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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Nearly six months into Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, the repercussions of the war are being felt across the globe with disrupted supply chains, weakened economies and shifted geopolitical relationships, and of course, the human toll. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 5,400 Ukrainian civilian deaths since the start of the war, and intense fighting has made reporting difficult. The agency believes the true numbers are much higher. United Nations also estimates that there are more than 6 million Ukrainian refugees currently in Europe.

In Bucha, officials have documented 458 people's bodies, some with hands bound, others with gunshot wounds to the head, killed in alleged war crime atrocities while Russian soldiers occupied the city and surrounding areas this March. Speaking here through a translator back in April, the mayor of Bucha responded to the horrors experienced in his city.

Mayor: We all were witnesses to the horrific events and the horrific crimes that the Russians committed here. We will never forgive the Russian people, not personally, not individually, but on the whole we will not forgive the Russian people for the atrocities that happened here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Even with the war raging, something quite extraordinary is growing, a deepened commitment to democracy. Joining me now is Nataliya Gumenyuk, Ukrainian journalist and founder of The Public Interest Journalism Lab. Natalia thank you for being here.

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Good to talk to you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: How are people faring?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Of course, the war and the hardship of the war has a high toll on the Ukrainians when we're speaking about the human life, about the suffering. At the same time, we see that the Ukrainians are appreciating their resilience. We know that it's the end of the summer season. People are reconsidering coming back home. Especially the people who left were mainly the kids and females and they do understand that they need to adjust to this horrible new norm. Of course, there are some towns in the eastern Ukraine, like Kharkiv, which is just on the Russian border, or in the south, which are constantly, constantly shelled, mainly due to the proximity of the Russian facilities there, where it's hard to leave.

I won't speak about even the occupied territories, but in the rest of the war is, let's say, more predictable. At the same time Ukrainians see clear ways to win this war and to end it at least to the point and return to the borders prior to the invasion in their mind. It's not something theoretical for them, it's still a clear vision of how it's possible to be back to normal, and how to organize your time that you are not consumed by the anxiety by adjusting to this new unfortunate normal.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can you talk to me a bit about these frontlines? Tell us a bit about what life is like in those cities. Are populations in decline? Is there a sense that young people and women are going to return?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: It's really different. I, of course, don't want to overcomplicate the audience with the Ukrainian geography, but something to understand more, after the fact that the Russians had lost in the early stage of the war, they didn't make to overtake the Capitol and some parts of the country, the Russians changed their tactics. They do not really fight if you really speak about the troops. It's really the artillery war. The closer it is to the Russian border, let's say the second biggest town of Kharkiv, which is usually had up to 2 million people living, a bustling industrial town with the biggest amount of the universities in the country.

It is just around 25 miles from the Russian border. Russia is able to throw any types of the rockets just outside of its borders. People want to be back in a way because it's a second biggest town in the country but it's true that many people left and it's really hard to wage normal life. At the same time, the same people, instead of going somewhere abroad, they, for instance, would move to Kiev temporary, with hoping that they will be back. We do have the Ukrainian south where we have the city of Odesa which is also under constant bombardment. There is a better air defense, it's further from the Russian rockets. The city is able to defend themselves.

Also, we have the southern part of the country which is occupied with speaking about around two and a half million of the Ukrainians are living under the occupation in the southern Ukraine, where both according to my traveling and my reporting for the last months, but also international organizations as human rights work, issued their reports. We have the cases of a systematic persecution, murders, tortures of various people by the Russian occupied authorities there. People are not able to leave there. That's one another huge chunk of the country, so different than the different parts of the country but if you speak about the most of the Ukraine, people try to be back to their normal life.

