Pod Insights The Ezra Klein Show Sway: 'Fear and Panic Are Bedfellows' in Ukraine About this episode Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at Sway about the war in Ukraine and the challenges of conflict-zone reporting.
Clarissa Ward has had, as she puts it, a “long and very complicated relationship” with Russia. The chief international correspondent for CNN, she has had stints in Moscow since the beginning of her career, and has struggled to get a Russian visa since she investigated the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
But that hasn’t stopped her from reporting on the region, and in particular on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet after months of war, it can be an uphill battle to keep the viewers’ attention on the front line. “Our job is to keep finding ways to make sure that we don’t become numb and desensitized to the horrors of war, because that is exactly how wars continue and grind on,” Ward says.
In this conversation, taped last week, Kara talks to Ward about her time reporting in Ukraine, what it’s like to “let fear sit in the passenger seat” when reporting from the front and how the hangover of war can leave correspondents detached from the “bourgeois and banal” normalcy of home.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.
Transcript 0:15 Speaker 00 Hi Ezra Klein Show listeners, I'm Kara Swisher. Ezra is taking a break today, he'll be back on Friday. In the meantime, I'm doing an Elon Musk-style hostile takeover to bring you an episode of Sway, the podcast I host for New York Times Opinion. Here's a conversation I recently had with Clarissa Ward, a fellow journalist and chief international correspondent at CNN. She's been reporting on the ground in Ukraine throughout Russia's invasion. Last week, she was back home in London, so I was able to catch up with her then to discuss the war, our waning attention on it, and how covering conflict affects her personally. Have a listen, if you like what you hear, subscribe to Sway. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Clarissa Ward, welcome to Sway.
0:59 Speaker 01 Thank you so much for having me on, Kara.
1:01 Speaker 00 So let's start with the big picture. Russia announced a new phase of the war last month, so talk about a little bit where we are right now, what does it mean and where is Putin focusing right now?
1:10 Speaker 01 So essentially, President Putin has had to dramatically downsize his ambitions in Ukraine. And after the failure of attempts to capture the capital Kiev and even smaller cities like Chernegiv in the northern part of the country, they have now doubled down on a new offensive in the east, which is all focused on this Donbass region and these two breakaway republics that comprise the Donbass. But from what we've seen already, because I was there when this new offensive began, is that their progress has been incremental at best, and it's really shaping up to be a long grind, a war of attrition.
1:54 Speaker 01 Russia is definitely operating in a different way to what we saw earlier on in the conflict.
2:01 Speaker 00 Which they were going for a blitzkrieg, correct?
2:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, they were going for a blitzkrieg, and they got their asses kicked, honestly. And they took a huge amount of casualties. And so now there is a little more caution in how they're proceeding. I think they've tried to address some of the issues with resupply and logistics that have really tested their ability to make progress on the battlefield.
2:28 Speaker 01 And the Ukrainians have some major challenges as well, like they're very much outmanned and outgunned as well. And yet, still, if Russia was hoping for an easier victory in the East, it's already becoming clear that it's not going to be that. And this could go on for months.
2:45 Speaker 00 Talk a little bit about that incremental. There's nothing wrong with incremental. You certainly can win that way. But why do you think it failed so badly?
2:53 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, I think it's the danger of a lot of autocracies that you start to believe your own talking points and your own propaganda. And I think there was a sense for many that they were going to go into Ukraine and be welcomed by people waving white flags and throwing rose petals.
3:13 Speaker 00 You're here to save us.
3:14 Speaker 01 You're here to save us from these awful Nazis who have been perpetrating genocide in the Donbass region. And to give them some credit, if you look at how things played out during the annexation of Crimea, where not a shot was fired, and where the Russian presence there has largely been embraced, you can understand the sort of hubris that allowed President Putin to think it might be a similar reception in other parts of the country. So I think there's several things at play. First of all, you know, sort of buying into your own propaganda. Secondly, dramatically underestimating the scale and
3:57 Speaker 01 scope and intensity of the resistance that they were going to encounter. And by the way, it's not just the Russians who were unprepared for that. All of us were shocked to see how effective Ukrainian counteroffensive forces were. I mean, if you remember, at the beginning of the war, US intelligence officials were saying two or three days until Kiev falls. And then there's another element, and again, this happens a lot in dictatorships, where President Putin is just being told all the time, whatever people think he wants to hear.
4:28 Speaker 00 Everything's great.
