Christiane Amanpour on Ukraine, Democracy and 40 Years at CNN

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guest

Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour is a legendary foreign correspondent who marked 40 years with CNN, covering the Gulf wars, the conflict and breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the War on Terror, the Arab Spring, and recently returned from Ukraine.

Episode Summary

Christiane Amanpour, the legendary foreign correspondent, marked 40 years with CNN this week. She's covered some of the biggest stories of our times: the Gulf wars, the conflict and breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the War on Terror, the Arab Spring, interviewing and challenging world leaders from Washington to London to Paris to Tehran. Having recently returned from Ukraine, she shares with One Decision's Julia Macfarlane and Sir Richard Dearlove what she heard in Kyiv on their counteroffensive against Russia. She also offers an assessment of the strength of American support for Ukraine, the influence of tech barons like Elon Musk on the safeguarding of democracy, and also her thoughts on the newly announced CEO at her network, former BBC Director General Mark Thompson.

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Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Lockwood: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world. And today, myself and my co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove, we're both joined by someone who has herself witnessed the impact and ramifications of some of the biggest foreign policy decisions the West has made for decades. And this week, she is celebrating forty years with CNN. And in that time, she has not only become a household name, but has really achieved legendary status in journalism. I am, of course, talking about none other than Christiane Amanpour. Can you tell that I'm excited about it? She, of course, joined CNN back in 1983 when it was, believe it or not, a startup, an experiment in rolling coverage that went on to define the news landscape and how broadcast journalism became what it is today. She's recently come back from a stint in Ukraine, covering how the counter offensive against Russia is going. And while she was there, she interviewed the Ukrainian leadership, President Zelenskyy and the first lady, the foreign minister, the defense minister, and of course, she also spoke to everyday Ukrainians, soldiers, and civilians who are all of them experiencing each day as a battle for the survival of their homeland and their way of life. Let's get right to the conversation. Christiane Amanpour, it is so wonderful to have you on the podcast. Congratulations on forty years of being perhaps one of the biggest names in international news. It's so wonderful to have you to talk to us. I hope it's not the last time that we have you joining us on One Decision. I firstly want to get straight into it because you've just recently come back from Ukraine. You anchored your show from the capital Kyiv. You had some really fascinating interviews while you were there. During this particularly interesting potential turning point in Ukraine where they've really stepped up some of their attacks on Russian positions and strategic areas following their recent punching through the first line of Russian defense not that long ago in the summer. What was the most important thing that you learned whilst you were there?

