Andrew Wilson:
Russia expected its assault on Ukraine to yield an easy victory. Instead, Ukraine continues to show resilience, and the ongoing war is a rallying cry for democracy around the globe. The scope and complexity of the human and economic challenges of this brutal situation are profound. In this new MOVA Podcast, Russia expert and CNN consultant, Jill Dougherty, who was in Moscow the day of the invasion, will share her thoughts on the war and what Russia and the world may still yet learn from Ukraine.
Jill Dougherty:
There was a lot of Putin on TV, Putin reading a speech, and then it would turn out that the speech was actually recorded the day before, but played that day as if it were live. And then Putin was meeting with women in the airline industry. I remember thinking, “Okay, a war is starting and it started in 2014, but essentially a big conflict is starting. We have an invasion and Putin is sitting down drinking tea with beautifully made up women who are in the airline industry. What is wrong with his picture?”
Andrew Wilson:
We’ll take a look at the impact the war is having on the entire region as well as Ukraine’s efforts to continue to build its democracy, coming up.
I am Andrew Wilson, executive director of the Center for International Private Enterprise. Welcome to MOVA: The Business Language for the New Ukraine. Our guest today is Jill Dougherty, an award-winning journalist and preeminent authority on Russia. As CNN’s Moscow bureau chief, Jill covered major events in Putin’s rise to Power and was actually in Moscow the day Russia invaded Ukraine. She’s here to share insights from her decades reporting on Russia to offer us insights and perspective on the war in Ukraine. Jill, welcome to MOVA.
Jill Dougherty:
Thank you very much, Andrew. I’m really glad to be here.
Andrew Wilson:
Let’s get right to it. You’re now writing a book about your time in Russia and you’re teaching a class at Georgetown on Russia’s disinformation programs. Can you share a little bit about that with our listeners?
Jill Dougherty:
Well, the book, I kind of call it a Cold War book because it begins way back like when I got interested in Russia, which was when I was a freshman in high school, in fact, and I studied the Russian language. I have a twin sister. We did the same thing, and we both spent four years studying Russian in high school, became our major in college. And then I think I was lucky, Andrew, that at that point, because it was the old Soviet Union and we had this relationship called war relationship with Russia. There were a lot of programs in the United States in order to prepare, let’s call it a cadre of young Americans who would speak Russian and who would be able to understand the country and go into the field. And so I was really lucky to be able to become an exchange student to work on the US Information Agency exhibits in the Soviet Union.
And then I worked with the Voice of America, which of course is still government funded, and then that got me into regular commercial broadcasting and especially CNN. So I’m really grateful that that happened. And there are a lot of other people that I know who became really illustrious ambassadors to Russia, et cetera, who kind of followed that same path. So it was a good investment. I will put a plug in there, a good investment for American taxpayer dollars to prepare people who can understand Russia as much as you can because it’s very complicated country.
Andrew Wilson:
Tell us a little bit about what you’re looking at in your work at Georgetown right now.
Jill Dougherty:
Well, I teach two courses and both of them are with the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, and that is part of the School of Foreign Service. Very high level. The students are really fantastic. And so the courses that I teach are one, as you mentioned, is disinformation, and essentially it focuses on Russia, although we do get into China, a tiny bit into Iran, but it’s really more Russia focused course. And then on the off season, I teach a course that I call the Putin Generation. I’m actually thinking maybe about renaming that in light of what’s going on, but the idea of it is that since Putin came into office in 2000, there’s a whole generation of young people who’ve grown up with actually one leader. Forget about Medvedev because he was kind of a placeholder, I would say, but essentially one leader for all this time. And so that has an influence I think, on young people, and that’s what I was trying to do in that course. Understand: are they different? Could they be different from the old Soviet days? And if so, how?
Andrew Wilson:
Now we’re going to talk to you a little bit later in the broadcast about Ukraine and what we’re seeing in Ukraine because for our listeners, we really are focusing a lot on the Ukrainian business sector and the small and mediums and how they’re surviving the war. But I think it’s really helpful for people to get an understanding, given your rich background and knowledge of the Russian people. And the fact that you were actually in Moscow on the first day of the full invasion of Ukraine, to understand what you were seeing on the ground in Moscow that day, how people were perceiving what was being put forth as just a minor military operation almost. And maybe a little bit about how you’ve observed that evolve since then, given your understanding of how Russians think in public affairs terms.
