Another Winter of War: NRC Head Jan Egeland on Visiting Ukraine & Latest on Sudan, Gaza and Syria

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Ukraine, where residents are bracing for another winter of war as the U.N. estimates 60% of its electricity-generating capacity has been destroyed. Russian troops are now reportedly within two miles of the key eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.

The Russian offensive comes just weeks before Donald Trump returns to the White House. Trump has threatened to reduce U.S. support to Ukraine. Trump recently met in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After the meeting, Trump wrote, quote, “Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” Trump wrote.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration announced Saturday it would send a new $1 billion military aid package to Ukraine that includes drones and ammunition.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the war in Ukraine, the humanitarian crisis there, we’re joined by Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He’s joining us from Chișinău, Moldova, where he’s just arrived after several days in Ukraine. Before that, we spoke to him after he had just left Gaza saying he was broken, and has recently been in Sudan.

Jan Egeland, describe what you’re seeing in Ukraine right now, as we here in the United States see in Paris [President-elect] Trump meeting with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

JAN EGELAND: Well, what I see and those with whom I met are all testament of this third Cold War winter becoming the worst. I’ve been five times now in Ukraine these last three years, and every time you come, people are more exhausted. They have less resources. There is less electricity, less water supply. And there is this relentless bombardment, that has increased tremendously in recent weeks, on civilian population.

I was in one place that is really frontline. It’s Kherson, was the one provincial capital that the Russians were able to take in their offensive in February two-and-a-half years ago. That was then retaken by Ukrainian forces, but the Russians are on the other side the river, Dnipro, so next door. And there is multiple attacks every single day, including the day I was there.

We meet in bomb shelters with the population we serve, and help them there, but were able to create an office now there and do massive also cash relief. So, it’s so important that the United States and the other Western countries continue to support the Syrian people. What USAID is doing through us is giving tens of thousands of families much-needed cash assistance to survive this winter.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Jan, if you could also speak about — you were in Kherson, but you were also in Odesa and Mykolaiv. If you could describe the situation on the ground there, and then, also, the difficulties in providing humanitarian assistance? In this year alone, 2024, dozens of humanitarian aid workers have been killed in Ukraine.

JAN EGELAND: Yes, they have, because the courageous humanitarian aid workers, especially from the local frontline organizations that we work with, are targeted, like the civilian population. Even ambulances are repeatedly hit. First night in Odesa — first afternoon in Odesa, we had to go to the bomb shelter underneath, the Norwegian Refugee Council bomb shelter in Odesa, because there was an alert of incoming ballistic missiles.

They hit Zaporizhzhia, which is another city in the south, and a hospital was obliterated, really. I think it’s now — the toll is more than 10 dead, multiple wounded, in a hospital, really.

In Odesa, the ancient city of culture and civilization, there is blackouts all the time, as in Mykolaiv, which, of course, means that life is tough, and on top of that, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced from other locations in the south and from the east of Ukraine.

AMY GOODMAN: And the number of deaths of Ukrainian soldiers, also Russian soldiers, just astronomical, and the reports in Ukraine of recruiters going and almost, basically, abducting men to try to get them to the frontline, people increasingly resisting, and where you see this heading around the issue of whether there would be any kind of negotiation at this point between Zelensky and Putin?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, I mean, the population is exhausted. So, imagine how it is in the trenches with those soldiers. Many of them have been continuously in battle for two years now or more. But, well, what about the future? I mean, I think everybody yearn for peace, ceasefire, an end to the bombardment. But it’s not very clear to see how they could agree on anything, when one side says that they want to annex large parts of Ukraine and the other side says, “We want to liberate all parts of Ukraine.” Well, hopefully, there will be a ceasefire and there will be a negotiated end to this, so that the civilian population that we serve can have a respite in the middle of this madness.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Jan Egeland, just in the previous segment, we were talking about Syria, so I’d like to get your response to these extraordinary events in Syria in the last days. You were in Syria not long ago. And earlier this week, you know, in terms of the response around the world, especially in countries where there are large numbers of Syrian refugees, Austria, although by no means the majority of Syrian refugees — Austria announced it will begin deporting Syrian refugees following the revolution that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. About 100,000 Syrians have resettled in Austria in the 13 years since Syria’s civil war started. Meanwhile, the governments of Belgium, France, Greece, Germany and the United Kingdom said they would pause applications for asylum by Syrians. More than 14 million people have fled Syria since 2011.

