Episode 3 -
The Unseen Toll: Ukraine's Fight and the World's Future

00:00:00:10 - 00:00:31:12

Sam Cook

Christopher Miller. Welcome to the Ukraine History Podcast. This is a podcast where we're in where we're interviewing the history writers and the history makers in Ukraine, specifically focused on the current crisis, the war here in Ukraine. And Chris, I just finished reading your book, The War Came to US Life and Death in Ukraine. And you started off the book saying, this is the book I always wanted to write and never wanted to write.

00:00:32:04 - 00:00:36:00

Sam Cook

Tell us about why this book was introduced as such.

00:00:36:11 - 00:01:18:16

Christopher Miller

Yeah, well, thank you for having me on the podcast. It's interesting that you invited me on to a podcast about history because I made it very clear in the introduction as well that I didn't want to. I didn't I don't view myself as a historian. I'm very much a journalist. And I really wanted to, you know, lay out the modern history of Ukraine, but not apply so much analysis of that history, but rather to to show what has happened over this period of 13 years that I've lived and worked in Ukraine, and then let people and historians and academics, you know, study that and look at these events as they are written here and as

00:01:18:16 - 00:01:49:01

Christopher Miller

they are written in journalism and reporting at the moment to judge, you know, what what has happened here and the significance of that. But, you know, as for the my my book and what you said about me, you know, viewing this as the book that I always wanted to write and also that I never wanted to write. I mean, the early chapters deal with my arrival in Ukraine, getting to know the place, the people, the culture moving to.

00:01:49:07 - 00:02:18:03

Christopher Miller

Then the little city of our little mosque now called Mahmoud in eastern Ukraine and having these really incredible experiences. I was as a US Peace Corps volunteer there and this was a volunteer job that was no easy task. It was an extremely difficult and challenging job. And, you know, but it was also very rewarding. And I build great relationships with people there.

00:02:18:03 - 00:02:40:08

Christopher Miller

And I have collected all of these incredible stories. And I thought that was important. And I had written down many of these stories for a blog that I kept at the time. I wrote about them in emails back home to family and friends. I kept a journal and I thought, you know, at some point it might be interesting to write a book about this place.

00:02:40:13 - 00:03:06:13

Christopher Miller

And I didn't have any lofty ambitions. I thought it might just be interesting as a book written by an American from the perspective of someone who lived in this really interesting place in Far Eastern Ukraine. And I had read some other books by Peace Corps volunteers who had traveled to various places and thought that I learned a lot about the place through their experiences.

00:03:06:13 - 00:03:53:13

Christopher Miller

And so, you know, back in 2010, 11, 12, my first years in Ukraine, I, I collected all of these stories. I kept them, like I said, in an archive online and in my hard drives and then also in my journals. And then I sort of forgot about them and set them aside. I decided to stay in Ukraine and after the Peace Corps became a journalist working first for the Kiev Post newspaper, and then several international media and it was, you know, after 2013, 2014, during the Maidan revolution and then Russia's annexation of Crimea and first invasion of Ukraine, that I really began to think, you know what, I've experienced a really important series of of

00:03:53:15 - 00:04:11:00

Christopher Miller

of moments that are shaping this country and thought then maybe I could be in a position to write a good composition, massive account of these events and then again and set it aside for years.

00:04:11:01 - 00:04:36:15

Sam Cook

So let me jump in. Why why did you not write the book in 2015, let's say, after. So the book's actually divided into three sections. First is your time in peaceful Ukraine. The Peace Corps, and then and then afterwards the European Cup and reporting. And then it goes into Maidan and the war that that came after that that that really never ended.

00:04:37:00 - 00:04:47:12

Sam Cook

And then the third part is a full scale invasion. Do you think you held back in 2015, 2016, because you weren't quite sure if this was it or what do you think stopped you?

00:04:47:16 - 00:05:03:14

Christopher Miller

Well, I'll go back to answer your original question in short, because I feel like I didn't give you a direct answer to it. And that is, you know, the book I always wanted to write was one about this place that I have come to love and the people who I've grown so close with and all of these really incredible experiences.

00:05:03:14 - 00:05:23:03

Christopher Miller

I had the book that I never planned to write that I did not want to write was a book about the place that I have come to love and the people that I have come to love being attacked and and facing war and this really brutal, brutal aggression that we've seen over the course of many years by Russia, which the that's why.

00:05:23:05 - 00:05:48:24

Sam Cook

And it's a paradox, because I remember last year before the full scale invasion, I did some I was running a tech startup and I was bored and I wanted to put something interesting in our blog about the history of Ukraine to illustrate the fact that we were based in this country, in Europe called Ukraine. And I tried to relate history to the tech world, and everyone thought it was kind of weird, cute.

00:05:49:20 - 00:06:00:17

Sam Cook

But in a way, the thing that you never wanted to have happened to Ukraine makes your book way more interesting. Everyone now wants to know about Ukraine, whereas before, probably no one would have read that book.

00:06:01:12 - 00:06:28:00

Christopher Miller

Yeah, I think that's I think that's true. And I didn't necessarily want to write a book before for it to blow up or anything like that and become this, you know, this great thing. It's more it's mostly and this is to in many ways a passion project or a personal project. I think that I am fortunate enough that the moment means that the moment in which, you know, I have published this book does mean that more people are going to read it and to understand and learn about Ukraine.

00:06:28:05 - 00:07:10:14

Christopher Miller

So that's, I think, a silver lining to this incredibly terrible situation that Ukraine has found itself in. You asked why I didn't write this in 2015. The there are many answers or many reasons why. I think, you know, I didn't feel as though the war was over and there was this stalemated situation following the Minsk two agreements in February of 2015 that led to the intensity of the war really decreasing and the front lines stabilizing and Russia really solidifying its grip on the occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk.

00:07:10:14 - 00:07:35:09

Christopher Miller

But the war kept going on through 2015. I would say that there were still these big flare ups and even in 20 parts of 2016 and winter of 2017, we saw the war flare up. I think that sort of unfinished nature of it made me think, you know, it's not the right time to do that. I didn't feel as though I also had a lot of distance from from the war.

00:07:35:09 - 00:07:58:11

Christopher Miller

I was still going to the front lines of every month or two and spending time with soldiers there. But there was a lot happening in Kiev that kept me very busy. It was, you know, Ukraine, a new Ukraine that was still dealing with Russia and and a a simmering war in the east. But it was also a country that was trying to remake itself.

00:07:58:11 - 00:08:29:18

Christopher Miller

And working on reforms and and progressing. And there was a lot of work to do as a journalist in Kiev covering those reforms, covering a new administration, covering, you know, the development of new politics. And and that kept me busy. I think I just lost track of time. Yeah. I changed jobs several times, working for various news outlets that, you know, had me focusing on different aspects of this.

00:08:29:23 - 00:09:02:22

Christopher Miller

But also there were other major events in the world that took me a foreign correspondent away from Ukraine and to those places. So I covered the refugee crisis across Europe and spent a lot of time in Greece and in the Mediterranean and Italy and other places. And I went back to the US and covered the the elections in 2016 and other various moments of tumult in the US, while also always, you know, returning back to my work base here in Kiev.

00:09:03:12 - 00:09:04:13

Sam Cook

So you're based out of Europe.

