Exploring a Geopolitical Perspective of Democracy with Chris

Chris, NatSecMedia, is an ex-pat living in Ukraine. He covers security issues around the globe. Currently, his focus is on Ukraine. He reports from in the country amplifying stories of the defenders and their families. 

Our democracy is intertwined and dependent on one another.

 For more info: https://natsecmedia.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome to Connections and Conversations, an advocacy arena podcast, working to increase civic engagement and strengthen our communities. Welcome to another episode of Connections and Conversations. I'm so excited today to have with me Chris with National Security Media. And we're going to just dive right into the conversation because Chris is doing some very important work. And Chris, I just want to turn the mic over to you and allow you to tell our audience what you're doing. You're in Ukraine. What are you doing there?

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

One, I live here. Okay. The reason why I say that is that it's a 360 environment, 24-7, for over 1,170 days. I don't know the precise day count since the beginning of full-scale invasion, but I came here in January 2022 in my old job as a research guy and terrorism firm. And then three years right about now went back to kind of my old roots in radio and news media at Pacifica. Something I just knew that was required of me, you know, which includes learning how to do what's required here by listening to Ukrainians. So what are we doing? Essentially combination of working with Ukrainians on what stories matter, and also explicitly trying to go find stories that do not get coverage, are easily ignored by major media like CNN, uh BBC, etc. And like I said, living here means that you get a chance to immerse yourself in experiences that I think people who come and go may not quite have, partially because the language barrier. So if they don't really immerse themselves in the language like where I live, I will find people who will speak English with me, but it's I'm often the only person around me who's an American. Whereas a lot of Americans and Westerners stay in a central area of the city so that when they come to do aid, when they come to do newswork or whatever they're doing, they have a specific kind of bubbled life that I think one, it's interesting, it's not the one I have, but it lacks some common chatter amongst people. So that over three years you can get the highs and lows of how the the country is changing, perspectives from different age brackets, uh you know, types of lifestyles, and when you just really say, Let's go into it 100%, there's no end of what you're trying to learn. I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:41

I often catch you in spaces where you're trying to tell these stories, and I am, as I said, excited to be able to have you tell a little bit of this story to our audience. One of the things that I know that you do is to tell the stories of defenders and their families and to bring attention to that. Can you tell me why that has really become a major part of your focus?

SPEAKER_00: 3:10

Uh a couple of reasons, actually. First, it was an accident, like a lot of things I find myself doing. I went out in November, at the end of November 2022, into my Don while being on someone's space about Ukraine and saw these families really, really wanting some attention towards their situation. I'm a lifelong activist, so it doesn't take long to spot, but I didn't necessarily know what. I saw Mariupol sign, so quickly gathered, you know, okay, these are families of defenders or family members are in captivity. Because of my media work, I often go to briefings on a range of issues. And the more I learned about what was happening, both to the defenders in captivity, some of which had returned and telling the stories, and also especially the emotional grind on the families who have very little information, literally live in a perpetual trauma of stories that come out that are clearly putting horror in their hearts for their loved ones, uh, whether they're f husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, you know. Then I found that the more I was doing the work, I would learn a lot more ambient information that I think most of you guys will see in headline-oriented news about weapons and where battles are happening, and mine worked in reverse. So whereas you you can watch 20 Days in Mariupol, I can sit down and talk to people who went through it from a range of different experiences. And one of the experiences that was lacking in our public record was what about the defenders? What did they experience? Not just the captivity, but what was their lead up into it, what's happening? So the biggest part of why is that it's not sexy, it's not popular, it's not getting done here enough, it's not getting done in our supporter circle enough. And when you go through town and you see an event to raise awareness, the question is do outsiders know what the protest is about? Is it just protesting? Is it, for instance, Russian media has actually tried to frame it as these families are upset with the government of Ukraine and therefore something bad? Sometimes they are. Sometimes that's part of it. But a lot of it is simply about why are we ignored? Why are our defenders being ignored on the international level? They hadn't done anything. They didn't invade a foreign country and get caught. They were defending on their own territory after three years, including the fact that yesterday is the three-year anniversary since the Illanivka community, since the Olunivka compound was hit with the defenders in there, 50 of them plus killed. And uh, I don't know the numbers, but 150 something seriously wounded, still in captivity, even after we've had this thousand for thousand swap infirmed, etc., those are still in captivity. So it doesn't get coverage. And I think that's the main reason why I'm more and more determined to do so. And that's last part because it it is important. When I listen to supporters talk about Ukraine, whether it's on Twitter or post uh on uh YouTube, and I'm specifically talking about the uh uh non-Ukrainian conversation. I've often said if you can sit down with a person who's come back from captivity for three years, and you can tell them what you did for Ukraine, for their mom, for their wife, their sister, their children, with a straight face, maybe some intrepidation, but at least like, yeah, well, I mean, while you were in captivity, I you have an answer. Good for you, you know. Um, I think most people need to stop and ask themselves, did I do enough for your mom? Did I do enough to make sure that your wife, while every day you didn't know what was happening in the rest of the world, I made sure that everyone treated her right, that the government officials listened to her, that she was strong, knowing that she had to be strong so that when you came out, she wasn't broken, shattered, and in you know, a mental institution seeking like rehabilitation. You this is why it became much more than just releases. It was a job. And now the defenders are coming home, and I get the uh the validation that it was the right path.

