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Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and you're with The Takeaway. Few Americans have known war. No protracted armed conflict has occurred on US soil since the Civil War. For most of us, it's nearly impossible to fathom what it was like nearly one year ago when in the early morning hours of February 24th, an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine began.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's hard to comprehend being shaken from sleep by missile attacks, explosions, sirens, fire to understand the terror of huddling together with neighbors and strangers in an underground subway station through a long, dark night of shelling. To know what it means to hold our children close and to try to comfort them with words, we ourselves scarcely believe or what it meant to have powerful deadly weapons pressed urgently into our hands, hands which only days before baked bread, tapped out financial reports, embraced our parents.

What do we know of having our neighborhoods transformed into the front lines of suddenly being responsible for the defense of home, of town, of nation, perhaps even of democracy itself? The UN reports that there have been at least 20,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine since the Russians invaded. The UN also believes that the true number is considerably higher. The scale of destruction is staggering with some towns nearly entirely eliminated by Russian aggression. More than eight million Ukrainians have sought refuge outside of the country.

Nearly as many are internally displaced within Ukraine. Russian troops have suffered casualties as well, approaching 200,000. According to The New York Times, on the Ukrainian side, at least 100,000 troops have been killed or wounded in action. This has been the worst conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. One year later, still Ukraine stands, still Ukraine resists, still Ukraine fights, and still Ukraine asserts with unwavering certainty that it will prevail.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: As we work to understand more fully what this year has been like in the midst of this conflict, we talked with two of the frontline journalists who've been bringing us dispatches throughout this year.

Christopher Miller: My name is Christopher Miller. I'm the Financial Times correspondent in Ukraine and the author of the forthcoming book The War Came To Us.

Anton Troianovski: My name is Anton Troianovski, I'm the Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Chris, I want to just start with you. Obviously, many of us are reflecting on the past year. Can you walk us through some of the phases of the past 12 months in terms of the war?

Christopher Miller: Yes, I think a year ago from right now, there was a lot of uncertainty about what exactly would happen. I think you and your listeners will recall that the United States and I think British intelligence and many people in the West were saying very loudly and clearly that Russia is going to invade Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy here in Kyiv and a lot of Ukrainians really didn't believe that it would happen.

A lot of people here in Ukraine were saying we think that Russia's likely to turn up the dial in the war in the east of Ukraine, but they didn't see the same intelligence or didn't read it the same way that the West was reading it. Come February 24th, the day of Russia's invasion, President Zelenskyy and a lot of Ukrainians were caught off guard. In fact, the President and all of his team were sleeping when the first Russian missiles hit the country and rocked the capital and startled everyone awake.

That launched what was the first phase of the war, this Russian blitzkrieg, and attempt to capture the capital, which was an absolutely terrifying moment. I remember it very clearly. I actually happened to be in Eastern Ukraine at the moment that the first missile struck the country because I too was expecting the focus to be there, but something big to happen. I rushed back to Kyiv and found this city very much on a war footing. There were checkpoints erected. There were volunteers running in the streets with guns.

The ammunition depots had thrown open their doors and were handing rifles out to anybody that was willing to go and fight the invaders. The military was mobilized and heading to meet Russian troops that were advancing from several different points from Belarus in the North, from Russia in the North and the East, and also up from Crimea in the South. It was just this really scary, this moment of great uncertainty where a lot of people felt as though there was a chance that Kyiv could fall in the first hours or days as President Vladimir Putin had predicted it and hoped.

That moment passed, I think, a couple of weeks later when it became clear that Ukrainian resistance was going to be really, really strong and that the Ukrainians had mobilized so quickly and efficiently. The Russians had planned so poorly that this was no longer going to be the blitzkrieg that Russia had planned but rather this protracted fight and, for the Ukrainians, a fight that was nothing less than one of survival and existence.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Chris, you talk about that belief that the focus would be on East Ukraine. Can you tell us what's happening in East Ukraine right now?

Christopher Miller: Yes, so after that first phase of the war, it became clear that the Russians were not going to get what they wanted in the capitulation of Kyiv and President Zelenskyy. What happened was they really refocused their military efforts and this "special military operation" in Eastern Ukraine in the Donbas, which is where Russian troops and Ukrainian forces have been fighting for the past eight years.

