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How to pronounce pre-emptor in English?

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hello everyone my name is betty cruz and
i'm the president and ceo of the world
affairs council of pittsburgh it's my
honor and privilege to be with you today
when we started planning a conversation
on ukraine we did not imagine we would
be here talking about russia's invasion
and continued escalation
our mission at the council is to convene
and connect people around global issues
to build a thriving competitive and
inclusive pittsburgh
and our vision is for a globally minded
and globally connected world that is
equitable and just for all
i feel these words deeply when i say
them and i hope they resonate with you
too
before jumping into our program we want
to acknowledge for all joining us from
around the region and world
that we are located in pittsburgh
pennsylvania the unseated ancestral
lands of many indigenous peoples
including the seneca
lenape
osage and shawnee
through this acknowledgement we invite
you to join us in paying respect to the
elders both past and present
now we are honored to welcome ambassador
john teft who will provide insight into
president putin's decision to invade
ukraine and what this means for global
governance and diplomacy going forward
ambassador teft will be in conversation
with mila sinina who we are grateful to
partner with
mila is an independent journalist a
writer and editor based in pittsburgh
until earlier this year mila served as
the executive director of public source
a non-profit newsroom delivering public
service journalism in the pittsburgh
region
under mila's leadership public source
has been billed as one of the innovative
independent newsrooms known for its deep
local reporting
before joining public source in 2016
mila worked for five years at the
pittsburgh post gazette where her last
position was as deputy managing editor
prior to the post-gazette mila worked at
the pbs newshour and cnn international
she started her reporting career in
central asia
a native of al-mari kazakhstan mila
holds a master's degree from the
graduate school of public and
international affairs at the university
of pittsburgh and a bachelor's degree
from the american university in bulgaria
most of mila's family lives in
kazakhstan some are in russia and she
has further family connections in
ukraine
it is now my pleasure to turn it over to
mila to lead today's program mila take
it away
thank you betty and many thanks to the
world affairs council of pittsburgh for
hosting this important conversation
about the war in ukraine and for
trusting me to guide it we're lucky to
engage in a talk today with ambassador
john theft please let me lead with the
introduction ambassador john f theft is
a retired u.s diplomat and a senior
fellow at the rand corporation he was a
career foreign service officer for more
than 45 years completing his service as
the united states ambassador to the
russian federation from 2014 to 2017.
he earlier served as the u.s ambassador
to lithuania from 2000 to 2003
ambassador to georgia from 2000 to from
2005 to 2009 and ambassador to ukraine
from 2009 to 2013.
he worked from 2004 to 2005 as the
deputy assistant secretary of state for
european and eurasian affairs
responsible for u.s relations with
russia ukraine belarus and moldova his
other foreign service assignments
include jerusalem budapest and rome
ambassador test holds a bachelor's
degree from marquette university in
milwaukee wisconsin and a master's
degree from georgetown university in
washington dc
welcome ambassador
it's great to share this virtual space
with you today i i'd like to start with
a bit of a general question
um we are now on day nine since the
russian invasion of ukraine began and
it's been
heartbreaking to watch the extent of
human tragedy the devastation the
violence but also
hard to estimate what's what's happening
on the ground the latest news this
morning was that russian forces have
seized europe's biggest nuclear plant um
after heavy fighting in zappos in
southern ukraine
what are you hearing and what have you
been seeing that other people might be
missing
well thank you very much neil i'm glad
to be on the uh this web conference with
you and i want to thank the pittsburgh
world affairs council for inviting me
i'm glad to be here today with so many
uh
so many uh people
you know it's i should start just by
saying for me personally this is a
horrible tragedy uh you know i've been
in touch with friends
in ukraine and i i know how much they
are suffering uh some of them i can't
contact anymore
um and as someone who's worked in both
countries and worked in eastern europe
for
most of my uh adult life uh it just it
as you see you're heart sick to see what
is happening here
uh
these two peoples that always see
themselves as brotherly and sisterly you
know even putin has said this over and
over again
uh are now fighting and killing each
other it's just uh
the word that my friends in ukraine the
two words that they consistently use and
their emails to me are unbelievable and
surreal
nobody ever dreamed that it would come
to this point
you know it's
fundamentally as president biden and our
other senior government officials have
said this is the decision of one man he
vladimir putin controls russia and if we
had any doubt of that uh you know a week
ago this last monday when we all watched
at least part of that security council
session where he had his senior advisors
get up and basically pledge allegiance
to uh
military uh action in ukraine
uh
you could just see he basically is
is controlling it all
and and vladimir putin we can talk some
more about him personally but he's had a
strong desire to take ukraine back to
what right what he considers the wrong
of the
end of the soviet union uh you know from
the beginning we saw this particularly
uh when he uh
when he during the orange revolution
during the maidan in 2014 uh and then of
course in recent years since
after they invaded
crimea and
subverted started the subversion of the
donbas
it's just
it's hard to kind of understand that he
has bought in
to this uh
myth i would say that somehow russia can
recreate
its empire and the key to that empire in
his view is taking control of ukraine
and in in the broadest sense here what
we have is a collision
between this dream of putin
and the the the desire the dreams of
ukrainians uh to have a real independent
national state they got that back in 91
when the soviet union ended and they
reclaimed their independence
and they have tried
to build a state since then and putin