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

Thank you so much. And and I know it means a lot to you, and I hear so many of your stories. I know that you have gotten to meet and become friends and part of families there, and I really appreciate the work that you do. I want to keep highlighting it. And when this episode airs, we will put links to your website and anything else that you think would be beneficial. I know you're busy. You're still in a country at war. Very much so. So my hat's off to you for your bravery for the important work that you're doing. I want to give you a few minutes to appeal to people, tell them what you want them to know about what you're doing, about the people of Ukraine, talk to them. Here's another opportunity to reach a different community.

SPEAKER_00: 8:23

Sure. Well, the first thing is I think that it helps um, if I were to say basically to Americans, you know, I'm from Texas. I grew up with a very specific set of values about freedom. Many of them I call them glittering generalities, you know, freedom, liberty, and all these things. I knew my country hadn't lived up to that, but the best of what we stood for was rooted in it. People I admired, and they even say the people we were coaxed to admire growing up had this mythos about standing up to tyranny, even if it was hypocritical in our culture, right? And so I haven't lost sight of that that value matters, and that if you're gonna say something like America First, if it's only navel staring version, like America First means screw everyone else and we'll just do what we want. Well, the problem for that is that um America's leadership role, the things that that crowd wants in that category come by leading and the world stage with the resources and power that come to the United States. It's like the the old adage, you know, to whom much is given, much is expected. And it's um part of why I think Americans don't understand why it's incumbent upon America to help Ukraine both remove Russia from all of its terrain, but also to hold Russia accountable in a way that we built our American mythos out of with Japan and Germany. Look at Japan and Germany now, right? It was not easy to achieve that, obviously, but it took world effort to do so. Americans do not understand that a majority of the money that was allocated through Congress stayed within America. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but you know I run a site called Uamission.com, along with it's a NATSIC Media project. And we broke down the numbers, and mainly we looked at the numbers of state in every state. I look at the example since I'm from Texas of Lance Gooden from Mesquite, Texas, that there's an artillery factory there, that his partisan politics made him go insult Zelensky instead of saying, Hey, I want to employ people in my community. And I think that when people see the amount of money that is you know used to employ people in their communities to essentially rebuild the machinery that runs the US Army, runs the Navy, that's what they're doing with it. And then what happens is the excess materials and old materials that would cost a certain amount of money to be destroyed actually cost less to just put on pallets and send to Ukraine to defend themselves. Then comes the foreign national policy issues. Russia clearly wants Europe to collapse, wants America's footprint to be highly withdrawn. And I think that those people who think that's a good thing need to count their resources like way far in advance, because the United States benefits, for instance, from a lot of the relationships that we are now screwing over in Europe, being hostile randomly to China for no reason. I mean, you know, there's problems with a lot of parts of the world we don't address with it all, we just stay stuck in this perpetual name calling for China and a complete ignorance under Trump of what Russia is trying to achieve. So I think the average Americans need to get with it to say no, we don't we don't like this slide towards appealing to Russia to find its sanity. Russia is not going to find its sanity. Russia launches drones, first off, every day, into the city I live in the capital, Kiev, which is a first world European capital, it's not third world. Some place that's so destroyed, so corrupt, it's just okay, it's a shithole. No, it's not actually. And I think that Marco Rubio's if you've got a second, I'm gonna lay this out for you. I know Yes, yes. Okay. So Marco Rubio, for instance, when he made a commentary here um a few months ago after getting into office, just like it's just so bad in Ukraine, and it sounds futile at that point. And that means there's nothing to protect. Well, he was just wrong. I mean, there's plenty to protect. There's a lot of places to protect, a lot of people to protect, and I try to equate it to the metaphor of burning down a house. If you went up to someone's house regardless of size, and found that the lower portion of the garage was on fire, but the rest of the house wasn't on fire yet. Now a big chunk of the garage is on fire. It's catching on towards the kitchen, but you can still put it out. And then people go, you know, should we get water? Yeah. I mean, it's not the bedroom. Now he's getting mad at me because we're not putting the fire up fast enough. He's wearing a sweater. I mean, that's what it sounds like. There's a lot of things that could have been done during the Biden administration. There's even more that could be done now because we keep learning. And I've said it a couple years ago. If you didn't like the tax bill that you had now for you know sixty-one billion dollars plus, or actually, you know, whatever the total number is, it's gonna be five to ten times more than that when this fails, and Russia and China and Iran, uh, North Korea gain more foothold because America just decided, meh, MAGA. So sad. It's avoidable. That's why it's sad.

