Speaker 1: And welcome back to the Armstrong and get a show.
Speaker 1: Felix Light, our man in London with CBS Radio News
Speaker 1: in the Moscow at times. Felix, how are you? I'm
Speaker 1: very well. Thank you to be here as always. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. You're a great reporter and that's why we
Speaker 1: like to have you on. So, speaking of reporting, does
Speaker 1: that seem to be accurate? Are are are people that
Speaker 1: desperate to flee ending up being some of the three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand men that are going to be sent to war? Oh, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you know, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to understate the gravity and the sort of the
Speaker 1: scale of what's going on. You know, I you know,
Speaker 1: speaking sort of from my own personal experience, I would
Speaker 1: say that pretty much every young man of sort of
Speaker 1: military age that I know in Moscow is making plans
Speaker 1: or has already left. You know, it is making plans
Speaker 1: to leave or has already left, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes that's, you know, taking them from sort of some
Speaker 1: really sort of you know securities and and and long
Speaker 1: and sort of roundabout roots. You know. So as as
Speaker 1: you said in the in the segment at the start,
Speaker 1: all the you know, for four or five six days
Speaker 1: are booked up. You know, it is literally impossible to
Speaker 1: get a flight out of Moscow right now. So you know,
Speaker 1: you see people sitting on trains to go over the
Speaker 1: border into Kazakhstan or into Mongolia or anything, you know,
Speaker 1: any sort of way to get out. Because you know this,
Speaker 1: you gotta sort of realize what you know the Russian
Speaker 1: army is. You know this is not the U S Army,
Speaker 1: is not the British army. You know, a place where
Speaker 1: you know you're obviously trained to kill and be killed,
Speaker 1: but you know you're you're treated with a modicum of
Speaker 1: dignity and a modicum of respect. You know, the Russian
Speaker 1: army and, more to the point, you know a conscript
Speaker 1: in the Russian army, you're not going to be treated
Speaker 1: well and you're going to be used as cannon fodder,
Speaker 1: an award that lots of these people don't agree with,
Speaker 1: and so I think, you know, people are pretty desperate
Speaker 1: to get out of that, whatever it may cost. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting angle you just brought up. So
Speaker 1: I was one. I was wondering if this is an
Speaker 1: indication how desperate these men are to get out of
Speaker 1: the country that they know what's up. They're getting the
Speaker 1: real story somehow. We we've talked a lot with you
Speaker 1: and others about the state controlled media is still telling
Speaker 1: the story that it's, you know, where we're liberating Ukrainians
Speaker 1: from Nazis and all the difference sort of stuff. So
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, most of these young men must
Speaker 1: know the real story. But part of it is, you're saying,
Speaker 1: just the the idea of being in the Russian military
Speaker 1: at all is so miserable you might want to leave
Speaker 1: the country because the history of the Russian military, that
Speaker 1: that's that's the deal. Well, yeah, you know, it's both.
Speaker 1: I think. You know these people who are talking about
Speaker 1: who are leaving. You know, these are people, I think,
Speaker 1: who are not, you know, on board with the idea
Speaker 1: of the war in Ukraine. You know people who, you know,
Speaker 1: not endorsing sort of Vladimir Putin's ideas. You know, Russia,
Speaker 1: you know, has a very sort of strict and vary
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, authoritarian political system with, you know,
Speaker 1: very little free media. But you know you know people
Speaker 1: in the sort of advanced cities. You know young people,
Speaker 1: educated people. You know they know the scholar, as you say.
Speaker 1: You know they know what's upset. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: impossible to find sort of, you know, accurate news on
Speaker 1: the Internet and whatever, if you know sort of where
Speaker 1: to look. So you know these people are not done.