00:09:04:18 - 00:09:36:09

Christopher Miller

I've been based here since since I finished the Peace Corps in eastern Ukraine and moved to Kiev in late 2012. But I do split my time between New York and Kiev, you know, try to trying to keep as much as I can, one foot in each place and living between the two. But I think also having the ability to step away for short periods of time from Ukraine and go back to the US helps me keep in perspective what what the war is and what it means to people outside of Ukraine.

00:09:36:09 - 00:10:03:09

Christopher Miller

And I think that's as important now as ever before, because Ukraine rely so heavily on Western assistance, particularly financial support and military support from the United States. So I get to go back every couple of months to spend two or three weeks at a time in the US and ask questions of our leadership there, but also ordinary people to hear what they're thinking about the war over here and about our continued support.

00:10:03:09 - 00:10:25:13

Christopher Miller

And, you know, there is a lot of concern that in the next several months, as we gear up for an election, the United States, that Ukraine could again become a political football of sorts and starting. And it's already starting, unfortunately. Yeah, but not to digress too much, you know, I just wasn't sure it was the right time to write a book in 2015.

00:10:25:17 - 00:10:38:08

Christopher Miller

And then time sort of escaped me. And, you know, I waited for years until actually I was approached by my publisher, Bloomsbury in January of 2022 as Russia was gearing up for its fall.

00:10:38:08 - 00:10:40:00

Sam Cook

So the way they approached, they approached you.

00:10:40:00 - 00:11:10:05

Christopher Miller

Before they did? Yeah. Yeah, I know. To their credit, they wanted a Ukraine book. They viewed the country as important and felt as though there was a story about Ukraine that had not yet been told in in the way in which I decided to tell it. And, well, we together decided to tell it. There are a lot of great history books by academics and historians, you know, Marcy Shaw, Timothy Snyder, some people have all published great books and I would recommend reading.

00:11:10:07 - 00:11:49:09

Christopher Miller

Yeah. Everything they've done. Yeah, it's, it's sort of out of all. Yeah, exactly. You know, they're, they're fantastic and they've certainly informed my reporting, but I felt as though there hasn't been really a comprehensive narrative style book of of reporting and vignettes and scenes that pieced together or stringing together all of these really incredible and important events that have unfolded over the past decade and that have really shaped the Ukraine that much of the world is now getting to know, you know, the resilience, the defiance, the unity that we're seeing.

00:11:49:13 - 00:12:00:14

Christopher Miller

It didn't come from nowhere, right? It came from somewhere. And so really, the idea was to sort of lay out how it built and and how we came to the place we are now.

00:12:00:14 - 00:12:22:11

Sam Cook

What was the idea when they approached you? Was was it hey, we just think there's a really good book out in Ukraine out there that hasn't been published. We're looking for someone and they found you were did someone recommend them to you? And then were they looking for this in January 2022 because Russia was starting to make Ukraine in the news more with its threats or.

00:12:22:12 - 00:12:25:02

Christopher Miller

Yeah, all of that. All of that actually. Yeah. Yeah.

00:12:25:11 - 00:12:34:20

Sam Cook

So they were just like, hey, this this country is becoming way more important on the global scene because of what's happening, even if this war doesn't start. We want to have a book in Ukraine.

00:12:34:20 - 00:12:36:18

Christopher Miller

Yes. Okay. Yeah, more or less.

00:12:36:18 - 00:12:59:06

Sam Cook

Yeah. And so it came together and you obviously at that point had no idea how the war would unfold in that environment where the sleepy little little town that you lived in, eastern Ukraine, would become the epicenter of the war. So let's go back to that original time. I call it the Garden of Eden time or the time of innocence in post-Soviet Ukraine.

00:13:00:16 - 00:13:33:01

Sam Cook

You talk about teaching in the local high school. And one particular story that I thought was really interesting was when you were grading students and you got relieved from your duties as a teacher to talk talk about that and just give the reader a sense of that. The first part of the book, what you were trying to do with that and set up and and one of the things I thought was remarkable about this, and I know how hard this is going through myself right now is is how you learned the language, you know, Russian, where you were living.

00:13:33:01 - 00:13:40:11

Sam Cook

And then now I'm sure you understand a lot of Ukrainian. But let's talk about this first part of the book before we move into the next part. And that story.

00:13:40:20 - 00:14:19:01

Christopher Miller

I arrived at a really interesting moment. Ukraine had for you know almost the the the many years post independence really struggled to become the democracy that it's today still striving to be. And when I arrived in 2010, the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich and his Party of Regions had just taken power. He had been he had he had rigged an election in 2000 for sparking the Orange Revolution, only to see that election canceled and a more Western friendly president, Viktor Yushchenko, coming to power.

00:14:19:08 - 00:14:33:23

Christopher Miller

He was largely viewed as a lame duck, having not done enough to really take the country forward and westward. And so Viktor Yanukovych was legitimately elected in 2010. And, you know, this was a really.

00:14:35:02 - 00:14:41:06

Sam Cook

Actually with the help of one of a very famous person in American political family, recently, a portmanteau.

00:14:41:06 - 00:15:18:18

Christopher Miller

Mr. Paul Manafort. Yes. Yeah. So I you know, I arrived at this moment where Ukraine was in many ways taking a step back. And I would say, you know, our leadership in the United States and a lot of the leadership in the European Union were concerned about Ukraine's progress or lack thereof. And, you know, I came in and a lot of outside of the capital, outside of some of the major cities, Kharkiv and Donetsk, if you get into the regions, the country at that time still felt, you know, very post-Soviet.

00:15:18:18 - 00:15:49:10

Christopher Miller

There was definitely still a Soviet hangover. And, you know, I found that to be interesting in that there were people who were my age at the time in their early twenties, mid twenties, really, you know, trying to find their way. Yeah. For the first time, having regular access to the Internet, being able to view the outside world as never before, travel outside of Ukraine if they had money, a phone.

00:15:49:11 - 00:16:13:17

Christopher Miller

But yeah, you know, they could, they could immediately transport themselves to Berlin or London or the United States in a way that they could never do that before. Right. By by using their mobile devices or their laptop to do so. At the same time, many of their bureaucrats and leadership, their educational system, their health care system still felt very stuck in this post-Soviet environment or malaise.

00:16:14:01 - 00:16:39:00

Christopher Miller

And, you know, I sort of wanted to paint that picture in that kind of struggle between the two in the book and just by sort of laying out exactly, you know, how it looked, how it felt, what the people I met were were going through and struggling with. And I think one of the people who you meet in the book, my pal Egor, is finding that out himself.

00:16:39:00 - 00:17:03:06

Christopher Miller

Right. He's somebody who has, you know, big aspirations, but for various reasons has had to, you know, go to university in Kiev, but returned to his provincial city of Bournemouth or Arctic musk at the time to work in city government. And he's very uninspired. He finds a place that is still very bureaucratic and and stuck in this sort of, you know, post-Soviet way.

00:17:03:12 - 00:17:20:22

Christopher Miller

And the school where I worked was also a little bit of that way, right? The teaching staff was an older staff. They only had a few teachers who were around my age or under the age of 30 and young and understood a little bit of English, but but really couldn't, couldn't speak.

00:17:20:22 - 00:17:24:13

Sam Cook

The best thing ever for learning languages when nobody was going to make it. Right.

