Speaker 1: So the victims of Vladimir Putin's completely absurd decision to invade Ukraine
are piling up. And some of those victims are Russian, and there is an incredible bit
of news because it's so predictable. This was exactly what many people started asking about
when the Russian forces dug in near Chernobyl in Ukraine. Russian troops are suffering acute
radiation sickness after digging trenches at Chernobyl. Several hundred Russian troops
reportedly rushed to a special medical facility in Belarus after digging in radioactive soil
in a forest near the infamous nuclear plant. This is not about the real victims are the Russians.
No, no. The primary and obvious real victims are all of the Ukrainians and the civilians and
the children and all of the different people in Ukraine who have suffered had been killed at the
hands of this authoritarian madman. But it's also a reminder Putin is very much like Trump and that
he really only cares about people to the extent that they're useful to him and as individuals.
These Russian troops are not really useful to him in terms of do they get radiation poisoning
or what are we sending them into? That doesn't matter. What matters is, are they useful to me
in achieving my foreign policy goals and at least for a period of time? Putin believed that that was
going to be accomplished by sending troops in, including to places rife with radiation. Now,
for people who don't know the back story about Chernobyl, Chernobyl was this nuclear disaster.
It was a nuclear accident, and it happened in 1986 at one of the reactors at the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant in Ukraine. And this is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history
in terms of number of casualties, as well as in terms of the financial cost. And there's only
been two nuclear energy accidents in history rated at a seven, which is the highest level of severity
on what's called the nuclear event scale. The other was the Fukushima disaster in Japan a little
over 10 years ago. So Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only two level seven disasters, and
it is still an extremely radioactive area and troops just hanging out there are quite literally
digging in the trenches and now all suffering from radiation sickness or what might be called
radiation poisoning. The Daily Beast reports the troops, who reportedly dug trenches in a
contaminated red forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now
being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because of
thousands of pine trees that turned red during the nuclear disaster. The area is considered
so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.
Local reports suggest seven busses with the zapped troops arrived in Gomel earlier Thursday.
Journalists on the ground have also reported ghost busses of dead soldiers being transported
from Belarus to Russia under the cover of darkness. I can't help but imagine how when every
time something bad happens to the Russian army because of either their own incompetence or just
the irrational and irresponsible nature of what they're being directed to do by Putin and
Putin's generals, Putin is certainly giving some different story to his people in Russia. It must
be Ukraine's fault. It's the West's fault. It's this that the other the other hand, this nuclear
poisoning, a radiation poisoning episode, is emblematic of the entire invasion of Ukraine,
a bad idea from the start, stupid and unnecessary and complete and total disregard for life,
whether it's Ukrainian life or Russian life, just complete and total disregard for life. And that's
that's sort of like the doctrine of the Russian military. Let's just throw bodies at a problem,
and either the problem will go away or the bodies will go away. And at least recently,
there's a lot of bodies here that are going away. Absolutely horrible. And again,
this is not to take the idea. Here is not, oh, the poor Russian troops, although it is. I mean,
the truth is, a lot of these Russian troops now know they were lied to about even the context
into which they were being set. They were lied to about the mission. They were lied to,
about why they were going to Ukraine. In a sense, they are many of them kids, 1918 years old,
victims of disinformation, propaganda that that is an aspect of this. But really, the story is
not to say who has been more victimized. It's obvious. Asleep in Ukraine. It's the
sheer disregard for human life and safety that is the status quo above the decisions made by Putin
and his generals. I don't know how much longer it's going to go. Yesterday, on the bonus show,
we had a longer conversation about the supposed withdrawal from Kiev, which Russians are saying,
Oh, we're doing that in order to foster good faith peace talks. At the same time, as the troops on
the ground withdrew from Kiev, the amount of air bombardment increased. So it may have been
as simple as Russia getting some of its people out of harm's way before increasing the bombing.
We really don't know what's going on, and we're going to continue covering the story, of course