Three Ukrainian Intellectuals on Trump and Putin
With Putin’s increased missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and Trump’s suggestion that he might walk away from the Ukraine-Russia ceasefire effort, we don’t hear much about what Ukrainians are saying. Our media doesn’t cover it, beyond a brief mention of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Easter message.
Russia has regularly exported its cultural and military narratives
as interesting and exotic pieces for Western digestion, but up to now there's been little mainstream consciousness-building of the Ukrainian narrative here. Now that is
starting to change.
Former Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba discusses
Ukrainian strategic solutions in conversations with political scientists and
thinkers on an ongoing basis. In an ad hoc role as influencer of the world’s
perspective on Ukraine, Kuleba works on de-imperializing the popular perception
of it.
Award-winning novelist Serhiy Zhadan is a member of the
Ukrainian army while his translated novels continue to reach readers in over 25
languages. Zhadan is part of the
intellectual vanguard that keeps Ukrainians’ awareness and morale high.
General Kyrylo Budanov oversees Ukraine’s covert war against
Russia as its military spy chief, and enables prisoner exchanges through
communications with Russian elites. Now 38 and with a high popularity in
Ukraine, the General was a special forces soldier in Donbas in 2014.
The following summarizes some recent messaging from these
three leaders in Ukrainian culture, diplomacy and military spheres.
On The Ceasefire
Knowing the situation from the inside and how it evolved, diplomat Dmytro Kuleba
doesn’t think Ukraine and Russia are even close to a ceasefire. He tells Ian
Bremner, President of the Eurasia Group in early April 2025 that Russia
believes it can still win. Russians think that the West is faltering, the
United States is walking away, and the European Union will not be able to
seriously step up its assistance.
It’s hard to negotiate a ceasefire without full awareness of
what each side wants. Kuleba tells CNBC that Putin doesn’t want Ukraine to
exist.
General Budanov once said that talking to Russia about peace
is like “talking to murderers who are going to kill you.” In an interview with
the National News Agency of Ukraine in early 2025, he says that Russia will
always use carrot and stick tactics to arrive at a ceasefire, putting pressure
on Ukraine and offering financially interesting enticements to others. “A truce
is done quickly, but peace is not,” he maintains.
Zhadan adds that it’s unlikely that any Russian politicians
dream about finally winning some Kharkiv suburb. They
are thinking about destroying the nation of Ukraine and being Ukrainian –
everything that isn’t the Russian World.
On Strategy
Speaking directly to Ukrainians with other writers-turned-army-personnel
at a Pinchuk Foundation event, novelist Serhiy Zhadan cautions Ukrainians
against strategic fantasizing about the failure of Russia - without facing the
potential of one’s own defeat. The compulsion to dream may play into “why we
have no right to defeat”, he says. Alongside his writer colleagues who currently
fight in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Zhadan stresses that regardless of what
could cause a potential Ukrainian defeat, it would still result in none of them
having any chance to remain there - either as writers or anything else.
For Budanov, who can't divulge strategic information from
his position as Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, it’s important to
acknowledge the cost of the war to Russia. “According to Russia’s strategy, if
they don’t get out of this war by 2026, they lose every chance at world
leadership,” he asserts. Budanov infers that if this war keeps going, regional
leadership is the maximum level that Russia would ever get to. The price of this
war is too high financially for Russia, preventing them from developing any
large-scale projects such as gas development in the Arctic regions, because
technological solutions won’t be available to them.
Kuleba is free to speak out about political and diplomatic
strategy now, having resigned from his diplomatic post in a Ukrainian cabinet
shuffle in September 2024. He tells Bremner that Putin’s
strategy is to feed Trump with concessions on issues unrelated to Ukraine to
buy time for himself. The first thing Putin did during the first days of the
Trump administration was release an important US prisoner, allowing Trump to
welcome him into the Oval Office. Then the discussion moved to potential plans
between Putin and Trump in the Middle East and the North Pole. The focus was on
everything except Ukraine.
“Putin wants Trump to let him finish the job,” says Kuleba,
“but not to negotiate anything serious. And that is why we don’t have a full
ceasefire that President Trump proposed months ago. That is why drones and
missiles continue to hit Ukrainian cities.”
According to Kuleba, a strategy to slow down or disrupt the relationship between the United States and Russia could occur in one of three ways:
- By Ukraine finding ways to please President Trump.
- By Ukraine keeping the front line if it holds Ukraine in a strong position.
- By Ukraine further developing support from European countries.
A remote fourth option might be opening a back channel to China to counterbalance the current situation, which involves enormous risk. China is the only country with leverage over Russia; it could join the process if it decides to fix the problem or is on par with the one who fixes the problem. China cannot be an assistant, says Kuleba.