has tried to in this current round in
particular uh has resorted i think after
a lot of frustration uh to using
military force in the most brutal
manner to try to force ukrainians back
in
just one more word
early in this conflict uh it was
actually the couple days before the the
actual fighting started arkady ostrovsky
who is the russia editor for the
economist magazine in london
uh did a tweet uh
erica is an old friend of mine i've
known him for many years
he said i just can't figure out how
putin thinks he is going to get the
political changes that he wants
because the people of ukraine don't want
to be under the russian empire this
includes
as we've seen in many of the press uh
interviews and tweets from people in
heart eve and marupaul these places that
are
predominantly russian speaking these
people want to be part of an independent
ukraine they don't want to be a part of
the russian empire and seeing that over
and over again so the fundamental
question here is even as russia has
advanced
with great brutality in taking killing
and taking control of ukrainian
territory the fundamental question
remains how does he hope to get
this political control
that is at the core of what he's been
trying to do for the i think the last 20
years
yeah and and to that end uh what do you
make of the response of the west to the
invasion of ukraine and you know in
biden's state of the union this week we
we heard the you know the forceful
response and unity of the west in
response to putin's aggression but
um i'm i'm still wondering how effective
would that be and what's your assessment
of the sanctions and tactics of
isolation the west has adopted against
russia do you think it's enough
i i think that the the biden
administration has done a pretty good
job they had a couple of months to
prepare for this
and as we've seen uh they kept open the
prospects of negotiations president
biden worked closely with uh president
macron of france and and i'm glad that
macron is staying in touch with putin uh
not much came of their phone call
yesterday from everything we can see
uh macron said that he expects the
situation to get worse but we need to
keep that diplomatic uh avenue open
there
uh i think the administration has done a
tremendous job to rally the alliance
uh to uh
protect the members of the alliance
and uh to uh these sanctions that have
been imposed are draconian and are going
to have a huge impact
inside of russia
not just unfortunately on the oligarchs
and the people at the top who uh who
benefit from this but i think from a lot
of ordinary people are going to suffer
as well
the one issue that's or there's two
issues really that are still out there
in terms of
suggestions that are made
that the biden administration could do
more of one is uh to stop the russian
export of
energy
oil in particular
and the biden administration is held off
from doing that
because they know that the the with oil
price is high uh with the
other cuts that have gone on and the
refusal of opec to increase the amount
of
of
energy that's on the world market uh
that they wanted to keep that going
there's a lot of questions there's a
article this morning in the washington
post by fareed zakaria the cnn
uh correspondent who says we really
should take we should take that down
the other one and this is extremely
painful and that is
every day
many times i see emails statements from
president zielinski to ordinary people
in ukraine saying the west should really
uh impose a no-fly zone over ukraine and
prevent russian airplanes
from bombing uh
civilians and bombing military units
inside of ukraine
president biden has refused to do this
because he understands and i i i
think it was expressed again yesterday
and also this morning
in brussels by the nato secretary
general a no-fly zone basically would
mean bringing american military aircraft
nato military aircraft european aircraft
into conflict with russian aircraft that
control the skies over ukraine and it
would then lead conceivably to a larger
and even larger war with consequences
that we can't see
the tragedy is of course seeing the
russians controlling the skies and using
that uh
uncontrolled access to bomb and kill uh
not just military people in ukraine but
ordinary civilians and it's
it's extremely painful uh and i think
that secretary general of nato in
stolenburg said that again this morning
but uh the nato uh summit meeting this
morning the virtual summit meeting
reaffirmed that that was in fact nato
policy
[Music]
now let's um let's switch gears a little
bit and let's talk a little bit about
the information war going on um
right now that is less visible but i
think nevertheless powerful
um i i'd like to share a story
a personal story um my aunt uh lives in
danietsk then bus region that putin
before the invasion declared part of an
independent republic for my aunt this
war is the war of liberation um she
tells me they lived in a state of war
for eight years and shares gory stories
about atrocities about the whole
generation of kids being raised in the
state of war
um and you know she talks about the
leaflets she was she saw
um um about you know
anti-jewish propaganda
and she um does say that you know my
couch shakes every time there is another
bombardment by these nazis um she calls
putin the men of peace she tells me all
they want is autonomy in the russian
language
and then you know i hear that you now
live in the states and i know it's
probably um
she tells me uncomfortable for you to
hear this but uh you know i
uh america is guilty for splitting us up
for for making us fight our own brothers
and
uh there is a lot of split within the
family because your daughter lives in
kiev
and your granddaughters live in life
which is western part of ukraine
and
she when i asked her about their safety
she doesn't elaborate because they hear
from other family members that their
relationships are strained because
they're against putin
and you know on my on my mother's
television in kazakhstan she watches
russian news and russian news tells her
that there is no war at all it's
especially military operations there are
no civilian targets and they're there to
denatify um ukraine
and you know i'm seeing it play out
very vividly in my own family i'm also
seeing how talking to my nephew in
kazakhstan he is has multiple sources of
information and has a more skeptical
view of what's happening you know i'm
also seeing how the news is covered by
the western media um and
uh what is debunked and how it's sort of
spinning off
being spun off in a way that also goes
viral and then may not be really um
uh well verified and fact-checked