INTERVIEW

Amanpour: Well, firstly, Julia, thank you very much. And, you know, forty years and I'm still in the field, and I'm proud of that because that's the only way to know what's going on. Even though I do a lot of studio work now, it's always informed by my going out to the regions and the places that as a journalist I'm covering. And of course, I don't have all the access such as, you know, the intelligence and the military and etc. But I get a good look at what's going on on the territory. And this time I decided to come up into Ukraine from the South, from Moldova, and all of this to try to figure out what was going on on the ground and what was going on with the counter offensive. And how even the neighboring states like Moldova were dealing with the pressure from Russia and the general, you know, sort of disquiet. And so for me, the first point of reality was to hear the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, tell me that they thanked not only the West and NATO for its help to Ukraine, but also Ukraine. She said Ukraine is our first line of defense, and their brave defense and the courageous leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president, and the entire civilian population, all of those who've been mobilized one way or another to fight this war, whether on the front or on the home front, have contributed to the security of even a place like Moldova, which by the way is about a third of it occupied by Russian forces since 1992. So that was my first sort of reality check after having not been in Ukraine since the March. Then I moved up, I did some work in Odessa. I saw wounded in a rehabilitation hospital. And I asked each and every one of them whether this was worth the pain, the death, the sacrifice. And each and every one of them said yes. And I know Richard Dearlove will appreciate this because we all come from the same kind of background when understanding the military sacrifice. They were eager, despite their wounds, to get back to the front because they wanted to be with their comrades, to defend their homeland and their families. And so this kept bolstering my notion of understanding that the motivation of the people in Ukraine, the victims, those who've been invaded and occupied, is still massively high despite the massively high cost. So that was one thing. Then I saw, including officers on furlough at the beach at Odessa. Odessa is a well known, you know, Black Sea beach resort, as it is a massive port, massively important to Ukraine's economy and strategy and strategic location. It's heavily mined by them to prevent Russians. There's plenty of Russian warships on the horizon. But individuals including as I said, soldiers and officers on furlough were at the beach. When I asked them why was this a good look? They said, well, this is going on. And it's gone on for longer than we expected. And it may go on for even longer. And we're making sacrifices in every corner and an area of our life. So yes, we come here to try to distract our children, to distract our families, to give them a little fun. And the officer said to me, who's 59 years old, had been mobilized by the state to go to Kherson, and he said, yep, you know, I'm on a two week furlough, I need a bit of relaxation, I will go back obviously to my position. And then he said to me, and the counter offensive is going according to plan. So a long way around to say, I then got to Kyiv and I started to ask a huge number of more central officials about how it was going. And I kept trying to figure out whether this armchair quarterbacking that had been going on, you know, sort of denigrating the counter offensive saying how slow it was, how it wasn't, you know, making the correct advances, etc. Was that true or not? And in general, the answer is, it is slower than they would like, it is bloodier than they would like, it is more difficult, more of a slog. They don't have all the weapons and weapon systems that they need for this kind of thing. And most crucially, they don't have air cover. And yet, they're doing better expected. So I was really pleased by the end of a week of investigating this theme and the reality to hear The United States, the National Security Adviser spokesperson, Admiral Kirby, put out a statement finally to say, we in the administration and NATO believe that the Ukrainian counter offensive is making good progress and going according to plan with all the caveats that I've just laid out. I think that corresponds.

Dearlove: I mean, was in Kyiv before the counteroffensive started. But they were saying at the time they didn't expect a dramatic breakthrough. It would be a series of counterpunches and it might take a long time. And like you, I was absolutely bowled over by the motivation and focus of the Ukrainians. And I would sort of endorse in terms of what you're saying the impression that I got. I mean, I think it's been slower than they expected, but on the other hand, they are let's put it like this. They're getting the better of the fighting even though they have not advanced as far as they would like. So I think that they hold the military advantage still, and I think your observations are crucial because, you know, it's a further step along the way. I think what worries me, Christiane, is that Putin doesn't need to win. The Ukrainians, in a way, need to drive him out of their territory, but he only needs to wait them out. And I think that, you know, you can see that with this massive defensive line, maybe this now is Russian tactics. And what also worries me is that the American administration will not talk about a Ukrainian victory. They absolutely avoid any discussion of that. So, I mean, how do you view this perspective?

Amanpour: It's crucial that you bring that up. I mean there's several observations to that and as you know, as we all know, the Russians have waited out Ukraine and the rest of the world ever since 2014. You know they had their little green pretended they weren't there. But we all know what it was. It was a Russian invasion and occupation with what they hoped would be plausible deniability. Anyway, it's a complete fiction. And so on the one hand, it's a fiction and they were digging in and creating reality on the ground and facts on the ground. And on the other hand, they were and they have been waiting out their opponents. I think since February 2022, the equation and the motivation and everything has changed. Russia has been called out and Ukraine has stepped up even further to sacrifice for its own homeland. And it goes right back to Western Ukraine. If it's the East and the South that are the main military targets, all the way to the West, you know, people are all in in this fight. I think honestly, Richard Dearlove, I would like to say because I just think I should and it's not any different from many military officials, including former NATO commanders who I've spoken to, many, many national former generals and officers who've dealt with this kind of thing in the past, it is really notable that The United States has never said what the endgame is, that it hasn't said victory is the endgame. It is notable that they have constantly said it's up to Ukraine to set the parameters of where and when it wants to negotiate, how it wants to fight, up until when, what sacrifice, etcetera. But at the same time, what worries me is that from the very beginning, they have telegraphed to Putin who they have called the adversary. They've telegraphed to him, and they've called for his defeat without calling for Ukraine's victory. They have basically, you know, telegraphed what they are not willing to do, how far they are not willing to go. And so what does that do? That just gives the adversary more of this hope that they can just wait it out. They have not given any yet air power. And look, I covered the first Gulf War as my first ever field story. So what was the first Gulf War? If it wasn't three weeks of getting first air supremacy. The Allies first got air supremacy with their three week air campaign against Iraqi forces and then they conducted their ground offensive. That took, if I'm not mistaken, not even a week or maybe just about a week. So here are the Ukrainians doing what they're doing with no air cover and no air supremacy or even air control. And this is very, very difficult for them, very, very difficult. And it's one of the first times in modern times that this has happened, that an army has had to defend itself without that requisite security and vision and surveillance from above.

