Journalists Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko on Trump and Ukraine

Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, journalists and podcasters Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko return to Fiction/Non/Fiction to tell hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell how Ukrainians view Donald Trump’s return to power in the U.S. They talk about the situation at the frontlines, the consequences of delayed aid, the urgent need for a swift and decisive response to Russian aggression, and continued Ukrainian resilience in the face of the existential threat of the war.

Check out video excerpts from our interviews at Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

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From the episode:

Whitney Terrell: Are there voices in Ukraine who are like, ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ or is everyone still united?

Tetyana Ogarkova: I guess everybody’s still united, because we also have experience with a kind of ceasefire back in 2014-2015, with the Minsk agreements in Normandy format. And we do know that if we stop now and then we just stop fighting, it will be just a pause before Russia attacks again on a huge scale. And there’s a problem when it comes to all the peace talks and all the talks about negotiations. We do know that Russia will never stop in its attempt to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation, because there are a lot of characteristics of this as a war to make Ukrainians disappear as a nation. So we do understand that all this compromise, or what you call compromise, means death for Ukrainians, it means occupation. 

Volodymyr and I can testify to what occupation means for Ukrainian people, because we visited many places which used to be occupied by Russian forces back in 2022 and which were liberated, and we talked to many people who lived in these territories. And there is nothing worse in this world than the occupation, because even if you are not personally tortured or killed, this absence of liberty is something that is fundamentally wrong for Ukrainian people, and this is not something we would like to leave. 

This is why we are skeptical when there are talks about negotiations and compromise and kind of leaving this part to Russia, because for us, this is not just some spots on the map. These are real places with real people living there, and we do have some connections with these people living in these territories. So this is not an abstract thing, but this is a very concrete thing to us. And so Ukrainians, they do understand what’s at stake and when everything is at stake. So this is existential for Ukraine, and we have no right, simply no right, to just to stop our fight, because there are other children coming, the next generation, and we have absolutely no right to leave this kind of situation for them to continue for decades.

V.V. Ganeshananthan: I can understand what you mean. What does a compromise actually require? How can there be a compromise with someone who is coming to take things from you that are rightfully yours? And you’re referring, of course, to the massive losses suffered by Ukrainians over the past couple of years. Just to set the stage for our listeners, could you give us an overview of how things stand on the ground in Ukraine compared to, say, one calendar year ago? We were all amazed when Ukraine conducted its successful offensive into the Kursk Oblast outside Russia back in August but what is the status there today? And where is Ukraine gaining territory versus where is Russia advancing?

Volodymyr Yermolenko: Well, if you read in the news that Russians are advancing, this is true, but if you look at the map, you understand that in 2024 Russians were able to take only two small, not even regional, but sub-regional centers. This is Avdiivka, and this is Vuhleder. And if you look at the map of Ukraine, even, the gains are so tiny, and this is the whole year of 2024. 

So just remember how, for example, the big wars were developing, like the Second World War. Look at the way, how much it took for Nazi Germany after the invasion of the Soviet Union in in 1941 to go through the whole of Ukraine—and the major fights were in Ukraine and Belarus, by the way, and not in Russia—and stop around Kursk and the current Volgograd, which at the time, was called Stalingrad, by the winter of ’42-’43 and then get a defeat, and then the war would go in the opposite direction. Now, if you take this war currently, and Russians are taking, well, maybe dozens of kilometers per year, maybe hundreds of kilometers per year. Well, it doesn’t really look big. So the problem is, as Tetyana mentioned very rightly, that, of course, resources are not comparable. Russia has much more resources, people resources, Russia has much more drones, Russia has much more airplanes, has much more bombs, has much more rockets than Ukraine. But even when Ukrainians are on the defense, when we are retreating, when we’re really under armed and we have less people, Russia doesn’t gain too much. 

Of course, all these territories are very dear to our hearts, because we know people who have been living there. We have been, for example, in one of the villages a year ago, which is now practically occupied or destroyed in the south of Ukraine.

But if you look globally, it just shows how weak Russia is, actually. And Ukrainians, yeah, we gained some territory in the Kursk Oblast in Russia, just to have a kind of exchange, because you see that, with Russia, it’s only tit for tat logic, so you can only negotiate if you have taken something from Russia. We can only have our prisoners of war back only if we have their prisoners of war. And, by the way, our soldiers are telling us that Russians are really eager to become a prisoner of war in Ukraine because they are treated much, much better in Ukraine as Russian prisoners of war than they are treated back in Russia as Russian soldiers, because if they retreat as Russian soldiers, as in the worst times of Stalinism, they would just be killed or executed by their commanders. 

