Hosted by Kwangu Liwewe
Featuring Mykhaylo Shtekel and Amie Ferris-Rotman
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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The war in Ukraine may have been relatively static as the Russian invasion crept towards its third year, Ukrainian journalist Mykhaylo Shtekel tells New Lines’ Kwangu Liwewe on this episode of Global Insight on The Lede, but the election of U.S. President Donald Trump has completely changed the situation.
“In the moment when we actually needed the support, Trump became president,” Shtekel says. “From that very moment, it was a big question for the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian army and regular Ukrainians what was going to happen.”
“In the moment when we actually needed the support, Trump became president.”
“I’m still in a state of shock by how the Trump administration is reacting,” adds Ferris-Rotman. Following a recent vote in the United Nations in which the U.S. voted alongside Russia, “it really did look like the United States has entered something which it itself has called the ‘Axis of Evil.’”
At recent talks in Saudi Arabia for a peace deal in Ukraine, and to which Ukraine was not invited, “I’m almost sure that Ukraine was not the top topic for them to discuss,” Shtekel says. “It could be China, it could be energy, it could be the security situation. I’m afraid that Ukraine is not the most important problem for Trump to solve.”
Across Ukraine’s border, “Russia has been completely changed by this war, at least until President Trump decided to extend his olive branch to Putin,” Ferris-Rotman says.
Nevertheless, she says, despite the length of the war and its human cost, Putin is unlikely to go anywhere soon. “Everything that gets conveyed to the Russian people is propaganda,” she says. “As long as this [war] is portrayed as a success, which is of course how it is being portrayed to the Russian people, then Putin will most likely stay in power.”