#415 – Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War

The following is a conversation with Serhi Plokhy, a historian at Harvard University and the Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute, also at Harvard. As a historian, he specializes in the history of Eastern Europe with an emphasis on Ukraine. He wrote a lot of great books on Ukraine and Russia, the Soviet Union, on Slavic peoples in general across centuries, on Chernobyl and nuclear disasters and on the current war in Ukraine. A book titled the Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History.

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There are often people confuse three different processes that were taken place in the late 80s and early 90s. And the one was the collapse of communism as ideology. And another was the end of the Cold War. And the third one was the end of the Soviet Union. All of these processes were interrelated, interconnected. But when people provide ideology as the explanation for all of these processes, that's where I disagree. Because ideological collapse happened

on the territory of the Soviet Union in general. Soviet Union lost the Cold War, whether we are talking about Moscow, Lenin Grados in Petersburg now, or Vladivostok. But the fall of the Soviet Union is about a story in which Vladivostok and St. Petersburg ended up in one country. And Kiev wins Kendoch and Bae and it in different countries. So the theories and explanations about how did that happen. For me, this is a really very helpful theories for understanding

the Soviet collapse. So the mobilization from below, the collapse of the center, against the background of economic collapse, against the background of ideological implosion. That's how I look at the fall of the Soviet Union and that's how I look at the theories that explain that collapse. So it's a story of geography, ideology, economics, which are the most important to understand of what made the collapse of the Soviet Union happen.

The Soviet collapse was unique, but not more unique than collapse of any other empire. So what we really witnessed, or the world witnessed back in 1991, and we continue to witness today with the Russian aggression against Ukraine is a collapse of one of the largest world empires. We talked about the Soviet Union and now talk about Russia as possessing plus, minus one six of the surface of the earth. You don't get in possession of one six of the

earth by being a nation state. You get that sort of size as an empire. And the Soviet collapse is continuation of the disintegration of the Russian empire that started back in 1917. That was arrested for some period of time by the Bolsheviks, by the communist ideology, which was internationalist ideology, and then came back in full force in the late eighties

and early nineties. So the most important story for me, this is the story of the continuing collapse of the Russian empire and the rise of not just local nationalism, but also rise of Russian nationalism that turned out to be as destructive force for the imperial or multi-ethnic multinational state as was Ukrainian nationalism or Georgian or or a historian for that matter. Or you said a lot of interesting stuff there in 1917, Bolsheviks, internationalists, how

that plays with the idea of Russian empire and so on. But first let me ask about US influence on this. So one of the ideas is that, you know, through the Cold War, that mechanism, US had made your interest to weaken the Soviet Union and therefore the collapse could be attributed to pressure and manipulation from the United States. Is there truth to that? The pressure from the United States, this is part of the Cold War. And Cold War, part

of that story, but it doesn't explain the Soviet collapse. And the reason is quite simple. The United States of America didn't want the Soviet Union to collapse and disintegrate. They didn't want that at the start of the Cold War in 1948. We now have the strategic documents. They were concerned about that. They didn't want to do that. And certainly

they didn't want to do that in the year 1991. As late as August of 1991, the month of the Kuhn Moscow, President Bush, George H. W. Bush, travels from Moscow to Kiev and gives his famous, so-in-famous speech called Chicken Kiev speech, basically warning Ukrainians against going for independence. The Soviet collapse was a huge headache for the administration

in the White House. For a number of reasons, they liked to work with Gorbachev. The Soviet Union was emerging as a junior partner of the United States and the International Arena. Perhaps this was destroying all of that. And on the top of that, there was a question

of the nuclear weapons, unaccounted nuclear weapons. So the United States was doing everything humanly possible to keep the Soviet Union together in one piece until really late November of 1991 when it became clear that it was a loss cause and they had to say goodbye to Gorbachev and to the project that he introduced. A few months later, or a year later, there was a presidential campaign and Bush was running for the second term and was looking for

for achievements. And there were many achievements. I basically treat him as great respect. But destruction of the Soviet Union was not one of those achievements. He was on the other side of that divide, but the politics, the political campaign, of course, have their own rules. And they produced and give birth to mythology, which we still at least in this country, we lived till now, till today. So Gorbachev is an interesting figure in all of this. Is there a possible history where

Soviet Union did not collapse? And some of the ideas that Gorbachev had for the future of the Soviet Union came to life? Of course, history on the one hand, there is a statement. It doesn't allow for what ifs. On the other hand, in my opinion, history is full of what if. That's what history is about. And certainly, certainly the rest of the narrows how the Soviet Union would continue. Would

it continue beyond, let's say, Gorbachev's tenure? And the argument has been made that the reforms that he introduced, that they were mismanaged and they could be managed differently. Or there could be no reforms and there could be continued stagnation. So that is all possible. What I think would happen one way or another is the Soviet collapse in a different form on somebody else's watch at some later period in time because we deal in with not just

processes that were happening in the Soviet Union. We are dealing with global processes. And the 20th century turned out to be the century of the disintegration of the empires. You look at the globe at the map of the world in 1914 and you compare it to the map at the end of the 20th century in 1991, 1992. And suddenly you realize that there are many candidates for being the most important to van the most important process in the 20th century.

But the biggest, the biggest global thing that happened was redrawing the map of the world and producing dozens, if not hundreds, of new states. That's the outcome of the different processes of the 20th century. You look Yugoslavia is falling apart around the same time. Czechoslovakia goes through what can be called a civilized divorce, a very, very rare occurrence

in the fall of multi-national states. So yeah, the right in was on the wall whether it would happen under Gorbachev or later whether it would happen as the result of reforms or as the result of no reforms. But I think that sooner or later that would happen. Yes, very possible hundreds of years from now, the way the 20th century is written about as the century defined by the collapse of empires. You call the Soviet Union the last empire.

The book is called the last empire. So is there something fundamental about the way the world is? That means it's not conducive to the formation of empires. The meaning that I was putting in the term, the Soviet Union as the last empire was that that was the Soviet collapse was the collapse of the last major European empires, traditional empires. That was the in the 18th century, 19th century and through most of the 20th century.

The Austria-Hungary died in the midst of World War I, the Ottoman Empire disintegrated. The Brits were gone and left India. And there was the successor to the Russian Empire called the Soviet Union was still hanging on there and then came 1991. And what we see even with today's Russia, it's a very different sort of policies. The Russia or Russian leadership tried to learn a lesson from 1991. So there is no national republics in the Russian Federation that

would have more rights than the Russian administrative units. So the structure is different. The nationality policies are different. The level of recification is much higher. So it is in many ways already a post-impureal formation. And you write about that moment, 1991, the role that Ukraine played in that seems to be a very critical role. He described just that what role Ukraine played in the classes of India. History is many things, but it started in a very simple way of making

notes about on the yearly basis, what happened this year or that. So it's about chronology. Chronology in the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union is very important. You have Ukrainian referendum on December 1st, 1991. And you have the solution of the Soviet Union by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus one week later. And the question is why? Ukrainian referendum is the answer, but Ukrainians didn't answer their referendum question of whether they

want the Soviet Union to be dissolved or not. They answered very limited in terms of, it's been in question, whether you support the decision of Verhov-Naradov, your parliament for Ukraine to go independent. And the rest was not on the ballot. So why then one week later the Soviet Union is gone. And President Yeltsin explains to President Bush around that time the reason why

why Ukraine was so important. He said that, well, if Ukraine is gone, Russia is not interested in this Soviet project because Russia would be outnumbered and outvoted by the Muslim republics. So there was a cultural element. But there was also another one. Ukraine happened to be the second largest Soviet republic and then post-Soviet state in terms of population, in terms of the economy, economic potential and so on and so forth. And as Yeltsin suggested, close

cultural and linguistically and otherwise, to Russia. So with the second largest republic gone, Russia didn't think that it was in Russia's interest to continue with the Soviet Union. And around that time, Yagor Gajdar, who was the chief economic advisor of Yeltsin was telling him, well, we just don't have money anymore to support other republics. We have to focus on Russia. We have to use oil and gas money within the Russian Federation. So the state was bankrupt.

Imperial projects, at least in the context of the late 20th century, they costed money. It wasn't money-making machine as it was back in the 18th and 19th century. And the combination of all these factors led to the processes in which Ukraine's decision to go independent, spelled the end to the Soviet Union. And if today anybody wants to restore the Soviet Union, but some formal Russian control over the post-Soviet space, Ukraine is as important

today as it was back in December of 1981. Let me ask you about Vladimir Putin's statement that the collapse of the Soviet Union is one of the great tragedies of history. To what degree does he have a point? To what degree is he wrong? His formulation was that this is the greatest geopolitical catastrophe at tragedy of the 20th century. And I specifically went and looked at the text and put it in specific time when it was happening.

And it was interesting that the statement was made a few weeks before the main nine parade and celebrations of the victory. A key part of the mythology of the current Russian state. So why say things about the Soviet collapse being the largest geopolitical strategy and not in that particular context? The second world war. My explanation at least is that the world war two, the price was enormous, but the Soviet Union emerged as a great victor and captured half of Europe.

1991, in terms of the life's loss at that point, the price was actually very low. But for Putin, what was important that the state was lost and he in particular was concerned about the division of the Russian people which he understood back then, like he understands now, in very, very broad terms. So for him, for him, the biggest tragedy is not the loss of life. The biggest tragedy is the loss of the great power status or the unity of those whom he

considered to be Russian nation. So at least this is my reading, this is my understanding of what is there, what is on the paper and what is between the lines. So both the unity of the sort of quote, Russian empire and the status of the superpower. That's how I read it. You wrote a book, The Origins of the Slavic Nations. So let's go back

into history. What is the origin of Slavic nations? We can look at that from different perspectives and we are now making major breakthroughs in answering this question with the very interesting innovative linguistic analysis, the study of DNA. So that's really the new frontier. We are getting into a pre-historical period where there is no historical sources.

And from what we can understand today and that can of course change tomorrow with all this breakthroughs in sciences is that the slums came into existence somewhere in the area of marshes, pre-pet marshes, North Western part of Ukraine, South Western part of Belarus, Eastern part of Poland. And that's considered to be historical homeland of slums and then

they spread. And they spread all the way to the Adriatic. So we have croats, we have Russians spreading all the way to the Pacific, we have Ukrainians, we have Belarusians, Poles. Once we had Czechoslovak's now we have Czechs and Slovak's. So that's the story of starting with the eights and nineth century. Even a little bit early we can already follow that story with the help of the written sources, mostly from Byzantine, then later from Western, from Western

Europe. But what I was trying to do, not being a scientist, not being an expert in linguistics or not being an expert in DNA analysis, I was trying to see what was happening in the minds of those peoples and their elites in particular, whom we call today not Slavs but Eastern Slavs, which means Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, how they imagined themselves, how they imagined

their world. And eventually I look at the so-called nation-building projects. So trying to answer the question of how we arrived to the situation in which we are today where there are not just three East Slavic nations, but there are also three East Slavic states, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

So this is the focus of my book. I am admittedly in that particular book I am on the 18th century before the era of nationalism, but then there are the books like Lost Kingdom, that where I bring the story all the way up to today. So what aspect of the 8th and 9th century the East Slavic states permeated to today that we

should understand? Well, the most important one is that the existence of the state of Kavenruss back during the medieval period created foundations for historical mythology, common historical mythology, and there are just wars and battles over who has the right, more right for Kavenruss. The legal code that was created at that time existed for a long period

of time. The acceptance of Christianity from Byzantium, that became a big issue that separated then East Slavs from their Western neighbors, including Czechs and Poles, but united in that way to let's say Bulgaria and so serves. And the beginning of the written literature, beginning in Kiev. So all of that is considered to be part of heritage, all of that is being contested. And this debates that were academic for a long period of time, what we see now tragically

have been continued on the battlefield. What is Kiev? What is Russ that you mentioned? What's the importance of these? You mentioned them as the sort of defining places and terms, labels at the beginning of all this. So what is Kiev? Kiev became a capital or the outpost of the Vikings who were trying to establish control over the trade route between what is today's western Russia and Belarus and Northern Ukraine.

So the forest areas and the biggest and the richest market in the world that existed at that time, which was in Constantinople and Byzantium. So the idea was to get whatever goods you can get in that part of Eastern Europe and most of those goods were slaves, local population, put them on the ships in Kiev because Kiev was on the border with the step zones, step zones were controlled by other groups, stethians, or nations, paloftians, picchinags and so on and so on. You name it.

And then staying on the river, being protected from attacks of the nomads to come to the Black Sea and sell these products in Constantinople. That was the idea. That was the model Vikings, Vikings tried to practice that sort of business model also in other parts of Europe and like in other parts of Europe, they turned out to be by default creators of new politics, of new states.

