A Thousand Years of Ukraine

Mariupol, Ukraine. Spring of 2014. A student from Volnovakha walks through the city with a handful of friends and a couple of lecturers, carrying a European flag. And one morning in June, he wakes up to gunfire. And his first thought is, our guys have come. By a snap of the fingers, the city is back. Two years later, he arrives in Kyiv with about $100 and a lot of ambition. By February 2022, he is co-founder of the Kyiv Independent. His reporting reaches more than a million people on Twitter.

And at the peak of the Battle of Kyiv, Russian troops are about three kilometers from his apartment. His name is Illia Ponomarenko. And now he has written the book he says his country was missing. A Thousand Years of Ukraine. From the last Viking on the Kyiv throne to the volunteers of 2022. For everyone who still thinks of Ukraine as Russia's backyard. His book is called The Land of Tears and Hope. Welcome to the Ukraine Military History Podcast. I'm Sam Cook. Graduated from West Point, an Army veteran, and later

became an assistant professor of history at West Point, where I studied European and German military history and went on to teach Russian and European history. I founded the Borderlands Foundation. I've been in Kyiv since 2018. And I've been here from the beginning of the war with my family. This show is for the people who need to know. Military professionals, government officials, defense tech executives, and founders, and investors backing them. Everyone working to win this war and secure Kyiv and the Western

security future. Ukraine is the most experienced army in the world in modern war. And the lessons are being written right now. Under fire. We bring them to you straight from the people writing them. And those lessons run deeper than this war. For 3,000 years, the great armies of history have marched through this land. Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Slavs, Mongols, the armies of the Sultans, the Tsars, and armies of the West. War runs through Ukraine.

We're building the world's best military history center on the ground where it's all happened. A quick word from our sponsors before we begin the show. The full story is at the end. This podcast is made by the Borderlands Foundation through its two centers. The Ukraine Military History Institute preserves and translates the lesson of Ukraine's wars. This show is its work. Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress heals the men and women who fight them. And in March 2027, both come together in Dallas.

March 15th through the 18th, 2027, the Ukraine Freedom Summit, in cooperation with the George W. Bush Institute at the SMU's Cox School of Business. The people you hear on this show in one room. On the golf course, a team of wounded Ukrainian combat veterans brought over by the center. $5,000 puts one of them on the first tee. Links to support them are below. And if you build defense technology, I gave a free talk at AUSA in Washington, D.C. and the panel that followed. This was made for you.

That link is below also. Now, today's episode. Stay for how Russia manufactured the war in Donbas in 2014. In Illia's words, it had to draw the first blood, and then blood follows blood. Stay for the last night before the full-scale invasion. Satellite phones, whiskey, and a book he planned to call Guerrilla Radio. Then the book itself. The Viking sword a fisherman pulled from the Dnipro near Khortytsia in 2011. The Cossacks who freed Kaffa, the region's greatest slave market. The world's greatest jailbreak.

And the Warrior Republic, where a new commander was pelted with garbage so he would not forget who he was. In episode 21, Andriy Zagorodnyuk showed us how Russia lost the Crimean War. Go listen to it after this one. And stay to the very end for the last chapter. No room for slaves in heaven. And why, after two and a half hours, he says Ukraine is worth it. And when the conversation ends, give me two more minutes for the reads at the end. That is where you find out how you can help us and how we can help you.

Illia Ponomarenko, recorded in Kyiv. Welcome to the Ukraine Military History Podcast. Illia Ponomarenko, welcome to Ukraine Military History Podcast.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for a while. Actually, we were going to talk about some of the recent war history. I reached out to you. I wanted to, and we will in the future, record a conversation in depth on the Battle of Kyiv, because you also have a book on the Battle of Kyiv. But then you sent me a manuscript for this book, which will be released, I think, by the time...

In a week. Yeah, well, it should be... From the day we are recording this.

Yeah, by the time this is released, I think the podcast will be dropped or your book will be published. And I guess it's going to be available... Well, tell us about the book and what the release date is.

It's called Land of Tears and Hope. The byline is The Ukrainian Story, and I guess it says it all. Well, it's a book about Ukraine. It's a history book, but it's not academic. It's not about dates and lists and many other things, but it's more about something that I call the historical or historic destiny of Ukraine, the historic path of Ukraine as a nation, as a state, and as a people in the last 1,000 years of history. It's a book by not a historian, but a journalist, a Ukrainian guy who wants to talk about

his country, something that is important to us, to present this country, to demonstrate its spirit, to show the tragedy of Ukrainian history and to show many people around the world how Ukraine is deeply underestimated as a country with so deep roots, deep down in history, with a lot of epic moments in its history, with a lot of tragedies and also glorious moments in its history. It's about us, the Ukrainian generation, that is fighting this war, yet another war, in which Ukraine may lose its independence.

And it's about the tragedy of Ukrainian history but also about hope, tears and hope but also about hope of Ukrainian people of our generation and also previous generations of breaking through the circle that Ukraine is trapped in and breaking free into the big world and the pursuit of happiness which is something that we dream about and so many people are fighting and dying for. So it's a book about Ukraine as an entity in the eternity.

Well, since this is your first time in the podcast, I wanted to just dive in a little bit to your background because I'm a historian trained and taught history, but I also appreciate history that's well-written with great stories, and you definitely accomplished that in this book. I think I started reading it last night, and I finished it today before the podcast, and it was 330 pages. Well, I am a fast reader, but it also is not normal for me to read 330 pages in one day, so it definitely was a page-turner.

But before we dive into the book, which I really want to do, I actually came across you, I've been living in Kyiv since 2018. My wife's from Kryvyi Rih, which you also wrote about the story of her hometown, and its founding in this book. Daughter's one year old. And, you know, our dream is to raise our family here. Unfortunately, she recently left due to the intensity of the airstrikes, and she hopes to come back as soon as possible.

But I first came across you because in 2021, I was afraid that the full-scale invasion was going to happen, and I read all of your tweets. I read every single article you posted in Kyiv Post. And then when the Kyiv Post went offline, I was freaking out because I was wondering where it went. And then suddenly you co-founded the Kyiv Independent and kept writing. And I remember your articles specifically gave me a lot of hope because I felt

as a former army officer who'd been to combat in Iraq that there was not any preparation being done, at least at the political level. And I was very scared that the country was in mortal danger and was going to be overrun, as the intelligence estimates estimated, quite quickly. And then when I came across your tweets and I read about your history of covering the military since 2014, I realized that the Ukrainian military had something to it.

It had a real spirit, and you were – I don't want to say you were optimistic, but you certainly weren't fatalistic. So let's talk a little bit about your background from just growing up to becoming a war correspondent and becoming a writer.

Oh, it's a long path. It's a long path because, you know, this Russian-Ukrainian war that dates back to the age of 2014. It became the main thing in the life of so many in my generation, particularly me. I'm in my 30s and essentially I lived one third of my life, at least one third part of my life. I'm in this environment, I'm in this war, I'm in this conflict with Russia. So it just came to me in my life and it took me from this profession.

And it all started with almost an accident because I was living in Mariupol back in 2014. I was just a student in international relations and foreign policy, and I was like so many others.

And you were from Donbas, right?

Yeah, I'm a local guy in Donbas. I grew up in Volnovakha, just between Donetsk and Mariupol. But I was a student. I was a student international relations in Mariupol. And I was just like so many. I was trapped in a city that had no Ukrainian control back then. It was controlled by Russian militants, Russian supported militants. They were held in the city center, and essentially there were no authorities, no police, no military in the city for quite some time.

So the Revolution of Dignity, just to step back a little bit, the Revolution of Dignity, or Euromaidan, which became Revolution of Dignity, you were in the streets protesting in Mariupol.

I was among the first few students who initiated, who mapped Mariupol on the map of Euromaidan revolution back in 13 and 14. Because the entire country was standing up revolving, protesting against the pivots of the pro-Russian government to wrap up with the rapprochement of the European Union. And me and just a couple of friends and several teachers from the university, we decided to just put that small town on the map of Euromaidan. So there was a picture on my Facebook where I am stepping in front, stepping like

leading just a handful of people, essentially my friends and a couple of lecturers with a European flag in my hands. So we mapped Mariupol. But also with a couple of friends, we also came to Kyiv for Euromaidan revolution for all those things happening. I was essentially in the very beginning, like December 1st, after the beating of the students, there came the fully large-scale, first really large-scale protest in downtown Kyiv.

And you were here for that?

I was there, yes, I was there in... Maidan. Yeah, during the initial phase, like the very beginning of a large thing. And also I was there in the very end of Maidan, but essentially the entire central Kyiv was the battlefield. Yeah, it was the battlefield of ashes and trenches and barricades and everything, and flowers, a lot of flowers, because people were mourning the protesters killed by government forces. So I was in the beginning, in the end, but in between I was mostly in Mariupol. So that was, like,

the first part of the big story that was happening to Ukraine in there. So what followed was the Russian revenge.

Were the students in Mariupol overwhelmingly pro-Maidan?

Of course. Okay. It's just a trait. It's just something that is very natural to that generation. We were in our early 20s back then. And despite us living in eastern Ukraine, which is which is normally conceived as strictly pro-Russian, Russian-speaking people, which is pretty far from, you know, a much more complicated picture in that region, but the youth who grew up much more westernized than the generation of our parents, especially when it comes to educated youth, especially those who

witnessed the miracle of the Euro championship in 2012, who are much more open to the outer world, especially the European countries. So it's far more normal and default for people, young people from Eastern Ukraine to be absolutely 100% pro-democracy, pro-West, pro-revolution and all those things. It's just a natural part of you because you grew up not looking up to Moscow as the real capital of the world and center of the universe. You grew up listening to things like rule of law, democracy, what's

what is good about all those things. You travel a lot, or you look outside the world and you see that people outside live far better lives than the generation of our parents. And naturally, you grow up and you become a human being with this set of values in you. So naturally, the entire country, especially when it comes to youth, the response to what was happening back then during the early stages of the revolution was the protests, because

what was happening to this country, this insane corruption, hyper-corruption under Yanukovych's regime, this abrupt and very bold cancellation of the rapprochement with the European Union, this pivots back towards Russia after all those years of reforms and promises and hopes, too. That was so incompatible with what country we really wanted, with what we really wanted, with what we were seeing as our future. So, of course, this just couldn't have led to anything but the state of revolution in the country.