00:17:24:14 - 00:17:33:08

Christopher Miller

Right. So, you know, I think I think I learned more more Russian and, you know, from from them than they probably learned English from me.

00:17:33:08 - 00:17:33:19

Sam Cook

This is good.

00:17:34:06 - 00:17:59:14

Christopher Miller

Yeah. But you know, the the school you know, it had young students that I don't think the older staff fully understood. They were still using old textbooks and had this kind of older way of teaching, but they had students who were on their mobile devices all the time and going home and watching, you know, Western movies, often dubbed in in Russian or Ukrainian.

00:17:59:21 - 00:18:26:02

Christopher Miller

And, you know, the experiences that I that I write about from that school, I think show this struggle that is, you know, Ukraine at the time really trying or a younger generation trying to to advance and progress being held back by some of this by some of the old ways. And, you know, that is, I think, a lot in the in the first section of the book.

00:18:26:06 - 00:18:57:23

Christopher Miller

And it also kind of gets us to that point where when the Maidan revolution begins, you sort of understand what people are fighting for behind are. Yeah, exactly. Behind. I mean, besides besides the response to state violence that was perpetrated by Viktor Yanukovich and his security forces against largely a group of students on the Maidan, people were fighting for democracy and for progress and exactly.

00:18:57:23 - 00:19:20:20

Sam Cook

And actually, that tension came out in the book. And by the way, the story you were I was asking you about was about when they asked you to stop grading your students. And I just thought that was an amazing illustration of, you know, you were coming in and and probably being a bit too Western or progressive. Right. And they had to rein you in and, you know, not pollute the minds of the kids.

00:19:20:20 - 00:19:25:22

Sam Cook

And you said that actually liberated you to be a bit better teacher because you didn't have to grade people anymore.

00:19:25:22 - 00:19:46:19

Christopher Miller

Yeah, yeah. In a way, I didn't have to fit to this structure that was that was in place and and didn't really allow any variations. But because I didn't have to give these tests and I didn't have to stick to, you know, exactly what needed to be taught on a daily basis. And the teachers said that, you know, don't worry, we'll handle the things that are required.

00:19:47:01 - 00:20:20:16

Christopher Miller

You know, you just focus on, you know, communicate with the students. Yeah, that actually it freed me up in a way to be able to teach a little bit more and in ways that weren't, hadn't been possible previously. And I could feel the students also relax. And by the end of the semester I remember, you know, that in the the students, students learned more in the second half of the semester in terms of learning how to communicate with me in English and learning more about the topics that I was teaching.

00:20:20:19 - 00:20:40:03

Christopher Miller

Then in the first half where there was this really rigid structure and we had to do all of these, take all these boxes and each lesson every single day and have a test at the end of each lesson. And, you know, really, I just was able to communicate with them and it was just it allowed me to be more interactive with them and on my own.

00:20:40:03 - 00:21:01:10

Sam Cook

Relax, learn more when it plays, you know, when at the touch of some emotions to the learning. So yeah. So so you get us into Maidan and what I was amazed by and I'm just to share my I was a history teacher at West Point I studied and wrote my master's thesis in Crimea in 2010. So you just moved here?

00:21:01:10 - 00:21:27:21

Sam Cook

I was publishing in May of 2010 my master's thesis on Crimea. And one of the first articles that I cited in my paper was the Sevastopol Naval Riots, right outside the the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters just got destroyed. There were some riots or protests because of the fact that the naval lease had just been extended another 20 years under Viktor Yanukovich, his government.

00:21:28:18 - 00:21:58:06

Sam Cook

And I said, I can't imagine Ukraine is or Crimea is not going to be a problem in the future. And this was in 2010. I didn't think that made me a prophet or anything to predict that this was a hot spot. But watching Ukraine from afar, since 2010, I had a girlfriend in grad school and then during the Orange Revolution, I remember watching, you know, I was a consumer of your reporting, watching as I was traveling around the world just off the army, I was watching intently what was going on, on the news.

00:22:00:05 - 00:22:28:11

Sam Cook

And from, you know, when the students are beat up that night on the square of 30 November, all the way through to like, you know, all of the major events on Maidan and then Crimea, you go down to Crimea during the fact that or during the part where, you know, the Russia's basically illegally annexing it and you're able to get all these inside stories, you really were at every major decision point in history during that critical period in Ukraine.

00:22:28:11 - 00:22:43:23

Sam Cook

What walks through that that period and what was at what was it like to be part of that? Incredible I mean, I've watched the documentaries. I've talked to a lot of people who've been there. But what was it like to be part of that Maidan experience?

00:22:45:14 - 00:23:23:05

Christopher Miller

I mean, it was a constant adrenaline rush. I slept very little, honestly, at the time. I don't think and part of the reason I wrote this book was really to have an opportunity to look back and sort of take stock of everything, because in the moment I wasn't able to do that. I was I was constantly, you know, rushing around from place to place, you know, sleeping very, very little, filing multiple stories a day for several international newspapers as well as, you know, my my doing my job for the Kiev Post during the revolution and then, you know, rushing down to Crimea.

00:23:23:05 - 00:23:59:00

Christopher Miller

I mean, even between, you know, the revolution in Crimea, there were only a few days where, you know, a lot of Ukrainians had this this moment of celebration after Yanukovych fled climbing the gates to his palatial estate, a metro area outside of Kiev, before they realized that Russian soldiers were spilling out of the Black Sea base and moving around the Crimean peninsula, and that special forces were being brought in and also spreading out throughout the the peninsula.

00:23:59:00 - 00:24:32:09

Christopher Miller

You know, I it was it was exhilarating as a journalist. It was incredibly worrying as somebody who lived here and had a life here and had friends who were, you know, at risk or involved in the revolution or later in Ukraine's defense in eastern Ukraine. You know, this is a place that I did not parachute into. So I was, you know, living here while while working here.

00:24:32:09 - 00:25:00:22

Christopher Miller

This was very much, you know, me and my community. And, you know, there were there were days where I mean, I'm on almost every day. I would have to go out and do the reporting, see some some extremely harrowing things and come back to my apartment in central Kiev, which is only a few blocks away from the revolution, and try to, you know, try try to figure out what I had.

00:25:00:22 - 00:25:03:10

Christopher Miller

Just try to understand what I had just seen.

00:25:04:02 - 00:25:10:06

Sam Cook

So so from a reporting standpoint, you have to put it out there. But then from a personal standpoint, you have to process it. Yeah.

00:25:10:06 - 00:25:33:05

Christopher Miller

And I don't think I had a lot of time to really process it and decompress. I mean, it was it was just day after day after day. I remember by by mid-February, I was celebrating my birthday on February 17th, and there had been some slow days before that. And on even on February 17th, we did not know what was going to transpire on the 18th, 19th and 20th.

00:25:33:11 - 00:26:00:18

Christopher Miller

And so I had decided that I would take the day off for my birthday. I gather some friends for dinner. We went out, we had several drinks. We stayed out until maybe two or 3 a.m.. I went home, collapsed in my bed and and was woken up. I think just after 6 a.m. from someone I knew who was on Maidan saying, Chris, where we're marching up Institute's the street, we're going toward the parliament, we're going to demand these things from them.

