- 35 minutes ago
If Russia wins in Ukraine, the story is not peace — it is occupation, and this episode explains what that means for ordinary people. Elvira Bary breaks down how Russian rule already works in places it controls, from Crimea’s polished showcase to the old Donbas model and the harsher occupations that followed 2022.
The episode traces the real mechanics of takeover: filtration, forced passports, property seizures, school indoctrination, disappearances, and the slow pressure that turns daily life into a test of compliance. It is a political analysis and narrated documentary about war in Ukraine, Russian occupation, human rights, and the future of civilians under authoritarian control.
Created for listeners searching for Ukraine war analysis, Russia occupation documentary, Crimea and Donbas history, and narrated geopolitical commentary. It also fits searches for military history, current affairs, human rights reporting, and long-form political education about what occupation looks like on the ground.
The episode traces the real mechanics of takeover: filtration, forced passports, property seizures, school indoctrination, disappearances, and the slow pressure that turns daily life into a test of compliance. It is a political analysis and narrated documentary about war in Ukraine, Russian occupation, human rights, and the future of civilians under authoritarian control.
Created for listeners searching for Ukraine war analysis, Russia occupation documentary, Crimea and Donbas history, and narrated geopolitical commentary. It also fits searches for military history, current affairs, human rights reporting, and long-form political education about what occupation looks like on the ground.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Let's ask the question nobody wants to picture all the way to the end.
00:05If Russia wins this war, what happens to the people of Ukraine the next day
00:12and the next year? We don't want to guess in the dark.
00:17Russia already controls Ukrainian territory. We've already seen the pattern. How they build a
00:23showcase, how they crash dissent, how they rewrite law, and how they turn daily life into a loyalty
00:32test. I am Elvira Barry, a writer born in the Soviet Union. Today I want to show you what Russian
00:40rule
00:40looks like where it's already in place and what that tells us about the future if Moscow gets what
00:49it wants. Here's our roadmap for today. Crimea's showcase. Why Crimea got the best version of
00:57occupation and why that won't be repeated. The old Donbass. What takeover looked like in the
01:06territories occupied in 2014. The newer occupations. What Russia did in 2022 faster and far more brutal.
01:15A grim future. What awaits ordinary Ukrainians if Russia wins. If you want more analysis like this,
01:24subscribe, like, share, or join my think tank. You can also support the channel via PayPal or Superthings.
01:31And yes, hype points help this video travel. And if you are listening on Spotify, tap
01:39follow so you don't miss the next episode. Now, let's start with the most polished version of
01:47Russian occupation. Crimea. Crimea's showcase.
01:54For anyone who grew up in the USSR, Crimea is our version of a seaside paradise. This name evokes the
02:03smell of pine and salt. A warm surf and shaded streets climbing up the green hills. Sweet peaches with
02:11juice dripping down your wrist. The word Crimea also rings with status. In Soviet life, going to the sea
02:20was not routine. If you could take your family to Crimea, it meant you weren't nobody. You had a job
02:28with connections, a union, voucher, or money. Crimea became a major tourist destination long before the
02:37Soviet Union. It was the empire's answer to the Mediterranean with a mild climate and a coastline built for
02:45sanatoriums and resorts. By 2014, the peninsula was pulling in about 6 million visitors a year.
02:55That's why the 2014 annexation landed so well with many people in Russia, even though Russians had been
03:03traveling to Crimea perfectly fine before. Some even settled down there or bought a second home.
03:11The annexation felt like we got something valuable back. Like the country won a prize. But the prize
03:19was not really for ordinary people in Vorkuta, Caluga, or Череповец. The real value went to the people who
03:28control land, permits, and budgets. Since the peaceful annexation in March 2014, Crimea was treated as a
03:38showcase. A proof that annexation can be made normal. A proof that the world can reach, sanction, condemn,
03:48and life will still go on even better than before under Russia's rule. So, yes, Russia built things. The
03:57Kerch Bridge alone was priced around 228 billion rubles or 3.7 billion dollars. There were new roads,
04:07new terminals, new facades. The Russian government also kept pumping money through long federal
04:14programs meant to develop Crimea and Sevastopol. But every showcase was a backdoor. And if you step
04:23through it, you meet the real logic of occupation. Start with politics. Crimea did not become a loyal region
04:32because people changed their minds. It became quiet because dissent was made dangerous. The freedom of speech
04:40in the peninsula is non-existent, as is normal civic life. Everyone who disagrees with the official stance is
04:49treated as a criminal and persecuted. For example, Russia banned the Mechilis, the representative body of the
04:57Crimean Tatars, a native people of the peninsula. Under Ukraine, their culture, language, and self-governance
05:04as an ethnic minority were protected. But Moscow branded the Mechilis extremist.
