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David Remnick: As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters a third month, its brutality escalating all the time, prospects of ending the conflict are still really nowhere in sight. For all the astounding resolve of Ukrainians, we're looking at a relatively small country up against one of the world's largest militaries, and there seems to be no limit to Vladimir Putin's destructive impulses.
Ukraine's most senior diplomat is Sergiy Kyslytsya, the country's permanent representative to the United Nations. Kyslytsya has spent his entire career in Ukraine's foreign service trying to avoid precisely the kind of catastrophe that's playing out now and I talk with him last week. Now, when you listen to the rhetoric of Putin, when you hear his version of history, this mystical selective version of history, what is happening here? What's your analysis of what Putin wants, and why he decided to invade your country?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: It cannot be analyzed from the scientific scholarly point of view. His narrative and his vision and his speeches, they are beyond the academic world and how the classic historians and sociologists see the history. It is rather to be analyzed by politicians, if not psychiatrists. The narrative he advances nevertheless is still popular and very attractive to the majority of the Russians.
David Remnick: Why?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Well, let's go back to Germany after the Treaty of Versailles and--
David Remnick: Following World War I.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Right, and see how and why Hitler was successful in selling to the overwhelming majority of the Germans this narrative about grievances, about Germany unjustly stripped off powers, so economic opportunities, and how Germany should revive itself by expanding, by militarizing. In fact, what happens in Russia is very similar to what happened in Germany.
The way the overwhelming majority of the Russian population is brainwashed is very similar to what happened to the Germans. That is why it is utterly wrong to believe that we should celebrate our victory the day or the next day Russia is defeated militarily in Ukraine because when it happens, and it will happen, it'll be just the beginning of a very long process of inviting and facilitating the process of returning of Russia to the past, very long past, to developing a democratic nation. The nation that is in case of Germany was deNazified, and in case of Russia, it should be dePutinized.
David Remnick: Well, this is jumping ahead to a victory, where we are now is in another phase of the war in which on the one hand we are discovering if these accounts can be trusted, quite frankly, with reporters on the ground, from The New Yorker and elsewhere, I see no reason to distrust them, we are finding mass graves in Mariupol, we're finding evidence of what could turn out to be war crimes, and I'm stating this quite conservatively, in Bucha and in all kinds of places.
At the same time, a renewed assault from Russia in the east that may lack finesse and skill, but is certainly brutal and Russia has a great deal of ordinance and firepower. What do you think Russia is aiming toward? What is its end game?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I'm sure you know it very well because you studied Russia, you lived in Russia and you probably know that for the Russians and the Soviets, the notion of symbolism is so important for when we speak about next couple of weeks.
David Remnick: You think May 9th is a big deal.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: May 9th is absolutely--
David Remnick: This is the day that we--
Sergiy Kyslytsya: [unintelligible 00:05:06], something so holy
David Remnick: Celebrating the end of the great patriotic war and the Soviet role and victory in it.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Absolutely. They have to have something to give Putin so he can show up in the red square and address his crowd and declare a war. They would not really care how many Russian soldiers should be killed to be able to give this something to Putin. Let me remind you, and you know it probably very well yourself, the cost of taking Kyiv in 1943 in November when Stalin ordered to retake Kyiv from the Nazis, by the 7th of November, which is the so-called Bolshevik Revolution Day, just to have Kyiv recaptured and it was so taken by the 6th of November. Hundreds, literally hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops died by drowning in Kyiv in the Dnieper River for no reason. They could have designed much smarter military operation to take Kyiv back in couple of weeks later.
David Remnick: I think what you're telling me that is what you're expecting, and we're talking now in late April, you're expecting horrendous butchery in the east of Ukraine in order to make a May 9th deadline.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Not only in the east, the thing is that they lack necessary personnel strengths in the front, but they still have enough missiles, both ballistic and other missiles, that can hit as far as Lviv in the west. They will escalate attacks by missiles from the sky to terrorize Ukraine in general and in their seeing of the situation to make the government more susceptible to surrender.
David Remnick: Now, this must be for you as human being horrible. You've been here many months. I assume you have lots and lots of family and friends, where are you from?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I'm from the capital.