00:26:01:02 - 00:26:39:02

Christopher Miller

And, you know, there are a lot of us and I think it could get it could get ugly. You should be down here. And I was, of course, you know, hung over, groggy. I quickly grabbed some coffee and rushed down there, too, to follow them up, institutes the street and the violence broke out. Just as I just as I arrived, I saw a Ukrainian photographer who I worked with on top of this police vehicle photographing all of this with with police hurling, you know, objects protesters, protesters hurling paving stones back at police.

00:26:39:02 - 00:27:02:22

Christopher Miller

And, you know, the the one day that I thought or the week that I thought I might have some time to sort of relax and decompress quickly, you know, disappeared. And of course, we know what happened after that, the 1890, the 20th, where the bloodiest days of the revolution and the major turning point in that revolution that ultimately led to by the end of the week, Viktor Yanukovich fleeing Kiev to Russia.

00:27:03:06 - 00:27:28:14

Christopher Miller

But it was one thing after the other, after the other, nobody really had time to take a break, myself included, really to to understand, you know, what was happening and the magnitude of the situation. I think also that was somewhat of a benefit to me at the time. I, I was, I think, somewhat naive in the in that moment, not understanding what this meant.

00:27:28:14 - 00:27:48:09

Christopher Miller

Big picture for Europe, for the West, for Ukraine. You know, I, I was I was intimately involved in all of this, covering it, seeing it from the ground level. And I think there's a lot of I mean, there's a lot of importance in that. And I think that that is something that very few journalists were able to do.

00:27:48:09 - 00:28:12:11

Christopher Miller

And luckily, there were there were those who did because, you know, we have this really intimate portrait of of what was going on on the ground. So much has been written and still is from, you know, all of the major capitals across Europe. And looking at this on a macro level and big picture. But I think a lot can be drawn from, you know, being here on the ground and doing the reporting.

00:28:13:07 - 00:28:44:19

Christopher Miller

And that's very much what I just kept focusing on doing. I didn't know how to do it any other way at the time anyways. And you know, nothing, everything just kept even evolving or devolving or changing. And there wasn't any time to really sit back and and, you know, take stock of things. And, you know, that there was very, very little time between the revolution between Crimea and Russia's annexation of that.

00:28:44:23 - 00:28:51:07

Christopher Miller

And when the war broke out in the Donbass and I went from one to the next to the next.

00:28:52:00 - 00:29:28:15

Sam Cook

So you go to Crimea, you one of the I think most interesting things that I saw down there was the the tension between the Ukrainian soldiers and the Russian soldiers and the fact that unlike Kremlin propaganda, this wasn't 98% of the population was enthusiastically begging Russia to come in. I was very divided and peninsula politically over this this question, whereas the Russians managed to, I think, make it seem to the West, everyone in Crimea wanted to run on this and this is just a fait accompli.

00:29:28:15 - 00:29:50:16

Sam Cook

So it was really interesting. You reported in Crimea and then you move up to right at right when the fighting broke out in Donbas and you made it to the center. And this is a guy that I think anyone who follows Ukraine closely would be fascinated by. You ran into or didn't you meet briefly Igor Girkin himself.

00:29:51:01 - 00:30:10:17

Christopher Miller

Yeah. And I mean, journalists. Any any journalist who wanted to operate in Slavyansk with the accreditation that sort of allowed you to move around freely without being harassed too much would have to go into Egor Gergen's office and get, you know, a little a little past with a pet shop, with a seal or a stamp.

00:30:10:19 - 00:30:12:00

Sam Cook

You still have that press pass?

00:30:12:00 - 00:30:32:20

Christopher Miller

I do, yeah, I do. I do. You know, and. And you didn't always meet him. Sometimes you met his, you know, his henchmen. Some of them were were also Russian, some of whom were local Donbass guys who had taken up arms with them. But they were scary. They had taken over the SBU building in Slavyansk. The Security service building.

00:30:33:12 - 00:31:17:18

Christopher Miller

And it was dark. It's it was, you know, a dark smoke filled room with a bunch of guys. You know, toting guns and and with with safety's off and not really knowing how to how to behave themselves and very angry toward Western journalists. Yeah. And so we would have to go in there to get this passed. So I bumped into him first, then and then several times over the course of the next two or three months for various reasons, you know, whether it was just stumbling upon him in Slavyansk someplace or at press conferences in Slovyansk or in Donetsk after he retreated from Slavyansk, he was never a never a kind man.

00:31:17:18 - 00:31:43:18

Christopher Miller

And I think he he and his role is is interesting and I think worth studying even more, because he has boasted of being the person who fired the first shot and effectively started the war. That's that's what he believes his role is. And I think there is there's some truth in that, too. Certainly Russia had its designs on eastern Ukraine in the Donbas, just like it did in Crimea.

00:31:44:01 - 00:32:12:08

Christopher Miller

But it needed somebody like Girkin to mask its official military presence there and somebody that would set what I think is this really dark tone that stuck over the course of those first several months and first year of of the, you know, covert Russian invasion of the Donbass. He himself was responsible for organizing these these pseudo military tribunals that sentenced

people for petty crimes to death by firing squad.

00:32:13:19 - 00:32:36:21

Christopher Miller

You know, this is just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a Stalin era. There's a Stalin era. Wartime law in which he convicted people and sentenced them to death by firing squad. Yeah, absolutely. So. But I think his role is really in setting a tone of war and war conducted by Russia and its and its troops and its proxies.

00:32:37:00 - 00:32:49:16

Christopher Miller

That, I think is, you know, has has only gotten darker and much worse today. But I think that really is when that seed of terror was planted was when he cemented his presence in eastern Ukraine. Mm hmm.

00:32:50:05 - 00:33:18:10

Sam Cook

And you were actually living mainly, as I can tell, during that initial, I think, 2014 until the Minsk two accords. It's a really fascinating period. And I actually learned a lot reading your work about I'd read analyst reports about this, but you really gave some some color and some real human context to what was going on down there specifically you.

00:33:18:10 - 00:33:52:01

Sam Cook

And if people who are watching this probably know if if you follow Ukraine closely. One of the other famous not as well known as you probably especially with this book, but well-known Ukraine correspondence, Roland Oliphant, you guys end up covering or uncovering critical evidence in the Malaysian Airlines airline being shot down. I talk about that story and and what that kind of taught you about what was I mean, how did it feel to be part of such an international event like this?

00:33:52:10 - 00:34:17:08

Christopher Miller

Well, I think Roland is a very well-known journalist. I think there are several of us from that period of time who were working at major Western newspapers, who probably became very well known at the at the at the time, because there were so few who were consistently on the ground and breaking stories and covering the major developments of those first few months.

00:34:17:20 - 00:34:42:15

Christopher Miller

Roland and I were among them. And, you know, after the shoot down of Russia, student of MH 17, you know, that was, I think probably to this day, the most disturbing story that I've had to cover and seems that I've come upon over, you know, nine years of of of writing about Russia's war against Ukraine. It still sticks with me.

00:34:42:15 - 00:34:56:12

Christopher Miller

And I think that's true of a lot of us that covered it when Roland and I came up with this idea to go looking for the news site of the book missile.

00:34:56:13 - 00:34:59:12

Sam Cook

You went straight onto the scene right after it had been.

