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Live Show: The War in Ukraine with Simon Radchenko - Ep 100
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For our first live show and in celebration of our 100th episode, we had originally planned for a dynamic and audience-interactive experience full of bits, challenges, and guest appearances. However, due to the recent invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s Russia, we wanted to use our platform to support the people of Ukraine. We were joined by Simon Radchenko, a Ph.D. candidate in Archaeology at the University of Turin, in Turin Italy. Simon is a Ukrainian archaeologist that first appeared in Episode 34, and joined us live from Italy. *Originally recorded live on March 12th, 2022*
In this episode, we chat with Simon about cultural differences between Ukraine and Russia, the history between the two countries, and his personal story about leaving Kyiv and getting to Italy. During the show, we took live questions from the audience.
Links
- Organizations that you can donate to in supporting Ukrainians
- Google Sheet with Organizations and Information to aid Ukrainians
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- Simon's Email: Simon.Radchenko@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction & Episode Milestone
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Good day, everyone. This is Carlton here from Life Ruins Podcast. Just so you guys are aware that this is our celebratory episode 100 for Life Ruins Podcast. The episode that you are about to listen to was recorded live on Saturday, March 12th. We plan on doing more live shows in the future.
Support for Ukraine Amidst Invasion
00:00:24
Speaker
Please support Ukraine in any way, shape, or form. We have some links and resources down in the episode description. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to our first live show celebrating the 100th episode of A Life in Ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-hosts, Connor Johnin and David Howe.
00:00:54
Speaker
On this episode, we are very excited to have Simone on here. We were hoping to have a different celebration than to do something different and to do something different for our live show. But I think this is the perfect opportunity to have this conversation and to celebrate us also getting to 100 podcast episodes.
00:01:14
Speaker
However, due to the recent invasion of Ukraine by Putin's Russia, we wanted to use our platform to support the Ukrainian people.
Guest Introduction & Personal War Experiences
00:01:22
Speaker
So we're here with Simon. Yeah. Simon, thank you so much for joining us today, man. It sounds like...
00:01:33
Speaker
There we go. Thank you very much for your presentation. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So for an audience that's listening live right now, you are able to ask questions, say something in the chat box. So as we're going on through this interview, feel free to ask questions to us and Simon, and we will field them as we get them. So just kind of just starting off, dude, like how are you doing? Well,
00:01:59
Speaker
Comparatively well, you know, I'm safe. I'm okay. So I believe that's more than enough now. Right. Excellent. Go ahead, David. Where exactly are you located currently in the country? Right now, I just entered Italy and just entered the airport in Nirvana. Before that, I used to be in Kiev and then on the western part of Ukraine in Lviv.
00:02:26
Speaker
for a few days. Now I'm trying to go back to my university and my research. Okay. I mean, so you had to cross, I mean, you started off in Kiev on February 24th, got to leave, and then you had to cross the border into Poland and then take a flight to Italy.
00:02:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. And this took about, like, two weeks? Oh, yeah. That's not like I spent two weeks to do that. Yeah, we just woke up at February 24. And you remember the location of my home in Kiev. It's right near the airport on the one hand and the military base on the other hand. So that's not the best way, the best place to be located when the war starts. And so a few days we spent to move the whole family
00:03:15
Speaker
my relatives to some place near Kiev to be sure they are safe. And then we were to do the same with the school I used to work with. We had already rented the base near Lviv in the western market range, so we just did something to arrange the study there. We stay online with everything to be sure that school can work. And when this was done, I just
00:03:43
Speaker
started to think of how can I go back to university. So I crossed the border and then I crossed almost the whole Poland and just entered Italy.
00:03:55
Speaker
That's bonkers.
Cultural & Historical Context of Ukraine-Russia Relations
00:03:57
Speaker
And just I mean, kind of like setting this up because this just this this whole war didn't happen out of nowhere. I mean, there's been like two decades, even like three decades of kind of build up to this. And so like a lot of our audience like I didn't know when I showed up to meet you guys, really the differences between Ukrainians and Russians, because that's just something we're not taught over here. So can you for our audience explain like
00:04:23
Speaker
What are the differences between Russians and Ukrainians culturally, linguistically? Why is this important?
00:04:29
Speaker
Well, basically, the simplest way for now is the historical reasons and language stuff. Yeah, so there's different languages. And basically, there's different ethnics and different ethnoses and different nations. And we know this consciously since the late medieval age, I believe. So as soon as Ukrainians start to create some
00:04:57
Speaker
kind of systems after the Golden Horde and the mass models did on the Ukrainian land, we considered the Ukrainians as something that is intended to be separate and independent.
