Power Lines Season 1 Episode 11 Bonus Transcript
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Jakub: Hello, listeners, welcome to your bonus episode of Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World.
Anastasiia: As we close out this season of Power Lines and approach, a year since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, we wanted to do a final Q&A.
Jakub: So, we asked you if you had any questions about post-war reconstruction in Ukraine.
Anastasiia: We got a lot of interesting questions, but before we get into that, I wanted to answer one that comes from CXiminez13, “Are we not putting the cart before the horse? Basically, should we even be thinking about rebuilding right now?”
Jakub: I actually think that it's not too early. In fact, I was recently talking with a faculty member from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Oleksandra Tkachenko, who was talking about basically the lessons from the rebuilding of the Netherlands and specifically Rotterdam city that was famously destroyed by a Nazi bombing before World War II. It looked somewhat like Amsterdam, and now it's a modern city with nothing from the old city left.
And essentially, they started to plan the reconstruction of Rotterdam immediately after the city was bombed. I think the new architect to organise that was hired within four days.
And you have to remember that the war had just started. It was moving across the Netherlands and into Belgium and then France. And they couldn't have known it at the time, obviously, but there were still five years to go.
But one of the reasons that Rotterdam is now seen as one of the examples of how to rebuild, how to do urban planning for the reconstruction of a city is because they started early. It's a huge effort. It takes a lot of planning, a lot of thinking.
So, hopefully peace and Ukrainian victory will come soon, but in the meantime, there's a lot of people who need to think about rebuilding the country.
Anastasiia: I totally agree. And I also think that such early preparations and plans being developed and announced, while this may not be obviously as important as the practical considerations, but they have this kind of soothing, comforting effect.
Because I think that if all the news that you're constantly reading about is new attacks, new developments on the frontline, the war may really seem endless. As this ongoing year after year after year kind of tragedy. And it's just really difficult to live through this, as you know, of course.
So, I know that when I see something like, oh, this ministry developed a plan to reconstruct this, it really brings hope to me, and it comforts me. And I remember that this will end in one day. It has to, and when it does, there will be a lot of work, and it will be positive work. It will be about rebuilding and reconstruction and bringing life to places that were destroyed by Russia.
Jakub: That's actually very hopeful. And yes, it does really matter.
Anastasiia: You're genuinely surprised that we managed to say one good thing on our podcast.
Jakub: Let's be honest, it hasn't been sunshine and roses every day.
Anastasiia: No, no.
Jakub: But there's a light at the end of this tunnel.
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So, most of the questions can pretty much be boiled down to how the hell are we going to pay for this? For example, someone with the username, GEG, asked exactly that and suggested perhaps a tax on Russian gas oil or mineral exports.
Anastasiia: Sharon Jackson also similarly asked, “Do you expect Russia to pay all reparations. This is going to be interesting. It'll bankrupt them for decades,” she said.
Jakub: Well, I'm a little bit pessimistic. I don't necessarily think that there's much in terms of legal mechanisms that can actually be used to force Russia to pay reparations.
That doesn't mean that the assets that have been seized will not be transferred to Ukraine, that would be criminally negligent, if all of those assets from the Central Bank, the oligarch, et cetera, that have been seized in the West, don't go to Ukrainian reconstruction.
But that probably won't be all. And Russia should pay reparations for this. I just don't really see how we can do that.
Anastasiia: I think one of the ways that we can do that is imagining what peace with Russia will look like. Because when this war ends, there will have to be a body of legislation that writes out the conditions for this ending of fire and moving forward.
There may be a situation there where Putin is no longer a leader. I know that may sound crazy, but also that is one of the possibilities that when the war ends, Putin is no longer the leader. And then the free world and Ukraine ends up signing a peace treaty with Russia basically on our conditions, and we can write whatever we want in that document.
And that can be as well reparations because it's pretty obvious that the entire world is going to rally behind that cause with us, these reparations are essentially key to rebuilding this.
Jakub: So, that would be the way to go. And I have to say, there would be something symbolic about taking an Ukrzaliznytsia train wagon and forcing the Russian representatives-
Anastasiia: Oh, my God.
Jakub: To come in and sort of sign an armistice in a forest just north of Kyiv.
Anastasiia: In liberated Mariupol or something.
Jakub: Yeah. But I think there's sort of two risks to that kind of scenario. One is that if it is Putin or somebody close to him, a continuation of his regime, essentially, that is still in power, I think they might just not admit defeat.
