Dispatch From Ukraine: Malcolm Nance and Terrell Starr on Putin’s War
We have two special guests reporting from L'viv, Ukraine! Gaslit Nation welcomes back intelligence expert Malcolm Nance, the author of several bestsellers on Trump’s ties to the Kremlin as well as the aptly titled upcoming book on Trump’s insurgency, THEY WANT TO KILL AMERICANS. (Listen to our previous interview with Malcom here.) We also welcome back journalist Terrell Starr, host of the must-listen podcast Black Diplomats which decolonizes foreign policy by amplifying historically marginalized voices and providing crucial perspectives on the crises the world faces. (Listen to our previous interview with Terrell here.)
Malcolm and Terrell are traveling Ukraine, where the country is bracing for an escalated invasion of Putin's war. They answered our questions on a variety of topics including: * Why did the Kremlin choose this month to escalate its invasion? * What are some indicators that Putin will go all in? * What are the real reasons Putin wants to occupy Ukraine? * What is the state of the Western alliance? What should NATO members be doing now? * What should the Biden administration be doing? * What role does the threat of nuclear weapons play? * What does Ukraine need from the West to succeed against Russia? * How does Russia’s history of imperialism and colonialism shape its actions in Ukraine today? * What are some ways the West can fend off Kremlin aggression without using military force?
This is an in-depth conversation about a complex and horrifying conflict by people who have been studying Ukraine and Kremlin aggression for decades. If you’re trying to figure out what’s going on and what may happen next, this is the conversation for you.
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[intro theme music]
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestsellers, The View From Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight, and of the upcoming book, They Knew, available for pre-order now.
Andrea Chalupa:
I am Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
Sarah Kendzior:
And this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
If you want a discussion on the latest threats to our democracy and what to do about them, you can get that on this week's Gaslit Nation early show available to Patreon subscribers at the Truth Teller level and higher. This week, we're focused on Putin's war and what to do about it. For that, we're joined today by two old friends and special guests, veteran and intelligence expert, Malcolm Nance, the author of several bestselling books and the soon to be released book on Trump's insurgency, aptly titled They Want to Kill Americans, and journalist, Terrell Starr, host of the must listen podcast, Black Diplomats, which decolonizes foreign policy by amplifying historically marginalized voices and much needed perspectives of the crises the world faces. Here is where we are: Russia has over 150,000 troops surrounding Ukraine. Russia has blocked Ukraine's ports to run military exercises in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, which cuts off a key port in global trade, which amounts to economic warfare that violates several security treaties Russia has with Ukraine. including the Budapest Memorandum for which Ukraine gave up the third largest supply of nuclear weapons at the time in exchange for security guarantees that Russia has flagrantly broken.
Andrea Chalupa:
Cyber attacks, bomb threats, disinformation warfare meant to destabilize and demoralize are all ongoing against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Putin has isolated himself as represented by all the damn long tables he keeps using for meetings like some shut-in eccentric. And he's mainly surrounded by just a few security chiefs and advisors. All of his generation laments the end of the Soviet Union and sees the world as a zero sum game. The US and several other nations have pulled their diplomatic staff out of Ukraine, shutting down much needed development and security programs. The US plans to open up an embassy in West Ukraine on the border of Poland and reportedly deliver defense aid to Ukraine from there, should Russia escalate its invasion.
Andrea Chalupa:
Russia has claimed to have sent some troops home but anyone who has followed Putin’s aggression closely knows that this is just another trick up his sleeve to distract and try to catch people off guard. President Biden said today that the US has seen no signs of Russia drawing down its troops and instead, they're continuing to get into formation for an attack position. Also, in Moscow, the Russian Duma—the puppet parliament controlled by Putin—voted on turning the Russian-occupied regions in Ukraine, which are Mad Max wastelands of Soviet-style human rights abuses, including a former arts center in Donetsk being turned into a sadistic terror, like something my grandfather barely survived as a torture victim of Stalin's purges of the 1930s. That’s what awaits anyone who falls under Russian occupation. It must also be noted that as the world looks to Ukraine, in Russia, Alexei Navalny faces a Soviet show trial on trumped up charges.
Andrea Chalupa:
The anti-corruption reformer who exposed massive corruption by Putin and his oligarchs is being charged with corruption because that's what the Trumps and the Putins of the world do: They gaslight. Navalny faces 10 more years in prison and his supporters fear that Putin will escalate his invasion of Ukraine and use that opportunity of the world being distracted by finally killing Navalny. It's never been a more dangerous time for him, a man who ignited mass protests against Putin. Inside Russia, Putin's terror against his people has never been greater, showing yet again what awaits Ukraine or anyone anywhere that finds themselves trapped under Russian occupation. Putin is bringing back the captured nations of Russian imperialism during the Soviet period. Today is February 15. Anything can happen over the coming days. So, Terrell, what do you think is gonna happen this week?
Terrell Starr:
Okay. So, thank you. First of all, you all are very dear friends of mine, so thank you very much for having me on the podcast and [inaudible] and before I begin to get to any of that I’m just going to troll you with my wonderful escargot.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh my gosh.
Terrell Starr:
You know, because Andrea's married to a Frenchman. I'm doing this to make her even more jealous, but at any rate-
Andrea Chalupa:
You guys suck so bad. [laughs]
Terrell Starr:
Yeah. I know. And I did on purpose, but okay. So to go back to your question. So what I think is gonna happen is, it's a wait and see situation. Ukraine is gonna continue to be on high alert in regards to a military standpoint, because even though I’ve seen reports of some Russian troops moving away from the border, according to the Minister of Defense of Russia, it's kind of a red herring. We really don’t know exactly what that means because these types of tricks have happened before. And so it could be a tactic in order to trick Ukraine into thinking that…in order to loosen their guard. So this is a typical Kremlin trick. I don't believe it. I'm very wary of it. I hope that it comes to fruition that they are slowly withdrawing troops from the border, but is that a guarantee that they're gonna make a complete withdrawal? We don't necessarily know. Also what I think will happen is that there'll be continued pressure behind closed doors with the Kremlin. I think that there are a number of things that are working that we should be very optimistic about.