00:05:14
Speaker
And then, when the most part of Ukraine interpreters were under the Russian Empire, we still thought that Ukrainians are independent because of ethnicity, because of language, because of literature and some
00:05:30
Speaker
metanarrative of the Ukrainian independent project and since the beginning of 19th century the idea of Ukraine as more or less independent nation already appeared so we tried to do this when Russian Empire turned to the USSR but failed because of
00:05:54
Speaker
the difficult political processes there. And then we had a new attempt, which is appeared to be successful in 1991.
00:06:04
Speaker
crashed, yeah. But basically, we still had a lot of narratives of post-Soviet sovereignty and some kind of common destiny of Russians and Ukrainians and a lot of ideas like this. And in Russia, from some point, there were
00:06:28
Speaker
a huge increase in the intensity of the CDS. So on one point, on some point, they just decided that as we are the close nations and as we are kinda brothers, generally it would be better if we create some one governmental system. Yeah, so it's simply better to invade us.
00:06:51
Speaker
Long story short, but basically since 1991, it's an independent country with independent law, independent constitution, and with the political institutions that are supposed to prove its serenity and independency.
00:07:14
Speaker
Gotcha. So like even prior to the Soviet Union Ukraine had a history of being independent, being ethnically linguistically different. And so kind of this myth of, of one people is from the post Soviet narrative.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, there is no such thing as the fraternity of the nations at all. In fact, yeah, and it's ridiculous to say that Kazakhstan, people from Kazakhstan and people from Belarus and people from Ukraine is just the one crowd of Soviet people. Yeah, now it's simply ridiculous. And like, yeah, we knew it for long ago, but
00:07:55
Speaker
You know, this sounds like some Empire stuff, Imperial stuff.
00:08:01
Speaker
It's impossible in the 20th century to consider empire as something valid. I want to ask real quick. You got this independence in 1991, but there's always been this kind of Russian influence, Russian attempt to infiltrate the government. There's always been something there to try to get Ukraine back.
Ukraine's European Integration & Political Movements
00:08:25
Speaker
We used to have political discussions in Ukraine, I mean inside to Ukraine.
00:08:30
Speaker
of what is the right vector for the Ukrainian development. So at some point, our former president invented some kind of multivacuality, which means that we are communicating with Europe in terms of your integration, but still trying to communicate with Russia and be a new neighbor to them. And since 19, well, since 2014, Ukrainians declared that they are
00:08:59
Speaker
to integrate in the European Union, and since then this war on the East has been a great start, basically. So, as more we try to integrate with the West, the more impacts of Russian invasion we have.
00:09:17
Speaker
um in like the states were kind of taught like larger aspects of history um less so than like small like you know finite details of you know ukrainian russian history uh and you you mentioned like the golden horde uh we're aware of like the kievan roost so is it is it at that point where ukraine and russia kind of split linguistically or what kind of goes on there that's
00:09:44
Speaker
First of all, it's kind of a complicated question, and it's kind of a complicated question to me as not a linguist, but before the Mongol invasion, we had a kind of
00:09:56
Speaker
a governmental entity or civil entity called Kyis Karus, which is the one country of all Slavic people. And then we had two languages there, which is the old Slavic language and the church language used in several style. And two of these language evolution differently. And then in some proportion became a basement for the Russian and for Ukrainian language.
00:10:25
Speaker
The modern Ukrainian language, as we know it, appears in the 19th century in writing at least. And it is not even considered at the beginning of the century as something independent, but then it appears that we have our own literature on this language. And this literature is already infected by the national idea and the national project of Ukrainians. So that's it.
00:10:53
Speaker
Cool. Yeah, I did not know that. You brought up like two critical pieces of history, you know, kind of talking about Ukraine's neutrality. And then like there was a brief period in like 2004 under the Yushchenko presidency, where, you know, he was about to sign the EU agreement, and then he just kind of did an absolute psych.
00:11:12
Speaker
And then you have the orange revolution that takes place in Ukraine of young people rising up and saying, no, we don't want to be close to Russia anymore. We wanted to be part of the EU. And this is followed by, what, like 10 years later and with the revolution of dignity or the maiden revolution in 2014.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's more or less slightly different stuff. Orange Revolution was the revolution caused by presidency election in Ukraine. There were two candidates, one like pro-European, which is Yushinka, and another is pro-Russian, which is Yanukovych. And the Ukrainian nation considered, the Ukrainians considered that this election was
00:11:58
Speaker
calculated Ron when he won in the first term of this election. So people just came to the streets and oppressed the government to provide another election. And then when you start to be a president. Then on another election, everything came back and in college became a legal president in 2009, I believe.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, and after that, when he refused to sign the agreement of Euro integration, some students in Kiev came to protest that on our central square, which is Maidan as a nationalist, which is a square of independency.
00:12:43
Speaker
And they were beaten by the governmental forces, which basically caused this process of revolution of dignity and street fights in Kiev, and then changing the president again. And then this guy, a Victorian poet, just left Ukraine in a secret way, running to Russia, and lived for some time in Rostov or somewhere there.