00:34:59:18 - 00:35:17:01

Christopher Miller

It was a few days. So I think it was July 17th of 2014 that MH 17 was down. Know, I think Roland was was the first person or among the first people on the on site. I arrived about 24 hours or 36 hours later.

00:35:17:08 - 00:35:20:01

Sam Cook

And and it was still a chaos.

00:35:20:01 - 00:36:09:18

Christopher Miller

It was absolute chaos. There were bodies still all over the fields of that area north of Taras and grab of and, you know, local miners and and some of the DNR guys and a bunch of other people looking for the remnants of the plane and the black boxes and all of that. Well, when when it became as it became clearer that this was a Russian missile fired from Russian occupied territory in eastern Ukraine, that down the plane and Bellingcat, this open source investigative unit that was really just coming on to the scene at that time began tracing the path of the missile system.

00:36:09:22 - 00:36:14:12

Christopher Miller

Mm hmm. Roland and I. One one morning over coffee at our.

00:36:15:02 - 00:36:15:18

Sam Cook

Not over during.

00:36:15:18 - 00:37:02:02

Christopher Miller

Donetsk. No, no, it was it was we had I well, the night before I remember the night before we had both looked at this blog that had an idea of the general location of where this missile system could have been and where the missile could have been fired from. And looking at Bellingcat on research about the path sort of aligned with this other open source investigators idea of of where this had come from, there was also this this sort of broad map that the United States had released, saying that this was the general trajectory of the missile and it all aligned kind of in this not not small, but area of of territory just south

00:37:02:02 - 00:37:27:04

Christopher Miller

of a place that I knew pretty well, because I had spent a lot of time there in my Peace Corps days in eastern Ukraine. So this is an area near initially or certainly in Russian, just south of that of that city there and over coffee. Then the following morning, I think it was the it was about the fourth day after MH 17, roughly, and we had decided to go give it a give it a go and see if we could find it and track it down.

00:37:27:11 - 00:37:48:17

Christopher Miller

And we went out there, ran into some Russian soldiers, ran into some DNR fighters, ran into a farmer who had an interesting story to tell. He said that, you know, just days earlier he had seen a fire burning in his field and he did not start that fire. And he said, you can go and look at it if you like.

00:37:49:00 - 00:38:07:23

Christopher Miller

We went to just a few hundred meters away. We noticed this burn pattern was very different from anything that we had seen in a field before. And we found some debris that led us to a position of Russian soldiers and some of this local proxy fighters and took some photographs. And I shot a video of Roland standing in the field.

00:38:07:23 - 00:38:31:00

Christopher Miller

And, you know, we really felt as though we had found the launch site, you know, a few years would go by before the Dutch investigators would would say that this was for sure the launch site. I think, you know, I think we felt confident that it that it was the place where this missile was fired that down to the plane.

00:38:31:14 - 00:38:58:11

Christopher Miller

But until those findings, I don't think we were 100% certain. But you know that I'm very proud of that reporting. I think that's one of the most important stories, if not the most important story that I've ever worked on, considering the fact that it was used as evidence in the trial of four men who were found responsible for playing roles in the downing of this airliner that ultimately led to the deaths of 298 people.

00:38:59:02 - 00:39:27:02

Sam Cook

So really, again, I can't say how much I learned as a historian and someone who's lived in Ukraine since 2018 and studied a lot of this period from documentaries and books. I've read what's out there in English on this, but I really it gave me a much more personal color to to the commentary. And it really, I think, helped clarify and help me understand what was going on.

00:39:27:02 - 00:39:46:11

Sam Cook

It was amazing to get some of these characters that you've seen from the current word Girkin and all of his war commentaries see that you've met this guy or that you've met, you know, Medvedchuk, the the dark prince of Ukrainian politics. That was one of the catalysts of of of this war. So I want to transition to the third part.

00:39:46:11 - 00:40:03:18

Sam Cook

There's a couple of things I want to make sure we get to by the end and we'll cover it at the end is I had a really good friends in Iraq when I was a troop commander there and served over there in the battle Tal Afar. Michael, where who is a war reporter. And he he saw every major battle in Iraq.

00:40:04:12 - 00:40:24:24

Sam Cook

And it got to the point at the end of it that he was pretty messed up. He couldn't go outside and he drank too much. And, you know, he really, really struggled with PTSD from this. And I think we've been quite public about it and and done some great work. So I want to get to that at the end of this because.

00:40:26:16 - 00:40:52:10

Sam Cook

Well, actually, I brought it up. Now let's let's just talk about that because, you know, the Ukraine history podcast is Borderlands Foundation. Our mission is to make sure Ukraine's heroes are never forgotten, both in their stories for history, but also their sacrifices in helping them get treatment. And our charitable part of what we do is all about PTSD, recovery and funding, research and treatment of veterans on that.

00:40:52:10 - 00:41:13:20

Sam Cook

And that's the main thing we're working on, because the people who create the history have psychological scars that go with it. So that's why we've structured our foundation to support both creation of history and recovery from people who created history. How have you dealt with all these things that you've seen? I experienced some of that in the Army, not as much as you as a reporter.

00:41:13:20 - 00:41:33:04

Sam Cook

Ironically, reporters sometimes see way more than a lot of soldiers. How do you deal with that? I mean, I noticed in the book there are a lot of comments about whiskey and other kinds of stuff and coffee, but how has that journey been dealing, processing with those things? I know that's difficult sometimes.

00:41:34:05 - 00:42:07:17

Christopher Miller

Yeah, it's difficult sometimes. You know, I think I approach I approach this reporting and reporting on war as though I'm well as a reporter and or as somebody whose profession or whose job it is to observe or to bear witness. I would say it's sometimes it doesn't feel different from, say, an EMT or a doctor or a lawyer working on a sensitive, particularly sensitive case.

00:42:07:17 - 00:42:30:11

Christopher Miller

Right. That's the job. So I do sometimes approach it rather coldly. Yeah, I need to be there. I need to write this. I need to make sure that I talk to all of these people to get various, you know, comments, cover all sides of this angles of this, you know, to form the, you know, the most factual story possible.

00:42:31:12 - 00:42:59:00

Christopher Miller

I don't think I really I mean, there have been some moments that have stuck with me. And May 17, I told you, was was one of them. There are some other moments that are not in this book because they don't necessarily pertain to the topic that I wanted to cover that have also stuck with me. You know, Ukraine is a very, very complex place with a really a really complicated history.

00:42:59:14 - 00:43:02:07

Christopher Miller

There are some really difficult stories that I've told in here.

00:43:02:14 - 00:43:02:19

Sam Cook

You know.

00:43:03:13 - 00:43:23:14

Christopher Miller

You know, I think in some ways this is, you know, my story, you know, a story that I've told and and these are my experiences. But the point was not necessarily talk about how it's impacted me, but how it's impacted so many others. I have the luxury as a foreigner, as an American, to be able to step away from this.

00:43:23:14 - 00:43:57:19

Christopher Miller

When I when I need a break and to go home. And I do that when when I can and when I when I really feel as though I need it. You know, I've got family back in the United States who is is great at listening to me or just being there if I don't want to speak. I've got a great support system of foreign correspondents and local journalists here in Ukraine who I've known for years and worked very closely with, who are fantastic and similarly will sit there and listen or commiserate or have the occasional glass of whiskey with me, if that's what we think we need.