This randomness of this attack is really, really striking and dramatic because it might happen, it might not happen. When we had these tragedies like the attack on the shopping mall in Kremenchuk which killed almost 30 civilians or attack in Vinnytsia, another town, just on the peaceful town in the centre of Ukraine, where also people died just in the center of the city, it also created this feeling of anxiety that you can't be fully, fully safe.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about the overall morale in the country. I understand that what's happening in the east in Donbas region is a distinct issue, in part because we're talking about eight years there. In much of the rest of the nation, as you said that there's not a theoretical but a clear sense of the capacity to win the war. Has that increased over the course of the past six months?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: It's increasing. Today one of the Ukrainian organizations called grading was announced that 98% of the Ukrainians believe in the Ukrainian victory, and it's growing. I'm honestly not a military strategist but, of course, we all have to understand the way military fights. For instance, the fact that Ukraine had received those himars from US and some other equipment which is very precise compared to the Russian airstrikes, really helped Ukraine in a way to destroy, first of all, the Russian warehouses with the weapon, the Russian artillery spots, or the logistical hubs of the Russian army. There is a clear vision, how the one precise attack on some Russian military deploy with the weaponry can save lives and can stop the Russian advance.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're speaking here of the sense of confidence in the military aspect. The piece you wrote recently for The Atlantic is actually about maybe a deeper confidence, confidence in local government units and in democracy. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Yes. For a while Ukraine really didn't have its own state. It was a part of the Soviet Union, then of the Russian Empire with some breaks. I do think that the Ukrainians had this in confidence in the state, treating the state as the government as something more like an adversary. What is interesting that there was in this last 30 years since 1991, since the independence of Ukraine, it felt like the new generation has developed in the independent country for whom the things like the right to choose really matters a lot. I traveled since the first day of the war all around the country and talk to hundreds and hundreds of the people.

The point of my research was also to understand for what people are fighting for. I was really positively surprised as, let's say, Ukrainian journalist based in the capital, that for a lot of people on various grounds they were really fighting for their own freedoms, and they can really explain what the freedoms mean. It's really the freedom to choose how they want to live, freedom to run their life. What was interesting for me that for a while, there was this portrayal of some Ukrainian volunteers or some activists which are outstanding, but I found it interesting that I spoke not just to these active citizens, but to the usual farmers, workers in the factories.

Local authorities, if I speak for instance of [unintelligible 00:09:28] just a very simple people, all of them were really speaking about the democracy, about the fact that they have the right to choose how they want to leave, whom they want to elect how to govern, and they wouldn't admit any types of occupation. They would speak about the civilized world. Just recently, giving a different example which wasn't in this article, I talked to the people in the Donbas in particularly who really didn't believe into the invasion because they really believed that there is a civilized war, where there are rules existing and that the one country won't attack them.

When you speak to the people, they really explain that they are fighting for the fact, of course apart from their own land, that those rules will be back. That if those rules are not kept in the case of Ukrainian invasion, there is no way those rules of the sovereignty would be kept elsewhere.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is it possible that on the other side of this it will be Ukraine that is, as the US is often self described, the shining city on the hill providing a vision of what constitutes democracy for the rest of the world?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Honestly, I would be very confident to say this. Of course as somebody reporting wars, I know the word is toxic but because things matter so much, and when people speaking about the human rights, they're really speaking about them not being tortured. When they speaking about the right to choose they're really speaking about a foreign military won't come to their village and would put a gun into them. All this things which we talk in the classes, in the conferences, are really have a very, very clear meaning. I think indeed that for quite a lot of time the democracy was taken for granted. The freedom was taken for granted by many, that it became very theoretical for a lot of people.

Giving you a different example, when I talked to a Rabbi who was born in Brooklyn but for 30 years is running one of the biggest communities of the Jewish communities in Dnipro in the city in the southern Ukraine, he said that he thought that democracy about the quality of life, but now he understands while being in Ukraine the democracy about the right to choose. He really started to value it way much and find out that it's something sacred for him. I see those cases many times. It's unfortunate but I do believe that the things like democracy and the rule of law, and the freedom, they are unfortunately tested in Ukraine now, and tested in this very existential way that it's a matter of life for particular people, and for many who had been already killed.