00:13:10
Speaker
And he's still out and on the run, essentially, as an outlaw. Yeah, and he just appeared a few weeks ago with some funny declarations and devices to Ukrainian politics, what to do in terms of Russian invasion, which is obviously an absurd one.
00:13:38
Speaker
It just seems like you're saying this question between where does Ukraine fall? Is it part of Russia? Is it part of Europe? And there's this battle to take it either direction at this point. And I know this is a big question to ask, but is there anything
00:13:59
Speaker
Any really good solution? Besides independence and making their own choices? Well, basically we have a lot of international agreement that simply should protect our choices and our sovereignty. I believe that's not really what you're asking about here.
00:14:21
Speaker
But in terms of simple logic and of history, Ukraine is rather not Russia as in Russia. And because of the long Institute of Democracy, one living in democratic institutes that really established in some dreamy form, but are established in Ukraine since maybe
00:14:43
Speaker
the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century. And then our constant attempts to become a more and more autonomous structure. The beginning, basically, of the Ukrainian-Russian relations after the Golden Hawk.
00:15:00
Speaker
was the agreement of Ukrainian pozaks and Russians to create a military alliance against Poland. But this military alliance appeared to be a colonization, in fact, so the idea of this Ukrainian sovereignty really falls back to 17th century.
00:15:21
Speaker
And we really have different institutes like Sauer in Russia against more or less democratic election of Hetman in Cossack, for Cossack in Russia. Yeah, that's a lot of difference.
00:15:38
Speaker
Gotcha. It's also something that's been mentioned on the news a lot like Putin claims that he's trying to protect Russians speaking Ukrainians. Now, are people like are Ukrainians that speak Russian? Are they culturally Russian or is it just that's the language they know? This is very one great stuff because the
00:15:57
Speaker
most popular and the link of franca of soviet union was russian so any people on post soviet space basically knows russian or used to know russian or his parents knows a new russian so anyway russian is russian knowledge is here and we can't avoid the fact that
00:16:19
Speaker
more than 70 persons, so Ukraine has no Russian. But that doesn't mean they aren't Ukrainians. And it's definitely not about their protection. We're not killing people on the street because they speak Russian.
00:16:40
Speaker
I think that's a good point, you know? Yeah. So can you tell us about the Orange Revolution? Because that was pretty recent, but I don't think a lot of Americans pay too much attention in terms of as to what's going on now. The orange one, you mean the orange one of 2004? Yeah. Yes.
00:17:02
Speaker
For me, I was kind of a little boy back there, but the general idea is this is very simple. People considered that the calculation of the president's election was wrong. So they just came on the street and with a really peaceful and calm protest declared that they want this election to be redone and recalculated. And after a calculation,
00:17:29
Speaker
It appeared that the occupation really was wrong and the president should be an allegation to the president. That's it. Okay. Okay. And then later on we had like the – or you guys had the revolution of dignity and the maiden revolution. Can you briefly explain that?
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's the more revolutionary stuff because then kids' students really were beaten. Yeah, and that was like something that happens in Russia when people go to protest and some guy with weapons simply beats them and
00:18:11
Speaker
are trying to arrest them and everything and when these hundreds of students maybe a little bit more were just thrown out of their protest a lot of people came to protect their basically protect their right to protest that's it and as soon as government
00:18:31
Speaker
improved, increased their pressure on the people. People simply increased their pressure on the government. And finally, we came to the point when Ukrainians declared that they don't want to be ruled, be followed by the president, who is definitely pro-Russian and who
00:18:58
Speaker
to kill people and to beat people, so it's simply declared that we want to change the rest. Gotcha. Excellent. And for those that are listening, the recorded episode, we're going to go ahead and take a break. This has been segment one with Life and Ruins. We're here with Simon talking about the war in Ukraine.
00:19:17
Speaker
Welcome back to segment two of a hundred of life for us podcast. We're still here with Simon. He hasn't left yet. None of us have left. Simon, so we have a question from the audience. Matt is asking what was going on right before the invasion? Were there groups in certain regions who wanted independence from New York, such as the Donna test? You know, the last eight years we have the board in these regions, but
00:19:46
Speaker
Basically, it appears to be a very calm war. We have the border between the U.S. Republics and the U.S. Republics. We have the military forces on the one side and on the other side. The border is not moving.
00:20:04
Speaker
Some fire sometimes happens, but no kind of big movement in any side. And we just started to notice that Russia appears to transport their military forces to Iranian border, all across the border. That's it. There are not many civilians, civilian actions, or any kind of
00:20:33
Speaker
I don't know, terrorism kind of side from Ukrainian side basically hasn't happened.
