Anastasiia Lapatina
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I was just going to say, no good news from Ukraine.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
We're not in a joking mood the past few weeks. It's all doom and gloom.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
Right. That was very funny. Apparently, there is a joke going around Ukrainian Twitter that after Zelensky's fiery press conference, which happened last Sunday, Trump might want to nuke us. So it's great that he fired everyone who may know where the launch codes are. That's good.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
In the first episode, it's titled Chicken Cave, and we're talking about how Ukraine regained its independence, officially declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and what was the American reaction to that. And the U.S. really wasn't kind of on the right side of history there, if you ask me, a Ukrainian, because the U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
was very much shocked by the fall of the Soviet Union, and they were just trying to you know, make this as clean as possible, avoid violence at all costs. And apparently the US government was sure that Ukrainian independence could only come as a result of some horrific violence. And so they basically came to Kyiv, Bush came to Kyiv.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
and said, you know, all of this independence jazz is cool, but we're actually basically going to back Gorbachev in Moscow. And, you know, he said that we are not here to pick sides, but everyone in Ukraine heard him picking a side. And so this speech then got titled Chicken Kiev. It's named after a famous Ukrainian dish, but of course it's to throw shade at Bush.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And yeah, everyone in Ukraine knows about this speech and Americans have no idea. And this is kind of a theme in the podcast. that there are a lot of hard feelings that Ukrainians have towards America and Americans have no clue what we're talking about. So hopefully we're going to fix that with the podcast.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
There is a lot of shock and outrage and anger just at all the absurdity that Trump is spewing, you know, talking about Zelensky being a dictator, just lying about Zelensky having 4% approval ratings, which is blatantly false. Zelensky's ratings are at 63% this month. which is higher than Trump's, which is important.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
But the most interesting element of this reaction for me is Ukrainians have this remarkable talent at unity when there is this radical threat to us, which is why, you know, we survived the 72 hours that were given to us in 2022. And it's now been three years that we're fighting back.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
So what we've seen over the past few weeks is that the more Trump attacks Zelensky, the more Ukrainians rally around Zelensky, even though like a lot of people in the country really don't like him. A lot of people think he's a bad president, want him out, etc.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
That, you know, he's corrupt, that the guy who runs the presidential office, Andriy Yermak, that he is this great cardinal who wasn't elected. He's kind of like our mosque. It's an imperfect analogy here, but he is an unelected official who runs the country for some reason. Zelensky cares about looking good and doesn't make tough decisions when necessary, which impedes the war effort.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
So there's a lot there. But once Trump started attacking him, the entire country started rallying around Zelensky with the message basically that like, hey, this is our guy, this is our president. We have a right to criticize him. We have a right to accuse him of whatever, democratic backsliding. You, Trump, do not have the right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And you see journalists saying this whose entire careers are built around criticizing the government. You see even members of the political opposition in Ukraine saying that. Poroshenko, the guy who Zelensky sanctioned just a few weeks ago, He's one of our political leaders in opposition.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
He said that, you know, we are unifying around Zelensky and we think he's our legitimate president, our legitimate government. So it's a very interesting reaction to kind of protect our president from Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I mean, it's terrifying to imagine, right? Because the vast majority of Ukraine's military aid came from the US and we see clearly that Europe just does not have the production capacity and you know, seems to have wasted three years not getting it out there. And they've done a lot. They've done equally as much as the U.S. in terms of, you know, monetary support. But still, it's not the same.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
I think Ukrainians have had some dark moments of history with Europe as well. And again, that's something we unpacked in one of the episodes. The Europeans were one of the reasons why the Bucharest summit that Tyler mentioned kind of and was the worst of all worlds, as we say. And they were also there brokering peace, quote unquote, with Russia after 2014 when Russia first invaded Ukraine.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
And look how that turned out. So we don't have a lot of trust towards the Europeans either. And so I think a lot of Ukrainians are feeling like we're being abandoned, like we're being left alone. And Macron is scrambling to figure out some coalition in Europe, calling these summits. Nothing concrete is happening out of them. Meanwhile, Ukrainians are like guys who've been at it for three years.
The Bulwark Podcast
Ben Wittes: Who the F*** Are You?
That should have been enough time for you to figure your stuff out. And it's just so annoying that ultimately, ultimately, it's always going to be us being the price. Somebody's children, somebody's parents dying. And it's unfortunately as tragic and as sad as Ben and Tyler kind of put it.