4:29 Speaker 01 Everything's great. We've got the best military, we've got the best weapons, we've got the best, best, best.
4:34 Speaker 00 That's not limited to autocracies. That's not limited to autocracies. Let's be clear.
4:37 Speaker 01 Right.
4:38 Speaker 00 Why was the Ukrainian resistance so strong? What do you attribute that to? In terms of training, in terms of, what is it about the people in the country and the military, obviously, which is, it's not people just with pitchforks attacking Russians?
4:50 Speaker 01 No, it's not. I mean, the first thing that I think is easy to forget, because it's sort of been overshadowed by the insanity and horror of what's happened, is that Ukraine has been fighting a war for eight years. And it's been much more limited in its scale and scope, but what that has done is, you know, there's already been a paradigm shift in the mentality of people. And so they do have this kind of willingness to suffer and to slog and to resist and to push and to come together as a country in service of this moment. I would also say Ukrainians are fiercely patriotic, by and large. I mean, I've been covering conflict in many years in many places, and the extraordinary
5:35 Speaker 01 unity and solidarity and resilience and courage, it has been truly, truly awe-inspiring, frankly. I haven't often come across that.
5:49 Speaker 00 So you were reporting in Kharkiv. Can you describe what it was like to go through that city?
5:53 Speaker 01 I mean, Kharkiv is, I mean, first of all, it's a wonderful city. It's Ukraine's second-largest city, a beautiful city center, used to be a major buzzing sort of tech town, and everything changed overnight. I mean, completely changed. Anyone with children now lives underground. They've either left or they live underground. And what's really happened in Kharkiv is that it's never let up.
6:19 Speaker 01 So they're still shelling and bombarding constantly. But there's a randomness to it. And and and that randomness is almost even more cruel, in a sense, because there's no part of the city that's really safe. There are parts that are safer. There are parts that are much more dangerous, obviously. But it is kind of arbitrary. And the mayor, when I was there, had just ordered for these tulips, these beautiful yellow tulips, to be planted around the city center, which, on the one hand, you're like, is this person insane? And then, on the other hand, you're like, actually, this is the perfect illustration of resistance.
7:02 Speaker 01 And it's this small, quiet act of resistance. And it's calm, and it's poised, and it's understated, and it's elegant. But it's it's kind of beautiful.
7:13 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, the Ukrainians have a really theatrics. And I'm not using that in a negative way. But you did a segment following Ukrainian paramedics in the city. I want to play a clip from that, when you come under active Russian shelling, like you were just talking about, just random.
7:27 Speaker 01 Alexandra is trying to find the wounded person, but there's no signal. At that moment, another barrage goes on.
7:40 Speaker 01 We race for the impact.
7:49 Speaker 00 Can you talk about that experience, covering that?
7:51 Speaker 01 Uh, I mean, you know, it's even now, you listen to it. Like, it was petrifying.
7:56 Speaker 00 Mm hmm, I'm sure.
7:58 Speaker 01 It was absolutely petrifying. And and I think that it gives you just a a small window into what these first responders are up against every single day. So they get the call, OK, some rockets have fallen in this area. There's a wounded man. We need to get to them. But what happens often, and it's becoming more often, it's a tactic the Russians used a lot in Syria. It's called the double tap. So you send a mortar or an artillery round into an apartment building, in this case, you wait half an hour. And then, when the first responders get on the scene, and there are more people on the scene trying to help those, you hit it again. And in doing so, you maximize the number of casualties.
8:40 Speaker 01 Now, what was extraordinary to me about that moment is we were extremely close to where those rockets were falling, the 10 yards or so away. We had a good hard cover there. The minute it was safe for us to extract, we extracted. Alexandra and Vladimir did not. They went to the next door entrance because they couldn't find this man who had been wounded. They found him, they got him out, they took him into their ambulance, which the back window had been blown out, and they saved his life. And they're 23 and 25 years old. And nothing really prepares you in life, I don't think, Cara, for that kind of a moment and that kind of danger. And you just either step into it or you don't.
9:21 Speaker 01 And, um, yeah, I found it pretty humbling because my instinct was like, we need to get out of here.
9:28 Speaker 00 Right. So you just said the word petrified, but how, how do you think about people most, you have a very cool personality on screen, not cool cold, but like you look like you're, I'm here, I've got my flag jacket on, I'm ready to go. Talk about being petrified as a, you're super composed when you're doing these reports.