information because in the fog of war
uh you can't tweet your way out of it
you know things happen and it's very
hard to do news get news gathering um in
the state of war so i would love to hear
your sense of you know this information
uh war that is happening and further uh
dividing and confusing the situation and
what's what's your take on this and i
think it would be very helpful to hear
uh to some members of our audience who
are high school students like where do
you go to get your news and get the
latest and get a fuller picture of
the war in ukraine and what's happening
oh thank you mila uh there's several
questions involved in there so let me
try to take them down one at a time
let me start and tell you a story back
which is that when i was in moscow
as ambassador from 2014 to 2017 this i
arrived in september of 2014 about uh
six months after the russian invasion
and annexation of crimea
you know throughout my time in moscow
i came to i think two fundamental
conclusions one
is that the russian people were not
being told the truth uh particularly on
state television it's uh
and the interesting thing that happened
then and it's only gotten even more
prominent sense
is that young people completely turned
off
i remember early in my time i i asked
one young
professional in moscow i said so which
of the tv channels do you watch and he
said why would i want to watch any of
them
he got his information from uh
from the internet and he got it not not
just from western sources he got it from
a lot of russian sources because there
were a bunch of them many of them have
been driven out of russia
uh there's a website that's now in
latvia called meduza which you probably
see
periodically
uh
it's uh it has a lot of very good
information it's russian journalists
who've been driven out of russia or left
because they were threatened
they have a lot of information and
people
here in the states can access that just
if you go into google you can get it to
translate it very easily into english
and they do a pretty good job
the other thing i learned when i was in
moscow back in the 2014 to 2017 period
is that
russians in general but
the leadership in particular didn't have
a very good idea of what was really
going on in ukraine
and and uh i think we've seen that uh
illustrated in the failed strategy that
uh the military of ukraine of russia uh
started this war with they they thought
somehow everybody was just going to
welcome them to uh to uh
to russia and or tomorrow to ukraine and
they'd be able to take over ukraine and
drive out the government very quickly uh
that's obviously uh was uh faulty uh
logic but you know even when i was in
moscow i came to the conclusion very
quickly
that people just didn't get it
i had
been
ambassador in ukraine from 2009 to 2013
and in the spring and the summer of 2013
i had traveled
and made visits to donetsk to lucansk
uh and i also took a trip
the last trip really i took in ukraine
was down to odessa and then drove to
michaelave and hairstone these uh
hairstone is a city that's now under the
control of russia
and you know i talk to all kinds of
people there uh you know not just the
calling on the governor and the mayor
but i talk to other people and my staff
my ukrainian staff talked to people so
we came away with kind of a composite
sense of things and i'll tell you
none of those people wanted to be a part
of russia
none of them wanted to be under the
control of russia they may agree with
their government at the time this was uh
president yanukovych was still in power
um and they had all kinds of grievances
against him but it wasn't an option and
i found the same in donetsk and lugansk
uh i read the other day in the new york
times this is right before the war that
something like a half a million people
had left donetsk and lugon skin moved to
harkeef a big city north of donetsk and
lugans now those poor people having fled
violence and and uh war in their
uh home region are now of course caught
in this horrible russian uh attack on
parky which has got all kinds of uh uh
weapons being used against civilian
apartment buildings and the rest of it
but i came away from this whole period
with this sense of just they just didn't
get it they didn't understand how modern
ukraine had changed in the 30 years
since the soviet union had fallen apart
and sadly the assumptions that were
built into this military campaign seem
to confirm just that
now in terms of the uh
the disinformation or the information
that's put out there uh i try very hard
and i did this is kind of a carryover
from when i was a diplomat to look at
all sides i of course read uh american
experts both at the
journalists who are
deployed out there but also uh people in
the think tank world here who i trust
i've tried to tap into russian think
tanks to make sure i understand and i
look at various uh russian websites the
medusas who are opposed to the
government
but also other russian websites that
report russia news so that i have a a
good sense and a feel for what they're
doing
and you know i just have to say that
the fundamental point that president and
putin made that this is somehow uh the
government of ukraine zolinski
is a uh is a nazi and that he's or drug
addicts i mean this is just preposterous
russia has throughout my
life working on russia or the soviet
union before it because i go back
this is going to date me make me feel
even older than i already am but i was
on the soviet desk at the state
department in 1983.
i arrived right before they shot down
the korean airliner that killed
270 people
there's always they've always used the
united states and nato as a as a foil
you know we're to blame for everything
and i think actually that many in the
leadership president putin and others
actually do blame the united states for
the of the soviet union they do not want
to admit that this was a problem of of
their own system uh and of course this
has become one of the
the the worst parts of the propaganda
that somehow uh the united states
and nato are responsible uh for this
whole thing but i think it's pretty easy
if you take a quick look to understand
that uh a lot of the uh propaganda
that's the only word i can use is just
unfounded and uh i i give the ukrainians
a lot of credit i think they have won
the information war here uh in turn so
far
uh you know the
zelinski and the ukrainian people for
the resistance have captured the
imagination of the world and all you
have to do is watch tv or look at
newspapers or magazines and you can see
that
you can see not just in the united
states but in europe people are turning
against russia
opera stars
football teams uh conductors are being