05:11Human rights monitors have documented years of raids, pressure, and politically motivated persecution
05:18aimed at critics, journalists, and Crimean Tatar activists. Many of them received outrageously long
05:25sentences. There's a face to this. Ramzi Bikirov was a citizen journalist linked to the grassroots
05:33initiative Crimean Solidarity. He covered searches and trials. He helped families of detainees. He was
05:43arrested after a search and later received a 19-year sentence. That's what stability can mean in Crimea.
05:52The street looks calm, but the people who speak out get removed. Then there's the everyday economy,
06:01the part that does not fit the brochure. Tourism was Crimea's strongest industry. After annexation,
06:08the number of visitors plummeted because a huge share of tourists used to come from mainland Ukraine.
06:16Moscow tried to patch the hole with pressure and subsidies. State companies were nudged to buy
06:23Crimean packaged tours for tens of thousands of employees. A vacation in Crimea campaign pushed
06:30semi-compulsory government-subsidized trips. Over time, the best customer became security services officers.
06:40They had money to spend, and they aren't allowed to spend vacations outside Russia.
06:47Crimea briefly hit a domestic peak in 2021 when pandemic closures helped drive a record
06:539.4 million summer visitors. But once the war became a daily backdrop, the tourist story collapsed.
07:03In June 2022, the occupation authorities had to admit that tourist numbers were down 40%.
07:11A hotel owner told the Moscow Times that rooms that used to sell out months in advance were running at
07:19about 30% capacity in June, hoping to reach 60% in July and August. And yet tourism didn't die
07:28completely,
07:28even after the full-scale invasion. It shrank, it got riskier, but it didn't disappear.
07:35Plenty of people still shrugged off danger and went anyway. They take a train from Siberia to
07:43lay on the beach where drones and missiles have been hitting military sites and infrastructure for months.
07:50It's like the human brain refuses to accept that a vacation place can also be a war zone, so people
07:59just keep booking rooms. But not all tourists are that brave. For many locals, that means they can't
08:08make enough money during the tourist season to support their families through the rest of the year. And
08:14government subsidies are dying out as well as Russia's entire economy becomes stretched.
08:20Then you get to the darker economy of Crimea – property and ownership. After 2014, the occupation
08:27authorities moved fast to nationalized Ukrainian state assets and Ukrainian-owned businesses. Some of
08:34what was seized was later privatized again, sold through tenders that rewarded insiders. One investigative
08:42report counted 967 land tenders from 2014 to 2022, with property sold for more than 27 billion rubles in
08:55starting prices. Another example shows how it worked in practice. The famous Novi Svet sparkling wine plant
09:04was effectively confiscated and re-registered as a state unitary enterprise under the Crimean
09:12authorities. For ordinary people, this wasn't abstract geopolitics. It changed what law even meant. Your
09:19Ukrainian document stopped being proof of anything and your ownership started depending on whether the
09:27new system recognized you. For opposition-minded Russians, setting foot in the occupied Crimea,
09:34let alone buying property there, was an absolute taboo.
09:38But plenty of people weren't so careful. They saw low prices and grabbed what looked like a once-in-a
09:46-lifetime
09:46deal – around $50,000 for a seaside apartment. Of course, it was bought on credit because who has that
09:55kind of cash lying around? Then the full-scale war started and suddenly it was not a smart investment. It
10:04was a
10:04trap. The loans stayed, but using the apartment became difficult or impossible. I know a woman who fell
10:14into this trap. She was happy with her Crimean property for a few years, but the full-scale invasion
10:21changed everything. She was left holding an illiquid asset that no one wanted. At first, she hoped the war
10:30would end quickly in Russia's favor. She even supported the invasion online in front of her five-digit
10:38followership. When she realized that quick victory wasn't coming, she went quiet and deleted those posts.