NATO Aspirations & War Preparedness
00:20:39
Speaker
What really happened is our president and basically all Ukrainians just started to insist on the quick procedure of entry in NATO. That's it. And I believe that this message was more or less stressful for the Russian government to put it in person because it is kind of going to be dangerous for them to persuade that to the east.
00:21:16
Speaker
So, Carlton, did you have one? Yeah, I did. Sorry, everyone. These are one of those moments that we edit out in post-production, where it's that awkward silence. We'll try to figure out the next question. So, you're seeing this live.
00:21:27
Speaker
kind of leading into this. So I mean, like, what was interesting, I mean, not necessarily interesting, but, you know, leading up to the invasion, like the United States intelligence services were like blaring warnings, like this is going to be happening. There are going to be these false flag operations. Like leading up to it, Simon, did you actually think Russia was going to invade or did you think it was just because more of Putin kind of just strutting his chest and nothing's going to happen?
00:21:56
Speaker
Oh, that's a stupid, like, you know, I'm not waking up with Danny. Well, maybe the war will start tomorrow. And like, okay, so I'm gonna go and eat some crepes. No, that's not like this.
00:22:11
Speaker
I believe all foreigners, or maybe all citizens of Kiev, knew by the 21st of February where the closest shelter is located, what they need to take in their pockets, and most of us had their backs like the
00:22:28
Speaker
You know, the extreme backs you need to take from home if something starts. Yeah, so that's it. But obviously, most of us just walk up at 24 from the news or from some noisy sounds on the streets and try to provide their safety as soon as they need, as it is possible.
00:22:58
Speaker
It's not like anybody is ready, but we did something to be prepared.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah. Had it ever come this close before? Did it ever feel like this could have happened in the past? Not for me. I have kind of personal experience with Crimea because the parents of my mother are from Sintropol, from Crimea. And when they simply saw these guys on the street, that was supposed to be Russian, but without any flag, obviously, because Russians
00:23:34
Speaker
They use the non flag system. So they just take their backs and left Crimea almost immediately. Like in the months, Harrison was sold or taken away from there. And we already knew that this is possible. We should be some kind prepared, somehow prepared. Left or do at least do something. Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
Just looking at holistically, I worked with you in the New Archaeological School in Zaporizha. We also worked in Zavalia with the Odessa Group. You got to take me to Kiev and show me your home in the home city. How are all your colleagues doing? Because they're all now in major population centers that are pinnacle points of this ongoing conflict.
Impact of War on Ukrainian Cities & Culture
00:24:26
Speaker
They lost
00:24:28
Speaker
is Kharkiv obviously and even some terms so those of us who were in Kharkiv at least they are really scared.
00:24:42
Speaker
For some of them the flats are crashed, their lives are crashed, they don't have a place to work. With my relatives and with New York College School, with more or less anybody I know in person, everything is okay.
00:25:00
Speaker
And they are saved. They managed to leave the dangerous places. Those that are in Sub-Risha, they are just working to make the Parisian repaired. When the Russians came there,
00:25:15
Speaker
don't see any scenario in which to the end, the person who usually will be successful for Russians because it's incredibly hard. But in general, most of this, most of our colleges and our relatives are safe, but a lot of people already lost their hearts and their family and their service.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, we have another question from the audience. This is from Matthew Lowry. So he's asking, what are your concerns for like the cultural material and cultural sites during the invasion? Are they afforded any sort of protections or is it an afterthought? I think that the protection is almost impossible. There's like two kind of
00:26:07
Speaker
threats to cultural sites. The first one is the Shaolin and Mesial attacks and bombs and everything. And we can, there's nothing we can do with this. So I already know like five or six sites that are destroyed from different periods of random history and prehistory and this number will be higher and higher and our ministry of culture
00:26:37
Speaker
simply at least started to record this and open the portal and everybody can share the fixation about this stress. The other kind is the
00:26:50
Speaker
at our attempt to protect the sites from being robbed, from being destroyed by people, by hands. And this is happening with those sites that has been protected before, like a friend of mine who worked in Rockart site near Billidopold, so now it's the occupied territory. There's a national reserve in there, and the workers of that reserve simply organized to provide the basic protection
00:27:20
Speaker
to the site that's the best they can do they are like in a really dense of occupied territory and they will not be deoccupied soon so they're just trying to take the site from being destructed
00:27:36
Speaker
Sure. We I took a class, I think someone listening here to Alex took a class on curation. And like one of the things about, you know, like you got to worry about is flooding or fires or earthquakes. And then like one of them was war. And like I kind of just shrugged that off as in like, you know, it's not going to happen here. But like watching the news, just watching stuff get back up. Sure. Chernobyl is kind of a historic site in a way now, too. And it's just like
00:28:05
Speaker
There's no way to protect this. It's just, it's hard to watch, especially with people dying, but archaeological sites, it's like, wow. Yeah, that's gone.