spurned and being having their contracts
torn up because they refuse to speak out
against putin
i think it's pretty clear that the the
propaganda
is wrong but i understand and you gave
us a good example of your relative in
donetsk who who watches this stuff and
believes all of this stuff
the question i have and this will be my
last point uh probably too long an
answer i'm sorry but uh you hit a a
bunch of questions
there i i think the uh
the fundamental question is going to
come home now when when all of these
russian soldiers these young soldiers
who are being killed in this conflict uh
when people
at the grass roots level the street
level understand
that these have come are coming home
dead
they ask themselves what for
what is it i mean for years for their
whole lives they were told that they
were friendly peoples ukrainians and
russians and so putin manufactured this
idea that somehow he was just uh
defending the the donetsk and lugons
when in fact it's a nationwide war that
they have launched there's going to be
an accounting here at some point
of this and maybe the russian government
has already started that but ordinary
people are going to say why did my
friend
lose his life
he didn't know his last message was
we're here on maneuvers and then he in
belarus and he finds himself inside of
ukraine and then getting killed there's
this is going to take some time but i
think it's going to seep through into
the consciousness of ordinary people at
least that's
that's what i would suspect
you know i'm seeing a quite a few
questions about the extent of this
aggression or potential extent
and i would like to
invite readers to keep
questions rolling i will we will attend
to them
in a few minutes uh but i have a
question that is about this you know you
served as an as the u.s ambassador to
georgia and saw putin's aggression
firsthand in 2008. um i am curious how
do you read his ultimate objective in
ukraine what is the likelihood that it
will spill over into moldova or goes
into as one
question was
you know will it stay contained in the
ukraine or will there be a larger impact
spread to disputed areas like you think
about transnistia aposia south asia and
other
areas so i i would be very curious to
hear your sense because everybody in the
post-soviet um sphere of influence
everybody's scared that you know like
when when will putin stop
oh it's a good question and i'm not sure
there's a good answer for it at this
point because we're in the midst of this
uh horrible war
uh but you're right my friends in
georgia are scared uh my friends in the
in lithuania and moldova they're scared
uh and they should be
i think a lot of the
a lot of this is going to be impacted by
how the rest of the war goes if you look
at the maps in the newspapers
you can see that the
apart from coming down to try to take
keeve and they have not been successful
the ukrainians have been
uh the words of one military observer i
read just brilliant in the way they have
uh stopped the russian onslaught coming
down from the north
but they're they're close to taking uh
harkeef basically they're using the same
methods there that they used in chechnya
they've surrounded most of the city and
are just bombing and killing innocent
civilians righted left from everything
i've read in the newspaper
you can see that they're taking uh
they've taken a lot of the coastline
along the black sea in the south
uh mario ball is apparently still
holding but it won't hold much longer it
appears from what we can see
and then the queen there's a battle at
mikolaya which controls the bridge over
the nepro river which will uh is the way
into odessa which of course is the third
largest city of the in the country and a
lot of speculation as to whether they'll
try to to do that as well
um
so
i think at this point i mean
the question
and i was on a web conference this
morning with several american military
experts who who know this area well the
question is how successful are the
russian forces going to be
uh they still haven't secured but one a
large uh city in ukraine they're still
fighting and dying uh on the road to
trying to take the others
are we gonna end up here with just
russia controlling the eastern part
will they even try to move west uh where
you have even more uh ukrainian
many more ukrainian nationalists live
out of la viv in the western part than
live in the east
but i think everybody in ukraine has
become pretty much a
ukrainian nationalist at this point
will they be able to do that where where
does the
where does the uh
where does it get too hard for the
russians because of course the other
thing and we haven't talked about this
yet are the sanctions that are coming
down the russian economy is very quickly
coming they'll halt
and uh you know when will you get to a
point where you just can't keep this
going the other problem is
that the military experts point out is
that the russians have clearly not done
a good job with their logistics you know
this these big trains of uh
trucks and tanks that we see north of
the highway north of kyiv many of them
can't move forward because they don't
have gas
plus they've got russian soldiers who
are deserting rather than continue to
fight in this war and watch their
friends get killed
um
so there's a what i'm trying to describe
is a very fluid situation which where it
makes it really hard to make a judgment
about
not only the the military campaign in
ukraine but then if they even if they do
succeed in in taking
a lot of ukraine i think you'll still
have guerrilla warfare in the east and
you'll certainly have fighting in the
west are the russians going to be ready
to try to move into another country at
this point
last point i read this morning that the
russians are now bringing in more troops
from their eastern uh military district
and their uh the the military district
around central asia
because they're losing casualties
they're losing people and so this war
if this becomes a war of attrition what
are the what's going to happen to the
russian army will that will they even be
in a position to try to
to advance to another country um
knowing full well that if they go for
example the poland or the baltic
countries then they will engage nato uh
fully and we're sending even more troops
there so uh i'm not sure it's a it's a
it's a done deal that uh russia is going
to go into uh these other countries at
this point we'll just we'll just have to
see how it goes there's a you can make
the argument both ways
you know in in terms of things that are
fluid and uncertain and in a way
unprecedented you know we heard the
world to say never again that there