10:47And underneath all this, the population has been changing. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have
10:55moved to Crimea since 2014, while large numbers of people left, including many Ukrainians and Crimean
11:03Tatars. Even basic resources show how fragile the story is. Water has been Crimea's chronic vulnerability
11:11for years. Local water sources can completely cover demand. Before annexation, the peninsula was supplied with
11:20Dnipro water through the North Crimean Channel. Afterwards, Moscow blamed water shortages on Ukraine,
11:28who cut off the supply. At the same time, little was done to find and develop other sources or to
11:35transport
11:35water more efficiently. The evil regime in Kyiv is making you suffer story was propaganda gold. Too good to
11:43swap it for some mundane gains like bringing clean water to every home. Another basic thing that started to
11:50show the strain is fuel. In 2025, Crimea imposed rationing and froze fuel prices as shortages persisted.
11:58The cause was refinery disruptions and the wider fuel crunch in Russia. But Crimea was hit the hardest
12:07as it completely depends on fuel supply from the mainland. And that's still the best-case scenario of
12:13Russian occupation. A story from the time when the Kremlin was willing to hold back violence
12:19and spent lots of money to show that it was a better master than Ukraine. Other regions had it much
12:27worse.
12:28Before we continue, I'd like to show you a short book trailer for my novel about the Russian revolution
12:34of 1917, the event at the root of so many of the problems Russia still struggles with today.
12:41In the summer of 1917, few people realized that Russia was on the verge of an unprecedented catastrophe.
12:51But the journalist's instinct never let Kling Rogov down. The moment he returned to his hometown from
12:58many years spent abroad, he sensed that a storm was coming.
13:06His plan was to claim his inheritance and return to Buenos Aires, where his successful career and fans awaited.
13:17But one unexpected encounter changed all. A countess, a business prodigy,
13:26a brave woman who dared to break all the rules of the polite society and be a winner despite all
13:35odds.
13:43Krim just could not left her behind and she refused to leave her business and family and follow him for
13:51Argentina.
13:55So he stayed with her to be an eyewitness of Russia exploding with powers so mighty it would change world
14:06history forever.
14:08Russian treasures, a story of survival, the most brutal civil war Europe ever saw and the dawn of the communist
14:18state.
14:32The Old Donbass
14:36Donbass was built as a Soviet industrial project. The state poured money into coal, steel, machine building
14:43and chemical industries. So the region looked developed in a very Soviet way.
14:50Big plants, big payrolls, big cities designed around one employer and well-stocked stores.
14:59After 1991, it turned out that a lot of that industrial wealth only worked inside a protected,
15:04captive market. When that market collapsed, Ukraine faced a brutal choice – close mines and plants
15:14and create mass unemployment or keep them alive with subsidies. It chose subsidies, huge ones,
15:23especially around coal. That kept towns functioning but also locked in corruption,
15:30areas, black market and illegal mines with horrible working conditions.
15:36In the 2000s, high global metal prices and strong steel exports helped parts of Donbass feel relatively
15:44prosperous. Even if that prosperity was uneven, fragile and tied to a few sectors that could crash fast.
15:53Still, Donetsk was the second richest region in Ukraine by GDP per capita, behind only Kyiv.
16:01The regional capital, Donetsk city, was known as the city of roses. Very clean, well-maintained,
16:09with wide avenues and beautiful flower beds. Many locals took pride in how well they did compare
16:17it with the rest of Ukraine. Local identity and politics were complicated. Donbass was heavily
16:23Russian-speaking due to Soviet-era migration, and language status was politically charged there.
16:30Relations with Kyiv were often tense, not because people hated Ukraine, but because the region's
16:36economy depended on state subsidies. When national politics kept suing in between competing visions,
16:45people in Donbass saw it as a threat to their personal safety and well-being. That's where Moscow moved in
16:53to
16:53play on these concerns, amplifying them. You feed the country, but you are not respected. Kyiv
17:01will close your mind. The state will ban your language. Russia is richer, so you'll be better off.
17:09This pitch sounded possible to those whose life was tied to one plant and one paycheck. At that time,
17:17Russia was, on average, about three times richer than Ukraine. But occupation did not bring a better
17:24life. It brought dependency, coercion, and economic decline. In 2014, Russia sent people and weapons to
17:33fight in Donbass against Ukraine, but spent years pretending it was a folk uprising of miners and
17:40tractor drivers who somehow acquired armored vehicles and missiles. Even after investigators piled up
17:48evidence of Russian involvement, the official line stayed the same. It's not us. The troops are not ours.