We had seen for at least the last six and a half, this simmering, grinding war of attrition. Now, from last summer on, we've seen Russian troops seize several cities and then slow to a halt. They've not had great success in the East, with the exception of a couple of early victories last summer. The Ukrainians actually have managed to push them out. There were these two counter-offensives in the autumn that pushed Russian forces out from the South and further into the East. In response to that and those failures on the ground we saw starting last October and November, Russia really ramped up its aerial assaults across Ukraine.

Not only in the East but these missile attacks and drone attacks being carried out here in the capital in Kyiv as far West as Lviv and certainly in the South, and then also providing those attacks as cover for the ground forces in the East. That brings us to this phase right now. We're seeing as we approach the one-year anniversary of this, Russian forces really concentrate their efforts in Eastern Ukraine, this area known as the Donbas, where they're trying to take all of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces that Vladimir Putin declared as Russian territory last September.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Anton, I want to come to you and cover some of that same territory, but rather than from the perspective of what's happening at a military level. Can you help us to understand what's happening to Russia as a country? How has this affected their understanding? Presumably, while both in Ukraine and in much of the rest of the world were shocked, Russia was clear about its intentions but also must have expected a very different outcome.

Anton Troianovski: Indeed. Actually, very much as Chris described, the Ukrainian shock when the war began, people in Russia also almost uniformly did not believe the Western warnings that Putin was preparing to invade. The idea that Putin could launch a full-fledged invasion of his neighbor would seem to violate-- in people's thinking back then would violate his unspoken contract with the Russian people, which was, "I let you do your thing as long as you don't interfere in politics." Then, suddenly, when the invasion happened, Putin's politics were driven home for everyone in the country.

Now, after that initial shock of the invasion, the next thing that happened was life actually didn't change all that much for most Russians. There were, of course, those incredible sanctions that were put in place by the US and Europe, but they didn't manage to collapse the Russian economy. Most Russian standard of living did not drastically deteriorate. For the first six, seven months of the war, it actually remained a far-off thing for most Russians, something that most Russians could ignore. Then that changed again in September, October when Putin declared his draft and 300,000 civilian men were mobilized and forced to join the military.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to us a bit about the Kremlin messaging and Putin's presentation of this to the Russian people.

Anton Troianovski: Well, it was a message that changed over time, but the basic one is that Ukraine is run by the Nazis installed by the United States and that if we were to not go to war now, then they would attack us in the near future. It was a preemptive invasion, the way that he characterized it. He also then increasingly started saying that, "We are not starting the war. We are ending it."

His claim is that it's actually the West that started the war in Ukraine back in 2014, which obviously is not true. It was Russia that fomented the conflict in 2014. It's this very much upside-down universe in Russian propaganda. One other thing that we've learned over the last year is that Russian television propaganda is extremely effective inside Russia. The Kremlin controls all of the television stations.

Television remains the most important medium for how people get their information in Russia. You have hours a day of news, of talk shows piping that message into Russian living rooms that the West is the enemy, "The West wants to destroy us and our 'special military operation' in Ukraine is about defending our country and our future from the West that wants to destroy us."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Chris, on the other side of this border, talk to me about what life is like in Ukraine for Ukrainians right now.

Christopher Miller: In stark contrast to the life in Russia that Anton described where things didn't change a whole lot for most Russians, everything changed for Ukrainians. There are millions of Ukrainians that have been displaced by Russia's invasion. Many of them fled very early on in the invasion in the first days or weeks. There were log jams on the highways as people fled to the west of the country, seeking safety in cities like Lviv or even further in Poland or Hungary or beyond in Germany or London or even the United States.

Then there are thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands. We don't know the exact number of people killed and wounded, but the estimates are grim. I think combined, it's tens of thousands of civilians killed. It's certainly tens of thousands of soldiers killed. Each one of those soldiers in Ukraine are people who are not only maybe those who were already in the military, but those who took up arms after the invasion, their grandfathers, their fathers, their brothers, their sons. There's no family in Ukraine that has not been affected in some tragic way by this invasion. People have lost their livelihoods. They've lost their homes. Entire cities have been flattened by Russian missiles.

There are several other cities where not only have they faced destruction, but they've also faced down these Russian soldiers in places like Bucha or Irpin or these other places around the Northwestern Kyiv region that have now become synonymous with the terror that Russian forces have unleashed upon Ukrainians. The word "genocide" is thrown around a lot here. I think that's certainly a word that carries a lot of weight, but it is one that is used increasingly so by Ukrainians as they discover not only the horrific atrocities that have been carried out against them by the Russians but the scale in which they're being carried out by the Russian soldiers.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Anton, I want to be able to make a bit of this distinction between the Russian people and the Russian government and military to the extent that it's fair to make that distinction. Can you help us to understand what these realities, even the language of genocide, means for hundreds of thousands of Russians who've left the country and for Russians who were already living across the world?

