“There is no shortage of adults between 18 and 60 who are willing to pick up a gun.”
Journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr lives in, and is currently reporting from, a place that many are currently fleeing: Kyiv, Ukraine. Since February 24, the city has been under siege by Russian troops, including missile strikes that’ve killed approximately 140 Ukrainians. Highways out of the country are clogged by cars attempting to escape, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 have been banned from leaving the country, in an attempt to compel them to join the fight against the Russian military.
On Starr’s Twitter account, he’s reported hearing loud explosions and seeing “fighter jets buzzing by in the not too far distance from my window” — as well as large numbers of civilians volunteering to take up arms to protect their country. Katie reached out to him to learn more about what he’s observing on the ground. Watch their conversation right here, starting at around 28 minutes:
And here are excerpts of his and Katie’s fascinating conversation:
Katie Couric: Terrell Jermaine Starr is the host of the Black Diplomats podcast, a weekly politics and foreign affairs podcast. He lived in Ukraine as a Fulbright fellow and a freelance journalist and in Georgia as a Peace Corps volunteer. He’s joining us right now.
Terrell Jermaine Starr: Thank you very much for having me, Katie. So right now I hear blasts. I hear explosions about 15 to 20 kilometers away. At least it’s a safe distance. So I’m being mindful of that. Secondly, there are men volunteering to pick up arms and fight. So the civilian population is preparing for urban warfare. I actually went to three sites around Kyiv and there are lines of men that are very eager to fight for the country. And so that’s the primary thing that I see right now. Also, you see people with luggage trying to get away.
And in many instances, they’re trying to get into Poland and Romania. The roads are clogged with people trying to get out if they can. Because keep in mind, a lot of people may not have the resources to go to Poland and set up shop elsewhere. But none of us know where exactly is safe anymore. The shellings yesterday started at about 4 in the morning, and I hear them now. And it’s 9 p.m.
KC: Are tanks coming into Kyiv? The New York Times reported that the Russians had lost a little steam and were not moving as quickly as intelligence reports indicated they would.
TS: So basically there was a special-ops group that dropped down and tried to take over, but the Ukrainian military eliminated them. What people don’t know is there’s a lot of B-roll in mainstream media about the Russian advance, but there’s very little B-roll of the Ukrainians fighting back. We haven’t seen the most that the Russian military is capable of right now because much of the fighting has taken place on the outskirts of the city. The Ukrainian military has destroyed bridges, their own infrastructure, in order to preserve the capital. Also, you have a lot of shelling that is taking place, but what’s really effective are the javelins, which are anti-tank missiles.
KC: I find it really interesting that so many Ukrainian men are signing up and being armed to protect their country. Did you talk to any of those people? What kind of weapons are they being given by the Ukrainian government? I heard they’re being encouraged to use Molotov cocktails.
TS: Yes, yes. That’s absolutely happening right now. My roommate is signing up to go fight, and I’ll be spending some time with this unit as they prepare to fight. This city is bracing for urban warfare. I went to the outskirts of the city and there are already checkpoints and barricades established. Everyone here is pretty much bracing for a fight. I went to centers and they were teaming with men ready to fight for the country. There is no shortage of adults between 18 and 60 who are willing to pick up a gun.
KC: That is really amazing because as you said, the Russian military is far superior to the Ukrainian military. And when you’re talking about this volunteer force, these are people with, in some cases, absolutely no military training or experience.
TS: Absolutely. On the most part, these are people who are taxi drivers, shop owners. These are people who just say, “Hey, I’m not a soldier, but I’m a patriot.” I’ve been here in Ukraine since 2009 and I have seen this country take a cultural shift politically from that time: In the span of 15 years or so, there have been two revolutions. And in between those two revolutions, at first, you had a minority of people who wanted to join NATO. Now you have the vast majority of Ukrainians who want to go toward NATO.
The more Putin is abusive toward this country, the more people wanna go toward NATO and go to the EU. The way in which Putin talks about Ukrainians, to me, is similar to the way racist white people talk about Black people. You have to treat the Kremlin, Putin, and his spokespeople as hostile to the truth.
KC: I’m trying to understand what Putin meant when he said the “denazification” of Ukraine. We know President Zelensky is Jewish. So what is he suggesting?
TS: OK, so a little history lesson here: Basically there was a guy named Stepan Bandera who was a WWII-era activist. He’s a very complicated person that we’re not gonna get into the weeds over, but basically, he’s a very controversial figure. When he was fighting for the liberation of Ukraine, there was a conversation about him collaborating with the Nazi movement. He essentially said, “Well, we’re collaborating ’cause we want to defeat the Soviets,” not necessarily because they were anti-Semitic.
And so in the global scheme of things, he was a very marginal figure but he’s been blown up into this big symbol of hatred toward Russians. And it’s very ironic because the thing about Russia is that it has its own Nazi issues. Putin is expecting people to believe in this big lie that Ukraine is a Nazi state. Listen, I’m a Black man and an American citizen. There is no way on God’s green earth that I would come to Ukraine to be abused in a country for Nazis. That’s just stupid and ridiculous. And neither would anyone else,
KC: Was he talking about “denazification” as sort of a false flag about how Ukrainians are treating Russians within Ukraine?
TS: Yes, but it’s also the fact that these people are a threat to the Russian state, which is why I brought up Stepan Bandera. Because he’s a figure that was used in decades of propaganda and was assassinated. This man has been dead for decades and they find reasons to create this image of him being the God of Nazis, that Ukrainians worship. When in reality, it’s more complicated than that. But at the end of the day, this is not about NATO. Ukraine does not have the capacity to threaten Russian sovereignty. What they do have is a robust and growing democracy act that Putin fears will spread into his own country.
KC: In that way, the ideology is more threatening than military force. Do you still hear the missiles outside?
TS: It’s pretty quiet right now because it comes and it goes. Again, this is my first time covering a war. So I’m getting used to how far away the sounds are and measuring the distance. Nothing is happening right now, but if it happens, you kinda get used to gauging if it’s 15, 20 miles away. I know that sounds wild, but that’s what’s happening now.
