“They Want What We Have.” Matt Gallagher on Supporting Ukrainians’ Struggle for Liberation

Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, novelist, journalist, and veteran Matt Gallagher joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the current state of the Russo-Ukrainian war and why the country desperately needs the emergency aid in a bill currently under consideration in Congress.

Gallagher, whose new novel Daybreak is set in Ukraine, weighs in on where the U.S. stands on the war by comparing it to military conflicts of the past, from World War II to more recent involvements in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. He also reflects on how reporting and training civilians in Ukraine influenced Daybreak, in which an Army veteran explores his own motivations for aiding the country’s fight for freedom as well as the flawed, messy realities of war. He reads from the novel.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

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From the episode:

V.V. Ganeshananthan: One of the things I was reading about was that Ukraine is specifically facing an ammunition shortage. Last year, 2023, Russia was facing an equipment shortage, so it’s interesting that both sides are having this at different moments. At the top of the show, we were talking about the emergency aid bill being discussed in the Senate. And presumably the Senate is working on it this weekend—I don’t know that I have much faith that politicians are working in any real way—but they’re talking about sending 60 billion to Ukraine, tagged to a bill that also has emergency aid for Israel in it. Can you talk about how this money would change things for Ukraine and the conversation in Ukraine around the equipment shortages and U.S. aid?

Matt Gallagher: It makes total sense that these aid packages get tagged with, kind of, specific numbers. But if you delve into what it means, it’s not just money, right? Like, we’re not sending Zelenskyy a $61 billion check with this particular package. If it gets through, about 1/3 of that actually has to restock American defense contractors who have already sold weapons, artillery, and air defense equipment to Ukraine.

So when I see Republicans in particular pushing back on this, suddenly being against American defense contracting, I’m just baffled. I’m baffled by the domestic politics of this. I think 15 to 20 million is money going to Ukraine to be able to purchase defense equipment from other European allies. So it’s almost a bonus to the EU package that was passed last week, that is going towards Ukraine. Some of it has nothing to do with war or weapons.

I believe about half a billion of this package goes directly to internally displaced Ukrainians. It’s earmarked specifically to help Eastern Ukrainians who had to flee to Kyiv and the center or the western regions of the country to escape all this. So, even the most humanitarian anti-war person on the planet, whether on the hard left or the hard right, should believe: “Hey, that’s taxpayer money that’s going someplace real and meaningful.”

So, it’s frustrating sometimes that this can be framed simply as a money thing. But the money that goes to the weapons is very real. In the op-ed that was mentioned, I make note of the fact that Russians are firing about 10 artillery shells for every one that Ukrainians now manage. It’s a huge part of the war. Every Western vet that I’ve interviewed over there that served in Iraq or Afghanistan cannot stop talking about the difference of what weapons from the sky need—particularly heavy artillery, but also drone bombs and how different that is than what my generation of American soldiers experienced.

Air defense weapons are another aspect of this. The interceptors in particular have been very successful protecting the big cities in Ukraine, Kyiv and Odessa, Lviv out west. These are protecting innocent civilians from random Russian missiles. Unless you’re living in Iraq, you have to realize that the Russians have zero interest in targeting only military targets. I’ve walked through the wreckage myself.

A great Ukrainian young woman named Victoria Amelina, who’s a Ukrainian writer who happened to be eating in the wrong pizzeria at the wrong time last summer, and was killed in a complete war crime. Innocent families going out to dinner, nowhere near a barracks, nowhere near a base or near a Ukrainian artillery position. This is what this money is going to—not helping the Ukrainian military advance so much as it is helping Ukrainian society survive. These are real people’s lives. This is a real culture. This is a real society. And I wish more of that was being injected in this conversation. If nothing else, it would force some of the detractors and skeptics of our support to confront the reality of what they’re naysaying.