Jill Dougherty:
Looking back at that period, that of course was February 2022, and even though I had left CNN after 30 years of working at CNN, they still sent me back to Russia when things were happening. And I’m basically like a commentator. It’s called a contributor. And so I was in Moscow in the Bureau, and I think thinking about that period, it feels like kabuki theater in many ways. And what I think Russia was doing is, and we know this, that Putin had made the decision quite a bit previous to that exact moment. And so they were putting, let’s say, the pieces in place.
So there was a lot of Putin on TV, Putin reading a speech. And then it would turn out that the speech was actually recorded the day before, but played that day as if it were live. And then Putin was meeting with women in the airline industry. I remember thinking, “Okay, a war is starting and it started in 2014, but essentially a big conflict is starting. We have an invasion and Putin is sitting down drinking tea with beautifully made up women who are in the airline industry. What is wrong with his picture?”
I think you’re absolutely right that the expectation by the Russian authorities and probably Putin himself were that this would be over very quickly. And of course it’s not, but I think that’s what they were trying to do, is to say, “Nothing to look at here. Military operation. We will solve this problem with a considerative problem and it’ll be over.” And I think crucially, the Russian people won’t really have to pay much of a price because this will be a surgical military operation. Boom. And it’s over.
Andrew Wilson:
Of course, that’s changed as you’ve observed. We’ve been in this now for a year and a half, and Ukraine now as we see it, and I think as was portrayed from the early stages of the conflict from Western eyes is ground zero in the fight for democracy in the world. And certainly the world is feeling its impact in a variety of ways, whether it’s been the grain shipments from Ukraine, or more recently what we’ve seen in stories actually from CNN about Ukraine being active perhaps in Sudan through some ways. So it is taking on some aspects of a global proxy conflict between the two powers.
But I’d really like to talk for a second about what’s really at stake here in this conflict because if we listen to how President Zelinsky has been recently framing this, this is preventing World War III, this is Ukraine standing up for Europe, stopping Russia from putting the same fate on the Baltic states or perhaps on some of the Caucasus nations. But others have framed it, especially in the south of the world, as a conflict just between nations, almost a border conflict, if you will. Where do you fall on this scale if we look at this as the apocal struggle of our time, or is this something that’s a serious conflict between two neighbors?
Jill Dougherty:
I think it’s really a turning point, a watershed. Let’s just start with the very fact that one big country, Russia, invades a neighboring country in the middle of Europe without really… most people in the West would say without provocation. The Russians say that they were provoked, that the West was out to invade them, but as far as I can see, NATO never did and will never, we hope, invade Russia. So that just by itself is an astounding fact. So that’s number one, that rules that were in place really ever since the end of the Cold War are all of a sudden broken by let’s say Vladimir Putin, because really it was his war, it was his decision.
And then I think the implications, you already mentioned one, which is it’s affecting the global food supply, and that is because Ukraine was, and still is a major, major exporter of grain. And Russia is too, but Russia is shutting down the ability of Ukraine to get its wheat and other grains out of the Black Sea that’s affecting developing countries.
Then you have inflation and the results of all of this attack on Ukraine where supply lines are changing, energy lines are changing. And you have… I think one of the most striking factors in this is the extent to which NATO has come back to life and really expanded, as we know with probably two new members. And Russia is facing an enormous… if they thought they had a border with NATO, now they have a much bigger border with NATO thanks to this war. So I think geopolitically, economically, no question, we didn’t even talk about the sanctions that have been imposed, but they’re affecting Russia very strongly.
We have societal change in Ukraine. I just spent a couple of seconds on this because I think Ukraine was going in that direction, becoming a democratic country with democratic values, trying to get rid of corruption. It’s always been a huge problem. Trying to help small businesses and get out of the grip of oligarchs. And that has been speeded up by this invasion because the Ukrainians are looking at their country and saying, this really is existential. Everything we built so far could be destroyed if we are taken over or destroyed by Russia. So there’s that factor.
And then I think you have to say it’s affecting Russia in an extremely negative way. Every time I look… I, at this point, cannot go back. I don’t think I would go back to Russia at this point because I wouldn’t trust the situation. Three Americans actually are being held at this very moment in Russia, but I think the way that we look at what’s happening in Ukraine is affecting almost every aspect of our lives right now.
