukrainian Embassy just a few days ago. So literal, that if these were plot twists in a movie, and we were watching the movie, we would've rolled our eyes and left the theater a long time ago. So Ukrainians have a message to send to the world, and the message is a potent one, it resonates with many. The second thing we've learned from the war is that when it comes to storytelling, when it comes to sending a clear message that resonates, that connects to our emotions, social media is a very powerful tool. Social media has allowed the Ukrainians to tell their story on the world stage. It has allowed them to constantly update us. It has allowed them to tell us stories from parts of Ukraine that are becoming increasingly less accessible by the press. Social media has made the reality hard to ignore, the idea of the war, of course. Social media, it's one reason, if not the reason why tonight we have such a big audience. It has given the war, and the suffering in the war, immense visibility. In my research, I find that social media can be crucial to ensure the type of bold Western support that Ukraine is getting right now. It's crucial for actors like Ukraine to be masterful at social media. So we're learning that Ukrainians A, have an important story to tell us that connects with our emotions, that resonates, and B, that they're using a powerful tool, social media, to do just that. So one take away from my intervention, wars are complex, and they can escalate by chance, not unlike our Thanksgiving dinners. And to end wars it takes an incredible balancing act, and the balancing act is aimed at deescalating tensions. Except social media's not known as a place for balance or subtlety. On the one hand social medias been crucial for Ukrainians to document their sufferings, to reach out to us. And it is important for us to see the suffering and to react strongly against that, and to condemn it. On the other hand, social media can uniquely complicate the balancing act that is required to end wars. Nobody ever wins a war, a war is a situation in which somehow I lose, and my opponent lose, and yet together we win when they come to an end. So here are the type of questions that keep me up at night. What happens if Putin does not fall, and you need to sit down, and you need to negotiate your way out of a very bloody war with someone who we have come to understand as "A Mad Man." As someone who's judgment, we said, we cannot trust. What kind of public support will there be for that? What happens if the Russians kill the person who has been dubbed "The True Leader of the Free World"? That is Zelenskyy, and we know there are plans, too, in that direction. My sense is that we are very much in uncharted territory here, and we'll need all the luck we can.

- Thank you very much, Eleonora. Samuel, please.