So 2014, after Maidan, when did you go back to Mariupol and what happened when you were there? When did the pro-Russian forces take control?

It essentially started with the victory of the Euromaidan revolution. And you know how it happens. Russians were really good in terms of exploiting the problems of their region for many, many years. Exploiting the fears of local people. Exploiting the regional differences. Particularly in Donbas. So they were good in terms of whispering to people's ears that all your fall, all of your economic troubles in this rust belt of Ukraine, in this struggling

industrial zone of Ukraine, this has lost a lot since Soviet times. You know, everything that is wrong about your life is about the fact that you are with Ukraine. It's all their fault, and they are rejecting you from the authority of this country by dethroning the president, who is originally from Donbas. They are stealing your tax money, and they are rebalancing or redistributing the money that you pay from your enterprises as taxes to western

regions of Ukraine, who are lazy, who do nothing. So they have always been good at presenting Russia and Moscow and everything that's connected to Russia as the better alternative to Ukraine, to this messy, undemocratic, poor Ukraine. Yeah, so corrupt Ukraine too. So we were seeing this with our parents, with our grandparents for years and years as Russians were presenting this TV picture as the better alternative, as the ideal alternative. They were buying people with this sweet dream of Russia

just coming and solving all their problems with their oil money. So it's a far more tempting thing to buy people with than many people imagine, especially when it comes to local mindsets and local grievances of people who were much more prosperous in the time when there was Soviet Union and, you know, these isolated industries who simply could not survive in a normal capitalist economy, but try to explain that to people. So they were good at exploiting the downsides of then-time Ukraine in there.

And they were good and they were provocateurs on the ground in many cities in Donbas, including my own hometown, in many villages in Donetsk, in Mariupol. They were good in terms of instigating the crowd, telling people what people wanted to hear about this. Touching this painful spot of the language, of scaring people with the perspective of their Russian language being banned by ultra-nationalists. So they were good at instigating this strife. I remember myself catching a thought when I was walking

down the street in Mariupol at some point, shortly before the beginning of the regional war in Donbas. And I was thinking, like, civil war? We were kind of calling this a civil war, the perspective. There was a sense of fear of the civil war in the air. I was like, civil war? I mean, that's not possible. Every country has, like, regional grievances and differences and feeling of bitterness between, you know, people in different regions, but

a civil war between Donbas and the rest of Ukraine, that's simply ridiculous. That's what we were thinking. And in part, from the distance of time, I think I was pretty right in this. And what Russians had to do is to draw blood, draw the first blood. We in Donbas, we had a lot of grievances, we had a lot of problems, but this situation was never that bad as to leave something that Russia could portray as a civil war, as the uprising of one region against the other parts of Ukraine.

But once you draw the first blood, it draws more blood. Blood follows blood, grievance comes after grievance, anger comes to anger, and that's how you, you know, unlock this, you unleash this demon.

Yeah, the revenge cycle of human wars.

People see what, people see, for instance, people in the streets, people in peaceful cities, just usual civilians, they see that Ukraine is, was introducing National Guard or military units to counter what was happening to Sloviansk when Russians, essentially Russian FSB colonel, just entering, crossing the border illegally with a bunch of armed goons, just capturing the city, and that's it. So people were seeing...

That's Igor Girkin, right?

Yeah, of course, we're talking about him. And people are seeing Ukrainians naturally doing what any nation would do in such a case, introducing army units, combating essentially the invasion of suburbs. They see Ukraine taking up arms against someone who presents himself as the champion of the people, of usual people in Donbas. And they simply have their prejudices. They have it confirmed. So that's how it happens. And from the distance of time, I would say that Russians were really good in terms of

understanding what they had to do to turn a lot of people against their own country. And essentially themselves, too. So, yeah, it's a hard thing.

So you were in Mariupol when the fighting started there, and that's famous scenes of now Commander-in-Chief in the 72nd Brigade, which you were very close to in your reporting, and then Azov. What do you remember about that period of Mariupol? You know the famous footage of the flying BMP, but at that time he was a major, he was a company leader, I guess.

He was a battalion, I think he was an executive officer. He was in charge of that convoy. I was there, I was there in Mariupol, I was not far away from there. I saw him fly, I saw him fly. And to be honest, those pictures got famous, especially in our time, since we know who that was. But that was May 9th, 2014, and that was a pretty pointless day in the life of that war, because that was the first day when the Ukrainian military, regular military, tried and did enter Mariupol after weeks of

mayhem, of anarchy, of a city essentially belonging to no one but so-called separatists or militants in the very center. And they simply entered, tried to do something about the SBU arsenals, I guess, and essentially achieved nothing and decided to withdraw. And that's what we are seeing on the video, the withdrawal, the very chaotic and pointless withdrawal of a pretty pointless operation. So we were having a lot of hopes. What was happening, I remember from that time, I remember that I lived, I rented an

apartment in some sort of an industrial zone where a lot of people from nearby factories were still working. And I remember that many people from plants, from factories, they were self-organizing in terms of patrolling their own neighborhoods, just to stand against marauders and many other things, because there were no police, no firefighters, no medical services. The city was on its own, which was in great ways the fault of the Ukrainian state system of that time because it collapsed.

It simply collapsed. The way it collapsed in Crimea, it collapsed even more spectacularly in Donbas because a huge part of the local governments and statesmen, they betrayed Ukraine. And the rest simply collapsed as a system. So I was really there. And when it comes to the day when Mariupol was set free, I also remember that day very well because it happened in June or July. I guess that was June, mid-June. And I was a worker. I worked at the bookstore.

Local businesses tried to go on working despite all those things. Local transportation also worked somehow. And I remember a moment really early in the morning. I wake up because of the sound of loud explosion somewhere pretty far away, but still very much audible. I just opened my eyes. I see grayish sky of early morning and I see this sound of gun firing. So the sound of the battle somewhere. And my first thought is that, yes, our guys have come. So, yeah, and it turned out to be the Azov units.

And they, early in the morning in the sunset, they entered the city with the support of all the other units. They attacked the militants headquarters in Hretska Street. And they took it down. And by just a snap, the city got back to very normal life, to super normal life. It was simply just like a sunset in this. And ever since then, for pretty much eight, nine years, up until the full-scale invasion, Mariupol entered probably the best time of its own history.

From the point of view of usual life, from the point of view of well-being, the comfort, the city as a system. I'm saying this because I came back at some point in late, in summertime of 2021, about six months before the full-scale invasion on vacation. And what I saw and what I compared with the city that I knew as a student years before was something really different. So Mariupol was in the happiest, more prosperous state than probably ever before in its history.

So after 2014, I guess you graduated. How did you get into journalism?

That's the funny thing. We were talking about the fact that Mariupol was isolated, was in state of anarchy, no authorities, nothing. Essentially the rule of pro-Russian militants in the city center. And since I was international relations guy and also English translation guy, I was really interested as a student and everything in foreign media, BBC, many other things. We were forced by lecturers to read as much in English as we simply could. They examined us on what's in the English language media these days.

And back in those times, I'm not sure what's about this, what's about now, BBC news, they had articles after which there was like a byline saying that if you're witnessing these events, please contact us so we could ask you questions and things like that. And I did. You reached out. I reached out to them and they started calling me sometimes at 4 a.m., sometimes late in the night, just to have someone to go live and talk about things on radio, on radio, like BBC World Service, voice only radio.

And they really started doing this with me every other day. So So those were my first steps into this. And then I graduated. I decided to get back to my hometown, Volnovakha, just between Mariupol and Donetsk. And that is a small town where not many things happen. But there was one job at a local newspaper, just a leaflet, essentially three or four pages, something like this, run by the city administration, and there was a job for a young reporter at minimum wage. So I decided

to take a chance. So that's how it came to be. I started writing for the local newspaper. In Ukrainian? Mostly in Russian, by the way. Local Russian? Yeah, yeah, it was a mixture. The newspaper was a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. It was a pretty interesting job in terms of you working at a very low level, a local newspaper that writes mostly about very cliche and very niche articles about how the local lawmaker came there to some, I don't know,

so-called place in some village just outside, in our community, just cut ribbons, and this is what a great guy he is. Or that guy from the local city council came to inspect the opening of the first pharmacy in that village, and you go there with some guy from the city administration or someone from local authorities, and you cover what they have to say. Oh, by the way, there is a bit of a funny story. Dmytro Lubinets, the Ombudsman of Ukraine, who came to big fame right now because of the Oleshky evacuation,

in which he was, he did what I consider a pretty heroic job in terms of going to the Russian- occupied side and saving people who were in danger of starvation under Russian occupation. He did it. Yeah. He did. He was my guy. He was my MP for Volnovakha until 2022.

So you covered him.

I covered him too. Yeah. In 2015. Yeah, that was 2015. Wow. 2015, 2016. So he was our member of parliament for Volnovakha, for our community. And so he used to come back to the town and also inspect and cut ribbons and inspect, you know, milk places and cow places and local pharmacies and local, like, nursery units, and I was forced to be part of his entourage, as, like, that's this newspaper guy. Yeah. So, see, time flies, time, and how roles change.

So when did you move into the English-speaking journalism world?

Well, I always loved English. I, you know, some people are good at dancing, some people are good at singing, and I always had this affection to English since my childhood. And I studied it mostly by myself in high school. Simply because I was growing up in a small village with not many chances, not many opportunities, other than, you know, working in the local factory. So I decided that... at the age of 16 that I probably need to do something with my life unless I want to work as a civil worker at a local factory.