And that was the story of the first Kiev in dynasty. And Kiev as the capital of that huge empire that was going from the Baltics to today's central Ukraine and then was trying to get through the South and Ukraine to the Black Sea. That was a major, major European state kingdom if you want to call it of medieval Europe with a lot, created a lot of tradition in terms of dynasty,

in terms of language, in terms of religion, in terms of historical mythology. So Kiev is central for the nation building myths of a number of groups in the region. So in one perspective, a narrative give us at the center of this Russian empire. At which point does Moscow become come to prominence as the center of the Russian empire?

Well, the Russian empire is a term and real creation of the 18th century. What we have for the Kievan, we call it Kievan Rus again, this is a term of the 19th century, they call themselves Rus. And there was metropolitan of Rus and there was Rusprincipalities. So very important to keep in mind that Rus is not Russia because that was a self name for all multiple groups on that territory. And Moscow doesn't exist at the time when Kiev emerges as the capital.

The first reference to Moscow comes from the 12th century when it was founded by one of the Kievan princes. And Moscow comes to prominence really in a very different context and with a very different empire right in the show in the region. The story of Moscow and the rise of Moscow, this is the story of the Mongol rule over former Rus lands and former Rus territories.

The part of the former Rus eventually overthrows the Mongol control with the help of the small group of people called Lithuanians which had a young state and young dynasty and united the lands which were mostly in today's terms Ukrainian and Belarusian. So they separate and what is today's Russia, mostly western Russia, central Russia stays under the Mongol control up until late 15th century. And that was the story when Moscow rises as the new capital of that

realm replacing the city of Vladimir as that capital. For those who went to Russia, they familiar with the, of course, Vladimir as the place of the oldest architectural monuments, the so-called the Golden Ring of Russia and so on. And so, of course, Vladimir is central and there are so many architectural monuments there because before there was Moscow, there was Vladimir eventually in this struggle over control of the territory struggle for favors from the

Mongols and the Tatar horde. Moscow emerges as the center of that particular realm under Mongols. After the Mongol rule is removed, Moscow embarks on the project that historians, Russian historians

of the 19th century called the Gathering of the Russian Lands. Using Russian now for Rus and and and trying to bring back the the lands of of former Kiev and Rus, but also the lands of the former Mongol Empire, the Russians get to the Pacific before they get to Kiev historically and really the the quote, quote, quote, gathering of the, quote, unquote, Russian lands. And only in 1945 when the Soviet Union bullies the Czechoslovak government into turning

what is today's trans-Corpatian Ukraine to the Soviet Union. It is included in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. So that's that's the moment when that destiny, the way how it was imagined by the 19th century Russian historian was eventually fulfilled. Moscow wasn't control

of all this lands. So to what degree are the Slavic people, one people, this is a theme that will continue throughout I think versus a collection of multiple peoples, whether we're talking about the Kievan Rus or we're talking about the 19th century Russian Empire conception. Well, a number of ways to look at that. One, the most obvious, the most clear is language. And there is no question that Paul speaks a separate language in their loves.

And there is no question for anyone going to Ukraine and here in Ukrainian, realizing that this is not Russian. The level of comprehension can be different. You can understand certain words and you don't understand others and the same would be with Polish and the same would be with Czech. So there is this linguistic history that is in common, but languages very clearly indicate that you're dealing with different peoples.

We know that language is not everything. Americans speak a particular way of English. Australians speak a particular variant of English, but for reasons of geography history, we pretty much believe that despite linguistic unity, this are different nations and different peoples and there are some parts of political tradition or in common others are this quite different. So when it comes to language, the same when it comes to political tradition, to the loyalty to

the political institution applies to Slavic nations. So there is nothing particular unique about the slums and that's what it does. You wrote the book, the Kassak myth, history and nationhood in the age of empires. It tells the story of an anonymous manuscript called The History of the Rus. It started being circulated in the 1820s. I would love it if you can tell the story of this. This is supposedly one of the most impactful texts in modern history. So what's the

important of this text? What did it contain? How did it define the future of the region? In the first decades of the 19th century, after Napoleonic Wars, a mysterious text emerged that was attributed to a orthodox archibishop that was long dead, which was claiming that the Kassaks of Ukraine were in fact the original Rus people and that they had the right for a particular place, for central place in the Russian Empire. It tells the history of the Kassaks.

It's the era of romanticism, full of all sorts of drama, there are heroes, there are villains, and the text captivates the attention of some figures in the Russian intellectual elite in St. Petersburg. People like Kondriteyory Lev, who was executed for his participation in 1825, uprising, writes poetry on the basis of this text, Pushkin based attention to it as well.

And then comes along the key figure in Ukrainian national revival of the 19th century, Ukrainian national project, Trashev Chamkland, and reads it as well, and they all read them very differently. Eventually by the beginning of the and the mid-20th century, some of the Russian nationalist writers called this text the Koran of Ukrainian nationalism.

So what is there? The story is very important in a sense that what the authors, and that's what I claim in the book, what the authors of the text were trying to say, they were trying to say that the Kozak elite should have the same rights as the Russian ability, and brings the long historical

record to prove how cool the Kozaks were over the period of time. But at the beginning of the 19th century, they put this claim already, they used new arguments, and this arguments are about nation and nationalism, and they're saying that the Kozaks are a separate nation, and that's that's a big, big, big claim. The Russian Empire, and this is a very, very good argument in historiography, that Russian Empire grew and acquired this one six of the earth,

by using one very specific way of integrating those lands. It integrated elites. It was making deals with the elites, whether the elites were Muslim, whether the elites were Roman Catholic, as the case was the post, elites would be integrated, and the Empire was based on that state the state loyalty and the state integration. But once you bring in the factor of nation and nationalism and language, then once in a sudden, the whole model of the integration of the elites,

irrespective of their language, religion, and culture, starts falling apart. And the polls were the first who really produced this sort of a challenge to the Russian Empire by a prize, two prizes in the 19th century, and Ukrainians then followed in their footsteps. So the tax, the importance of the tax is that it was making claim on the part of a particular

state, the Kozak officer class, which was that Empire could survive. But it turned it, given the conditions of the time into the claim for the special role of Kozak's as a nation, creating that this is a separate nation, a Russian nation, and that is the challenge of

nationalism that no empire really survived and the Russian Empire was not an exception. So that's a turning point when the discourse switches from loyalty based on the integration of their elites to the loyalty based on attachment to your nation, to your language, to your culture, and to your history. So that was like the initial spark, the flame

that led to nationalist movements. That was the beginning and the beginning that was building a bridge between the existence of the Kozak state in the 17th and 18th century that was used as a foundation for the Kozak mythology, Ukrainian national mythology, went into the Ukrainian national

anthem, and the new age and the new stage where the Kozaks were not there anymore, where there were professors, intellectuals, students, members of the national and organizations, and it started of course with romantic poetry, it was started with collecting folklore and then later goes to the political stage and eventually the stage of mass politics. So to you even throughout the 20th century, under Stalin, there was always a force within Ukraine that wanted to be independent.

There were five attempts for Ukraine to declare independence and to maintain it in the 20th century, only once succeeded in 1991, but there were four different attempts before and you see the Ukrainian national identity manifest in itself into different ways.

In the form of national communism, after the Bolshevik victory, in the Bolshevik control Ukraine and in the form of radical nationalism, in the parts of Ukraine that were controlled by Poland and Romania, and part of that was also controlled by Czechoslovakia and later Hungary. So in those parts outside of the Soviet Union, the form of the national mobilization, the key

form of national mobilization became radical nationalism in Soviet Ukraine. It was national communism that came back in the 1960s and 1970s and then in the 1991, the majority of the members of the Ukrainian parliament who voted for independence, members of the Communist Party. So that spirit on certain level never died. So there's national communism and radical nationalism. Well, let me ask you about the radical nationalism because that is a topic that comes up

in the discussion of the war in Ukraine today. Can you tell me about Stepan Banderah? Who was he, this controversial far right Ukrainian revolutionary? The right list two, Stepan Banderahs. One is the real person and another is mythology that really comes with this name. And the real person was a young student, missionistically oriented student in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in the part of Ukraine that

was controlled by Poland. Who belonged to the generation who regretted that they were not born in time for the big struggles of the world war one and and pollution at that time. They believed that their father's lost opportunity for Ukraine to become independent and that in new

ideology was needed and that ideology was radical nationalism and new tactics were needed. So Banderah becomes the leader of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine at the young age and organizes a number of assassinations of the Polish officials or members of the Ukrainian

community who this young people in their 17, 18, 19 considered to be collaborators. He is arrested, put on trial and that's where the myth of Banderah starts to emerge because he uses the trial to make statements about the Ukrainian nationalism, radical nationalism and its goals and suddenly becomes a hero among the Ukrainian youth at that time. He is sentenced for execution for death so when he delivers his speech he knows that he probably would die soon and then it was the sentence was

committed to life in prison. Then World War II happens, the Polish state collapses under the pressure coming of course from from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Banderah walks away and presides over the act of the split of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists into two groups. The most radical one you used called revolutionary, they call themselves revolutionary is led by Banderah. They work together with the Nazi Germany at that time with the hope that Nazi Germany would

deliver them independent Ukraine. First days of the German attack, Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, the units formed on the basis of the organization of Ukrainian nationalist march into the city of Lviv and declare Ukrainian independence. That was not sanctioned by the German authorities, that was not in German plans. So they arrest Banderah members of his family, his brothers, members of the leaders of the organization. So his two brothers go to Auschwitz,

die there. He was sent to Zaksimhausen for most duration of the war until 1944, refusing to revoke declaration of Ukrainian independence, which again contributes further to his mythology. After the war he never comes back to Ukraine, he lives in exile in Munich. So between 1930 and his death in 1959, he spent in Ukraine maybe up to two years, maybe a little bit more, but most of the time was either in the Polish prison or in the German

concentration camp or in exile. But the myth of Banderah lived and all the members of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists and then the Ukrainian insurgent army that fought against the Soviets all the way into the early 1950s. They were called Banderaheids. They were called Banderaheids by the Soviet authorities. They were known also in that way to the local population. So there was a far away leader that barely was there on the spot, but whose name

was attached to this movement for really liberation of Ukraine at that time. Again, the battle that failed. The fact that he collaborated with the Nazis sticks. From one perspective, he's considered by me to be a hero of Ukraine for fighting for the independence of Ukraine. From another perspective, coupled with the fact that there's this radical revolutionary extremist flavor to the way he sees the world, that label just stays that he's a fascist, he's a Nazi.

Which, what degree is this true to what degree is it? This label is certainly promoted by the Soviet propaganda and then by Russian propaganda. It works very nicely. If you focus on the years of collaboration, those were the same years when Joseph Stalin collaborated with Hitler. We have the same reason to call Stalin Nazi collaborator as we have the reason to call Banderahe, Nazi collaborator. We look at the situation

in the Pacific, Indonesia, in other places. The leaders who worked together with Japanese, with the idea of promoting independence of their countries, after the Japanese collapse become leaders of the empire. So the difference with Banderaheids that he never becomes the leader, the leader of empire and immunity that comes with that position certainly doesn't apply to him. But there are other parts of his life which certainly put this whole thing in question,

the fate of his family, his own time in the German concentration camp. Certainly don't fit, don't fit the propaganda one-sided image of Banderah. In terms of him being a hero, that's very interesting question because he is perceived in Ukraine today by not by all and probably not by the majority, but by many people in Ukraine as a symbol of fighting against the Soviet Union and by extension against Russia and Russian occupation. So his popularity grew after February 24th,

2022 as a symbol of that resistance. Again we are talking here about myth and mythology because Banderahe was not leading the fight against the Soviet. The Soviet occupation in Ukraine because at that time he was just simply not in Ukraine. He was in Germany and you can imagine that geography mattered at that time much more than it matters today. There's a million questions to ask here. I think it's an important topic because it is at the center of the claimed reason that the war

continues in Ukraine. So I would like to explore that from different angles. But just to clarify, was there a moment where Banderah chose Nazi Germany over the Red Army when the war already began? So in the list of allegiances is Ukraine's independence more important than fighting Nazi Germany essentially? The Ukrainian independence was their goal and they were there to work with anybody who would support and in one way or at least allow the Ukrainian independence. So there is no

question that they are just classic nationalists. So the goal is the nationalism is the principle according to which the at least one definitions is according to which the cultural boundaries coincide with political boundaries. So their goal was to create political boundaries that would coincide with the geographic boundaries in the conditions of the world were two and certainly making making deals with this whoever would either support as I said or tolerate that project of theirs.