- Thanks. And thanks for the invitation to be here. It's a particular privilege to be on the panel with Bill Taubman, who was my thesis supervisor when I was a student at Amherst, and a mentor of mine. So I'm going to talk about four particular aspects of this unfolding tragedy. One, just getting a little bit into what as best we can tell, what Russia's war aims are, and the state of the war, the Western policy response, where this all might lead. And finally, what this tells us about Putin's decision making, both in recent months and going forward. And I also want to caveat this by saying that I'm going to try to be somewhat coldly analytical, but it also remains hard for me to do that given that I've lived in both of these countries, and have friends in both Russia and Ukraine, but I'll do my best to try to distance myself from that. So if we can analogize Russia's objectives in this context to something that's more familiar to an American audience, I would think about the invasion of Iraq, in 2003. And particularly how Russia envisioned the sort of run to Baghdad, in this case the run to Kyiv. Basically this is a regime change operation. Putin has made clear that he essentially seeks the ouster of the Ukrainian government, and its replacement. What has also become clear is that the initial Russian war plan was terrible, it was based on wildly optimistic assumptions about the weakness of the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian military, essentially an assumption that with just a little push the whole thing would collapse like a house of cards. And it was also sort of discarded, a lot of Russia's own doctrine and how we know how they train to fight. This is not how Russia trains to fight wars, and it's really not how anyone would train to fight a war. For a very capable military, not engaging in, for example, immediate suppression of air defenses, and establishing immediate air superiority is just odd. Or, for example, sending paratroopers deep behind enemy lines with no logistical support, no air support, no ground support, and just sort of leaving them there with the expectation that just the very presence of the Russian Airborne Forces would have a sort of shock and awe effect was very bizarre. So I think the Russian forces are now regrouping, and trying to recover essentially from this initial near cataclysmic attempt at conducting this war, for themselves that is, and are resorting to evermore brutal tactics. I think the question now really is the extent to which that initial mistake will prove fatal. Ultimately I think the balance of capabilities is so lopsided in Russia's favors that the bets are on them to prevail. It's just a question of whether that initial mistake, so set them back that, for example, that they're logistical tail is unable to recover from assumptions about a war lasting three days, that is now into its third week. Of course, as the previous speaker mentioned, Ukraine has resisted bravely, but I think we should also keep in mind that Russia's poor showing so far is mostly a result of its own planning mistakes, from which they could potentially recover. And now we are seeing that shift that I mentioned. In terms of the Western response, it has really been quite extraordinary. There was lot of planning that went in, both in Washington and in European capitals, to how they would respond. There were contingencies brought up. There were an elaborate plan about how to gradually, or not gradually, but to sort of dose out sanctions so that there was some left in the quiver. But essentially all that went out the window on that first weekend, and we went to essentially 11 out of 10 on sanctions in a totally unprecedented way with such a large economy, particularly the Central Bank sanctions. And it has been striking, and a lot of that came as a result of the Europeans moving, surprising themselves, the U.S., and certainly the Russians, with how fast they were prepared to move. And we're really now at the point where the only thing left are these energy sanctions that could really have dramatic effects on the global energy market. So the other challenge though with this is that the sanctions have been framed purely as cost imposition. And the problem, although the cost imposition is thoroughly deserved by Russia's actions, cost imposition doesn't solve problems, and particularly in the short term. So the sanctions have not been framed as leverage, to achieve any change in Russia's behavior, in the short term. And they therefore potentially reinforced escalatory dynamics that could, in other words, if they're permanent sanctions, if Russia has no hope of ever getting out from under them, it has very little incentive to retaliate or escalate itself. It also leaves us with a few levers, or it leaves us without the leverage that we've created to potentially alleviate the human suffering that we're now seeing unfold. Some thoughts about, and also one other point about the Western response, is that, again, surprising to lot of people, myself included, is the extent to which European governments have been falling over themselves to arm the Ukrainians. And this has become sort of a somewhat uncoordinated effort, whereby ideas are being put out there, like having Ukrainian pilots to Poland, and fly back MiGs to attack the Russians, which raise escalatory concerns in themselves, and that will be a challenge to coordinate going forward. So, and finally about the Western response, and this is not necessarily the government response, is that the extent of sort of private sector companies self sanctioning was totally unanticipated as well. In other words governments impose sanctions to force private sector actors to change their behavior. Essentially sanctions are sanctions on companies, really, for the most part, with the exception of the Central Bank sanctions. But we've had every company that had any significant stake in Russia, particularly in the energy sector, divesting more or less voluntarily without the sanctions forcing them to do so, which was again unanticipated. Thinking about where this all leads from here, the problem I have is that I have trouble envisioning what the end game is, for anyone. Putin's end game seems really poorly thought out, it's hard to imagine how a regime change operation in Ukraine leads to a stable political order. We discovered that in Iraq, to return to my original analogy, and this seems even less likely to produce a sustainable political order, particularly throughout the entire country, but even in the parts of the country where the fighting is now ongoing. And so I don't know what the sustainable outcome in Ukraine looks like. I don't know what the sustainable outcome for Russia looks like, politically or economically, the extent of the dramatic transformation, really, of Russia's economic position over the last 10 days is pretty extraordinary. But the impact of these things is going to be felt over the medium and long term to such a degree, it will totally transform the Russian economy, and the prospects for instability resulting from that seem quite significant, political and economic. And finally, I don't understand what the end game is for the international system. Having Russia playing the role of North Korea, a pariah state essentially, does not seem to me a viable long term scenario for the international system as we know it today. Russia plays a far more important role in international politics than North Korea ever did, or Iran, or both of them put together for that matter. And not being able to have, essentially Russia having made itself a pariah state seems like a unlikely long term stable proposition. So finding a stable end game is going to be challenge for all involved right now, and it's kind of hard to see how we get there. I think since I've gone a little bit over time, I can address potentially other questions in the Q&A, so I'll leave it there.

- Thanks very much. I was wondering if maybe we could begin with this final point about this sort of end game, since several of you have touched on it. I don't know, maybe Sergey or Bill, if you'd like to comment on this? While you're sort of thinking, cause it's not quite fair to put you on the spot immediately, one reason I asked this, is one of the questions we have is "Do you believe really that any concessions "could have been made that would've kept the peace, "or alternatively, are there any possible ways "through this that could sort of mitigate "the possible destruction, or elongation of the war, "that any of you see as possible?" So, Bill or Sergey, if you'd like to?

