(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

The situation in Ukraine with Russia's invasion has created impact that's rippled across the world.

Joining us to lend perspective to that situation from the BGSU, Department of Political Science are Dr. Marc Simon and Dr. Neal Jesse, and from Bowling Green State University's School of Media and Communications, Dr. Ellen Gorsevski.

So, thank you all for being here and joining us on The Journal.

And I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Obviously, we've got a topic here, we're gonna spend about 25, 26 minutes on it.

It has a lot more than that.

But maybe we can illuminate some of the problems and some of the issues that people are dealing with.

It's on the news every night.

So, Neal, talk about how we got here.

Why are we here at this point in time with Ukraine and Russia?

- Well, it's a pretty complicated situation.

But I'll try and boil it down to what's happened in the last few decades.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a breakup of the 15 Soviet socialist republics.

Ukraine was one of those.

Became independent as did Baltic nations and nations in central Asia.

With the reorganization of the Russian Federation and Putin coming to power in 2000, he has slowly but surely tried to unify Russia.

He's tried to stabilize Russia, he's tried to build their economy back.

Part of this has been dominating the neighboring countries.

Right, trying to ensure that countries near him have friendly foreign policies to Russia.

And so, you know, Ukraine is an important nation to Russia.

It's where they transport energy through to Europe.

But also, they think of it as a buffer state, as a barrier state to Western aggression.

And so, since 2000, you know, Putin ended the wars of Chechnya with direct military intervention.

In 2018, he invaded Georgia over a separatist issue in the Republic of Georgia through direct military aggression.

In 2014, when it appeared to Putin that Ukraine would take a more pro-western stance, and in particular, try to integrate more with the European Union, he solved the problem through direct military aggression, in which-- - There's a trend developing.

- Yes.

- There's a pattern here.

- In a military special operation, they took Crimea, they seized the Peninsula Crimea.

They encouraged separatism in the Donbas region.

The problem was is that it both went well and didn't go well in 2014.

The seizure of Crimea was simple.

It led to a referendum in which Crimea decided to be part of the Russian Federation even though not recognized by the international community.

And the Donbas region though, it stalled.

The rebels there or the separatists, were incapable of establishing that pseudo state there.

They were incapable of fully making it independent from Ukraine.

And so Putin has been stuck since 2014 in a bad situation in which Russia has been supporting the separatists in Ukraine, fighting a long war against Ukraine while technically not of fighting a war with Ukraine, right?

Because they're allowing the separatists to do it.

And we've gotten to a position here where Putin had to either kind of cut his losses or go further.

A lot of the literature that was written about the war in Ukraine after 2014 said basically, the way it summed it up is everybody loses.

Russia was losing, Ukraine was losing, the separatists were losing.

No one gained anything from the 2014 conflict.

So, this particular war is more like a continuation play in which Putin decided to gamble.

He thought the west was divided, he thought NATO was divided, he thought various individual leaders were weak.

And think what he did to Macron.

He brought the French president in and tried to make him look like a fool by sitting him at a long table and gauge how weak he truly was.

And I think he firmly believed some of their own lies about Ukraine, and that Zelensky was weak and the Ukrainian people were weak and so on.

So, you know, this particular war was an attempt to continue to dominate Ukraine in a way that Russia has tried to dominate its neighbors since 2000.

So it had just been part of a predictable pattern.

I think though that it was the miscalculation of the response of the west that really, you know, is what has led to such a large conflict here.

- Steve, I wanna mention, Neal's written a book that just published a year ago that's basically on this, you know, Learning From Russia's Wars, when, where and why Russia will strike next, so he was not surprised that this happened.

I guess I should mention some basic historical things too though that Russians and Ukrainians are different identities, different nationalities.

But because Ukraine was part of the late Russian empire and part of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of Russification there so Ukrainians speak Russian, and, you know, it was traditionally thought of as the bread basket of the Soviet Union.

But, you know, we know that they're different nations, different identities, right?

But I think in Putin's mind and in some of the people around him, there's this belief that, well, you've probably heard, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was this terrible thing for Russia.

And I think his mind is more, "Let's restore the sort of grand juror of Russia "back in the days of the czar and the the Russian empire."

And that Ukraine and Belarus to some extent are real central to that in addition to the strategic part about being a buffer state.

And so I think that's part of the motivation for this aggressive war.

The other thing I'll just throw out is that Crimea, historically was actually more Russian than Ukrainian.

Khrushchev gave that to Ukraine kind of to compensate them for Stalin's horrible genocidal famines that he generated in Ukraine but that was the Soviet Union trying to get Ukraine integrated into the Soviet Union, right?

So, there's a lot of history here and a lot of problems.

But, you know, there is that imperialistic desire, I think, to rebuild the power and stature of Russia that's driving them.

