Ukraine’s government has accused Russia of war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine and is reporting troops from Belarus have joined Russia’s invasion. Despite resistance in Ukraine to the Russian military, Yale history professor Timothy Synder says Russia will soon enter “a much more horrifying stage of this war.” We also speak with veteran journalist Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor for Harper’s magazine, who says international sanctions imposed on Russia are having repercussions in Western countries which have industries dependent on Russian supplies. “We’ve sanctioned ourselves, as well,” says Cockburn, author of “The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine.” The two also discuss the history of the region and what role NATO’s expansion played in the current crisis. Cockburn says the United States and its allies broke promises made in the 1990s not to expand the military alliance into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for an eventual confrontation. “What Putin has done is absolutely disgraceful, but it’s kind of easy to understand. There has been sustained efforts to push NATO forward,” he says. But Snyder says the focus on NATO ignores the agency of leaders in Ukraine and elsewhere who have the right to seek their own arrangements. “It’s very important to remember that the world isn’t just about Washington and Moscow. It’s also about other sovereign states and other peoples who can express their desires and have their own foreign policies,” says Snyder.
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