- Well, what strikes me is that there is an obvious set of compromises, that is to say, and various columnists have talked about it, and the Ukrainians would say, "Yes, they will, "or they will not join NATO," and the Russians would stop the invasion. And the Russians might insist that the Ukrainians give up Crimea forever and ever, and that they also give up the two provinces in Eastern Ukraine run by the separatists. I mean, these are things the Ukrainians don't want to do, obviously, but if they did them, the price could be for Russia that they end their effort to change the regime. Another way to put this is that Ukraine would become, would begin to resemble Finland, or Austria, it would be a neutral country with its security guaranteed by everybody, including Russia. The trouble with some kind of dirty compromise like this is I don't think the Russians want to accept it, and I don't think the Ukrainians want to accept it. I could even imagine if Zelinskyy decided to accept something like this, that he might be opposed by hardliners in Ukraine. So in that sense, I don't see a solution.

- Sergey, did you want to?

- Well, I'm not sure I know what the end game is, except that I think that the goal is really the dismemberment of Ukraine. The kinds of demands that the Russian delegation during the three rounds of negotiations with the Ukrainians put together the demand for the recognition of Crimea, the annexation of Crimea, the recognition of the independence of the two separatist republics, and the denaziification of Ukraine, which is a euphemism for essentially removing substantial parts of Ukrainian government, they're not acceptable for Ukrainians, Ukrainians are not going to accept them, let alone the neutral status. And they're even less likely to accept them now that the operation has stalled and is producing outcomes that Moscow did not foresee. But we also know of longstanding plans for the creation of the so-called Novorossiya, a territory in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, stretching from the border with Russia all the way to Moldova, and including Transdivistria, which Moscow could try to set up, and there are already signs that they tried. There were attempts to gather fake town meetings of various people, in some of the cities occupied by the Russians to proclaim new republics. It didn't work out so far, but that might be one of the potential outcomes. And we have to keep in mind Putin has to show something for the amount of the destruction that his action cost for the Russian economy. And so unfortunately there seems to be a tunnel for him now where he has to press, he has to capture Kyiv, or Kharkiv, or he has to proclaim something like Novorossiya to show domestically.

- Thanks. Eleonora? You're muted.

- Thank you. On this question, on whether it's possible to give concessions to keep the peace. So in international relations theory, we say that in order for you to reach an agreement, to get concessions, your threats need to be credible, which your threatening others with, but also your promises have to be credible. And I feel like compared to 12 year, 12 days, it does feel like years, but 12 days ago, the threat of what Putin would do if he doesn't get what he wants, the threat of invading another country is more credible than it was 12 days ago, but the promise of not doing so, should he get a Finlandization of Ukraine are less credible than they were 12 days ago. So it's a hard nut to crack.

- Sam.

- So, I think that there's a point of no return, which is the violent overthrow of the Ukrainian government, frankly. In the short term, the emphasis should be on achieving a sustainable cease-fire and convincing Putin to negotiate with, and not overthrow, the government in Kyiv. Whether that is possible is an open question. I think if you ask Emmanuel Macron, he would probably tell you no, because he's been on the phone with Putin twice in the last week, and has gotten nowhere, and has come away in fact saying that he's going to pursue this to the end. There are others who might be able to prevail upon Putin, or not. I mean, it is possible that he has just decided that he's going to pursue this no matter what the cost. And that is, thinking through this, in terms of Putin's mindset and rationality here, one way of understanding why he started this in the first place was not a rational calculus about the costs of action, but rather the costs of inaction. In other words, a loss prevention mindset, where if the status quo is totally intolerable and there are indications to suggest that that's what he believed, leaders tend to think about the costs of not acting, rather than the costs of acting, because you have to do something. And I think that might well help us explain the kind of frame in which he's viewing these things.

- Thank you. Eleonora, we actually have a question for you about your sense about, now that outside internet access is being limited, presumably this will make it more difficult for Russians to access information as to what's really happening in Ukraine and the world's revulsion at it. The question is, "How do you think this might impact "the information war?" And I know, maybe Sam, you could also weigh in since you've been very actively tracking and also participating in sort of social media. So Eleonora.

