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Radio War Nerd #328 — Ukraine War Reporting & the Ghost "International Legion", with Seth Harp (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-05 16:34:41
Edited:
2022-05-16 20:37:15
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Seth Harp, investigative reporter 

Recorded: May 2, 2022

We talk to investigative reporter Seth Harp, who just returned from a 5-week reporting stint in Ukraine for Harpers magazine on the International Legion, the tightly controlled media environment in wartorn Ukraine.

Read Seth's article on the Fort Brag Murders in Rolling Stone. Follow Seth on Twitter.

Total time: 1:39:35

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Demented Avenger

Posting this before listening, but it's been bugging me for awhile: why haven't the Russians called in its Air Force? At first I thought the Russians didn't want to whack the Ukrainian infrastructure as to have the place be more productive once they had installed some procurator to run it, but since that's pretty much out the window and the West doesn't seem to want to leave Putin with an out, I can't figure out why have they are holding back the air power.

Sam Zeng

I know Malcolm is not really fighting but part of me want to believe that he is. Like this Boomer Russia Gate Lib is now taking revenge against the Russian GRU Operators for their Trump shit posting. Its like a Tom Clancy novel lol.

CR

To be fair, some of those non-specific death notices at Bragg are JSOC casualties in places they aren't supposed to be. (Beyond killing Michael Hastings in L.A. ...) DIA is allowed to create shell and front companies, which is an exception from the sensible policy that DOD can't do that. I'm sure JSOC (and perhaps SOCOM as a whole) are also allowed to do it, either directly or indirectly through their coordination with DIA and special warfare attached intelligence personnel. Once you've got them, you may as well use them to launder money to make sure if the Pentagon, White House, Congress, or public asks questions the covert operators can tell them all to fuck off.

Sam Zeng

Even funnier.

Ander Pierce

In my highly uneducated opinion the Ukrainians have enough ground based anti aircraft weapons that although the Russians have 'air superiority' in that the Ukrainians have little in the way of aircraft, the airspace is still highly contested. Aircraft are expensive and pilots are hard to replace, so maybe exposing aircraft isn't worth it in most cases

Sam Zeng

Their airforce has been taking a beating but is currently flying sorties . Also they are using a lot of cruise and short range ballistic missiles for the longer range strikes. The airspace is contested but it looks like Russia holds air superiority near the line of contact. They are absolutely not holding back, there is a ton of heavy combat and destruction. UA is taking heavy causalities along with the RA, it looks like a absolute meat grinder.

James Whale

Absolutely key ! This guy I gotta follow. You always get the best journalists. Any more about Ukrainian power structure would be Rad !

grimbo

This was a very informative conversation!

Sean Atkinson

It kind if frightens me how reticent this show has become to use the words CIA. Its making me wonder what the heck they are about.

Breakaway

I just figured he was going back to his old intelligence duties.

Breakaway

Great episode! I had to download and listen right after work. Seth is a solid guest. I hope you’ll have him back on.

Sean Atkinson

They seem dissapointed he did not pin Bucha on Russia.

Sean Atkinson

Ten seconds after he tells em that Russia did not attack civilians, John starts talking about how he can “imagine” Russians killing civilians as they retreat. ? Did I get that right?

Sean Atkinson

“did the Russians commit abuses” - “no”, “but you can’t write that” WTF?

Sean Atkinson

yeah Azov is growing and we should be very worried. Yes just like Islamic State and the empathic tone of this show is scary. They have not “evolved”, they have gotten the USA to evolve to Fascism.

Lionel Boyd Johnson

Just wow. Fantastic reporting, thanks for bringing it to us. I really recommend his interview on Trueanon, it's a really shocking story.

Of course

You heard right: the Russian army committed atrocities in Bucha because "that's what invading armies do," but... 1) the eyewitnesses deny the Russian military committed the atrocities, 2) the Ukrainian military was in control of the area before the atrocities were discovered, and 3) commanders generally tell their troops not to rape and pillage. It's only a matter of time when people come to realize and resent the manipulation, censorship, lies, disruptions, and mass-murderous - and possibly humanity-ending - policies associated with the Russiagate/HeroZelinsky narrative.

Ned Schafer

Great interview. One topic I would be interested in is the inevitable export of these surplus weapons. There are plenty of rumors out there of weapons ending up in the middle east for sale. I haven't seen any reporting on that.