You tweeted in response to this news, quote, “Hi European populist politicians, you want to push Syrian refugees back to these homes while foreign powers are still bombing and no one knows how and who will be governing the various regions of the country? It would be cruel and reckless. Those who can will voluntarily return.” So, Jan, if you could elaborate on this? First, your response to Assad’s ouster, and then this response from European governments about the status of Syrian refugees already there and applications from Syrians for asylum?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, and when I tweeted this, that you quoted, I had a photo with it that I took myself only four weeks ago in Syria, where you have entire cities leveled to the ground and not rebuilt since the horrific civil war that was going on continuously from 2012 to 2019. And I said this: “Is it this rubble you want to deport people to?”

I know Syria well. I worked with it every week now since 2011. There is jubilation and anxiety on top of each other, and in Damascus, mostly jubilation, because those who have taken over say all of the right things at the moment. But in the northeast, there is a lot of fighting between — and the various armed groups are taking territory from each other, Israel, Turkey trying to bomb the place. The various groups that are now partly or fully in power were listed by many of these Western governments as terrorists. And then they want to deport people back.

I think it’s a testament how bad politics have become in Europe and, for that matter, in the United States, that the idealism, the openness, the biblical saying, “I was a stranger, and you took me in,” that’s gone. Now people are looking at their own navel and really cherishing their nationalism and their xenophobia, it seems. I’m ashamed what are the signals coming out of one European country after the other. This is the time to invest in hope and possibilities in Syria, not to deport people back to a chaotic situation where they will have to live in rubble.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Jan Egeland, before we go, we just wanted to address Sudan, which you’ve talked about as the worst crisis in the world. The headlines today, Sudan’s military is accused of carrying out an airstrike on a marketplace in the western region of Darfur, in which more than a hundred people were killed. Emergency Lawyers rights group described the bombing as a “horrific massacre.” The fighting between the Rapid Defense Forces and Sudan, and what needs to be done, the level of hunger there, as well?

JAN EGELAND: It’s just tremendous. And these generals are really willing to fight each other to the last woman and child, it seems. I was in West Darfur, which was bombed three weeks ago, where I saw large parts of the city of Geneina ethnically cleansed from the Masalit people, the African tribe, by Arab militias in this case. In other parts of the country, there is indiscriminate bombing, etc., etc.

But there is also a lot of humanitarian heroic aid workers on the ground, including in the Norwegian Refugee Council, that with, again, assistance from the USAID, is able to provide the daily subsidized bread to a million people every morning through 800, 900 bakeries.

So, we’re there. We’re going to be fighting for the civilian population, but we need attention to this, the biggest crisis on Earth, at the same time as the Middle East is in turmoil, Ukraine is having its worst winter. We need to have — we need to really mobilize international solidarity in the months ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we have just 30 seconds, but our headline today out of Gaza is the bombing of another humanitarian convoy in Gaza. An Israeli drone strike on a convoy west of Khan Younis killed at least 13 people, injured dozens of others. You were not just in Sudan and Ukraine, but also we spoke to you right after you came out of Gaza, and you said you were broken by that.

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, and it’s a pattern. This civilian population and these women and children had nothing to do with the horrors inflicted on Israel on the 7th of October. They are innocent, and they are bombed, and they are starved by this besiegement from Israel, with American arms and American support. It’s the worst part of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. Hopefully, that will change, because it’s costing the United States and the Western powers, really. They look at hypocrisy: How come occupation by Russia in Ukraine is bad, and it’s tolerable when Israel is doing exactly the same?

AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, we want to thank you for being with us, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, joining us from Chișinău, Moldova, where he’s just arrived after several days in Ukraine, before that, Sudan, before that, in Gaza.

Coming up, we look at what some are calling Donald Trump’s #MeToo Cabinet, from Pete Hegseth to Linda McMahon to Trump himself. A number of Trump’s Cabinet picks have been accused of sexual misconduct or covering it up. Stay with us.