How the Baltic states are fighting against Russian disinformation.
On the Border of the Ideal

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In times of war it is difficult not to lose hope for a better future. Especially if a commitment to freedom and democracy has dangerous consequences. ON THE BORDER OF THE IDEAL follows four young activists from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland who continue to fight against injustice. What does freedom mean to them? And where does their fighting spirit come from?
Belarusian Jana Shostak knew from an early age that she wanted to flee. She got into trouble after writing a protest slogan in the snow in Minsk. Now living in Poland, Jana sees inhuman situations arising through all the refugee flows (first Iraqi and Syrian, now Ukraine). Some Ukrainian refugees even travel back because they cannot cope with the situation in Poland.
Polish activist Janek Spiewak has been fighting against Polish oligarchs and the neoliberal state all his adult life. In 2018, Janek ran for mayor of Warsaw, but he realized that the system would never accept him. There are hardly any social facilities, hospitals do not function, the rule of law is under pressure and the housing shortage is high. With more than two million refugees from Ukraine, the future looks worrisome.
Aleksandr Konovalov is the son of a Belarusian mother and a Ukrainian father, but he has lived in Russia all his life. He fled Moscow after years of worries about Russian oppression and has been living in Poland for two years. The arrival of thousands of refugees to the Polish city of Wroclaw, his home port, has awakened the activist in him. From Poland he tries to make his former compatriots change their mind.
As the initiator of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, Daria Kaleniuk fights against corruption in Ukraine. Among other things, the organization ensured that anti-corruption legislation was drafted in Ukraine. After the war in Ukraine broke out, she no longer felt safe and fled to Poland. The war has given new meaning to the struggle for freedom and democracy around the world. How do ideals survive in times of deep crisis?
Citation
Main credits
Luyn, Floris-Jan van (film director)
Beumer, Jeroen (film producer)
Other credits
Camera, Christian Paulussen; editor, Daan Wierda.
Distributor subjects
No distributor subjects provided.Keywords
WEBVTT
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[upbeat music]
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Know what we play?
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I fuck your wife.
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we\'re forced to ask ourselves
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just how much is democracy really worth to us?
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For the people in the region,
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it wasn\'t a question
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but a reason to act.
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But this is what Ukraine needs now, we need arms.
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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A reason to keep believing.
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You have to create it by your own, you know?
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So I fight for justice.
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I fight for freedom, and I fight for equity.
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[speaking in foreign language]
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the interests of others first.
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[speaking in foreign language]
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Backlight follows four young activists in Poland
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on the borders of freedom, exploring to what extent
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our principles can survive in times of deep crisis.
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This is \"Backlight\".
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Welcome to the world of the ideal.
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There was a time when Russia
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was the subject of heroic stories.
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Russia still celebrates its victory
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over Nazi Germany every year.
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Over the past 80 years, however,
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Russia has trampled over everyone and everything.
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A development felt across the entire region.
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In a country with such a burdened history,
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it takes a lot of courage and perseverance
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to keep hoping for, even fighting for better times.
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Poland, once a Soviet satellite state
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is becoming a haven for the suppressed
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and the persecuted.
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Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians.
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Some decide to stay and fight for their ideals
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without the use of flags that is.
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Not quite popular right now.
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[Putin speaking in foreign language]
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[crowd cheering]
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[Aleksandr speaking in foreign language]
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[Putin speaking in foreign language]
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[Aleksandr speaking in foreign language]
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[crowd chanting in foreign language]
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[Aleksandr speaking in foreign language]
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Aleksandr decided to leave Russia with his Polish wife.
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They now live in Wroclaw.
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And because he wanted to do something,
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instead of just sitting there watching,
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he became an activist.
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[train engine roaring]
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[Aleksandr speaking in foreign language]
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I\'ve have to explain my eldest son
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why I don\'t have time to go to the shop
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and buy him hamster.
[giggles]
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And he was saying, \"Okay, but my birthday soon,
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are we gonna come back?
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I want to go home and celebrate my birthday
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with my friends in Kiev.\"
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And saying, \"Well son, I will try my best.
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But I don\'t know.\"
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[explosion booms]
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Now I\'m educating myself
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what are the differences between MIG-29s
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and F-16s and F35s
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and what is needed for whether Ukrainian army
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can operate F-16s
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and how long will it take for them to operate F-16s.
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I feel myself a little bit like an arms dealer now
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but this is what Ukrainians need now, we need arms.
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We need weapon.
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And I have to learn how to,
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how this world of weapon supply works.
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If you are provoked and attacked for long enough,
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a fire awakens,
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like it did with Daria.