00:28:13
Speaker
I don't want to be cynical, but that's the not biggest problem with Chernobyl in terms of war country. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to like, I don't know any big ones, I guess, Carlton. For our Soviet history, there's two sides. I'm really, maybe three. I really like to send it to Tocqueville. That's the destruction of the biggest aircraft in the world, airplane in the world, called Maria, which is
00:28:41
Speaker
which is the dream in Ukrainian. So it was destroyed. And second is this square on the prairie, this square of freedom in Harq, which used to be the biggest square in Europe. And the great site of Soviet constructivism and Soviet architecture. This is very funny. This site has been destroyed. And the
00:29:06
Speaker
Sir, this is the Museum of Ukrainian Artist, Maria Primechenko. She has really iconic artworks, but the point is when Russian attacked this museum, there was a fire in there, and people simply tried to save the picture of the images from the fire, and managed to do this for almost all pictures, almost all artworks.
00:29:36
Speaker
But that's the most iconic. Sure. Wow. So Chris brought up a really good point. Our producer, like, we should probably situate where Ukraine is. I'll go ahead and share my screen just so we're all aware of what we're talking about. Except I can't share my screen, apparently, because we have too many video sources. So never mind. Here, I can dip out.
00:29:56
Speaker
No, you're fine. Stay safe. So just for those who are geographically challenged, Ukraine is on the northern side of the Black Sea. It's just opposite Turkey of the Black Sea, southwest of Russia, south of Belarus, east of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. So like Eastern Europe, the breadbasket of Europe. I think it's the largest country in Europe by landmass.
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it's like, no joke, it supplies a lot of the world's grain. And so kind of from a military standpoint, the loss of Ukraine from Russia is actually a pretty, pretty big blow in terms of and also the amount of energy you guys all produce. So you guys are Ukraine produces a lot of national natural resources, food and
00:30:42
Speaker
Yeah, just before interview, I just read the article about the neon production.
00:30:52
Speaker
Neon production is what is needed to produce the semi-connectors to produce video cards and other technological devices. So almost all neon, like more than half and almost two thirds of work neon supply was provided by Ukraine and now it's completely stopped.
00:31:18
Speaker
So if you plan to change your video card in these days, you need to hurry up because we have another price growth for that. We're already having problems with the access to that right now. If the war will not finish soon, it will become much broader.
00:31:42
Speaker
We have, um, ask another question, um, from Ash. Um, so from, she's asking from a museum, our key. Oh my gosh. Why is it think, why are things moving? From a museum archeology standpoint, is there a concern that the artifacts and archives could be stolen and taken, um, by Russia? Like what happened in Syria?
00:32:05
Speaker
It's much more complicated to sell the artifacts from Ukraine than the artifacts from Syria because of the state of prehistory. They are simply not so expensive. But yeah, sure. And we just need to consider the possibility that Russians in any kind will take everything.
00:32:29
Speaker
and we'll try to steal everything. So yeah, it's possible. And those museums who managed to provide at least some kind of evacuation of the material, they considered this the war crimes and trying to steal as much as possible. Some of our museums managed to do this and some didn't.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah. I know, like you took me to like all the museums you could, and that was one of my favorite experiences. And I'm pretty sure I annoyed the living hell out of you because I took a picture of every single exhibit because I was like, I don't know if I'm ever coming back here. But something that always stood out to me is that in the National Museum in Kiv was the exhibits on the USSR and the names of all the people that died under Stalin's purges and really kind of this
00:33:20
Speaker
narrative of like being part of the USSR was horrible. And this kind of goes back to like, this is going towards Caleb Welch's question. Thank you, Caleb. He asked, you know, what do you think of Putin trying to justify the invasion by saying Nazis have taken over the government? He finds this especially strange considering the current president has relatives who survived the Holocaust and is currently a practicing man of the Jewish faith.
Refuting Russian Propaganda & Supporting Refugees
00:33:46
Speaker
Well, first of all, I think we'll need another exhibition after this war. Maybe not about the SSR, but how the independent agree already. The second is about this justification. I saw even the slides from Russian schools, from Russian historical lessons of schools, and there's no kind of logical consequence in any kind of this justification.
00:34:14
Speaker
First of all, because that's not the scene of massism in Ukraine and not science of this massism and some
00:34:30
Speaker
messages that Putin tried to apply for his simple self-justification is simply like Russian language is forbidden in Ukraine. That's not true. Yeah, and like we're having breakfast with Russian kids. That's also not true. And there's a lot of these messages that just a general narrative for Russian media. That's it. And that's
00:34:57
Speaker
no such thing as any kind of NASA ideology. Obviously, as far as I can try to apply a logic to this, yeah.