J P 3

As far as Bucha is concerned, it's not really surprising that there would be limited access to areas where there were booby traps, mines, and a significant amount of unexploded ordinance. The areas in the north of Kyiv were vacated over a month ago, and they have still not finished clearing all of unexploded ordinance. e.g. 2 days ago there was a report of people being injured by mines, I seem to recall that a group dealing with unexploded ordinance was killed near Chernihiv in the past week or two. As far as casualties go, the East has been a blackbox throughout the conflict. The war outside Kyiv seemed to receive a lot more coverage and attention. I would not be surprised if both the Russians and Ukrainians had tens of thousands of casualties. The fact that the Ukrainians were not able to go on the offensive in the immediately aftermath of the Russian withdrawal in the north prior to the Russians reinforcing the east tends to suggest that Ukrainian losses have been significant.

J P 3

Volodymyr Ischenko's interview in the most recent issue of New Left Review "Towards the Abyss" is worth checking out. Andrii Portnov's article in Open Democracy "How eastern Ukraine was lost" Jan 14, 2016 was helpful for understanding the various figures and rivalries before 2020.

Keith O'Brien

I would guess that the oligarch mentioned at the press conference with Zelenskiy was Roman Abramovich, who has apparently been involved in negotiations in some capacity.

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

There's an interesting shift in npr's rhetoric around this conflict. Whereas before their headlines would usually say, "Russian Military Does XYZ horrible thing," one of their latest headlines says "Russians wreak havoc on Ukrainian farms, mining fields and stealing equipment." It's getting more and more Starship Troopers-esque by the week.

James

Yes! Yes! More Ukraine - thanks guys

Frederick Von Drasek

JSOC exists to commit war crimes and,yes, do coups. Anyone who thinks the US needs to be more involved in Ukraine should know that we've been there since 2014, and now things are falling into place--and now, at about 47 billion in on Ukraine, have already put up about what would be 2/3rds of Russia's annual defense budget. We aren't going to be actually bleeding in the middle of the old Soviet Union. Not a chance...

Ross Kiro-Ward

Awesome episode! I remember listening to the Trueanon episode with Seth and being amazed at the depth of his reporting! I have a question for the hosts and the RWN community at large. If we know that since 2014 (maybe even before?) the ‘west’ has been interfering in Ukraine for whatever reasons - including spec ops and other military means - then is it at all conceivable that Russia may have had even a smidgeon of justification for invasion? Or were they doomed to sit and do nothing while their rivals do whatever they want? Yes, invasion bad - war is bad; I absolutely agree, but what else was there? The Minsk agreements were all but abandoned by two consecutive Ukrainian presidents, including Zelensky who was elected on a peace platform. I mean, we can keep saying that Russia is in the wrong but unless we give some alternative action they could have taken, it seems to me at least, the only thing left is to admit that in some way - no matter how distasteful it may may be - that they have some understandable reason to act. I don’t know, it’s just so frustrating to see the neo-cons able to manipulate us all into war, again.

Mark Ames

Volodymyr is always good.

Scott

Has anyone else’s Patreon feed stopped working?

Old Mate

You could go and watch the press conference on Youtube and find out. If you can sit through the 1hour of questions about arms supply it's the one in the metro station.

Nicholas Moore

It never updates unless I do a hard restart of the app

Magic Mikey

This is similar to Scott Ritters argument: that the Ukrainian army was massing in the east ad preparation for an offensive to retake the Donbass before the Russian army could react. Hence Russian recognition of the Donbass republics, military alliance with them, which allows russia to invoke pre-emptive self defence under UN charter article 51. Although this is potentially legal under international law, as a socialist I don't care about the legal niceties. I see an invasion that is bad for the Russian people, really bad for the Ukrainian people, being waged by two nasty chauvinist authoritarian regimes. So I don't support either side, instead I remember the attitude of some socialists during ww1 - "the main enemy is at home." In Russia that means the kremlin, in Ukraine its the Ukrainian government and associated nazis, and in the west its our own governments which are facilitating and pushing the Ukrainian government to continue the pointless slaughter.

mt

Mark & John, the Russians and Kiyv. If I understand it correctly you believe that the Russians tried to take Kiyv but failed. What are your arguments for this interpretation? Those claiming they did not, say it was a maneuvre to divert troops from other areas as well as not sending enough troops to take a large city like Kiyv.