wouldn't be
a world war
but
there is more and more um i guess
concern about how far it can escalate
especially given that you know the
military and the weaponry itself has
become much more sophisticated and if in
the past with the cuban missile crisis
uh you know nuclear weapons there were
protest uh protests to
uh denuclearize nuclear allies so to
speak the militaries now you know putin
is brandishing his nuclear
arsenal and there is a huge question of
what's the probability that he may
deploy it um and how can we you know
they have been in different um
um
analyses that i've read uh sort of this
assessment of putin as unhinged um uh
dictator you know he is capable of
anything i would be curious based on
your experience
what do you make of these um
analyses and where do you put this
probability
you know i know you were going to ask me
that question mila so i was trying to
think ahead and uh i have a good friend
who's a psychiatrist
and uh
he's been sending doing a couple of
publications and
saying that uh trying to get to the
bottom of this whether putin has really
become unhinged he's crazy you know you
we've all read these things in the
newspaper
and uh
he he sent a note to me today or he sent
a column that he just published
and he said
[Music]
trying to explain why putin is doing
what he's doing and obviously one
question is he's very emotional about
this and we've seen this on his tv
performances
putin was always at least in my time in
moscow and before
you know he was willing to take risks
but they were always calculated risks he
was a calculated risk taker and now he
seems to have
made these emotional decisions which uh
haven't been based on really sound
analysis or real understanding of the
situation in ukraine
but then the question of his own
personal uh ability my friend wrote in
here i'm going to just read jewish
a couple of sentences which i think kind
of
addressed this issue
my friend says putin's age could have
relevance here putin is 69 years old
aging leaders faced with competing
pressures of ambition their legacy
and their mortality
sometimes make rash decisions
bolstered by cognitive rigidity and a
lack of integrative complexity
in putin's case his isolation
and this is his isolation during because
of covet and he's been very isolated as
we all know
is isolation compounded by silver v key
these are the hardliners around him
compounded by siloviki groupthink could
have played a role in the no the
intelligence failure to plan this
properly so i'm sorry if it sounds a
little bit too uh psychiatric but i
think there's a lot of there's a lot of
truth to that and as someone who's 72
years old you know i try i fight against
cognitive rigidity all the time uh you
know i can understand as a human being
what he's trying to say
uh
about that and uh
there may be something there the bottom
line is that none of us know on this or
many other questions where he's from uh
all i do know is that uh
he's very he's been very emotional he
has a clearly a big chip on his shoulder
he's frustrated by his failure to get
his way in ukraine over the last 20
years
and he's he's kind of gone all in on it
this time and uh we've i've mentioned
the kinds of things that will inhibit
his success i think there's been a lot
of failures already but they've doubled
down now and they're uh using really
barbaric methods uh killing civilians uh
you know even attacking nuclear power
plants to try to get control of the
electricity grids uh it's a pretty
i it's part of the russian playbook we
saw it in in syria we saw it in chechnya
and it's sadly being worked even on
these
uh what the russians have always called
the brotherly people you know
it's hard to understand but it shows the
the emotion and the anger that putin has
on this issue
you know i this this will be the last
question from me and then i'm gonna move
to the audience questions um
i would like to ask you about the
humanitarian crisis that we see
unfolding um in the ukraine as of
march 1st
according to the united nations over one
million refugees have already fled
ukraine to neighboring countries um and
are currently being welcomed it was
predicted as that this will be the
largest uh
european refugee crisis this century it
is also important to note that along
with the welcoming um messages and um
you know the sort of the the hope and
the welcoming the hopeful welcome there
has also there also have been reports of
many students from african and asian
countries being discriminated against
as they have been attempted to cross the
border into countries accepting
ukrainian refugees
so how are these countries smaller
countries
such as romania slovak slovakia moldova
expected to handle this flood of people
and um you know what uh what what if
some of the humanitarian efforts are
being uh made to ensure the safety of
both refugees and citizens of um these
countries and the safety of you know
black and brown refugees seeking to
escape ukraine
they're very good questions and i think
we've all watched on tv some of these
just
heart-rending experiences of
ukrainian women and children arriving at
the border in poland or in slovakia or
hungary
and being permitted to come in after you
know
10 20 hours trying to get out of hark
eve and get to the west to be able to
protect their kids
uh
we saw this one yesterday that just kind
of broke your heart
these husband and wife from you from
denmark had literally driven from
denmark down to this polish border town
and they had a sign saying
we can take eight people and so they had
each driven a car
and they were going to take four people
each and drive them back to denmark
and basically take care of them you know
i mean it's an amazing outpouring of of
uh
of not just sympathy but a willingness
to try to to do this and the governments
have done pretty well
the estate the uh
congress is is being asked right now to
uh
pass a large uh
bill which would provide a lot more
money for refugees
and i i was pleased yesterday i think
it'll go through pretty quickly uh i was
pleased to see yesterday that the uh
that we've apparently are going to let
ukrainians stay in our country at least
temporarily how this works out and gets
adjusted i think is is is good and the
europeans are going to do that as well
uh my wife and i watched one of these
programs where it showed the young
african students who had been in ukraine
being uh turned back at the polish
border
and this particular
interview said is this just pure racism
and i obviously don't know this the
situation but you know these african
students it may not just it may not be
racism it may be uh regulations visa