On Russian Disinformation
In a discussion about Russian disinformation between Serhiy
Zhadan and Kyrylo Budanov earlier this year on Radio Khartia, Zhadan points out
that there are Russian narratives that are regularly thrown into the
Ukrainian informational arsenal to show, “look, your own leaders are telling
you a lie.” And some Ukrainians are buying it. Budanov asserts that this is a
completely normal reaction of society when there’s a massive external
information campaign going on.
“Disinformation is a weapon. It’s totally obvious that the
weapon reaches its targets and hits these targets – which in this case is
Ukrainian society. Ukrainians must be aware that Russians are quite adept at
using this tool, however Ukraine is better protected from disinformation now
than it was before 2014,” he says.
Dmytro Kuleba points to Russian disinformation as one of the
reasons Russia believes it can win the war. Part of Russian disinformation has
included messaging about Ukraine’s will to fight deteriorating and Ukraine
destabilizing internally. When steering this campaign, Russia’s confidence was
boosted.
Zhadan takes the disinformation question to a cultural
level. If we talk about the information space and the cultural space which is
now unprotected from Russian influence, it’s necessary to delve into a deeper
level within the individual, focusing on what motivates a person to fight back.
On the Future
Kuleba projects that Ukraine has about six months if Europe doesn’t increase its military support and micro financial assistance, because Trump is apparently not going to do it. In an interview with CNBC in February 2025, he adds that “then Putin will set his sights on an EU nation, while pretending that he has no intention of doing so."
When asked for a prognosis, in an April 2025 conversation
with MIT Center for International Studies, of the kinds of pressures on Europe
that he sees right now, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs describes fear
as being the only thing keeping the Europeans united. The first fear for
Europeans is losing their security, which will lead to a loss in prosperity.
The second fear is one of undermining the unity of the European Union, with
different member countries pulling strings to direct the decision-making
process in its favour.
Living in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Serhiy Zhadan speaks of Ukraine’s “cultural ability” and the
power of its culture to underpin an entire people’s fight. As the war has continued,
Ukrainian audiences at literary and cultural events has continued to grow. In
an interview with OK Talk, he explains the role culture has played ever since
Russia’s first invasion of the Donbas region and Crimea 11 years ago – serving as
an umbrella, not only for the earlier proponents of Ukrainian identity, but for the
whole country.
General Budanov zooms out with a wide lens. Considering the recent
changes implemented by President Trump since taking power, he states there’s a
general state of uncertainty felt throughout the world right now. He says this
doesn’t mean that everyone will collapse, nor does it mean that everyone will
flourish. Budanov may be referring to the few players operating at Trump’s
level, who haven’t made their decisions clear yet.
On Perception and Media
In an interview with Volodymyr Yermolenko in March 2025,
Dmytro Kuleba describes his recent interviews with world media to promote a
Ukrainian narrative. “The situation has become even worse than it was before
Trump came to power,” he says, referring to the polarized representation of
media. He describes how in the half year since Trump took office as president, Kuleba
has had a barrage of requests from world media to speak to him through his
different communication channels. Yet no requests have come from any
alternative right-wing media outlets. They have built their authority in the
eyes of people by not allowing any alternative points of view in, essentially
hardening their audience.
On Freedom
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has accentuated what freedom means to people. Budanov was asked in an interview whether he'd be bothered if any listeners commented on his reticence to divulge much personal information. The Chief of the Defence Intelligence answered, "Let them say whatever they want. We live in a democratic society."
The war, says award-winning novelist Zhadan, has brought people together to fight for who they are. He expresses both the urgent and the philosophical, saying that "we cannot lose because the entire area will be erased of us. The restoration of our spirit will be postponed for several centuries."
That's already happened a few times on Ukrainian lands, since the 10th century. Zhadan, however, senses an extraordinary strength is building again. He says the war organically unites people's will to defend themselves, their territory, their values.
Kuleba, Ukraine’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, urges his country to correct the general unawareness of who and what Ukraine is. The world knows the Bolshoi, Tolstoy and Catherine the Great because Russia’s been promoting itself to us for so long.
Ukrainians are realists, he says. They totally get where they currently are. But none is ready to abandon the idea that they can change this set of circumstances, eventually, at a certain point. “A nation that abandons its dream, its ambition, its goal, is doomed to lose.”
- Margaret Khomenko
Sources:
Zhadan and
Budanov interview – Radio Khartia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FskyzaW5iRs
Budanov
interview with Ukrainian National News Agency
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxeg3ryKV_Y
Kuleba
interview with Bremner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rdZfBssY88
Budanov
interview with Maksymchuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tdxhOtuDxc
Zhadan
interview with Pinchuk Foundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7UiLwuxrXM
Kuleba
interview with Ramina
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2On_6cJuvbc
Kuleba
interview with Yermolenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Bjwprim34
Zhadan
interview with OK Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4AA74RJmQ
Kuleba
interview with MIT Center for International Studies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUkOdiboegw&t=2572s
Kuleba
interview with CNBC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWo6DiyuupM