So I would love to find the line between nationalism, even extreme nationalism and fascism and Nazism. So for Banderah the myth and Banderah the person to what degree let's look at some of the ideology of Nazism to which degree did he hate Jews? Was he anti-Semitic? We know that basically in his circle there were people who were anti-Semites in a sense that okay we have the texts, right? We know that. We don't have that information about that sort of

text or that sort of evidence with regards to Banderah himself. In terms of fascism there is very clear and there is research done that in particularly Italian fascism had influence

on the thinking of people in that organization including people at the top. But it is also very important to keep in mind that they called themselves nationalist and revolutionaries and despite the fact that in 1939 and 1940 and 1941 it was very beneficial for them to declare themselves to be Ukrainian fascists and establish this bond with not just with Italy but with Nazi Germany they refused to do that and then they refused to recall their independence. So influences yes but

clearly it's a different type of a political project. So let me fast forward into the future and see to which degree the myth permeates. Does Ukraine have a neo-Nazi problem? My understanding is the Rana says in Ukraine and the Rha supporters of white supremacy theories. But also my understanding is that they are extremely marginal and they are more marginal than the

same sort of groups are in central Europe maybe in the US as well. And for me the question is not whether the Ukraine has it but why even in the conditions of the war the radical nationalism and extremism and white supremacist is such a marginal force. When in the countries that are not at the war you look at France you look at again it's not exactly nazis but really right radical right is

becoming so important. Why Ukraine in the conditions of the war is the country that manages relations between different ethnic groups and languages in the way that strengthens political nation. So for me as a scholar and a researcher what I see is that in Ukraine the influence of the far right in different variations is much lower than it is among some of Ukraine's neighbors and in

Europe in general. And the question is why I don't know I have guesses I don't know answer but that's the question that I think is interesting to answer how Ukraine ended up to be the only country in the world outside of Israel who has a Jewish president who is might least understand in is the most popular president in history in terms of how long his popularity goes after the election. So this is really from my point of view interesting questions and again we can we can

certainly debate that. So just for context the most popular far right party 1 2.15% of the vote in 2019 this is before the war so that's where things stood it's unclear where they stand now it'd be an interesting question whether it escalated how much what you're saying is that war in general can serve as a catalyst for expansion of extremist groups of extremist nationalist groups especially like the far right and it's interesting to see to what degree they have or have not

risen to power in the sort of in the shadows. So no nationalist or nationalistic party actually crossed the barrier to get into the parliament so Ukraine is the country where there is no right or far right in the parliament we can't say that about Germany we can't say that about France so that's just one more way to to stress this unique unique place of Ukraine in that in that sense.

And the year 2018 is the year already of the war the war started in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimea the the the front line was near Donbass all these groups were fighting there. So Ukraine maybe not to a degree that it is now was already on the on the war footing and yet and yet the the the the the right party couldn't couldn't get more than 2% so that's that's the question that I have in mind and yes the war historically historically of course puts forward

and makes from the more nationalist views and forces turned them from marginal forces into more central ones we talked about Bandara and we talked about organization of Ukrainian nationalists they were the most marginal group in the political spectrum in Ukraine in the 1930s that one can

only imagine but World War II comes and they become the most central group because they also were from the start go then you they had the organization the the violence was basically one of their means then you how to fight so historically historically wars indeed produce those results so we are we are looking at Ukraine we are we are trying to see what is happening there.

So Vladimir Putin in his interview with Tarkar Kralsen but many times before said that the current goal for the war in Ukraine is denotification that the purpose of the war is denotification can you explain this concept of denotification as Putin sees it.

Denotification is the trope that is accepted quite well by the by the former Soviet population and Russian population in particular the most powerful mythology Soviet mythology that then was basically passed as a part of heritage to the to the Russian Federation was World War II

was fighting against fascism so once you use terms fascism and not send denotification suddenly suddenly people not just start listening they just stop analyzing and as a propaganda tool this is this is of course very very powerful tool in terms of to what degree this is this is the real goal or not we discussed the importance of the far right in in Europe and in Ukraine so if that's the real goal of the war probably the war would have to start not against Ukraine but probably against

France or some other country if you take this at face with you. Well there's something really interesting here as you mentioned that's spoken to a lot of people in Russia and you said analysis stops in the west people look at the word denotification and look at the things we've

just discussed and kind of almost think this this is absurd when you talk to people in Russia maybe it's deep in there somewhere the history of World War II still reverberates through the maybe the fears maybe the pride whatever the deep emotional histories there it seems that the goal of

denotification appears to be reasonable for people in Russia they don't seem to see the absurdity or the complexity or the even the need for analysis I guess in this kind of statement word of denotification I would say this is broader this is broader the the war that started under the

banner that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same people and produces that sort of casualty really goes against also some any sort of logical of logical thinking but the Russia is a place where the free press doesn't exist already for a long period of time Russia is the place where there

is an echo chamber 30 degree and as war started first in 2014 and then all out war in 2022 I came across a lot of people on the personal level but also in the media reporting that they really can't find common language with their close relatives in Russia people who visited Ukraine

who know that it is not taken over by by nationalist and is not taken over by Nazis but the media around them the neighbors around them the people at their work basically say one and the same thing and we as humans in general whatever our background we are very very

our mind is is is really it's relatively easy to manipulate it and to a degree that even family connections that even family ties don't sometimes help to to maintain that that ability to to think and to analyze on your own to look at the facts

so Putin has alluded to the Yaroslav Hanukkah incident in the Canadian Parliament September 2023 this man is a veteran of warlord 2 on the Ukrainian side and he got two standing ovation in the Canadian parliament but they later found out that he was part of the SS

so can you explain on this what are your thoughts on this this had a very big effect on the narrative I guess propagated throughout the region yes what what happened during world war 2 was that once the Germans started to run out of of manpower they created sort of foreign

legion groups but because those people were not Aryans they were created for fighting on the on the battleground because they were not Aryans they couldn't be trusted so they were put under the command of Henry Himmler under command of SS and became known as SS Waffen units and one of

such units was created in Ukraine with great difficulties because Nazis didn't consider Slavs to be a generally worthy of even even that sort of foreign legion formations but they made an exception because those people were coming from Galicia which was part of Austria hungry which means part

of Austria which means somehow were open to the benevolent influence of the of the Germanic of the Germanic race and called the division Galitsin or Galicia part of Ukrainian youth joined the Galits the division the one of the explanations was that they

were looking at the experience of World War One and seeing that the units the Ukrainian units in the Austrian army then played a very important role in the fight for independence so that is one of the explanations you can't just use one explanation to describe motivations

of everyone and every single person who was joining there so they were sent to the front they were defeated within a few few short days by the by the by the red army and then were were retreating through Slovakia where they were used to fight with the partisan movement there

and eventually surrendered to the British so that's that's the story you can personally maybe understand what what what the good motivations were of this person or that person but that is one of the the best one of the very tragic and unfortunate pages in in in in Ukrainian history

you can't you can't justify that as as a as a as a phenomenon so from that point of view the the celebration of that experience as opposed to looking at that okay that that happened and we wish that those young man who were idealistic or joined the division for idealistic purposes

had had had had better understanding of things or made other choices but you can't you can't certainly certainly celebrate it and and once that happened that of course became a big big propaganda propaganda item in in in in in the current war we are talking about about

10 to 20,000 people in the division and we are talking about two to three million Ukrainians fighting in the red army and again it's it's not like red armies is is is is is completely blameless in the way how it behaved in in in pressure or in Germany and so on and so forth but it's basically

it's it's again we we are going back to the story of bandara so there is a period of collaboration and that's that's what propaganda tries to define him by or there is a division the litzin by 20,000 people and somehow it makes a relevant the experience of two to three million people

I mean just to clarify I think there is just a blunder on the Canadian parliament side the Canadian side of not doing research of maybe correct me if I'm wrong but from my understanding they were just doing stupid shallow political stuff let's applaud you know when Zelensky shows

up let's have a Ukrainian veteran let's applaud a veteran a world war two and then all of a sudden you realize well there's actually complexities towards we can talk about for example a lot of dark aspects on all sides of world war two the mass rape at the end of world war two by the

the right army when they say martiala's German there's a lot of really dark complexity and on all sides so you know that could be an opportunity to explore the dark complexity that some of the Ukrainians were in the SS or bandara the the complexity is there but I think they were doing

not a complex thing they were doing a very shallow applaud and we should applaud veterans of course but in that case they were doing it for show for the Zelensky and so on so we should clarify that the applause wasn't knowing it wasn't for the SS it was for a Ukrainian it was for

world war two veterans but the propaganda or at least an interpretation from the Russian side from whatever side is that they were applauding the full person standing before them which wasn't just a Ukrainian veteran but Ukrainian veteran that fought for the SS I don't have any particular

insights but I would be very much surprised if even one person in the parliament I mean the members of the parliament actually knew the whole story I would be very surprised yeah the whole story of this person and frankly the whole story of Ukraine and Russia and world war two appears

yes nevertheless I had a lot of power and really reverberated in support of the narrative that there is a neo-Nazi a Nazi problem in Ukraine this is the the narrative that is out there and it's it's a special repulful in Russia it's a special repulful in Russia given that there are

really the the the the atmosphere that that has created really is not conducive to any of any independent analysis well I wonder what is the most effective way to respond to that particular claim because there could be a discussion about nationalism and extreme nationalism and the

fight for independence and whether it isn't like Putin wrote one people but the question of are there a Nazis in Ukraine seems to be a question that could be analyzed rigorously with data that has been done on the academic level but in terms of the public response and public discourse

the the only response that I see is not to focus on the on the questions raised and put by the propaganda because you already become victim of that propaganda by definition but talk about that much broadly and and talk about about different different aspects of if it is world war two about

different aspects of world war two if it's about issue of the far right in Ukraine let's talk about US let's talk about Russia let's talk about France let's compare that's the only way how you deal with propaganda because propaganda is not necessarily something that is is an outright lie

can be just one factor that's taken out of the context and and is is blown out of proportion and that's that that that is good enough in the way to defend against that is to bring in the context let us move gracely throughout back and forth through history back to Mandela you wrote a book

on the KGB spy Bogdan Stoshinsky can you tell his story this is a story of the history of the organization Ukrainian nationalists and and Mandela as well already after the end of the second world war because what you got after the second world war so imagine a May of 1945 the red banner is

all over Riksstok the red armies and control of half of Europe but the units of the red army are still fighting the war and not just behind the Soviet lines but within the borders of the Soviet Union and this war continues all the way into the early 1950s up to almost up to Stalin's death

the war is conducted by the organization of Ukrainian nationalists which have a Ukrainian and Sergian army and the government tries to crush that resistance so what it does is basically recruits local people to to spy on the partisans on the underground and Bogdan Stoshinsky is one of

those people his family is supporting the resistance they provide food his sister is engaged with one of the local commanders of the of this underground unit and they know everything about Stoshinsky's family and they know everything about him because he is also collecting funds for the underground

so they have a conversation with him saying that's okay that's that's what we've got and you and your family can go to to prison or you help us a little bit we we're interested in the fiance of your sister and we want to get him and Stoshinsky says yes and once once they round up

the fiancee basically betrayed a member or almost member of his family his he's done he can't go back to his village he can't go back to his study he was studying in the river at that time so he becomes as I write in my book the the secret police becomes his family and he's sent to Kiev he's

trained for two years sent to his Germany into Berlin and becomes becomes an assassin so they sent him across the across the border to Western Germany to Munich chose the headquarters of different different organizations and they saw that organizations Ukrainian and Russian and

Georgian and so on and so forth and he kills he kills two leaders of the of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists one editor of the newspaper and eventually he kills bandara he does that with the new weapon a spray pistol that eventually makes it into the bond novel the man with the

golden gun and that whole episode is a little bit reshaped but it is it it is not in the film but it is in the in the novel itself and then later has a change of mind under the influence of his German German fiancee and then wife they decide to escape to the west and while they're doing

that they discover that their apartment was bugged and probably the KGB knows all of that so a long story short his son dies in in Berlin he shouldn't allow him to go there but his wife has a nervous breakdown so they allow him to go there to just calm her so that they would

be no scandal and two of them one day before their sons burial because that's after after that they would be sent to Moscow they jumped the ship and go to West Berlin two hours before the Berlin wall was being built so they they they you even they would stay for the funeral probably they

would the KGB would not let them go but also if they would stay the the the the border would be there and he goes he goes to the American intelligence and says okay that's that's why I'm and that's what I did and they look at him and they say we don't trust you we don't know who you are you have

documents and five names you say you killed Bandera well we have a different information he was he was poisoned and probably by someone in his in in his in his clothes in his clothes circle a spray pistol did did you reach too much Ian Flamin where does this come from he insists they say okay

you insist if you committed all those crimes we're giving you to the German police and German police will be you'll be investigating you and then the trial comes and if he says if he takes back his testimony in the whole case against him collapses he can go free but he knows that if

he goes free he is a target of his colleagues from from from from the same department so he's taskeded the trial is to prove that he is guilty that he's did that and then he disappears nobody knows where he goes and there are all sorts of cover stories and I was lucky to interview

commander for the form of the of the South African police confirmed to me that Stoshinsky was in South Africa defled the vice-German intelligence thought that it was too dangerous for him to stay in Germany they sent him under different name

to to South Africa so that's that's that's the story of Stoshinsky himself but going back to Bandera of course the fact that he confessed and it became known that KGB assassinated Bandera that added to the image and to general mythology about Bandera what a fascinating story of a village boy

becoming an assassin who killed one of the most influential revolutionaries of the region in the 20th century so what just zooming out brought down the KGB how powerful was the KGB what role did it play in this whole story of the Soviet Union it depends on the period at the time that we just

described late 50s and early 60s they were not powerful at all and the reasons for that was that people like Roshov were really concerned about the secret police becoming too powerful it became too powerful in their mind understanding under Berya and it was concerned about the Berya's power as a

secret police chief that led to the coup against Berya and Krushov come come into power and Berya was arrested and executed and what what Krushov was trying to do after that was trying to put um since 54 the name was already KGB KGB under his control so he was appointing the former