Therefore, they do have real meaning which can be challenged by the skeptics, by the hypocrites, so therefore it could be.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist based in Kyiv and founder of the Public Interest Journalism Lab. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Thank you for your interest.

Melissa Harris-Perry: According to the UN, one third of all Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes since Russia invaded their country on February 24th. More than three and a half million have applied for temporary residence in another country, but an even larger number of Ukrainians have remained in Ukraine. An estimated seven million people displaced from their homes within their country. One man from the south spoke with ABC news last week about why he stayed.

Speaker 1: Well I want to live in Ukraine. If my house is destroyed, it's material things. I'll get money, build new home but I'll leave in a free country.

Melissa Harris-Perry: With me now is Ann Lee, the CEO of Community Organized Relief Effort or CORE. CORE is and non-profit humanitarian organization that coordinates with local organizations and crisis areas to provide essential resources and disaster preparedness tools. Welcome to The Takeaway, Ann.

Ann Lee: Thank you so much for having me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We've just been speaking with a journalist who has talked to us about the very complicated movements right now of Ukrainians particularly as perhaps those with families or trying to find spaces in the country to make something like a normal life. Can you talk with us about the current sense of urgency at this point in the war?

Ann Lee: Right now we are still seeing a lot of movement as you've mentioned. A lot of folks that have been abroad are actually coming back in. There is a desire to stay home with the familiar and the people that you know, so the increase of the displaced persons is going to just grow over time we feel, and it's just getting worse because of the winter. Winter is coming and it is bitterly cold out there. What we worry about is that there are still a lot of people in gyms, in schools, that are not equipped to take people to be living in these conditions and we really, really stress that right now is the time to focus on the displaced persons inside Ukraine as much as possible.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What are some of the conditions like for IDPs and these internally displaced persons? You're talking about being housed in the gym, are we're talking about for months here?

Ann Lee: That's right. These are folks that have been displaced in these gym conditions without any privacy. Imagine a gymnasium and a stadium of 300 to 400 people, a lot of them being elderly, that are being housed there on cots. Some of them have mattresses, some of them don't, and they've been there for quite some time. We expect that this is going to actually increase over time as well. Mind you, this is only probably 25% of the displaced population. The majority of folks are being housed with friends, families, in conditions within houses probably on the floor. We hope that these folks continue to host these families even when it's been about four or five months.

Melissa Harris-Perry: With deep ties to the city of New Orleans, it is something that I know quite intimately and well, right here in our own country with the experience of IDPs after hurricane Katrina, and I can say clearly that even nearly 20 years later the effects remain. That was not in the context of a national war, but simply that experience of displacement and the effects that it has, again, continued to have nearly 20 years later. Can you talk to me about the ways that not only for living conditions, but the emotional, the psychic, the health concerns. What are some of the things that relief organizations are seeking to do?

Ann Lee: Right now there is a huge focus on keeping people as safe as possible in these conditions, and it's so apparent the psychological effect that it's happening on so many people and especially the kids. There's a lot of questions in terms of what's going to happen. Is this our new reality? A lot of folks can't even think about finding jobs or integrating within the fabric of the community that they're currently in, because there's still this hope that, "Maybe we're going to be able to go home next week. Maybe the war will be over." It's this absolute unknown that makes it so impossible for people to even figure out what to do next, that you can see has such a deep and long lasting impact on the generations that are going to come.

How do you get kids integrated into a school when they don't know whether or not tomorrow they might go home, or they might not have a home tomorrow? We see this happening and that is one of the biggest things that a lot of nonprofit organizations are focusing in on, but there's still a lot more to be done.

Melissa Harris-Perry: How difficult is it to deliver aid in this moment, given the circumstances in Ukraine.