- So I think it's very worrisome. I was so surprised that it took Russia relatively long to interfere with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, I believe this happened last Friday or Saturday. So it had been like a week, and I thought they would go for it much faster. I wonder if that suggests that they did think, this would be a boost, this war would be a boost for Putin. He would go in, win quickly, come home, and be hailed as the victor. I do worry that, to the fact that the Russians cannot access the kind of information we can, will make it so that we see two completely different worlds, And we have two completely different mindsets when it comes to the war. I will add a ray of hope. So I studied the use of internet by the Libyan rebels in 2011. And I must say, technology-wise there are ways to get around these bans. Obviously not everybody will do it, so these bans will decrease the availability of information, but it's somehow, I think, I wouldn't be surprised if it's harder to decrease the availability of outside information now than it was even three or four years ago.

- Yeah, I mean, I think that there's still, Russia State control of the information space within Russia was pretty comprehensive before the last set of limitations on free media, and social media, now it's even more so. And I think, with the exception of urban, educated, relative elites, we're talking about, their pretty extensive ability to control that information space. But I think they're battening down the hatches, so to speak. One consequence of this, for those of us outside of Russia, is that we're going to have a much more, we're going to have harder time actually knowing what's going on inside Russia now, because many of the news outlets that I was reading less than a week ago are gone, or listening to, or watching, frankly. And this has now also affected Western media's Moscow bureaus, several of which have decided to close because of this new law, criminalizing "fakes" about the war. So, we're going to be facing a bit of an information desert about events inside of Russia as well.

- Thank you. Now that we've actually touched on this question of the media, I'd like to ask Maura Reynolds and Betsy McKay, if they could join us. They are two of the nearly 700 people who have gathered with us this evening, and while they log in, I'll just introduce both of them. Maura Reynolds is a Senior Editor at Politico, and graduated from Amherst in 1985. And Betsy McKay is a Senior Writer for the Wall Street Journal, and a Pulitzer Prize winner. So, which in effect means that we have two Pulitzer Prize winners on Russia, given Bills earlier work on Khrushchev. So, Maura, maybe we could begin with you, just to ask a, sort of your general sense about the Russian government's clamp down on whatever remains of independent, or semi-independent news organizations, and perhaps what other sources do Russian citizens have for getting accurate news reports. I'm also sorry, welcome to this evening.

- Lovely to be here, and it's great to see Betsy, we overlapped in Moscow, as correspondents, so. I guess, Russians don't have a lot of sources of information, and I think that's actually really critical right now. One thing we haven't really talked about is whether the role of Russian public opinion will play any role in the course of this crisis. One thing we've seen about Putin is he gets very unnerved by public demonstrations. I mean, that's, the Maidan is one of the reasons why he invaded Crimea. If Russian citizens think that they're going to war with Ukraine and they actually oppose that, or if soldiers come back in coffins the way they did from Chechnya, and that spurs some kind of a social movement, that's very awkward for Putin. But if the information space is so closed off that Russians really believe, and they come to believe that they're really fighting NATO, then there could be a social coalescence against the war. I feel like it's very, very fluid, and the information space is really important. I think almost everyone that I know who's a journalist in Russia right now is either leaving, or staying very, very quiet. And Betsy, I'd be curious whether that's your experience as well. But I mean, I literally have friends driving to borders right now to try to cross out of Russia, because the Russians have just made it a crime to actually call what this is an invasion, and use the term war. And it's pretty hard to be a journalist and not use those words.

- Yeah, it's a huge, I totally agree with everything you said, Maura, it's a huge challenge, people are leaving. The situation is changing day by day. So, I know people who are spending their last day in Moscow, and taking off from there. And every day we've seen sources of information within Russia cut off. So what people had access to two days ago, or yesterday, they won't have access to tomorrow. I think that we have to remember that despite the fact that things, this is a real step back, and a big step towards repression in Russia's history, a lot has changed in the past 30 years, and people are much more integrated, or were much more integrated into the West, and have come to expect not just access to information, but they've sort of come to understand what information they might they might expect to get. And I think if there's any way for people to, first of all, I don't think a lot of people will believe everything they see, and read, and hear, that's of course never been the case, going back to the Soviet Union. So the question is what they will be able to get access to in any form or fashion. I mean, I don't even know for example, a couple days ago, it was true that you could get on Facebook and Twitter by using VPN, and I think that was still true today. I don't know if it's going to be true tomorrow, or the next day. So as long as there's a will, there there's a way, but it is going to be, for those who can figure it out. Maura brought up the possibility that because of the sanctions, and because of the information coming out of the Kremlin, and there are people who, and possibly a large part of the population, who believes that this is NATO aggression, and these sanctions will have a deleterious effect on public opinion in that way. We haven't talked about Putin, and what happens with him, but as, as Maura mentioned, popular uprising is one thing that he's afraid of. And if you look at whether he can be stopped, I mean, there's really just a couple of ways. One is a palace coup, and the other is popular uprising, but not of the sort that we're seeing right now. Although it looks like thousands of people, you need like half a million people, you need an overwhelming number of people demonstrating. What's going on now is that the size of the crowds is actually small enough that the security forces can handle it, and they're arresting people, as we've seen, by the thousands. So it's really hard to know what's going to happen. I mean, will this clamp down in information actually push people out to the streets, in the thousands and hundreds of thousands, or not? And I mean, I feel like I just don't know the answer right now.