So I decided to study English by myself. And eventually it brought me to Kyiv. Essentially it brought me to Kyiv because I worked as this newspaper guy in the entourage of local officials for about a year, something about a year. And that was a good experience because the local newspaper was good. The team was good. It was just a handful of people working and running this newspaper, but they were very nice people. But at some point I decided that I'm 23. I really wanted to move forward in life.

And besides Ukraine, not Ukraine, Volnovakha by then was a near frontline city, one of the back rear cities for the Ukrainian military, which had its positive sides, especially when it comes to local economy. It was situated several kilometers away from the frontline, but it was just near the entry point to the other side of the frontline. And naturally we had a lot of military guys and I started making friends of course with the military.

I always wanted to be as close to the military as possible since I couldn't serve. And in general it has always been a sense of commitment since we are in this revolution and also in this war that had to end with this process of reforming the military and holding the line. So everybody wanted to be part of it, myself included. I started making friends, sometimes illegally. I used to come with them to military units on the front line, very illegally,

on the condition of me keeping my mouth shut about this for at least 10 years. So I served.

Statute of limitations is over.

So, I just wanted to do this. I just wanted to do this. For the first time in my life, I was never a fan of the military. I never imagined myself in the military. But what we saw in 2014-15, the heroism of the Ukrainian military, of volunteer battalions, it makes you appreciate. It makes you appreciate people in uniform and people who took up arms and fight. So I decided I need to move forward and move to Kyiv. And, of course, as it always happens, the first job in Kyiv is never good.

You start from nothing. I came here in May 2016, May 9th.

The price is here a lot higher than in Volnovakha.

Oh, yeah. So I managed. Remember me saying that I worked for minimum wage. So I managed to collect about $100 for the next trip, for the future trip, which is a bit of nothing here in Kyiv. But nonetheless, I had my backpack. I had $100 and I had a lot of ambitions with me. And I jumped off the train and a whole new life started. But Kyiv is a kind of place that puts you to the test. And especially when you start from nothing, from zero, from... I had no one in the city.

I had... I organized a job, the first job in a pretty weak media outlet here in Kyiv. But that's how you do things. You start from nothing and you do grow up, you know. You step on the ladder and you move forward step by step too. So this path, once upon a time, about six months later, during which I worked essentially for peanuts and lived with my friends. My friend from my university moved a couple of months after. So we lived together. We shared, I'm not sure what's the word for this.

We shared sort of a wooden by house, by a very old house owned by a really old lady in the outskirts of Kyiv. So we lived, like, essentially that was a summer, summer, summer outhouse or something like this. I'm not sure what's the, what's the, even the word for that, because that was not even a house, but just a part of a house. Where you could sleep until it's cold. So that's what we could afford with my friend. And once upon a time, I decided that I want to eat at least once a week.

And I found this job at 1+1, which is a really big deal in Ukraine. It's one of the largest media groups, media companies. And they had an English-language media outlet called Ukraine Today. They had it back in the day. First, it was sort of a TV channel because Ukraine speaking English about itself, talking to the world, was one of the most popular things in Ukrainian media. So Ukraine back then was trying to cry out to the world.

So a lot of people tried to establish English language media outlets, newspapers, TV channels. So I came to Ukraine Today. I saw for the first time what a real good, nice media outlet looks like. The office at 1+1, which is good. The first more or less decent job. In which you could afford more than one meal a day, which was, which was good. I'm kidding, of course, but you know, the first months in Kyiv were hard. They were full of adventures, but also I feel terribly nostalgic

sometimes about those times. So Ukraine Today, Ukraine Today, that was a paradise. It was a paradise compared to what I had back in the day. Also awesome people. Awesome people. The team that worked there. Foreigners too. We had a British guy who was like an English-speaking guy in the room. The first real good experience in English language media. The first articles in English. And it ended well too early, well too soon, just after two months. So by the end of the year, year 2016,

a guy came to our office, our beautiful, nice office. That was shortly before or after Christmas Day. He came and said that he made a decision to terminate this media outlet. That this guy was Tkachenko. He ended up being the minister of culture of Ukraine for years, for years after that. So that was it. That was it. It's Christmas time, New Year's time. I lost my job for the first time in Kyiv. Just imagine my shock and my... But as part of this national trait that we have in Ukraine, there was this attitude that,

yeah, things may look bad, but we will find something. We will find out how to make another step forward, which is what I did by annoying a man, an American man living here in Kyiv. His name was Brian Bonner. Quite a well-known name in town, who was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper called Kyiv Post. And I annoyed him on Christmas Day and on New Year's time because losing your job in Kyiv after like nine months in the city is one of the most fearful things that could happen to you.

But when this whole decrease in Kyiv ended, I came to Kyiv Post for the first time and he said, yes, you may come, we need something that he called a Pentagon guy, we need someone to take up this defense security. So I started, I started a new job, and when you start a new job, it's always a new level, and at this new level you have to start learning from the very beginning. So that was the beginning of something new.

Yeah. So you started covering the military, which you already made some relationships with, and we start heading towards 2021. Yeah, I could get a sense from the tweets that you were doing and the articles that you were concerned, but you also were probably skeptical for a while about Russia's true intentions. When did you think it was, I remember there was a specific article where you wrote about if Russia does come, they actually have a fight on their hands.

And this was probably one of the more inspiring articles I read before the war. Tell me about when you came to the conclusion this war was going to happen.

I, you know, part of the human nature is that you try to cling to hope until the very last moment. And you always try to rationalize things. As you think about things in this world, you try to be rational about this because you assume everybody is rational, at least at some point. I was very skeptical about the perspective of Russia's full-scale invasion until the final few days, I would say. Partly because I did not want to believe, but I understood this very well, because I was

making practical steps towards getting myself and my family prepared for this war. But like I said, I was trying to think.

Including buying a house in Bucha?

Yeah, doesn't mean that you have to cancel your life anyway.

You closed on a house in Bucha four days... You told me four days.

A couple of, a couple of days. I just became an owner of an apartment. And to be honest, that was being made in the atmosphere of, it's like, okay, be what may, be what may. It's just, it costs you nothing. It's just, you file papers, you get confirmed as the owner of a property, the first one in your life, your first home.

So you'd already paid for it, right?

Yeah, it was fully covered. Be what may. What I really wanted is my first home. I'm just about to turn 30, so congratulations to me. Let's see what happens next. So I was pretty skeptical because one thing I really knew the Ukrainian military and how it works, how my people work, the way it thinks, the way it has the attitude towards this country. Because I saw the year of 2014 and 2015, I saw my people capable of doing incredible things for this country.

I saw my people being capable of self-mobilizing into volunteer battalions, into taking up arms and joining the fight, essentially with nothing, with rusty Kalashnikovs and sneakers on their feet, with the clothes from their hunting shops. This doesn't happen to people who do not want to fight, who are not motivated to hold on to this country. So, to be honest, my understanding of the war and my expectation when I very, very gradually accepted this possibility was that we are going to have a guerrilla war.

There will be, Ukrainian military will give one hell of a fight. We were absolutely sure about our leadership. I mean, military leadership.

You actually wrote an article. You said we have this amazing new commander-in-chief and new defense minister and everyone's in the right place.

Defense minister was good. I think I even mentioned in my first book, just simply describing, a lot of things have changed in our attitude and our perception of those events and personalities too, but I was describing our general attitude in the military and military community. We had a lot of trust in Commander-in-Chief. We had a lot of trust in the Defense Minister. We had a pretty strong team, one of the strongest team ever in the entire military and security block. We knew it because it's our own people.

We stay in touch with the military all the time even though we are journalists. We knew that people in the military are going to take fights. They will fight. Moreover, in the final days when Zelensky announced the so-called partial mobilization he didn't have to call up people and enforce mobilization back then. Because in civilian life, there were lots of people who left the military by then, and they were getting back in huge numbers.

Because a lot of people left the military because of the pains of military life, especially when it comes to our far from perfect system. But people were really getting back to fight, and they had their arms itching for a fight because when Ukrainians feel the real danger, they do this. They do this. Our people are really good at self-mobilizing. They don't need the persuasion in this.

But your expectation, despite all of that, and you were saying, you know, we have these brigades here in Zhytomyr, and, you know, the 72nd is around Kyiv. But despite all that, your expectation deep down was there would be guerrilla war.

Yeah, that was what I expected. I thought there would be a short, terrible war and then a guerrilla phase. I was absolutely persuaded that Russia, it would take a lot of time, but Russia would simply bog down in an unwinnable guerrilla war in which it would exhaust its resources, exhaust its abilities to fight. I was absolutely sure that they will be crushing sanctions despite us being generally very skeptical about the West. And I expected something that could resemble sort of an Iraq thing.

Or Afghanistan in some sort, in which the overwhelming stronger invading force and occupying force simply faces an unwinnable and extremely unpopular war back home. I can't say that I was right in terms of Russian perception of the war, because we imagine that if Russians managed to do this really quick in a blitzkrieg way, then the Russian society would suffer little to no casualties, suffer little to no pain. And if it drags down, if Russians bogged down in an extremely

brutal guerrilla war, so Russians would be horrified by the stream of coffins coming to their country the way it happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s. And they will bring this war to an end, which was extremely naive perception, I would say. But in general, we seriously underestimated the Russian recklessness, their delusions about us. We simply very seriously underestimated their perception of us and their deeply mistaken perception of Ukraine being a country with no agency, a country that is seriously

on some sort of foreign occupation and submission, the country that is simply waiting for Russian liberators, the country that does not appreciate its own identity, its own national revival. And when we're talking about the years after 2014, after Euromaidan Revolution, we must understand that was a time of national revival, language, Ukrainian culture, everything that's Ukrainian. A lot of people, especially when it comes to youth, started appreciating the Ukrainian identity inside them.