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Before her flight from the Ukraine,
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she led her own NGO that fought against corruption
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and the influence of Russian money
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which was there long before the violence.
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and Russia\'s people is,
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unlike Germans,
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Russian society didn\'t go through some,
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you know, clearing exercise.
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Soviet Union was a totalitarian regime.
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KGB then FSB, they were not punished.
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They were not forbidden
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after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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You know, people didn\'t say that it was wrong.
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Unlike it was done in Germany, in Nazi Germany.
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And what it led to, it led to these secret services
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which were killing, robbing, raping,
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murdering for 80 years, millions of people.
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They took over power.
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And what we have now, it\'s Putin who is himself
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a product of FSB and KGB
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and he will not stop.
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[eerie music]
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[weapons exploding]
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one could easily forget how a similar bloody war
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took place two years ago in Belarus,
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during a failed attempt to expel a friend of Putin\'s.
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This was the reason she fled to Poland,
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where she creates awareness for her cause.
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[Jana screaming]
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[ominous music]
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someone with creative ideas
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which she uses to make a political point.
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Like this dress, which features the faces
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of 1200 prisoners of war,
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gracefully displayed in a gallery in Warsaw.
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It didn\'t go down well in her own country, Belarus.
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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I didn\'t sell any of them in three months.
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through an activist\'s lens,
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it\'s hard to understand why an authoritarian state
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doesn\'t trigger global protest.
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An activist sees no other solution
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than to take action, no matter where or how.
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the next day after the Russian invasion
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is because of the Russians assassination list.
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Information that such list exists was published
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in many medium before the war.
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And basically the plans of Russian government
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was and probably still is
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to eliminate people who create problems for them.
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A few days before war started
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Vladimir Putin made a long speech.
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I listened to this speech to understand his mood.
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[Putin speaking in foreign language]
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And after the speech, I had two conclusions.
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First, that the war will happen for sure,
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in the coming days it will start.
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That the war will happen actually against entire Ukraine.
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He was actually challenging the right
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for our country to exist.
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The second thing, as he mentioned,
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all reforms I was working for during the last eight years.
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the approach to oligarchs,
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dismantling old power structures.
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That\'s what hits the Russian state at its core.
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into anti-corruption activities
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towards Putin and his oligarchs.
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We made a map of assets owned by this oligarchs in Europe,
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in Germany, in France, in in Great Britain,
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in Austria, in the United States.
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And we were campaigning, asking for these countries
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to freeze this assets immediately
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to impose sanctions before war started.
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And we made it hard for also Ukrainian oligarchs
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simply to treat Ukrainian state
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as their business empire.
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So what we were doing in Ukraine was building
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out of ruins which our country was after the Soviet Union,
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the really democratic country
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where people can live in dignity,
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where you can go and protect your interest in courts,
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where there are strong institutions
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which can punish for robbing the country.
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And we were quite successful to that
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and this irritated Putin.
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[eerie music]
[explosion rumbles]
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Refuge, the war, so ...
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And then we\'ll, we\'ll decide what to do later, I think
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and if you need something, just write to me.
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We\'ll always try to help you somehow.
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At the beginning, I took one family to my apartment
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but they moved almost immediately to Germany.
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The cat stayed. [laughs]
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depending on the gravity of the situation.
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Some people lobby for F-16s, others help refugees.
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But the Polish activist Janek fights a different battle.
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One against an intolerant government,
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corruption and real estate tycoons,
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because in Poland, its authoritarian past
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is the root of the problem.
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public housing whatsoever.
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And now with the influx of the refugees,
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you basically you cannot rent anything right now
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because the housing stock is so low.
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I\'m from intelligentsia family.
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I\'m basically, I\'m very privileged
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even though I don\'t have so much money.
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I wasn\'t aware of the problems of working people here.
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And it turned out that basically organized crime
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is taking over buildings and kicking out people
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from the buildings and destroying people\'s lives.
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this is his area of expertise.
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As a sociologist, he explored how
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old communist power structures
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still reign in the country.
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and probably the same as in other countries,
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especially post-communist countries
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was set up by the secret services,
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you know, in the late eighties.
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So when the communists started to fail,
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they tried to somehow, you know,
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privatize as much as they could.
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Yeah, like elites, from the communist elites.
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And so they started to run this,
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you know, crime groups in order to, you know
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to have people who would do their criminal work.
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They took over the houses and they would kick out,
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you know, people who were before
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you know, city tenants, communal tenants.