Komsomal leaders as the heads of the KGB so the people who really really owned everything to him that that sort of position and the heads of the KGB were not members of Polidura it changed it changed in the 70s with Andropov where KGB started started to play again very important role in

the Soviet history and let's say decisions on Afghanistan and the Soviet troops marching into Afghanistan were made by the apart from Berya's knew by the trio of the people who are not would be called today Cili Viky maybe or not all of them were Cili Viky but one of course was on

drop of the head of the KGB and other was the minister of defense and and then there was secretary in charge of the military industrial complex the minister of foreign affairs so but but the head of the KGB became really not just the member of Polidura but the the the the member of that

inner circle and then the fact that Andropov six kids Berya's new is also a manifestation of of the power that KGB acquired really after after Khrushchev in the in the 1970s and then going into the right to the 80s who was more powerful the KGB or the CIA during the Soviet Union

the CIA it's it's the organization that is charged with the information gathering and all sorts of operations including assassinations in the 50s and 60s abroad the KGB was the organization that really had both the surveillance of over the population

within the Soviet Union and and and also the the operations abroad and its members well it's leaders were members of the inner circle for for making decisions I again from what I understand about the way how politics and decision work and decisions are made in the United States the

the CIA the chief of the CIA is not is is not one of the decision-making group that the providing information yes so I would say it's not day and night but their power political influence political significance very different is it understood how big the KGB was how widespread it was

given its secretive and distributed nature certain things we know others we don't because the sti-c archives are open and and most of the KGB especially in Moscow they're not but we know that the KGB combined not only the internal sort of a secret police functions at home and counter

counter intelligence branch and intelligence branch abroad but also the the border tropes for example right so really institutionally it was it was it was a huge huge mammoth and another thing that we know we can sort of extrapolate from what we know from the sti-c archives that

the surveillance at home the surveillance was really massive the gas is the the the the the the sovets were not as as effective and as as meticulous and as scrupulous and as methodical as probably is Germans were but that that gives you that that gives you a basic idea of how how

penetrated the entire society was what do you think is important to understand about the KGB if we want to also understand Vladimir Putin since he was a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years from my research including on the on the sti-cinski what what I understand is that

in KGB and it was a powerful organization again less powerful than 50s and 60s but still very powerful organization there was there was on the one hand the understanding of the situation in the country and abroad that probably other other organizations didn't have they had also

first peak in terms of the selecting cadres the the the work in the KGB was well paid and considered to be very prestigious so that's that so that was part to a degree of the Soviet elite in terms of whom they whom they recruited and they had a resentment toward the party leadership they didn't

allow them to do James Bond kind of things that they would want to do because they were political risks after this scandal with sti-cinski the at least on many levels the KGB stopped the the practice of the assassinations political assassinations abroad because it was considered

politically to be extremely extremely dangerous the person who was in charge of the KGB at the time of when there was a assassination she lepon was one of the candidates to replace Khrushchev and Brezhnev used against him that scandal abroad eventually to remove him from Politbola

so the KGB was really was really looking at the party leadership as to a degree in effective corrupt and was on their way and from what I understand that's that's exactly the the the the attitudes that people like like Putin and and people of his circle brought brought to to power in Kremlin so

the methods that KGB used they can use now and there is no no part you know no other other other institution actually stopping them from doing that and they think about my understanding the operations abroad about foreign policy in general in terms of the KGB mindset of planning

operations and executing particular operations and so on and so forth so I think a lot a lot of culture that came into existence in the Soviet KGB now became part of the culture of the of the Russian Russian establishment you wrote the book the Russo-Ukrainian War the return of history

that gives the full context leading up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 so can you take me through the key moments in history that led up to this war so let me mention the collapse of the Soviet Union we could probably go much farther back but the collapse of the

Soviet Union mentioned 2014 maybe you can highlight key moments that led up to the to 2022 the key moments would be first the year 2004 now for orange revolution in Ukraine and then year 2013 known as the revolution of dignity both were the revolts against the something that

by significant part of Ukrainian population was considered to be completely completely unacceptable actions on the part of the government and people in the government at that time so the orange revolution of 2004 was a protest against falsified presidential elections and rejection of a

candidate that was supported by Russia publicly supported by Russia I remember being in Moscow at that time and couldn't believe my eyes when in the center of Russia I saw a billboard based on the Kovych the trick was that there were a lot of Ukrainians in Russia and in Moscow in particular

and they they had the right to vote so and it led to the election of Ukrainian as Ukrainian president Viktor Ryushchenko who put on the agenda the issue of Ukraine's membership in nature so it was apparently a pro-Western orientation and the second case was the revolution of dignity

2013 with some of the same characters including Yanukovych who at that time was already president of Ukraine and there the question was of the government promising the people for one year at least to sign association agreement with European Union and then turning over almost overnight

and saying that they were not going to do that and that's that's how things started but then when they became really massive and why something that was called revolution euro revolution became revolution of dignity was when the government police bit up students in downtown cave

who judging by the reports were basically already almost ready to to disperse almost ready to go home and that's when roughly half of cave showed up on the streets that sort of the police behavior that sort of the was absolutely unacceptable in Ukraine

the still in elections and falsification of elections was unacceptable that's where around that time and around 204 the president of Ukraine at that time renewed kuchma writes a book called Ukraine is not Russia and apparently the term comes from his

his discussion with Putin when Putin was suggesting to him quite strongly to use force against people on the may done on the square in cave and kuchma allegedly said him you don't understand Ukraine is not Russia you can't you can't do things like that you get you get push back

and that's that's the this two events to four and then 2013 and became really crucial point in terms of the Ukraine direction the the survival of Ukraine and democracy which is one of very few countries in the post-soviet space where democracy survived the original flirt with between the

government leaders and democracy of the 1990s it was the all-soviet story in Russia everywhere else there was high democratic expectations but they came pretty much to end by the end of the decade Ukraine Ukraine preserved the democracy and the orientation of Ukraine towards toward integration

into in some form into western and european structures that that Ukrainian democracy plus western orientation was something and in Russia we see the strengthening of the autocratic regime under Vladimir Putin that if you look deeper the this are the processes that put

the two countries on the collision course so there's a division a push and pull inside Ukraine on identity of whether they're part of Russia or part of Europe and you highlighted two moments in Ukrainian history that there's a big flare-up where this the statement was first Ukraine is not

Russia and essentially Ukraine is part of Europe but there's other moments what were the defining moments they began an actual war and the dot that the the the worst started in february of 2015 was the Russian takeover of Crimea by military force right the so-called green man

and the big question is is why and it's it's very important to go back to the year 2013 and the the start of the of the protests and the the story of the Ukraine sign an association agreement with european union so from what we understand today the Ukrainian government under

president general college did this suicidal sharp turn after one year of promise and association agreement saying that okay we changed our mind under pressure from Moscow and Moscow applied that pressure for one reason at least in my opinion the Ukraine sign an association agreement

with european union would mean that Ukraine would not be able to sign association agreement with any Eurasian union in any shape of form that that was at that time in the process of making and for Vladimir Putin that was the beginning of his or part of his third term one of his agenda items

for the third term was really a consolidation of the of the post-soviet space and Eurasian space and not membership in NATO not membership in European union but association agreement with European union meant that that post-soviet space would have to exist under Moscow's control but without

Ukraine the second largest post-soviet republic the republic on whose vote depended the continuing existence of the Soviet union and whose vote ended in many ways the existence of the Soviet union so that is that is broadly background but but also the rough was personalities there are

also their beliefs that the the readings of history and and and all of that became became part of the story but if if you look at that geopolitically the the association agreement is Putin put in Ukraine outside of the Russian sphere of influence and the the the response was

an attempt to topple the government in cave that clearly was going to to sign that agreement to take over Crimea and to help to deal with a lot of issues within Russia itself and boost the the popularity of the president and it certainly certainly worked in that in that way as well

and the once once Ukraine still after Crimea continued on its path then the next step started the so-called hybrid warfare in Donbass but again the unlike and like Crimea from what from what I understand Russia was not really looking forward to taking possession of a Donbass then bus was

viewed as the way how to influence Ukraine to stop it from drift over the west maybe you can tell me about the region of Donbass I mentioned that nationalism and principle of nationalism is the principle of making the political borders to coincide with ethnic and cultural borders and

that's that's how the maps of of many Eastern European countries had been drawn in the 19th and 20th century on that on that principle Donbass where the majority constituted by the beginning of the 20th century were Ukrainians was considered to be Ukrainian and was claimed in the middle in

in the middle of this revolution and revolutionary wars and civil wars by Ukrainian government but Donbass became a site one of the key sites in the Russian Empire of early industrialization and it's it's mining industry with logical industry so what that meant was that people from

other parts of not Ukraine but other parts of the Russian Empire congregated that's that's where jobs were that's how Khrushchev and his family came came to Donbass the family of Brezhnev overshoot a little bit they got to the industrial enterprises in in the city of Kamensk and

Nipro the place the city that was called Nipropetrovsk so those were Russian peasants moving into the area in looking for the for the job and by the the population became quite mixed Ukrainians still constituted the majority of the population but not necessarily in the towns and in the cities and culturally the place was becoming more and more Russian as the result of that of that moment so apart from the Crimea Donbass was the part of Ukraine where the ethnic Russians were

the the biggest group they were not the majority but they were very very big and significant group for example in the city of Mariupol that was all but destroyed in the course of the last of the last two years the ethnic Russians constituted over 40 percent of the population right so that's

not exactly part of Donbass but that gives you that that gives you general idea now the story of Donbass and what happened now is is multi-dimensional and this ethnic composition is just one part of the story another very important part of the story is economy and Donbass is a classical

rust belt and we know what happens with the cities that were part of the first or second wave of industrialization in the United States globally you know about social problems that exist in those places so Donbass is probably the most dramatic and tragic case of implosion of the rust belt

with the mines not anymore producing the sort of the and at the acceptable price the call that they used to produce is people losing jobs with the politicians looking for subsidies as opposed to trying very unpopular unpopular measures of dealing something and and bring bring new money and

new investment into the region so all of that all of that become part of the story that made made it easy for Russia for the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation we have interviews with Mr. Girkin who is saying that he was the first to pull the trigger and

and fired the shot in that war he became the minister of defense in the the Donetsk people's republic you look at the prime minister he is another person with Moscow residence permit so you see key figures in those positions at the start and the beginning not being

Russians from Ukraine but being Russians from Russia and Russians from Moscow closely connected to the government structure intelligence structure and so on so that is that is the start and the beginning but the the way how how it exploded the way it did was also a combination of the economic

and agricultural and linguistic factors so for Putin the war in Donbass and even in 2022 is a defensive war against what the Ukrainian government is doing against ethnically Russian people of Donbass is that fair to say well how he describes it what what we see this is certainly this is certainly

the argument right this is certainly the argument and a pretext because what we see there is that there would be no and there was no independent mobilization in Crimea either in Crimea or in Donbass without Russian presence without Russian occupation the fact of the Crimea there would be no

and and there was no before at least in the previous five to six years any mass mobilizations of Russians there was none of such mobilizations in in Donbass before before Gertkin and other people with military with with these parts of military units showed up there so it is it is a it is an excuse

you you've been to Ukraine you know that Russian language is not persecuted in Ukraine and if you've not been to Donbass it would be different or to the Crimea it would be difficult to find one single Ukrainian school not that they didn't exist at all but it

would take quite an effort for you to find it or sometimes even to hear Ukrainian language outside either of the institutions or or the or the farmers market so that's that's that's the reality that that's the reality that is clear that is visible so imagine and those conditions and

contacts that someone is is persecuted ethnic Russians or Russian speakers um want to believe in something like that one important precondition is never to step step your foot in Ukraine I should mention maybe this is a good moment to mention when I

travel to Ukraine this is after the start of the war I mentioned farmers market which is funny basically every single person I talk to including the leadership we spoke in Russian for many of them Russian is the more comfortable language even and the people who spoke Ukrainian

are more in the west west side of Ukraine and you know young people that are kind of want to show that in an activist way that they want to fight for the independence of the country so I take your point I wonder if you want to comment about language and maybe about the future of language in