17:58Later came the slower normalization of the lie. Putin acknowledging Russian military specialists in
18:06eastern Ukraine. Inside Russia, it was sold as, we don't abandon our own. On the ground, it looked like
18:14an occupation and a quiet population swap. Many younger people left because there was no future to build.
18:22The people who stayed were often the true believers of Russian Spring, plus pensioners who couldn't move.
18:30And in came waves of temporary workers, security men, and soldiers. People earning money in a place that
18:40increasingly functions as a military hub. In the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's
18:47Republic, puppet states that existed between 2014 and 2022, the state became the main employer and the main
18:57payer. Local budgets leaned heavily on Russia, most of all energy support that kept the lights on even as
19:06the real economy shrank. Coal mines were closed, industries were cut off from their old supply chains
19:13in Ukraine, and many workers were left with years of wage arrears. In June 2020, miners in Antrecet in the
19:22Luhansk region went on strike over unpaid wages. Their response was not negotiations. It was
19:31clampdown. Authorities used a quarantine pretext, blocked internet access, arrested dozens of protesters,
19:39and some stayed in custody for months. Politics followed the same logic. Since 2014, the region
19:46saw a lot of arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment by the newly formed militias.
19:53They used brutal methods that read like a checklist of what breaks a person fast. This was not random
20:01violence, but a deliberate policy backed by Moscow. If you can make a few people disappear, everyone else
20:09learns to whisper. Stanislav Oseyev is one of the clearest human stories here. He was a Ukrainian
20:16journalist seized in Donetsk and held for years, including in the notorious isolation detention site.
20:24He later described a world of humiliation and torture built into routine. Today's Donbass is a place where
20:32human rights don't exist. Crime blends into the state because power itself is the main business.
20:40Propaganda runs hot and stupid. The kind that invents monsters and then demands you fear them.
20:49Meanwhile, the occupation squeezes men for the front. In many towns, families adapt. Men try not to be seen.
20:57Women carry the errands because a man can be stopped and mobilized on the spot.
21:03The region gets shelled, things blow up, and sometimes Russian aviation drops bombs on its own side,
21:11including an occupied areas. The ruins from the first years of the occupation were never rebuilt,
21:18like the destroyed Donetsk airport that remains a wasteland. The water crisis spiraled because the
21:26Soviet area canal system stopped functioning after 2022 and decades-old networks were already worn down.
21:34Residents couldn't flush toilets and used plastic bags. Russia tried to patch the disaster with emergency
21:42measures and a new pipeline, but those covered only a fraction of needs, with no stable fix in sight.
21:53That's the occupation in one image. A region claimed as ours, but managed like a burden, kept just alive enough
22:02to be used.
22:04The new occupations
22:08The territories that Russia took over in 2022 went through the same process as the old Donbass,
22:15but much faster, with more brutality. Mariupol is the clearest example. Before the invasion,
22:22this coastal city had around 430,000 people. Then it was surrounded, shelled, and cut off. No power,
22:30no water, no heat. People cooked on the fires in courtyards and melted snow for water. Bodies stayed in the
22:38streets because leaving your basement to try to bury them could get you killed. At least 8,000 people died
22:46during that siege period, and this is probably an undercount. Other tallies go much higher. Over 90%
22:54buildings in Mariupol were destroyed by shutting, from old mansions in the downtown to high-rise apartment
23:02blocks in the outskirts. That's why this city became the stage for Moscow's largest rebuilding
23:09project. The rubble is being cleared. New apartment blocks are rising. But how much new housing are we
23:17talking about? The occupiers built about 50 new high-rises in Mariupol. That's around 5% of what
23:25was destroyed, not even remotely enough to re-house the city's population. The stock and rebuilding
23:31looks more like an attempt to erase the past than a humanitarian effort. It makes perfect sense as a
23:39propaganda tool and a way to hide the evidence of Moscow's war crimes. One example is the Mariupol
23:47Drama Theater. On March 16, 2022, the theater, a long-standing symbol of Mariupol, was being used as a
23:54civilian shelter. Hundreds of people were inside, families with kids, older people who couldn't run to
24:02safer areas. Two days before the strike, the word DETI, children, was written in huge letters in Russian
24:11on the ground outside, visible from the air. People did that to make it impossible to claim confusion.
