In 2025, Ukraine is facing unprecedented pressure from one of its key partners, the United States. The Trump administration has chosen not to act as Ukraine’s ally, but rather as a mediator between Ukraine and Europe on the one hand, and Russia on the other. This shift has fundamentally changed the geopolitical framework of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Around the world, the language of victory has largely been replaced by the language of peace. Yet under current conditions, “peace” often implie...
Dec 17, 2025•48 min
Imagine an NGO that has raised over one billion dollars to support the Ukrainian army. Imagine a civil society initiative that purchases armaments and military equipment. Imagine a transparent organisation with an independent board and detailed reporting. This NGO exists — it is called “Povernys Zhyvym”, or “Come Back Alive”. It is one of the largest Ukrainian civil society foundations supporting Ukraine’s defense. In this episode, we will speak about its work — and about the ways you can help U...
Dec 08, 2025•43 min
Ukraine has its own tradition of geopolitical thinking — a tradition that reaches deep into the past and continues to shape the country’s strategic imagination today. What are its key traits? Why was it developed more by writers than by statesmen? And how does it relate to Ukraine’s current reflection on its identity? *** Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language media platform about Ukraine, run by Internews Ukraine. Listen on various platforms: https://li.sten.to/exp...
Dec 01, 2025•48 min
What makes the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church so unique? Why is it such a remarkable attempt to bridge the divide between Eastern and Western Christianity? How can its history help us better understand the history of Europe and of the Christian religion? How has it shaped Ukrainian national identity? And how did it survive the Soviet era, when the authorities sought to eradicate it? *** Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language media platform about Ukraine, run by Int...
Nov 28, 2025•49 min
Ukrainian cultural heritage is not something that quietly settles into national archives. In reality, it is the result of a dramatic struggle against destruction and oblivion. This makes this heritage so magnetic—precisely because it is not always visible or accessible, yet can be reconstructed like a lost mosaic. In this episode, we talk about what the Ukrainian cultural heritage is, and how we can understand it. And also about the role of cultural institutions during Russia’s genocidal war aga...
Nov 27, 2025•46 min
Russian propaganda claims that Ukraine is not a separate nation, but merely a “preliminary form” of Russia. Today’s Kremlin ideology seeks to annex Ukrainian history in order to justify its territorial aggression. But this myth has a birth certificate. It emerged in the 19th century, when the Russian Empire started inventing its “ancient” medieval roots. Before that, Russian travellers in Ukrainian lands showed little interest in such historical questions. In this episode, we trace the genealogy...
Nov 21, 2025•42 min
She is not only a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She is not only one of the most visible human-rights defenders in Europe in recent decades. She is not only a tireless activist with profound empathy for others. She is also a thinker — someone who reflects deeply on the moral foundations of freedom and dignity. Our guest today is Oleksandra Matviychuk, a prominent Ukrainian human-rights defender and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. In this epis...
Nov 19, 2025•47 min
How is the life of a soldier different from that of a civilian? Which aspects of it are hardest for civilians to understand? What is happening on the frontline today — and how will the outcome of this war depend on the technological race? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: Vladyslav Urubkov, a former soldier of the Ukrainian army and now a manager for military affairs at Come Back Alive (Povernys zhyvym) ...
Nov 03, 2025•50 min
Ukraine is not a burden for Europe — it’s a chance for Europe. Today, European security is unthinkable without Ukraine. Ukraine has the strongest army in Europe, a dynamic defense industry, and citizens with vast military experience. The real question is: to what extent does Europe itself understand the threat posed by the new authoritarianisms? And to what extent does it realise that helping Ukraine is, in fact, a matter of its own survival? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosoph...
Oct 30, 2025•46 min
In this episode, we will talk about “Ukraïner”: a great initiative that has done a great deal to help rediscover Ukraine — both from within and from abroad. “Ukraïner” launched expeditions to villages and towns across the country, researched the lifestyles and cultures of Ukraine’s diverse communities, and created outstanding textual and visual projects that help us better understand our own land. It has also done much to tell the Ukrainian story to the world. *** Host: Host: Volodymyr Yermolenk...