Terrell Starr:
One, the fact that after meetings with the German chancellor and with Macron for example, France, there doesn't seem to be any hedging on their part in regards to Ukraine. There have not been any concessions about the future of Ukraine’s membership to the EU, which is very promising. What's also very promising is that there doesn't seem to be, from our perspective on the ground, any pressuring of Ukraine to concede to what Putin wants, which is the official recognition of the Luhansk and the Donbas regions from the Kyiv government. And so I see that everybody's gonna continue to dig their heels in, but everyone's digging their heels in from the perspective of Ukraine and the West. That seems to be prevailing at this point. And, you know, in regards to what will happen militarily, I’ll let Malcolm take on that perspective, but everything seems to be slightly promising with extreme caution.
Andrea Chalupa:
Malcolm, what do you think is gonna happen this week?
Malcolm Nance:
Well, if it's gonna be this week, it's gonna be in a matter of hours and I hope that nothing happens. I hope we're all completely horribly disappointed so Terrell and I can get our Chernobyl tour on, which we canceled twice already because we thought there was going to be an invasion. But let's stipulate some things. First off, the Russians had when this crisis really was at its peak 60 to 70 combat battalions, combat-ready units. That has gone up to 110 as of today. 70% of the Russian army is around Ukraine right now. 70%. And they have over 500 combat aircraft within range of Ukraine that can support these operations. If this is a strategic fake and he thinks that he's just going to lull us into sleep, you know, lull the Ukrainians into sleep, we have a lot of intelligence collection assets right now which can tell us definitively when they're going to kick off.
Malcolm Nance:
But the thing is, let's look at it for the strategic objectives of Putin. What was it he wanted? He wanted to get NATO offside. He wanted to get the Europeans to split from the Americans. That's not happening. He has unified NATO. He, in fact, may make NATO go from 30 nations to 32 with the addition of Sweden and Finland. This is really a disaster for Putin, but whatever's going on, as Anne Applebaum said, don't think of it rationally the way Americans think of it. Think of it in Putin terms, and that means irrationally, according to whatever's happening inside his head. If anything happens, and God forbid that it does, and H-hour is tonight, well, you know, right now it's 5:30 in the evening. By 9 o'clock, they could hit this country with a cyber attack that could blind it.
Malcolm Nance:
And then by midnight, we're gonna have ballistic missiles raining down from all over Western Russia, all over Ukraine, and then the airstrikes are going to come. And at that point, you'll be in the largest war in Europe since World War II. It's gonna be brutal and it will devastate this country. Now I'm hoping I'm getting up early in the morning and nothing happens and we can all go and reschedule our Chernobyl tour. But I have to assume that a man that has put virtually the entirety of the Russian armed forces on his border, has distributed ammunition—which is a key indicator, that's a war indicator—you can't be fooled by him saying we're withdrawing some units. Yeah, those units may be unnecessary for the offensive and he can say that, or maybe they don't do anything and he starts withdrawing as of this weekend. And if we can verify that, then he will explain to the Russian people that he got something from us. We're on Putin's time, Putin's dime and Putin's mindset, and none of it can be trusted.
Andrea Chalupa:
So there was a piece… A number of Ukrainian security experts have been sharing their analysis of the likelihood of war. Their read on the situation is that Russia doesn't have in place what's needed for a sustained occupation. Do you think that's correct?
Malcolm Nance:
I actually went to the Donbas battlefront last week and we were briefed by a general who is the commanding general of all land forces in Ukraine, as well as another battle commander there who's responsible for Donbas, Luhansk and Crimea. By his estimation, the Russians didn't have the resources in place to carry out a blitz, but that may have changed in the last week. With regards to the occupation, we've seen an intense amount of Rosgvardiya forces, which are the Russian National Guard, and they would be the occupation forces, and there may be as many as 20,000 or 30,000 of them. But let's make no mistake: This country's huge. They're gonna need another 100,000 troops to take everything west of Kyiv. I mean, and it's gonna take them weeks to get past the Dnieper River. If they attack, there's not going to be any folding, like in Crimea. It's gonna be a bloodbath and it will ruin this country. It will turn it… You know, this country has been rebuilt since 1945, and they're talking about destroying it all because the only way to fight here is gonna be total war.
Andrea Chalupa:
Kyiv is the Jerusalem of the Slavs, their ancient, ancient historic site that Ukraine claims as heritage. So does Russia and Belarus. Do you think Putin is mad enough—like Hitler wanted to level Paris to the ground—do you think Putin is mad enough to destroy the Jerusalem of the Slavs?
Terrell Starr:
Well, I'll answer that. So that the answer is, Yes, because the bottom line is, this whole concept of honoring the “Kievan Rus”—you know, like Ukraine being the mother city of Russia—is a mirage, right? And we need to make this clear: Putin is a racist. And the reason why I'm saying that he’s a racist. And I know that this sounds foreign to a lot of people who are Russia watchers, per se, and we don't look at things from a lens of race. Putin hates Ukrainians. There is no particular or polite way to say that. The way that he describes them, the way that he uses a historical analysis about Ukrainians, it's very similar to how white Americans during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s talked about Black people. “Our people are fine down here and you Northerners come down to tell us about how to run our country. You're trying to manipulate and radicalize our good Negro.” This is the way that Putin thinks about Ukraine. It is the exact same copy. He despises them. He hates them. He's taking a playbook from Stalin. He can’t starve them to death so what he does is that he manipulates Ukrainians.
Terrell Starr:
He manipulates them. He menaces them with his military. “Since I cannot deprive you of food, I’m going to abuse you.” And this is what a batterer does. You know, he is not a reformed person who has a vested interest in preserving Ukrainian culture. So that's why all these military deployments that Malcolm brilliantly outlines make sense. This is not an attempt to preserve Ukrainian culture. It is to destroy it and to recreate it in the form of a Russian narrative. So, I absolutely believe that he would destroy everything down here because he doesn’t give a damn. The premise of Putin’s ideology toward this country has never been about preserving Ukrainian culture. It’s about integrating geography back into Russia so that it's an oblast of this country, as opposed to a sovereign nation. They have never viewed Ukraine as an individual country that is deserving of sovereignty, that deserving of agency, because he doesn’t perceive them as complete human beings. So my answer is an emphatic YES, he will destroy them in order to make a point because he can. And it's going to translate to the Russian people that as long as we have the land, you know, destruction of it be damned. This will be a resurrection of Catherine the Great. I mean, when you think about the conquest mentality, you know, much of Ukraine came under Catherine the Great and so if he can resurrect that type of image, whether or not he has the gravitas or what have you is irrelevant. The fact that he can manipulate the narrative so that he does is what he does.