Ann Lee: It's extremely opportunistic in a lot of ways trying to deliver materials to the east. Because of the fighting, because of the lines of control shifting on a constant basis,, our teams are constantly in contact with the folks on the ground with the people that are in these areas to get different types of materials at any given moment and to be able to safely deliver it. Just to give you an example, just recently the president announced in Ukraine that the Ukrainian government controlled area of Donetsk of 200,000 people need to evacuate because of the winter, because of the gas lines being cut.

Another expected wave of people is something that we need to plan for. It's a constantly shifting need that we are trying to address on a regular basis, and that's actually an area that I really want to highlight and ask other international disaster agencies to continue to provide support because, as I mentioned, people are calculating potentially to stay there despite the evacuation warning.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For those who did reach the borders of neighboring countries, who are in Poland, Moldova, what kinds of conditions are they finding? It is being a Ukrainian in Ukraine but displaced from your home and your region, and your community better circumstances or worse than what folks who are now refugees in other nations are facing?

Ann Lee: This is such a great question because it really points to how individuals are making their own calculated risks. As we see it as an international community, we might think well it's so much safer and better abroad, but a lot of folks are coming back home even into the areas where there's still fighting because they're making a calculated risk of, "I don't speak the language. I don't feel like I belong. I don't know that I can find a job. I feel more accepted in my own hometown despite potential shelling," and so they're making these calculated risks of what is more important to them. A lot of folk that we spoke to who have come back are saying, "We feel like this is our home. We can't leave it and it's going to be easier for us to integrate into our home country than abroad."

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's take a quick pause here. We'll be right back with more on The Takeaway. Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. I'm talking now with Ann Lee. She's the CEO of CORE. We're speaking about humanitarian aid efforts for Ukrainian refugees and those who are internally displaced within Ukraine. I heard you make an appeal to an international community of relief organizations. What is attention and what are resources like now compared to maybe in the first months of the conflict?

Ann Lee: It's difficult to hear, meeting with government officials, to hear the term, a trending disaster or trending crisis. It does feel that way in a bit. There's a lot of worry about the attention and the support and the importance of having international support and the attention continue because that really translates into direct funding as well as direct support militarily and political support. I think that there's worry in terms of the attention waning, because what that means is that the lives that are being supported right now might wane. Again, that's why these discussions, for example with you, are so important to remind the public and to remind public officials how important it is to continue the support.

I do think that the international community is continuing its support. I do see that a lot more funding is coming down and trickling down to local organizations, which is hopeful.

Melissa Harris-Perry: On this difficult way of describing this trending disaster or trending need. There has been conversation about the notion that the people of Ukraine received more international attention, more aid than those, for example, from North Africa, than the east, that the refugee crisis here has received more attention. How should we understand that inequity?

Ann Lee: I think that is a very fair assessment and that's a huge issue that we have in terms of these trending disasters. I think that there is a fundamental race component to it that we always struggle with in terms of keeping attention to Haiti, for example, where we continue to work and we continue to support despite the very difficult circumstances and the enormous need that is there. Somalia and the food crisis, which is huge right now. I do think there's an element, however, to this crisis that has more political weight to it in terms of security and direct security to US interests and European interests.

I think that has a huge factor into why it's getting so much more attention and probably a lot of funding. I think it is an existential crisis. I look at it as a huge impact on fundamentally what we're looking at in terms of democracy and whether or not the US truly believes in this idea of democracy abroad, as well as at home.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In the context of both internally displaced persons and refugees, are there some kinds of Ukrainians who are having a more difficult or a more facilitated capacity in this moment?

Ann Lee: One of the things that I've noticed through our support in the displaced inside Ukraine as well outside is that there's a huge number of women and the elderly. It's very difficult to see in terms of, especially the elderly who are often alone, who have come back alone, who find it more difficult to integrate into neighboring countries. Definitely there is a huge need to support, especially folks with disabilities and the elderly. I think that in particular what we see is that there's been a huge support group around especially keeping women and girls safe but I do hope that we can focus in on the elderly.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Lee is the CEO of CORE. Thank you for joining us on The Takeaway.

Ann Lee: Thank you so much.

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