Lockwood: Christiane, you had a GOP strategist on your show recently who said that the isolationist recessive gene of the Republican party since Trump has now become the dominant gene. Now we've interviewed quite a few American Republican leaders on this show. We've had Bob Gates, Mike Pompeo, Asa Hutchinson, Mark Esper, and loads others. They have all insisted to us that the Republican party would continue to support Ukraine should there be a change administration after the general election next year. Insisted that everything that Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump have said about the war in Ukraine not being any of our business does not reflect Republican thinking. And that there was a strong commitment to Ukraine, to their territorial sovereignty and the rule of law. You have, of course, talked to so many of these politicians and officials. Tell me, do you believe them when they say that Zelensky doesn't have to worry about the US election and who is in the White House from 2025 onwards?

Amanpour: I mean, as it stands now, I do believe them and all the people you've just listed are the, what I would call the normal Republicans. You know, they're not on the radical right. They're not the populist Republicans who are the Trumpies and the MAGA and all of the rest of it. If they stay as a critical mass, it's likely, you know, to continue. But the facts show that the majority of Congress supports it, Republican and Democrat, and most crucially, the majority of the people still support it. And let's not forget that this was, yes, a leadership, whether it was in The UK, The US, or around NATO, a leadership rallying around the need to defend Ukraine way back in March 2022. But it was propelled by grassroots demand and support for Ukraine by people in all of our countries. It's the civilians and the populations, the voters of all of our countries who let their leaders know that Ukraine needed to be defended. And I think that's very powerful. You're right, though, that as this war goes on, you know, perhaps the interest wanes a little bit around populations, and that's difficult. And that's why I think, you know, smart politics would be to increase the possibility for Ukraine to defend itself so that it can achieve at least as much as necessary to bring Russia to the negotiating table. There is no reason right now, and Putin keeps saying it, for him to come to the negotiating table in any other form other than to demand surrender. He's never gonna get it, but he hasn't yet internalized enough pain to make him come to the negotiating table to sort out a rational end to this. Not an end to which Ukraine says, you know, cries uncle, because that's never gonna happen. And I will say this, having, you know, just marked my forty years at CNN, a lot of people have been saying around Ukraine, Russia that this is the first war in Europe since World War II. Well, it's not. I covered the first war in Europe since World War II and that was the Serbian invasion of Bosnia and the former Yugoslav Republics back in 1991 and '92. In Bosnia, it lasted a long time. It was exactly the same game plan. It was exactly the same motivations just to seek territory, to deny a smaller state, its democratic and independent perspective and prerogative. It was committing war crimes. It was committing genocide. And it thought that it could win. And a tiny little state like Bosnia surprised the whole world, even under siege for four hundred days Sarajevo was, the longest siege in modern history. They actually refused to surrender and with they had their arms tied behind their backs and yet they fought. There was an arms embargo, which is not the case for Ukraine. So suffice to say that if they survived and pushed the limit and refused to surrender, it's very hard to see Ukraine with much more help and much more support from the world ever being forced to a negotiating table on terms that are not rational.

