‘Putin’s Revenge.’ Lucian Kim on Why Russia Invaded Ukraine
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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It’s hard to read the mind of a dictator, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying.
When Russian President invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, there were a million columns, videos and podcasts explaining “the real reason” for such a “crazy” move.
Well, anyone who tells the story from February 2022 is missing decades of Russian interference in Ukraine, with low points coming during the Orange Revolution of 2005 and then in 2014. The Euromaidan protests ended with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
But what made Putin take that next step eight years later?
Lucian Kim is a journalist with vast experience in the region, working in Berlin and as NPR’s bureau chief in Moscow. If you can trust anyone to know what brought the world to war, it’s him—hell, he wrote a book on the subject: Putin’s Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast. |
| 0:02.0 | Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. |
| 0:05.4 | It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. |
| 0:09.1 | Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:13.0 | First of all, just to say, we are talking with Luchin Kim, who I've actually known now for almost 15 years, I believe. |
| 0:21.2 | It's been a long time. |
| 0:22.3 | And beyond that, he actually is friends with Alan Chin, who has been on the show as well. |
| 0:27.8 | You are listening to a show about an angry planet. |
| 0:31.9 | Unfortunately, it keeps getting more angry, and that's just the way it is. |
| 0:35.8 | Long story short, Lucian, you are here to talk about your book, |
| 0:41.9 | which has been greeted. It's not just that the reviews are so good, it's who wrote these |
| 0:49.3 | reviews. The book's called Putin's Revenge, Why Russia Invaded Ukraine, and you have Fiona Hill, you have Michael McFall, I mean, just some of the people who really know Ukraine and Russia the best, writing about your book, that's got to feel great, right? |
| 1:09.4 | Oh, sure. |
| 1:10.2 | That's that, that is a good feeling. |
| 1:12.7 | And I hope more people will read it now. |
| 1:17.8 | Well, can you tell us basically a bit about who you are and then tell us what the book's really about? |
| 1:24.0 | So I am a journalist who has been working as a foreign correspondent since the late |
| 1:31.0 | 90s. I basically had two stints in Berlin and two stints in Moscow, sort of alternating. |
| 1:40.9 | I've written for the Christian Science Monitor in Moscow for the Moscow Times, the English language daily, which is still surviving to this day. |
| 1:51.3 | I worked for Bloomberg News in Moscow covering the Russian oil and gas industry at the peak of the Russian oil boom. |
| 2:00.6 | I also covered Vladimir Putin when he was prime |
| 2:03.9 | minister briefly. I then covered the beginning of the Ukraine war in 2014, which is really |
... |
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