Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused massive disruption in the country, and while actual numbers are impossible to know, Western intelligence agencies recently estimated that more than 100,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded and the official Ukrainian civilian death toll is at least 8,000 — though many suspect those numbers are actually higher. As many as 200,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded since the war began.
More than 14-million Ukrainians have fled their homes — and as many as 1-million Russians have left their country. And, since the war began an estimated 20,000 Russians have been arrested for protesting the war while the country’s economy suffers.
We get a sense of how Russia’s war on Ukraine is impacting Russian people with Dr. Kathryn Stoner, she is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law — both at Stanford University — where she is also a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy). Dr. Stoner is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.
Dr. Stoner was on campus recently giving a talk called “Making Autocracy Worse: How Putin's War in Ukraine has Ruined 30 Years of Reform in Russia” as part of the 2023 Florida Gulf Coast University Liebert World Affairs Lecture Series so we brought her by the studio to chat.
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