Andrea Chalupa:
So I want to ask you both about timing. Why now? And to set up that question, I want to point out to our listeners that Zelensky, the current president, came to power with an overwhelming vote. A massive amount of the people voted for him, and part of his political platform was that he was going to try to wind down the war with Russia. So he came in as a dove, even his big oligarch backer, Kolomoisky, was making Russian-friendly comments to the press and for the first year or so Zelensky was chill with Russia, to the point where he got a lot of criticism and accusations of being a traitor. But as the saying goes, Revolutions are easy, governing is harder. Zelensky’s revolution turned into governing and with it sinking poll numbers, and he started going after his critics.
Andrea Chalupa:
He went after his big campaign rival, Poroshenko, who’s staunchly pro Ukrainian. And that was seen as banana republic type stuff and he got a lot of criticism for that, but then he also went after his critics on the Kremlin side, like Putin's dark prince in Ukraine, Medvedchuk. Medvedchuk’s child has Putin as a godfather. They're brothers. And he shuts down Medvedchuk’s media empire. He puts Medvedchuk on house arrest. And then just recently, he shuts down another Kremlin TV network owned by another Putin puppet inside Ukraine who British intelligence warned that Putin was going to replace Zelensky. So Zelensky has cleaned house Michael Corleone-style in The Godfather baptism scene when it comes to Putin's puppets in Ukraine and their propaganda machines, their TV networks, right? Their Fox Newses. And it seems like that has been a driving force of this because Putin no longer has his tentacles inside Ukraine. He no longer has his puppet strings in Ukraine. And on top of that, you have Biden coming to power who's calling Kremlin aggression a national emergency, and he wants to avoid any accountability or punishment from Biden, so now he's being scarier than ever. So I wanna just ask you both, what is your sense of, Why now? Why didn't he grab Ukraine when he could under Trump?
Terrell Starr:
Okay, I'll address this. So, let me get back to Zelensky. Zelensky is a very complex figure and everyone despised him as a comedian and somebody who's a joke, per se. And so, you know, when you think about Poroshenko, that's another complex issue. So the thing about Poroshenko, the reason why Zelenski—and I’m going to give you my view and then I’m going to give you the Ukrainian view. I think that Poroshenko has not been given enough credit for maintaining and preserving the sovereignty of this country. The fact that Ukraine exists as a sovereign nation to this date is a miracle. Let's just put it all on the table and just be clear about that. And we have Poroshenko to thank in part for that because one thing that you'll hear in Washington is that Poroshenko was a great diplomat. Listen, his English is as good as mine or yours. He understands communication. He understands systems. He understands how to manage. And so yes, if you’re an oligarch, yeah, absolutely and so I'm not putting that aside at all, but the fact that he was able to manage this country since 2014—and inevitably he lost—the fact that Zelensky has the country in the shape that it is is a tribute to Poroshenko’s diplomacy.
Terrell Starr:
That is just an objective fact, okay? And even the most skeptical Ukrainian, if they understand what's going on, they would acknowledge that. Right? Even if they don't particularly like Poroshenko’s politics and his oligarchy. And the reason why he was swept out of power is precisely because, you know, he didn't do a lot to reform the judiciary. Right? And so the irony… Here's another thing, irony. And I'm gonna get us slightly into the weeds because this is an important context to your question. Poroshenko is complaining about the judiciary right now, but the same judiciary that he refused to reform is the one that is judging him. So that's the irony of all of this, right? And so that's the critique about him. Now when you think about all these letters about Biden, Biden was during Obama’s second term—and you'll get this from my interview with Michael McFaul—Obama was the Russia person that dealt directly with Putin and Biden was the person who was the pinpoint individual for Ukraine.
Terrell Starr:
He was the one that came to Ukraine and pretty much admonished lawmakers about the fact that they needed to come, you know, come down hard on Russia. He was like that old dad that came down here just kind of shaking his hand at the Ukrainian parliament, chastising them about their need to address corruption. And so it would be appropriate that he would be handling this Kremlin-made crisis as he did. He gets an A+ for the manner in which he's handling it. And so when you think about why Trump—to your next point—why Putin did not take Ukraine while [Trump} was in power, the reason was because of Poroshenko, because the Ukrainian military is not the same Ukrainian military that existed in 2014. In 2014, the Ukrainian military didn’t exist. And you’ll have high ranking Ukrainian military officials who will tell you that this is the most combat-ready military in all of Europe. It's not the most technically advanced, but it's the most combat-ready. These people have fought since 2018.
Terrell Starr:
And the reason why Putin didn't come in is because he would've had to come in for a fight. These people are not going to be waiting for Putin’s troops with milk and cookies. Malcolm Nance—and I’ll give it over, of course, to Malcolm about this—Malcolm Nance literally said, “This will be the white Taliban.” You know, I'm here in Western Ukraine. If you’re here, you would appreciate the sustain about what is happening. And I equate it to near hatred. And I came here in 2009 and the difference in tempo and tenor about Russia—and I'm not talking about the everyday citizen, I’m just talking about the cultural philosophy and approach toward Ukraine—it’s born of hatred and you feel it. And so any assault that would come will be met with extreme force that you, again, you know, what Malcolm would describe again, as a white Taliban as, as a way that the Afghans reared America back in the 1980s and when they invaded. It will be extraordinarily fierce. You'll see violence. These people that are walking down the street, they will pick up guns and they will fight. And I know that because I've spoken to them myself.
Malcolm Nance:
Yeah. Let me second that. I've now been out with the Ukrainian army. I've watched them on the field. I've seen their professionalism. And like Terrell said, in 2014, they were taken by surprise by the Russians because they thought these were sort of, you know, their brothers, or bigger brothers or something like that. They had no idea of their mean spiritedness. And now they've got a full measure of that mean spiritedness. They've lost 14,000 people, dead, since 2014. And they put the pictures of all the soldiers who were killed on the walls of St. Michael's Cathedral every time someone's killed. The word that I would use here is that they will fight the Russians out of pure, unadulterated spite.