Ukraine is is the future of language going to stabilize on Ukrainian or is it going to return to its traditional base of Russian language very roughly before the start of the war in 2014 we can talk about parity between Russian and Ukrainian and also with as you said clearly Ukraine

being a dominant language in the west and Russian being being a dominant language on the streets certainly in the in the east of the country and then in between of that to pause a number of this transitional areas and Ukraine in my experience and I visited a lot of countries not all of them

and probably maybe maybe I will be still surprised but in my experience this is the only truly bilingual country that I ever visited I lived in Canada for a long period of time the risk were back and the rest and and and in Ukraine you you can talk in either Russian or

Ukrainian in any part of the of the country and you would be understood and you would be responded in in a different language with the expectation that you would would understand and if you if you don't understand that means you don't come from Ukraine

that's the reality the war and loss of the Crimea and partial loss of them bus if it's major major industrial industrial areas really shifted the balance towards mostly Ukrainian speaking regions and also what you see and you clearly pointed to that starting with

2014 even a little bit earlier the engage in Russian chooses Ukrainian as as a marker of its identity and that started in 2014 but we we have a dramatic dramatic shift after 2022 and on the anecdotal on a dot-all level I can tell you that I speak to people who

be in in in Chernihiv at the time this is east of Crimea at the time of of the Russian aggression and bombardment and so on and so forth who had passive knowledge of Ukrainian but spoke all their all their life Russian and they would speak Ukrainian to me and when I say okay why

you're doing that we we know each other for decays in the US-Tression and he said oh I don't want to have anything in common with people who did that to us so there is there is a big big push of course with this with this current war now the question is whether this change is is something

that will stay or not what is what is the future linguistic practices are very very conservative ones and we at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute have a project called Mapa Digital Atlas of Ukraine and we were documenting and mapping different data in time and what we noticed is the

spike in the people's self-reporting of use of Ukrainian in 2014 and 2015 at the time of the start of the war when the the the the threat was the most clear one this is self-reporting that doesn't mean that people exactly do what what they believe that that's what they are supposed

to do and then return back to to where it was by the year 2016 and 2017 so this this dynamic can repeat itself but given given the how long the war is going on how big the impact how big the stresses and that the the way the way of the future is probably associated with younger people

who are switching to Ukrainian so I would my bad would be on on Ukrainian language rising in prominence so as we get closer to febber of 2022 there's a few other key moments maybe let's talk about in July 2021 Putin publishing an essay titled on the historical unity of Russians and

Ukrainians can you describe the ideas expressed in this essay the idea is is very conveniently presented already in the first paragraph in the first sentence is rarely of the article where Putin says that for a long time I was saying the Russians and Ukrainians were one in the

same people and here is the proof this is this is the the the the the the historical he develops his historical argumentation apparently is the help of of a lot of people around him and he started to talk about Russians and Ukrainians being one in the same people one year before the start of

the war in 2014 so in 2013 he was together with patriarch Kyril on visit to Kiev and there was a conference specifically organized for him in the Kyrilin cave's monastery and that's that's where he he stated that the fact that he was with patriarch Kyril is is very important factor for

understanding where the ideas come in from this is the idea that was dominant in the Russian empire of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century that Russians Ukrainians and bell Russians are really Russian great Russians little Russians and white Russians and that they

constitute one one people yes there are some dialectical differences yes Ukrainians sin well yes they they dance funny but overall that's that's that that doesn't matter and the that idea actually was really destroyed mostly destroyed by the revolution of 1917 because it wasn't just

social revolution that's how it is understood in in in US in good part of the world it was also national revolution it was an empire it was a revolution in the in the Russian empire and to bring this pieces of empire back within the Soviet Union the Bolsheviks had to make concessions

one of those concessions was to recognition of the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation bellorussian as a separate nation Russians as a separate nation in down in them with their own territorial with borders with institutions and so on and so forth but there was one institution

that was not reformed that institution was called the Russian Orthodox Church because one of the ways that Bolsheviks dealt with it they couldn't eradicate religion completely but they arrested the development of the of the religion and thinking and and and and theology on the level as it

existed before the revolution of 1917 so the Russian Orthodox Church of 1917 continued to be the Russian Orthodox Church in 1991 and in 2013 continuing the same imperial mantra of the existence of one big Russian nation one unified people and when you see the formation of of the ideas about

about nations about foreign policy in the Russian Empire after 1991 they're going back to the pre pre Bolshevik times Ukrainians do that as well as donions do that as well the difference is that when Ukrainians go back they go back to the pre 1917 there they're intellectual fathers and and

writings of basically liberal nationalism or sometimes they go to the radical nationalism of Mandara which would be which would be not pre 1917 but pre 1945 when the Russians go to pre Bolshevik past looking for the ideas looking for inspiration looking for the narratives what they find

they's empire what they find there are imperial projects and and that's that's that's certainly the story of the of the Putin's claim that's the story of the argument and to to conclude the argument that he lays out the historical argument comes also almost directly from the narratives

of the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century so it's not only the argument is coming from that era but also the argumentation is coming from that era as well but that those arguments are all in in the flavor of empire it's empire on the one hand but also there is imperial understanding

of what Russian nation is that doesn't allow for independence of its little Russian and white Russian branches alleged branches right so what what you see is the concept of the big Russian nation that's late 19th beginning 20th century empire sees the right in on the wall that nationalism

is on the rise and it tries to survive by mobilizing the nationalism of the largest group in the empire happens to be Russian Stalin is a big promoter of the some form of Russian nationalism especially during the war and after war and he started his career as a very promising Georgian writer writing in Georgian so he's not doing that for some personal personal affinity or cultural intellectual roots within within Russian with them Russian nation or Russian people he is doing that for the

for the sake of the success of the of his Soviet and communist project and he has to get the largest ethnic group on board which are which are Russians but Stalin and and and Putin have different understanding of Russians or Stalin Stalin already accepted Ukrainians and Belarusians

they exist and Putin Putin goes back to pre-Slav and pre-Lan time so if we step back from the the historical context of this and maybe the geopolitical purpose of writing such an essay and forget about the essay altogether you know I have family in Ukraine and Russia I know a lot

of people in Ukraine and Russia forget the war forget all of this there's a kind of they all kind of sound the same like if I go to France they sound different than in Ukraine and Russia like if you lay out this the cultural map of the world there's just a different beat and music and flavor to

people I guess what I'm trying to say is there seems to be a closeness between the cultures of Ukraine and Russia and how do we describe that do we acknowledge that and how does that attention with the national independence first of all especially when it comes to eastern Ukraine

or to be big cities many people in Ukraine spoke Russian right generally it's it's the same language on the top of that we started our discussion with talking about the Slavs right so both Ukrainian and Russian language are Slavic languages so there is there is proximity there as well

on the top of that there is a history of existence in the Soviet Union and before that in one empire for a long period of time so you see a lot of a lot of before the war a lot of Ukrainian singers and entertainers performing in Russia and vice versa and biography of president Zalansky certainly

one of the fits fits that that particular particular model as well that that all talks about about similarities but this similarity is also very often obscure things that that became so important in the course of this war and I already mentioned the book titled by by president

Kuchmov Ukraine Ukraine is not Russia so that's that's the argument despite the fact that you think that we are the same we behave differently and it turned out that they behave differently you have Bolotna in Moscow and police violence and that's the end of it you have the my done in Ukraine and

you have police violence and that's that's the beginning that's not the end history really matters in the way why why sometimes people speaking the same language with different accents behave very different Russia and Russian identity was formed around the state and has difficulty imagining

itself outside of the state and that state happened to be imperial for most of Russian history Ukrainian project came into existence in revolt against the state Ukraine came into existence out of the parts of different empires which means they left different cultural impact on them

and for Ukrainians to stay together out the critic regime so far didn't work it's like the colonies of the United States you have to you have to find common language you you have to talk to each other and that became part of the Ukrainian political DNA and that that became a huge factor in the war

and very few people in Ukraine believed what what Vladimir Putin was saying that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same people but the majority believed that they certainly closed cultural and historically nations and from that point of view the bombardment of the Ukrainian

cities became such a shock to the Ukrainians because deep down they they may be looked at Syria they looked at Chechnya and were explaining that through the fact that there was basically such a big cultural gap and difference between Russians and and and those those countries and those nations

but I I my understanding at least most of them had difficulty imagining the war of that proportion and that that sort of frost and that sort of war crimes the the the the bringing that that sort of war crimes and on that level it's interesting that you say that in a DNA

of Ukraine versus Russia so maybe Russia is more conducive to authoritarian regimes and Ukraine is more conducive to defining itself by rebelling against authoritarian regimes by rebellion absolutely and that was the story pretty much before 1991 so what you see since 1991

and what you see today is a my would say new factor certainly in Ukrainian modern history because Ukrainians traditionally were very successful rebels the largest peasant army in the civil war in the Russian Empire was the Mahno-Army and South-Eun Ukraine and one one revolt

cause a cruel war and other revolts one after another but Ukrainians had historically difficulty actually maintaining the sort of freedom that they acquired had difficulty associating themselves with the state and what we see especially in the last two years it's it's a quite phenomenal development in Ukraine when Ukrainians associate themselves with the state where Ukrainians see a state not just as a foreigner as historically it wasn't Ukrainian history not just someone who came

to to take but the state that is continuation of them that helps to provide security for them that the the Ukrainian armed forces even before the start of this war had the highest highest support and popularity in Ukraine the state today functions unbelievably effectively under

attacks and missile attacks and against city government and local government and it's it's it's we we are witnessing when it comes to Ukraine we're witnessing a very important historical development where Ukrainians found their state for the first time through most through most of the

history and tried to make a transition from successful rebels to successful managers and state builders yeah I talked to John Mishima recently there's a lot of people that believe NATO had a big contribution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 so what what role did NATO play in this

full history from Bucharest in 20 in 2008 to today NATO was a big part certainly of the Russian justification for the war that was the theme that was up there in the months leading to the to the aggression the truth is that and Vladimir Putin went on records saying that that the Western

leaders were telling him again and again that there is no chance for Ukraine to become member of NATO anytime so Russia was very effective back in the year 208 in stopping Ukraine and Georgia on the path of joining NATO there was a Bucharest summit at which the US president at that time

George W. Bush was pushing for the membership and Putin convinced leaders of France and Germany to block that that membership and after that membership for Ukraine and for Georgia was really removed from the from the realistic agenda for NATO and that's that's what the leaders of the Western world

in the month leading to the February 2020 to aggression were trying to to convey to Vladimir Putin what he wanted there was an ultimatum that really was there to not to start negotiations but really to stop negotiations he demanded the withdrawal of NATO to the borders of the 1997

if I'm not mistaken so completely something that neither leaders would accept nor the country's members of NATO would accept but for me it's very clear that that was that that was an excuse that that was a justification and what happened later in the year 2022 and 2023 certainly

confirms me in that in that belief Finland joined NATO and Sweden is on the way to join in NATO so Finland joined in NATO in Christ border between Russia and NATO to fault and problem more than that so if NATO is the real concern it would be probably not completely unreasonable to expect

that if not every single soldier but at least half of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine would be moved to protect the new border with NATO in Finland so I have no doubt that no one in Kremlin either in the past or today looks favorably or is excited about NATO

NATO moving or the countries of Eastern Europe joining NATO but I have very difficult time imagining that that was the primary cause of the war and what we see also we talked about Tucker's interview he was surprised but he believed that Putin was completely honest when the first 25 minutes of

interview he was talking about relations between Russia and Ukraine was talking about history and that was also the main focus of his essay essay was not on NATO and Russia as he was in Russia and Ukraine so that is where the the the real causes are the broader context is

the fall of empire and process of disintegration of empire not the story of NATO what was to clarify the reason Putin Russia engaged Ukraine in 2022 the immediate goal in 2014 when the war started was to stop the drift of Ukraine toward the west and outside of the Russian sphere of

influence the invasion of 2022 perceived the same goals keeping Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence once we have the resistance quite effective resistance on the part of Ukraine the rumstein and coalition international coalition in support of Ukraine then we see the

realization of plan B where parts of Ukrainian territory are being annexed and included in the constitution of the Russian Federation so the two scenarios don't exclude each other but if if the scenario number one doesn't work then scenario number two goes goes into play in the gates of