Started thinking about Ukraine as the only possible national home. A lot of people are not looking around for immigration or looking up to some other countries, but rather rediscovering their own countries, their own beautiful things about this country, culture, this alienation of Russia, of everything that's connected to Russia. This pretty stunning process of Ukrainian people and Russian people just drifting apart in terms of their cultural proximity, language proximity,

you know, mindset. It's pretty wild to think about this as of now, but like 15, 20 years ago we were essentially the same cultural space. Yeah, same artists, same movies. President Zelensky used to go perform in Moscow. He's the best illustration. He was an inside guy in Moscow, Moscow showbiz. Same goes about a lot of Ukrainian artists. And I must say that knowing what kind of situation we had back then and knowing how dominating the Russian, everything Russian, from pop music to movies to

TV shows, how dominating they were back then in Ukraine. It takes just extraordinarily hard job to bring those nations apart in terms of this. But they managed. They managed to do this by being this stupidly evil. And when I compare where we are right now, I mean, we're so insanely apart from Russia, from Russian cultural space. We essentially, an average Ukrainian has no idea what's happening to Russia, has no idea what's, well, most of Ukraine, have no idea what's popular right now in Russia, what's

trending right now in Russia in terms of TV shows and all those things. Nobody cares, essentially. And moreover, an average Ukrainian is much, much, much, just uncomparably much more focused on what's happening here, inside this country. And they're looking west. They're following Western politics. They're following Western culture. So, you know, we are not watching, or we could watch some of the popular Russian podcasters or interviewers or like Yuri Dud.

And in 90% of the time, we could have no idea who they're talking to. And like they talk to important people in their country, in Russia, but we have no idea who that is. We simply drifted apart as nations in very large way because of what they've done. Because of what they've done.

So you thought the full-scale invasion was going to happen. It happened. You were reporting from Kyiv, Battle of Kyiv. I remember your X account probably went from, I don't know, a couple thousand followers to 1.2 million during that period. I don't know how many followers you had, but I remember it just happened.

That's correct. A couple of thousand.

Yeah. And you started writing famous dispatches in the Battle of Kyiv and the Battle of Donbas and Bakhmut. How did you decide to get out of journalism? Because I want to do some other episodes with you on what you saw in the war as a journalist. But how did you decide to transition to becoming a writer?

I did it because of many reasons. First and foremost, it's about internal problems within Kyiv Independent and our work. And the way I saw my work, the way they saw my work. So that was, to put it mildly, that was one bit of a problem. Another thing is that I was...

So you were part of the Kyiv Independent, a co-founder when it started, right?

Yeah, co-founder. I essentially went on. We went prominent because of the coming crisis, because Kyiv Post was killed when this transition to war in late 2021 was taking place, and Ukraine was making headlines. And so was the breakup of Kyiv Post, because one morning in November, the same guy, Brian Bonner, eight years long came to very usual morning meeting and told us, told the team, that this newspaper is no more. I have received orders from the owner to terminate and shut down, effective immediately.

We're supposed to leave this office today. Well, that was the beginning of the end, but also the beginning of a new beginning, because we overcame the shock, made up our minds, started writing things on social media, trying to draw attention, and decided that we stay together as a team. So this is the newsroom of the Kyiv Post, essentially, the core, the core team. We decided that we stay together as friends, as a working family, and we find out something new. In many ways that was

because of the time, what was happening, because of this crisis, because of this transition to war in late 2021, as the feeling, the feeling of people inside that team that we cannot leave this country without a major, professional and good-looking English language media outlets. So we as a team we travel to this period of expecting the war, getting ourselves prepared as a team for this war.

You know, you were the one that decided, I think you were the one of the only ones that decided to stay in Kyiv, right?

There were several of us, a couple of guys who decided to stay. And also people, when the situation became more or less clear, people moved in and out.

But at the beginning, you're like, okay, this is going to be a guerrilla war, and I'm here for that.

Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, I will never forget my last night before the full-scale invasion, because we were essentially ready. We did create the things like we purchased satellite phones. We made up our minds. When do we meet up? Where do we go? What's happening to us? We asked our friends in the U.S. and Canada to go on with the website. Because one of the things that we really expected, and we were really surprised it never happened, is that Russians would have expected us, Russians to bring us to an

absolute total media blackout, like nothing from inside Ukraine to the outer world. So that was the last night before the invasion. We had, I was, for instance, part of the many, many journalistic chats on messengers. Among journalists who do defense and military, who have resources and stuff. They were like, guys, it's about 4 a.m., 5 a.m., probably, be ready. It's like, I never came to sleep on that night, just simply because you want to enjoy, yeah, you want to enjoy the last hours, sipping whiskey in the night,

reading through news all the time and probably expecting, expecting the H-hour. And I remember myself thinking that they are, they are really going to ruin this country apart. There's going to be an apocalypse. It's going to be probably in the end of the world for many of us, but we will somehow see the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's just one of those things that Ukrainians react with to such things. Do what's best, do what is honest, do what is right and be what may.

Probably the best intentions, the right moral choice will bring you to something really good. So that was, I think, everyone's attitude in the final nights. And what happened, happened. You know, and yeah, I decided to... We were having, like, meetings in which we were expressing our opinions on what we should do and our plans on what we should do, and I told my friends and colleagues that, guys, I am going to stay in Kyiv under any circumstances, because I simply can't. I love the

city. This is especially me, like, defense guy. I simply see no alternative for myself, and I had arrangements with the local territorial defense units. So, be what may. And you know, the funny thing, my first book's working title was initially Guerrilla Radio, Guerrilla Radio, because when I was writing all those tweets that you mentioned, when I was writing all those articles about what was happening, I imagined the next weeks and days of the Battle of Kyiv as us

getting back closer and closer to downtown Kyiv, to government quarter with the Russians closing in on the city and us reporting until the bitter end. This is what I expected. But we, of course, had arrangements on what happens when Russians enter the city, especially for ourselves, because me and my friend, we were still living together by the beginning of the war. He lost his job, of course, because of the war. He decided to stay with me. And we hired him as our driver.

Yeah. As our driver. So he's in the military, by the way, right now. So we had our plans, and we lived in the northwestern part of Kyiv, just on the edge of the cheapest places of Kyiv. Just on the road that leads to Irpin, to Bucha, to all those places where Russians were in. Just essentially, just a wood belt away from us.

I think that's by that big soccer ball on the gas station, right? And it's pretty close.

Yeah, it's pretty close. I think at the peak moment, Russians were about three kilometers away from our own apartment. So we lived there, and Russians were advancing towards Irpin, from Bucha to Irpin. They were in Hostomel, so they were a wood belt away from us. You might remember pictures of the broken, the blown-up bridge? Yeah, under which people were hiding, and they were trying to cross from those suburbs of Kyiv into the city. The famous bridge. Yeah, we lived pretty

close to this. Essentially, we were the last building before the highway to that bridge. Every single night we were in the first row of hearing things, of looking at things, when we were not in the fields reporting or doing this stuff. So we were in the field. And of course I expected us to do what we are supposed to be doing as journalists, with Russians closing in on the city in the hard urban battle and us getting closer and closer to the government quarter,

and then who knows. And we had plans to move into other parts of the city too. We had bicycles, for instance, just waiting for us if Russians rush in very quickly and unexpectedly. We ditch the car, because that's probably not a good idea to use the car, because we knew that Russians shot at cars back then on highways, and we decided that if something really bad happens, we take bicycles and we run away in the woods, because we were bicyclists by then and we knew all the paths we could

escape. Like I said, that was an extraordinary time, extraordinary time from many, many perspectives.

Yeah, no, I think it was an amazing window for someone who's watching, and I left Kyiv, I think, 12 days before the full-scale invasion. You know, literally, I remember flying out of Boryspil thinking I'd never see the city, and we'd left our apartment, my fiancee and I at the time. So it was, yeah, it was quite emotional leaving and then seeing how it turned out. That was a, let's call it the, I like to tell people, and we'll do this in the Battle

of Kyiv episode, if you rerun the Battle of Kyiv seven times out of ten, we're living in an alternate reality. Oh, yeah. This was not the way it should have turned out for many reasons. And, you know, when Trump was talking about this Russian general made a wrong turn, he's not right. But in a way, he's communicating a truth that he doesn't quite comprehend, which is...

He's talking about things that people were really expecting. Yeah.

He basically was channeling what should have happened from a probability.

Yeah, especially when it comes to the fact that the Ukrainian military command, political leadership, they were also trying to be rational about this. You know, we are very keen to criticize them about a lot of decisions that were made or not made by then. But I think it takes time, and we will make our final judgment after the war when we know a lot of things. But they were also trying to be rational about this. So Americans were warning us of a pending attack on Kyiv, but that's not rational.

That makes no sense. That made absolutely zero sense. So what made sense was to presume that Russians could attack outskirts of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, just for the sake of disturbing forces and keeping our forces away from Donbas. That made sense. So many people expected that, and myself included also. So, and it's a pretty well-known fact that, you know, the brigade of Hostomel, the 4th Rapid Response Brigade of National Guard, most of it was redeployed to Donbas from Hostomel

in February, just weeks before the full-scale invasion, because they were thinking rationally about this. They thought that, you know, we need this very combat-capable brigade in the east rather than somewhere outside Kyiv. And by sheer luck in many ways, by somehow, by this Ukrainian, by this Ukrainian, we'll see what happens. Probably because of a lot of mistakes on Russia's side too, the underestimation of Ukraine, and because of insane heroism of the Ukrainian, few Ukrainian forces that we had, particularly

the 72nd Brigade. And all the volunteers. Volunteers, in particular Americans, they were deployed here on a volunteer basis. Parts of the village, bits of National Guards, some bits of the SBU, Biletsky's guys, pilots, yeah. Azov. Azov, they had like a special force, Azov, back then. So they transformed into... Third Assault. Yeah, Third Assault. A lot of people. Because of the Russian mistakes, but also because of something that I really describe

and I remember as like a supernova explosion of what's good about human nature. That was happening back then. So just like many other journalists making a final decision for themselves to stay and serve their duty. The same way a lot of people here in Kyiv and many other places in Ukraine decided to make a final stand because obviously people had little to no illusions about this. We certainly did not expect to be seen the fifth year of the invasion still where we are right now.