Malcolm Nance:
They will just blitz them with whatever they have. So I hear these people saying that they're going to, you know, that the Russians themselves would be able to technologically overwhelm Ukrainians. Well, that may be true, but there's a factor of being able to beat your enemy through sheer willpower. And when I made that comment about the white Taliban, I was talking about the postwar, if Russia comes in, takes 20,000-30,000 dead, wipes out Ukraine…There's no occupying this whole country. It's massive. But you know what, when Terrell and I went to the Rodina-Mat, the giant statue from World War II, you know, the motherland statue, you walk through this hall of all of the entities that contributed to the war. And the one that the Russians apparently forgot about was this giant twice life size series of people who represented the partisans, that fought the Nazis underground, blew up IEDs, sniped Nazi troops, and helped undermine their rule. Well, that's what the Ukrainians will do.
Malcolm Nance:
These soldiers aren't gonna roll over. They're not gonna surrender. They're gonna fight and invade and move to the west until they can get to the point where American weapons or German weapons or will… Right. Yeah. Terrell's putting that picture up now, where those weapons will start coming into play. And let me tell you, I did an interview with Ukrainian army television, because I'm an old soldier. You know, I said the question that I think the journalists are not asking you correctly is, How many stingers do you need? How many Javelin anti-tank missiles do you need? Because I think that the Biden administration, if they actually do invade, if he's gonna talk to Putin today, I would say, “Listen, I see your forces. You've moved your ammunition. You are in assault force position. You are ready to go, no go at any minute. If you do that, I'm gonna drop 10,000 Javelin missiles into Ukraine. There will be five for every soldier. And that means that you can come into that country, but, you know—
Terrell Starr:
Malcolm, explain what a Javelin is, and a stinger.
Malcolm Nance:
Yeah, a Javelin is an American anti-tank missile that is absolutely top of the line of our technology. You aim it, once it locks onto what you've aimed at you pull the trigger, and then you get up and leave. The missile does all of the work. It will guide itself to the target. It can’t be, really, defeated. And it has enough capability to blow through anything the Russians have. And so we've already sent a couple of thousand of those to them.
Malcolm Nance:
In fact, Donald Trump got impeached because he tried to extort Zelinsky to do the Joe Biden corruption fraud, by saying, We're not gonna give you those Javelin missiles, which Zelinsky knows is critical to the defense of the nation. And as of today, we all see that they were absolutely critical to keeping this country alive. If those missiles weren't there, they probably would've invaded already. But, you know, Russia is doing calculations that they may be able to defeat that before a lot of these weapons systems can get to the field. I'd make it clear that, again, if I was Biden, oh, I'm gonna equip whatever remains of the Ukrainian army with more Javelins and you can shake a stick at, and by the time they're finished, you won't own a tank. You know? They will literally chop their way through there. Also the same with stinger missiles, that's a surface to air missile which can shoot down Russian helicopters and low flying jets, just like the Taliban, like we used in Afghanistan. But if you do those things, then Putin has to understand, you know, videotape of long burning columns of Russian tanks will not endear him to the families of his now volunteer armed force in Russia.
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Andrea Chalupa:
Friends in the Russian opposition have said to me that if Putin invades Ukraine, it's the end of his regime. It seems that, on some level, Putin must realize the massive risk. And if you look at, in recent history, Russia's military excursions, they've been picking low hanging fruit in Moldova, Georgia, Crimea, the eastern tip of Ukraine, even what they did—the atrocities they committed in Syria in propping up Assad—they were doing that under the guise of fighting ISIS with the West. They took advantage of a critical situation there, but for the most part, it's been low hanging fruit. It's been wars that they feel pretty confident they can win. Ukraine is not that. How is that all factoring right now into Putin's calculations?
Malcolm Nance:
Well, let me just do a little bit of that about Putin's mindset. When I wrote my last book, The Plot to Betray America, I went to his office in Dresden when he was a junior KGB officer, where he did most of his human intelligence activity of flipping people as spies. That guy loves the manipulation game and he now is seeing that he can do this on a geopolitical level. What would make him think he could take this place? I think he has a very Soviet mindset, almost a soloistic mindset towards the countries that he attacks. Terrell was in Georgia. He'll tell you about that. I've seen what they've done in Syria. The first thing they did in Syria was they bombed every hospital in all of northern Syria, killed the doctors, killed the patients, then the Russian Air Force started destroying every ambulance that was in Syria and white hats, rescuers, firehouses. That's the total mentality that he has. If this thing kicks off tonight, this is gonna get brutal. And I've made that joke that the Ukrainians will turn Kyiv into the largest Molotov cocktail party since Stalingrad. That's not a joke, because they're gonna have to use that level of force to subjugate the place. Is Putin the man to do that? I think maybe in his mind, since his dad was Stalin's cook, maybe he thinks he's going to be the roughest toughest guy since Ivan the Terrible.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow. Okay. So do you think he would even go as far as West Ukraine, where you are?
Malcolm Nance:
He can try. I don't think he'll get west of Kyiv. He can surround Kyiv, for example, but he can't take it. I've been all around that city. I've been in combat. I've been in land warfare all around the world. I've been to Sarajevo in wartime and they surrounded that city and couldn't take it. I mean, this is not something you can do. I mean, a Molotov cocktail thrown by an 85 year old grandmother at a window is just as effective as a Molotov cocktail thrown by a 15 year old kid, right? They have to factor in that not only are they gonna be with a hostile population, they're gonna be with a hostile population that will shoot at them from behind every rock and tree. Can they get west of, like, Zhytomyr, which is about a hundred kilometers west of Kyiv?
Malcolm Nance:
I don't think so. I really don't. Whoever the remaining Ukrainian army units that fall back will have a logistic and resupply tail that's gonna be coming from NATO. And I'm not joking about, you know, making stingers fall off a truck at the Polish border by the hundreds and hundreds. I'm certain that that's what we'll do. We'll empty US army stocks in Europe and give the army a fighting chance. At that point, with Javelin missiles, they can counterattack. And literally, you know, here's something about occupying countries—and I know it since I was in Iraq and Afghanistan—you’ve gotta sit those tanks at the crossroads and you’ve gotta defend all these crossroads and military installations you seized, which means you're now a static target and you are Javelin bait. Another thing is this place is like an IED festival (improvised explosive devices).
Malcolm Nance:
In Afghanistan, we have giant swaths of open land. Every field in this country is surrounded by trees and granted they can come, you know, tanks are gonna come out into those giant empty fields, but the ambushes are coming from the trees, the culverts, the roads, the bridges, the houses, the schools, the churches. You know, you gotta go back to 1945 to talk about how to fight in this country. It will not be pretty for the Russians.