Ross Kiro-Ward

That’s great and all but it is an extremely western viewpoint. I agree we in the west should do all we can to stop our governments from supporting, or in the case of the US, instigating the crap we do to people we don’t like the world over. Should people in Russia be against the kremlin for whatever reason? Sure, if they want. But how do people in Russia stop Washington from supporting and funding neo-nazi fighters in Ukraine? Russian people are allowed to have some agency in this matter surely? They have to live next door to them, not you or I. Again, invasion bad - war bad. I’m with you on that. But what does Russia do, as terrible as the leadership may very well be, in the face of such blatant political manoeuvring by the west in a country right next to them? Sit and hope they mean well? I keep seeing Scott Ritter being mentioned on anything that could be considered even slightly nuanced in regards to Ukraine, and it shocks me that he has become the go to expert. I think he pales in comparison to other commentators and actual experts on this matter. The late Stephen F Cohen talked for decades about how what the west was doing on Russia’s borders could end up killing us all. I’m not saying he would of supported the invasion by any means, but as he said many times, Ukraine is an existential concern for Russia, while it is not for us.

Mark Ames

Magic Mikey: well said. There's this idea that being against this war, absolutely against all sides and the war in general, is somehow "easy", but hardly anyone I see takes that position publicly, and when they do they're always denounced by all sides as stooges of the other side as well as "taking the easy way out" etc.

Breakaway

Agreed. I’ve also read that it is all but inevitable that some of these weapons will spread into Western Europe, and into the hands of all sorts of nasty people, whether Jihadis, fascists, or criminal organizations.

Doug Cartel

my worry is that after the war the ethnic differences will lead to western Ukrainians trying to purge the eastern ones.

Aditya V

An interesting response from NYT to my question on last episode patreon post , but still nothing about those seeking revenge for Donbass deaths and Odessa deaths The Russians, he said, had not even bothered to court him, they only leveled demands. He said Moscow took the same approach to other politicians in Ukraine’s east. “They didn’t even try to convince us,” he said. “They just thought we would be, a priori, on their side.” “They mistook common language and values like attitudes to the Second World War and Orthodoxy as a sign that somebody loves them,” he said. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/07/world/europe/russia-putin-ukraine-politicians.html

Bradley Mayer

The problem is that "being against all sides", particularly being against Ukraine accepting military hardware from wherever it can get it, amounts to standing for the defeat of Ukraine and victory for Russia. If we are honest. Meanwhile the willingness of US/UK/NATO to escalate its proxy involvement is exaggerated. In fact they are rapidly running down their stockpiles of Javelins, howitzers, manpads, etc., and will approach the point where this will jeopardize their own military readiness. The truth is, contrary to the tale of an all-powerful US/NATO that laid a trap that Putin had "no alternative" but to fall into, US/NATO was not prepared for their proxy war, and are wary of further escalation. This goes for the tale of an "imminent Ukrainian offensive in Donbass", now unprovable thanks to the Russian invasion.

Bradley Mayer

As this podcast justifiably complains about the scarcity of military "sitrep" info for the Ukraine side - as a bit of a "war nerd" myself I share the frustration, having grown up in a Maryland childhood at the centennial of the US Civil War in the 1960's, with many famous battlefields within a 60 mile radius, where "Yankee & Rebel" uniforms and toy muskets were available at the 5 & dimes (and Baltimore being the HQ of Avalon Hill!) - I offer you both an eye-witness by a Ukrainian artilleryman - who happens to be a socialist, as can be seen by the interview - on the Donbass front, however anecdotal; and this fairly detailed May 7th report from the Khiv Independent, however propagandistic as in inevitable in war: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/europe/interview-with-ukrainian-socialist-serving-at-jfo/ https://kyivindependent.com/national/russias-offensive-in-donbas-bogs-down/

etienne

I love that Ukraine, a country being invaded by a world military power, has better trains than the USA

xxx

quite the costly "diversion" but people are desperate to believe all kinds of things these days i guess

Aditya V

Fantastic guest. Wonderful to see him open the show with the point that Zelensky is just the spokesman. And that defense ministry runs the media centers. Overall, seems NATO is now the real manager and Zelesnky an employee