00:43:58:12 - 00:44:36:18

Christopher Miller

You know, I think also that I, for better or worse, have become very good at compartmentalizing things. And again, that sort of goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is that, you know, I, I do sometimes approach things coldly, but that is not because I do not care. I care a lot. I just think that the best approach sometimes is me, you know, being there and observing and and being able to take stock of every well to, to, to, to everything that I can and, and to be able to also sit down and write it.

00:44:36:23 - 00:45:09:24

Christopher Miller

If I can't sit down and write that and get that out for people to read, then nobody's going know about it. Nobody's going to care. Right. And so I think I'm doing okay. Yeah. You know, there are there are difficult moments and I do try to take a break when I can. I think I've gotten better at doing that and understanding when I need to take a break as I've gotten older and you know, there is this feeling of invincibility when you're younger, I think my yeah, you know, I covered the revolution when I was 29.

00:45:09:24 - 00:45:34:01

Christopher Miller

I, I turned 30 during, at the height of it, and I spent most of my my 30th and my 30th year covering a revolution and an invasion of Crimea and then the invasion of the Donbass without without any brakes. And I was exhausted by the end of the year, I realized only, you know too late, that that I was exhausted.

00:45:34:01 - 00:45:58:24

Christopher Miller

And I remember needing a little bit of time to sort of step away. And I did that after, you know, the Minsk two. And and that was part of the reason also that I went off for for a couple of months here and there to cover other stories to sort of, you know, remind myself that there were things outside of war and then there were things outside of Ukraine that existed and were important, you know.

00:45:59:10 - 00:46:24:14

Christopher Miller

But I think that nobody's suffered as much as the Ukrainians have here in their own country, having to defend their territorial integrity and sovereignty and independence while also raising families, going to work, just generally trying to keep it together. And, you know, I think that comes through in the book. And that's really what I wanted to underscore was that, you know, I've met all of these people, I've been to all these places.

00:46:24:19 - 00:46:38:17

Christopher Miller

Here are their stories and everything that they've been through, because I think telling those stories and doing so in this ground level, granular way is what really inspires other people to want to help. And, you know, do not.

00:46:38:18 - 00:46:39:06

Sam Cook

Forget about.

00:46:39:06 - 00:47:12:04

Christopher Miller

This. Exactly. Exactly. I think that with somebody who's as good of a communicator as Zelensky is, I think that's great. I think that that can inspire support. But he you know, he does not do that by himself. He draws from the people. And, you know, it is it is ordinary Ukrainians doing extraordinary things under incomprehensible circumstances that I think has led to an outpouring of support by by people who back home in the US, by people across Europe and the United States.

00:47:12:04 - 00:47:16:12

Christopher Miller

And hopefully that's what's going to inspire them to continue to support Ukraine.

00:47:17:04 - 00:47:41:03

Sam Cook

And this book really is part of that. One of our missions of the historical centers keep, you know, history of the war is already being written and journalists to the famous first draft of history and you really are the draft I think of a lot of Ukrainian history and people will be studying your your writing and interviews and things for a while to get a real sense of what's what happened here on the ground level.

00:47:41:14 - 00:48:21:06

Sam Cook

But as as you as we look at, you know, going forward into the last part, I have to get to the last part of the tour, which is the war starting. I remember living here and didn't know you at the time, but I remember that dark winter of 2022. And so reading all these alarming reports of intelligence and first time for a long time I'd gotten interested in the news I got hooked on, found this thing called Twitter, which is now ex got hooked on it sorry and yeah everyone's Twitter feeds yours being one of the ones that I many ones I was following and I would see, you know, Michael Kofman and counter music

00:48:21:06 - 00:48:42:16

Sam Cook

and all these famous analysts on Russian military saying this is going to happen. And then, you know, President Wolinski is saying it's not going to happen. And you talk about in the book, you went out to the front lines and and you saw the intensity of the fighting along the line of contact, which which wasn't really being reported.

00:48:42:16 - 00:49:04:22

Sam Cook

You knew the war was coming. At what point, you know, when did you really feel like it was coming? And when you did what did you think back then? Looking forward, was Ukraine future? Did you think the government would stand up? Do you think the government would flee? I mean, what was your sense of because I remember and I got my company out.

00:49:04:22 - 00:49:13:24

Sam Cook

I had a tech start up. I had to get everyone out. I said, if this happens, it's going to be a disaster. You know, what did you think would happen by.

00:49:14:18 - 00:49:51:18

Christopher Miller

I started growing really concerned. By the end of November 2021, I was actually covering a trial in Charlottesville, Virginia, and keeping one eye on news in Ukraine and made it back up home to New York in early December and spoke with my editor at the time. I was working at BuzzFeed when I was working at BuzzFeed News and I said, look, how about I just go to Ukraine for a few weeks before the end of the year and see what the mood is like, see how serious this this really is and, you know, I'll do some stories for us.

00:49:52:10 - 00:50:21:15

Christopher Miller

I'll report back to you and we can decide if I need to be there longer term. But I really do think that we should we should do this. It looks like Russia is really ramping up for something. And he said, sure, go off and, you know, let us know what you see. I here and immediately felt this felt different from 2015 2016 all the years after Minsk two leading up to the full scale invasion.

00:50:21:18 - 00:50:53:09

Christopher Miller

This just it felt different. The number of soldiers, the rhetoric from Russia, the concern among people in government here at the time, although there was a lot of confusion. But, you know, I had some sources in the security realm here who said we really do need to take this seriously. They're going to attack us. But there was some debate about what that attack would look like by the end of December.

00:50:53:16 - 00:51:14:10

Christopher Miller

I was convinced that Russia would attack Ukraine. I didn't at the time, I don't think I used the word invasion myself. And but but I you know, I would use it in the context of, well, Western intelligence is warning of a potential invasion. Some of my Ukrainian sources were talking about a potential invasion, but not a majority of them.

00:51:14:17 - 00:51:42:03

Christopher Miller

And I was not yet set on the thought of Russia invading Ukraine again, but perhaps attacking in the Donbass from the terrible territories it already occupied in Donetsk and Lugansk by, I would say, mid-January. It really did seem and I was hearing increasingly so that Russia was going to invade Ukraine and it was going to happen in a large way.

00:51:42:06 - 00:52:01:20

Christopher Miller

It was going to go for explicit. No. Well, it was going to be an explicit invasion. Western intelligence was saying there's a really good chance that they could try Kiev. I still you know, I felt I was in a little bit of denial myself, sort of listening to the Ukrainians argue we don't think they're going to invade in Kiev.

00:52:01:20 - 00:52:22:04

Christopher Miller

I really wish Washington and the West would stop causing panic among our population. You know, there's going to be an attack. But, you know, please don't say that they're going to, you know, try to try to capture Kiev. And I think that's because the Ukrainians were viewing the same intelligence as as the West was looking at, but just interpreting it differently.

00:52:22:11 - 00:52:23:15

Christopher Miller

And I lay that out on the policy.

00:52:23:16 - 00:52:23:23

Sam Cook

Yeah.

00:52:24:04 - 00:52:43:02

Christopher Miller

Yeah, exactly. But they weren't necessarily wrong. Right. Both sides got some things right and both sides got some things wrong. And I did as well. I really did believe, you know, by January that Russia was going to invade Ukraine in some way. But I thought, as many Ukrainians did, it was going to be focused on the south, in the east.