9:47 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, I think you have to, like, fear is something very important. If you don't feel it, you're stupid, right? Like, fear is an evolutionary phenomenon that informs us when we need to move out of a place. What you learn to do if you want to do this job and do it for a long time is to, you know, let fear sit in the passenger seat, but you don't let it take the driver's seat. Because the problem with fear is that fear and panic are bedfellows. And panic is what will really get you hurt potentially in a war zone. So I recognize the fear, I feel it, I know I need to get out of this situation, but there's also 10 other things that I need to do first. I need to determine if it's safe. I need to make sure that we've got the material that we came and took this risk to get.
10:31 Speaker 01 I need to be sure that we're all communicating as a team. I need to listen to my security consultant. You can actually hear him under the sort of barrage of explosions. He's saying like, stay under, because, you know, the cameraman's like trying to look at something. And so it's not so, you know, you have to be composed and you have to be focused, but that doesn't mean you're not afraid.
10:53 Speaker 00 Right. I, I actually, when I went to journalism school, I thought about being a foreign correspondent. And then every foreign correspondent I met was just fucked up. I don't know how else to put it. By the fear, by the trap. They were just so, and I was like, no, I don't think so. And I did one thing where I was in a riot, a neo-Nazi riot in Germany, and it was terrifying. I just, I don't know what else. They were lighting cars on fire. You never know what they were gonna do.
11:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:14 Speaker 00 Um, and you know, e- even though it was, I was perfectly fine in the end, but it was terrifying. And I remember thinking, no.
11:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is terrifying and it's okay to be terrified. It's more what you do with that feeling and how you respond to it. And also, the more experience you get, the more you learn to understand that, okay, this might look terrifying, but where I am standing right here with this wall is covered, like, I'm actually in a pretty good position.
11:43 Speaker 00 How do you try to not let it get through to you in some fashion, the horror part of it?
11:49 Speaker 01 So I think that when you're in the field, there's a sense to which you have to compartmentalize, right? Because the work also is so consuming and, and multi-layered, right? We talk a lot about the sort of broad idea of journalism, but also working at television, there's so much logistics going on that there's just a huge amount to think about. And so in the moment, like, you wanna be open to the experience of the people whose stories you're telling and listen to them with like genuine sincerity and real presence. But you also have to know how far to let that in and when to then focus on, okay,
12:28 Speaker 01 now we need to get like diesel for our generator and also start clipping this and translating that, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's really important to be able to compartmentalize in the field. I actually think it's equally important when you come home to try to sit with some of it. And, you know, when you're talking about the sort of dysfunctionality of the, the typical war correspondent, which I do think is based on a kind of truism, I think a lot of that comes from them never wanting to sit. And just let it all percolate because some of it, you know, it's baked into the bones. It's a huge amount of stress that you're holding on to. It's other people's trauma.
13:11 Speaker 01 It might be even your trauma and you have to find a place or a way to process that at some point. Because like I say always to younger reporters, you know, the check is coming in the mail at some point.
13:26 Speaker 00 Right.
13:27 Speaker 01 You're getting that check.
13:28 Speaker 00 And there's, there is a different image. You are a different image of a foreign correspondent.
13:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it has.
13:33 Speaker 00 You have a family at home, you have kids.
13:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, it, I think it's changed a lot. I think probably with, there's a lot more women doing this. And women have been doing it for a while. The, you know, there's plenty of trailblazers who came ahead of us, but there's a lot of women doing it now. And I think there's also a lot of us who speak a bit more about the taboos of, you know, it's still a bit of a taboo to talk about like mental health and PTSD and trauma and therapy. And I'm like, really, in this day and age, right? Like, how can we possibly consider this stuff taboo? It's ridiculous.
14:05 Speaker 00 Is that a kid or a dog back there?
14:06 Speaker 01 It's a kid. I tried to lock him in the basement.
14:10 Speaker 00 Good, well, that's what I do with mine. Yeah, that's okay. I don't mind him at all. So speaking of which, you don't, can't do that. You can't cut that out, right? The idea that you have a family.
14:20 Speaker 01 You can't. And you know what else it doesn't allow you to do? Because I used to come back from Syria particularly and I'd feel so detached. I would feel like I feel nothing for my husband. I feel nothing for my, I know intellectually that I love you, but I feel nothing. I feel that this is bourgeois and banal and I'm totally detached from it. You can't do that when you have kids because it's like this wellspring of love. And there's a real kind of grounding physicality. To the the nature of, you know, for me at least, being a mother, I can't feel nothing with them.
14:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, I know.
15:00 Speaker 01 And so it is like an anchor that forces me to like, be present and be in my body and be open, which is challenging because then it's like, oh, now we're going to just feel all the feelings. And definitely when I'm in the field, I notice how that affects with my kids. I'm a bit like, okay, let's do our FaceTime every day. But I'm also trying to keep a distance a bit because if I let myself go to that space, then it's like, all right, we're, you know, we're in a different space from where I need to be right now.
15:35 Speaker 00 We'll be back in a minute.
15:41 Speaker 00 If you like this interview and want to hear others, follow Sway on your favorite podcast app. You'll be able to catch up on Sway episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with Jake Tapper, and you'll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Clarissa Ward after the break.
16:08 Speaker 00 So when you were covering the murder of civilians, some of the what are going to be considered war crimes presumably in the end. These are people who are just not even fighting. They were there and they're in mass graves.
16:18 Speaker 01 It's truly.
16:19 Speaker 00 Why is that happening?
16:20 Speaker 01 It's.
16:21 Speaker 00 Go ahead.
16:22 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, why is it happening? Is it this sort of, is it intentional? Is it, does it speak to this, you know, what President Biden has called a genocide? Is it the act of a really undisciplined army? I mean, I was so struck, I went past one of their camps, a Russian camp, and it was a mess. I mean, it was disgusting. It was like a filthy mess. And I was with a security guy who's a former military person himself. And he was like, oh, my gosh, this, this camp, this mess, this squalor, speaks to a real lack of discipline and a lack of morale. So I thought that was interesting. And I have never fully understood rape as a weapon of war.
17:06 Speaker 01 I mean, we, we, we know that it's a very prevalent and persistent one, but I still struggle to get my head around it. And, and, and why the, the sort of physiological drive? I can't, I, I just really, I really struggle to get my head around it.
17:22 Speaker 00 Right.
17:22 Speaker 01 And it's just so, you know, and the way it's being described, a lot of the women who have been raped, particularly in and around Kiev and those suburbs, have said that, you know, there was one guy and the other soldiers were trying to tell him to stop, but he wouldn't stop. So they have framed it as more of a kind of regular aberration as opposed to this was the strategy. But then, I don't know if you heard this intercepted phone call, which literally haunted me. I, I, I can't stop thinking about it. Between this man and his wife, he's a Russian soldier. He's talking to his wife in Russia. And he's like, do I have permission to like rape women while I'm here?
18:06 Speaker 01 And she's like, yeah, sure you do. Just make sure you use protection.
18:11 Speaker 00 Disgusting.
18:12 Speaker 01 And you realize, I mean, and the sort of cavalier ease with which they're saying the most filthy, trashy, horrend- I, I, I,
18:25 Speaker 01 you, you're not dealing with normal people in, in a situation like that.
18:31 Speaker 00 Well, that's been propaganda after all that year. Sure, you are. You're doing exactly with it. That, that is what they're prepared to do.
18:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, but then you hear other intercepts where, you know, where there's a slightly more human response, where the woman might be like, oh, gosh, really? Oh, that sounds weird, you know? And then they're like, yeah, but it's okay. And, you know, and they're like, oh, okay. Well, if you say it's okay, but at least you feel like there's that hint of shame.
18:59 Speaker 00 When you cover that, is that the hardest part of covering this? Or is it, is it the actual attacks as the war is going on?
19:06 Speaker 01 Oh, no, definitely the hardest part. It people's stories, people's trauma. I mean, you know, like this woman whose two sons were killed and, you know, she came out of the house to talk to us and just completely broke down.
19:23 Speaker 01 And you're
19:26 Speaker 01 It's so hard because you also feel like I'm making you relive a trauma right now. Um, by putting you through this interview. So like, how do I make this as painless as it possibly can be? But what we have found time and time again in Ukraine is like, people want their story on the record. They want their stories out there and they understand that there is power in speaking your truth. And in having it on the record, this is what happened to me. Or this is what happened to my child. But it's heartbreaking because so many people have so few answers.
20:09 Speaker 01 And look, when you lose a child, I can only imagine there's never enough answers, right? There's never something that you're going to be told that's like, oh, well, that clarifies that for me. Thank you.
20:20 Speaker 00 Right.