Kiev chapter you write above a lot of Roslensky in the early days of the war what are most important moments to you about this time the the first hours and days of the invasion the first hours and the first days were the most difficult psychologically the rest of the world really didn't

expect Kiev to last for more than few days didn't expect Ukraine to last for more than few weeks and all the data suggested that that's what would happen Ukraine would collapse would be taken over Putin called his his war a special military operation which suggests you also expectations

about the scope expectations about the time so semi military semi-police police operation so every reasonable person in the world believed that that would what happened and it's the herrhysm of quote unquote unreasonable people like Zalensky like the commander of

Ukrainian armed forces Zaluzhny like mayors of the cities glitch ko and others I'm just naming names that are familiar to almost all of us now but there are thousands of those people unreasonable people who decided that it was unreasonable to attack their country and that

was that was the most the most difficult times and days and speaking about Zalensky every understand reasonable leader in the west was trying to convince him to leave Ukraine and to set a government in exile in Poland or in London and it was reasonable to accept his one of his

predecessors Mr. Yonukovych flat cave a few months before that in Afghanistan the president of Afghanistan flat Afghanistan that was a reasonable thing to expect and he turned out to be very unreasonable in that in that sense that's that comes with the gods his gods and gods people

around him and Ukrainians in general why do you think he's dating Kiev this former comedian who played a president TV one Kiev is being invaded by the second most powerful military in the world because I think he believes in things and and one of those things was that

if he a president and he is in the presidential office he is there to play his role to that and another thing my personal again I never met with him as Zalensky my personal understanding of him is that he has talent that helped him in his career before the presidency

and then helps now he feels the audience and then channels the the the the the attitude of the audience and and amplifies it and I think that another reason why he didn't leave Kiev was that he felt the audience the audience but that in that particular context for the Ukrainians

so he had a sense that the Ukrainians would unify because he was quite if you look at the polls before the war quite unpopular and and there's still divisions and factions and the government is divided I mean there's the east and the west and all this kind of stuff you you think he had a

sense that this could unite people the east and the west was not already such an issue after uh after Crimea and part of Donbass being gone so Ukraine was much more united than it was before uh he brought to power his before that really non-existent party of regions on his personal

popularity but the important thing is that he created a majority in the parliament which really reflected the unity that existed among Ukrainians that didn't was not there before he won with 73% of the population uh of those who took part in in the elections his predecessor Petro Poroshenko

also carried 90% of the of the prisons and the same happened with Zelensky so the country unified after 2014 to a degree it was impossible to to imagine before and Zelensky filed that Zelensky knew that and that that that that where where the talent of politician really matters and that that's that's something that you can see beyond beyond just data and and you can feel that apparently Jelsen had that ability. Why did the peace talks fail? There was a lot of peace

talks. The main reason is that the conditions that Russia was trying to impose on Ukraine were basically unacceptable for Ukraine because one of the conditions apart from this strange thing called denotification was of course the fact that loss of the territory and for the future

really staying outside either of NATO or any any any western support which was very clear you can buy a couple of weeks you can buy a couple of months but in the conditions like that Russia will come back tomorrow and will take over everything and once once Ukrainians realize that they can

win on the battlefield once the Russians were defeated and withdraw from cave the the opportunity emerged to get out of the of the negotiations which was very clear were leading not today then tomorrow to the complete destruction of Ukraine and then of course once the territory started to be liberated things like Butcher and the massacres of the civilian population came to the fore which made also very difficult if not impossible to conduct

negotiations from this moral and emotional point of view. What about the claims that you know Boris Johnson the West compromised the ability of these peace talks to be successful basically you kind of manipulated the talks. I asked people who accompanied Bruce Johnson to give that question the answer was no and I believe the sensor and I'll tell you why because it is very difficult for me to imagine President Zelensky to take orders from anybody in the world either Boris Johnson

or Joe Biden or anybody else and basically doing things that Zelensky believes are not in his interest or in the interest of his country I just can't imagine that anybody in the world telling Zelensky what to do and Zelensky actually following it against his own his own vicious and desires at least if that is possible what is in the public sphere doesn't allow us to suggest that it is. That said Zelensky is a smart man and he knows that the war can only continue with

the West support. That is a different supposition to know that it can continue with the West support but if we are talking about withdrawing from the negotiations that's not about the continuation of the war that you don't need Western support. Well what I mean is if he started the sense that the West will support no matter what then maybe the space of decisions you're making is different.

We can interpret that that way but Boris Johnson represented at that point Britain, not the United States and really what the war showed and it was clear already at that time that what was needed was massive support from the West as a whole and the promise of that support came only after the West realized that Ukraine can win and came only in late April with the Ramstein so at least a few weeks later. So I don't know how much Boris Johnson could promise he probably could promise

to try to help and try to convince and try to work on that. If Zelensky acted on that promise he certainly was taking a risk but the key issue again I'm going back where I started. It's a principle and acceptance for Ukraine, the conditions that were offered and Ukraine was the moment they saw the possibility that they could fight back with Johnson's support without

Johnson's support they took the chance. So what are the ways this work can end? Do you think what are the different possible trajectories whether it's peace talks, what is winning look like for either side, what is the role of U.S. what trajectories do you see that are possible? It's a question on the one level very easy to answer on the other very difficult. The level

on which it is very easy it's a broad historical perspective. If you really believe and I believe in that, that this is the war of the Soviet succession, that this is the war of the disintegration of empire. We know how this story ends and they end with disintegration of empire, they end with the rise of the new states and the appearance of the new colored sports on the map. That's the story that started with the American Revolution. So that's long term perspective.

The difficult part is of course what will happen tomorrow. The difficult part is what there will be in two days or even in two years. And in very broad terms the war can end in one of three scenarios. The victory on one side, the victory on another side and the sort of a stalemate and compromise, especially when it comes to the territories. This war is already approaching the end of the second year. I follow the news and look analysis. I don't remember one single piece suggesting that the

next year will bring peace or will bring peace for sure. And we are in a situation where the both sides still believe that they can achieve something or improve their position on the battlefield. Certainly that was the expectations of Ukrainian side back in the summer and in the fall of 2023. And from what I understand now, this is certainly the expectations of the Russian side today. This is the largest war in Europe since World War II. The largest war in the world since

Korean War. And we know that the Korean War ended in this division of Korea, but the negotiations were going on for more than two years. While those negotiations were going on, both sides were trying to improve their position there. And until there was a political change, death of Stalin, rival of Eisenhower in the United States, and the realization that the chances of succeeding in the battlefield, huge the peace talks didn't come. So at this point, all three scenarios are

possible. I don't really discount any of them. It's really, really to say what will happen. So without any political change, let's try to imagine what are the possibilities that the war ends this year? Is it possible that it can end with compromise, basically at the place it started? Meaning back to the borders of 2022? Yeah, back to the borders of 2022 with some security guarantees that aren't really guarantees,

but a hopeful guarantees. No, it's not just virtual impossibility. It is impossible without political change in Moscow. The reason is that back in the fall of 2022, Vladimir Putin included five Ukrainian-region sublists, even those that he didn't control, or during the control fully, into the Russian constitution, which basically in simple language is that the hands are tied up not only for Putin himself, but also for his possible successors.

So that means that no return to the borders of 2022 without political change in Moscow are possible. A few days after that decision in Moscow, Zelensky issued a decree saying that no negotiations with Russia. What that really meant in plain language is that basically we are not prepared to negotiate a stable agreement with five wall oblists, not just the next, but also in the Russian constitution. That's where we are. That's the scenario. Everything is possible,

of course, but it's highly highly unlikely. So the Russian constitution is a thing that makes us all very difficult? Yes, not only as a negotiation tactic for Putin, however, what's negotiating the Russian side, but also as a legal issue. So the practical aspect of it, even as difficult? You really have to change the constitution

before this agreement takes hold or immediately after that. And with the Minsk agreements, that was one of the things that Russia wanted from Ukraine, change of the constitution, and it turned out to be really impossible. So that's one of the back stories of the Minsk and collapse of the Minsk agreements. Is there something like Minsk agreements that are possible now to, maybe this is a legal question, but to override the constitution to sort of shake everything up.

So see the constitutional moment as a just an negotiation tactic to comment the table to something like Minsk agreement. Given how fast those amendments to the constitution were adopted, that suggests that real executive power in Russia has enormous power over the legislative branch. So it's again difficult to imagine, but technically this is possible again, if possible, if there is a political change in Moscow. I don't understand why assuming

political change in Moscow is not possible this year. So I'm trying to see if there's a way to end this war this year. There is a possibility of armistice, right? But armistice more along the, like any armistice, along the lines of the current front lines. But withdrawal of the Russian troops to the borders of 2022 at this point, whether it's reasonable or unreasonable, can be achieved all only as the result of the defeat

of the Russian army. Like it happened near Kiev. Is it possible? Is it likely, especially given what is happening with the Western support, military support for Ukraine? Probably not.

But if Putin, the executive branch has a lot of power, why can't the United States President, the Russian President, the Ukrainian President come to the table and drop something like Minsk agreements where, and then rapid constitutional changes made, and you go back to the border of 2022, before 2022, like through agreements, through compromise, impossible for you.

Certainly not this year. I look at this year as the time when at least one side, Russian side, we'll try to get as much as it can through the through military means. But that's been happening last year too. There's been a counteroffensive. There's been attempts. It doesn't mean that every new year somehow is supposed to bring new tactics. The last year was pretty much a lot of fighting, a lot of suffering, very little movement of the

frontline. The biggest change of the last year was Ukraine victory on the on the Black Sea, where they pushed the Russian navy into the western part of the pond and restored the and grain corridor and export from Odessa, apparently up to 75 percent of what it used to be before the war. So that's the only major change. But again, the price is enormous in terms of wealth in terms of special in terms of lives. So thinking about what 2024 brings,

Zelensky just fired Ukraine's head of the army. A man you've mentioned, General Valyry Zolushny, what do you make of this development? This is a very, very dangerous moment in the war. The reason for that is that Zelensky is someone who is very popular with the army and with people in general. So if you look at that through American prism, that would be something analogous to President Truman firing General Makar.

Given that stakes for U.S. at that time were very high, but probably not as high as they are for Ukraine today. In both cases, what is at stake is certainly the idea that the political leadership and military leadership have to be on the same page. And the question is whether on the part of Zelensky, this is just the change of their leadership. Or this is also the change of his approach to the war. And then can mean many things. One can mean him taking more active part

in planning operations. It can mean also possible change of the tactic in the war, giving that counteroffensive didn't work out. We don't know yet. I don't know why the President's Zelensky at this point knows exactly what will come next. But this is the change of the leadership in the country and in the army that is at war. It's one of the most trying most dangerous months. So the thing that President Zelensky expressed is that this is going to be a change of

tactics, making the approach more technologically advanced, this kind of things. But as you said, I believe he is less popular than the chief of the army, Zolensky, 80% to 60% depending on the polls. Do you think is possible that Zelensky's days are numbered as the President? And that somebody like Zolensky comes to power? What we know is that in this war, Ukrainian people really united around their President.

And the armed forces were always, even before the start of the war, more popular than was the presidential office. So the change, if happened in that realm was not so dramatic. And from what I can see from social media in Ukraine, there is a lot of, and happiness, a lot of questions. But there is also realization and very strong realization that the country has to stay united. And certainly the behavior of Zoluzny himself is there, basically, not suggesting any sort of

pre-gusion type of scenario that gives me some hope, actually a lot of hope. And in terms of whether Zelensky's days are numbered or not, I don't think they're numbered. But if Ukraine stays a democracy, and I believe it will stay, what comes to my mind is the story of Churchill. The story of Degal in Poland, the story of Pilsutsky. So once the war is over, really the electorate in the democratic elections, they want to change the political leadership. They want to move forward.

But Pilsutsky came back to power, and Degal came back to power. And Churchill came back to power. So, no, I don't know. Whatever happens in the short run or medium-term run, I think that Zelensky days in politics are not numbered. So what to you is interesting, for example, if I get a chance to interview Zelensky, what to you is interesting about the person that would be good to ask about, to explore, about the state of his mind is thinking his view of the world as it stands today.

Next month we're supposed to take place Ukrainian elections. They're not taking place. Because the majority of Ukrainians don't think this is the right thing to do, to change the president, to have the elections, to have a political struggle in the middle of the war. So Zelensky refused to call those elections, despite the fact that he is and continues to be the most popular politician in Ukraine. So it would be, to his benefit,

but that's clearly not what the Ukrainians want. But the question of continuing as the president beyond five years also, one way or another would raise questions about the legitimacy. And certainly, certainly, Russia will be playing this card, like there is not tomorrow.