laws now if these students are in
ukraine
studying on a uh
and are on their passport from the
african country that they live in they
may not be eligible the same way
ukrainians with ukrainian passports
would be to get in
my point is not to defend this i'm not
trying to do that but there may be
legal technical issues here
visa officers at the border or the uh
immigration people have to comply with
the law of the land and there may be
something like that we have pretty
difficult laws on sometimes
you have to have special waivers to be
able to get in maybe they'll they'll do
that i don't know it looks horrible when
you see it on the television but there
may be some kind of an underlying legal
justification that the newspaper
reporters haven't mentioned
and you know you would like to think
that that people they would be let in
but uh
uh you know that that may be something
that's up to the polish and uh
slovak and hungary and and romanian
authorities
yeah you know i have seen also reports
that that has happened at train stations
where uh they're not allowed to board
trains uh whereas they may not be you
know
the for for transport or somehow um
being pushed away um so i think
to your point there is a lot of
complexity i mean i also remember when i
was traveling with kazakhstani passport
through slovakia we got stopped at the
border um as well just because we didn't
have any visa
let me go to um
audience questions there is a question
about what the us
organizations usaid organizations could
do
to get help to those in need in an
effective way and i think it would be
you know it's relevant to our pittsburgh
audience who has been moved by this uh
this crisis and would like to do
something do you have any suggestions uh
for them
well i i've talked to people uh
uh
at state and uh they they have put out
and i i don't have it here in front of
me so i can't uh read the organizations
now
uh in terms of taking care of people
inside still inside ukraine the the
the the organization that i'm constantly
being or i've seen constantly uh
referenced is unicef
uh the unit has the one of the best
systems to take care obviously of
children inside of
of ukraine and refugee families
the un high commissioner for refugees is
dealing with displaced persons inside of
ukraine as well as those who have left
to um
uh to get out of ukraine to go to uh
poland romania or whatever and then
there's a whole group of organizations
the i don't have a list now but my
daughter sent this to me of
organizations that you can
contribute to it seems that the the some
of the bigger organizations have the
best uh
and most well-organized relief efforts
um perhaps
the world affairs council people can
access one of those and put it up on the
website here
of the different places that you can
can you you can make contributions uh to
help refugees and displaced persons
um there is a question about um
uh
about the
uh president zielenski's decision of
staying behind to fight the russian
federation uh do you agree with it if
yes what should zelinski do next if no
then what should he what should have he
done
you know i i'm not gonna second guess
this i have no idea exactly i know there
i've seen in the papers he's moving
around
inside of uh
of kiev uh
i have i don't have information so
there's no way of kind of telling him
what he should do now or others i think
president biden said it best the other
day that's his decision he's got to do
it according to the newspapers we've
urged him to try to to move out but uh
it's clear that one of the reasons
ukrainians are standing up is that their
president is uh has taken such a strong
stand and a courageous stand and uh you
know i i saw yesterday one of the
american journalists who met him at a
secret location said you're being
compared to churchill
and uh zlinski with his usual humor said
uh or they said are you an icon and he
said he said i'm not a nikon ukraine is
the icon uh and you know he had some
kind of funny thing i i know on on
churchill he said he said i don't think
i'm churchill he said the one thing i do
know churchill drank more than i do uh
but it was it was a classic zelinski
response to this
but clearly his his staying there is it
has been a source of inspiration for the
people of ukraine he's extremely popular
now do they have plans if things if the
russians close on key for him to get out
of there i would hope so i'd hope people
who are figuring out how they're going
to do this because it would be
would be terrible if he were to die
uh because he's the the symbol better to
move to another location outside of kiev
if it really comes to that of that that
be my sense uh
he's too valuable uh to lose at this
point but uh i don't know what he's
gonna
do could you explain why the u.s
european countries wouldn't have
pre-announced an overwhelming number of
sanctions that would be immediately
triggered the minute russian troops
crossed the border as it seemed that
this wait and sea with escalating
sanctions hasn't worked to deter the
aggression yeah
i uh
i'm not in government obviously anymore
and i don't bother my friends who are
working enormously hard at the state
department in the pentagon to try to
deal with this crisis
uh
i try to stay as best informed as i can
i think
there's probably two answers to your
question the first is they they really
did
hope that this would somehow the
sanction not putting sanctions in
holding them out like a sort of damocles
over the russians had would deter putin
and that obviously didn't work but there
may be another factor here that we don't
know about which is
uh president biden and his team have
tried extremely hard to stay in very
close
i won't say lockstep but very closely
coordinated with the europeans and it
may be that the europeans were not
prepared to move ahead on some of these
uh kind of unpreemptorially preemptory
pre-emptor
uh
preemptorial i guess that's the word uh
sanctions against uh against russian you
know my own sentence is that putin had
pretty much made up his mind to do this
one way or the other uh but and the one
thing we do know is that having started
the war uh the sanctions have been uh
heavy and fast and draconian and there's
more still coming
you know there is a bit of a couple of
follow-up questions about this uh
nuclear weapons threat um and one is you
know um
if putin is indeed is indeed unhinged
enough to launch nuclear warheads are
there enough level-headed people within
russia's military to stop that and then
there is you know there is another uh
the question within in the same
realm um what what strategies uh could
be uh discussed to ensure that putin