20:20 Speaker 01 But to have such a murky picture of, but where was he standing and, and who took him? And why did they take him? And what did he say? And what was the person's name? And, and, and where was he shot? And yeah, it's just, uh, it's a real horror. And then I interviewed a woman right afterwards, and this one really stays with me. Her daughter was taken by Russian troops. She was also taken for three nights and then they let her go. She has no idea where her daughter is. She has no idea. Is she alive? Is she dead? Was she raped? Was she left alone? Does she taken a prisoner? Does she maybe not have that? And that is absolute hell.
21:04 Speaker 01 And so to, to be in someone's presence when they're in that kind of a moment and see and feel the full force of that horror and that suffering is by far and away the hardest part of the job.
21:17 Speaker 00 And, and there is no answer. There will be no answer for possibly ever.
21:21 Speaker 01 No, there's no answer and, and, and there's very rarely closure. And okay, we come in and, and we ask questions and, and we're present and we listen to the stories. And then we go and, and then what? Everybody is dealing with this trauma. And so you have a society where there's like collective trauma. And also the sort of day to day work of staying alive.
21:49 Speaker 00 Right, you know, I'm not surprised it feels banal when you come back to real life, but it's been over two months now since the invasion started. Do you feel like the world is losing interest or growing numb to the coverage of war of this war? Because I interviewed Ukrainian journalist Olga Tukaryuk, and she expressed worries about this, that attention will wane and foreign media will move on. Can you talk to that?
22:10 Speaker 01 I think it's always, every conflict I've covered, you get to a certain point where there's like saturation level and fatigue starts to set in. And people don't any longer feel as shocked or as horrified by it. But I think as storytellers and as journalists, our job is to keep finding ways to make sure that we don't become numb and desensitized to the horrors of war, because that is exactly how wars continue and grind on. And we know this. You have to try to keep it on the front page.
22:53 Speaker 01 You have to keep it forefront in people's conscience. And you don't do that by preaching at people or kind of wagging your finger and telling them how important it is. You do that by finding characters who they can connect with and stories that they can relate to whereby they continue to feel engaged and like they have a vested interest and they care. And so the bar does get higher in some ways. But also, I would say, usually you'll have a moment at this sort of stage where you might have a few days to put a story together as opposed to a few hours in the beginning where the appetite is just relentless.
23:37 Speaker 01 And some of the most powerful storytelling comes out of opportunities where you do have a little bit more time.
23:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, I call it the time when the big anchors go home. I don't like being there at all in the first place. How do you like that?
23:52 Speaker 01 Well, they're still there for CNN. They're still there.
23:55 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:56 Speaker 01 For me.
23:59 Speaker 01 I just feel the way we can connect more people to these stories is by making them more accessible and not alienating people with a lot of geopolitical jargon, which, you know, you and I can do that dance and talk that talk and go to that panel in Washington and sound smart and that's great. But if you want ordinary Americans to feel like they have a grip on what's going on in Ukraine, then you need to create entrance points into the story for them, not put up barriers by saying unless you understand what an EU oil embargo would mean for X, Y, and Z, then you don't have a seat at this table.
24:36 Speaker 00 So Biden just proposed an additional $33 billion in military and economic assistance. Nancy Pelosi recently traveled to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Zelensky. Boris Johnson was there. Do you see these gestures as an intensification of US and Western support?
24:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they are. I think they are. I think the fact that the Americans, this 33 billion, which is, you know, very, very significant. I think the fact that the Europeans are talking about an oil embargo, these are things that probably would have been inconceivable at the beginning of the war. So I do think it speaks to an intensification of Western support. And I think that that support has been buoyed by the fact that they see that it's made a difference on the battlefield. And I think there's a sense of, wait, the Ukrainians actually could win this thing. And so, you know, we need to double down on our support. There's another argument that can be made as well, which is like, okay, does this then just become, you're prolonging the agony, you're prolonging
25:34 Speaker 01 the length of the war, the amount of casualties. But to be honest, I, I, I'm not sure how much water-
25:41 Speaker 00 Every day the Russians aren't winning, every day they're not winning is a day they're losing, right?
25:44 Speaker 01 Exactly. And so I, you know, it's always hard when you're talking about war and moral clarity and like, it's, it's obviously like incredibly convoluted. But if there's one war I've covered, which is less convoluted on that front, I would say it's this one. I mean, there is very clearly- A right and a wrong here.
26:03 Speaker 00 Is there anything that would change the equation there for more significant US intervention? Or Western intervention?
