what is it? > i have been thinking about this and watching my friends freak out in moscow about their government getting them into a war that they don't agree with, and that they feel they are still culpable for, watching ukrainians fight back the way they have been. your producers gave me some homework and i think i came up with something. i was hoping for just a dollop, a little ray of sunshine. > stephen: we have to take a little break, but when we come back i will ask julia if there is anything hopeful she sees in any of this. but it is still amazing that that many people came out in this kind of climate where it has become so much more dangerous and terrifying to go against vladimir putin publicly. so, when you see these videos of these protests today, and people, 900 people getting arrested, it is a much smaller protest than we have seen in the last ten years. one of his lieutenants, a young man, was - escaped russia because he had a criminal case brewing against him, so what he did is they arrested his 69-year-old father and sentenced him to three years in a penal colony. people are, you know, people are in jail for posting these videos, for liking something on facebook. we are done.” and he disbanded a lot of ngos, drove a lot of activists and journalists out of the country.
#Colbert julia ioffe free#
I let you guys play at opposition politics, at having a free press and having activism and a civil society. what does he mean there? is he speaking in a voluntary capacity layer for domestic consumption we don't understand? ukrainians fought the nas.n ukn putin says he wants to de-nazify ukraine. > stephen: so maybe you explain this to me. he has been consistent about, and now here we are eight years later and trying to make them basically one country. so there is a reason i think he made that joke in 2014, that "better talk fast before they are one country," right? there was already something you were sensing or that you heard about, you know, how he talks about ukraine that made you realize that this is something he might do. i think in his own closed system, he is logically and rationally consistent, and has been over the last 20 years. > stephen: rational self-interest, how about that? > yeah. is he? > i think it depends how you define rational. > stephen: there is a lot of talk about whether he is a rational actor. but also putin is in charge and he does crazy things and he is a big risk taker. > stephen: is that because russians are fatalistic or have to be fatalistic when you think about russians? > both. that's how you predict what happens with russia.
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