Yeah, if you would have been told right before the invasion that this is what would be the case, you would... And Russian oil fields are burning and airfields are burning every single night.

I mean, no, no, no. And ever since then, you know, everything that's happening to your life is a lesson, and ever since then the lesson of those days for me is that, you know, do what is right, do what is honest, do what is simply the best moral decision. It may feel not the easiest way to go, but it pays out. It simply pays. It paid out for this country, it paid out for us, because for me to be in Kyiv in those days was one of the most

correct decisions in my life, absolutely the most correct decision in my life. And for this country not to give up, to stand up and fight no matter what chances, was a correct decision. So yeah, like I said, I describe this as a supernova of what's best about the human nature from our side, but unfortunately some of the worst things about human nature.

Yeah, what amazes me about war from personal experience is the best and worst of human nature comes out on all sides, I think.

And it's a very normal thing, by the way, in war. And in situations like this, this is what we're seeing, especially during the Battle of Kyiv, people simply tend to show their true selves. You are who you really are in those situations. You may be an IT guy, a cab driver, but when you make decisions, you become a soldier. You take care of your own family and you stand up to fight. You might be... I have friends, tomorrow I'm coming to a radio program run by a guy who,

being a radio host, a pretty popular radio host, decided to join volunteer battalions back then. So him being a lone father, just a popular host, not having to join the military under any obligation, but he decided to take up arms. And in my first book, I guess, I have a chapter in which I describe one of his gigs in wartime Kyiv during the first days of the invasion, with Russians just closing in on the city, and him and his co-host just having this radio talk show and talking about

things in a very cheerful manner, with the semi-military, paramilitary uniforms, with these yellow stripes on their shoulders and Kalashnikov rifles just by their knees, just in the middle of the radio studio. It's an amazing time, amazing time to be to be seeing people, regular people that you knew, and seeing them, demonstrating their true self, what they're capable of.

So, Illia, we're going to have a whole deep dive in the Battle of Kyiv. I'm looking forward to that. And going over your other book, let's move on to Land of Tears and Hope. And why did you write this book? And what are you hoping to, who are you hoping to reach and accomplish?

I wrote this book simply because I'm not in the military. I was excluded from mobilization because of medical reasons in 2023, I guess, because of the objective reasons. It's a blood disease that capacitates my ability to walk much. So I'm not much of a walker ever since then. It's a family thing. So to my big surprise, I was rejected from mobilization on these grounds a long time ago. So I decided to focus on what I can do best, right?

And one of those things that really irritates me when I hear a lot of people talking about my country, about Ukraine, was that a lot of people who even support Ukraine, they perceive Ukraine as a country that is sort of a backyard of Russia, sort of like a historical offshoot of Russia that is not much different from present-day Russia, the country who just accidentally got its being and its independence in 1991. So I simply decided to write a simple book, like an explainer, countering

myths about Ukraine, countering long-engrained Russian propaganda points about Ukraine that are deeply rooted inside Western perception of Ukraine, or simply tell people about this country. Simple truth without any sort of propaganda, without any nationalistic points, simple scientific mainstream points about this country. But when I started doing this, I realized, when I was preparing for this, obviously I had a lot of materials, preparations and research, I started getting this, that I'm having something far

more deep to say, because I was rediscovering my history too, the history of this country, the historical face of this country, the way we are getting back to our history, our own history, and our own national symbols and traditions and many other things as part of this war. It's about this national revival that we were talking about a while back. So I decided to... I ended up having this book, and I must say that it came to be without

much of a plan. I pitched one book, one sort of a plan for this book, to my publisher. I was thinking about something yet another, and I ended up having something absolutely different on paper, as if the book was writing itself, simply like this. You know, I've been doing this, I mean writing, for quite a while, for like 19 years, and I noticed that when you write things and when you barely understand how it happens when you have the result that surprises even you when you feel like it wrote itself, there's

some magic happening to this. It means that there was some magic, and it ended up being something really good sometimes. Sometimes when you can barely understand and can barely explain how you do this, it's something that is worthwhile in you.

What I really like about this book is I've read all the English Ukrainian history books out there, Timothy Snyder and Serhii Plokhy's books and Yaroslav Hrytsak. I really like his book also. And a number of other books on different parts of Ukrainian history. I've done a lot of Crimean history and Battle of Kyiv history from World War II and anything about World War II I've read. But what I really like about this is you really tell great, powerful, vivid stories of a number of figures throughout Ukrainian history.

Not all of them. Some of the major ones are barely mentioned in here. But you choose enough in each period that it's not written for historians, which as a historian I'm fine with. In fact, I think history should be accessible to the masses. And in a way, as a journalist and as a Ukrainian who's lived the history, your stories and the stories of the recent history are compared to everything going all the way back and I think that was amazing. You start the book in the preface talking about Bakhmut,

very personal story about you during the Battle of Bakhmut, and all the history of that, some of the recent history with the marine who blew up the bridge on the first day of the war. So it was a really powerful introduction, and that kind of drew me in, and then I just kept reading. So I really appreciated that. I just want to give a high level summary of the book because my dream for this podcast is that everyone's interested in the current war, right?

That's what draws people in, you know, military professionals, policymakers, makers, people who are just supporting Ukraine. The current war is what we're obsessed with. But I think what people don't understand and why I created the Ukraine Military History Institute and our podcast is Ukraine has a rich, deep, I think uniquely valuable history to tell the world about how to survive and thrive and rise from the ashes in the most valuable part of the world, geographically with the bread

basket all the resources but then also the most challenging neighborhood in the world because of the invasion routes and the neighbors that we have around us.

It is true that it's not really like a history book from a historian. I'm not a historian, absolutely. I am 100% reliant on historians on articles and books but there are lots of authors who would describe and curating history and write topics on Ukrainian history much better than me. We all know them. We all love them. I was reading them for this. But I decided to take another angle with my book simply because I wanted a book that is written not simply on Ukrainian history but on the perception of the Ukrainian

destiny in this history. As a country that's very young and very old at the same time, very immature and very deeply ingrained at the same time. The country that has been humiliated, including by itself, for quite a long time, not appreciating its own legacy, its own history, looking up to wrong people and looking up to wrong legacies and wrong ideas. A country that has a lot of dark pages in its history because of many, many circumstances,

but also about glorious pages in its history, a country that only now gets back to its past, you know, the ancient Kyiv, symbols of ancient Kyiv that are symbols of modern Ukraine. It's about the people of my generation, but in particular my generation, who essentially fights this war and who starts to really appreciate all that legacy, a very diverse legacy in terms of appreciating the legacy of ancient Kyiv and Vikings and Slavic tribes getting together and creating something that is among Ukraine's

greatest national shrines, such as here in Kyiv. The introduction of Christianity on this very land, on these banks of Dnipro, the epic stories, epic legends that we have about ancient kings and queens, warriors or wise people creating historical wonders. It's a story about Ukrainian Cossacks, the military history that has a lot of influence on Ukraine's today's military history and insignia and in general the Ukrainian military tradition. It's about something that we get back pretty often these days is the first

Ukrainian attempt to proclaim independence in the early 20th century by the end of World War I. And in 1917, 1918. Failed attempt one more time because it was essentially drowned in blood by Russian Bolsheviks.

Well, it was Russian Bolsheviks executing skillfully the same campaign that you compared how they did it then and how they tried to do the same thing now, but also internal divisions.

Yeah, internal divisions, political strife that are super characteristic to Ukrainian political life right now. And we compare a lot, we draw a lot of parallels from that time because of the stupidity of then-time Ukrainian leaders who managed, who did not manage to keep this country afloat because of many objective and subjective reasons. It's about also about us right now getting to understand that our independence, our national tradition, even at the present

state and the modernity, it dates back not to this pretty accidental and sudden collapse of the Soviet Union that happened in 1991. It dates back far earlier, and our national symbols, our money, our currency, our coat of arms, our flag date back to the days of the first failed attempt to proclaim revolution, proclaim independence. And as I was exploring, re-exploring the history, I'm not really going deep into academic depths. I'm more talking about things that make Ukrainians

Ukrainians. One of the second titles that I had early on in my work, like a working title, was that I really wanted to be accepted as an official title was How to Be Ukrainian. So I wanted this to be a semi-joking title simply because I'm talking more about myths, legends, very popular and very well-known historical episodes from Ukrainian history. Songs, people, poems.

You talk a lot about monuments.

Monuments, shrines, works of literature.

Taras Shevchenko is very prominent in the book. With all people, yeah.

People, national poets, their influence on the country and the people who were in the position of essentially slaves, yeah, in the 19th century, but their culture diminished and spat upon and legally banned. Yeah, legally banned too. And some peasant guy, yesterday's serf, who ended up being a super talented painter, but also an even more talented, ingenious poet, who ended up being a preacher, a prophet, someone who inspired so many people with his surprisingly genius poetry out of nowhere in his

peasant language, and his epic poetry inspired so many other people to get back to their national roots from then-time Russian Empire's aristocracy and prominent people that they ended up simply creating the Ukrainian nation. This is what happens to post-colonial nations normally. So it's about... When I was exploring all those stories and all this history, I simply realized that we as a country, we're walking in circles all these centuries. We keep trying to get this independence and freedom of our own in our

own lands, and we keep losing them time and again, time and again. And there have been a lot of empires, a lot of powerful people who always wanted to be masters of this land, because Ukraine is a rich country. Ukraine is, you know, to be a master of Ukraine is a very good thing.