24:18It didn't help. The strike hit shortly after 10 a.m. and destroyed the building while civilians were in
24:26and around it. About 600 people were killed, although the true number remains hard to confirm under occupation.
24:34After the takeover, Russian installed authorities started rebuilding the theater and reopening it
24:40with staged cultural events. Former staff called it obscene. One of them said it felt like dancing on
24:49bones. The same erasure and rebuilding are going on in the other newly occupied territories.
24:57Their integration into Russia begins with filtration. Filtration is what happens when
25:05all civilians are treated as potential rebels and saboteurs. People are screened at checkpoints.
25:13In temporary holding sites and in makeshift processing centers. Who gets pulled into it?
25:21Anyone trying to leave a besieged area. Anyone crossing between occupied zones. Men of fighting age,
25:28obviously. But also journalists, activists, local officials, teachers, veterans, volunteers and
25:35sometimes just people with the wrong phone contacts, the wrong tattoos or the wrong last name.
25:42Filtration often includes searches, detailed questioning, photographing, fingerprinting and data
25:49collection. Phones are checked. Messages and subscriptions are read. Some people are forced to undress
25:56so soldiers can look for tattoos that might signal military service or nationalist views. Families can be
26:04separated. Men can be taken aside. If you fail the screening, you can be detained, beaten or disappeared
26:11into a system that does not need formal charges. Infiltration does not end at the gate. It can lead to
26:20forced transfers. Many people have been forced to relocate to places like the Ganrok
26:26or deeper inside Russia, often without real choice. Then comes the second layer, the passport.
26:33People in the occupied areas face everyday pressure to trade in their Ukrainian citizenship for Russian.
26:39Access to jobs, banking, pensions and services is tied to Russian documents. If you insist on keeping
26:47the wrong passport, you can't get anywhere close to normal life. In late 2025, Russia passed a law enabling
26:55the seizure of honorless properties in annexed Ukrainian regions through 2030. That allows the state to
27:03strip displaced Ukrainians of homes unless they take Russian citizenship and re-register property.
27:10In Mariupol alone, more than 12,000 apartments were listed as honorless. Schools are another control
27:19note. There is forced, russified education for that, re-written curricula, pressure on teachers and
27:27patriotic programs that are about building loyalty. The families who don't send their children to these new
27:34schools face intimidation and a lot of pressure to comply. They can even lose their children who will be
27:41taken away, deported to Russia and adopted by Russian families. Over 19,000 of Ukrainian children in the
27:48occupied territories were forcibly brought to Russia. This number includes orphans who were raised in
27:55Ukrainian foster homes and children who were separated from their families. Their caregivers
28:01might be alive and well, but loyal to Ukraine. Their pretexts vary. Safety, summer vacation, rehabilitation,
28:10but the real goal is to erase these children's identity and make them into Russians. That's achieved by
28:17keeping them in foster care with patriotic curriculum or getting them adopted by Russian families.
28:24Ukraine is working to bring these children home, but only about a thousand of them have been reunited
28:30with families. One case that made headlines is 12-year-old Ilya Matveyenko from Mariupol.
28:38In March 2022, Schelling killed his mother. Russian soldiers found him, moved him through occupied Donetsk,
28:47issued Russian documents, and he was nearly adopted in Russia. His grandmother recognized him in propaganda
28:54video and fought her way across borders to get him back. A grim future.
29:03If Russia takes over all of Ukraine, the likely scenario is what we see in the newly occupied territories.
29:11Not the olden bus. Russia no longer needs a semblance of local autonomy as a cover.
29:17And definitely not Crimea. Russia no longer has the money to put up another showcase.
29:23Picture the day after. The first thing you see is new flags and forms. New seals on office doors.
29:32A new police unit in the same old building. The message will be polite at first. Register, update your
29:39documents, confirm your address. It's just procedure. But this is how takeover works.
29:47In the first months, Russia would build a map of people the way it did in occupied areas.