Dearlove: There seems to be a growing fear in the States that if Ukraine succeeds more or less in driving the Russians out of their territory, this will amount to a Russian defeat and that the political consequences in Russia could be profound and that there's a, like, a view across bits of Europe and The States that the disintegration politically of Russia, and I mean, maybe this is, you know, rather an extreme view, but I think that there is an element of truth in it, be a worse problem to deal with than a war in Ukraine. So that a negotiated peace in Ukraine, even if the Ukrainians lose some of their territory, would be a better outcome than a totally destabilized nuclear armed Russia, which was itself having, as it were, a disintegrative political effect for having lost this war. I mean, do you think that this is a serious problem?

Amanpour: I do think, as you say, a lot of people think that way, perhaps even the president of The United States. I mean, you've heard leaders such as president Biden, and before him, actually, president Obama saying, I'm not going to start World War three over, you know, back in the Obama administration, it was first Syria and then it was Eastern Ukraine. And now Biden has said similar things and other leaders have as well. So you got to first ask yourself, is that a real prospect, a third world war? Do you really believe the threats by Putin, which are veiled at best and have really, really diminished since you know, since those first very sort of, provocative things he said in the first day really after his invasion. If you talk to former Russian leaders, they say he will never do that. He will never do that because his prerogative is survival. My question to those questions is how much worse can it get than what we have now? Is there a cadre of Russian, you know, the nomenclature, the political class, even the military maybe, who see that Putin has possibly driven them into the worst stage they've been and the worst state they've been in many, many decades. How deeply supported was the Prigozhin aborted coup? If somebody like General Surovikin was willing to at least hold his fire and stand by, if not outwardly support or openly support Prigozhin, you've got to ask, are there more there? Of course, now they've been, you know, silenced and terrified by the assassination in midair. But I genuinely ask myself the question, how much worse can it be? How much worse can it get than what we are enduring right now?

Lockwood: Yeah. I know there's a lot to say about Elon Musk and his role in Ukraine with regard to Starlink and so on. I don't wanna go into that today, but rather how these tech leaders and figures are shaping our democracy. I mean, looking at what Musk has done to Twitter, for example, which has been for many years, our town square, and he's now elevated conspiracy theorists, anti Semites, and others who are further poisoning our political discourses.

Amanpour: Well, look. Elon Musk is, as I interviewed Walter Isaacson, his biographer today, somebody with a savior complex, somebody with a huge amount of technical ability, but also dark sides and demons as this biography points out. In terms of the Starlink over the Crimea assault, he swears blind that it was never a blank check for the Ukrainians and he didn't pull it at the last moment. It was just that he didn't open Starlink for that particular of whatever. The central question remains, should a private individual have so much power in these kinds of situations? And obviously with AI, we've been trying to dig into that aspect of it too. So I had the first interview with Craig Martell. He's the Pentagon's AI kind of, you know, chief trying to figure out how to counter it, how to deal with it, how to, you know, maximize the opportunities and deter some of the challenges and ring fence around some of the challenges. And what he said was, he believes that there will always have to be a human in the chain of command for launching any kind of massive military operations or massive military systems. I don't know what you think Richard Dearlove about that, but he swears blind that that will remain in place no matter how much machines can do.

Dearlove: I suppose I'm an optimist on these issues and I think that that implies a human input remains in place even the human input is bad judgment at some point in time, but to be completely in the hands of AI in these extraordinary areas, no, I mean I find that very very hard to accept. But yeah, so I think I would be generally in agreement. Think a lot of what you've said I condone, and I think what you said about the likely threat of a breakup in Russia, I would agree with you. You know, what's worse, I mean, what we've got is pretty bad, and, you know, we should deal with that without actually trying to think about worse implications that might come down the track and therefore cater for those and have a bad solution of what we've got now.

Lockwood: Lastly, given that we're all Brits, I think we can all be pretty unanimous about the good news that a Brit is finally in charge at CNN again. Christiane, what advice would you give Mark Thompson who will be taking reins at the company soon?