There's a very old saying that in Yaroslav Hrytsak's book he was talking about a historian who talked about whoever controls Ukraine controls Eastern Europe and whoever controls Eastern Europe controls the Eurasian landmass. Literally, it determines the balance of power in the largest stretch of land in the world.

It's about the mineral resources that Russians really, really appreciated and wanted. It's about human resources, it's soldiers, it's workers. It's bread. It's the ports. It's the geographical positions close to the heart of Europe. It's about the brains because not many people, and Russians definitely do not like to talk about this, but in the early periods of Russian Empire, it was a bunch of people from Ukraine who were educated, who were trained here in Kyiv and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

You talk about this very well in the book, and this is a very important point, is when the Russian Empire got control of Kyiv, they had no universities themselves. They take all of the Kyiv-Mohylianska, which was founded by Cossacks, and the Cossacks created this great educational institution which revived this ancient tradition, and they steal the history of Kyiv. They steal all the best talent, the best priests. That I think is like a third of the doctors in the Russian Empire were Ukrainians.

Yeah, government clerks, simply educated people, you know, the brains, simply the brains. And what empires do, they create their own version of history, they create their version of authority, of narrative that solidifies their power over lands. And that's how even the most educated Ukrainians, you know, clergymen, they ended up being in service of the Russian Empire, creating the narrative, the historical religious narrative, particularly the ones saying that the sanctity of

Kyiv, of old ancient Kyiv just traveled and transitioned to Moscow, to the Russian historical heart, even though, you know, it's a very interesting thing to see how it happened throughout years of history. And as we were walking through this circles, and this vicious circle, Ukrainians keep suffering because they are not masters of this land. They are not in control of their destiny, of their way of life, of their vector in the world. So they keep being soldiers in foreign wars for empires that they never

needed. And my worst painful example of this is the Ukrainian participation in the Finnish War in late 1930s. And of course, because a lot of Ukrainians, essentially, a large part of the invading force of Soviet Union in Finland was Ukrainian units, people from Ukraine. So Ukraine, who was never even potentially be enemies with Finland. And those people dying for nothing. We're not even mentioning things like Holodomor and Stalin's war machine, an industrial

machine, using the Ukrainian bread in exchange for machinery and industrialization and building their war machine for themselves at the expense of insane hunger and millions of people who are starving there. And my entire point, and I simply came to it by myself as I was writing this book, essentially I just came to this with the writing of the book, is that what's happening right now with this war is that Ukrainians are facing yet another risk of losing their freedom and independence in their history, and

but at the same time, it's hope for them, for us all, that this time around we're going to break the circle. We're going to get a free, strong, independent Ukraine where Ukrainians and those who want to live in this land and be loyal citizens, and people who could live in this, on their land, to be masters of this land, to set the rules, to set their own path in the outer world for themselves, and never to be a resource base or mechanism of other empires again. So that's, I guess, the entire point of this book.

I just want to give a quick outline for people who are considering getting the book. And also, I've been looking for another partner in this historical discussion of Ukrainian history for the masses, for people who are not professional historians or experts on Ukraine. So I want to, in the future, we're going to try and do an episode on each chapter in this book. But I just want to outline your book really quickly and mention and go into some of the

favorite parts of it. The first chapter is the legacy of the Vikings, and I think a lot of people will be surprised by, you know, the Vikings. Everyone, well, a lot of people have probably seen the Netflix series Vikings. Who doesn't love that? Yeah, who doesn't love that? And then if you saw Vikings Valhalla, you've got Harald Hardrada. Who ends up actually courting, and it takes him several years to impress and win the favor of Elizabeth, who's one of the daughters of Yaroslav the Wise.

And he made it. Yeah, and he made it. And he proceeded to found the city of Oslo.

Yeah, he founded Oslo. According to some accounts. Yeah, with the help of a beautiful Ukrainian bride.

And then you have France, Anna, who married, you know, the French king and then created, you know, a number of, you know, and she famously taught them how to read and bathe and all kinds of stuff that the French weren't doing that well at that point. Because, you know, Kyivan Rus at that time, founded by Vikings, you know, working with the local Slavic indigenous population that had been there for several hundred years, created the wealthiest, biggest empire in Europe at that point.

One of them, one of the biggest. You know, just the fact that so many dynasties of Europe, of kings of Hungary, of Norway, Sweden. Czech. Yeah. And if we go beyond the legacy of Yaroslav the Wise, also England, for instance, France, too. Just this fact says a lot about the power of ancient Kyiv back then. So people were seeking union and unity with the rulers of Kyiv, which is impressive for essentially a kingdom, a realm that was essentially established by Vikings as a means of a trade vehicle. To get to Byzantium.

Essentially, that was a political entity that could preserve the safe passage from north to Black Sea to Constantinople. And pretty quickly, it ended up being the huge kingdom with impressive historical legacy that we are right now having.

And you talk about in there the first confrontation with the Muscovites, which actually was founded by the princes of Kyivan Rus. They ended up...

Settlers from present-day Ukraine. Went to Moscow and founded it. It's not a surprise that in the historical heart of Russia, there are lots of names of cities that are the same as present-day Ukrainian cities, because, you know, there were settlers from many, many old cities of present-day Ukraine just looking for new lands beyond forests, and thus establishing the historical part, historical heart of Russia. But when it comes to, you know, the distinction between Ukrainians

and Russians, I really date it back to those times, because I try to explain to people who think that Russians and Ukrainians are the same. I try to show this very simple distinction between the Ukrainian way of thinking of political culture and Russian political culture and the way of thinking. Ukrainian way of thinking and political culture rests upon the tradition of Veche, which is the gathering of people in city squares dates back to tribal times so

that people and crowds of people decide on important things or revolt. Does it ring the bell? The Ukrainian tradition and way of thinking rests upon the European law of self-governing in cities, the so-called Magdeburg law in our city, because that was something that was brought by Poles, by Lithuanians. And it was a supernatural part of Ukrainian political life and urban life up until the early 19th century. Whereas in Russia, it was more about authority, the divine rule of tsar.

Well, the split for that really came, well, first of all, for those of you who don't understand Ukrainian-Russian history, Ukraine, Kyiv, in Rus, was the capital. It ended up founding Moscow with settlers. And then the big split, I think, that you outlined in Chapter 2 is after the Mongols came and basically conquered and sacked most of Kyivan Rus territory. Kyiv was destroyed badly.

Yeah, Kyiv was destroyed. I think 2,000 people survived out of 50,000. And then Western Ukraine kind of became the continuation of this very tradition of not having like a tsar, of a ruler, of a prince that is, by the way, limited in his power by nobles, by the Veche of usual people, by really wealthy and powerful people from merchants, for instance, because Kyiv was historically a city of merchants, a wealthy city. So it's all about the contradiction between a

limited rule with a lot of dispersion of authority and a universal unified rule of divine power of the tsar that comes more from Mongol tradition and authoritarian rule. That's at the very core. Same goes about things that we mentioned with the Magdeburg law, European law of self-governing against the rule of the tsar and his armed people, which is still essentially the same if we go to a very common picture. That's the strife. That's why in many ways there have always been this misunderstanding

between Ukrainian Cossacks and Russian tsar when they decided to make a union to do something that Russians call the unification of Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian Cossacks being part of the, formerly part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of their European practice and European understanding of what the vassal and the authority is. They were expecting the tsar to have obligations before them too, to have guarantees to them too. So they are their vassals, but it doesn't mean that they are slaves.

The suzerain has the obligations before his people. So it's this, it was this idea that leadership has responsibilities to the ruled, to this: if we enter this sort of relationship, you have responsibilities before us, just like we have responsibilities and duties before you. You have guarantees towards us that you do not do this, this, this and that, because that's what Europeans do. That's what's about vassals and suzerains. And from the Russian side, there's a very famous

saying that the tsar does not make oaths to his superiors. Yeah, to his people. Subjects. To his subjects, he does not make oaths. That's essentially what Russian boyars, Russian nobles told Ukrainian Cossacks when they came for this union. And there has always been this misunderstanding, this lack of just simply misconception between these two kinds of mindsets. And this, it goes on. It goes on forever. And in our time, despite so many centuries after, we still can see this in Ukraine.

That's why Russians, I mean, even ordinary people, they still have this very sincere and genuine lack of understanding on why Ukrainians rebel, why they have this hated Maidan, why they disobey the authority, which is something that deeply enrages them. It's something that they simply fail to understand.

They can't comprehend it to the point where it must be a CIA plot, right?

Yeah, that's why they came up with a lot of conspiracy theories, simply because a lot of people in Russia, in their environment, they simply do not really understand this. Not all, of course, but it's a very Russian thing to be furious about you. I think it's a good example from this movie, Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained. There was this old slave, Stephen, who was so deeply ingrained in his slavery and his submission that he was furious to see someone else from his people not obeying the master, essentially.

It's something that creates something really deep in his heart. And so that's why I keep saying that even if Russians end up somehow, I don't know how, enslave and conquer Ukraine again at its present state, it makes little to no sense because Ukraine as an entity, as a phenomenon is deeply... incompatible with what Russia is. They will have to exterminate all of Ukrainians if they want this land, because otherwise it's not law. Yeah.

Well, so the second chapter, you go into the split after the Mongol invasion of 1240 with Danylo and the story of Lviv and the founding of Lviv. And during that time, while Ukraine is basically establishing its independence or, let's say, maximum freedom from Mongol rule, the Moscow region, the whole reason Moscow got so powerful was it actually became the go-to place for Mongols to rule the local people in the northeastern.

