Ukraine faces its greatest diplomatic challenge yet, as the Trump administration succumbs to disinformation and blames them for the Russian aggression. How can they navigate the storm?
Ukraine has been standing up to the full-scale agression since February 2022, and as today’s guest, Maksym Kyiak put it: Russia had thought they would conquer Ukraine in 3 days, but they haven’t managed to bring Ukraine to its knees in 3 years.
This surprised the international community as much as the Kremlin. But when it comes to international relations, Maksym Kyiak looks even further back, specifically to 2008, when Russian troops marched into Georgia. Kyiak thinks that the lukewarm international response this aggression has emboldened the Kremlin.
Some historians view this incident as a sort of green light for Putin’s regime, proving that they can get away with aggression without significant repercussions. 6 years later, in 2014, the invasion of Crimea prompted more substantial, yet still cautios and divided international reactions.
Over time, public attention dissipated and many seemed to entirely forget about this war – despite the fact that active violence persisted. Then, in 2022, as Russian troops started to amass on the Ukrainian border, many watched in shock and surprise as the heir to the former Soviet Union attacked its former territory, justifying its actions with false claims and historical lies.
What Putin had hoped would be a victorious Blitzkrieg turned out to be a blood-soaked, horrible fiasco that keeps claiming thousands of lives and has brought war crimes galore, as the Russian aggression deliberately tries to destroy and erase Ukrainian political and cultural independence.
Today we take stock of the past three years and the preceding 13, and we also look into the future. Ukraine now faces a world of uncertainty as the new Trump administration pedals Russian propaganda lines and even blames them for the war. The EU remains a major ally, yet weakened by the rise of far-right parties and ever broadening Russian interference.
How will they mitigate the losses, and who can come to their aid? Who is responsible for keeping Ukrainian culture and identity alive? Our guests talk about all this and more.
Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian curator, writer and cultural critic based in Basel, Switzerland. She is a co-curator of multidisciplinary biennial Culture scapes in Basel. Until 2015, she was a director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, as well as a founder and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Korydor. You can find her articles in Eurozine, one of which even nominated her for a European Press Prize.
Maksym Kyiak is a chief scientist at the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies (Kyiv, Ukraine), Doctor of Philosophy, the Deputy Director of the Central European Institute. He worked at various academic and governmental institutions in Ukraine and abroad. He has represented Ukraine at the CAHROM Committee in the Council of Europe and was one of the co-authors of the research of the NATO StratCom. Research interests: global security, European integration, countering disinformation, foreign policy, sociology of religion.
Adam Reichardt is the editor of the Kraków-based specialist publication New Eastern Europe, one of Eurozine’s partner journals, who has been surveying and publishing on the politics of the wider region for a great many years. For us, he also brings in an American perspective.
Standard Time talk show S2E12: Russian assets in the White House
Ukraine and the future of post-heroic Europe
Economic frontlines: Ukraine bracing for Trump
Creative team
Réka Kinga Papp, editor-in-chief
Daniela Univazo Marquina, writer-editor
Merve Akyel, art director
Zeynep Feriha Demir, producer
Zsófia Gabriella Papp, digital producer
Management
Priyanka Hutschenreiter, project manager
Judit Csikós, financial manager
Csilla Nagyné Kardos, office administration
Postproduction
Milán Golovics, dialogue editor
Dániel Nagy, dialogue editor
Nóra Ruszkai, video editor
István Nagy, post production
Art
Victor Maria Lima, animation
Music by Crypt-of-Insomnia
Captions and subtitles
Julia Sobota closed captions, Polish and French subtitles; language versions management
Farah Ayyash Arabic subtitles
Katalin Szlukovényi Hungarian subtitles
This talk show is a Display Europe production: a ground-breaking media platform anchored in public values.
This programme is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the European Cultural Foundation.
Importantly, the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Published 21 February 2025
Original in English
After over 20 years of publishing for free, Eurozine needs your support to get through an exceptionally lean year.
Become a Patron and get exciting perks for your help!
Want to hear a human voice?
Listen and subscribe wherever
you get your podcasts.
Subscribe to know what’s worth thinking about.
Under the aegis of the Council of Europe, a ‘core’ group of countries have been moving forward with plans for a tribunal capable of prosecuting the Russian leadership for the crime of international aggression. The US administration’s switch of allegiance now puts these plans at risk, writes Gwara Media.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, and not the human chain across the Baltics, is emblematic of 1989. But what if this show of unity had become iconic of communism’s disintegration? Could acknowledging Eastern Europe’s liberation positively reframe what Russia otherwise perceives as loss since the Soviet Union’s demise?