Andrew Wilson:
Let’s take a little look at the Ukrainian private sector for a minute. I think you mentioned the oligarchs, but we have seen in the years just prior to the conflict, the beginnings of a real exciting entrepreneurial class within Ukraine, and they certainly are an engine of growth. We’ve learned that from almost every transitional economy we’ve looked at in Eastern Europe. When we’ve looked to where growth has occurred, it has always been from the small and medium enterprises. And to that extent, Ukraine was a bit of a holdover with the facilities and the economic power of the Donbas region, which of course has now been destroyed. And should it ever return to Ukraine? I think there’s a real fundamental strategic question there about: do you even rebuild it? But take us through your views on the role of the private sector, both today in helping Ukraine address the conflict it’s in, but also as its future. You’ve alluded to it a little bit already.
Jill Dougherty:
I think it’s really crucial because in that entire world, Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, the Caucuses, Central Asia, the entire, let’s call it… I hate to say post-Soviet, but maybe there’s no other expression. But that neighborhood, which is huge, the one thing that traditionally many people had and then was taken from them by the communists going back to the Soviet Union, was private enterprise and private farms. I had a conversation with actually the oldest friend that I have. He happens to live in Russia. His ancestors came from Ukraine, in fact. We had this conversation. His grandfather was arrested by Stalin and sent to the camps, and guess what his grandfather did? He was a private, pretty well-off farmer.
So this is one way that Russians showed their entrepreneurship and Ukrainians and other people in the region. So I really do believe that having somebody build their own business, whatever it is, is really crucial because to do that, you need a legal system that works. You need to be able to write a contract, you need to be able to buy land, you need to be able to hire other people, and then you need to be able to protect that business. All of these things are the institutions of democracy, and every single one of them has been diminished by Vladimir Putin in Russia. And then in Ukraine, not really, let’s say officially by the government, but practically by the rich oligarchs who simply would buy up everything that they could, some of them under the influence of Russia. But that’s the malign effect of not having some way of having entrepreneurship and building a life that you want to have.
Andrew Wilson:
Some people have strategically said that perhaps the fastest way to help Russians build those institutions, they believe, is to support Ukraine. A: do you believe that yourself, and B: how does that manifest itself? What is the power of example that could be at play here?
Jill Dougherty:
Yeah, Andrew, I really do agree with that. I’d like to think that there could be reform in Russia, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. All the reforms are being turned around and reversed. So for Ukraine, I do ascribe to that school of thinking, which is if Ukraine can, number one, save itself and survive this horrible assault, and then it can continue to build the democracy that it has been building, that it would be a graphic lesson to civilians in Russia. Just picture it. So many Russians have relatives in Ukraine. I always joke about it and I say, every Russian I know has a grandmother in Ukraine, and it’s almost literally true. So if all of a sudden their relatives are living much better and their relatives are building businesses and having farms and traveling and doing the things that people in Western Europe do, I think Russians would kind of question like, “What’s happening here? Why not?” So it would be a great lesson. I do hope it happens. I think it would be the most effective way that ultimately you could change Russia for the better.
Andrew Wilson:
If we’re thinking about outcomes here of the conflict, does a frozen conflict or a conflict in which Russia still manages to retain some geographical advantage on Ukrainian territory, does that jeopardize in some way that opportunity?
Jill Dougherty:
I think it would. I mean, that is the sad state that we have right now, which is we don’t know how this is going to end. And I think Putin, if you look at the way he is conducting this war, he’s not showing any sign that he wants to end it. I think in a way, we all know that he’s kind of playing this out. He’s hoping that in 2024, number one, he’s going to be facing reelection. He wants to get reelected, but I think he wants change in the United States as well, and which might be more amenable to his point of view in the world. And so I don’t think he’s really in any rush to solve this, sadly, but if it turns into a frozen conflict, I think it would be extremely difficult for Ukraine to build what it wants to build and have that type of situation right next door or maybe even on your land.
So this is so complicated, Andrew, how ultimately it will all end, but I think the pressure of the world has to be on Russia to allow Ukraine to be itself, to be what it was before it was brutally attacked.
Andrew Wilson:
One of the stories that I think goes underreported and perhaps underappreciated is the broader human impact of this. We all care immensely for those who lose their lives and are otherwise direct victims of the conflict. It’s the horrible thing about war, but there’s a huge amount of displaced humanity that’s in place right now on both sides of the conflict. If we think about the Ukrainian side, it’s of course the most obvious faces is the refugees that have left the country, women and their children, and men of course not allowed to leave. And then we look at Russia and we see the departures that have occurred there for more political reasons, I think. What do you see as the impact of all of this? To me, it’s both countries are losing a generation.