David Remnick: You're from Kyiv?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Right.
David Remnick: Where's your family?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: My family, except with a couple of members of my family, are in a safe locations. I cannot disclose them for the security reasons, but there is quite a number-- there are at least two family members who cannot leave Kyiv. My sister, for example, she lives in a place not far away from Kyiv where all buildings, but her building, her house and two houses of her neighbors are totally destroyed.
David Remnick: North of Kyiv probably?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Yes.
David Remnick: What has she seen? What has she experienced?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: She would call my family members in the middle of the shouting and you can listen on the phone, you can hear rather on the phone, the shouting and she would scream, she would be totally terrified. I think the only reason that ironically she didn't leave because she has animals on her farm.
She used to be a very urban Kyivite, and one day she decided many years ago she would like to live on a farm. She moved from a city to the farm and now she didn't leave because she has animals.
David Remnick: Well, do you tell her to get out of there?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Yes. It's amazing, it's--
David Remnick: She won't leave?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: No. It's amazing because she probably saw in the media many, many examples of how people would really sacrifice to take their cats and dogs, and you name it, to save them.
David Remnick: You must be fearful for her life all the time.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I try to fire all myself, being very cynical.
David Remnick: How do you mean?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I try not to engage emotionally because if I engage emotionally too much, I am not operational. If I'm not operational as Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN, I'm of very little use for my government.
David Remnick: Do you always succeed in holding your emotions back?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Yes. That's why I gain weight.
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David Remnick: Seriously?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: No, I try. Even the Security Council, when I sit there and I listen all those monarchy coming from Putin's representatives on the council, at first I was trying to listen to them carefully then I thought what the hell? Nobody really believes them.
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David Remnick: Sergiy Kyslytsya is the permanent representative of Ukraine to the United Nations. We'll continue our conversation in a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour.
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David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking with Sergiy Kyslytsya. He's Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN and one of the country's most senior diplomats. Kyslytsya is 52 and he spent his career in this work beginning as an intern in the foreign ministry.
He's watched the entire area of post-Soviet politics play out the tense relationship between Ukraine and Russia. He's seen it from very close up. I imagine you sit long days in the United Nations and when you think about it, what good is it doing? In other words, do you sit in that chamber and you think this place could be a source of political resolution or you think to yourself, this body is impotent.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: The United Nations is not an ideal institution by design and especially when it comes to the 21st century and the challenges of the 21st century. Why should it be ideal? We shall remind our listeners that the United Nations was conceived by three fathers, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the pure evil Stalin. The United Nations has in its DNA, Stalin's DNA as well. Later on at a later stage, they allow the Chinese to join and the French to join when the Vichy government was removed. Why something conceived by evil will be perfect, no.
David Remnick: You're referring to Veto power from--
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I refer to the fact that In Yalta and later on in San Francisco and they designed the organization that allowed the permanent members to control the decision making.
David Remnick: Let me ask you this. This week, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia made it very plain what I think Putin also believes and he's made plain as well, that this is not necessarily a war between Russia and Ukraine. Rather it's a proxy war between Russia and the West, Russia and principally the United States. Now, Ukrainians get to be the victims in this but in a geostrategic sense, is that true?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Ukrainians are indeed the victims of a long sequence of events that brought us all, including the collective West to the point where we has this monster, this evil capable of waging the war because the collective West beginning from 1991 gave too much credit to Moscow, to begin with how the Russian Federation was allowed to seize the seat in the Security Council.
Now and then Russia would do something ugly and instead of properly reacting to the Russian actions, be it Moldova, Transnistria, be it invasion of Georgia, be it Syria, we were putting a fresh layer of paint over yet another crime by Russia and now we are surprised how come Russia feels so-
David Remnick: Aggrieved.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: -powerful.
David Remnick: Do you sense that Russia thought the West was weak? In other words, after so many failed interventions and half interventions, after Iraq, after Libya, after the failure to do anything about Syria whether that was a good idea, a terrible idea, or what, did do you feel that above all, that Putin sensed the United States and the West was weak and that this latest assault on Ukraine was something that he could have just marched through?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I think partly it explains. I wouldn't really name the person who told me. That person was present in one of the G8 dinners 12 years ago.