Terrell Starr:
Out of all the former Soviet republics—and I know we wanna decolonize the language about how we describe Ukraine and the rest of the countries that were colonized by the empire them, but just for important context—of all of the countries that were part of the USSR, Ukraine has a very rich partisan tradition. In 1917, everyone presumed that everybody just fell in line. That's not necessarily the case with Ukraine. You know, you had partisan armies that resisted. and that culture is not that many generations away.
Terrell Starr:
And so when you asked that question about going into western Ukraine, if you think that eastern Ukraine would be difficult, here would be a whole different story. So this whole metaphor about the white Taliban would really manifest itself in western Ukraine because we focus so much on the East. This is a vastly different culture from eastern Ukraine in that when you think about the independence, when you think about the Stepan Bandera-type of tradition, which is a very complex figure—that's a whole nother podcast. But when you think about the resistance culture here, it is 1,000 times more pronounced here than it is in eastern Ukraine, and that has nothing to do with me saying that the eastern part is any less than western Ukraine. I'm not saying that at all, but I'm just speaking truly about facts and thinking about the cultural dynamics that would be faced here. If you come into the West, it is a vastly different culture. You know, we’re in Lviv right now. Many people consider it to be the cultural jewel of the country. Yes, Kyiv is the capital, but Lviv is considered to be the cultural capital of this country, or the mothership of the country.
Andrea Chalupa:
I just want to point out, Kyiv would disagree with you.
Terrell Starr:
No, listen, listen, I'm not trying to…Yes, I get it, but I'm just giving you purely from a military standpoint, that the partisan aspect of it that would evoke a particular type of reaction, that would give you a very unique type of uprising that we haven't seen in Europe since World War II. Again, like I said before, this part of the country especially is not going to greet any Russian military with milk and cookies.
Malcolm Nance:
Let me make one comment about the West now that I've been in the Carpathian Mountains. No one's taking that place. Right? I mean the entire country would have to roll over and surrender, right? it would take them months to get out, you know, through combat, just to get out to the Carpathian Mountains. I don't think that's even viable. But you know what? The Russians will get introduced to some concepts that the Americans learned the hard way: the explosively formed projectile IED (which is, improvised explosive device). It's a simple copper disc inside a piece of black iron pipe with explosives behind it. And when you detonate it, it turns that copper disc into a molten glob of copper lava. It will cut through anything in the Russian inventory. And you know what? Guys are making these things in their basements.
Malcolm Nance:
So, you know, I know out here in Lviv, this is where they build tanks, and we saw some drones, some robots here recently. This place will become the most innovative IED assembly region in the world. They will blow the Taliban and the ISIS and the Iraqi insurgents’ records off the charts. The Russians won't be able to get near a horse cart without wondering whether it's gonna blow up on them. Why would he do this? He must have a total war mindset for him to even consider this, or he's giving the biggest fakes in history.
Malcolm Nance:
The white Taliban. Imagine every person in this country now is the enemy, is hunting you. Every person, right? Kids are going out to school and they're dropping, you know, they're laying the wire for IEDs. Okay? We only saw through three horse carts with hay on them the entire time we were here so I'm very disappointed, but imagine cars coming down the roads to your checkpoints that are not cars but in fact robotic, vehicle-borne IEDs. They're not suicide bombers, they’re robot bombers with 2,000 or 3,000 pounds of explosives, ramming your checkpoint and blowing up. It will be a war of magnitude worse than the Taliban. The Taliban did it through drip, drip, drip. This will be a daily slaughter for the Russians.
Terrell Starr:
Hey, Malcolm, let me add in something too. I wanna tell you, Andrea, so here's the issue. One of the things that you don't see in western media and what me and Malcolm over here, because we're here, and particularly me because I’m constantly in the know of what's happening here in Ukraine, and I'm gonna take words from Malcolm. You know, in the western media, you would assume that there's no army here. Like I said before, this is the most combat-ready army in all of Europe. It is not the most technologically sound but it is the most combat-ready. So basically there is—and I think people, because it's Ukraine and we talk about white Taliban—there is a bias that this type of civilian participation in warfare remains to the Middle East. And so there's a little bit of stereotyping in that as well, but it has nothing to do with your nationality or culture, it has everything to do with the fact that you're not going to let your country go. And that has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and has everything to do with the will of your people. You can see video of adults training 9-year-olds, 8-year-olds how to use a gun. And if you're not paying attention to Ukrainian social media and TikTok, you're not gonna know that, but I see it.
Terrell Starr:
These people are training the youngest person who can pick up a weapon to fight. It is really, really severe. I don't think people are prepared for the type of resistance that's going to happen. Again, because you know Andrea, like, I’m here half the year. I don't think people appreciate the disdain about how they've been treated. It is severe. And we bring up the white Taliban; that comes from the fact that the type of existence that the average person here—I don't care if they're 5-years, I don't care if they're 9-years-old, I don't care if they're 80-years-old—they're fight. And there's never been a psychological defeat of this country. And if you don't have a psychological defeat and breakdown, they're not going to win the war. They'll win battles but they will not win a war.
Malcolm Nance:
Let me jump in there real quick and let me help the US media here, because the reason I brought up the phrase “white Taliban” was to give them the impression of what's to come but, you know, we haven't seen a resistance organization in Europe since the Hungarian Revolution. So let me help the US media: the Ukrainian Makhno—Ukrainian freedom fighters and partisans—are what's going to crop up here and you're gonna have feisty mountain men and young students who took part in Maidon all out to defeat the Russian occupation force. And until that magnificent image pops into the news media's head… Again, they act like there's not even a Ukrainian army. There's 250,000 men and women in this armed forces. Granted they're not technologically as advanced as Russia, but you don't need—as ISIS has taught us, as Al Qaeda has taught us, as Shaba Al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia have taught us—you don't have to be technologically savvy to defeat an advanced force. You just have to be committed to kicking their butts.