Even if they lose, they'll say, “Look, this special military operation was a huge success. We have now denazified Ukraine all the way back to our borders and we're fighting against NATO when representing the Global South.” And it'll be completely delusional. But they will essentially deny everything including reality, and there won't really be peace, right?
Anastasiia: Yeah. That is also a possibility.
Jakub: And then the other thing that is also a risk here is coming back to the train wagon example. So, if there is a new leadership in Russia and they find themselves in a difficult position because they have to take over and it's going to be an angry, poorer — it's going to be a hobbled society in a sense.
Then there's a lot of Western leaders, I think, who will feel nervous and will say, “Look, we don't want the same case as with Germany, where after World War I, we pushed them too far and look, we got Hitler. We need to go soft on Russia now, otherwise World War III is around the corner.”
Anastasiia: I hate this historical example. It will definitely be used. I am not disagreeing with you, but I just hate when it's brought up in these discussions because within that same broad historical timeline you can come up with arguments against being soft in Russia.
But yeah, the key is, is like, okay, it will bankrupt them for decades. I'm not really sure what would be a fair alternative. Well, because again, if Russia doesn't pay and if Russia doesn't pay reparations, think about how that's going to go with the Ukrainian society.
Because we're all definitely just hoping for the victory day and hoping that Russia will pay as a broad statement, be it criminally via military generals being charged in the Hague or something. And also, Russia paying for their building of all of this. We're not going to be happy if Russia just walks away like nothing happened.
Jakub: No.
Anastasiia: So, these two interests, we're going to have to negotiate that because yes, the Russian society is going to be very angry if they have to pay. We are going to be very angry if they don't have to pay. So, it's going to be an imbalanced situation either/or. The question is, what is the morally the right thing to do?
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Anastasiia: So, there are also other ways to pay for this that we haven't mentioned, being foreign aid and private money. So, just large companies investing. Right?
Jakub: Absolutely. We shouldn't dis-consider or sort of ignore the value of private capital here. Of course, that depends on what the peace looks like and to what extent the security issues have been dealt with.
But the reconstruction of Ukraine, it's a huge project and there's a lot of companies that will be interested in going and investing in Ukrainian agriculture. There will be a lot of security and defence companies.
Ukraine is now the biggest testing ground unfortunately for what 21st century warfare looks like. So, there's a lot of know-how expertise and there's going to be a massive defence industry building around that.
But beyond that, creative industries, IT and so forth, there will be a lot of companies that come into Ukraine.
Anastasiia: This actually leads us to another issue that was raised by our follower with username Takennig. They said, “I just hope inhabitants will be able to reconstruct just as they want, and not like big foreign companies want. New buildings here (France), are not good quality. No soundproofing, no decoration at all. Don't let them screw up everything pretending to help.”
And I think this is actually a really fair concern because this kind of aid has been seen by many people around the world, in the developing world as kind of this soft form of neo-colonialism. We are the guys with the money, so we're going to figure out how that money is spent in your country anywhere. And we don't care what the local population wants or needs.
Jakub: Yeah. China has been doing this all over the Global South. Right?
Anastasiia: Exactly. And they've been trying to do this in Ukraine, and I remember the upheaval then went on within the anti-China activist community in Ukraine.
But yeah, it's a very typical kind of story where you invest a bunch of money, but there are strings attached and China is not the only party to this. Obviously, the IMF has done this around the world.
But one way that we can combat this is that it's not like Ukraine has a lack of professionals in all of these industries, especially when it comes to creative industries like architecture, project management, IT, design, whatever. We definitely do not have a brain drain situation. We don't have a lack of expertise in general.
Jakub: Ukraine has had waves of quite significant foreign investment since the 90s. By the way, that's actually why the Kyiv Post, the predecessor of the Kyiv Independent, was set up because after a lot of investment in the 90s, there were a lot of expats that came in and they spoke English, didn't speak Russian or Ukrainian.
And essentially, they needed some kind of news about what was happening in the country that they had-
Anastasiia: Invested into. Yeah.
Jakub: Yeah, exactly. But look at what has happened in Ukraine over close to 30 years. I would not say that Ukrainians have “gotten screwed out” of their own country by foreigners.
In fact, it's almost been the opposite to an embarrassing level, where a lot of investors ended up putting money into different companies and seeing their actual control and interests sort of disappear through various Byzantine legal and corrupt mechanisms.
So, I'm not so afraid, if that makes sense for the Ukrainians to kind of lose their own country here.