Anton Troianovski: Tens of thousands of Russians have been detained or arrested since the start of the war for protesting against it or otherwise speaking out against it. Saying something in public against the war, something that, for instance, highlights Russian war crimes in Bucha outside Kyiv can get you imprisoned for 15 years. There are numerous Russian public figures who are now in prison for speaking out just about those issues that Chris raised.

One of the major changes in Russia over the last year is that it's become an even more repressive society. You see how worried the government is about any kind of anti-war sentiment spreading by just how draconian these punishments are. The fact is that from all we can tell, Putin's hold on power domestically within the ruling elite, if anything, has only been strengthened in the course of the last year. We have a situation where, domestically, where Putin is dominant, his hold on power is firm.

The state is able to silence just about any anti-war speech. That leads to a situation where a lot of people, especially those who don't have the means to leave, try to find some way to justify what their country is doing in their name, which is, I think, one reason why you see in the polls being conducted in Russia now such as they are showing that most Russians say they support the war. At the same time, as you said, hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the country in the last year.

There was one major wave of immigration in late February and March after the initial invasion where people just realized they didn't want to live in a kind of country anymore that would carry out this kind of war. Then there was another wave in the fall when men especially were fleeing the draft and ended up across Central Asia, across Europe, and even in Latin America and the US. For those Russians, that question that you raised is, of course, incredibly hard.

It's something that's being discussed every day in the myriad Russian YouTube channels that have sprung up that are trying to tackle what can Russians, who are against the war, do in this situation. How can you influence the government if you are, let's say, a Russian journalist outside the country? How can you get the truth to people who are still inside the country? YouTube, which I just mentioned, actually plays a really big role because YouTube is not banned inside Russia. It's still freely accessible. That's probably the main way that Russians inside the country are able to get alternative information about the war. It's a very hard question. Very hard.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Chris, I'm going to give you the final word on this one. We're at the one-year mark and this looks like it's going to be protracted. What are the primary needs in Ukraine right now and what is your sense of what the next 3, 6, 12 months might look like?

Christopher Miller: Well, militarily, Ukraine is in pretty desperate need of ammunition. It's expending thousands of artillery shells and probably tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of bullets every single day. It's these artillery shells that it really needs so that it can continue to defend itself. Not only that but eventually, possibly, this spring, launch a counter-offensive to try to retake territories.

Ukraine also wants more air defense systems. If it can get fighter jets, it would like them as well. Really, air defense systems, the ammunition for it, and artillery, militarily, this is what Ukraine needs. There is a lot of need also for humanitarian assistance. A lot of humanitarian assistance has been given. Not all of it seems to be making it to the places where it's really needed, but also a lot of people have had their homes destroyed like I mentioned earlier.

There are people living in temporary situations, shacking up with friends or family or strangers, or trying to rebuild but without the means to do so. The reconstruction of some places that were under occupation for several months is an ongoing issue. The way that the war is currently, yes, there's no end in sight. Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, don't see space for negotiations at the moment. For Ukraine, negotiating anything right now is untenable.

Zelenskyy certainly cannot sit down with Putin even if he wanted to and negotiate some kind of settlement that would see the areas that are currently under Russian occupation stay under Russian occupation. All of Ukrainians right now really are behind the President and his leadership. They want Ukraine to continue to try to expel Russian occupiers from these territories in the South and the East.

I think Anton can speak probably better on the Russian side, but I don't think I'm wrong in saying that the Russians don't want to sit down right now and negotiate either. They really want to see the rest of the East, that being Donetsk and Luhansk provinces captured. These are the areas that Putin claimed to annex last autumn. That goes also for Zaporozhzhia and Kherson Oblast in the South. These are only partially occupied by Russia.

I believe that Russian forces want to continue trying to push into all four of these areas and to fully occupy them before they attempt to get President Zelenskyy at the negotiating table. Even at that point, knowing the Ukrainians like I do, speaking with them, speaking with President Zelenskyy in his office, I don't see the Ukrainians under any circumstances, whether it's being short on ammunition or having a momentum against them, stopping their fight. They see this as an existential fight. It is a fight for their survival and the survival of Ukraine. I think they'll continue to fight as long as it takes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Christopher Miller is a Ukraine correspondent for the Financial Times and author of the forthcoming book, The War Came To Us. Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. Chris, Anton, thank you both for being here.

