The New Yorker Radio Hour - A Ukrainian Diplomat on the Future of Russian Aggression

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters a third month, prospects of ending the conflict are still nowhere in sight, and there seems to be no end to the destruction that Vladimir Putin is willing to inflict. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, tells David Remnick that he expects Russia to continue escalating its attack leading up to May 9th, a day of military celebration in Russia commemorating the German surrender in the Second World War. “They will escalate attacks by missiles from the sky to terrorize Ukraine in general,” he predicts, “and to make the government more susceptible to surrender.”    In contrast to President Volodymyr Zelensky—who was a political rookie when he took office, in 2019—Kyslytsya has spent his career in Ukraine’s foreign service. In the years after the Soviet breakup, he says, Ukraine wanted to both placate its neighbor and ally itself with Western institutions. This created a “cognitive dissonance,” he says, that prevented Ukraine from recognizing the extent of Russian aggression. Having watched as diplomacy failed, Kyslytsya still has to separate his work from the personal toll of Russia’s invasion on his family and friends. “I try not to engage emotionally because if I engage emotionally too much, I am not operational,” he says. “And if I am not operational . . . I’m of very little use for my government.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm 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 Sergei Kislyza, the country's permanent representative to the United Nations. Kisleetza 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 talked 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? It cannot be analyzed from the scientific or 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. So it is rather to be analyzed by politicians, if not psychiatrists. So the narrative he advances, nevertheless, is still popular and very attractive to the majority of the Russians. Why? Well, let's go back to Germany after the Treaty of Versailles.

And see... It's following the World War I. Right. And see how and why Hitler was successful in selling to the majority, overwhelming majority of the Germans. This narrative about grievances, about Germany unjustly stripped of powers of economic opportunities and how Germany should revive itself by expanding, you know, by militarizing. So, in fact, what happens in Russia is very similar to what happened in Germany.

And the way the overwhelming majority of the Russian population is brainwashed is very similar to what happened to the Germans. And 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 will be just the beginning of a very long process of inviting

and facilitating the process of returning of Russia to the past, very long pass to developing a democratic nation. The nation that is, in case of Germany, was denazified, and in case of Russia, it should be deputinized. 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, and I, you know, quite frankly, with reporters on the ground from the New Yorker and elsewhere, I see no

reason to distrust them. We were finding mass graves in medieval. We're finding evidence of what could turn out to be war crimes, and I'm stating this quite conservatively, in Boucher, in all kinds of places. And 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?

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, You think May 9th is a big deal. May 9th is absolutely... This is the day that we...

Cycral, you know, something so holy... Celebrating the end of the Great Patriotic War and the Soviet role in victory in it. Absolutely. So 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.

war. So 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 Kiev in 1943 in November when Stalin ordered to retake Kiev from the Nazis by the 7th of November which is the

so-called Bolshevik Revolution Day just to have Kiev recaptured and it was retaken by the 6th of November hundreds, literally hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops died the drone in Kiev in the deeper river for no reason. They could have designed much smarter military operation to take Kiev back in a couple of weeks later.

I think what you're telling me then 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. 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 Leviv in the West. So they will escalate attacks by missiles from the sky to terrorize Ukraine in general and to, in their seeing of the situation, to make the government more susceptible to surrender. Now, this must be for you as a human,

human being. Horrible. You've been here many months. I assume you have lots and lots of family and friends. Where are you from? I'm from the capital. You're from Kiev. Right. Where's your family? My family, except with a couple of members of my family, are in safe locations. I cannot disclose them for the security reasons, but there is quite a number. There are at least of two family members, who cannot leave Kiev. My sister, for example, she lives in a place where,

not far away from Kiev, where all buildings, but her building, her house, and two houses of her neighbors are totally destroyed. North of Kiev, probably. Yep.

What has she seen? What has she experienced? She would call my family members in the middle of the shaling. And you can listen on the phone, you can hear rather on the phone, the shaling. And she would scream, she would be totally terrified. And I think the only reason, ironically, she didn't live because she has animals on her farm. She used to be a very urban, you know, Kievite.

And one day she decided many years ago, like she would like to live on a farm. she moved from a city to the farm, and now she didn't live because she has animals. Do you tell her to get out of there? Right. Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, it's... She won't leave.

No. It's amazing because you 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. You must be fearful for her life all the time. You know, I try to firewall myself being very cynical. How do you mean? I try not to engage emotionally, because if I engage emotionally too much, I am not operational. And if I'm not operational as Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN, I'm of very little use for my government. Do you always succeed in holding your emotions back?