- I would just like, I think you're totally right, Betsy, about the size of the demonstrations. I think Putin may have learned two very unfortunate lessons in his time as leader. One goes back to Chechnya, which is that when you meet resistance, you can counter it, and you can put it down eventually if you are willing to be brutal enough.

- Yeah.

- And the Russian, I mean, we both covered the war in Chechnya. I mean, the Russians did not have a lot, I mean, they had no respect for the Geneva Conventions. They did things on the battlefield that Western armies would not agree, would never conceive of doing. Then the number of war crimes built into sort of ordinary operating procedure by Russian soldiers, is kind of shocking to a Western conscience. But it worked, from the Kremlin's point of view they pacified Chechnya, eventually, right? And if they were willing to do that in their own territory, what are they willing to do in another territory? The second lesson that Putin seems to have learned, unfortunately, is that popular uprisings can be put down with enough force, because that's what he did in Belarus, where you did have half a million people out in the streets. And now we've seen, Belarus, in the course of just a handful of years go from being a place where people went out in the streets to looked like they could overthrow a dictator, and now they've just been completely subsumed into Russia.

- While we have both of you here, and thank you so much for providing your perspective, one question is generally about, this is really for the whole panel, everyone's sense really of how the war is currently being reported really by Western media sources. And I wonder if anyone might kind of assess, so far, how you think it's going in terms of the reporting, but also, since we've touched a little bit on the difficulty. I'm sure that that's not a comfortable question, given cause you might have to be assessing your peers, so I don't know who this question should go to. But I think another question, given we've talked a little bit about the difficulty of obtaining news, or reliable information in Russia, who are you sort of turning to, what sort of sources are you, yourselves, relying on? Maybe Bill, would you like to weigh in?

- No, I think I would pass on that. I think there people who are paying more focused attention on this than I am, including Maura and Betsy, but also Sam, and Sergey, and Eleonora.

- I would say social media, well, the climate is different, the situation is different in Russia, and in Ukraine, right? And in Ukraine there's a flood of information, I mean, Ukraine is winning the information war on all fronts, right? There's just tons of stuff, Twitter, Facebook, all sorts of stuff on social media, and it's fabulous. I mean, we're seeing, well fabulous is the wrong word, it's tragic and horrific. We're seeing a war unfold before our very eyes, in videos that ordinary citizens are taking. We're seeing the president of the country, going directly to the public in selfie videos. And so I think everybody is relying heavily on that. Russia, until today, was also a source, through social media, of pretty good information. That's going to change obviously, so it's really hard to say what it's going to be like going forward. I think, I'm afraid it will end up being, total, near total silence from Russia, and that's a pretty dangerous situation.

- I guess I would say that from the point of view of an American media customer, there is so much more information available about this conflict than I think any conflict ever. Because we have multiple sources of information, I mean, I'm just thinking back to wars that I covered, and you just wouldn't have any idea until you got there. Like what a place looked like. You would look on the ground to try to see what kind of remains of ammunition was there to try to gauge what kind of weapons there are. And now you've got like all of this open source intelligence groups, like in real time looking at these videos and identifying the weaponry, and charting the trajectories, and sending in drones. I mean, it's astonishing in some ways how much we know about what's actually happening on the battlefield. I think the real challenge, and this isn't a challenge just for the media, I mean, it's a challenge to everybody on this panel, and to all Americans, is to get our heads around this thing. I mean, this is a massive event, really. And it's kind of breaking a lot of the categories that we are used to thinking about conflicts, and the relationship between Russia and the rest of the world. We just don't have good models, as Eleanora said, like we don't have good models for where this is going to go. And that is going to be a challenge for the media, but it's not just going to be for us, it's a challenge for everybody.