Christopher Miller: Thank you.

Anton Troianovski: Thank you for having us.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay, we're going to take a break here. When we get back, we'll be checking in with some of the Ukrainians that we've talked to throughout this past year, including a woman whose grandmother was rescued from the Russian siege of Mariupol.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: As we approach the one-year mark of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we're checking back in with some of the Ukrainians that we've talked to as they reflect on this past year.

Olena Shevchenko: My name is Olena Shevchenko and I'm a chairperson of Insight public organization, which is based in Kyiv and support LGBTQI communities and also women from vulnerable groups now during the war.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We spoke with Olena last April. She was in Kyiv at the start of the Russian invasion. She stayed for 14 days partially sheltering in a basement and then decided to move the Kyiv-based part of her organization to the western city of Lviv. Now, they went back to Kyiv in June and have had hubs all around the country. Throughout the war, the organization has continued advocacy work around LGBTQ issues. They've also helped tens of thousands of people who were fleeing the country or who were internally displaced by offering legal consultations, distributing humanitarian aid, and finding temporary shelter.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: The war has changed everything about day-to-day life in Ukraine, but winter was especially hard.

Olena Shevchenko: Nobody among us or other people were pretty prepared to the winter or winterization, how it's cold on the different levels. Honestly, that was a nightmare mostly because in the summer and also during the spring, there were many attacks with bombing, but the target was quite different like buildings, military bases, and also people's buildings, houses. Then they changed the tactic and the main goal was the energetic objects. Almost all country were in black conditions, but it's not only about the light. That's the whole electricity system, which means like you don't have heating.

You don't have any possibilities to cook something. It is very cold. It's freezing even inside the apartment. You don't know when there will be electricity in your house. That's why, of course, we try to support our community members and open another program trying to buy all possible solutions like generators, small heating systems, gas heatings, small portable gas supplies to cook something at least somewhere if you have this access to gas booms. We also send it to people and mostly warm blankets also, lighters, everything, which give people some kind of light or heating.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For many Ukrainians, they'd hope the war would be over by now, but however long that takes, Olena and others are preparing to rebuild.

Olena Shevchenko: Now, it seems to us like nobody is expecting that it will be such a previous life for us. We are trying to be well-prepared for another year of the war or if it will be finished. We understand the consequences. Also, we understand that it will be much more difficulties, let's say. We don't expect it will be better, especially in terms of the situation of people in Ukraine because it's not just the war, bombing. People lost everything, houses, relatives, but it's also about very deep social and economical crisis, which affects mostly the vulnerable communities.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Despite these many difficulties, there are some things that still give Olena hope.

Olena Shevchenko: It's still people. Looking back to my activist life, I can't remember the period, which show me so many people who came together yet to do some good things to help others, even taken into account that they also suffered. This solidarity and mutual support, I think that's the main thing to believe in humanity still, which still exists in our society.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We also checked back in with--

Mariia Sirychenko: Hi, my name, Mariia Sirychenko. I'm currently in Ukraine in Kyiv region. Actually, since the war started, I changed many places where I were. Currently, I'm located in Kyiv.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We last spoke with Mariia at the beginning of March, just a couple of weeks after the Russian invasion. She was in Kyiv when the city was attacked and she left two days later also to the safety of Lviv. Nearly a year later, she's back in Kyiv.

Mariia Sirychenko: It's funny because, recently, I calculated how many places I've changed since the beginning of the war and it counted more than 10 places.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Mariia is from Mariupol. You may remember the city's name because it was an early target of Russian attacks. The city was under siege for more than 80 days. It's estimated that thousands of civilians were killed in the attacks, but exact numbers have been very difficult to verify. The city is currently under Russian control. When we last spoke to Mariia, she hadn't been in contact with her grandmother in Mariupol for 10 days, but the family found a way to get her grandmother out.

Mariia Sirychenko: Basically, she was, for almost three weeks, in Mariupol without any heat, electricity, water, under constant shelling by Russians. We paid some money. We found a way to rescue her. We also had some really good people that helped us with finding her and taking her to the safe place, but it was probably one of the most difficult days for our whole family. Thank God, again, she's safe. Right now, she's also in the Kyiv region. Of course, these hard weeks were extremely difficult for her. Her health condition also worsened due to that stress and due to that shelling that she experienced in Mariupol, but I'm super glad that she's alive and we can see each other again.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Still, Mariia has experienced losses during this war.

