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“This is not a suicide mission” – the Wolverines of Ukraine
Faced with an invasion by the world’s fifth-largest army, Ukraine is doing everything to fight back, and ordinary civilians are now part of the mission.
President Volodymyr Zelensky recently promised weapons to anyone who wants them, and so far more than 25,000 automatic rifles and nearly 10 million bullets have been handed out in Kyiv alone, according to a recent video post by Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky.
Many of those weapons have been picked up by members of new volunteer defense groups that have sprung up in local communities. Under a new law passed in January, these groups are now legal across the country, and their leaders loosely report to Ukrainian army commanders. As for weapons? Their members bring whatever they can.
“It’s BYOG,” says Daniel Bilak, the leader of one such group, active on the outskirts of Kyiv, “that is: Bring Your Own Gun.”
Bilak, 61, is a Canadian-born lawyer with Ukrainian heritage who moved to Ukraine some 30 years ago. His own gun, he says, is an AR-15 that he recently bought himself in Ukraine.
The defense group he leads is called the Wolverines, a nod to the heroes of the 1984 movie “Red Dawn” about a group of American high school students who beat back a Soviet invasion of the United States. The scrappy, diminutive, blue-and-yellow clad Wolverine of X-Men fame might work as well, of course, but Bilak says he's never seen the comics or films.
In the weeks just before Russia’s invasion began, the Wolverines held weekend training sessions in fields and forests outside Kyiv. Now, with the battle for Kyiv raging, Bilak says they conduct nightly patrols to keep order and capture presumed Russian saboteurs.
For men over the age of 60, the age limit for army service, groups like the Wolverines are a way to get involved directly in the defense of the country, and they’re an important part of Ukraine’s bootstrap strategy for holding off a much larger and better-equipped Russian army.
What’s more, in the event that Russia does prevail on the battlefield, they could be the building blocks for a popular insurgency thereafter.
“If Vladimir Putin is foolish enough to try and occupy Ukraine, he will face a highly motivated and well armed population,” says James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO. “Grannies go wild could end up being his worst nightmare.”
While groups like the Wolverines are showing Ukraine’s claws against the Russian war machine, human rights experts warn about the dangers of giving out weapons to civilians with limited military training.
“As soon as you pick up that weapon,” says Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, “you lose your civilian status, which means that you can be targeted. And it also means that you have to abide by the laws of war. And of course, nobody's had training on the laws of war.”
Still, Ukrainians like Daniel believe they are taking up arms not only for their country, but for something bigger.
“We are fighting for every democratic country,” he says, “certainly in Europe and for democratic and European values.”
And despite the long odds, he says, “this is not a suicide mission.”
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How will we deal with the next pandemic?
While most of the world is still grappling with COVID, some countries — mostly wealthy ones with early access to vaccines — are thinking about preparing for the next pandemic. This sentiment ties into a wider debate about health security that was missing when the virus hit us all early last year.
Indeed, we should aspire to ensure the health security of our population instead of waiting for it to get sick, Flagship Pioneering CEO Noubar Afeyan said on June 9, during a live discussion,Stronger Partnerships for a Healthier World: Mutually Assured Protection— the second in GZERO Media's two-part discussion, Beyond the Pandemic: A Radical New Approach to Health Security, presented in partnership with Flagship Pioneering.
That'll only be possible with a level of global cooperation that remains absent even during the current pandemic, noted Eurasia Group and GZERO Media President Ian Bremmer. Right now, we seem to have learned nothing from COVID, he explained, citing the example of the US, which is more interested in investing on the tech that's on your smartphone to compete with China than in a system to help keep Americans safe from the next virus.
Also, it's too early to really talk about a global recovery when COVID is still ravaging so many parts of the world. For IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, "a two-track pandemic means a two-track recovery" which will hold the entire planet back for years. She called for all countries to focus on vaccines as the cornerstone of their economic policies, and for rich nations to realize that helping poor ones recover is in their economic interest.
UK Health Minister Matt Hancock said that this week's G7 meeting comes at the perfect time for the world's wealthiest democracies, alongside a few like-minded friends, to make strong commitments on procuring vaccines for low-income nations and donating those they don't need right now. That's fine, but "don't commit to what you cannot achieve," remarked Agnes Binagwaho, Vice Chancellor at the University of Global Health Equity, who called out rich countries and multilateral organizations like the IMF for often not walking the talk on their pledges to the developing world.
Meanwhile, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel underscored that his goal is to end the pandemic in 2022, not later, and the best hope for that to happen is for governments to help vaccine makers get hold of scarce raw materials instead of demanding patent waivers. It was capital markets and not governments, he added, that Moderna got the money from to conduct the research into mRNA technology to develop COVID jabs in record time.