- I think, just to throw one more thing in there. I think it is a challenge to portray it, to get the point across to people that this is more than a war in a far away country. I don't know how good a job we're all doing at that, yet. I mean, the atrocities themselves, and just covering the day by day changes, and the tragedies that are unfolding is occupying, as it should, most of the space right now. But my husband was talking today with a woman who was doing some polling, works for a polling organization, over the weekend. And when she asked people about Ukraine, most of them really didn't know what was going on or hadn't really paid attention. And I think it's important for us to convey that this is basically a new World World war that we're in, whether it actually becomes physically a World War is not yet clear, but it could happen. And regardless we're facing a change in the world order, whatever outcome there is of this, unless there's an unconditional pullout tomorrow, even then, there's a change in the world order between the great powers. And that will have consequences for everybody. Some could be good, maybe as part of this we all move towards, we move more quickly towards renewable energy. I mean, but there are going to be changes that affect people. And I think we all, that's our challenge going forward in addition to covering, as well as people are doing it now, covering the war itself.

- Maybe just a couple of words, Michael, about the situation with the media in Russia. A lot of the journalist collectives that have been removed from the air, like the radio station, Echo of Moscow, or Mediazona, or other important sources of information, they moved to telegram. And this is where I think a lot of Russians are now getting their information. And the Russian State tried to deal with that source, but failed.

- Thank you, Eleonora, did you want to ?

- Yeah, I wanted to add about the information environment. So I had a colleague who did this great tweet, and his tweet was "The four horsemen of the Ukrainian Army, the javelin, the stinger, rasputitsa," if I pronounced that correctly, probably not, "and TikTok." I thought it really captured the level of information that we gain through these other sources. there's more evidence now on the war, and it's more readily available, than it was the case in 1999, then even was the case with Syria. But in statistical terms, we say that this information that we get is not a simple, random sample of all the information available there. A lot of the information we get, a lot of those videos, and who hasn't watched them, of the Ukrainians using John Deere to get equipment out, Russian equipment out of the way, a lot of those are from the Ukrainian side. And so, because it's not a random sample, they might not be representative of really what's going on on the ground. And paradoxically, it might be a case where there's a lot of information, but really a little signal, or a wrong signal, that comes from all that information.

- Sam.

- Yeah, I just wanted to underscore that point, we've seen a lot of fakes, and sort of information operations parading as news. And to the Ukrainians credit, they have owned the information space, it's really quite extraordinary, sort of bursting the bubble of the great Russian disinformation machine and it's magical powers. But I think that there's another piece of this, too, which is that we're seeing, particularly in the social media video, or visual information of other sorts, it's exclusively really from one side, and you don't even see, I think there's some sort of ethic among many posting these things up on taking things from TikTok, and putting them on Twitter, just not to put things that portray, that have any negative connotation for the Ukrainian forces, and/or show their losses. So if you were to just follow social media, you would think that Ukrainians haven't experienced any casualties, it's all been Russian forces, either abandoning their vehicles, or being routed, and clearly that is not the case, so.

- Could I, so we're at around 8:15, and I'm looking at a page of 600 or so questions, it feels like, so I wanted to shift slightly to a different set that seems to be concerning various people. One is really, sorry, this will also move from grim to grim, but the role of nuclear weapons here. And so if I could just ask basically, or I'll just repeat one of the questions, "If a cornered or stymied Putin, "or if Putin finds himself cornered, "is he capable of resorting to tactical, "or the use of tactical nuclear weapons?" Similar questions, "What are the West's realistic responses "if Putin uses a tactical nuclear weapon, "or simply a dirty bomb within Ukraine?"

- So just my 2 cents, the Russian conventional magazine has a long way to go before it's completely depleted, and there are some fearsome conventional weapons remaining in the Russian arsenal that have not been used. So I don't think they need nonstrategic nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, battlefield nuclear weapons, whatever you want to call them, to prevail in Ukraine, frankly, if they're willing to continue this. However, in the context of stability, and potential regime insecurity, these kinds of rational decisions, and military advice made based on operational considerations might go out the window. And if a quick victory is demanded and it cannot be achieved, you know. But I do think that there are, we're a long way from that in the Ukraine context right now.