Mariia Sirychenko: I have some people whom I know who died unfortunately in the war. My former colleagues, my relatives were in capture in spring when people were defending Mariupol. They were in Azovstal, so I had some of my relatives there and then they were in prison for six months.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Everything about day-to-day life has changed for Mariia.

Mariia Sirychenko: It allowed us to understand the biggest value that we have. It's our life, it's our freedom, it's our country. The life changed from different perspectives from day to day, for example, because since October, we started experiencing power outages, blackouts, issues with electricity, with heating, with water. We needed to get used to it, but also it's hard to understand that you can't have basic access to the things that you used to have all the time all your life.

The life also changed from a philosophical perspective again because all my family is scattered all around the world right now. My hometown is occupied by Russians since April. I don't have my home like my parents' house where I could go anytime. It's also hard from my perspective to understand that you don't have something you used to have for your whole life. Suddenly, Russians, they just took it away from you.

You need to fight for your freedom. You need to fight for your life. It's hard to reflect on the terrible things that we experience because, psychologically, my mind just tries to block all the horrors that we've been through. I try to focus on things that we can influence. I don't know when the victory will come. I don't know when we will win specifically, but I can control my actions. I try to put all my energy into the day-to-day, into work, into helping, volunteering, donating.

I think if I can share anything with people around the globe, I would say that this is something that everyone can do. Every little action counts. Every small step that we are taking together towards defending our country and towards just defending the basic human rights, defending the freedom of people will move this goal closer to us, will move this victory closer to us. I personally think that keeping positive mind even despite all the death that we face every day, it's super important.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Thank you to Mariia and Olena for sharing with us.

Mariia Sirychenko: Slava Ukraini.

Olena Shevchenko: Slava Ukraini.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: As we approach the one-year mark since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we've heard from people living through the conflict. We also wanted to hear from you. Many of you expressed sympathy for the Ukrainian people.

Byron L. Williams: Byron L. Williams calling from Washington, DC. One of the ways that I am reflecting on this anniversary is I have met several Ukrainians who have talked about wanting to go home or seeing how hard it is being in the United States while watching their home being in a war. That's really hard to think about of your home, your friends, and family going through this, and you not being able to do what you want, or just be experiencing this in a way that sometimes feels helpless and hopeless.

Mary: This is Mary from Philadelphia. February 24th has a special meaning for me. It was the birthday of my late daughter who passed away seven years ago at age 46 when Russia invaded Ukraine on her birthday. I couldn't help but think one tragedy on top of another tragedy. My heart goes out to all the people in Ukraine. The same way my heart goes out to my daughter. I just hope for a fast and humane end to this awful war that they're experiencing.

Speaker 1: The Russian Ukrainian thing is so awful. We have people who are totally innocent and all they want to do is live their lives. Another country is killing them over and over and over again. I just wish that the entire world would get together and say, "Hey, knock it off."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Some of you talk with us about wanting to see more domestic and international support for Ukraine.

Larry: Larry. I'm calling from Lambertville, New Jersey. It's more important than ever. We really have to pull this together, get all the right resources to the Ukrainians. No time to slack off on this thing now.

Ken Marish: This is Ken Marish calling from Ocala, Florida. What is crystal clear is the impotence of the world community at stopping a lone madman and his war of choice that Putin continues every day to reign destruction, death, and the ruination of so many Ukrainian lives is a crime against humanity. This war must stop. Putin must be brought to justice.

Deborah: Hi, this is Deborah from Colorado. I feel like every other country in the world should be helping Ukraine push Russia back, but I understand that it's a delicate balance when you're dealing with an opponent as unbalanced as Putin seems to be.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For many, there are feelings of helplessness and concerns that things could still get worse.

Kathryn Schmidt: My name is Kathryn Schmidt from Ridgewood, New Jersey. Each day when I watch or read about or hear about the war, I feel like I am a voyeur observing the story as it unfolds. It's like a bad dream. I wonder how this can go on. It's especially painful knowing that there is so much more we can be doing militarily but that, politically, we cannot do much more than what we are doing. I worry that years from now, decades from now, we might be viewed as bystanders, similar to how many were viewed as they stood by and watched the Holocaust.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, there are those expressions of hope.

Paul McCarthy: My name is Paul McCarthy from Massachusetts. The bravery of the Ukrainian people sustains my hope for the future.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As always, we are so grateful for all of you for sharing with us. Call us at 877-869-8253.

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