Amanpour: Guess what? I am not gonna give Mark Thompson any advice because he's got such a long career of results oriented success. So I think that's really good. But he's on year one out of your 40 at CNN. Well, is true. But he's on year 14 out of all his previous career. I'm 40 at CNN. But he's been at BBC, Channel Four, New York Times, and has had amazing results, which we at CNN hope to benefit from as well. Obviously, we've been through, you know, some pretty battered weeks, months, and certainly the last year and a half. And we look forward to a new capable leadership and one most crucially that Mark brings with him, an international DNA. He's an internationalist, you know, and he will look at not just our coverage, but our positioning in a much broader way than perhaps just for domestic viewers and just putting the domestic channel front and center all the time. The international is a huge part of CNN's DNA from the moment Ted Turner conceived of CNN and took it international as the world's first ever global television broadcaster in twenty four seven. And so I think that we all hope I know that in my, you know, few days here in New York, since he's been named, that there's a buzz around the network.

Lockwood: That's great. I was at ABC under James Goldston, so always in favor of a Brit running US TV channels, for sure.

Dearlove: Give Mark Thompson my warm regards. I certainly will. I haven't seen him for a long time, but we knew each other quite well. I'm sure, I'm sure. Maybe there was even some butting of heads when he was at the BBC and you were in the Intelligence.

Lockwood: All the best. Yeah. Christiane, thank you so much. Please join us again soon. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you. And congratulations on forty years. Thank you. Bye bye.

ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE

Lockwood: So Richard, I absolutely love Christiane Amanpour. I think like most female journalists who have been covering foreign affairs, she's sort of one of the first names you get to learn, given that she's such a legend in industry. And I'm glad that she touched upon the Bosnian war. It's obviously a story that she's very, very associated with. She did incredible coverage of the Yugoslav war, and she mentioned Sarajevo and drew, of course, a lot of the parallels between what happened, as she rightly says, in Europe. That was the first war in Europe after World War II, not Ukraine, and it's something that people tend to forget from time to time. But of course that war was different because NATO eventually interfered and got involved in that. Are there limits to the parallels we can draw with Ukraine? And do you think perhaps like the war in Yugoslavia, do you think it's the kind of war that is inevitably gonna draw NATO in somehow?

Dearlove: Yeah. That's an interesting point. I've never actually heard anyone make a direct reference like that before to Serbia and Kosovo and Russia and Ukraine. And I think it's a very interesting comparison to draw because it does have relevance because you know they are both, as it were, territory grabs or land grabs and the confidence that, you know, a large state can overwhelm a small neighbor and then finds that overwhelming a small neighbor is a much more challenging and difficult task. But I think I would make, you know, there's a huge difference. Know, Russia and Serbia, in European terms are not really comparative issues. So NATO was happily well I won't be happily I mean it was a very tense and difficult time and I remember it very graphically because I was still in my previous life when this happened. And you know it caused a lot of angst and a lot of difficulty but let's put it like this: NATO could attack Serbia, which it did, you know the bombing campaign of the Serbian military without risk that, you know, it would escalate into a huge European conflict.

Lockwood: But do you think the fact that American planes and jets are going to start being sent over to Ukraine, do you think that is gonna start changing things? Because obviously, if there are gonna be F-16s being flown by Ukrainian pilots, we can't just send NATO jets to Ukraine and just say, do with these what you want. That comes with support, that comes with supervisors, technical support, crew, engineers, who will be not just Ukrainians, but will be people from NATO countries, because there's a whole support system that you need to use to fly these modern jets, that the Ukrainians don't have that infrastructure? So if we're sending them these planes, we're sending a whole lot of things to them as well. And do you think the fact that that's now happening, that European countries are now pledging dozens of jets to Ukraine, that that's slowly going to sort of tip us closer towards actually confronting Russia head on in certain ways in Ukraine?

