This is a very important question, because the whole question about the information war is very acute. We have not only active military aggression happening in Ukraine but also economic aggression happening against Ukraine by the Russian Federation. Perhaps even more dramatic and more worrying is the information war that's being waged by the Russian Federation both in Ukraine and frankly across the world. There have been many studies, including in the U.S., around the extent of this information war. That whole region along the borderline or the contact zone is under heavy influence of the Russian propaganda war. It is troubling and it is problematic.
The disinformation war is really focused on Ukraine being a failed state. My co-presenter here, my colleague, painted Ukraine as a failed state and, therefore, we should just give up on them and let them try to figure their own way out. But the reality is that eastern Ukraine and the areas around the conflict zone are, in fact, turning and seeing that.... When the war first broke out, the extent of support for Kiev was significantly lower than it is today.
I've had the privilege or the opportunity to visit the front lines, where I met brave primarily men who were largely from the east. When I was speaking with them, they would show me that their families were either on the front line or behind the occupied territories, and they are there defending their families. These are Russian-speaking, some ethnically Russian. With this whole discussion around ethnic Russian versus Russian-speaking,...at the end of the day, what Vladimir Putin has done for Ukraine is to make it a strong, unified country.
There will be challenges with reintegrating the occupied territories, absolutely. That's why it would be premature to force Ukraine to have immediate elections in that region. First of all, you have between 1.5 million and two million people who have been displaced, and it takes some time to reintegrate. That's why it's important for there to be a UN peacekeeping mission to move all the Russian troops and artillery and hundreds of tanks out of that region, and to allow time for people to resettle, to create peace and stability, and then to hold democratic elections in that region.