VictorBout

Ross, I agree with your position. Scott Ritter is not a serious analyst of Russia and it's quite unfortunate that his commentary has become representative of a broad set of people opposed to the U.S. strategy in Ukraine. His prominence in the discourse may be explained by factors other than his degree of insight. My perspective, as a Russian communist, is that Ukraine has long ceased to be a sovereign state in the proper sense, and is abstractly, an engine of destruction built on Russia's doorstep (that also happens to have real human beings of flesh and blood living in and operating its parts). That such a project could succeed is not a testament to the ingenuity of the imperialist core (they are not geniuses, they simply have endless resources and playbooks several generations old that have proven themselves again and again - in Pakistan, Taiwan, Kuwait and elsewhere), but rather, a testament to the total moral, ideological, and intellectual bankruptcy of the current Russian regime and economic system. Their choice to launch a massive invasion to preempt a likely Ukrainian offensive against the Donbass (an offensive that had been planned and loudly announced for years and could have come at any time) was - perhaps not the worst, but clearly one of the worst - possible options on the table (of which all were bad, but the least bad would have been to let Ukraine attack first and to limit the response to a defensive battle along the line of contact without touching major Ukrainian cities), that fit so neatly into obvious, clearly articulated U.S. strategic aims as to be grounds for suspecting them of treason. This isn't 20/20 hindsight, btw, I said this on the day of the invasion. I believe now, as I did then, that this war is now totally unwinnable for Russia, and the options are a partial, mitigated defeat now, with consolidation of assets to deter a larger offensive against Russia itself, and a total, disastrous defeat later, with possible nuclear holocaust. For domestic reasons, the current Russian regime is unlikely to survive either outcome, so it seems they prefer the latter. For the international, anti-imperialist left, and indeed all anti-imperialists who recognize that U.S. imperialism is orders of magnitude more capable than Russian imperialism, the conclusion should be neither "U.S. and Russia are equally bad" nor "The U.S. is worse and thus we have to work to prevent Russia's defeat and a U.S. victory", but rather, "The Russian invasion is already, from day 1, a resounding victory for U.S. imperialism" and what to do about it now.

Magic Mikey

This is the problem when Great powers clash – there’s so much pressure to pick a side. I think about the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. Taking the Belgian side in Britain or France puts you militarily fighting with the British and French Empires. Supporting the Belgian state in Belgium itself puts you in the same camp as the butchers of the Congo (Belgium being a minor imperialist power itself). Only in Germany could one really struggle against the German invasion without ending up allied with the most vicious oppressors. Extremely difficult to do – the SPD deputy Karl Liebknecht opposed the German invasion, met with Belgian socialists, exposed German army atrocities and generally agitated against the war. He was charged with treason and sent to prison for it. He was right though and despite over 100 years of attempts to prettify and justify it, WW1 is still largely seen as a pointless war where all the great powers are to blame - it’s not generally seen as a war of German aggression. If there’s anyone still around in 100 years to write this history, I suspect the same will be thought of the current conflict in Ukraine.

Bradley Mayer

Here are two more eye-witness on the ground accounts from the Ukraine side of the military situation, from a couple of foreign volunteers. "Oddly enough", both are from Quebec, though one appears to be from a middle eastern background. It's Canada: Canadian fighting in Ukraine describes the 'hell' he witnessed https://youtu.be/zN2NdiFJFh0 “War is a terrible disappointment” (in English machine translation) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2022-05-06/retour-du-tireur-d-elite-wali/la-guerre-c-est-une-deception-terrible.php

mt

xxx- I am asking because I want to know, not just believe. Do you have any facts or arguments that it was not a diversion, please, put them forward.

xxx

micael - the distinction is unknowable and completely meaningless.

mt

xxx - unknowable, unless you have access to the Russian war plan, at least. Meanibgless - judging by the number and kind of adjectives being thrown around, it does carry some sort of meaning. In what sense would you say it is meaningless and why?

mt

I think now would be a great time for an episode on the wars in Finland in the 1900s before the re-run comes. https://youtu.be/ciUNBIKNxMw

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

What do you guys follow for accurate information? Are there news websites that are pretty reliable, overall? I was following The Grayzone for a while but felt like maybe they went a bit off the deep end with some of the Ethiopia coverage, so not as sure about them as I used to be. Is it more a matter of following the right journalists on Twitter? Are there good options for non-Twitter people? Any suggestions you've got would be appreciated. I feel like you guys are the most reliable news-ish source that I've got, but curious how you yourselves sift through news and figure things out.

Lionel Boyd Johnson

Listened to this again, it really was great. Sorry guys, it's the Radio War Nerd podcast, and there's a war going on in Europe, you've kind of self- selected a fan base that's going to want to hear all about it, not sure how you're going to get out of that pickle. Would love to hear you guys bring in somebody like Aaron Mate to talk about the stories that he's been doing on Ukraine. He hasn't been there of course, but I think he'd provide an interesting counter point to a lot of the mainstream war mongering coverage. I can't watch the Sunday shows anymore, those liberals are some blood thirsty bastards and I can't take any more of it.

Robert Rowe

A number of Javelins and some MANPADS (don't know type) which had been provided to Ukraine were confiscated by the French authorities inside France about a month back. As usual, 90% of contraband isn't going to be intercepted.