- Michael, can I say something?

- [Michael] Yes, please.

- One of the things I've been wondering about is, again, how unique is Putin as compared with his advisors. That certainly applies to nuclear weapons, would he? Would they? But the question of how unique, I wonder what you think, Sam and Sergey, as to whether the people around Putin, if they had been in charge, would they have done what he did invading Ukraine? This is of course a speculative, hypothetical question, but I think it's important, because if we believe that the people around him would not have done it, even though we also believe that they will not challenge him once he's done it, that again, redirects our attention to him, and his psyche, and his mentality. So I'd be curious what you think. Do you think people around him, whether we're talking about the head of the FSB, or the Minister of Defense, or the most influential oligarchs, do you think that they, given the same circumstances would have launched this invasion?

- For what it's worth, I don't think so. And judged by the televised performance called the meeting of the Security Council, where they all were sort of forced to declare support for his policies, and just judged by how they looked at this meeting, I doubt any of them were particularly excited about what was to come in the next day. So I personally don't think so, and I think there is something about his particular emotive commitment to history, and to particular interpretation of Russian history. I don't know what that means for the prospect of using nuclear weapons, or anything like that, I'm really not a specialist in that. But it strikes me that Putin acts on emotion, and resentment, and grievance, not on rational choice right now.

- So what do you think Sam, about this?

- So there are certain things that are matters of consensus among the Russian leadership, and that is the priority placed on Ukraine. I don't think that's the subject of much debate, that losing "Ukraine" is totally unacceptable is also probably not controversial. What exactly they do to prevent that outcome, I imagine there's some subject of debate, but it wasn't like Putin took this decision in an instance, there was a long buildup here in which many people were involved, and at the very least his Minister of Defense, the Chief of General Staff, the Head of the FSB, the Chairman of the Security Council, the sort of inner security cabinet, clearly were all party to that. So, it's very hard to say whether, to the historical counterfactual, I think right now the bottom line is that Putin's actions have tied the hands of any potential successor, of any stripe, right? I mean, you can't undo what has been done in the last 12 days, and that's going to have consequences no matter what, who felt about this before it began.

- Eleanora?

- I wanted to address the nuclear weapons question that Sergey was bringing up. So in political international politics we talk about nuclear weapons as producing the so-called stability-instability paradox. So because there are nuclear weapons, then you have more crisis and wars at the lower level, instability, the instability part, but those cannot escalate into bigger war. That's the stability. So instability-stability paradox, and that's what nuclear weapons should guarantee. I think when Putin put his weapons on high alerts a few days ago, he actually, and I'd say this with a lot of, I'm very nervous about it, but he did a favor, a huge favor to Biden. If I were Biden, I would've called him to thank him, because there was a lot of talk, there still is, of a No-Fly Zone, and as my colleague of mine says, a No-Fly Zone should be re-dubbed the Shot Down Russian Planes with U.S. Equipment Zone, and then people would actually understand what that meant. And so in that case, Putin, by reminding people that he has nuclear weapons has sort of toned down the conversation a little bit. But remember this is a complex adaptive system, it's just like your Thanksgiving dinner again, you never know what's going to happen. So I'm definitely very nervous about that.

- To add to another avenue onto the complexity, we have several questions about the role of China here. And so let me just ask this "Is the Alliance that appears to be developing "between Russia and China result in a win for Russia, "regardless of the outcome in Ukraine, "or more generally, what could you say "about the role of that China is playing?" Sergey, maybe I'll start with you here.

- Well, I think it's too early to say, right, how China will react in this crisis. So far the indication has been that they're very reluctant to do a lot, but they're doing quite a bit behind the closed doors, and they're providing economic assistance already, this is very clear. In particular, the recent decision by Visa and MasterCard, for example, to pull out from Russia has been sort of, the Russian banks are now rapidly issuing cards that are employing the Russian National Payment System, called Mir, and they're also carrying the logo of UnionPay, which is the Chinese payment system. So there is a lot that China is doing right now. What they can doing the long run, I don't know, but they're already buying almost a third of all of Russian gas exports, so providing influx of currency what might be very needed very soon, consumer goods into the Russian market. Whether it will translate into a much closer alliance in political and military terms, we'll see.