Andrea Chalupa:
I just wanna make a quick point on what you said: No child anywhere should be taught how to use the gun to defend themselves. The fact that it's come to that in Ukraine, which I understand perfectly, is part of Putin's war crimes against humanity. That's a whole level of cruelty, that you're putting children through that. The other point I wanted to make to emphasize your points is that Ukraine leads the world in IT talent. There are several cities across Ukraine that compete with each other to be the Silicon Valley of Ukraine. So all of that ingenuity certainly is something that would go into a ground resistance game. All of that, of course, is fascinating to hear and also heartbreaking and unnerving.
Malcolm Nance:
We saw some of that. We saw some of that when we visited a robotics engineering company here. They were producing things to evacuate soldiers from the battlefield, but they could just as easily be turned into suicide bomb drones, or remote weapons platforms that are sniper platforms that can start picking off Russian soldiers, one at a time, and when the Russians get there, there's nothing there but a remote robot that's used a joystick from a DJI drone, or just using drones to drop small improvised explosive devices like ISIS pioneered. This is insanity because it will excite the technological knowhow of these people in places like Ivano Frankivsk and Lviv where there are these…What do they call it? I think the word is Guran or something, these little IT startups. You just don't want that to be started up for war because the Russians will pay for it in blood.
Andrea Chalupa:
If Ukraine does fall or if Ukraine becomes a much larger frozen conflict and Putin has Ukraine where he wants it in a matter of time, do you think eventually—since Putin has engineered it that he can now die in power like any dictator—do you think Putin will eventually go on to doing this to Lithuania or Poland? Do you think he'll attack NATO next? Because part of his demands are he wanted NATO troops out of Eastern Europe.
Malcolm Nance:
That is not going to happen. Don't forget, you attack Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia, you are attacking all 30 NATO nations, which means the third world war starts. Okay? Which means every piece of American European firepower comes online. It will be massive air battles over the Belarus plain. We'll lose people left and right, but you know what it will do? We will assemble a ground war and we will chew the Russian army to pieces. I got some news for you: They only have one army. They’ve got a lot of tanks but, you know, back in the oldy days when there was the Warsaw Pact—which was Russia and its version of NATO of its slave states here—they had some crazy number, like 40,000 tanks. Well, today, the Russian army only has 2,500 tanks. NATO has 3:1 superiority on that, and that means that we're gonna have to ruin Russia. We're gonna have to bring them down to where they don't exist. The only thing that they'll have left to deter anything is their nuclear weapon stock, huh? Nobody wants this. Okay? Nobody wants this kind of war. And I hope that Putin is…If he's losing his mind, maybe his generals need to resolve that issue.
Terrell Starr
Yeah and Malcolm I’ll also add that it’s not just a military standpoint, it’s economic. Putin would be put off from every economic organization in the world and they don't want that. And keep in mind that if Putin has been put off from every financial institution, every bank, they're gonna have to go to China. And the way I describe it is that China's looking at all this with a Birdman hand rub because, at the end of the day, they’re scavengers. Beijing is scavengers as it pertains to Putin because all they’re going to do is the Kremlin is going to go—and all their oligarchs are going to go—to China and their interest rate is going to be three times, or even more, the interest rate.
Terrell Starr:
And the Chinese don't necessarily trust Russia anyway because of their lack of diversification in their economy, because it's an energy state. If you take away the energy state, they have nothing else. And here's the thing, you brought an earlier point. Something that's really important that kinda draws into Malcolm’s analysis is that, you know, a lot of my critiques when I talk about progressives and things like that, I wanna bring up something that's really important here: In order to really appreciate security and what it means, we really have to understand imperialism and how it works. And one thing that works in imperialism is complicity. An example is South Africa. Imperialism works, in part, because you look at atrocities that are happening to a particular group of people and you just don't say anything about it.
Terrell Starr:
You have no moral approach to it. Another example would be the way that Israel treats the Palestinian population and its own sovereign. All this stuff comes into form, right? If you have a state like Russia that would dare to attack NATO, their foundation would completely end. And one of the things that imperialism does in its worst form is that it even oppresses its own people. If you are a smart Russian person, regardless of who you are, you care about liberty. And there are three things that happen to a Russian that believes in liberty. If they don't kill you first, they manufacture a reason to put you in jail. That's the first thing. If you are somebody that's innovative, like the guy who created Kontakte, Durov… You know, the thing about Facebook and Instagram, all these social media platforms, they require liberty and they require freedom from government rule, which is something that does not happen in Russia. One of the things that happened with Kontakte, which is “Contact” in Russian-
Andrea Chalupa:
You're talking about VK, the Russian Facebook. The founder fled Russia.
Terrell Starr:
Yeah, thank you for that. So the issue is that if the Russian government comes to you and says, Hey, we need to get your data so we can find these people who are organizing campaigns on your platform, and you say, No. You're killing ingenuity, right? Because ingenuity has to be independent of government control beause in a free market enterprise, you get the best out of people when they don't have be slaves to government. And so in the case of Durov, he was forced out of the country, right? So that's number two. Now if you’re an opposition leader like Boris Nemtsev, you know, in a case where you are killed in front of the Kremlin, those are three things, right? And so you can’t tolerate opposition. If you can’t tolerate opposition, you have to kill it. So one, you’re forced out of the country, you’re forced into prison, or you are killed. That is the fate of a smart Russian person. And it's very clear to me that the co-founder of Google is not in Russia, he is in the United States of America.
Terrell Starr:
So that's an important concept that you have to keep in mind. Malcolm’s correct from a military standpoint, but there’s an economic dynamic too. And so when you think about the sanctions, I think that’s where you really have to put pressure on them, through a sanctions standpoint, because you have to really ask the Russian people, is all of this worth it? And if they keep being enslaved to this mentality that America is the enemy as opposed to looking at the Kremlin, then that’s the question for them to answer. So, it goes beyond a military consequence and it goes into this notion that if you attack NATO, you're just completely knocked off the market. And I don't think that's something that the Russian elite at the bare minimum can stand.
Andrea Chalupa:
Putin recently had this unhinged performance where he threatened nuclear war against the West, saying something to the effect of, If you come after me or you try to get Crimea back, I will nuke you and there'll be no winners. Do you think he would cross that line? If Ukraine puts up this fierce resistance, should he escalate his invasion, do you think Putin would go nuclear on Ukraine?
