I think I can summarize the state of the war effort in Russia invading
Ukraine in the fate of one ship.
And it really fits in both strategy as well as theme because if you go back 50
days, right around to the beginning of this thing, you might recall snake island.
And the soldiers there that received an ultimatum from a Russian warship and
apparently told them to go after themselves.
The details are disputed but we know that the incident did happen.
Well that ship has now been sunk.
Look, that is an interesting closing of that particular event that they
went up against these soldiers who decided we're not gonna submit.
We're gonna defy you despite your overwhelming firepower,
the money that's gone into this, we're gonna defy you.
And that has been kind of what we've seen out of Ukraine in the 50 days since.
And it ended of course with the Russian warship Moskva being sunk.
And in fact not that long before we went live, the US confirmed that it actually
had been struck and sunk by a pair of Ukrainian missiles, the so
called Neptune missiles, that had been disputed up until that point.
The ship had sophisticated air defense as well as offensive missile capabilities.
It was actually capable of holding and
launching more than a dozen long range cruise missiles.
So that is now gone for the Russians at least for now,
since they don't have many ships of that class.
This was the flagship of their Black sea fleet and
in the wake of that ship which had been being towed away after there was a fire,
they believe they could get it to a port to be saved.
A number of other vessels of the Russian war effort have now moved away
from the coast because they no longer have the protective cover that was provided
by some of the systems on the Moskva.
Now we know that it was critically damaged back on Thursday.
It's a 12,000-ton warship more than 600 feet long and
it's thought to have had a crew of nearly 500.
Now, there is every reason to believe that although some of those crew might
have died in the initial strikes from the missiles, it had been
being serviced as large ships like this always are by a number of support craft.
It is hard to imagine that they did not evacuate the crew.
So if you're worried about the fate of the sailors is likely that that they
were saved.
Of course Russia is not forthcoming with much information in that area.
But if you want to get an idea of how significant the sinking of the Moskva is,
I wanna show you this little bit of video.
This is from in just the last
day state hosts and
pundits on Russian state
TV discussing what they
thought about being sunk.
>> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN].
>> So if you're just listening and
not watching the one gentleman was saying this is now a cause for
war, which I guess hadn't been being waged in the last 50 days.
And the female presenter there was saying we should bomb Kyiv,
we should scare away world leaders, there has to be retribution for
this and we'll get to the retribution that's already come.
But Farron I wanna start with you,
what do you make of this most recent wrinkle in the war?
>> [LAUGH] I actually just watching that clip though,
I'm reminded of Sam Rockwell and Iron Man two when he shouts, I don't speak Russian.
So it was a little confusing there for a moment.
But no, for real though,
it makes me wonder what exactly is Putin's endgame at this point.
I mean we have seen this remarkable show of resistance from Ukraine,
they have also suffered tremendous casualties.
That's absolutely true as has Russia at this point, with tremendous troop loss.
So I'm left to wonder when we see these very big victories for Ukraine,
which this is, what exactly is Putin's goal here at this point.
And we know he cannot turn around and just say, okay,
everybody get out and come home.
This is the kind of guy that wants to project this image that I am the biggest
baddest, toughest man that has ever controlled this country.
So to withdraw is admitting defeat.
He's not gonna do that.
But how much longer can they sustain suffering these losses from Ukraine?
And that to me is the big question mark.
We don't have an answer to that.
I don't think we fully know what Putin is really even playing at anymore.
Just suffering loss after loss and continuing to do it again.
So it's a very troubling situation I would think for
the Russians I know they're angry.
They say this is a declaration of war.
You've been at war.
You're not doing very well and eventually this is going to have
to come to an end but I don't know how we get there.
I will say however,
I'm pleased that the United States has not sent troops on the ground.
A little bit shocked almost, that we haven't, very happy we haven't.
But I thought for sure by now if it was still happening the US would have said all
right screw it, let's send them, and they didn't.
So I do applaud the administration for not getting involved on the ground there.
That's still a very good thing and I hope it holds up.
>> I mean personally I just like when any battleship is sunk
as someone who doesn't believe in battleships.
So I'm pro supporting every battleship to the bottom of the sea.
That being said obviously not pro the expendability of human lives.
It is important to note that these are sailors.
These are Russian military.
This is not the indiscriminate killing that we've seen in cities
all over Ukraine.
But that being said, I think Farron's absolutely right.
Putin doesn't care about his own soldiers and he cares even less obviously about
Ukrainians and Ukrainian lives, but he treats everyone like cannon fodder.
And so it is very striking to see the things that are being beamed into
the households of Russians every single day as their children are being
sent off to war, which is they need to just buck up and fight harder.
What are they doing?
Go there, swim to Kyiv and go bomb them immediately,
[LAUGH] leave the ship, you know what I mean?
Or like just just that kind of, again, we've seen it so much in this country.
If anyone knows what it's like to sort of rally around a pigheaded war,
it's Americans.
So I see that I'm I know exactly who did this.