26:10 Speaker 01 I mean, the obvious one is chemical weapons or some kind of a tactical nuke, which again would be so disastrous and so horrifying, it's impossible to fathom how that would be possible. I still believe that Putin is a rational actor within the context or framework of his universe. So I want to believe that that would not happen. However, I also acknowledge that I was wrong about the invasion. I never thought the invasion would happen. I did not believe that Putin would do that. And I think there is a sort of baked in wishful thinking
26:51 Speaker 01 in a lot of my analysis about his actions, because I know other people who would be like, just look at recent history. It was all right there. I mean, it's not like he was trying to hide it, you know?
27:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, I have to say, I'm not an expert.
27:05 Speaker 01 Did you call it?
27:06 Speaker 00 No, I'm not a military expert, but from watching their technology stuff, they're thugs. They're paranoid and insecure thugs, so why not? Of course they will. They seem to be preparing Ukraine for propaganda, so something else follows that.
27:20 Speaker 01 Well, and that's also a big part of it as well. You don't know how much of it is just sort of psy-ops designed to wig people out, like, let's keep just talking elliptically about chemical weapons attacks until people can't function. And how much of it is, you know, like, oh, yeah, we're actually going to consider doing this and call it a false flag and just escalate things off the charts.
27:42 Speaker 00 This is a war of information. It's really the first internet war in a lot of ways, although there's been other sort of internet wars, but this one's really quite significant. In addition to cracking down on social media, Russia also passed a censorship law in March that criminalized accurate reporting on the war in Ukraine. Talk about how it's affected your approach and in Ukraine, it's different, but within Russia.
28:03 Speaker 01 Well, I think it's been, first of all, we're very lucky in that our CNN's Matthew Chance, who has, you know, basically lived on and off in Russia for more than 20 years now, is back in Moscow and is reporting from there, which I think is hugely important.
28:22 Speaker 01 Obviously, there are risks associated and he has to be careful with his wording and.
28:29 Speaker 01 Very transparent about the entire process. And I'm sure it's a huge amount of pressure. But I do think it's so hugely important for us right now to have a little bit of a sense of what does it look like in Russia right now? What does it feel like? What are people talking about?
28:43 Speaker 00 Even if you have to use words that are not the words you should be using.
28:46 Speaker 01 Even if you have to use words that are not the words, there's ways to get around that. I mean, it's, it's, it's obviously not ideal. It's, it's blatant censorship. But there are ways, I think, to navigate within the sort of parameters of what's allowed. Now, the problem is that those parameters are so random and, and shifting that you, you don't know exactly what could get you into trouble. For me, it's been a, you know, I lived in Russia twice. I have had a long and very complicated relationship with Russia, but have a lot of love for many elements of it, particularly, you know, the culture and the history and the literature. And I have not been able to go back to Russia since I did this investigation with Bellingcat and with Navalny team.
29:31 Speaker 01 And so I can no longer get a visa. And they, you know, have just put some nonsense propaganda piece out on state TV.
29:39 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. You're facing personal attacks, Russian state media calling you a propagandist and insinuating worse. And you were targeted in 2019 after the report about Russian mercenaries in Africa, in Ghana and Nigeria, and then Navalny, of course, which is their biggest, most painful spot.
29:55 Speaker 01 Bugaboo. Yeah. Yeah, no, they don't like me very much. But for me, it's like, I still desperately want to be able to go to Russia and to report from Russia and to understand what's really happening. Because for me, the very alarming piece in all this is the sort of...
30:19 Speaker 01 Wide-eyed credulity with which the Russian public does seem to be absorbing a lot of this propaganda in spite of the facts that granted are harder for them to get to because it's not on state TV and you maybe are not on Telegram or one of these social media apps that would allow you to access some slightly more impartial, unfiltered information. But still, I know people who should know better.
30:51 Speaker 00 Right. I have a friend who's spent a lot of time in Russia. Same thing. She can't believe it, how many of her friends in Russia are telling her the opposite. And I was like, you do not have a Trump relative then, a Fox News watching Trump relative. So I get it. I get the situation. And in Russia, they're absolutely, when you're there, it is, they're inundated, especially older people with this kind of propaganda. But, and I know you worked at Fox News, Tucker Carlson has been, clips on him on Russian state TV. How does that affect it? Is it trying to show that not all Americans are rowing in the same direction? Or what is the use of that? Now, let me just know, he's gone back on his early point of view on Putin. Apparently Putin's a thug now. But nonetheless, initially, he was not.
31:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I think there's two sort of tactics that they're implementing here. One is to show like, there is a side of America that actually thinks that, you know, Russia is powerful and justified and that does not hate President Putin. The other is just more broadly to cast America as this kind of chaotic, riven with internal disagreement, divided, angry nation where people are just shouting at each other and disagree about absolutely everything. And it's the sort of Showcase for like this, you really want this?
32:18 Speaker 01 This is your democracy. Look at this. It's just angry people shouting at each other. And so they like to trot that one out a lot.
32:27 Speaker 00 So there's a ton of disinformation being spread on both sides of this war. What are you seeing and how does it affect your reporting? Because some of it, like, you know, the ghost of Kiev, et cetera, et cetera. I have to say, Zelensky is fantastic at that version of propaganda, which is sort of morale building propaganda, I guess. And then, of course, there's the Russian propaganda, which has been used excessively. How does it affect your reporting when you're sort of in the middle of that? Because you don't want to, you want to sort of do down the line for some of the stuff.
32:55 Speaker 01 I mean, first of all, it just means that every single piece of information you get and every single piece of video that you come across needs to be run with a fine tooth comb. It just makes our jobs a lot harder because the burden of proof is that much higher. But, you know, it's sort of a flip side because it's also like, well, at least we're getting lots of videos, right? And so, once we can geolocate them and can put them into the appropriate context, then we do that. And it allows us to tell stories about places that we can't get to, like Mariupol, for example. But you do have to be very careful and you do have to be skeptical.
33:34 Speaker 01 And both sides are going to implement propaganda for the purposes of morale or for the purposes of, well, trying to destroy another society, if that's what your goal is. But so when you have a Ukrainian statement that seems like it might be far fetched or the numbers seem higher than is likely, or that the battle didn't quite transpire in that way, I think you have to be careful about how you couch it and how you frame it. And if I feel like someone is coming to me with a story that they're like, that obviously feels like a propaganda story, I probably will not.
34:15 Speaker 01 Focus on it.
34:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. All right. So how do you see the conflict ending?
34:20 Speaker 01 I mean, there's a couple of ways it could end. It could be that President Putin decides to claim Mariupol as a victory and that with Kherson, they can start to fashion a kind of land corridor to Crimea and try to market that as some kind of a victory. I think that'll be very tough for him to call that a victory at this stage, especially when they've just said that the Donbass is the goal now. So I feel like it is going to grind on for quite some time and it will be incremental. And I worry that the more Ukraine wins and the more Putin's back is against the wall and the more likely a scenario is in which something really terrible and crazy happens
35:05 Speaker 01 along the lines of some kind of a chemical attack or something like that.
35:10 Speaker 00 Is there a path for someone like Aleksei Navalny, the jailed Russian opposition leader, to come to the fore? You have reported on him quite a bit. I mean, look, you had Nelson Mandela jailed for 25 years in South Africa.
35:22 Speaker 01 I think if Navalny is able to stick it out, then potentially when President Putin is no longer in power, there will be a role for him and a place for him. The question you have to ask yourself, and I sort of had talked about this around the time he went back to Russia, I said, okay, he's ready to be Russia's Nelson Mandela. But is Russia ready for Nelson Mandela? Does Russia want Nelson Mandela right now? And that's the question I'm not sure I know the answer to.
35:51 Speaker 00 And you mentioned the fall for Putin. How would that happen? Oligarchs inside? There's of course those longtime rumors that he's very sick, et cetera, et cetera.
36:00 Speaker 01 Persistent rumors about his health, which impossible to confirm, but they don't seem to be completely unfounded. I think the oligarchs, no, oligarchs will not bring him down because ultimately he'll just kick them out. The people who'd be able to bring him down potentially are the so-called siloviki, right? The strong men who surround him and who empowered him.
36:25 Speaker 01 But the problem with that is that if if he goes down, they probably go down, too. And he was quite clever. He had this National Security Council meeting right before the war where he summoned all of them and he made them sit like little schoolboys in these chairs. And then he sat sort of majestically aloof at this enormous desk. And he made each of them stand in front of the microphone and be like, I support this. I believe that the Donbass should be independent. And he kind of humiliated a lot of them along the way. It was the most bizarre psychodrama I have seen in quite some time. But the intended effect, at least in part, was, well, now you're all on the hook for this. Now, none of you can say, oh, you know, I was vehemently opposed to this. You've all gone on television and said, we're with you, boss.