- And Ellen, as we've talked about this, obviously the message that we're seeing in from all different perspectives, where Putin portrays himself as the savior of Russia.

He's trying to, and as you gentlemen have said, he believes the people in Ukraine or at least in his mind, are Russian so they should be part of Russia.

So, talk a little bit about the messaging we've seen so far.

And obviously there's a lot we can talk about there.

- Oh, the lens of the union.

Yeah, I could go on for hours but to kind of recap briefly, you know, the latest data I've looked at in terms of polling was from about mid-March.

So, it's about two weeks old so I'm not sure if it's ticked up or down since then.

But the main important thing to remember is that most Russians are behind this.

Most Russians perceive Ukraine as part of Ukraine just as most Americans see Texas as part of America rather than as part of Mexico.

So now, that's not withstanding in terms of their removing their final independent media, instituting draconian laws to prevent journalists from even mentioning the word war with regard to Ukraine.

- [Steve] Wow.

- So there's a lot of gap and lack of knowledge.

But the majority of Russians as of right now are quite behind what they understand to be sort of a minor administrative matter similar to the US say dealing with immigration on the border whenever there are periodic surges.

So, in terms of the media portrayals in the west, us grossly over-simplifying the message down to Putin, it's really incorrect.

The majority of Russians, at least as of the latest data I've looked at, are really still behind it.

Now, would they be as enthusiastic or they to be more aware of what's actually going on objectively?

There are upticks in terms of hundreds of thousands of VPNs, virtual private networks, showing at least younger Russians, gen X, gen Z, are trying to get more real knowledge about what's going on, but that's the minority.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- So it's really hard to say.

- Well, and we come back, we can talk more about it because, yeah, what we view at least, I think probably most Americans view is, what you're saying is like the average Russian, if there is such a thing as an average Russian just like we have average American, they're seeing is you're indicating a totally different view of what, even from this, the actual impact is very small.

They look at it as you said, almost like a border situation while we see it as a global strategic world-shaking, maybe the start of World War II, think so.

We come back, let's talk a little about that and of course, more of the historical perspective too, because as you said, there's a lot of layers to this to get to.

Back in just a moment.

We're talking with the BGSU faculty about Ukraine, Dr. Marc Simon, Dr. Neal Jesse, Dr. Ellen Gorsevski.

So back in just a moment, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on the journal.

Our guests are Dr. Ellen Gorsevski from the school of media and communications here at Bowling Green State University.

And two members of the faculty at the department of political science, Dr. Marc Simon and Dr. Neal Jesse.

Obviously, as we talked about huge, huge issue, a lot of things we can't spend as much time on, but Dr. Simon, the west reaction has been in some ways very united, but then occasionally not as united.

So talk a little about the west reaction and how that has proceeded as we've now a month into this.

- So, I think Neal was right that Putin really underestimated the west for good reason because there's been a lot of tension in NATO in the last five years, right?

But the thing about this is, you know, the narrative that the Russian people who watch state media belief that Ellen talked about is one thing.

The narrative that the west sees is a another.

And it's based on the echoes that this has of historical precedent from World War II.

And also I think the primary rule in international politics since the founding of the UN is you do not take over other countries by force.

- [Steve] Right.

- That is like the foundational goal of the UN; to enforce that rule so that we do not have World War III.

And Russia just so blatantly violates that.

In contrast to the Crimea's takeover in 2014 where they kind of snuck in, send the little green men and before you know it, there's a referendum, this is just a flat out invasion.

- [Steve] Right.

- And it's just so outlandish that it drove NATO to realize this has been our purpose all along, is to resist this exact thing.

And so the reaction of Europe has been stronger than anyone expected really in terms of not just supporting economic sanctions but taking on the kinds of costs by risking cut off of their oil and gas.

And just it's really serious and the Europeans are united against this.

Because people remember World War II.

And they remember the Soviets invading Czechoslovakia and Poland and Hungary, and all of those things.

And this is just too strong an echo.

- Now, a question, I mean, in Putin's mind, and I know we're not in Putin's mind obviously, is there any legitimacy at all to his concern because one of his topics has been, "I wanna have a buffer around Russia's borders."

And he sees Ukraine as that.

But then you've got Poland, which is now a member of NATO, literally on his border, you've got the Baltic states, which are NATO states, literally on his border.

So, is that even remotely a legitimate concern that, "Hey, I don't want a NATO country right on my border."

I mean, is there any legitimacy that at all?

I mean, I suppose from his perspective there is but-- - From his perspective, there is.

- But, you know, it's.

Maybe Neal, you could talk about the Russian mentality here about the kind of, well.

- Well, and Dr. Simon's correct, every nation has a right to its security.

And most nations believe that security is enhanced if they have friendly neighbors, or as a buffer against other states.