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And then they would privatize it
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and they would sell it on the market
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and they would buy these properties,
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the rights to these properties for 1% of the value,
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maybe even sometimes even less.
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But this building also was re-privatized.
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And you can see that it\'s empty.
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You know, like people were kicked out,
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somebody got it for free basically,
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so they can keep them empty.
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I believe that they stole around 4,000 buildings
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50,000 people were displaced and nobody fucking cared.
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Most of my work right now
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is to change mentality of the people.
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That people are not, you know, subjects,
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they\'re human and but this is how it works.
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We have this kind of, you know,
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post feudal structure in our society.
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It\'s a jungle basically.
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[ominous music]
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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all for the greater good obviously depends
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on how much you can take on.
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Some people move mountains,
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others do what they can,
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as long as it helps.
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[Janek and refugee speaking in foreign language]
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Being an activist or aid worker can be very simple.
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In fact, sometimes it\'s enough to just talk
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and listen to people in their own language.
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Something he wouldn\'t mind for himself.
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[Janek speaking in foreign language]
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[mouse clicks]
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How long do you just sit and watch for?
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When do you start to act?
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It\'s hard to imagine from the point of view
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of a safe and stable country,
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how much courage it takes for someone to speak their mind,
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let alone to turn your whole life upside down
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by moving to another country
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in order to continue the battle from there.
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[man and crowd chanting]
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[calm music]
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It\'s quite popular in Poland and also in Ukraine.
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[calm music]
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[Kaczynsji speaking in foreign language]
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where there is more than enough to get worked up about,
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enough to campaign for.
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After all, Poland is one of the countries
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that still faces the legacy of communist dictatorship.
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It may be an EU member
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but Poland also boasts a long tradition
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of nepotism and intolerance.
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And that is exactly what aggravates him
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and causes him to spring into action.
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[Kaczynsji speaking in foreign language]
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Nepotism, you know, like is huge here.
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Corruption is huge here.
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So I came up with this new phrase, \"cupboard state\"
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which is basically a very weak state
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that doesn\'t solve people\'s problems.
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This neoliberalism that was put on us
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after fall of communism,
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this hardcore individualization of everything,
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that you are on your own, you have to fight,
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nobody will help you.
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You need to be, you know, wolf or you will be eaten.
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You know, all this horrible things
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that were were forced on us.
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I was elected when I was 27 to the Council of Warsaw
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and I ran for mayor of Warsaw in 2018.
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when you feel very strongly about something
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is to take it to the next level,
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to go into politics.
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Unfortunately, Poland is not so enamored
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with busy bodies like him.
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It\'s always been like that
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because men with good connections keep quiet.
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Not this one though.
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it\'ll be easy, you know,
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I will become a council member.
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You know, I will be helping people
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and I will try to do, you know, good things to them
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and they will re reward me in the next elections.
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I was like central left at the beginning.
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And then I radicalized
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because I saw that the biggest problems
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that I have to deal with in my work
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are the problems that are caused by big money.
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his 30th no less
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because the establishment has its ways
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and knows exactly what to do.
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All you can do about it is laugh.
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[men speaking in foreign language]
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because they will never allow me in the politics
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because I\'m too dangerous
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because I\'m basically not allowing them to steal buildings.
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But from guy, from good family, from intelligentsia,
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son of a professor at the university
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does this kind of stuff, I\'m a class traitor
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because if I wouldn\'t be saying this stuff all the time
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and fighting for these people
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I could be in a very nice, you know, position right now.
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Some kind of, you know, public post or whatever.
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I have some friends, but it\'s a lonely fight.
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[host speaking in foreign language]
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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[crowd applauding]
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[Jana sighs]
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[crowd applauding]
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[crowd applauding]
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[crowd applauding]
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[crowd applauding]
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I head the Anti-Corruption Action Center from Ukraine
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and I passed the border a couple of days ago.
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I\'m from Kiev.
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Most of my family, most of my team members,
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are still in the Ukraine, in Kiev.
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Britain guaranteed our security under Budapest memorandum.
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So you\'re coming to Poland,
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you\'re not coming to Kiev, Prime Minister.
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You\'re not coming to Lviv.
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Because you are afraid.
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Because NATO is not willing to defend.
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Because NATO Is afraid of the World War III.
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But it has already started.
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And these are Ukrainian children who are there,
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taking the hit.
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You\'re talking about more sanctions, prime minister,
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but Roman Abramovic is not sanctioned.
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He is in London.
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His children are not in the bombardments.
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His children are there, in London.
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Putin\'s children are in Netherlands, in Germany.
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In mansions.
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Where are all these mansions seized?