Speaker 1: You know they know what they're thinking about. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, you know they've invested a lot in
Speaker 1: not going to the war, you know, and especially a
Speaker 1: war they don't agree with. You know, Russia has the
Speaker 1: draft for one year. You know, you get concerted for
Speaker 1: one year when you leave school and you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be half to fight in wars as a concert
Speaker 1: but you know there's a really sort of roaring black
Speaker 1: market trade and sort of you know, doctors to get
Speaker 1: people out of that sort of you know, year of
Speaker 1: service in the military. So there's a huge sort of war,
Speaker 1: you know, sector of the economy around sort of getting
Speaker 1: people out of the military. So you know, when something
Speaker 1: like this happens, then there's a much bigger call up
Speaker 1: and when it's actually to a war, I think that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff really goes into overdrive. You know, those
Speaker 1: kind of instincts. You know, people are just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to die for Poutin I'm not going
Speaker 1: to die in a war that I don't agree with.
Speaker 1: You know, I get a head out of friendship. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I've seen videos of guys being hugged, hugged by their
Speaker 1: mothers is before they get on a bus that are going.
Speaker 1: So how many people seem to actually be sticking around
Speaker 1: and going as far as you can tell? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Russia is a you know, a very sort varied in
Speaker 1: complex country. You know, in sort of the big cities,
Speaker 1: the Moscows, you know, the Saint Petersburg, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people are just going to be going with
Speaker 1: their seating, getting out, you know, going to wherever they can.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're like a young kid in
Speaker 1: a little village somewhere, you know you've got a very
Speaker 1: different life experience. You know, it's more likely that sort
Speaker 1: of you know, your your dad's already served in the army,
Speaker 1: you know, or your grandfather has already served in the army.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's sort of much more normal
Speaker 1: and I think you know those people they don't really
Speaker 1: have the resources to sort of get out of the
Speaker 1: country and get out of the way. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, what we see is that, you know, if
Speaker 1: you get away from the big cities to sort of
Speaker 1: especially sort of ethnic minority areas, you know, parts of Siberia,
Speaker 1: parts of the south of Russia, where, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the people aren't actually sort of, you know, European,
Speaker 1: sort of ethnic Russians. You know they're they're Muslims or
Speaker 1: their sort of Asians or whatever. You know, these people
Speaker 1: are really getting called up. You know there's a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of, you know, military recruitment going on there
Speaker 1: now and a lot of the burden of this mobilization
Speaker 1: is really falling on these people, I think. Um, what
Speaker 1: is your take on how long it's going to take
Speaker 1: before these guys are actually in the field fighting Ukrainians,
Speaker 1: trying to liberate them from the Nazis? Yeah, right, well,
Speaker 1: you know it's not going to take long. You know
Speaker 1: these people are not going to get the sort of
Speaker 1: the red carpet treatment in the merchant. You know you're
Speaker 1: going to get sort of, you know, two weeks, two
Speaker 1: and a half weeks of training. You know, because you're
Speaker 1: already theoretically a member of the reserves. You know, you're
Speaker 1: already theoretically a member of the Russian army. You've been
Speaker 1: trained before and now you're getting sent off to war.
Speaker 1: So you know, these people are going to be putting
Speaker 1: a pretty down fast combat may belts, you know, to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So these people are going to be showing up on
Speaker 1: the front of the end very quickly. Wow. One final
Speaker 1: question for Felix Light, who is in London but he's
Speaker 1: a a reporter on all things Russian, has been for
Speaker 1: a while. Um, how seriously are Europeans taking the nuclear
Speaker 1: threat that putting put out the other day? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the war obviously feels a bit closer to us,
Speaker 1: but you know, when you're talking nuclear, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's almost so bad that you can't imagine it. You know,
Speaker 1: and I think for the you know, for the moment,
Speaker 1: people do worry a lot about the war. You know,
Speaker 1: they worry about gas prices, they worry about energy costs here,
Speaker 1: which are really going up in Europe. You know, America,
Speaker 1: obviously you can get it's it's gas and it's it's
Speaker 1: still from other sort of sources, from Europe is really,
Speaker 1: really dependent on Russia, and so you know, that's a
Speaker 1: big worry, I think here right now. You know, nuclear
Speaker 1: is obviously terrifying, but you know, it's it's almost bad
Speaker 1: thing that you don't want to think about because it's
Speaker 1: too bad to think about. So I wouldn't say people
Speaker 1: worry about day level. Right, okay, cool, always good. Felix
Speaker 1: light from London. Thank you, Felix. Always pleasure of cheers.