Robert Rowe

I noted the emphasis in USA astroturf on looting stories too, that started about 3? Weeks back. Stuff like 90 million $s in John Deer tractors, combines and other agricultural rolling stock were stolen in Ukraine but got remotely "bricked" at a farm outside of Grozny in Chechnya. Riiiiiight. That's a good chunk of a long freight train worth of flat cars with SEVERAL switching yards and numerous engineers & logistics staff needing to be suborned to move illicitly, not going to happen without support running all the way to the top- Which would imply the GRU involved with the knowledge base to scan for & yank any GPS trackers/satellite phone data links back to Big Green in USA. Pretty sure the Russian Federation would stomp down hard on a (non senior officer, unconnected to important persons) looter. As in, field court marshall followed by immediate summary execution. Little people must FOLLOW POLICY. Big fish and state intelligence probably got some wiggle room, but wht would they bother with such petty larceny?

Aditya V

JSOC's predecessors, the Green Berets were formed under Kennedy. They were decscribed in NYbooks in 1971 with the same language 'Praetorian'. Kennedy likely built this group which was answerable to him to crush a possible Army coup as Dr. Dolan pointed out. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/07/22/a-special-supplement-kennedys-private-war/ "Kennedy wanted to carry on the Vietnam war exclusively through the Special Forces, which would enable him to seize command of the national military apparatus. He seems to have had a vision of the Green Berets as a Praetorian Guard, an elite army directly under the command and control of the President. The Green Berets represented Kennedy’s attempt to curb the power of the Chiefs and institutionalize the military directly under the Presidency."

Patrick Fitzgerald

Great interview. And the Fort Bragg story is fascinating. As Mark said, drug use in the military was a common story in the 80s but I don't think it was directly tied to Vietnam. More of a hangover from that 70s reality. Robert O'Connor's Buffalo Soldiers captured the vibe of sordidness and corruption on a West German army base.

Magic Mikey

There's no entirely reliable source for information in this war. Other than some Reuters reporting, the western mainstream media is virtually wall to wall propaganda and entirely unreliable imo, although you can of course parse some useful information on occassion. The alt media has some good coverage although it more or less verges over into conspiracy theory or just uncritically quoting the Russians, so is extremely variable and often unreliable. Before this war I had very little time for it, but given the complete abrogation of the truth by virtually every msm outlet I now also listen to Grayzone and even dodgy outfits like the Duran. And there is the Russian and affiliated media, mainly through Pravda, RT and telegram channels such as sputnik, Intel slava z or Rybar is you’re ok to use google translate. This is obviously Russian propaganda, but unlike the western msm they often provide receipts for their claims, especially photographic and video. I’m finding Russian propaganda more believable than Western propaganda and that’s partly a function of their receipts and partly that they tend not to make the sorts of outlandish claims the ukrainian and western msm do. I’m no military analyst, but it looks to me now like the Russians are systematically destroying the Ukrainian army in the Donbass with relatively few Russian casualties, and massive casualties on the Ukrainian side. If this is true, then perhaps another reasons I’m finding the Russian media more believable is because they’re winning. And winning sides don’t need to lie as much. To be clear, I don’t think this is a good thing – if the Russian army emerges victorious and largely intact from the Donbass, god knows what else they will do to the rest of the country. Or how foolishly NATO will respond. I’m someone who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s and I’ve never been more afraid of nuclear war than I am today.

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

Word, thanks for the answer Magic Mikey. Different generation than you (millennial so Iraq had a big impact on how I see the world) but I definitely share the sentiment. The older I get the more I realize how much goes on in the world that we don't know about. Let's hope that cooler heads prevail.

Adam Smeltzer

In terms of the oligarch involved in the negotiations, I'm 99% sure they're referring to Roman Abramovich going to the turkey talks. It was very strange because the uk had just seized his football club (Chelsea), and everyone was scratching their heads, like "what on earth is he doing there?"

Haemu

Well said.

Sean Atkinson

Every poster has to show their western bona-fides by shitting on Russia. Even though WE ARE IN THE WRONG HERE.

CR

That’s probably what he’s selling to his followers.

Ellen Harold

This is a very interesting show that I have listened to twice. It seems clear that if a journalist wants to have a career they can't stray too far from what the public wants to hear. One small point, I don't think it can be right that Andrei Biletsky was a Russian Nazi born in Belarus. Wikipedia and other sources say that he was born in Kharkiv and is of Cossack descent on his father's side while his mother comes from a noble family from Zhytomy. (wherever that may be--I think it may be in Kharkiv). There must be a confusion here with someone else. According to wikipedia, some of Biletky's maternal ancestors took part in the Decembrist revolt.