And what I would be interested in asking Zelensky about, whether he sees that his second term, which comes on those conditions, would suggest a different attitude over their position, maybe some form of the coalition government, like it was the case in Britain with Churchill, under different circumstances, of course. Or this is basically his opinion, something that would be destructive and something that would really be an impediment for the issue, for the

question of unity and war effort. And I would ask this question not to basically suggest that that's the way to go. But I would be very much interested to hear what is his thinking about that. Do you think there's a degree during wartime that the power that comes with being a war president can corrupt the person, sort of push your way from the democratic mindset towards an authoritarian

one? I think that there is a possibility of that, right? So you're in the conditions of any emergency, war, in the case of the Soviet Union, there was a Chernobyl disaster and so on and so forth. You make decisions much faster, you create this vertical and then it's very easy to get to get really used to that way, dealing with the issues in the conditions of emergency, right? And

then the continued emergency or there's no emergency, they continue in the emergency mode. I think again that would be a very natural thing for any human being to do to make it easier. Should I do that easier and in more effective way or should I do the right way? That's a challenge. Sometimes it's difficult to answer this question. Let me stay in power for just a little longer to do it the efficient way. And then time flies away and all of a sudden you go for the third term.

And the fourth term? And suddenly it's easy to realize that actually you can't control in any other way. Whatever skills you had of people around that can help, is that already wrong? Exactly. People that surround you are not providing the kind of critical feedback

necessary for a democratic system. One of the things that Tucker said after his interview with Putin, he was just in his hotel just chatting on video and he said that he felt like Putin was not very good at explaining himself like a coherent whole narrative of why the image happened in just this big picture. And he said that's not because he doesn't have one but it's been a long time since he's had somebody around him where he has to explain himself to. So he's out of practice

which is very interesting. It's a very interesting point. And that's what war and being a power for prolonged period of time can do. So on that topic, if you had a chance to talk to Putin, what kind of questions would you ask him? What would you like to find out about the man as he stands today? As a historian I have a lot of questions and I have questions about when the decision was made to attack Ukraine and what went into this decision because we are

thinking about that we are trying. So as a historian I have this big question, have questions about the Crimea when those decisions were made. So that sort of questions that interest me. But the rest either I think that I understand what is going on with him or I don't expect the answer that can help. For example, a good question. Whether you regret or not the start of the war in 2022 given the enormous casualties on both sides.

But you can't expect from a politician and honest answer to this question. So there are questions to which I know he can't answer honestly. And then there are other questions to which I think he already provided all answers that he could. So what for me is is an interest. Basically questions for a historian about the time and the logic of particular decisions. Well, I do wonder how different what he says publicly is from what he thinks privately.

So a question about when the decision to invade Ukraine happens is a very good question to give insight to the difference between how he thinks about the world privately versus what he says publicly. And same about other, you know, about empire. As if he asked Putin, he will say he has no interest in empire and he finds the notion silly. But at the same time, perhaps privately there's a sense in

which he does seek the reunification of the Russian empire. Not in the form of the Russian empire, not in the form of the Soviet Union, but certainly in some form of the Russian control. That's that's that's from me at least it's quite clear. Otherwise there would be no busts to the bust to the to the Russian empires and Catherine and Peter and others. You wrote in your book titled The Frontline, I say, on Ukraine's past and present about the Russian

question. I guess articulated by Solzhenitsyn first in 1994. Solzhenitsyn of course is the author of Galag, Archipelago. He's half Ukrainian. What is the Russian question? Solzhenitsyn clearly identifies himself as Russian and his opposition to the communist regime was a position of a Russian nationalist. His argument was that communism was bad for Russia.

And for him, Russian question is about the Russian ethnic Russians, but also he was thinking about Russians in Putin's terms or Putin thinks in Solzhenitsyn's terms, about Ukrainians and Belarusians constituting part of that. So the Russian question is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century. The division of the Russians, the loss of the statehood and division of the Russians between different states. This is this is Solzhenitsyn Russian question.

And his original idea and plan was presented in the essay that he published in 1990, was called How We Should Restructure Russia. And Restructure Russia meant getting rid of the Baltic Central Asia Caucasus and have Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians, including those who live in northern Kazakhstan, to create one nation state. So he was a Russian nationalist, but he was thinking

about Russian nation state as the state of Russian Ukrainians and Belarusians. And once the Soviet Union collapsed and his his idea was not implemented, in the 1990s he formulated plan B, taken over by Russia of Donbass, Crimea and South-Eunuch, the areas that now are included in the Russian Constitution. So in terms in historical terms and intellectual terms, what is happening today in the war between Russia and Ukraine is the division on one level or another level that was

formulated by the noble laureate. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, how Russian have you created? If there is such a thing, what would you say is the Ukrainian question as we stand today? The Ukrainian question is very simple. It's now it's not any more acquisition of the nation state but actually a sovereign state, but it's it's it's maintenance. So it's Ukrainian question is like

dozens of other questions in the 20th and 21st century. The rise the rise of the new state and that's that's that's what is the Ukrainian question whether whether Ukraine will continue to its existence as a nation as an independent state because that existence is being questioned by stating that Russians and Ukrainians are one and the same people which the fact to say

your guy is Russian and also trying to destroy the state. Is it possible that if the war in Ukraine continues from many more years that the next leader that follows Zelensky would take Ukraine away from a sort of democratic western style nation towards a more authoritarian one maybe even with a far right influence this kind of direction because of the war the influence of war.

Everything is possible and the longer the war continues the more likely scenario like that becomes but realization of that scenario would go against the grain of the largest part of Ukrainian history where Ukraine really emerged as a pluralistic state on which the elements of democracy

were built in the last 30 years would go against the grain of the Ukrainian society where as one author formulated in the 1990s he wrote a book Ukrainian nationalism a minority faith where the nationalist was a minority faith and radical nationalism continues to be at least continued to be in 2019 a minority faith during the last elections so possible but unlikely given

the historical realities of the last 30 plus years. I could talk to you for many more hours on Chernobyl alone as you read in a book on Chernobyl and nuclear disaster this is just a million possible conversations here but let me just jump around history a little bit back to World War 2 back

before World War 2 my grandmother lived through Hallermorne World War 2 not so occupied Ukraine Hallermor what do you learn let's say about human nature and about governments and nations from the fact that Hallermor happened and maybe you could say what it is and why it happened.

Hallermorne is a massive famine in Ukraine between the years 1932 and 1934 and it happened as the result of forceful collectivization of the agriculture and a tamp on the part of Stalin also really roll Ukraine into the Soviet Union is basically no no potential opposition from from Ukraine now national communists.

So two things came together in December of 1932 when in the same decree Stalin and Molotov signed a decree on the requisition of the grain which lead eventually to the mass derivation and on the banning of Ukrainian language publications and education out in other

Soviet republics outside of Ukraine and introducing limitations on the so-called Ukrainianization policies so on the use of Ukrainian language in Ukraine itself and the numbers are debated the numbers that most of the scholars work today are four million but again there are

larger numbers as well that that circulate and this is the famine of 32-33 was not exclusive Ukrainian phenomenon but most of Ukraine in the Soviet Union died in Ukraine and Ukraine was the only place where the policy on collecting grain were coming together with the policy of the

clansion of the political leadership sending people from Moscow to take over the leadership and attack on Ukrainian culture so in terms of what I learn about human nature it's more me learning about the the ideologies of the 20th century because it's not the only famine in the communist

lands the famine in China which was in terms of the numbers much more devastating than that it's a different category and for a good reason but you have Holocaust what unites this things are is the time this is 20th century what unites them are the dominance in the societies that are

doing that really ideologies that not just devalued human life but considered that actually the way forward is by destroying large group of populations defined ethnically religiously socially otherwise which tells about the time but tells also about humanity because for centuries before

that human life was valued there were enemies but the idea was that human life can put and you can at the end of the day they can be slaves they can be you can use them for productive force countries in the 18th century without in Ukraine they were looking for settlers for people to

bring and and live on land you move into the 20th century and there is mass destruction of the population in the name of ideologists which basically are by definition destroy human lives and that's what really so shocking and striking because that's that break with

not just physicians of morale not just with issues of humanity there's any common sense what is what is happening and I am absolutely convinced that we didn't learn the lesson I am absolutely convinced that we didn't learn the lesson with turning our page on fascism and

communism somehow decided that we are free of that that at least in those terms history came to an end that what is ahead is is a fusion nothing of that sort would would happen would take place to a degree that people would get in trouble for comparing any statements or or events

that are happening today with either the communism of fascism and and so I feel responsibility of myself and as a historian in particular for not not doing a better job about about telling people that well we we are who we are and we we we have as humans our dark side

and we have to be we have to be very careful so there is a human capacity to be captured by an idea and ideology that claims to bring up a better world as the Nazis did as Soviet Union did and on the path of doing that devaluing human life that we will bring a

better world and and if millions of people have to be tortured on the way to that all right but at least we have a better world and human beings are able to if not accept that look the other way yes and in the name of a particular nation or race like like was the third

Reich or in in the name of the humanity of the future so not just devalued human life destroy human life is there something fundamental about communism and centralized planning that's part of the problem here maybe this also connects the just story of Chernobyl where the Chernobyl

disaster is not just a story of failure of a nuclear power plant but it's an entire institution of the scientific and nuclear institution but the entirety of the government there is and there is a number of factors of political and social character that's that produced Chernobyl and one of

them is general with the atmosphere of secrecy in the Soviet Union in the conditions of the Cold War Chernobyl reactor was a dual purpose reactor it could boil water today and produce in rich uranium tomorrow right so it was top secret if there were problems with that with that

reactor those problems were kept secret even at people who operated that's that's what happened that's what happened in Chernobyl another another big big part of the story which is specifically Soviet that's the nature of the managerial culture and administrative culture in which people

had no rights to make their own decisions in their in their place in their position a few years before that three mile island happened which was a big big nuclear disaster but in terms of consequences nothing nothing like Chernobyl and there in the context of the American legal

culture and managerial culture people who were operators who were in managerial positions that was their responsibility to take decisions president Carter came there but he was not calling shots on on none of those issues what you see with Chernobyl and people who saw HBO serious know that very well the moment the high official arise everyone actually falls in line is the official who calls the shot and to move population from the city of Pripyat you needed the okay coming from Moscow from

the from the very top so that is Soviet story and and there is a global story of cutting corners to to meet either deadlines like it was with that test that they were running at that time or to meet production quarters this is not just socialist thing you can replace production quarters with

profit and and and you get you get the same story so some parts of in that story are generally reflective of our of our today's world in general others are very specific very specific for Soviet union for for Soviet experience and then the biggest the biggest probably Soviet

part of that story is that on the one hand the government in Moscow and Kiev they mobilize all resources to deal with that but they keep information about what is happening and the radiation clouds secret from the from the rest of the population something that completely would be impossible and

wasn't possible in US in UK where other accidents happened and then guess what a few years later the Soviet Union collapses very much also thanks to the mobilization of people over the issue of Chernobyl and nuclear energy in people writing about that that subject call it agonationalism ecological

nationalism which comes at least and part from this holding information from people and in Ukraine mobilization didn't start over the issues of the led to independence didn't start over the issue of language or didn't start over the issue of national autonomy it started under

the slogan tell us the truth about Chernobyl we want to know whether we live in contaminated areas or not and that was a very very strong factor that that crossed the not just ethnic religious or linguistic lines lines between members of the party or not members of the party of the top

leadership and not in military and civilian because turned out that the party card didn't protect you from being affected by by radiation so the all national mobilization happens the first mass manifestations are about Chernobyl not about anything else that's fascinating I mean for people

who might not know Chernobyl is located in Ukraine so it would be it's a fascinating view that Chernobyl might be one of the critical sort of threshold catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union that's very interesting what just as a small side I guess this is a good moment to give some love

to the HBO series it made me even though it's British accents and so on it made me realize that some of these stories in Eastern Europe could be told very effectively through film through series it was quite a it's I mean it was so incredibly well done and it maybe I can ask you historically

speaking were you impressed I was I was and I think that the mini-series are very truthful on on a number of levels and very untruthful in some ways and they got they got excellent in very well the the macro and micro levels so the macro level is

the issue of the big truth and and the the story there is very much built around the theme that I just discussed now it's about the the cost of lies right and the Soviet Union line to the people and and and that's that's what the film explores so that that's I call it a

big truth about Chernobyl and they got a lot of minor things really really very well like the curtains on the windows like how the houses looked from inside and outside I didn't see any post-Soviet film when you western film that would be so good at caption those everyday details