won't have any desire to escalate it and
put nuclear options into practice and
thinking about third round of
negotiations coming up what would be the
face saving solutions out of this
terrible war
well face saving solutions require one
fundamental uh factor that we don't have
now which is putin's willingness to
actually negotiate
based on the call that macron had with
him yesterday he doesn't seem to be
ready to do that
uh when i saw the statement he the
statements he's made about uh you know
nuclear weapons
i took that to mean that he was using
this as a kind of a warning to us and to
the europeans
uh as we imposed more and more sanctions
on russia you know it was kind of like
don't forget i still have these nuclear
weapons i didn't take it as a i'm going
to use these necessarily
um
obviously i don't know either but that
was kind of the my kind of seat of the
pants reaction to this uh because he
does know that the united states has the
ability to
to destroy russia uh they may be able to
do it to us too but i don't think
putin
has an idea that somehow he can uh he
could win and survive and achieve his
objectives with nuclear war i think he
also has a substantial concern about his
own safety about these things and he
knows that uh
any kind of a nuclear exchange with
russia that's it
uh so
you know i
i take it seriously but i also uh i'm
not losing sleep on that i'm not losing
sleep on that like i'm losing sleep
worrying about my friends in the middle
of keith
do you think that it's we heard um we
heard about some people being uh invite
or
volunteering to fight um on the side of
ukrainian army and there is a question
do you think that it's a smart idea for
nato countries to allow these citizens
to go and fight in ukraine even if they
can't come back um
radicalized
i don't know i saw a report yesterday
that said that something like 15 000 uh
people non-ukrainians have shown up to
fight
i don't think that the western countries
can prevent
uh certainly the united states can't
prevent somebody from going uh to fight
at least as i understand the united
states
law i don't know for sure about the
europeans uh
zielinski's been encouraging people to
come and fight uh especially people who
have military experience because they
need all of the people they can to fight
on all of these different fronts uh i
don't
i don't think the administration will
stop that any more than it's stopping
the many private efforts to send a
medal and relief to ukraine during the
war
there is a question about the um the war
crimes allegations um this week
we saw we saw that and there is a
question do you think that russia is
guilty of committing these crimes or
rather like what is the process to
investigating uh war crimes and actually
finding um a party in this case russia
guilty of those um
of those war crimes
i've i'm not a a
lawyer here and i'll defer to people
i've seen different reports on
on television and on the internet that
say that the
targeting of civilians uh is a war crime
in a number of different places i've
personally watched uh
the it was really cluster bombs that
were dropped in harkee than what was
clearly a residential neighborhood and
then yesterday you probably saw in
hartke
they showed uh four missiles coming down
and just wiping out a whole apartment
block i mean there was no military
around that as far as anybody could see
i didn't see a military vehicle in the
picture so there's i from what i can
tell is a as a
non-lawyer type there's no question that
they have committed war war crimes and
as we see in other you know this is as i
said before it says the same approach
they took in chechnya and they've took
in in syria when they bombed
aleppo and killed all kinds of civilian
people
i think there will be uh an accounting
here and i saw tony blinken the
secretary of state said yesterday we're
keeping track uh and we will uh we'll
pursue this now i saw that the u.n human
rights commission i think late yesterday
created a commission that was voted
overwhelmingly to in
to investigate these war crimes and i
think there's other groups that are
doing the same thing so there will be an
accounting for this uh at some point uh
i can't predict exactly how it'll turn
out but would seem to me just from the
observation i can make on television
that uh war crimes against civilians
have taken place
and and you know the
given that the the hague uh would be the
international um court would be involved
in this case and speaking of
international organizations there is a
question if nato and u.n are not taking
any action on this issue and seems to be
and seem to be
you know uh
rather ineffective in preventing this
conflict um why should taxpayers support
these organizations
well you know
i think most people know the we'll put
it this way the u.n human rights
commission is taking action to deal with
the question of war crimes
the united nations
has always had a problem dealing with
conflicts in which uh one of the uh
one of the five permanent members is
involved because they have a veto and as
we've seen the russians try over the
last week they have vetoed uh
resolutions um
and what happened was that uh when they
vetoed the security council resolution
uh condemning russia they passed a
resolution to uh what's called uniting
for peace to take it at the general
assembly and two days ago we had this
overwhelming vote
uh condemning russia in the general
assembly there's no question that uh
russia even with some of its friends uh
you know china uh abstained uh cuba and
others abstained there and i think cuba
voted with them but they had like five
votes in the entire general assembly uh
they're you they're they're
really a pariah in the inner in the
world right now
but
any as i said anytime there's a secure
the involvement of a permanent member
and particularly russia in this case uh
you're not going to be able to get
action by the united nations because the
russians will veto it and that's one of
the weaknesses of the u.n but the u.n
does a a lot of other good in the world
and
we don't always even read about it
doesn't make it into our papers the u.n
is still in my view a very worthwhile
organization to support and uh something
that we should continue to do
um there is a question that is about uh
nova gazietta in moscow recently
reported on the presence of chi chiang
soldiers among the russian army headed
toward kiev
according to the newspapers military
analysts the chechens have special
skills in clearing out resistance in
cities in
street to street building to building
fighting which they demonstrated during
the chechen war
nova gazietta continues to describe this
