The Ukrainian Resistance Might Be Stronger Than Putin Thinks

CLAY: I want to talk about an angle in Ukraine that I believe is going to become the focal point as we go forward, and that is what happened to several different individuals in the Zelensky family. Buck, Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine, is refusing to leave the country. He is also saying that he’s refusing to have his family leave the country as well. Now, we don’t know whether for sure his family is still there. I would say I would have… This is me speaking as a dad. I’ve got three young boys, obviously my wife.

I would not want them in the country with me at all if I was in the midst of a Russian invasion. I would want my wife and my kids out of the country. I believe, Buck, you said he has a 17-year-old and a 9-year-old, two kids. And I hope that they are going to be safe, all of them. But if Russia — and there are reports that these Chechen assassins are effectively roaming the streets right now of Kiev looking for high-profile targets, meaning high-echelon government employees as well as the president and his advisers.

If Russia captures and kills him, I think it’s going to connect in a way that many other deaths do not, because we know that this is an invasion of a democratic country. But if you are then stripping the leader out of his position and potentially executing or imprisoning him, that is going to be a next-level form of usurpation, I think, as many people are going to see it — and it’s not just him, by the way.

For those of you out there who are boxing fans, two of the most well-known boxers in the last 20 years or so, the Klitschko Brothers — both of whom were champions. One of them is the mayor of Kiev, the other one is also Ukrainian. They’re both worth $50 million or more based on what they made in their boxing careers. They are right now fighting against the Russians as well, which represents a form of bravery that is all too rare in the world of athletics intersecting with politics. But these guys, I think, for many Americans are going to become the face of the Ukrainian struggle.

BUCK: Clay, it’s almost hard to believe when you read about where Zelensky comes from. People refer to him, he’s a comedian and an actor. But his most well-known role — this is true, everybody. Zelensky’s most well-known of anything in his professional career, before becoming president — was he played an everyday guy who ran for president of Ukraine on an anti-corruption platform. He then decided to run for president of Ukraine on an anti-corruption platform — this is real — and became the president of Ukraine. So, imagine if… Remember the movie Dave with I think it was Kevin Kline with he plays sort of the stunt double, almost?

CLAY: Martin Sheen from West Wing.

BUCK: Martin Sheen from West Wing. Imagine that… I think Martin Sheen does think that he’s the president, or that he was, at least for a while. But imagine that they ran. As you mentioned, you have now one of the most well-known and successful boxers of his generation straight up with an M60, basically, or he’s taking automatic weapons. Someone’s gonna yell at me, “It’s not an M60!” But he’s taking up arms himself as the mayor.

This is what’s actually happening in this city. I don’t think anybody would ever expect that the former mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, is ever gonna have bandoleers of ammunition on him and was actually gonna take up arms in defense of his city no matter what happened. These are guys… There’s a heroism narrative here that you’re seeing among the Ukrainian leadership, the fact that you have people who are members of Parliament who are donning body armor.

CLAY: Men and women.

BUCK: Yes, and saying, “We will fight to the death to defend our parliament.” There are lessons that I think a lot of people around the world are gonna take from this, and there are stories here you may have seen, Clay. There was an outpost of effectively border guards on an island, Ukrainian border guards, about 13 of them, and a Russian warship — which has them completely outgunned and on an island, so there’s nowhere to go.

The Russian warship said, “Surrender,” and there’s actual audio of this. It’s in Ukrainian so it wouldn’t make much sense to play it here. But in the translation, they essentially say, “Okay, guys, what should we tell them?” And they say, “Go [bleep] yourselves” is what they say to this Russian warship knowing they’re about to get annihilated, they wanted to make a point they were going down fighting. If that mentality is more widespread in Ukraine, we could see a very protracted struggle.

But the casualty figures for the Russians right now are being reported at over a thousand for the first day. I have no way of knowing. I’m not in the intel community anymore, haven’t been in years. I have no way of validating one way or the other whether those numbers are real, but there is a possibility here, Clay. I know it’s war. It’s horrible. It’s the ugliest thing that occurs from man’s inhumanity to man.

This is the ugliest thing that’s going to occur anywhere in so many ways, but there is this possibility that perhaps this breaks Putin over the long term. I don’t think in the short term that will happen. But depending on how this goes… Remember the Soviet Union was undone by its invasion of Afghanistan. It was a long time coming but that was for many the trigger point, if you will, that was what actually brought them down.

If you’re talking about massive losses and to your point about Zelensky, this stuff becomes very visceral. This becomes very emotional for people. It hits them in the gut when they see these stories of brave Ukrainians defending their own homes and their own Parliament and just city streets, and Russia is running over them because they couldn’t just have a real negotiation over NATO? That’s what’s gonna go on here?

So there is the possibility that you see greater… We didn’t mention this yesterday in the show. There were protests. They are being cracked down to viciously which we knew, but was there some protests in St. Petersburg, I believe some in Moscow as well where thousands of young Russians particularly have gone out into the streets. So there’s gonna be a lot of pressure brought to bear behind the scenes as well. Remember, Putin, he’s got a scary military and a lot of nukes but it’s a $1.4 trillion economy, and there is an opposition to him within the country. So there are some reasons to hope that maybe, maybe this brings down Putin’s grip on power in the country if it turns out to be a debacle, which we’re all hoping that it will.

CLAY: Also want to mention, you were talking about the Russian protesters and obviously the bravery that it requires inside of Russia to be willing to stand up to the power and might of Vladimir Putin. A Russian tennis player named Andrey Rublev, right after he advanced to the final in the tennis match in Dubai, he wrote, “No war, please” with a Sharpie marker on the camera lens of the television camera. So, I mean, that is a different level of brave too.

We talk much about all the athletes and entertainers and everybody else who speak out. Most of them don’t risk very much in the grand scheme of things because they actually get rewarded for their left-wing activism. Well, Andrey Rublev speaking out and writing, “No war, please,” in the middle of Russia invading Ukraine is a pretty brave gesture by him to have been willing to do, again, right after he won a tennis match in Dubai to advance to the final there.

BUCK: Yeah. Taking a knee at a football game in America just gets you more credibility on the left and million-dollar deals from Nike, et cetera. If you’re a Russian Federation citizen and you do something like this, they gave you a phone call… I mean, I know how the FSB works. They’ll put a phone call in to you that your dad is now under corruption investigation and facing 15 years in prison. The Russians play dirty. There are very real consequences for people who go against the state.

So you’re right, Clay, that act — those public demonstrations — of solidarity with Ukrainians and with humanity comes with a price in Russia. In this country we’re so used to people on the left taking a popular position in the pop culture, if you will, and then acting like they’re selfless heroes that are putting it on the line. That’s not the case here. Over in Russia, you speak out against Putin right now, you’re putting a lot on the line.

CLAY: And when you get rewarded for something, to me, in many ways it’s the opposite of bravery. If you make more money because of something that you say, you can call it a lot of things — capitalistic in nature — it’s not brave, and it’s not courageous, very often. To me, bravery and courage requires that there be a risk potentially of life or liberty. And I think that Russian tennis player certainly and his family is putting himself on the line in a way that very few athletes have been willing to put themselves on the line in recent years, despite the fact that we regularly toss around the concept of bravery and try to claim that it is more common than it is.