29:53Lists, files, phone checks, workplace audits. In big cities, filtration will not look like one camp
30:00or one checkpoint at the city exit. It will be everywhere. Street patrols, checking documents.
30:08Verification at the train station. A knock on the door after your neighbor reports you.
30:13If your husband served in the army. If you volunteered. If you taught Ukrainian history. If you posted the
30:21wrong thing in 2022. You become a target. Then the passport becomes the center of gravity.
30:29You can keep living in your apartment until you can't. You can keep your job until payroll changes.
30:35You can keep your clinic until the receptionist asks for the new document. It won't always be announced
30:42as punishment. It will be announced as integration. No passport. No bank. No bank. No salary. No salary.
30:50No rent. No rent. No home. And this is where law turns into a trap. Russia does not need to
30:56seize
30:57every home with soldiers. It can seize homes with registries. If you fled. If your building was damaged.
31:04If you can return to re-register under the new system. Your place can be labeled onerless.
31:12Then someone else moves in legally with a stamp. Schools would be next. Because schools are where
31:20the future lives. At first, parents would be told it's normalization. New textbooks, new flags,
31:28new patriotic lessons. Teachers would be asked to sign new contracts and follow the new line.
31:34The ones who refuse will be quietly removed. If you want a human picture of that future,
31:40you can look at the story of a principal like Vitaly Chernov. When troops came, they didn't ask him to
31:47improve test scores. They demanded loyalty. He refused and it turned into detention and torture.
31:55Economic life would shrink into a narrow corridor. Some businesses would survive by re-registering,
32:03paying new taxes and keeping quiet. Others would be squeezed until they fold. The grocer in Kherson
32:11who refused to shift to payments in rubles and was beaten for it is the future in miniature.
32:17You can sell bread, but only if you accept the new rules. And while all of this happens,
32:25the security state grows like a second shadow economy. The biggest employee will no longer be
32:32tech or industry. It will be the apparatus. Police, investigators, informants, administrators,
32:39guards. A job that pays not because it creates value but because it enforces obedience. People will take
32:47those jobs the way they take shelter in a storm. Not out of love for Russia. Out of fear and
32:55hunger.
32:56That's what a full Russian takeover will look like. An ordinary person's daily life turns into a series
33:02of tests where the safest answer is silence. Ukrainians lose more than sovereignty or independence. They lose
33:11the right to tell the truth about themselves out loud. And there will be no rebuilding of what was
33:17destroyed. No Marshall Plan with a Russian flag on it. Russia is already squeezing itself. The war eats the
33:25budget. Oil revenue is getting hit by sanctions pressure and discounts. And even Russian officials have
33:32started warning about the economy cooling. In that reality, Ukraine will be managed cheaply. Patch the holes that
33:40threaten order. Ignore the rest. Russia's own provinces show what this kind of cheap management looks like.
33:49Infrastructure ages. Nobody replaces it. And when money is allocated, a lot of it gets stolen or wasted.
33:56Look at Murmansk and Severomorsk in January 2026. Major outages after old power pylons collapsed.
34:05Thousands of people ended up without heat in the Arctic winter. Now add the long tail. Sanctions
34:14aren't going away just because Russia declares victory. Money and talent will keep leaking out.
34:21So when Moscow divides up state investment, Ukraine will be last in line. That's why getting Ukrainian
34:29towns back even to pre-war living standards won't be fast. It will be much like the aftermath of the
34:36Russian Civil War. Recovery dragged through decades and people lived through years of scarcity and breakdown
34:44before anything felt stable again. That's the real choice Ukrainians are fighting over. Either Ukraine
34:51keeps its right to build a future like Poland and other post-Soviet satellites that escaped. Or it becomes
34:58the backyard of a shrinking empire, where your best years are spent waiting for someone in Moscow
35:05to remember you exist. Now I want to hear from you. If you woke up tomorrow under occupation,
35:11what's your first move? Resist, live, or go quiet and survive? And what decides it for you? If this
35:21episode helped you see the mechanics more clearly, please like the video and subscribe. Share it with
35:29someone who still thinks a victory would simply end the story. And if you want to support this work
35:36directly, you can join my think tank or use Paypal or Superfanks. It truly helps me keep making careful,
35:43detailed videos like this. And if you are listening on Spotify, I'd really appreciate a follow there too.
35:51It helps the show travel. Thank you for watching.
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