00:35:14
Speaker
The idea that Ukraine is a nation and you can be Ukrainian and you don't want to be Russian if you want to be Ukrainian might be considered as a necessary idea by people who simply want to renovate USSR. But basically we all know that this is not necessary.
00:35:36
Speaker
I think that I'll lose the connection in like five minutes. So let's do the trick and I'll try to enter the interview from the phone. Yeah. Sounds good. All right. Let's see here.
00:35:59
Speaker
I think in the meantime, Carlton, you had Alex Cravat asked a question about things that we can do. So he says, my fiance works at an immigration law firm and was wondering what avenues should they pursue to help refugees and what kind of nonprofits are the best to contact.
00:36:17
Speaker
Carlton is dropping some links down in the chat there of things that Simone had sent to us and other Ukrainian folks to help ultimately with as much as possible, as much as we can help.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah. So that will be, for those listening at home after the live show, that will be in the show notes itself, wherever you're listening to this episode. For everyone that's following the live stream right now, that link is now in the chat box. It's an NPR list of like 27 ways to support Ukraine to different links. And so you can send your money to somewhere that you think is most important. So please, yeah, like make sure you're able to do that.
00:37:00
Speaker
You know, this, it's, as we're waiting for Simon to come back, it's anthropologically, this has been a really interesting, interesting as a word, but like right now has been
00:37:16
Speaker
There's good and bad sides, like kind of saying how welcoming Europe has been to Ukrainian refugees, but then you look at how they were to Syrians. Of course, no one across the globe should have to go through this sort of
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah. It just makes me think of like hunter gatherer stuff too. Cause like you have, not that the men are staying and fighting and the women and children are leaving, but like just seeing the women and children walk so far across look, it's just like humans are built to just be migratory. And it's just like jarring to see how far some of these people are like going and just like leaving how quickly and how little things they take with them.
00:37:58
Speaker
It's sad. But at the baseline, you just need food and water and safety. It's hard to see. So Julia just dropped a link to a Google sheet that has a bunch of links. Julia, do we have permission to put that on our episode description when this comes out? Because that would be super helpful.
00:38:24
Speaker
I guess in the meantime, I had another, or I guess a response to a question. So I think it was it Caleb, we were talking about like the denotification thing. Oh, one second guys. So we're getting some things. If you guys can hear us, if we're frozen, will you please drop something in the chat, let us know that you can hear us. Cause we'll be higher having other folks say that they can't see us and they're frozen. So we're just want to make sure that's, if that's an internet connection issue,
00:38:52
Speaker
Chris, Chris Webster, who's supposed to be running this, um, just saying he was having issues. So if you guys can hear us drop a hello, how are you down there? Okay, cool. Sweet. Awesome. I'm still working on trying to get Simone on there. So sorry, David. Okay. No worries. Um,
00:39:09
Speaker
Yeah. So like I've been watching this really closely because it's just like world history fascinates me. Um, but like a lot of Americans like kind of forget that, or at least to my knowledge, that the Soviets and the Americans fought with the British against the Nazis. Um, so like, it's a deep history for them as well that like, you know, we're all the anti-Nazi here and like, we got war movies about it. Uh, so so are they. So it strikes a chord with the Russian public to say like, we're going to go fight Nazis. Cause then they're all like, hell yeah.
00:39:38
Speaker
And like the propaganda is just like, you know, essentially saving private Ryan to them, but they're going into Ukraine instead of Germany. And like, it seems the older generation is just like hyped on that from what I've gathered. And like the younger generation who's on Instagram is like, no, uh, I don't know. Hold on. You can probably speak more to that. Um, but, uh, yeah, it's.
00:40:01
Speaker
It's interesting. I'd be curious to hear what Simon says about the living. And then also like a point to note, it's like when, um,
00:40:10
Speaker
the Nazi Panjresses divisions were starting to go through Ukraine. Like Ukrainians had originally opened Nazi Germany with open arms because they're like, yes, the end of the Soviet Union, like we're saved. And then it was worse. It was just so much worse. And so, you know, there was that point in Ukraine's history during that time where they thought they were about to be free of the USSR in Stalin. And then it was just
00:40:34
Speaker
the USSR became the lesser of two evils. And we have Simon back and real quick, we're going to go ahead and end for those that are listening from the edited version. This is the end of segment two. We'll be right back with Simon on our conversation.
00:40:50
Speaker
And welcome back to 703 of episode 100. We're here with Simon. Simon, yeah, so we were just kind of chatting a bit while we were waiting for you to get back on. We had another question from the audience.
00:41:05
Speaker
So, Morgan from Wyoming was asking, in the beginning, you mentioned that it was about a two-week process for you to get out of Ukraine. Has this been the average timeline for people to get out of the country and have the attitudes from the countries taking right before it's been positive?