- Thank you. I wanted to ask this final question, and I'm so sorry that we can't get to everyone's today, but this is from Daria Kitichanev, who she writes "We have family in Ukraine. "What are your suggestions for how we, as U.S. citizens "can help them in a way that can make "their lives better right now?"

- Well, there are a series of institutions and organizations, which are easy to find on the web, which are trying to help Ukrainians whether by sending them aid or mobilizing opinion on their behalf. So I think if any of our audience wants to do that, it isn't hard to find such places to which you can donate money. Or I suppose you can actually start working with them if you have the time, and the energy, and the expertise.

- If I may also add very quickly, I want to reiterate that Ukrainian Civil Society is exceptionally strong and well developed. And so it's relatively easy to find active organizations in different parts of Ukraine, in different cities, and different towns, using social media and quickly identify organizations on the ground that can be very easily contacted.

- Eleanora.

- I agree with Sergey and Bill have said, I wanted to add, I think one thing you can do to help is to keep the attention focused on what's going on in Ukraine, and all the horrors that are going on. It's really hard to watch the pictures that come from newspapers and our attention span is this big. But we have to remember when we go to fill up our tanks, and when we see the prices that we see, we have to remember we imposed sanctions and we wanted to help, and we thought it was important. And I agree with what Betsy said before, like this is a brave, this is a completely different world. The norm that upheld peace in Europe for so many years, the norm of not territorial gains, no territorial conflict, has been broken. And the way we react to that is crucial. Norms are both very powerful and very frail, and we have to remember that.

- The one thing I would say from experience in war zones is that money is much more important than any other kind of aid, because what's available depends so much on supply lines and whatever. So you're just much better off supporting organizations financially, and if you want to help, Medicins Sans Frontieres, other people with direct experience operating in war zones, is really the most reliable way to help. There are some fun social media thing, fun is the wrong adjective, but to the extent that this question of what information is available to Russians is a really critical one for the way things are going to go forward. There are some innovative social media efforts to communicate with Russians and get information to them. I know for instance some people are using, posting comments and photos about the war, information about the war in spaces for restaurant reviews, for restaurants, and places like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Places on the social media web that are not really moderated by the Russian government, at least not yet, maybe they will be eventually. If you're interested in that, I'm sure there are even more innovative things out there to do, but I would say money and information are the two most critical things.

- Can I just throw in quickly, that Maura is totally right, and it reminds me of one of the more innovative ways to give that I've seen in Ukraine, besides as Maura mentioned, the sort of well known, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Global Giving, there's a whole bunch of them out there where you can give money, but also people are, maybe some of you have heard of this, renting, they're booking Airbnbs with Ukrainian hosts, and the reason to do that, booking them for like tomorrow and the next day. The reason is that within 24 hours of the booking starting the host gets paid money, and people desperately need money. And I saw a post the other day suggesting that people book in Kharkiv, because people really need money there. So, and then you send, I mean, anyone who's interested can Google it, and there's lots of stories out there. But you book it, you send a note saying "I'm not coming, but please use the money." And some Airbnb hosts are actually housing people who have had to escape their own homes. So that was, I just thought that was a really interesting, clever thing that somebody discovered, and people just started doing.

- Thank you very much. I've been given the signal that it's time to bring the webinar to an end. And before I do, I'll just say just two quick comments. One is we'll be posting some of these various links, or organizations that are helping to the Center for Russian Culture at its website, and various sources that we have been relying on. And then secondly, one of the reasons why we decided to continue to very actively try to develop programming, given as we can see by the 500 people who are still with us, the pages and pages of questions, is that along with the degradation, the terrifying degradation of human life, of Ukrainian culture, is also the total assault on knowledge, and on expertise that we are seeing everywhere. And one of the, what we feel is absolutely incumbent is to try to provide these sorts of moments for experts to weigh in, and to provide opportunities to think together, to correct the record, to provide different ways of thinking about it. And so in the coming weeks, really, for as long as we can, we'll be having different events and maybe, hopefully, we'll see all of you again, particularly Sam, Maura, and Betsy, maybe we can call on you for another opportunity. And let me thank again, Eleanora, Sergey, and Bill for being with us and providing all of, and to all of you really, for providing your insight. And lastly to everybody that's joined us this evening, Thank you very much.