Other key moments of the program:
- US Navy Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.) on the importance of using military forces to deploy soft power, for instance on vaccine distribution logistics.
- President of Global Policy & Advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Gargee Ghosh on how even enemy governments can collaborate on health, like the US and the Soviet Union did on a smallpox vaccine at the height of the Cold War.
- Geoff Martha, chairman and CEO of Medtronic, on whether or not we should nationalize certain parts of global supply chains to better deal with the next public health crisis.
- Procter & Gamble President of Global Home Care Sundar Raman on how experience in corporate partnerships applies to health security.
- Junaid Bajwa, chief medical scientist at Microsoft, on the looming shortage of doctors and other medical professionals that'll severely impact our capacity to respond to a public health crisis like a pandemic 10 years from now.
- Nestlé Health Service CEO Greg Behar on why we need a three-pronged — regulatory, government, and tech — proactive approach on health security partnerships.
- Amitabh Chandra, Director of Health Policy Research at the Harvard Kennedy School, on imagining a "parallel universe" in which Pfizer and Moderna had started developing COVID vaccines when the pandemic started, and why vaccine patent waivers are a "death sentence."
The first day of the series on June 8, Beyond the Pandemic: A Radical New Approach to Health Security, discussed what we could learn from COVID to prevent the next pandemic.
Learning from COVID to Prevent the Next Pandemic | GZERO Media Liveyoutu.be
This 2-day event was produced by GZERO Media in partnership with Flagship Pioneering. We thank our event partners, Partnership for a Healthier America and Medtronic.
Is the US military investing in the wrong kinds of weapons?
In comparing the American military defense spending to China's, former US admiral and best-selling author James Stavridis is concerned that the US is too focused on legacy systems. In a conversation with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, he discusses the role of the private sector in the development of US defense capabilities and the need to move towards higher end technologies, which he says China has already done. "They get to make decisions and move out with big land armies, tanks, aircraft carriers in ways we are retarded from doing by the messiness, as wonderful as it is, of our democratic system," Stavridis points out.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
How China plans to achieve global military dominance
The US still enjoys military superiority over China, but for how long? Retired admiral James Stavridis believes it's important to understand how determined China is to establish global dominance. The Chinese defense budget is focused on strategic initiatives including offensive cyber, militarizing space and quantum computing. Furthermore, China's approach to education is intended to secure an advantage. "They're pumping out huge numbers of people with advanced degrees. They're investing government resources into the kind of R&D that we should be doing more of here in the United States," Stavridis tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
Is the US military’s reliance on technology a vulnerability?
What happens to US defense systems in case of a cyber attack? "The American military needs a Plan B, because these exquisite systems upon which we have come to rely so deeply, because they were invulnerable fighting the Taliban, or fighting Al-Qaeda, they're not invulnerable anymore," argues Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), who also served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander. He discusses the benefit of having analog alternatives for US military operations in a discussion with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Watch the episode: What could spark a US-China war?
What could spark a US-China war?
Ask national security experts how they view China today and they'll likely the use a term like "adversary" or "economic competitor." But what about "enemy?" How close is the world to all-out-war breaking out between United States and China? According to US Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), who served as Supreme Allied Commander to NATO, those odds are higher than many would like to admit. In fact, Stavridis says, the US risks losing its military dominance in the coming years to China. And if push comes to shove in a military conflict, it's not entirely clear who would prevail. Admiral Stavridis speaks with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World and makes the case for why the fictional depiction in his bestselling new military thriller 2034 of a US-China war could easily become reality.
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Podcast: How a US-China war could happen: Warning from ret. admiral James Stavridis
Listen: Ask national security experts how they view China today and they'll likely the use a term like "adversary" or "economic competitor." But what about "enemy?" How close is the world to all-out-war breaking out between United States and China? According to US Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), who served as Supreme Allied Commander to NATO, those odds are higher than many would like to admit. In fact, Stavridis says, the US risks losing its military dominance in the coming years to China. And if push comes to shove in a military conflict, it's not entirely clear who would prevail. Admiral Stavridis discusses his bestselling new military thriller 2034 and makes the case for why his fictional depiction of a US-China war could easily become reality.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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What would a Chinese invasion of Taiwan look like?
When asked about where a US-China war may start, US Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.) doesn't hesitate: Taiwan. He suggests that China may believe the US is distracted by internal politics: "I think it would be a miscalculation on the part of the Chinese, but they may calculate that now is the moment." How would a move against Taiwan play out? Stavridis speculates how the Chinese military may plan to invade the island on the upcoming episode of GZERO World, which begins airing on US public television Friday, May 14. Check local listings.