00:41:22
Speaker
And that's not like I spent two weeks to leave today. I spent three days to arrange everything in Kyiv and here by Kyiv. Then I spent two days to reach the beach.
00:41:39
Speaker
It was kind of complicated because some wars were dangerous and some wars were simply crowded, but they did it. Then I spent like a little bit more than a week or two or three hours a week and just then I tried to leave the country and cross the border with Poland. With me it was kind of quick. I spent only 12 hours on the border.
00:42:04
Speaker
for some of my students who tried to do the same, it was 50 hours in the queue. So, and that's it. But, as soon as you cross the border, Everson is great because the Europeans would try to be helpful. And in Poland it's like extraordinary. The Ukrainian flags are everywhere, and Everson is
00:42:29
Speaker
as free or cheap or clear as it is possible. So they arrange special trades to reach the safe coins. They arrange special safe coins. They arrange food. They arrange like Harrison. And it's great. And there's really a lot of help and support from you and your friends.
00:42:51
Speaker
from institutions also, but mostly from just people who try to be helpful.
00:43:01
Speaker
Gotcha. Now, I have a question for you. I thought the president, who is not allowing Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, how are you able to get across the border? Yeah, that's true, because we have now a war state. We are in a state of war, so it's impossible to cross the border. But I like you.
00:43:24
Speaker
Basically, I want to do it personally. There are different categories. We should do sweet kids, or if you're a man who has a kid, there's some disruption.
00:43:46
Speaker
illness and a lot of this. And one of the speculary is the man whose relative died in the war with Russia since 2013. So that's why I'm not a bishop. Interesting. I didn't know that. I believe almost every country in Europe has this formula, but Europe and Paris simply don't do this because they don't have formalization.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah. There's another question here, which I think is pretty interesting. And it's in regards to memes, and like our meme culture here in the States is like very strong. And I know a lot of them are like super pro-Ukrainian, pro-Zalinski, like everything, like is that?
00:44:35
Speaker
Is it helpful to you guys or is it annoying? Yeah, it's obviously helpful because there's no reason to explain it.
Media Influence & Ukrainian Resilience
00:44:45
Speaker
Obviously it's helpful. That's really nice and easy. Again, this is something about support and we also try to produce as much memes as possible. And that's also kind of information work. Yeah.
00:45:00
Speaker
We see the world like this in the 21st century for the first time, and we see that, for example, Telegram or any kind of messenger is really a kind of background. So it's better to use everything we can in this environment. That's a really good point. Kind of like coming out of this, one of the more fascinating urban legends that's come out is the Ghost of Kyiv.
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, like especially early on like I have a poster that's supposed to get in a couple days that I'm hanging on that on that door goes to keep like I was just and that speaks to like
00:45:35
Speaker
how, you know, dedicated your country is to protecting its citizens and its people. Like, Russia thought they were able to take Kiev in three days. It's been over two weeks. They've lost so much men and equipment, and it's just been, it's just been really fascinating to see how resistant Ukraine has been to the United States.
00:46:00
Speaker
That's like, you know, I don't want to provide any kind of recommendation for Russian troops or ideas that they would receive. It's possible that they expect that they will enter the city and the citizens of the key will
00:46:18
Speaker
So flowers like will be great to be done as if I but that's not true We have our identity and we need to protect that and then we have a lot of city lenses like a guy stood in the queue to the work office to receive his weapon and go to protect me and he
00:46:41
Speaker
was afraid of the form of Shaolin in this place, but not so afraid as to lose his place in the queue. So all of these people were forced to say this might Shaolin. Something like this, and we see it everywhere in the movie.
00:47:03
Speaker
The government tried to force every people who arrive in the week to stay in the register in the war office just to calculate to men. But war officers can do this because they all included as volunteers want to serve. So, like every Ukrainian want to protect the country to the area.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, instead of flowers being thrown at them, it's been Molotov cocktails. Like David shared a video not too long ago of some tank trying to get to Kharkiv, and like, dozens of people were just like, hit the fuck out. Yeah. And one of them already knew how to produce these cocktails because of the sovereignty. So...
00:47:53
Speaker
In fact, the last eight years we had like the plastic training of what to do in the war time and our military forces were really trained by this war in the east. So now the country is
00:48:14
Speaker
Do you think I found out that videos 2014 not current but still yeah So someone I was gonna ask you do you think? With the advent of technology and the ease of spreading information out of Ukraine. Do you think that is something that is helpful? Is it detrimental in the same sort of way?
00:48:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, I was just gonna ask like so everyone has a cell phone, you know Everyone upload stuff to Instagram to Twitter everything like that. Is this you think this is something that is helping your country?
00:48:55
Speaker
If you noticed the war column, or war tank, or any kind of technique, you can just make a photo and send the coordinates to the zero forces, or like send the coordinates about some diversion route.