Although look, is there an uncomfortable level of dependence when you have the government that is dependent on the West for security, but also big Western firms that are often connected to the public sector, especially the defence firms and so forth, that are playing such a critical role in the reconstruction? Yes, that feels like a bit much.
Anastasiia: But at the end of the day, A, we don't have a choice and B, this is the least bad option that we've got. So, we just kind of have to go with it.
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Jakub: Absolutely agree on the least bad option. Yeah.
Anastasiia: Another listener question was about whether the cost of rebuilding in Ukraine can be substituted by post-war tourism. So, Robert asked, “I hope there will be some kind of travels arranged where we could do both tourism things, but also help with something useful to help rebuilding up Ukraine again.”
And then Andrew Watson also asked, “Given the almost voyeuristic nature of the war, would it be unethical to visit places like Bakhmut or Soledar as a post-war tourist? What is the best way to pay our respect to those brave souls, but not be cringe?” This is an excellent question. Jakub, what are your instincts?
Jakub: Well, first just there was a point about — in terms of financially it's tiny. It's a drop in the ocean. It's good. It will help some local businesses, mid-size businesses just travel to Ukraine, but it's not meaningful in its scope.
But you want people to have a sense of the reality of it. You want them to know about it, to remember it. The truth is that when we travel somewhere and we see something, it's just such a more vivid memory and we take the time to actually learn about the place that we're going to. So, I would say yes.
At the same time, I have to say as somebody who is from Poland who spent a big part of their life growing up in Poland, I kind of hated the fact that the whole world would come and visit my country to bear witness to a genocide that a foreign power had exacted in my country.
Anastasiia: Why did you hate it?
Jakub: Well, because then that's sort of what your-
Anastasiia: Legacy becomes.
Jakub: Yeah. Look, it's just having your country associated with something so horrible, so negative, yeah, it becomes your identity.
Anastasiia: I completely understand what you're trying to say because it’s just how you introduce yourself as Ukrainian right now, everyone abroad just gets kind of confused and doesn't know what to say and doesn't know whether to be positive or whether that would be out of place. And yet they should be in like negative and feel pity for you.
But at the same time, I know that I, for example, has studied the Middle East a lot in university. And before the war actually, my whole career plan and my entire life plan was to work in counterterrorism in the Middle East. And I was going to get my master's and study Arabic and go work somewhere in Lebanon or Syria or Iraq.
And obviously, the reason why these places were interesting to me, not the entire reason, I am also extremely interested in cultural aspects and the social aspect of it. But I was interested in these places because it was torn by conflict.
And it was interesting for me how societies merge out of that and how they persevere and how they continue having something of a normal life amid all of the conflict that happened.
Would that be inappropriate then? Because I'm interested in a place because it has had this tragic history and I want to go there, and I want to see these places and I want to see museums and libraries that were destroyed by ISIS.
I want to see how they were rebuilt because I have the curiosity and I also have immense respect for the local population that has a life amidst all of that.
So, I think it's just about being respectful and when going to these places being kind of a fly on the wall in a way, right?
Jakub: Yeah.
Anastasiia: You can do your thing and be curious and see things. And I totally understand this curiosity, but you have to listen to the locals, understand the local context, don't expect too much in terms of hospitality and these stages. You have to really understand that you're going not for a vacation, but you're going into a war zone.
Jakub: Yeah. And at the end of the day, we spend so much time thinking about how to not offend people.
Anastasiia: Right.
Jakub: If you're curious and you want to do something, just go ahead and do it. And if Ukraine is open to people coming and seeing all of the memorials — and by the way, I was talking about the tragic history of Poland. Just in Kyiv you have the Holodomor Memorial, you have the Babyn Yar Memorial. Ukraine has so many tragedies and yet the people have this resilience-
Anastasiia: Exactly.
Jakub: And creativity and they look towards the future and somehow, it's not quite as oppressive.
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I feel Poles are very pessimistic and stuck in the past. Yeah okay, let's not make this a Poland episode. If Ukraine is fine for you to visit, go ahead. It's a beautiful country and it will be.
Thank you so much for listening to Power Lines. Next week we'll be speaking more about the rebuilding of Ukraine, and specifically how Ukrainian society can heal from the traumas of the war.
Anastasiia: Power Lines is a partnership between the Kyiv Independent and Message Heard. It was produced by Bea Duncan, Harry Stott, and Talia Augustidis. The executive producer is Sandra Ferrari. The theme music is by Tom Biddle and Alfie Godfrey.