Yeah, they managed to grow, partially grew really strong. I mean, the Mongol rule, and in centuries after, they managed to essentially bring down that rule, and they started expanding. Yeah, expanding Moscow. So that's how Russia was built, following all those things. So yeah, but in this chapter two, it's called Defenders of the Faith, I decided to focus on this thing, that after the Mongol downfall in Kyiv, it was a huge, insane, a huge blow to everything that could

be seen as the origins of Ukrainian culture, the language, literature, the very religious status of Kyiv in dismay. And at the same time, we live in a world of competition all the time. And we have religious competitors in the Polish side, from the Lithuanian side too. It's about culture, language, religion, the Orthodox Christianity. And that chapter follows the way very few of the wealthy people, such as the princes Ostrozkyi, they did

something that ended up being super important for the continuation of this emerging Ukrainian identity from the ancient time to further, to centuries closer to our time, which was to stay away from being absorbed by Catholicism, by Polish religion, by other cultures and languages, by not playing by those rules and preserving the original faith, the faith of their fathers, as they call it, and the beginnings of the origins of the Ukrainian language.

Essentially, we're talking about the first people who used their money and wealth not for the sake of their own comfort in those political environments, but for the sake of preserving this idea of old rules, of old language of ancient Kyiv, the faith. And they simply passed the torch to other generations because they established schools for the first time. They invested in the creation of books because when we're talking about the Mongol downfall,

the Mongol invasion, we're talking about centuries of essentially cultural and religious void that happened after.

One of the really interesting things about this is you talk about the Ostrozkyi family. They were rich nobles that basically controlled Ukraine. Yeah, a lot of Ukraine under the Lithuanian rule. And they kept Ukraine in discussion through the Renaissance period with Byzantium and basically Europe. They had a culture of writing and discovery and exploring ideas through their connection with Constantinople. And that was a very important difference between the way Russia and Ukraine evolved.

Yeah. They simply passed the torch against all the odds, because most of the nobles of that time transitioned to other cultures, to other languages. They polonized, for instance, simply because that would give you privileges. That would give you access to positions to higher corridors of power. But some people decided to stay away from this. And in the time of Catholicism, Catholic faith expanded, really expanded, they were among the ones who supported the old faith of Kyivan Rus.

And this ended up being a huge service to the very preservance of what ended up being the Ukrainian language back then later on.

And then Chapter 3, the frontier in the Wild East, you open out with an amazing story about the Cossacks finding 10th century Viking swords in the middle of the day.

No, no, no, that was not Cossacks. 2019, sorry. Yeah, that was in the modern times. That was a bit of a, you know, one of those things that I discovered as I was making my own research for this book is that a lot of moments in our history, they interconnect between centuries in the most interesting way. Sometimes they come in circles and very symbolic way. For instance, in the first chapter, we're talking about the ancient kings and the queens

of Kyiv. We talk about Prince Sviatoslav the Brave, like the last Viking, someone who historians call the last Viking on the Kyiv throne, the absolutely devoted warrior who never imagined his life without war. Without... He spent life in military campaigns. He dreamt of having an empire in the south. He clashed with Byzantium. And he lost his life, very famously lost his life being ambushed somewhere in the Dnipro by nomads. He was killed and the nomad chief made a bowl

out of his skull and he drank wine with his wife because he had a dream of having a son who is at least somewhat as brilliant and brave as Sviatoslav of Kyiv. So he was called the last Viking in this. And it happened a thousand years ago. And then suddenly in our time, it was 2011, I guess, suddenly in those places near Khortytsia in Zaporizhzhia, where some people believe Sviatoslav may have been killed, there was a location of that story. Suddenly a fisherman gets a sword, a Viking sword,

a super expensive Viking sword from Europe that could belong to noble warriors from that time, someone really important. So it could be that, could it be Sviatoslav himself or someone from his war party in that location, in that place, and that not a simple location in Ukrainian history. That is the Khortytsia Island of Dnipro in Zaporizhzhia, which is a bridge from that source of Ukrainian military tradition in ancient times to even

more important pulse of Ukrainian tradition, which is the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the Zaporozhian Host. And there's a lot of similarities between the Rus and the Zaporozhians. It's just like two epochs of glorious times in Ukrainian history from the military point of view, from the point of view of military traditions of the nation, just making a handshake in this regard. I was so stunned when I discovered this simple fact from a newspaper.

It's not very well known in general audience, but I was so stunned when I discovered this fact about the discovery of swords, Viking swords in Dnipro, in that very location that symbolizes the glory of Cossack hosts in Ukraine.

The thing I loved about in your chapter of the Cossacks, you talked about so many great stories. My personal favorite was Ivan Sirko and his long life and his amazing letters that he wrote to the Ottomans and so many things. But the Cossacks basically became the most famous fighters in Europe during a period when fighters all over Europe were kind of paid and served in various places. And what they were famous for was attacking the Ottomans, defending against slave trade. And the Cossacks were really became

so famous in Europe that they established the map, literally the first map you talked about during this period where the French identified the land of Ukraine was because of the exploits of the Cossacks. It was a really interesting chapter.

It simply became, to understand it, simply became the part of the tradition that Ukraine is a part of the steppe frontier to which a lot of people were escaping from slavery, from trouble, from poverty, or for the sake of fortunes too. And they were, you know, as many nations would understand this, this spirit of frontier gave this new face of the country. It's just another contribution to this.

So the frontier, krai, which is like the edge land. Borderlands.

It simply came to the borderlands, then simply the lands, this is our lands. So where are you going to? It's our lands. Russians tried to mock this as the distant borderland, but the true Ukrainian understanding of this word is the country. It's our homeland. You are going to the country. And it's interconnected with this frontier understanding of this. And it's a pretty amazing story in global history in general that this semi-criminal society, this essentially army of fugitives or people who decided

not to obey to authorities and to go to wilderness and to establish the life of their own to absorb these lands, it became in many ways the liberator of slaves. Something that was seen with the Cossack liberation of Kaffa, the region's greatest slave market in 1616.

The world's greatest jailbreak.

Yeah. It became famous for naval operations on simplistic boats in which these people who are simply a guerrilla army of the 17th century attacking and devastating the ports of essentially the greatest military power of that time, the Ottoman Empire. So Ukraine is really full of the most amazing and very improbable things happening to it.

Well, and the last thing I wanted to highlight on that chapter, which is really amazing, was the Cossacks accepted Poles, Germans, Jews, anyone who wanted a fresh start. It was almost like a French Foreign Legion kind of place to go.

It was, it was like a pirate semi- criminal society, army slash a gang, slash liberators, slash retaliators for people, slash traders, slash producers of things, manufacturers, explorers.

Who got so powerful that they were able to basically create their own autonomous state within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

And it ended up being something that I call the Warrior Republic. Not the republic in the modern understanding of this word, but at the same time, a society of warriors that is very hierarchical, but at the same time, very much based on trust and authority that is gained in battle. So it's a military republic of warriors.

It was a military culture where promotion was not based on rank or birthright, but it was based on competence.

And which was extremely important and which is very important in the Ukrainian mindset up until this day. And what's really important is that, you know, no matter how high ranking you are in the Cossack army, there's always a possibility of you being dethroned all the time. And many, many super famous, super respected commanders ended up being legendary in ages. They were dethroned quite a while in their history. Of course, you know, it shouldn't be idealized to the extreme, but in Ukrainian

military tradition, being a hetman or an otaman, which is the leader of the pack of warriors, is always a very tricky position, because you are on the constant watch. And what is very illustrating is that part of this ritual to introduce you into the high authority commander was to symbolically humiliate you by throwing garbage at you so that you do not forget who you are. So you do not think way too high on yourself.

Yeah, I could think of so many... The Cossack tradition and the imagination of people looking back on that, I think, gives us an inspiration for what Ukraine can and needs to become to survive, which is this place where I think you and I both see this. You talked about Americans who showed up at the beginning of the war. There's an amazing group of expats who are coming to Ukraine and during the war who are serving in the military or serving in other ways.

I like to think of myself as someone as part of this community that we don't want to leave when this is over. We're not here to come and leave. We want to build our future, our families, and a society here.

There's an interesting thing about Ukraine is that the Zaporozhian Cossack army, it gets back when it has to. It happened during the 20th century revolution. It happened during the 2014 with the volunteer battalions. It happened during the full-scale invasion of our time with people self-organizing out of nowhere forming these militias and paramilitaries and guerrillas just like it happened in Donbas in 2014. This Zaporozhian Host gets back to Ukraine when it has to.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, so Chapter 4 was a war for independence, and this is where we talked in detail about basically the most violent period in Ukrainian history since the Mongol invasion, with the rise of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. Controversial historical topic, but also part of the history in terms of some of the violence against Jews and also the uprising against the Polish nobles. But it's important to understand that period. And Ukraine rebelling against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth leadership was

really about their rights and grievances and a lot of pain and poverty, injustices.

The very system of the foreign rule back then was deeply unjust and prone to violations, brutal violations, terrible violations, and leaving a lot of people in severe poverty and injustice. It was based on religions, on ethnic groups, on the very system was instigating all this. So at some point, it ended up erupting in a terrible violence that has no rationality itself. That is deaf, that is blind. Blind rage is the best illustration of what happened towards people that Ukrainians

hated for all those years and decades of humiliation and injustice. So I'm describing all those things, terrible things that happened during the Great Cossack War of rebellion, to once again demonstrate that Ukrainians need to be in charge. Ukrainians and those who want to live in this country, they need to be in charge of themselves. And to be building a just and simple democratic system for themselves that works for themselves and for the people who really want to work and live here.

Otherwise, Ukraine ends up being a victim of this injustice and it erupts into violence, into terrible things.

And I think the big lesson I took from that chapter was the turn towards Moscow during that period created an internal division among the Cossacks where you have right...

Not many people are really happy about this.

The right bank Ukraine, which is more oriented towards the west, and then left bank Ukraine, which became more oriented towards Moscow, and then the division and occupation in Kyiv. Once again an example of Ukrainians through these injustices, grievances and blood and horrible things, again trying to get the independence and failing again.