David Remnick: An American?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: It doesn't really matter, but that person was present at dinner where Putin was addressing the G8 members. Putin basically said, "You guys take care of Western Europe, Central Europe, and you let us take care of the rest."
David Remnick: Meaning Eastern Europe?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Eastern Europe.
David Remnick: It's like Yalta all over again.
Sergiy Kyslytsya: That person told me nobody reacted. They continued to have their desserts and coffee. Putin walked out of the meeting technically able to say, "I told them and I heard no proposition to what I told." I can give you so many examples of this complacency of all of us that led us to--
David Remnick: When you say of all of us, you count Ukraine as well?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: Including Ukraine. Ukraine until 2014 had this clear case of cognitive dissonance when it comes to foreign policy. We wanted to be with Russia, but integrating to the West. We wanted to be with Brussels making friendship with Moscow. We wanted to be neutral at the same time telling that we want to be NATO members. This was a chaotic, no synergy. Only after 2014, we finally got rid of this dissonance and if something made us willing to join NATO so much that's Russia, was personally Putin.
David Remnick: As you know George Kennan, who was a superb analyst of Russian history and behavior was against NATO expansion before he died at, I think he was 100 and something years old when he died. This is often brought out by various people now as a Western mistake, NATO expansion in the Baltic States, in Poland.
Then there was a moment when NATO membership was not quite offered to Ukraine and Georgia, but it was half offered, it was certainly offered as a possibility. Did that help or hurt Ukraine and how do you see that whole NATO argument?
Sergiy Kyslytsya: I think that it hurt Ukraine on a systematic nature basis. We lost our chances as I said, but it happened during the Bucharest Summit. When the Bucharest Summit took place, as I said, we still had the government that was not really clear. This cognitive dissonance, as they call it, was very much present. Even if we were given the chance to integrate to NATO on a fast track, I'm not sure that the government was totally on board.
David Remnick: To take it.
Sergiy Kyslysya: Right, to take it.
David Remnick: President Zelenskyy repeatedly has in any number of venues, and in any number of languages, and in varying and very effective moods talked about, first, he begins by thanking this country or that organization, and then not imploring them, but demanding of them much more materially, militarily, and politically. In what condition is the Ukrainian army now, now that you've gotten all kinds of aid packages from the United States and from many places? What is the level of Ukrainian need in your view at this time?
Sergiy Kyslysya: I think that on a scale of five, we are doing a very solid four. Let us look at, for example, at morale, morale is very high, very high. The Ukrainians are fighting on their territory, and the Ukrainians are very motivated to defend their homes and their families. The Russian morale is very low, they are fighting on the foreign territory, they have no clue, many of them, why the hell Putin sent them to Ukraine, and what the hell they're doing there. We were successful in changing the tide of the attitude of the major suppliers of arms and weapons when after the initial wrong belief in many capitals that we would be defeated in two to five days. They realize that we are not only defeated, but we also successfully defend our territory, and in some cases, we advance.
David Remnick: Now, earlier in our conversation, you said it's inevitable. I think that's the word you used, inevitable, that Ukraine will win its victory and then that will begin a process as well in Russia. Is it inevitable? We hear threats, unveiled threats from Moscow about the potential use of nuclear weapons. We've had intelligence reported in the press about the possible use of chemical weapons. What makes you so sure that Ukrainian victory is inevitable?
Sergiy Kyslysya: When you have 93% of population after 65, 67 days of war, so solidly, strongly re-united, when only 2% of population says they are completely exhausted by the war, you realize that there is no other way. Let me give you one figure that is not that often mentioned. We all hear about 4 plus million Ukrainians who left Ukraine in the course of the last 2 months seeking refuge and protection in neighboring countries and beyond, but how many of your listeners know that a million of Ukrainians came back to Ukraine to defend Ukraine?
We have no shortage unlike the Russians who do not declare war and they're not been able to mobilize. We have no shortage in Ukrainians willing to fight, we have shortage or mismatching the weapons we need to have to be even more effective in defending our country and doing so in defending Europe and beyond.
David Remnick: Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much.
Sergiy Kyslysya: Thank you.
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David Remnick: Sergiy Kyslytsya is the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations.
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