Yeah, that's why I gain weight. Seriously. No, no, no, I try. Even the Security Council, when I sit there and I listen all those malarkey coming from Putin's representatives on the Council. You know, at first I was trying to listen to them carefully, then I thought, what the hell? I mean, nobody really believes them. Sergi Kislytia 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. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I've been speaking with Sergi Kislytia. He's Ukraine's permanent representative to the UN and one of the country's most senior diplomats. Kislytia is 52, and he spent his career in this work beginning as an intern in the foreign ministry.

So he's watched the entire area of post-Soviet politics play out, the tense relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and he's seen it from very close up. Now, 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?

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. And why should it be ideal? I mean, we shall remind our listeners that the United Nations was conceived by three fathers, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the pure evil Stalin. So the United Nations

has in its DNA, Stalin's DNA as well. Well, later on, at a later stage, they allowed the Chinese to join and the French to join when the Vichy government was removed. So why something

conceived by evil will be perfect. No. You're referring to veto power from... 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. Let me ask you this. This week, Sergei 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, but rather it's a problem. 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? Ukrainians are indeed the victims of a long sequence of events that brought us all, including the collective West, to the point. where it 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. And then, 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 aggrieved? Powerful. 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 you feel that, 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. Yeah, 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 or so. But an American? It doesn't really matter. But that person was present in a dinner at a dinner where Putin was addressing the G8 members. And Putin basically said,

all right, you guys take care of Western Europe, Central Europe, and you let us take care of the rest. Meaning Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe. So it's like the altar all over again. Right. Yeah. And that person told me nobody.

reacted. They continued to have their desserts and coffee. So Putin walked out of the meeting, technically able to say, I told them, and I heard no opposition to what I told. You know? And I can give you so many examples of this complacency of all of us that led us to the... When you say of all of us, you count Ukraine as well. Including Ukraine. Including Ukraine. I mean, 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. So this was kind of chaotic, no synergy. So only after 2014, we finally got rid of these dissonance. And if something made us willing to join

NATO so much, that's Russia, that personal. Putin. As you know, George Kennan, who was a superb analyst of Russian history and behavior, was against NATO expansion before he died. I think he was 100-something years old when he died. And this is often brought out by various people now as a Western mistake,

NATO expansion, in the Baltic states, in Poland, And then there was a moment when NATO membership was not quite offered to Ukraine and Georgia, but it was kind of half offered. It was certainly offered as a possibility. Did that help or hurt Ukraine? And how do you see the whole NATO argument? 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, and when the

Bucharest summit took place, as I said, we still had the government that was not really, you know, clear. And this cognitive dissonance, as I call it, was very much present. So even if we were giving the chance to integrate to NATO on a fast track, I'm not sure that the government was totally on board. To take it. Right, to take it. President Zelensky 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?

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 are doing there? We were successful in changing the tide of the attitude of the major circumstances. of arms and weapons, when after the initial wrong belief in many capitals, that we would be defeated in two to five days, they realized that we are not only defeated, but we also successfully defend our territory, and in some cases we advance. Now, earlier in our conversation, you said it's inevitable. I think that's the word you use, that Ukraine will win its victory and that that will begin a process as well in Russia. Is it inevitable?

And we hear threats, unveiled threats from Moscow about the potential use of nuclear weapons. We've had intelligence reports reported in the press about the possible use of chemical weapons. What makes you so sure that Ukrainian victory is inevitable? have 93% of population after 65, 67 days of war, so solidly, strongly reunited, 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 two 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? So we have no shortage unlike the Russians who do not declare a war and they're not being able to mobilize, we have no shortage in Ukrainians willing to fight. We have shortage or mismatch in the kind of weapons we need to have to be even more effective in defending our country and doing so in defending Europe and beyond. Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much. Thank you. Sergei Kislyzlitsia is the permanent representative of Ukraine to the United

nations. I'm David Remnick, and before we go, I want to send my love and gratitude to my dear colleague Dorothy Wickenden. We've worked together so closely for so many years at The New Yorker, and back in 2007, when podcasting was still a bit of an experiment, Dorothy stepped up to host the show that became politics and more. Dorothy is leaving The New Yorker as an editor, at least, to focus on writing books and writing pieces for the magazine, and we wish her the very best. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thank you for listening. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, Gauphin and Putubuele. And we had additional help this week from Andrew Dutton. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.