We've all seen the people.
They're still on television, the people who ratcheted up the war causes [LAUGH].
>> Yeah, they're making tons of money, far more than us.
Unfortunately, well look,
we don't know how Putin is going to respond in the medium term.
I'm gonna get to the consequences in just a second.
And I also wanna give the Ukrainians a chance to respond.
Again I just want to add a little bit more perspective.
I don't think that Putin cares at all about one Russian soldier dying,
100, 1000, 10000, God only knows.
That's not new in the Russian context, not caring about the,
quote unquote cannon fodder that you've sent to war dying.
But in terms of ships like this being sunk, from everything that I read,
the last time a Russian ship of this size and importance was sunk was World War two.
And the last time in the world a ship like this was sunk was I believe during
the Falklands, it has been decades.
This does not generally happen.
So very significant there.
And that was noted by a number of Ukrainians, including a member of
parliament who said Moskva battleship went down with missiles and
ammo used to target Ukrainian cities and towns.
Now it's part of the submarine fleet, which is fun if dark.
Obviously, I personally, I agree with you Francesca.
I like when generally I would wanna sink every one of these ships.
But I would prefer to tow it to somewhere where it could perhaps serve as the sour
dough starter for a new reef maybe.
That would be I think better.
But in any way, in any event, President Zelenskyy thanked those who
have shown that Russian ships can go to the bottom only.
And the Minister of Defense said that now they have a new diving spot
in the Black Sea and a Russian warship is a worthy diving site.
Well, look already the consequences are coming.
Russia attacked a military factory near Kyiv.
It's a factory that makes the specific type of missiles that were used to sink
the Moskva.
So it seems like a very targeted incident there.
And just some added wrinkles here.
I did see Ukraine is now using something called Clearview AI's facial
recognition technology inside of its borders for a number of reasons,
including trying to identify Russian soldiers that might have died already.
Russian spies that might be embedded and to fight misinformation.
They've already used this for thousands of facial recognition searches.
Apparently they're identifying Russians and
then contacting their families, which we can get into that if you want.
But then I also have some fears.
I mean, any kind of AI like this is gonna get some things wrong.
What happens when you have a false positive on a Russian spy and
it's a civilian?
So I'm a little bit worried about how this might be used in practice and
how you might have some civilians getting detained or perhaps killed,
if there are false positives with this technology.
I know we're just learning about this now, but
what do you what do you think about this?
>> Well, in any time you have these kind of mass surveillance systems,
there's going to be problems, there's going to be flaws,
there's going to be innocent civilians that get swept up in it.
I mean, we've been living with that here in the United States for
several decades now and we know that it's never foolproof.
It's never, we're just getting the bad guys, no innocent people get swept up.
Lives can be completely destroyed by this.
And so it is troubling to see them doing this, just because as you said, one
wrong identification, your facial features are a little too similar to this guy.
And we could end up with innocent people being killed in the streets because they
think they're a spy.
That's terrifying to think about that.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah I mean, I think Ilhan Omar,
Representative Omar said this early on in this war, which was about
cautioning us around the amount of weapons that are being sent to Ukraine.
And I think that obviously in this moment a lot of us are feeling helpless and
feeling, hey, maybe that's good and at least it's not boots on the ground.
But kind of looking at other places, Libya is a great example of the amount of,
or really anything, where the United States funds and
allows tons of technology, tons of weaponry, sort of green lights, helps,
all kinds of new weaponry get sort of piloted in these wartime scenarios.
And then those things are never decommissioned, right?
Those things often can be turned against one's own population.
Obviously we don't want them to be used against innocent folks who
aren't spies either, but it just gets incredibly hairy.
And again, these weapons of war, no matter what, just like the United States,
when you see them in Iraq and Afghanistan, funny.
You see them on the streets of Ferguson, you see the same kind of tanks,
you see the same kinds of methods of subduing a crowd that the police are now
inheriting from soldiers who were once abroad.
So I'm generally cautious about this kind of stuff as much as I want this
war to end.
>> Farron you were right to point out what we've been saying from the beginning we're
just watching Biden, we're, don't make a move towards sending soldiers in there.
We wanna support Ukraine.
This war shouldn't have happened.
War crimes are being committed literally every single hour.
We do not want war with Russia though.
And so far they haven't done that, not only not sending in soldiers, but
also not making some very specific moves that have been carved out as unacceptable.
Whereas, so you can't send jets, that would be too far.
Sending things that shoot down jets is apparently fine.
It's weird how this works.
But in this most recent package of weapons,
this is some serious military technology, long range artillery systems,
hundreds of armored vehicles, helicopters as well.
And if you can send the helicopters, why not the jets?
We get into some weird philosophical differences.
But Russia is now warning the US about the ratcheting up of the sorts of weapons
we're sending.
So we are going to have to watch that.
We'll see what Putin is going to allow.
So far he hasn't done anything crazy in terms in regards to the United States at
least, but we will be watching for that.