but then there is a huge gray area in between big truth and small truth is of the of the recreating the environment and that's how you get from one to another and then you see the KGB officers coming and taking someone out of the meeting and arresting which was not necessary

you see the Soviet boss threatened in someone to throw the person from the helicopter so you get this Hollywood sort of things despite the fact that it's a HBO or HBO series and they're the best really in terms as a film in the fourth episode where they can completely

decide it just to hell with the reality and let's let's make a film so they bring Legasov to the one of the key characters to the the squad meetings that they bring the Soviet party was Shirbina he wasn't there they created drama there so but so they they got they got the main thing the

big truth right and that's that's why I like this this this production sometimes you have to uh to show what something felt like you have to go bigger than it actually was I mean if you I don't know if you experience heartbreak and you want it and you see a film about it

you want there to be explosions you want to see this this in images you yeah visible right so and uh by the the question again I just mentioned KGB marching in and and some party leader given a speech they were not given that speech but the sense what was there and it was in the air and I

as people of my generation who were there knew that and recognized that but for for new generation whether they are in Ukraine and Russia in US and Britain in in Zimbabwe anywhere yeah you have to you have to do this this little little untruths and and introduce them and had a very interesting

uh on on air conversation with the author of the script amazing and I asked him the question of it the the film declared really the importance of the truth but how do you square that with the it was the need in the film to to really put it mildly to go beyond beyond the measures of truth

for whatever understand of that term is well I suppose it is a bit terrifying that some of the most dramatic moments in history are probably quite mundane the decisions to begin wars invasions they probably something like a zoom meeting on a random Tuesday in today's workplace

so it's not it's not like there's dramatic music playing these are just human decisions and they command armies and they command destruction um I personally because of that believe in the power of individuals to to be able to stop wars not just star wars individual leaders so let

me just ask about nuclear safety because there's an interesting point you make you uh wrote in the book in in Adams and Asha's a global history of nuclear disaster so technically nuclear energy is extremely safe there's a number of people died per energy generated it's much safer and coal and oil for example as far as I understand but the case you also make is you write quote many of the political economic social and cultural factors that led to the accidents of the past are still

with us today make it the nuclear industry vulnerable to repeating old mistakes in new and unexpected ways and any new accidents are certain to create new anti nuclear mobilization and then you continue with this makes the nuclear industry not only risky to operate but also impossible to con on as a

long-term solution to an overwhelming problem so can you explain that perspective it's an interesting it's an interesting one so to speak into the psychology when an accident does happen it has a dramatic effect and uh also speaking to the fact that accidents can happen not because

of the safety of the nuclear power plant but of the underlying structure of government that oversees it yes I wrote book and Chernobyl and then tried to understand Chernobyl better but placing it in the context of other disasters as a historian and was looking at the political

factors and social factors and cultural factors not not the physics or or or engineering part part of the story and the factors that are still with us are the like it was the case in Chernobyl the authoritarian regimes right and and and high centralization of the decision making and

uh desired to cut corners and also the issues associated with secrecy so that's that's that that is with us if you look at the where the future of the nuclear industry is at now at this point it's the regimes and parts in the Middle East that's a big new frontier the countries that are

not particularly known for the history of democratic existence where we also have the situation that we had at three mile island that we had at at Chernobyl this is the first generation engineers nuclear engineers right so people who uh where the country doesn't have a lot of experience in

generations after generations working in that particular industry where it's all new that's that's certainly that that is certain additional additional risk and what we got now is this current war is something that not that people completely didn't expect but didn't happen in the

past you see the war coming to the nuclear sides Chernobyl was taken over by the Russian army or National Guard rather uh on the first day of the invasion then there was a Parisian the largest nuclear power plant in Europe where the battle was waged of the territory of the nuclear

power plant the missiles being fired building sketching fire and the the situation of the that brought the Fukushima disaster was there as a Parisian more than once and Fukushima came because the reactors were shut down as they are at the Parisian but they still needed electricity

to bring water and to call them down and in Fukushima case it was the tsunami that caught off the supply of electricity in the case of the Parisian there was the warfare that was happening in the area around the Parisian that did did the same effect so we have 440 reactors in the

wall today plus minus none of them was designed to withstand the direct missile attack or to function in the conditions of the warfare if operators they're human then they make mistakes like they did it through my island or Chernobyl but think also if the war is happening around them

if they're not sure what is happening is there is their families if they don't know whether they will be next missile whether they will hit their room where the control room or not that that multiplies also so we are in a situation where we are not done yet with the nuclear accidents

you each time it's not like we don't pay attention or we don't learn smart people work on that and after every accident try to figure the way how not to to to step in into the same into the same trap but next accident would actually expose in your your vulnerability you deal with Chernobyl

and then tsunami comes you deal with tsunami and then war comes and we really in that sense we have sometimes wild imagination but sometimes it's difficult to imagine what can happen next so we are not done they will be they will be nuclear accidents unfortunately in the future

and that makes nuclear energy so problematic when you count on it to fight climate change I'll explain why you gave the figures how many people died from burning coal from how many people died from from radiation and it's it's it's a good argument some people would question them

because it's also the issue of not just dying but impact impact of radiation on cancer on on our health which is not completely understood yet so it's still there there is a lot of question marks but let's assume what you are saying that's the figures that's how it is but we as people

we for whatever reason are not afraid of coal but we are very much afraid of radiation it's invisible it's it's COVID it's everywhere and you can't you can't see it and then and then you start have an issue and then you have seven problems and during the COVID the the governments close the

borders maybe maybe maybe good idea maybe not so good ideas isolation so that that was the way people governments started to to fight for access to Pfizer to to modern to to sputnik to to whatever it is to to vaccine so now back to the to the radiation what is happening once once Chernobyl happens that's the highest point in the development of nuclear industry so far in terms of how many how many new reactors were commissioned or the licenses were issued the next reactor after a three

mile island in the US go ahead was given it seems to me 10 years ago or something like that the Fukushima happens the reaction is in China to that as well they're very much concerned so there is a saying

in the in the field Chernobyl anywhere is Chernobyl everywhere after Fukushima Germany decides to go nuclear free and and gets there at the expense of burning burning coal so that's that's how we react and each major accident that means global freeze on the on the on the nuclear reactor production

for at least another 10 years so that's what I mean that nuclear industry is politic not just in terms of of of technology not just in terms of radiation impact on health but also politically a very very unreliable option and to you you suspect that that's an irreparable aspect of human

nature in the human mind that there's certain things that just create a kind of panic invisible threats of this kind whether it's a virus or or radiation there's something about the mind if I get a stomach ache in the United States after Fukushima I kind of think it's probably radiation

this kind of irrational type of thinking and I think that's not possible to repair I think we can we can be we can be trained right we can be pretty smart are we but but but but generally we are afraid of things that we see but even more we are afraid of things that we don't see

and radiation is one of those let's zoom out on the world we talked about the war in Ukraine how does the war in Ukraine change the world order let me just look at everything that's going on zoom out a bit China the Israel Gaza war the Middle East India what is interesting to you important

to think about in the coming years and decades there's a historian and I'm trained that way I have a feeling of deja vu I see the the the cold war is coming back in many in many of its features and the war started and we discussed that in 2014 at least in my interpretation with

is Russia trying to really reestablish its control over the post Soviet space in Ukraine is was crucial for that for that project and the more globally Russian vision since 1990s was that they didn't like the American monopolar world they you and realize that they couldn't go back to

the bipolar world of the of the cold war era so the vision was multiple world in which again it wasn't just academic exercise it was a political exercise in which Russia would be one of the centers one of the polls on power with China on power with European Union on power with the United

States that that very broadly speaking the context in which in which the war starts in 20 in 2014 where we are now well we are now in Russia certainly trying to regain its military strength but no one actually believes that Russia is the sort of a superpower it was imagined before 2022

we see certainly Russia finding the way to deal with the sanctions but we don't see certainly Russia as as economic economic power with any sort of a future so it is not an implosion of the of the Russian military economic and political power but it's significantly actually it is

diminished so today very difficult imagine the Russia immersion as another poll of the of the multipolar world not impossible but it's the war certainly made that that very problematic and much more difficult on the other hand what the word it basically awakened the West

the Old West United States and Western Europe transatlantic alliance and on the top of that there are East European countries that are even much stronger proponents of of assistance for Ukraine than is Germany or or or the United States of America so it is it is

the the replay of the Cold War story the return of the West that one of the chapters in Mbukh Darosy Ukrainian War is called that way we also can see the elements of the rebuilding of the Beijing Moscow alliance of the 1950s it was a very important part of the Cold War

it was extremely important part of the Korean War that in many ways launched launched also the the Cold War globally so I see a lot of parallels of going back to the time of the Cold War and the bipolar world that emerges it's not anymore the world focused on

Washington and Moscow it's Mollek world focused on Washington and Beijing and then there are countries in between there are countries in between that that join join one block another block that is emerging that is not fully fully formed this is this is in my opinion makes the task of

us historians to really go back to the Cold War and look and look for for through new perspective on the history of that conflict because there is a lot of things that we can we can learn so so in some ways history does repeat itself here so now it's a

Cold War with China and the United States what's a hopeful trajectory for the 21st century for the rest of it the hopeful trajectory is really trying to be as wise and as lucky as as our predecessors during the Cold War because the the dominant discourse so far about the Cold War was what a

horrible thing that the Cold War was what did we do wrong how did we end up in the Cold War and I think especially today this is a wrong question to ask the right question to ask is how did it happen what did we do so right that for now more than 70 years we don't have a World War

how come that after World War one World War two came within 20 years how come that what what helped us to keep the world on the brain but still away from the global war for such a long period of time how to keep the Cold War cold that's that's the biggest lesson that the history of the Cold War can

give us and I don't think we ask the question often enough ask the question that way and if you don't ask right questions we don't get right answer yeah you've written a book a great book on the human missile crisis and we came very close not just another World War but to you know

a nuclear war and the destruction of human civilization as we know it so I guess it's a good question to ask what do we do so right and maybe one of the answers could be that we just got lucky and the question is how do we how do we keep getting lucky luck luck is clearly clearly one of the factors

in the in Cuban missile crisis because what happened there and there is one of the lessons is that eventually the commanders at the top they believe that they have all the cards they negotiate with each other they try to see who who blinks first in the game of nuclear brain partnership

the trick is that they don't control fully people on the ground the most dangerous moment or one of the most dangerous moment of the Cuban missile crisis was the Soviet missile shooting down the American airplane killing the pilots an act of war right so technically already in war

and the the order to shoot the missile was given with Moscow having no clue what was going on the ground Moscow never gave gave approval for that and again I described that in book many times about Kennedy bringing back his wisdom from World War two years there there always will be

S.O.B who didn't get the order or missed things and that was happening on the American side as well so people who believe that they in control really are not in control and that can escalate whether they but it's very often against against their their issues so that is one lesson but

going back to what why we're still here and why why the world didn't didn't end up in 1962 is that the leadership and and that's that's I I come to the issue that you strongly believe in that people personalities matterly this matter they were they were very different right

age education political careers understanding what politics are and so on and so forth I mean uh uh Khrushchev and Kennedy yes but they had one thing in common that in one way they belong to the same generation that was generation of the bikini at all that was the

generation of the hydrogen bomb the bomb that unlike the atomic bomb the new could destroy the world and they were scared they were scared of the nuclear of the nuclear weapons and they tried to do whatever they could pushing against their advisors or or or were trying to deal with their

always the anxieties the the first is true for Kennedy the the the way to maybe for Khrushchev to make sure that this that the war between the United States and and the Soviet Union doesn't start because they knew that that war would be would be a nuclear war so we have we have a

very very paradoxical sort of situation the crisis occurred because of the nuclear weapons because Khrushchev put them on Cuba but the crisis was resolved and we didn't end in the third world war because of the nuclear weapons because people leaders were afraid of them and that's that's

where I want to put emphasis it's not that the nuclear weapons created crisis or solved the crisis it's basically our perception of them and we are now in the age after the Cold War era is the new generation of voters is the new generation of politicians we don't belong to the generation of

bikini at all you maybe know what bikini is but we think that this is a different different thing that this is something else and it's very it's very important it's so fascinating how that phase into memory that the power and and the respect and fear of the power of nuclear weapons just phase into

memory and then we may very well make the same mistakes again yes we can another leader said that I believe but about a totally different topic well like you said I'm also glad that we're here uh more as a civilization that we're still seem to be going on there's several billion of us

and I'm also glad that the two of us are here of the red a lot of your books I've been recommending it please keep writing thank you for talking today this is an honor thank you very much it was it was a pleasure thanks for listening to this conversation with sir he plohi the support this podcast

please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from earnest Hemingway never think that war no matter how necessary nor how justified is not a crime thank you for listening and hope to see you next time