Whitney Terrell: It’s interesting to me, because I think a lot about how what war means to Americans changes over time. I once wrote an essay for The New Republic about war movies, and one of my arguments was that the rise of pro-WWII movies that glorified the Greatest Generation, movies like Saving Private Ryan, but also Greatest Generation. Wasn’t that a movie? Or at least it was Brokaw’s book that was then made into a movie?

MG: It was a TV show, I think.

WT: Right. Those types of movies and films in the ’90s made it much easier for George Bush to go to war in Iraq, because people thought that it was this glorious thing with great purpose. And unfortunately, that did not turn out to be true in Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet, this is the war that most resembles WWII. You have a clearly fascist, totalitarian dictator on the other side, and you have a democratic society that’s resisting him. He’s murdering civilians, torturing people, and doing terrible things that we know are happening. And it seems like maybe we just got worn out by being in so many stupid wars since WWII that we can’t actually recognize that this is something resembling that.

MG: Yes. I, first of all, think that essay that you wrote for The New Republic was excellent. I remember it. I think you were on to something, like, “What’s the one thing that unites all of this? American hubris.” The idea that—gosh it’s been over 20 years now—but we would go to these countries, take out a dictator, and establish a democracy from the top down in the name of freedom. Genuinely insane, looking back on it. And then 20 years later, for very good reasons, American people are skeptical. The American people, some of whom had direct connections to those wars, feel betrayed by our government and by the defense complex, and are wondering why this is really different.

It takes intellectual humility to just take a step back and consider how and why it is—because otherwise, you’re falling into the same kind of hubristic tendency that you condemned George Bush for. Believing that the Ukraine Maidan social uprising in 2013 was a CIA plot is just as full of American hubris as George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld was back in ’03, thinking that it would be a short war in Iraq and that there wouldn’t be any kind of insurgency.

Don’t get me wrong, Ukraine is a flawed country. It’s been trying, for fits and starts since it gained independence in 1991, to kind of purge itself of its demons. The corruption issues that have made international news are real, but it’s been making incremental progress. Every five to ten years, the country has had an internal social protest movement, trying to become more democratic and more a part of Europe. This is not the propping up of a democracy from the top down—this is the defensive one, and it’s flawed. But guess what? So is ours. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper and realize we should not be proclaiming down at anybody about a complicated population trying to figure it out.

It’s frustrating to me because I have friends across the political spectrum that I asked consistently, sometimes more politely than others, just to take a step back and consider this from a Ukrainian perspective. Just take a look at their history and realize they want what we have—or they want what they think we have—and here’s an actual opportunity for America to be what we always aspire to be. And we’re going to drop the ball? I’ve never been more patriotic than when I was over there talking to everyday Ukrainians about what they think America is. And, even after my experience in Iraq, I don’t think I’ve ever been more dispirited about what my country actually is than watching what we’re doing to Ukraine right now.

Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Jasmine Shackleford and Madelyn Valento. Photograph of Matt Gallagher by Melissa Lukenbaugh.

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Recommended Reading

By Matt Gallagher

Books:
Daybreak • Empire City • Youngblood

Articles
“This is no time to give up on Ukraine” by Matt Gallagher | Boston Globe
“There Are Only Two Options Left in Ukraine” by Matt Gallagher | Esquire, Nov. 20, 2023
“The Secret Weapons of Ukraine” by Matt Gallagher | Esquire, Feb. 23, 2023
“My Advice for American Veterans Who Want to Get On a Plane to Ukraine” by Matt Gallagher | The New York Times, April 10, 2022
“Notes from Lviv” by Matt Gallagher | Esquire, March 31, 2022

Others
“Ukraine is resorting to attacking Russia with small drones because it’s running out of artillery ammunition” by Tom Porter | Business Insider
“Ukraine and Israel Aid Bill Inches Ahead as Divided G.O.P. Demands Changes” by Karoun Demirjian | The New York Times, 2024
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Forever War by Dexter Wilkins
“What Should a War Movie Do?” by Whitney Terrell | The New Republic, Nov. 21, 2016
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