00:52:44:16 - 00:52:52:11

Christopher Miller

And and that's why I found myself in crematoria when on February 24th, Russia invaded, so that the other reporters did as well.

00:52:52:13 - 00:52:55:07

Sam Cook

That was that was your bet as to where the main action was going to be?

00:52:55:07 - 00:53:14:10

Christopher Miller

Yes. And I was in contact with several of my Ukrainian sources and intelligence and in the West who were telling me that an invasion was imminent. It's absolutely going to be happening in the east of the country. But some people were not sold on Kiev still. Right. That was like a worst case scenario. If they go all in, they'll try for Kiev.

00:53:14:16 - 00:53:42:09

Christopher Miller

But I don't you know, very few people I think we're one 2% set on that until the hours before. And certainly the Ukrainians didn't believe it because as I write in the book and as you know, we we have come to know through reporting elsewhere is that, you know, most of Ukraine's leadership, including including President Zelensky himself, were sleeping or, you know, at home not panicking on the night of February 23rd through the early hours of February 24th before this invasion.

00:53:42:22 - 00:54:07:09

Sam Cook

But but luckily and I felt one of the best moments of the book was when you talk to tell this story about the dawn of getting up in front of all the leaders, of all the parties on the 23rd, and to lose lives there. But on off there and the kind of the head of the SBU, Gadhafi, the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence, and you said everyone's fight they had the blood just drains from their faces when they hear his report.

00:54:08:01 - 00:54:33:03

Sam Cook

And and he was very vocal before the war that this that this was going to happen. And this is something I've I've you've met both of these people. You've met Presidents Lansky, you've met President Poroshenko. A lot of people are very critical of the fact that it didn't seem like President Selenski got got the country ready for war.

00:54:33:18 - 00:54:40:14

Sam Cook

But obviously, the military moved. It moved everything, you know, before the missile strikes, which saved the Air Force, save the air defense.

00:54:40:14 - 00:54:53:12

Christopher Miller

Well, not everything they moved some things that the Air Force had the foresight to put plans in place and did move several things before these missiles struck. But a lot a lot of military installations were destroyed or damaged.

00:54:53:13 - 00:55:15:10

Sam Cook

Yeah. In the 72nd Brigade, I think they got out like 88 hours before the missile struck their barracks and some things got hit, some didn't. But do you and then President Zelensky, you know, he goes from like begging at the Munich Forum, don't you know, calling President Putin? It's almost like kind of like sad, like this girl or this guy's not calling you back and not picking up your calls.

00:55:15:10 - 00:55:37:18

Sam Cook

President Putin doesn't answer his calls and then he gets woken up with missiles and then he you know, your mom gets a call from someone. I'm Putin's staff saying, you know, surrender. And and that ended pretty abruptly. But then he goes from this to saying, well, you know, his wife kisses him in the book and thinks this is the last time she's ever going to see him.

00:55:37:18 - 00:56:03:21

Sam Cook

And presidents, unless he gets in and they have this Independence Day type moment at the government center where he's just like, okay, it's time to fight. Were you surprised by prison Zelensky's ability to step up as a wartime leader? And I love and I hate counterfactual history. How do you think Poroshenko would have knowing these two guys? Could he have done it better or or what do you think would have happened?

00:56:03:21 - 00:56:40:18

Christopher Miller

I think I you know, I wasn't I wasn't surprised by Zelensky doing what he did. And so defiantly staying and going outside and and filming this video. But I was it was unexpected, you know, I wasn't I wasn't surprise. But I think people do these incredible, extraordinary things in extraordinary moments. And I think the people who know him have told me they weren't surprised by that because they just know what kind of person he is.

00:56:40:18 - 00:57:11:04

Christopher Miller

And that is a person who is stubborn. Yeah, strong. You know, unafraid. And but I think, you know, it was it was unexpected. I didn't I didn't expect that from a comedian turned president. I mean, you know, looking at what he had done and accomplished, you know, in the time before that, I think, you know, he was he was doing fine, but he wasn't, you know, very popular.

00:57:11:04 - 00:57:34:20

Christopher Miller

He had done some unpopular things. His his popularity had plummeted from the 70 plus percent that he won the election with in 2019 to, I think, around 30% just before the invasion. And a lot of people, a lot of Ukrainians were very frustrated by what they felt was the lack of preparation on his part, in the government's part, ahead of the full scale invasion.

00:57:35:04 - 00:58:03:03

Christopher Miller

And as Western governments and leadership were warning of an imminent Russian attack, he was leading his his his government in saying calm, we've got things under control. Please don't cause panic, you know. So I think it was unexpected of him to to come out and to and to say, I'm staying, I'm going to fight because of that set up.

00:58:03:03 - 00:58:28:11

Christopher Miller

Right. And a lot of people probably, if you would have asked them, would have assumed that maybe he would that he would run away or not not respond how he did. With the benefit of hindsight and looking back at all of the context and everything, I'm not I'm not surprised that he that he chose to do what he what he did.

00:58:28:11 - 00:58:56:20

Christopher Miller

And it's probably the most important decision that he's made in his political career, if not in his entire life. You know, I do believe that him deciding to stay and to put on that video set the tone for Ukraine's defense. And it is a big reason why Kiev did not fall in those early hours, because I think it came very close to falling at several points because the response was more ad hoc than it probably should have been.

00:58:56:20 - 00:58:59:16

Sam Cook

So not as good preparations should have been correct.

00:58:59:16 - 00:59:27:06

Christopher Miller

But him, Zelensky coming out and saying, I'm here, we're here, we're going to fight. I think that inspired enough people to respond in the way that Ukrainians responded during the revolution during the first Russian invasion in 2014 and take up arms on their own and fight to defend their country no matter what. Right. They did not wait for the military recruitment centers to open.

00:59:27:10 - 00:59:54:03

Christopher Miller

They went down to the police stations, which swung open their doors to armories and handed out guns. And people ran to the fight right. As the Poroshenko you know, I, I don't know what he would have done. I'm not certain he would have chose to do the same thing. Yeah, I will say that I think, you know, Poroshenko's messaging was never as good as Zelensky's has been.

00:59:54:09 - 01:00:21:07

Christopher Miller

So I, I don't think that he would have been able to put out such a defiant, affecting message immediately after Russia's invasion began to inspire Ukrainians. I think they would have just had to. And I believe that many people would have on their own, you know, muster up the courage and the strength to respond unilaterally. And I do believe Ukrainians many Ukrainians would have done that.

01:00:21:07 - 01:00:49:20

Christopher Miller

I just think that because of what Zelensky did, so many more decided to do that, too. And it was a more unified grassroots response. Whereas, you know, Poroshenko, a lot of people had lost faith in his ability as a military leader over the course of the years in which he oversaw Ukraine's defense of the Donbas and yeah, maybe I'll leave it there, because I don't you know, that's a lot of what it could have shown.

01:00:50:08 - 01:01:09:12

Christopher Miller

But but, you know, I think many of the people I've spoken with have said they were they were they're very pleased that it was Zelensky in office when this happened and not Poroshenko, because they they weren't certain that he would have responded similarly, you know, strongly.

01:01:10:05 - 01:01:13:01

Sam Cook

And we talked about this there a.