37:10 Speaker 00 Right, right. It's a little like the Ohio Senate race. Anyway, in any, it's just a joke, just a little, a little Trump joke.
37:22 Speaker 00 More with Clarissa Ward after the break.
37:37 Speaker 00 Okay, I want to finish up just briefly. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about CNN, because wars are what the CNN machine is made for. Your new boss, David Zasloff, pointed to CNN's coverage of Ukraine as a proud moment. I'm curious whether you see this as a refocusing moment for the network.
37:55 Speaker 01 I would just say that it's, for me, it's a, it's a point of pride. And it's nice to feel that amid this uncertainty and amid this challenging moment that CNN's been going through, that CNN International and with a lot of our colleagues from domestic have really been able to work very hard in challenging circumstances to do what we do best. And.
38:20 Speaker 00 I'm just curious what it's like from where you are. You had the CNN Plus shutdown. You had the Zucker exit. Is that something that affects you as a reporter more, you know, than talking to CNN anchors? And they're both upset and also confused, and they don't know what's going to happen. They have a lot of loyalty towards Zucker still, which I was sort of surprised about. How do you, from afar, manage that? Do you miss someone like Jeff Zucker? And were you disturbed by the CNN Plus shutdown?
38:47 Speaker 01 I think that we're a little bit protected or cushioned from a lot of this. And particularly, okay, I'm in London at the moment, but I've spent 10 weeks in Ukraine this year. And so, so much of my focus has obviously been uncovering the war. Jeff was a great boss and gave me, and so many others, extraordinary opportunities and was like incredibly hands on and very caring and attentive. So obviously, it's a loss when someone like that leaves. But I'm really excited to work with Chris Licht as well. I worked with him at CBS. He's brilliant and no one knows more about programming. And I'm really excited to see what he's going to do with CNN. And the CNN plus thing, of course, is like devastating.
39:32 Speaker 01 So many people lost their jobs and so many brilliant, talented people work so hard. And so, yeah, it's, it's, it's terrible, but it's not something that most of us on the international side feel and experience firsthand. It's more like through our colleagues.
39:48 Speaker 00 Very diplomatic, Clarissa. Very diplomatic. Very well done. But let me ask you, where do you think CNN is going to go then? Under these new owners, there's obviously pressure from all kinds of, of things, whether it's streaming, whether it's the changes in media. I have talked about CNN and Warner being too small, especially facing internet companies that big. How do you look at what you do as an international correspondent and the changing way news is delivered?
40:13 Speaker 01 I look at it as being the unenviable job of people who are much smarter than I am to work out how this whole industry is going to reconfigure itself in the way that is inevitably already starting to happen. But I look at that with the understanding that you're always going to need content. You need great content. You need good quality storytelling. And definitely as a society, you need good journalism. And so as long as I'm focused on producing those, I know that someone out there will find a way to disseminate them effectively so that more people have access to it.
40:55 Speaker 00 So would you, if that didn't happen, would you go somewhere else? Or where do you imagine you're being in a couple of years? Would you go back to Fox News, for example?
41:04 Speaker 01 No, I definitely would not go back to Fox. I learned a lot there as an overnight desk assistant. But yeah, no, I would not, I would not go back. No, where would I go? I don't, why would I go anywhere? I have the best job in television news.
41:17 Speaker 00 But where do you imagine that going in the future? You know, international news? Do you think about like the TikToks of the world being a news purveyor or anybody else? Or you just think this is the way it's going to be going forward?
41:27 Speaker 01 No, I think it will change, but I fully recognize my own limitations. And so I don't know where it's going. I'm ready to ride that wave. But I do think that CNN is going to be right at the crest of that wave. I do.
41:44 Speaker 00 All right. That is diplomatically where we will end that. Thank you so much for taking so much time.
41:49 Speaker 01 I've loved it.
42:01 Speaker 00 Sway is a production of New York Times Opinion. It's produced by Naimea Raza, Blake Nishik, Daphne Chen, Kaitlin O'Keefe, and Wyatt Orm, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Sonia Herrero and Carol Saburo, and fact checking by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristin Lynn, and Christina Samulski. The senior editor of Sway is Naimea Raza. And the executive producer of New York Times Opinion audio is Irene Noguchi. If you're in a podcast app already, you know how to get your podcasts. So follow this one. If you're listening on the Times website and want to get each new episode of Sway delivered to you, along with a basement to put Vladimir Putin in, download any podcast app, then search for Sway and follow the show. We release every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening.
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