SPEAKER_01: 13:39

Exactly. And I appreciate you continuing, as I said, to shine a light on it, to contextualize the narratives that they are trying to push. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:51

It's uh it's been a learning lesson to get the Russian narrative lessons up close, too, because I had my American versions, but then I'm around Ukrainians, and I get, well, you know about this, right? No, like some historical flavor that would have only been local. That's been a tremendous help in locking in a lifetime of experience, you know. I'm in my mid-50s, so I remember enough about the Cold War, studied it vigorously for my job to understand what was happening with the active measures of the last few years plus the historical past, and it's not done. They're still playing.

SPEAKER_01: 14:27

They really are, and I imagine like we have some concepts here of, you know, as Americans, of the Russian propaganda and and how it works, but I imagine it's slightly different what affects us here and how it's used on us here than it is for a neighboring European country.

SPEAKER_00: 14:45

So I imagine it's customized. Here there is a full-blown information warfare against Ukrainians that affects the mindset of Ukrainians, officials, common people. There's a lot of mindfulness about it here, probably more than just about anywhere, but it still has its effect. I know a historian who was doing research on what textbooks were being propagated in occupied territory, and she said the thing that really shocked her was that after studying and studying and studying what they had been brainwashing the kids with, that she was like, Well, was it like that? Is our history you know, this sort of questioning? And it was painful for me to hear this person who I you know clearly knows, knows her topics, have to have that mind bend go on, you know. Uh I have a different word, but it's something to be very serious about. And then the second part is in the active noise of the war. Meaning like there's a historical narrative battle where you have people here who say things that Russia wants to hear and wants to be said by Ukrainians, but then there's just the real-time operation issues. So as things are happening, Russia bombards the news space, bombards the social media space with lies, and so Ukrainians can't get the information as fast as necessary, to make good decisions, to not be angry at officials, to not be angry at the West. All of these things are different. So what's aimed at you in America is designed to get you as an American to do the thing Russia needs you to do. What's aimed at Ukrainians is basically the same thing, just designed for Ukrainians, to get them to do what they need them to do, to get the Polish to do something, to get the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Germans, every group out there is a target of an operation designed to elicit a uh what I call behavior nudge that's in the design of the Kremlin. I study American Psyup. We did it in many parts of the world ourselves.

SPEAKER_01: 16:49

Would you say that because Ukrainians are feeling that kinetically through this war and experiencing that, do you think that they're a bit more savvy around these operations and media literacy in general?

SPEAKER_00: 17:05

Certainly media literacy. Like I have a chapter eventually, if I ever get a book out, I'm not rushing to get one, but I I always pan at these certain chapters, and one of my favorite is the Babusi Intelligence Agency, the grandmas that I love and adore. One of the segments in there will be about their smartphone literacy that they know how to use Telegram, Facebook, etc., to get information around. But also they go to classes across the country no less. I actually went to a center in Chernehiv, just northeast of us, and elders can come in and learn how to use computers and smartphones and make sure that they're aware of getting information, but also to be savvy of where to get the information. And the government has been very keen to do it for the last three years. And aside from the elders, an example would be the defender families often go to the coordination headquarters to hear updates, but they get briefings on potential operations that have been found of the FSB trying to prey upon their need to get their defender home. Oh, if you'll just do this, we'll help you. And it's a very active problem. Some of which the family is kind of like, oh, well, the coordination headquarters is saying that for you know, whatever. So some people do blow those things off, or maybe they just feel they already know. And but I think it's important that these different agencies are frequently trying to tell Ukrainian people, here's the situation, because this is the front. I mean, this is the digital front, the information warfare front, and uh of course the kinetic warfare front.