Dearlove: Well, no. I think there is still, let's say, a clear division about escalation and a line which will not have been crossed. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. We should ask ourselves the question, which advisers, military advisers, are sitting in the headquarters of the Ukrainian General Staff. They're going to be lots of people helping the Ukrainians. Okay, their presence isn't declared, but without going into detail, I'm sure the Russians are aware that there are other nationalities on the ground and the whole question of training the Ukrainian military. Okay, most of that training is done off territory, not in Ukraine, but then there are certainly advisers and other people in the country and close to the action and close to the fighting. But I think as long as the fighting is done by the Ukrainians themselves and they do insist on that, you know, other than, you know, these volunteer battalions, which is a different issue, I don't think this crosses the escalation line and the supply of weapons that look, we're already supplying them with very sophisticated stuff. Mean, Abrams tanks, F-16s, okay, there is a difference in capability and range.

Lockwood: Right, but let's say there are Polish ground crew or support staff or British sort of engineers who are there capacity to support the deployment of F-16s in Ukraine? And then what happens if the base that they're at gets bombed by the Russians and we have NATO citizen casualties?

Dearlove: Well, I think that's just the fact of the war, but I wouldn't regard that necessarily as a cause for escalation and I also think that the Ukrainians, my understanding is that some of the logistics and the support will be off territory. They will use countries, well I mean Poland in particular, say, for example, you know, repair of armor and stuff like that might well be done outside the Ukraine. And of course, the more that's done in Ukraine is more that is vulnerable to Russian attack. And of course, the Russians will take a big interest in the arrival of F-16s. They'll be looking very carefully at the vulnerability of whatever, you know, is in place inside Ukrainian territory. But I don't think it crosses the escalation line yet.

Lockwood: Got it. One thing I wanted to ask Christiane, we kinda ran out of time at the end, but she had a very interesting interview with the foreign minister of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, and they were talking about the drones, the recent drone attacks that have struck Russian territory. And there was one specific incident that they talked about. It was a drone attack inside Russia that attacked a military and civilian airport, and it destroyed cargo planes and a few other things. Kuleba seemed to imply that it might have been something to do with Wagner. I think the attacks were happening sort of late August, early September. Firstly, the Ukrainians have consistently denied having anything to do with these drone attacks. Do you believe them when they say they have no knowledge or no involvement in these things? And secondly, these drone attacks are becoming more and more successful. They're now taking out cargo planes and infrastructure. So why wouldn't the Ukrainians want to own these successful attacks if they are involved with these? Why do they keep saying it's got nothing to do with Kyiv?

Dearlove: Well, I think the theory behind these types of operations is that there are two approaches. Are they deniable, are they unattributable? They're clearly not unattributable, but they are deniable. And, you know, because they don't have a formal military signature, it's much easier for the Ukrainians not to comment. I mean, I understand this because it's how you operate when you're conducting a war with an element of clandestinity about it. And, you know, they're denying the drones. I mean, by not commenting, it's a denial. But let's face it, who else are you going to attribute them to other than the Ukrainians? So there's this level between these two concepts: deniable, unattributable. And the Ukrainians have chosen, for strategic reasons, to sit between the unattributable and the deniable, and they're on the deniable side of the equation. But everybody knows and assumes it's them, including their population, and I think it's an important psychological aspect of the war for the Ukrainians that they're showing their own population and they're showing the world that they have the very inventive capability to strike back despite the fact that, you know, they're operating at such a disadvantage. I mean, I think this is a remarkable achievement and they're showing huge creativeness and inventiveness in using technologies. And I think everyone's learning a significant lesson about modern warfare from watching this. And it's tough from the Russians, because the Russians obviously find it very difficult defensively to pick up all these drones because for all sorts of technical reasons. They fly at very low altitudes, they fly very fast. And their air defenses are to deal with a much more conventional threat like cruise missiles and aircraft, not with these drones. So it's an extraordinary situation, but I mean I'm not surprised at the line that the Ukrainians have taken. That's exactly what I would do if I was in their shoes, deny it, not not you know, and not comment.

Lockwood: They'll probably wait and see how these drones fare up against all the nineteen sixties North Korean missiles that Putin's about to get gift wrapped from his best Kim Jong They're not they're not gonna solve the problem. Sure. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live? You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.