Oct 28, 2025•50 min
In this episode, we discuss how Russia destroys Ukrainian families, kidnaps Ukrainian children — including those who have parents — and reprograms them, changing their identity, their way of thinking, their lifestyle, their homes. *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: Kateryna Rashevska, a Ukrainian human rights lawyer, expert at the Regional Centre for Human Rights, and a tireless fighter for the liberation...
Oct 27, 2025•44 min
Where do Ukrainians get their news? What are the key trends in Ukraine’s media sector during the war? Do citizens trust information coming from the government? And why is Ukrainian society so dependent on Telegram, a Russian social network? In this episode, we discuss a report, “Ukrainian media. News Consumption and Trust in 2025”—a new study conducted by Internews Ukraine with support from its partners. Read the report: https://internews.ua/en/opportunity/media_trust_consumption_2025_release **...
Oct 23, 2025•46 min
In September 2025, in Kyiv, a prominent American historian Timothy Snyder received the Vasyl Stus Prize — a Ukrainian award honoring the name of Vasyl Stus, one of Ukraine’s greatest poets and dissidents of the 20th century, killed by the Soviet regime in 1985. Founded in 1989 by Yevhen Sverstiuk, another prominent Ukrainian dissident, the prize is now awarded by PEN Ukraine, the publishing house Dukh i Litera, and the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. Before the award ceremony, we held a public conv...
Oct 21, 2025•1 hr 32 min
What do we know about theatre — the most ephemeral of the arts — in Ukraine? What role did Ukrainian theatre play in Soviet times? How is the heritage of the Executed Renaissance generation still alive today? And why are women in theatre so important — and yet so often ignored? *** The Explaining Ukraine podcast is produced by UkraineWorld, an English-language media project about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine. Host: Tetyana Ogarkova, a Ukrainian literary scholar at Kyiv Mohyla Academy and jou...
Oct 17, 2025•45 min
Why is Taras Shevchenko not only the founding father of Ukrainian poetry but also of Ukrainian identity? What aspects of his legacy remain alive today? And how does poetry shape a nation? *** Host: Tetyana Ogarkova, a Ukrainian literary scholar at Kyiv Mohyla Academy and journalist at Ukraine Crisis Media Centre who also runs a French-language podcast, “L’Ukraine face à la guerre”. Guest: Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He launched the Cambridge Ukrain...
Oct 15, 2025•40 min
Are all empires equally bad? If some were better than others, what criteria can we use to make such judgments? Why must we study networks, not only hierarchies, to understand our past, present, and future? What happens to societies in times of catastrophe, and who has the best chances of survival? And finally — why is Ukraine so important for the world today? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: Niall Fergu...
Oct 13, 2025•33 min
Let’s take a deeper look into drone warfare and the long-term changes it is bringing to the battlefield. How is Ukraine countering Russian drone attacks? How is it developing systems of drone interceptors? Are we moving toward a future where drones will fight other drones? And what skills must our societies cultivate to prepare for this new reality? *** The “Explaining Ukraine” podcast is produced by UkraineWorld, an English-language media outlet about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine. Listen on...
Oct 10, 2025•47 min
How is Ukrainian IT transforming the country’s defence? Why is technology key to success in today’s war? Why is Ukraine one of the world’s most dynamic IT nations — and why does it still hold so much untapped potential? And finally, how has the IT sector become a driver of social change, reshaping Ukraine’s social fabric today? *** Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld, an English-language media outlet about Ukraine run by Internews Ukraine. Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian phil...
Sep 29, 2025•45 min
Yaroslav Hrytsak is one of Ukraine’s leading historians and public intellectuals. His recent book in Ukrainian, "Overcoming the Past: A Global History of Ukraine", became a bestseller. His English-language book, "Ukraine: The Forging of a Nation", is now a key reference work on Ukrainian history. We met in Lviv to discuss the global dimension of Ukrainian history, and the features of Ukraine’s political culture that explain why the country has so often fought against tyranny. *** Explaining Ukra...
Sep 25, 2025•50 min
If Ukraine does not receive real security guarantees, the war will continue—and is likely to spill over into the rest of Europe. But what kind of guarantees are truly needed, and which of them are realistic? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Our guest today is Hanna Shelest, one of Ukraine’s leading experts on international security and foreign policy. She is Director of the Security Studies Program at the Fore...
