attacks in eastern ukraine on easter weekend, president zelenskyy said, i cannot understand how a christian country, the russian federation, will be killing people on these very days. this is not christian behavior at all, as i understand it. on easter, they will kill and they will be killed. leading off our discussion tonight is jelani cobb, staff writer for the new yorker and professor of journalism at columbia university, and a political contributor to msnbc. and fintan o toole, columnist for the irish times and the new york review of books. he is the author of, we don t know ourselves, a personal history of modern ireland. professor, let me begin with you. and what we learned about the man, zelenskyy, as he is approaching this greatest challenge of his life for the lives of any president.
the war was fought about. what you find is that those kinds of calcified lies only serve to facilitate later acts of tremendous aggression and in humanity. russia did before, the soviet did before with 20,000 poles. what we are seeing now is not unique but it is tremendously dangerous. and fintan o toole, in your latest piece for the irish times, you looked at this threat to democracy, which this war is. vladimir putin trying to crush his neighboring democracy and you made the point that this is a phenomenon we are seeing around the world. that this challenge, this challenge to democracy is not just there. and you have isolated a cause that is new to me and very compelling, when you say that
i think you are right in saying that it is quite an astounding interview. we have seen him speak passionately and compellingly and articulate the cause of the ukrainian people in many formats and forms. but to hear him or to read him in this format, it gives you a real sense of how nuanced and thoughtful and intelligent he is as a leader. and fintan o toole, i was struck by his comparison to germany post-world war ii. and germany s clear admission of guilt. and changing its direction in a way that the world could be confident that it was no longer nazi germany. that is rare. that s a rare outcome at the end of conflicts, that one side says, we were wrong. it seems like an outcome we can hope for but not very soon in russia.
third world nations, in comparison to the so-called first world nations, where are the raw resources for the capitalist productions coming from? you look at the u.s. relationship with haiti and its history. you would not think that russian capitalism is so a typical. in fact, russian capitalism just looks like the most brutal and non cosmetic division of capitalism we saw in the 19th century. they haven t decided to give it a facelift and make it appear to be more egalitarians than it is. so i think we have to be very clear that what we are seeing in russia should not really be surprising to us. professor jelani cobb and fintan o toole, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight. thank you. thank you. coming up, we will have more on the situation in ukraine later in the hour, and a live report from ukraine. and next, ian mackey will join us after we show you the breathtaking speech he