as a war in ukraine and seems to be
relatively independent in its reporting
what have you heard about this
yeah
is one of the websites that i uh i
follow carefully i used to also follow
echo musk v the radio station which had
a very good website but that's been shut
down now by the russian government
um
and uh you know tv dosh uh the tv reign
uh that's been taken off the air as well
but novaya gazette continues i think
probably in part because
the editor mr muratov uh got the nobel
prize uh
and uh you know it would be yet another
uh
black mark on russia if they were to
take this off the air they're careful on
how they uh do some of the reporting and
you know i think they even have a i
think they use the word war but in
russia now you can they just passed the
law today that says who uh
if you don't report if you report this
as a war you can get 15 years in prison
uh it's uh it just passed the uh
federation council today so you have to
use this euphemism you know special
military operation to describe what
they're doing otherwise you can get into
deep trouble and be fined in russia
i saw a web a meme the other day on the
web that showed the cover somebody had
adjusted the cover of the
of a russian version of tolstoy's war
and peace
and instead of the word for
war in russian they had put special
military operation and peace uh on the
cover just to make fun of uh this idea
that this is some kind of an operation
in the donbas when in fact it's a much
bigger war that uh that russia and
russia alone has stimulated
i have more questions here but i know
that we have um we're running against
time we still have three minutes um so
i'm trying i'll try to get through as
many as i can one is about the um
a question the question about russian
public uh we hear many people talk about
the withheld information from the
russian public soldiers are withheld
information about the true reason for
invading ukraine the citizens of russia
do not know the truth of what's going on
and their children are being sent to
fight a conflict they don't know about
and the deaths of people those that do
are being silenced by the police and
government especially in protest do you
think that the people would rebel
against putin to the point of
overthrowing him successfully or is he
simply at a position to stay in power
i think that this point the the
the actions of the government the last i
checked there's like seven or eight
thousand people have been jailed for
protesting in different cities all
across of russia the protesting against
the war and the the regime as the
government has clamped down hard on
these people and i think we'll continue
to do that because in the end uh this is
an illegitimate war and the people as
i've tried to say i think the people of
russia will eventually come to realize
that more um
they're working the propaganda on tv
quite extensively so i don't see and i i
i was on a web conference with some
russians the other day and they don't
see any kind of a challenge to the
government at this particular point but
we'll see depending on how how long this
goes on
um this will be my last question you
mentioned earlier about putin's
advancing age reports indicating that
putin is really alone in this
without an inner circle of advisor so
other influence if she falls do you
think there is a clear leader that would
rise in russia and uh would they like to
continue with putin's efforts and also
you know a lot of people who are in
power right now are really soviet uh
people who came of age in the soviet
union
and really um have stayed along um
ruling the country that has been
independent
for a long time so would really um
that's that's the last question
i i would just say that uh i think putin
has made sure there is no
uh heir apparent there you know if you
remember two years ago
they changed the constitution to allow
putin to
run again for president in 2024 and
again another time in 2030 he could stay
in power technically uh until 2036. i'm
not sure he's going to do that because
later this year he's going to turn 70.
but many of the guys who were uh around
him mr patricia the head of the security
council mr bortnikov the head of the
federal security service the fsb the
successor to the kgb these guys are in
their 70s too uh and uh you you know
even with the best medicine and the rest
of it time marches on and uh
i think there's a lot of people within
the russian system among the elites who
would love to be able to move up the
problem in the russian system is as soon
as you put your hand up or your head up
you're liable to get it
chopped off because so you don't want to
uh get out there and be seen as any kind
of a challenge and so i haven't seen
anything over the last
week and a half that indicates that
people are
of a senior level are standing up to try
to do that the opposition is on the
street the opposition is in professional
circles journalists intellectuals
uh and then the the the many thousands
of people ordinary folks who've gone out
on the street to uh to demonstrate
against this war and just say it's just
wrong
well thank you ambassador it's pleasure
to share the space with you and betty
for closing remarks
thank you ambassador theft uh thank you
mila sunina thank you everyone who has
joined us today for caring about the
world there is much more to cover i know
we ran out of time many other questions
were out there
much more to cover on this topic that
we'll continue to
bring back to you through new
programming as well as other global
issues we'll be sharing information in
the days ahead on how pittsburghers can
join together to support ukraine if you
enjoyed today's program please follow us
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everyone wishing you all peace see you
next time

hello everyone my name is betty cruz and

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pre-emptor::noun | Spocien Dictionary

pre-emptor

noun

/pri_'ɛmptər/

someone who acquires land by preemption

Type	Words
Synonyms	preemptor
Type of	appropriator

pre-emptor::noun | Spocien Dictionary

pre-emptor

noun

/pri_'ɛmptər/

a bidder in bridge who makes a preemptive bid

Type	Words
Synonyms	preemptor
Type of	bidder

Examples of pre-emptor

pre-emptor

The pre-emptor might have almost anything, particularly at favorable vulnerability.

From the stltoday.com

How to pronounce pre-emptor in English?

pre-emptor::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

Related words

pre-emptor::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

Related words

Examples of pre-emptor

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