00:49:11
Speaker
At the very beginning, the Russians put the markers for the place they intend to shout for themselves, and our military officers just sent to the problems in these terms. The examples of these marks, and don't like people if you say this, just destroy it in any way. And people think this.
00:49:38
Speaker
How much time do we got left, guys? 10 minutes. Yeah, we have about 10 minutes. Simon, is there anything you'd like to, like, share? And, like, let us know we can go from there?
00:50:06
Speaker
I just want to notice here that when we arrange this war, the other type of this kind of Ukrainian cruises are some sort, but yeah, we all need to insist that this is war.
00:50:22
Speaker
and in that frame we stand in to protect the democracy and we are basically doing well with this and you all guys try to visit him on the super raid whenever we have to.
00:50:44
Speaker
We have another question down in the comments. Do Ukrainian archaeologists have a tradition of working with Russian archaeologists? And if so, how is the war affecting that relationship?
00:51:07
Speaker
based on the low moral ground. We already knew by that time that Russians are playing in our land, so it's better not to work with them. We still used to have some complications, and a lot of this communication came through Europe. That's like, if we work in these Germans, both the Iranians and Russians, we must work in one portion, for instance, yeah?
00:51:30
Speaker
But now, as for any country in Europe and as for most of our colleges, Russia will not be the
00:51:40
Speaker
and the Russians will not be scientists who intend to have such good relations with the European Union. I just want to say thank you to Crimea and the plan for more archaeological congress. Last few days' declaration that international intelligence could support this war, or as they call it about this war, will be considered as a
00:52:08
Speaker
assistant of the empire of evil or something like this. And obviously, most of Russia will call this war because just simply calling it war will be the reason to prison them after 15 years. So most of them will put its
00:52:34
Speaker
So, where's your family now? Your mom and your grandma, Simon, so you were able to get them to Poland? Most of my grandparents just refused to leave K, because they already made a lot of efforts to leave Crimea.
00:52:53
Speaker
They are not quite young, really, on their late studies, so basically they just decided to stay on the election even if they're not. This is South Eastern North, so it's the same part of Haiti, and it's cold there, and I believe that they will be alright.
00:53:15
Speaker
And that's it. I hope that they can stay like this. They have the car, and they have the food, and they have self-medicine. So basically, everything being needed is available right now. And if citizens will go out and they go now, they are safe.
00:53:42
Speaker
So we get a lot of news here about President Zelensky and how he's handling things using social media and whatnot.
Zelensky's Leadership & International Support
00:53:53
Speaker
What do you guys think about him?
00:53:58
Speaker
You know that he is an artist by his profession, so he is really good in social media, and that's nice. And he has some skill, a nice speech of nice skill, so that's also okay.
00:54:16
Speaker
And we kind of used to think that he is not a great president at this time. But for now, for this period, I say that every election of our government is correct. Emerson is great. And I'm more or less just going to do what they do.
00:54:37
Speaker
and this is also involved with the president and you can see by any kind of tests and various tests that the support of our president is going tremendously by these commands because indeed Anderson is doing great work.
00:54:59
Speaker
Well, as we're about to end this, Simon, what can we do? What can our listeners do? What can our colleagues do to help you and help the people of Ukraine at this time?
00:55:35
Speaker
I believe that the most important thing that we need to continue to declare our position about training
00:55:42
Speaker
They had Russia constantly in every kind of media to make all governments in the world new, that we are against the war, and we want two foreigners to stop dying from the war. That's it.
00:55:58
Speaker
In fact, there's a message that we can almost ask if we have to maybe go to Skype or whatever you can, but the specific messages, maybe even it's not so important as just saying that we are against it.
00:56:34
Speaker
For our audience, those that are listening live, in the comments section, I just dropped our email address. If you guys have any questions for us or Simon after the show, please feel free to email us and we'll get back to you and get you a contact with Simon. Brother, you created an art gallery
00:56:49
Speaker
to the Ukrainian public, what we push for contact with. Simon, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. You had just got into Italy, man. I really appreciated you coming and speaking to our audience. Goal for the live show, and of course, this is coming out in two weeks, not this Monday, next Monday for our audience. Dude, I miss you a lot. I can't wait to see you again, and I really hope this all blows over.
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah, I really hope that if we win soon and I was going to go where I'm at, we'd never be afraid to be afraid. And I still hope that if we won't win some of this money, this country is going to win. And thank you very much, guys, for giving me this opportunity to help. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
We hope to do more live shows in the future. So if you guys like this, please let us know. If you'd like us to continue doing this format. Thank you all so much for coming today and supporting Simon, supporting us. We will be with you guys again. This has been episode 100 of the life ruins podcast. Stay safe everyone.
00:58:18
Speaker
I'm just making sure. I'm going to end it right now, okay?
00:58:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer.
00:59:05
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.