Malcolm Nance:
No, and I don't think anyone…I mean, if he is really seriously discussing that with his battle staff, they should seriously be discussing about resolving and terminating his rule. Because look, I worked at a national nuclear command post for a little while. That's those underground bunkers, you know, posts dug into mountains. Let me tell you something: Everyone who goes in comes out an ardent anti-nuke. Those things are not F-ing toys. They cannot be used. You nuke something, you blow it up, its dust goes around the world and gets in your milk by the next morning. Talking about using nuclear weapons is not the sign of a person of any stability whatsoever. I mean, he knows the viability of it. He's just using these excited phrases in order to show just how far he will go? Well, you know, Ukraine has something to say about that.
Malcolm Nance:
If I had my way, maybe Ukraine's nuclear weapons that they gave up need to be restored to them. Now that sounds like a crazy statement, right? But we found out that the weapons that they gave up, that they couldn't really operate anyway, were the only thing keeping Russia at bay. And the lesson to the rest of the world is never give up your nukes because a country like Russia will come after you. But no one should be talking about the N word, okay? Because it's dangerous. It's insane. It affects every human on this planet. And so if he's doing that, you better chalk that stuff up to rhetoric. But again, if he's seriously putting that into his battle plans, then anyone who has children or wants a future needs to be thinking about how to get that guy out of office.
Andrea Chalupa:
I wanted to ask you about the Biden administration's response to the crisis. As we all watched last year with Afghanistan and the humanitarian disaster there with what many critics are calling a “rushed pullout”, there is now sort of chatter that the reason why Biden's team is pulling everyone out of Ukraine and essentially causing a mass panic of all these other countries pulling their people out is because they don't want to repeat Afghanistan. So, they're acting from an abundance of caution, and Ukrainians are then suffering all the economic fallouts; their flights are being canceled, their economy is taking a hit. And what the accusation has been out of Ukraine by many journalists and people there is that Ukrainians feel as though they've been sanctioned because of Russia's aggression against them and that Putin's whole troop buildup is really benefiting through this economic warfare against Ukraine. So why do you think Biden acted in that way? Was it the right thing to do and what more should Biden and the West generally do to give Ukraine what it needs to succeed against Russia?
Malcolm Nance:
Look, let me answer this. First off, Afghanistan was going to happen that way, no matter what. Okay? We didn't just jump up and leave. They sold the country to the Taliban when Donald Trump signed a secret agreement with them and didn't even tell the government of Afghanistan. So no matter what happened, Afghanistan was going the way it was. The non-combatant evacuation operation—and I've taken part in four major NEOs, as we call them—was as good as it was going to get. Yes, we took some casualties, but you know, it was a horrific situation. This is an order of magnitude bigger. I mean, a real order of magnitude bigger here. You're talking, literally, open major land warfare with the most sophisticated weapons on this planet, minus atomic bombs, being waged against a country of 42 million people. We're not talking about just, you know, suicide bombers at an airport.
Malcolm Nance:
We're talking about thermobaric, white phosphorous-laden rockets falling in civilian neighborhoods and burning the populations to death. I just saw videos of those rocket launchers just this morning, along the Ukrainian border. So, let's put the terms the way they need to be. This is literally World War II-level combat that will occur here in this country. Biden has to hit the numbers and all this bull about, Oh, he's trying, you know, he's causing a panic, he's seeing intelligence that the rest of us aren't and I see the fringes of it. But until just two days ago, I was very optimistic that the Russians weren't out of their minds. But now I'm seeing the intelligence that two weeks ago the White House would've had, which is ammunition moving, logistics moving, things that are needed to sustain combat and forces moving into their command posts and assault positions. That's happening.
Malcolm Nance:
And look, I'm hoping—let's pray to God—that you don't wake up tomorrow morning or around 5 or 6 in the evening EST, that we are not at a full scale war with ballistic missiles, bastion and caliber cruise missiles blowing up all over Ukraine, including here in Lviv, because they have military facilities out here. There's Mig bases out in the west. I mean, this is why Terrell gets so frustrated with the anti-war Left. The people who are waging war here is Russia. We are responding because we have an alliance of 30 nations that…You know how many countries border this that are NATO? Four. Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary all border this nation. They are literally on the edge. What if Russian cruise missiles fly into Poland and kill Polish citizens? This isn't a game and people who are saying, Oh, do you think Biden's doing this… Combat does not care. Combat will kill whoever is in its way, man, woman and child. I have fought four, well, three major wars and several small wars, and this is as serious as it comes. Let's hope it all just goes away so, you know, we can go on our noble tour.
Andrea Chalupa:
What if there, God willing, is no war? How long can Putin keep his troops amassed at this level in order to keep these tensions high and further economically weaken Ukraine? How long can Putin sustain this?
Terrell Starr:
I'll take that one, Malcolm. So the thing about it is that Putin is not accountable to anyone. So, for example, if America were to do the same thing, there would be hearings in Congress. There would be nonstop coverage of this. There would be mothers on television, be it local, state level, national level, raising alarms and raising holy hell about why he's doing this. And Biden would have no choice but to respond to that because, you know, one of the things that I want your listeners to understand is that Putin does not have that same accountability. He has no accountability. It is an autocratic, kleptocratic state in Russia, which means that it is supreme one-party rule and it's, you know, I don't call it a straight up dictatorship. North Korea is a straight up dictatorship. It is an autocratic state. And so it could continue ongoing because one thing that we all need to know is that even if we were to believe that these reports from the defense ministry of Russia, that troops are slowly withdrawing and going back to base, keep in mind that this is a tactic that was used before.
Terrell Starr:
So to really address your question, this could go on for an entire year because he has the political capacity and the lack of accountability to his own populace. And in some sense, you can make the argument that a number of his populace are okay with this. Let's just be real. If you look at recent polling, you'll see that a vast majority of Russians agreed with the annexation of Crimea, right? And so this is a colonial framework that is embedded in much of the Russian population. And so if you have those two coming together, this operation of going back and forth, patrolling Ukraine with this military could be nonstop because he has no accountability to stop him.
Andrea Chalupa:
What do you want to see from Biden and the West to make sure that Ukraine has everything it needs to succeed, should Russia go all in?