The difficulty here is that you can't create buffers by invading them.

And that's the part that is not legitimate.

Jon Von Schimmer is one of our top political scientists.

He does the national relations.

And one of the things that he's put out in the media now is that the west was to blame for this by moving NATO so close to Russia.

And unfortunately, that's incorrect.

What he's failing to note is that if we had not moved NATO so close to Russia, Russia would be invading countries further west by now.

- True.

- And so, it's actually, you know, moving NATO closer is what is allowing the west to respond to this invasion of Ukraine.

As Dr. Simon said, you know, the basic nature of our international system is that states should not have their sovereignty violated by other states.

And so there's no legitimacy to Russia's violation here despite what the Russian government is saying.

- Yeah.

I mean, it almost, from the surface and perceptionwise, and Ellen, you could probably speak to this, if you look at that, it's almost like he's trying to restore the iron curtain, that buffer of having basically vasal states that are beholden to Russia between him and NATO, between him and the west.

And the messaging is like that.

As you said, that's some of the messaging we're hearing not just from Russian media, but even from some Western media.

Well, maybe he does have a reason, he has a reason to do this.

So, yeah.

Talk a little bit about that.

- Right.

So, from the Western European perspective, particularly France, Germany, Macron was very, very involved in taking many trips and trying to negotiate and figure out a way to get to a ceasefire and the European Union likewise, but there was a lot of disorganization and disagreement primarily with regard to, you know, finally once the conflict had begun, implementing some low-grade restrictions in terms of economic boycotts and freezing of assets and so forth.

The US was very slow to do that.

And so the Europeans, particularly the Germans still as of this date, as far as I know, I checked the news, you know, I haven't seen any movement on that in terms of blocking the oil and gas from Russia.

Now, just on Sunday, over this past weekend, Zelensky again, appeared before the Doha forum in Qatar.

And he said, "Please increase your production "so that Germany can be able to do this."

And when he appeared before the Bundestag, he asked Germany to please do that, asking also repeatedly the British parliament when he appeared and sort of cribbed from Churchill's famous speech.

I'd give him a B plus, you know.

- [Neal] If you're gonna steal, steal from the best-- - He cited his source so, you know, I think the British seemed charmed.

And likewise, when he appeared before the US Congress, there were members of Congress who were very moved almost to tears when he kind of mentioned the parallels for the US between Pearl Harbor and the attacks on Ukraine.

I see less of a parallel, but rhetorically, it was very persuasive.

He's got movie-star quality.

He was a television actor.

He appeared on Ukraine's equivalent of Dancing with the Stars.

He's very media savvy.

So, Zelensky comes across as very personable, persuasive figure.

He's very down to earth in his self portrayal.

He wears sort of Mash style, army green, polar fleece, or just a simple army t-shirt.

He's shown in the trenches whereas, stark contrast, Putin, appears before these incredibly ridiculously long tables appearing very out of touch.

Reportedly, I saw a 60 minutes broadcast where they said he had replaced a thousand of his personal employees in his house because he's so paranoid about being poisoned.

So he appears rightly or wrongly, you know, his self portrayal is very distanced.

The only exception was when he had sort of a Trumpesque rally where he gave a speech and he was wearing kind of a big puffy coat and he looked maybe slightly less out of touch, but it also appeared more to be sort of like a North Korean style or Soviet era rally that was full of people who were paid to be there kind of thing.

So the optics for Zelensky versus Putin in terms of their leadership to the west, you know, we love Zelensky because he's just so telegenic and is able to get his message across.

I don't know what my colleagues would say in terms of his ability to persuade, but he's been quite persuasive.

- Let's come back to that because it is the, as we know, messaging, what people see and perceive is really, unfortunately, somewhat at the core of all this.

So, back in just a moment, we're talking about the Ukraine with BGSU faculty members; Dr. Marc Simon, Dr. Neal Jesse and Dr. Ellen Gorsevski.

Back in just a moment on The Journal.

Thanks for staying with us on The Journal.

We're talking about Ukraine.

And of course, obviously this is not a topic you can cover in 25 minutes.

When we get right down to the bottom of it, what is the ultimate goal that Putin is trying to accomplish here?

What is his main thrust here?

- And I wanna be clear about this, you know, I mean, he has an imperial vision of restoring Russia to its former glory.

And it's not uncommon for states like this that have experienced loss, but unfortunately he's really fitting a lot of the stereotypes that we saw in World War II.

He's a bully and he's leading a country that's promoting authoritarianism and the authoritarian model, and he's trying to spread it.

And I think that's partly his downfall.

I wanna ask Neal about, you know, we've seen the Ukrainian military do much better than expected and the Russian military that was so feared in the cold war do so poorly.

What do you think is happening there on the ground, and what's the likely outcome?