So if you look at this globally, you understand that Ukraine continues to be resilient, that, as Tetyana said, we go very often to the front line. We bring cars to our defenders, to our medics, to our soldiers, and yes, the exhaustion is there. Imagine you’re just an ordinary civilian, an engineer, a stomatologist, a truck driver, a university professor, and you are now in the war for three years, in a full scale war. And some of the people have been in the war for 11 years, since 2014 or 2015. Of course, there is exhaustion, but there is no readiness to say, ‘okay, we give up; we give up Ukraine’s sovereignty, we give up our territories.’ I think thatUkrainians are really showing a stubbornness and the willingness to stand. And I always say that Ukraine is a nation of ‘despite’ so we will continue to fight for freedom despite the lack of freedom which is around us.So we should keep that in mind.

WT: The left and the right in the United States were united behind the Ukrainian cause very clearly in 2022 but now, as you mentioned in our opening, Democrats continue to unequivocally support Ukraine and aid Ukraine, although maybe not giving as much as they should, while Republicans are split between the neoconservatives who support military aid to Ukraine– they’re sort of like what used to be a conservative in America– and the new America-first faction of the party, which is represented by Trump, that wants to end US foreign aid pretty much everywhere. What was your experience of watching the US election play out from the perspective of Ukraine? How close could Ukrainians follow it? Who were they polling for?

TO: Well, the American election was a big issue here in Ukraine. Everybody was watching the campaign and the whole process. And for sure, everybody, I guess, here in Ukraine, understood that what’s at stake is the Ukrainian future, because the United States is the biggest player in this geopolitical game. And there’s no secret that we were worried at the moment when we understood that Donald Trump finally won this election. We were worried, but we were not desperate, because of many things, because, well, it was expected, in a way, because many experts were talking about this possibility, but at the same time we do have some experience with Donald Trump back in his first presidency. And we do remember, for example—

WT: —Yeah, he tried to extort your president to dig up dirt on Biden, that’s what he did. 

TO: Yeah, exactly. But we also remember Javelins (missiles), for example, which were delivered by Trump in his first presidency. And we also remember, some Ukrainians were kind of bitter at one moment when the Biden administration was promising things and they were arriving, but they were arriving late sometimes, like many things, like weapons, but also like authorization to strike against the Russian territory, and all these things. So in this last month of Biden’s administration, we have billions of American dollars arriving here in weapons and in other kinds of support. And this is appreciated, and we do thank you, American people, for this support, but at the same time there was a significant delay. 

I mean, on the one hand, you have this war, which is extremely dynamic and what we can testify also from our talks with the military is that this war is developing in an extremely rapid way, so you have to react quickly to new technologies, to new ways to get this war. So sometimes you need tanks, but sometimes it’s too late for tanks, you know, it’s too late for Abrams (tanks). It’s too late for all the equipment which arrives now, but it was needed six months ago. Now it’s here, but it’s too late to exploit, you know, to use it so you need something else. 

And this is not an American problem, this is a general problem of our democratic time, so when you take time to consider things, just to reflect, to think it over and to react. And autocratic regimes like Putin’s regime, but also Iran’s regime and other autocratic regimes, have this capacity to react in an extremely fast way, and that’s explicitly why they win sometimes. 

So when we understood that Donald Trump had won in this election, it was pretty obvious in the first hours of the sixth of November, there were not a lot of people in panic. A lot of Ukrainian experts were saying that we are not so sure about his program because he made some statements, but these statements are not realistic, because he, for example, told us that he would end this war in 24 hours. It makes people laugh here in Ukraine, frankly, because nobody believes that you can finish this war in 24 hours. It’s much more complex than that, because the Russians are deep into our territory, and you cannot finish that in 24 hours. And at the same time there’s unpredictability, so the way that Donald Trump is not so sure about his program, it gives us some chances to develop this situation and to improve the situation.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Vianna O’Hara.

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Tetyana Ogarkova

Ukraine Crisis Media Center • L’Ukraine face à la guerre – Ukraine Crisis Media Center

Volodymyr Yermolenko

Internews Ukraine • Explaining Ukraine podcast • Ukraine World • Trump’s Election and Its Impact on Ukraine – with Nataliya Gumenyuk 

Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 5 Episode 15: Scott Anderson on What Russia’s Wars in Chechnya Tell Us about the Invasion of Ukraine • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6 Episode 51: Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko on How Artists Are Responding to the War in Ukraine • Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 6 Episode 2: How Dostoevsky’s Classic Has Shaped Russia’s War in Ukraine, with Explaining Ukraine’s Tetyana Ogarkova and Volodymyr Yermolenko