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I don\'t see that.
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I see that my family members,
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that my team members are saying that we are crying.
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We don\'t know where to run.
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This is what is happening, Prime Minster.
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396
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for your questions
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and thank you for getting here today and I\'m glad-
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399
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there was opportunity to stop Hitler
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with smaller costs
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of efforts and lives in 1939.
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But everyone was trying, you know,
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to solve its own problems.
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For the cost first of Austria
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and then for the cost of Czechoslovakia
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and then for the cost of Poland,
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giving more to the dictator
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and being afraid to provoke the dictator.
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Warsaw didn\'t, was ruined in 90% of ruins.
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Mariopul has 90% of of ruins.
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What does it remind?
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It reminds that the World War III has already started.
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Putin is challenging the liberal democracy.
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Putin is challenging existing international institutions
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and international order.
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Ukraine is just a battle field.
417
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418
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419
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to keep fighting for the greater good,
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particularly in former Soviet republics
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where the tide is turning very slowly.
422
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Many generations have fought for freedom in the past.
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This entire region\'s soil is drenched with blood.
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[ominous music]
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[speaking in foreign language]
426
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427
00:43:34.680 --> 00:43:39.600
Russia once fought for a cause that he, at least understood.
428
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He takes comfort in this memory.
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[speaking in foreign language]
430
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431
00:44:57.960 --> 00:45:01.110
and but they were accepted by Russia.
432
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They were part of Russia then, that\'s quite interesting.
433
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My grandmother from my mother\'s side
434
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and my grandmother from my father\'s side,
435
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they survived the war in Russia.
436
00:45:09.360 --> 00:45:12.150
So it\'s quite interesting that for my grandparents,
437
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Russia was the place that saved Jews, basically,
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from the German oppression.
439
00:45:18.990 --> 00:45:20.820
We have also this feeling that they saved
440
00:45:20.820 --> 00:45:24.990
part of our family, but now everything has changed.
441
00:45:24.990 --> 00:45:26.850
They are the fascist regime that wants to
442
00:45:26.850 --> 00:45:30.120
wipe out people who are not from their ethnicity,
443
00:45:30.120 --> 00:45:31.473
which is crazy, you know?
444
00:45:33.990 --> 00:45:36.480
This house was part of the German district
445
00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:38.610
during the second World War.
446
00:45:38.610 --> 00:45:42.157
And basically during the war it was a place where,
447
00:45:42.157 --> 00:45:44.887
you know officers of Wehrmacht lived.
448
00:45:44.887 --> 00:45:47.460
So you can see from the windows here,
449
00:45:47.460 --> 00:45:51.300
you can basically see the headquarters of war.
450
00:45:51.300 --> 00:45:56.163
So Gestapo, where horrible things happened during the war.
451
00:45:58.710 --> 00:46:03.240
It\'s quite symbolic that Jewish family could survive
452
00:46:03.240 --> 00:46:05.580
the the Holocaust is living now.
453
00:46:05.580 --> 00:46:07.323
So we, yeah, we won.
454
00:46:08.220 --> 00:46:10.770
Life won over death
455
00:46:10.770 --> 00:46:13.773
and hopefully it will stay this way.
456
00:46:18.293 --> 00:46:23.210
[Lukashenko speaking in foreign language]
457
00:46:43.170 --> 00:46:45.660
458
00:46:45.660 --> 00:46:47.490
How long they stay however,
459
00:46:47.490 --> 00:46:49.590
depends on the people who have the guts
460
00:46:49.590 --> 00:46:51.603
to stand up and speak their mind.
461
00:46:52.470 --> 00:46:55.440
Maybe this is what activists, however much
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00:46:55.440 --> 00:46:58.920
or little they do, are trying to tell us.
463
00:46:58.920 --> 00:47:02.700
As long as there are people who rob others of their freedom
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00:47:02.700 --> 00:47:04.950
there will be people like them,
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people who are prepared to reclaim that freedom.
466
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[Jana speaking in foreign language]
467
00:47:47.513 --> 00:47:50.180
468
00:47:51.150 --> 00:47:53.760
You understand what is freedom
469
00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:55.413
when you are about to lose it.
470
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[Aleksandr speaking in foreign language]
471
00:48:05.646 --> 00:48:09.930
472
00:48:09.930 --> 00:48:14.096
And freedom ends when somebody else freedom starts.
473
00:48:14.096 --> 00:48:18.513
[Jana speaking in foreign language]
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475
00:48:34.655 --> 00:48:37.405
476
00:48:39.096 --> 00:48:41.679
[upbeat music]