Malcolm Nance:
Yeah, I'll tell you right now, if I were Joe Biden today—and it's what I said earlier—and I'm on my last call with Vladimir Putin and I've got NSA and reconnaissance intelligence saying that they are absolutely in position, tanks are moving, communicating with each other, battle orders have been set, H-hour has been set for 0300, I'd say, quite simply, “The minute you cross that border, I am going to airlift in 5,000 javelins. Your army, in about a week, are gonna start getting devastated. And you think that we shouldn't participate in this? You're about to kill 10s of thousands, if not 100s of thousands of civilians here. So maybe we need to level the playing field.” I know the Ukrainian army asked for 12,000 West German anti-tank rockets. You know what? If I were to the United States Army, I'd buy those rockets from the Germans and have 'em all fall off a truck at the Polish/Hungarian/Ukrainian border and make sure that Russia understands they may get to the Dnieper River, but that is where the Ukrainian army can start flowing those weapons and really just devastating the Russians. And I'd make it clear to the Ukrainian armed forces, Use all the Javelins you can in the initial onslaught. Get film of the burning columns and let's let Russia see what they've actually wrought.
Andrea Chalupa:
If we should get into that level of engagement where we continue to give defensive aid to Ukraine when it's being massively invaded, what do you say to the critics on the Far Left and the Far Right who are saying, Get outta Ukraine, we shouldn't be in Ukraine, and trying to make this a big political liability for Biden, or genuinely want us not to be involved in any way, shape or form with Ukraine? What would you say to them?
Malcolm Nance:
You know, CODEPINK put out a tweet the other day saying they expected millions of people to be in the streets, protesting the war. What war? There's no war between the United States and Russia. There is a war where Russia is on the offense and Ukraine is on defense. We would be providing them weapons to defend themselves, not to go out and blitz another country. Russia is using all of its weapons are now poised in an offensive way in which they're gonna come through and recreate the Nazi Blitzkrieg in reverse and kill, again, 10s or 100s of thousands of people. Look, the US isn't shooting anybody. We're merely providing the means for them to defend themselves. And so for a lot of people in the West who have joined forces with the Trump Right to just insult Biden, it's just about humiliating Joe Biden. They've literally become fifth columnists. They are literally pro Putin now. If you can imagine that in any time in history that America coming to the aid and defense of a democracy, that we would have an entire party in America with liberal allies saying that we should get out of the way of the fascist KGB dictator. I swear to God, I could never have imagined this moment.
Andrea Chalupa:
Terrell, I wanna say that your brilliant piece for Foreign Policy on why progressives should care about Ukraine is one that I want to print out and mail to every single member of the Progressive Caucus in Congress who will have to vote on a sanctions package for Ukraine. So, I wanted to ask you Terrell, like, we need these sanctions, right? Because it's the whole strategy of banks not tanks, and Ukrainians have been making all the sacrifices and the Brits don't want to sacrifice by cleaning up their Russian oligarch addiction. The Germans and the French don't want to sacrifice either in cleaning up their Russian oligarch addiction to all that dirty Russian money. So what is your message to progressives out there that are anti sanctions and might vote against a sanctions package to finally hold Putin and his court of oligarchs accountable?
Terrell Starr:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that question. So, first off, sanctions are not a science and I think that there's a science component, but it's primarily an art and you have to be very clear about what you wanna accomplish. And so, you know, even in my piece, I hedge slightly about particularly hitting banks, because if people can't conduct money, you know, business and dollars, that would definitely hamper them. But think about the fact that you have airlines that are canceling insurance over flights into Ukraine. Ukrainians are suffering perversely, doing nothing. Meanwhile, Russia can come and go to the West if they get the proper pay for it without any problem whatsoever. Automatically, Ukraine is being punished. So I don't have a problem with sanctions on banks that don’t have some type of impact on the general population because there's a complicity. We have to have uncomfortable conversation about that, right? Like I said, there’s a large population of people who do support the annexation of Crimea and do support President Vladimir Putin, even though you have a suppressed liberal Russian population that does, in fact, strike against Putin’s barbarism.
Terrell Starr:
But the primary issue—and I think that this is something that people like Bernie Sanders are considering, for example, despite my disagreements with him—is that there are considerations about a severe sanction regime against Putin’s elite. And the thing about it is that these types of sanctions have not really been pushed since 1991 because the sanctions regime that's against the Kremlin right now is the strongest since 1991, right? With Obama, and so that kinda pushes back against this notion that Obama was beat against the Kremlin. That’s not necessarily true. And again, that's another conversation for another podcast because that has its own complexities to it. But the sanctions regime against the Kremlin needs to be extraordinarily severe. It needs to be one that hits them so hard that if you're a Russian oligarch, if you have children in America, they need to have their assets sent back to Russia and go to Mother Russia. If Mother Russia is a country that you love so much, go live there.
Terrell Starr:
And the reason why you're not living in Mother Russia is because you know that it's a country that is not conducive for a healthy, equitable life. You know that. That’s the reason why your ass is in America. If Mother Russia was so good, you would be there. We need to have a very uncomfortable conversation and not be polite about this and come forward with that. Everyone needs to suffer. If you love your country that much, go live there. And American lawmakers need to be very direct and drill in the message clear, whatever that Putin has, and Malcolm told me about this in one of my very early podcasts: Take it, seize it, have American military forces come take everything because we can. If you're dealing with a brutal person, you have to be brutal with them. And you don't need to use military force to do it. Just take their money because here's the bottom line, and I'm gonna close out with this: I'm anti-imperialist. You know how I stand on this issue. But the one thing that an oligarch really can’t stand is for you to mess with their money. And with America, we are an open society, despite all of our faults. Even though with Google, with Facebook, with all these social media platforms, there are plenty of people in Congress who don't necessarily like how they operate. But because we live in a free society, we're able to grow and develop our money, despite all the inequities in it.
Terrell Starr:
That's something that you can't do in Russia. So go back to Russia and grow your economies there because you can no longer take advantage of the loopholes in our banking systems. You can no longer go to K street, because that's another thing. Again, it's not just Russia. It's the people who don't give a damn about our country who, to me, if you are somebody that does business with Russia under their current framework, I think you're a traitor. I think you're somebody that needs to be equally taken to task and you need to be put in the same level, in a similar level as Snowden. You are financing a government and a group of rich oligarchs who are undermining the integrity of democracy not only in America but across the world. And you all need to pay economically and severely.
Malcolm Nance:
I agree. Last word: You wanna hurt them? I come from the Take They Money school of politics. Seize their assets worldwide, implement global Magnitsky Act, let the Ukrainians file a lawsuit in New York for an injunction for $50 billion, $100 billion, and then let's just start seizing their assets worldwide.
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