SPEAKER_01: 18:40

Exactly. When I speak about Ukraine, I think of them as really the spear and the shield to Western democracy. And so again, what you are doing is so important.

SPEAKER_00: 18:52

One more thing is that Euromidon is a thing for a lot of American supporters to go, oh, I'm so proud of Ukrainians. And uh people died in Euromidon. People confronted the government strong enough that Yanukovych unleashed death. They didn't go out there with signs and rallies and bang the drums and then go home and everything was kind of like start it back up the next day and just hope. No, it got bloody, and not because the protesters were violent, not like a Jan 6 bullshit. We've had it. We've had it with the the oppression, we've had it with the oppression of the activists, and they weren't gonna put up with it anymore. And every it's actually testimony to nonviolence, although I don't feel I'm as nonviolent in my heart as I was as a youth. Uh there's a lot of Dr. King uh information in my head that's it's on hold right now. But that's the point, is that they were out there being that. It was the government who did what they did. It wasn't the people who went out and started being violent at the government. The people demanded that the will that their Rada had voted for a trade pact with Europe towards the West, away from Russia, be honored. That was what they wanted, that's what they supported, and they were not going to be sabotaged. And the more a dictator type behavior kicked in with Yanukovych, the more they said, no, we won't. So one of the problems here in Ukraine for policy is the sort of the opposite, like populism, where not upsetting, you know, it may be more even complicated than this, but one specific issue I see is that populism to not upset the people is sometimes stronger than what people try to jab at Zelensky or others as being dictatorial, because if it was dictatorial, a lot of things happening now simply would not be happening. Dictatorships are what I call neat, and I'm not saying that in a good way. I understand. Democracy is messy. By nature of democracy, it's very messy. Autocracies are very neat, uh, even when they're bloody, they're still very neat. That's what the autocrats want. When they apply their rules in society, it's about keeping things neat. Tell on your neighbor, telling your co-worker, tell on your family member is keeping things neat. Messy democracy doesn't allow that. And here, a range of problems that Ukrainians battle through in policy form. Like if you ever watch a Zelensky speech and watch a Ukrainian journalist ask a question, it's that. It's not the stupid CNN question about what territory would we give up in order to have peace. No, no Ukrainian journalist is going to ask Zelensky that question. Because that's not a question Ukrainians ponder. There's like, why are we fixing the bridge when we haven't won the war? You know, why things that are practical and um personal. Exactly. You know, and we don't have that in America. In America, it's it's federal, right? It's concepts that are battling right now.

SPEAKER_01: 21:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 21:50

That's not what's happening.

SPEAKER_01: 21:52

Well, again, I thank you for being there. It can't be easy, but I know that you're passionate about it. And your passion comes through whenever I hear you speak and you are working to bring attention, as I said, especially to defenders and their family, to humanize their story. So it's not just, you know, a headline that goes by or that never gets made, but you're connecting with real people because it is the people of Ukraine whose lives are at risk and who are risking their lives for their country.

SPEAKER_00: 22:31

Journalism should be about empowering the voiceless, empowering those who in the out-of-balance of society do not have that. So the number one mission is to empower those without the balanced voice. If it's a civilian from occupied territory, if it's um a defender's mom, if it's a defender themselves, um, whichever, any of these things, um, then that's what I will do. I I did at Pacifica Radio. Um, I would go to parts of Houston's uh communities that major media would mostly ignore. Wasn't sexy, wasn't influential enough, maybe, but we saw it as people who suffered or had issues that needed to be fixed. That's what I see it as here.

SPEAKER_01: 23:14

I thank you, and I thank you for doing what you do. And when the episode airs, we will have links. Uh I hope that you get more support and eyes on the work that you're doing and the people whose stories you are trying to highlight. So I want to thank you for spending this time with us.

SPEAKER_00: 23:33

Thank you, Dave. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01: 23:38

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