01:01:13:21 - 01:01:14:14

Christopher Miller

After.

01:01:14:14 - 01:01:50:07

Sam Cook

The war started, there's this amazing part of the book. You actually it's like such a great visual between the transition from one crisis to the other. The head of Central Air Command, you know, gets out. He's in COVID isolation, has I.V. in his arm, rips out and says, I have been cured of COVID. I think one of the things I really got the most out of was these your personal reporting that you experienced and also your after the fact interviews with the Air Force, very tough access to get access to the Ukrainian Air Force.

01:01:51:13 - 01:01:54:21

Sam Cook

Air Force really saved Ukraine in this in this book.

01:01:54:21 - 01:02:21:15

Christopher Miller

Absolutely played a huge role. A huge role. And, you know, I think have not asked for a lot of credit either. You know, they they really do seem the the stoic, determined type. You know, I mean, just to get this interview took me took me weeks and weeks and he you know, the Central Command, central commander of the Air Force told me when I met him, you know, I've never done one of these before.

01:02:21:22 - 01:02:44:04

Christopher Miller

And I was I never done what is like an interview with a journalist. It was the first time. And I think that also worked in my favor because he didn't know what he you know, he just thought he just felt as though we were having a conversation. It was over coffee in a basement cafe near one of his had near one of his offices.

01:02:44:04 - 01:03:13:23

Christopher Miller

And it was about a three hour interview. He did not rush away. He wanted to tell his story because he felt as though the Air Force, his story had not been told yet. And he wanted to give credit to the pilots who had risked their lives and many of those who were shot down, especially the older pilots who asked that younger pilots remain on the ground so that they could respond knowing that they might not make it back and had lived their lives.

01:03:13:23 - 01:03:28:12

Christopher Miller

And many of them didn't know. But yes, certainly the Air Force is absolutely one of the heroes of this war. And without them, I think, you know, a lot of people believe that it would have been a lot harder, if not impossible, to defend Kiev without them.

01:03:28:18 - 01:03:59:22

Sam Cook

Without air defense staying alive. And the Ukrainian air force staying in the air. I remember before the war, a friend of mine in the Defense Intelligence Agency, he called me and he said, you know, a week and a half before the war that they're coming for Kiev and, you know, it's it's you know, when the war started, he was shocked and he said, I can't believe that they don't have air superiority and that I think Ukraine managing to keep its air defense alive and its air force alive has, as you know, made all the difference in the battle of Kiev.

01:03:59:22 - 01:04:03:21

Sam Cook

And certainly, you know, now, in terms of the long range strikes that they're.

01:04:03:21 - 01:04:24:03

Christopher Miller

Doing, I think the credit to that goes to the Air Force and it's yeah, and it's, you know, it's management, it's top brass. I mean, they had the foresight to move things, you know, I don't know. I think the one thing that I might not have been able to like exactly pin down is, you know, whether or not there were orders for them, for the Air Force to move things.

01:04:24:18 - 01:04:30:17

Christopher Miller

You know, my understanding is that they did so unilaterally understanding the intelligence that if.

01:04:31:04 - 01:04:31:22

Sam Cook

They didn't walk.

01:04:31:23 - 01:04:52:09

Christopher Miller

Through, yeah, they didn't wait for orders if there was an invasion to happen, like there is being warned, then they need to move things around. They also believed and knew that Russia would first attack with missiles to try to take out command control to take to try to take out air defenses. And so they knew that that would be they would be among the first targets.

01:04:52:09 - 01:05:17:22

Sam Cook

Yeah, they were. They were target. Yeah. Yeah. And Chris said that we could go on forever about this, but I'm gonna, I'm going to wrap up here and just leave people wanting for more and getting a copy of this amazing book, The War Came to US. I'll just I'll just summarize a quick story that you said that really hit home was a mother bearing sons in western Ukraine.

01:05:17:22 - 01:05:44:12

Sam Cook

And, you know, I watch my mother bury my brother because he died, unfortunately, early in life, earlier than he should have in life. And unfortunately, in the Army saw too many comrades, you know, that were buried. But it's different watching a friend than than than someone that you raised get buried. It just an incredible toll that this has taken on Ukraine.

01:05:44:12 - 01:05:51:17

Sam Cook

How have you reflected after writing this book on that story and just the overall sacrifice that Ukraine's making?

01:05:52:23 - 01:06:20:03

Christopher Miller

I mean, I think there's not a day that goes by where I don't think about what has happened and what it has cost Ukraine and Ukrainians. It's also because I'm here almost every day I do leave, but rarely and you know, I'm in constant contact with my Ukrainian friends and, you know, Ukrainian people who are my sources, whether it's people in government or NGOs, you know.

01:06:20:03 - 01:07:04:11

Christopher Miller

And I mean, the war is omnipresent. There's no one who has not been impacted by this. You know, everyone knows somebody who is fighting a huge majority of people here know someone who's been killed in the war. There's there's no aspect of life that is untouched, you know. So it's everywhere. You can't not think about it. You know, I, I think about I think about how it's changed the lives of my friends, especially those in Berkeley who I first got to know 13 years ago and have, you know, those who have been forced out of their homes, who've lost just about everything and have had to start over.

01:07:06:00 - 01:07:49:13

Christopher Miller

And I think about, you know, I think about how we in the West view this war and sometimes as very short sighted. And I think that there I'm worried that there are a lot of people who don't understand the seriousness of this and the scope of it and the potential for it to reshape things in in a way that is going to have a wide a large scale negative impact on on our on our future.

01:07:49:13 - 01:07:51:17

Christopher Miller

And and if.

01:07:51:17 - 01:07:52:19

Sam Cook

We let Ukraine if.

01:07:52:19 - 01:08:21:11

Christopher Miller

We let Ukraine lose, if we don't continue supporting Ukraine, know, I think there's a there is not an understanding among everyone of what is of just what this is. You know, it's not a domestic conflict. It's not, you know, just Russia attacking Ukraine. I think it's bigger than that. I think Ukrainians are bearing the brunt of of a war that has the potential to spill over and have a much larger impact even than it's already having on the world.

01:08:22:21 - 01:08:48:06

Christopher Miller

And I think about that, and that worries me. And that's what keeps me at night, you know. But I think it's important for folks like yourself, journalists like me, certainly the Ukrainians and everybody who does care to keep talking about it, writing about this. So thank you for having me on to discuss this with you.

01:08:48:14 - 01:09:15:20

Sam Cook

Yeah, because Christopher, I really enjoyed this book. I mean, it, it really to me brought the whole story together that I've been studying for a while and I wish I would have had it earlier, but obviously it just came out. And anyone who wants to get caught up in Ukraine, it's a great, uh, the, probably the best shortcut you can take into the, the, the history and the stories really to get some context, but really understand what's happening.

01:09:15:20 - 01:09:18:07

Sam Cook

So I think congratulations on your first book.

01:09:18:14 - 01:09:18:24

Christopher Miller

Thank you.

01:09:19:00 - 01:09:39:21

Sam Cook

The first book is always the best, I think, because you haven't read the critics pens yet, so that this definitely was from the heart. And, you know, like you said, the book, you always wanted to I never wanted to write. I think a lot of people benefit from from listening to them. Sorry. From listening to it on audible or reading it or obviously listeners interviews think that was thanks.