Mariupol

So I mean [chuckles] not everything is doom and gloom in Kyiv and in Ukraine.

A couple of guys who were caught during the siege of Mariupol, they were on paper not part of Azov, but at the end of the siege, everyone was basically fighting under the commanding officers of Azov because they were the last ones standing.

So these guys were taken to Russia to captivity, where they were of-- brutally beaten.

There were occasions when fifty-eight people were kept in a cell designed for four people, so they had to take turns laying down and sleeping.

And if you look at their actions once they take over an area, everything they're doing is about ethnic cleansing, right? So give you an example.

As soon as they invaded Mariupol, they went into the library, pulled out every piece of literature in Ukrainian, piled it up outside the library and burnt it, right? If you speak Ukrainian, use the Ukrainian language in any of the occupied territories, you're arrested.

If you want to keep your Ukrainian passport, you're not allowed to.

You have no rights.

Putin is no different than that.

Putin wants nothing but the complete subjugation and eradication of anything that is Ukrainian.

And as I said earlier in this discussion, what is the evidence of that? In any land he has taken over, whether Mariupol or Donetsk or parts of Zaporizhia or parts of Kherson, he has eradicated anything to do with Ukrainian language, culture, anything.

And that is the evidence of what he will do if he took control of all of Ukraine.

Ukraine is also putting two of its most battle-tested commanders in charge of revamped formations in Donetsk.

Andriy Bilitsky will lead the center grouping, while Mariupol defender Denys Propyanko is expected to command Azov, strengthening defenses and drone warfare coordination.

So, um, yeah, I mean, the Russians were planning to have this area by just or-- just after the turn of the new year.

Now it takes Ukraine three to six months to move a new technology from frontline needed to serial production.

What is the best case scenario? But

by the way, if I can just add, it does mean that the theory of victory for the Ukrainians is not to charge through Russian lines and take Mariupol tomorrow.

It doesn't mean that they are unwilling to shut down the war until they take back every square meter of occupied territory.

They are perfectly happy to go to a line of contact.

Now, of course, it's become synonymous with so much else.

But back then it was just a name, Mariupol, which we'll hear in a second as well.

But just to give you a sense of the way David approached this, I thought we'd hear a clip from twenty twenty-three when we were in Washington together doing one of our first live events, which was at the British Embassy there.

And David said what I thought was one of the most moving things I ever heard him say on the podcast, which was talking about what it meant to him and, and, uh, the importance of how we approach this, this issue.

This was, you know, speaking to everyone on, on many, many different levels.

Mm-hmm.

Well, let's play a few clips now from the first two weeks of the war when the tanks were stopped outside Kyiv, when sanctions were just beginning to be imposed, and as we'll hear, when Mariupol was struck, and the heinous war crime was first being reported.

As you'll hear, David was very keen that we frame it in a certain way.