- Well, the war's going very poorly for Russia right now.

And this, even though it was unexpected from the west that the Russian military would do this poorly, when you examine how they performed over the last couple decades in their wars, we should have seen this coming.

When they fought in Georgia, they did kind of a postmortem as to why their troops did not perform well.

And they found that about 70% of them were not combat-ready the time they were sent into Georgia.

And if Georgia had not been so small, Russia would've lost that war.

What we're seeing here is that there's a lot of corruption inside of Russia.

You know, it runs like a kleptocracy in which people at the top steal.

This has created a military that has low morale and is very inefficient.

And I think we're seeing that now, that while Russia might be very good at long range bombardment and leveling cities to the ground, their troops don't fight well.

And I would anticipate, and I hate making any sort of predictions, but the Russian military is gonna go on the defensive now rather than the offensive here in Ukraine.

And we can see that, much like the Russian state, as Dr. Simon has been talking about, as Ellen has been mentioning about the Russian population, the Russian state is a bit weaker than it looks.

You know, these sort of autocratic societies like to portray strength.

But because of endemic corruption, they're weak at their core.

- And this is an important point because, you know, on the ground, Russia is losing a lot of artillery and tanks, and they have troops defecting and things.

And while they have numbers, this can switch quickly.

And I wonder about two possibilities.

One is what happens if Russia really starts losing?

It's the same thing about what happens if Russia really starts winning or becoming more aggressive?

This is why NATO is trying desperately not to get into a no-fly zone or have any conflict because we don't-- - [Ellen] It hopes it'll flame out on its own.

- Well, no.

But if we get into a conflict with Russia and any NATO country is attacked, we're obligated to defend them.

- Right.

- That raises two nuclear-armed states.

And Putin has been very vocal about his willingness to use nuclear weapons, I think, as a strategy to scare off the west.

- [Neal] And I agree.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Which is effective, but let's be honest.

It's possible that we'll see the first use of nuclear weapon in warfare since World War II.

- Well, I mean, another possibility here now is with Russia redefining some of its goals as being merely the liberation of the Donbas region and continuation of the occupation of Crimea, that we could see this go back to where it was in 2014, which is not a long term solution.

But might be one that would lower the tension.

- They've changed their messaging in recent days to indicate that they're nearing-- - They never really wanted all of Ukraine and really but-- - Right, I have in mind George W. Bush with the mission accomplished kind of parallel on the carrier.

- [Simon] So let's hope that happens.

- That would be the lesser of many possible frightening scenarios.

- My fear is that Putin is so out of touch that he would just decide to go for broke and-- - Go all out and-- - Well, and escalate, and then push.

By accident, missiles could land in Poland and then where are we?

Right?

And this is really serious.

And they've got a strategy to use nuclear weapons in a limited way.

How would the west respond?

- Yeah, and we've got just like a minute or so.

So, whoever wants to get the last word.

- Yeah, Neal, you are more the expert in this region.

- Well, the last thing is one of the, you know, you hate to say something positive might be happening right now in this war, but the fact that it could potentially become more limited and not continue to expand might be at least a temporarily positive outcome here.

And, you know, it did appear that Putin had very grand goals when he went into this.

But I think the realization, A, of his military is ineptitude at arriving at those goals, and B, the mass of pain that the west has put on Russia, because, you know, to summarize, he's got in the opposite of what he wanted.

NATO is unified, he's in a war he can't win, Ukraine will be, and the Ukrainian people will be against him for a very long time and against Russians for a very long time here.

This is the opposite of what he wanted when he went in.

So, I think by now, he is starting to realize, or least people are making him realize inside Russia, you know, some of his Slovakia and others that are with him are probably telling him, "It might be time to cut our losses here."

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Although there are also close to 6 million internally displaced Ukrainians and close to 4 million people dispersed across Europe now, particularly in Poland.

So, it could have a very destabilizing influence in Europe right now too.

So, it remains to be seen, to be continued.

- Yeah, well.

And we'll have to leave it there.

But I know someone said, "Well, if this is Russia losing, "I don't wanna see Russia winning."

Because you see those on TV, you see the destruction of Ukraine and you're thinking, "Wow, if this is them losing, "what's it gonna look like if they actually win?"

What does that mean?

Well, it just encourages 'em to do more as you said.

They'll continue to move.

So, we'll have to leave it right there.

Dr. Marc Simon, Dr. Neal, Jesse, Dr. Ellen Gorsevski, thank you for being here to talk about Ukraine.

Maybe we can have you guys back in a few weeks.

Maybe we won't have anything to talk about about Ukraine.

By then, everything will, we'll get whatever whatever the best scenario is there, we'll hope that's the case.

You can check us out at wbgu.org and of course you can watch us each week on The Journal.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.