Sep 18, 2025•57 min
Maksym Butkevych is a prominent Ukrainian human rights defender. Before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he dedicated his efforts to the protection of people whose rights were violated. When Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Maksym joined the Ukrainian army to defend his country. In June 2022, he was taken prisoner of war by Russia and accused of committing a war crime. The case was entirely fabricated: Russia sought to “balance” the real war crimes committed by the Russian sol...
Sep 16, 2025•46 min
Why is technology playing such a decisive role in this war? Who is ahead in technological innovation—Ukraine or Russia? How are drones reshaping the battlefield, and how might they also transform technologies of peace? And why must Europe step up its technological cooperation with Ukraine? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: Glib Voloskyi, analyst at the Initiatives Centre of Come Back Alive (Povernys zhyv...
Aug 22, 2025•45 min
Kherson may be the most dangerous regional center in Ukraine. Occupied by Russian forces in 2022, its residents were subjected to torture and intimidation. The city was liberated by Ukrainian forces in November 2022 — but almost immediately came under daily bombardment and shelling from Russian troops stationed just across the Dnipro River. In June 2023, Kherson was hit by a catastrophic flood caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant — an explosion orchestrated by the ...
Aug 19, 2025•52 min
Trump is set to meet with Putin in Alaska on August 15. Media reports and leaks ahead of this meeting, along with statements by President Trump and members of his administration, suggest that the two leaders may have discussed a plan in which Ukraine would cede some or all of the occupied territories to Russia in exchange for “peace.” This brings us back to the basics: the fundamental truth that violating internationally recognized borders through military aggression cannot lead to sustainable p...
Aug 12, 2025•43 min
Russia has committed over 160,000 war crimes in Ukraine, according to Ukraine's Prosecutor General's office. What kinds of crimes are most widespread in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Why is the Russian approach to war so heavily marked by cruelty? Why do Russian forces torture Ukrainian civilians and abduct Ukrainian children? *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine. Guest: Oleksandra Romantsova, a Ukrainian human rig...
Aug 11, 2025•52 min
How can we understand what’s happening inside the Ukrainian army? How do soldiers feel? What challenges do they face? What parts of military life do they believe aren’t working? Traditional sociology doesn’t always provide the answers. But another discipline — anthropology, also called ethnography — offers a different approach. This method involves deep immersion into the everyday lives of soldiers. A more recent innovation, called mobile ethnography, takes this further — allowing researchers to...
Aug 07, 2025•49 min
Ukraine wants to be heard around the world. But we must also learn to listen to the wider world in return. The Ukrainian Institute — the country’s leading institution for cultural diplomacy — is doing remarkable work to make Ukraine’s voice heard not only in Europe and North America, but also across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In this episode, I speak with two key figures at the Ukrainian Institute who work on engagement with the wider world. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of b...
Jul 29, 2025•52 min
What’s the difference between colonialism and imperialism? What types of colonialism can we identify — and which of them are playing out in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other countries? This conversation is not purely academic. It helps us better understand what’s happening today — and what might happen tomorrow. Russian colonial and imperial practices sometimes resemble those of other empires — but at other times, they differ significantly. Russia often masks its imperial violence with nati...
Jul 28, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Myroslav Shkandrij is a prominent scholar of Ukrainian cultural history and Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Canada. He has written extensively on topics such as avant-garde art in Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalism, Jews in Ukrainian literature, cultural imperialism, and decolonization. His book “Russia and Ukraine: Literature and the Discourse of Empire, from Napoleonic to Postcolonial Times”, published in 2001, remains a classic text on Russian cultural imperialism and Ukrainia...
Jul 23, 2025•48 min
There are foreigners fighting for Ukraine in this war — but their numbers are small. They are not sent by their governments; they come as volunteers, driven by a personal sense of justice and a desire to help. One of them is a British man with the callsign Caesar. He serves in Ukraine's International Legion, fighting not only for Ukraine but for the values this struggle represents. *** Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, the chief editor of UkraineWorld, and the president of PEN...
Jul 15, 2025•35 min