Jill Dougherty:
They are, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. You have to look at the casualties. I mean, Russia is facing way over 200,000 casualties, and that includes dead and wounded. It’s probably much higher, but at least that. I actually just the other day heard the figure, and I think it’s probably reliable of 300,000. And Ukraine, about half of that. So 150,000 people in Ukraine, and these are young people, these are people who could be in college or working and we’d call them the best and the brightest on both sides that many are being killed. So you have this entire generation being wiped out or severely injured, and then you have families separated. So I concentrate a lot on young people. That’s the problem in Ukraine, that people have had to flee the fighting and then the young men are dying and also young women. There are plenty of women who are fighting as well.
In Russia, you have the military dying of course, but you also have a lot of people who oppose the war who simply had to flee, and that includes, I’ll tell you. All of my journalist friends, all of them down to the last person have fled Russia, and now they’re in the Baltics, they’re in Georgia, they’re in Europe in various places, and they have no idea when they’ll go back. That’s another really horrible damage to Russia and its future that these people who really are thinkers and leaders are all leaving. And who is left? Who is left and what is going to be left? Because anybody who oppose this war is going to be arrested and prosecuted and thrown in prison. It’s just the way it is.
Andrew Wilson:
This leads me to the concluding question on this. We’re doing a lot to perhaps help Ukraine with the military side of the struggle. We’re certainly providing support in humanitarian ways that we can. What are other ways that Western democracies can help either by helping Ukraine directly or perhaps in terms of helping Russians who may want a saner path for their future? What can we do to help in practical terms advance these folks?
Jill Dougherty:
Andrew, I think in Russia, it is very difficult to help directly at this point because a lot of NGOs have been declared foreign agents or undesirable organizations. And so it’s virtually impossible to work with them without jeopardizing them. Let’s say from the West, you wanted to give money. It could be very damaging to them because they would be violating the law. So I think there are programs outside of Russia and actually outside of Ukraine at this point for let’s say students, academics, people who may be studying legal systems, et cetera. I think the NGO world is really trying to help and do what it can right now to build the building blocks, to have the building blocks for what will come next.
I do think Ukraine is quite extraordinary because in the midst of this war, they seem to be able to do some reforms, which is astounding to me. I am amazed sometimes realizing that their government still functions how that happens, but it does. So I think they’re moving ahead as much as possible. I think the US really has to help with any type of NGO. Especially ones that are funded by the US government, they can help with those building blocks, legal reform… let’s say economic reform and helping people who want to start businesses. How do you start a business? These are things that the United States has done for years and can really help in that area.
And then I think Americans have to realize we’ve got new people coming here, and there has to be a way to integrate them into our society with the hope that maybe they will go back. I think a lot of people in both countries want to go back and build their countries. And so preparing them for that, I think is the best way that the West can help and individuals out here in the West can help.
Andrew Wilson:
I appreciate the sentiment, and I think what we’ve seen in our work in Ukraine is the incredible resilience of civil society in both responding to the immediate challenges it’s got, but also in terms of finding niches and ways it can support that perhaps the government hasn’t identified quickly or doesn’t have the resources to do. And what we’re seeing are wonderful bits of imaginative and responsive pieces.
On another MOVA broadcast, for instance, we talked to someone from an agricultural association who’s working with Jose Andres’s World Central Kitchen to find pickup trucks, of all things, because all the farmers’ pickup trucks got donated to the army, and the farmers still need the equipment to feed the country. Things that just people don’t quite think on what the knock-on effects are, but NGOs and civil society are there because they’re touching the pulse of people all the time and they can find those solutions. It’s really heartening to see, and I think my hope for it at least is that moving forward as we learn from the other reconstruction efforts we’ve seen around the world, whether that was the Balkans or places where we even learned negative lessons, that we take advantage of all of those equities in society to help people solve these problems that are going to be huge. They already are huge, but are going to be huge.
Jill, I wanted to thank you for joining us today and giving us those insights into Russia, and I hope we can touch base again sometime and maybe take a look back, hopefully at what will have been a successful reconstruction effort and perhaps change elsewhere in the neighborhood that we can salute and be proud of. Thank you, Jill.
Jill Dougherty:
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Andrew Wilson:
And thank you for joining us on this episode of MOVA. For more information on the Center for International Private Enterprise and our work, please visit our website at www.cipe.org. If you found value in this episode, please show your support by liking and subscribing to MOVA. Sharing this podcast with others helps us expand the conversation.