Turning against each other. And turning against each other and again being a resource for other great powers of any time.

And then Chapter 5 was Prayer for Ukraine, and you take us from the period after basically the division of Cossack Ukraine. You talk about the Battle of Poltava, going all the way through to, I think you take us all the way through Taras Shevchenko and then his legacy, his legacy in terms of reviving this spirit of people, of the people, and sending this inspiration to other talented people so that they essentially create the Ukrainian culture from nothing, scratch. And then it goes to political things.

So in this regard, one of the central points was again this, that Ukraine throughout centuries after, they ended up being the core resource of Russian Empire and their people ended up being the core resource and this long ingrained and really painful tradition of serfdom on Ukrainian peasants came to be. And it's one of the central issues of Ukrainian historical memory because it's extremely painful legacy that Ukrainian tradition has.

And from this serfdom, from this essential slavery of millions of Ukrainian peasants came to be the great Ukrainian national poet Taras Shevchenko, orphan boy from heartland Ukraine, from poor village who had little to no education from church clerks in his village but who suddenly appeared to be good at painting and drawing things and then suddenly appeared to be really good at writing poems. And he was writing poems in his native language, in Ukrainian.

Even when he was in St. Petersburg, when he was getting attention as a popular painter, his talent helped him find people who managed to buy him out of slavery essentially for a crazy amount of money among Russian imperial elites and his legacy, his poetry, his surprisingly barely explainable talent and his talent for or using this simple but poetic language in Ukrainian, in village Ukrainian, it inspired a lot of really talented people from Russian

and not only Russian imperial elite who decided to get back to their roots and essentially create Ukrainian culture from nothing. And then you talk about political things, you talk about things like independent Ukraine, can we be a country? Are we a nation? Are we something different from many people, from what many people perceive us to be? Are we really Russians? Since we are so different and we have our own poetic language. That's how you end up having some guy in Kharkiv who is a lawyer, who also

worked in Kyiv and who is pretty young, very radical in those things, but who ends up writing a small pamphlet that was illegal, of course, by the beginning of the 20th century, and which reads Independent Ukraine. That's how you get the idea out of the feeling of the roots from your people. You get the idea of getting the state for this country.

So that leads us into Chapter 6. I think it was, was it Altars of Madness?

Altars of Madness, yeah.

And this, you pick up with another great, I think my favorite historical figure in Ukraine is Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who basically takes this Ukrainian culture, and because he's driven out of the tsar, makes Ukrainian language forbidden, which drives Hrushevsky over to Lviv. And that creates an underground publishing center for the rest of Ukraine.

And since we are talking about political things, since we're going political, we are also rethinking our history, the history of the center. And particularly Professor Hrushevsky was essentially the first to talk about Ukraine in the most profound ways as something that has its own identity, its own face in history, its own history. Its own identity that is not simply part of Russia. So he writes famous books about this. And naturally, he becomes an authority on those things.

And when a chance occurs and the Russian Empire falls, so he is among the ones who were inspired by poetry of Taras Shevchenko, by this idea of Ukrainian nationhood, of Ukrainian identity, by many other people here in Kyiv who were famous musicians, writers, publishers, businessmen too, and who also were thinking about the Ukrainian and getting back to Ukrainian roots. And here we are with Ukrainians proclaiming essential autonomy for themselves in this. And then with the coming of Bolsheviks independence

based on all those ideas. Ukrainians calling themselves Ukrainians, calling Ukraine, Ukrainian People's Republic. And here we are in the war with Bolsheviks and the price of it and the price of the failed, terribly failed war with Bolsheviks, which was again like a reminiscent of the worst days of the Cossack War. Extremely bloody time here in this country from all sides across Ukraine. That 30-year period from 1917 to 1945. Essentially the end of the World War II.

And this long, big chapter, essentially the segment of the book is called Altars of Madness simply because I show it that by having lost independence yet, having been clutched in the Soviet Union, Ukrainians as a nation without their own country, without their own state, ended up being a resource for Stalin's crazy experiments with his building a war machine at the cost of insane blood. We're talking about Holodomor. We are talking about the use of working force in Ukraine and also many other nations.

The Great Purges, we're talking about the repressions, we're talking about the Great Terror. We're talking about the fact that Ukraine, as one of the most fertile lands in the world, one of the wealthiest nations in the world and countries in the world, ended up suffering terrible hunger and famine and millions of deaths of starvation, which seemed to be impossible for this. We're talking about the Finnish war, we are talking about

Ukrainians being used as soldiers in World War II against yet another monster who came to be and also wanted Ukraine as part of his Lebensraum. He was having plans on the colonization of Ukrainian fertile lands. And my entire point in this title, Altars of Madness, is that, you know, by losing independence, Ukrainians and many other nations under imperial rule, they ended up being on the altars of madness of other empires, of mad kings.

And this is what we have. And we have described only a few things of that terrible time. And, of course, things like Holodomor, the Great Famine. It had a terrible imprint on the entire national memory on this. It is no wonder that when you grew up in Ukraine, even in my time, in my generation, our grandparents, they have lived with this deeply ingrained fear of hunger in their souls, in their minds. That's why they, even in our time, closer to our time, they always force

us into eating the last bits of food on your plate because they simply have this irrational fear of hunger. And that came to them from their parents too. I know many people in Ukraine would tell you stories about how their grand grannies, they were extremely fearful of letting kids outside for anything, for playing. Because in those times, you know, kids were often stolen and eaten. Eaten. So they have this fear and instilled in them. So the price of losing independence, of losing control of your own destiny

in the country as tempting to be had as Ukraine is terrible is more than terrible. So that's why I wrote this.

Yeah, it was a very, very powerful... It's tough to go through that period, and there's so much that happened, but the stories and the historical figures you highlighted were really, I think, important. And then Chapter 7 was, it was about A Great Day for Freedom.

Everyone who spots all these references to songs is a especially cool guy. I simply decided not to go into, you know, describing the events of the Soviet Union in the second half of the 20th century. I decided to focus on personalities that illustrate very well the things that were happening to Ukraine back then throughout the second half of the existence of the Soviet Union. So I really wanted to have five faces, but I ended up having three, really three.

I came down to three because one of the things that I really wanted was to show that Ukraine really produced a lot of talent to the world. It gave a lot to the world. You know, Russians love this talking memo, asking that, what did Ukrainians give to the world? Well, Ukrainians sent humankind to space, to begin with. The space program was built in Ukraine. Yeah, the mastermind, the secret mastermind behind the space program of the Soviet Union was the Ukrainian guy from Zhytomyr named Serhii Korolov.

And there's a museum in Zhytomyr.

Oh, yeah. It's a beautiful museum, space museum, and also his memorial house where he was born and where he spent the first years of his life. And I simply came down to three figures, one that illustrates the Ukrainian fate in the second half of the 20th century. So, Serhii Korolov and his fate, yeah, he sent people into space, but also he suffered a lot in his life, and he barely survived Russian gulag. He essentially survived by luck, only to essentially, much later, came

to be in a position of someone who sends people into space.

And a lot of Ukrainians were sent to the gulags, so that was emblematic of Ukrainian stories.

His fate is very symbolic in this regard because he was a dreamer. I guess the chapter telling his biography is titled The Dreamer. He was a dreamer. He was an enthusiast of the air. He was a lover of Ukrainian songs. He was a lover of Ukrainian poetry. He was in love with rockets, with the idea of humankind going up into space someday. At the same time, he was a prisoner. He was tortured. He was beaten badly, which ended his life prematurely, the traumas of that.

But nonetheless, thanks to hope and to a lot of luck, he survived, and he essentially did what he was destined to do. And again, we were talking about the fact that Ukrainian history, in Ukrainian history, a lot of things just simply pop up, and they end up being extremely symbolic to the other bits of Ukrainian history. Again, when I was exploring things and doing research, a simple fact came to be, that thanks to Serhii Korolov, a

Ukrainian song, a beautiful Ukrainian song about dreaming, about flying, came to be probably among the first in outer space. Because in the early 1960s, the first Ukrainian in outer space, Popovych, just sang it live on the communications, because he knew that Korolov loved the song. So that's how Ukrainian song ended up being first or among the first. It's debatable. Ukrainian song that even a century before was barely heard in the world, ended up being heard in space too. And probably among the first ones.

So it's super symbolic. The second phase in this, I turned to Vasyl Stus. Vasyl Stus is the poet, martyr, who also ended up being in Soviet gulag and died shortly before the coming of Perestroika. Yeah. Essentially, among the last victims of the Soviet prison system. And his fate, his martyrdom, in general, his image, his pictures became extremely symbolic in Ukraine of today. So it's a fancy thing right now here in Ukraine to be referring to Stus, to be referring to his legacy.

And he had a great lawyer.

And he had a lawyer. He had a lawyer whose name was, who was young by then, and whose name was Viktor Medvedchuk. And like I said, a lot of things just in the most crazy way in Ukrainian history, they interconnect. And this very lawyer who betrayed him, who essentially collaborated with authorities to send him to prison, ended up being one of the Ukraine's top oligarchs and the top collaborators on the Russian side and closest people to Vladimir Putin in terms of subjugating Ukraine.

So that's how simply Ukraine works. It interconnects in the most symbolic way possible. And this is one of those things that really astonished me when I was writing this book myself. So we're moving to independence. And the face of this wind of change time was Viacheslav Chornovil. I guess the third person that illustrates the Ukrainian destiny in this period of time. Also a man who spent a lot of time, a lot of years in Soviet prisons, but at the same time, the one who essentially was the mastermind,

one of the key masterminds behind the proclamation of Ukrainian independence, of taking this very sudden chance in the August of 1991 of catch the moment, gathering at the Verkhovna Rada building here in Kyiv, and when the Moscow's grip was weakened to proclaim it, to do it. So if Korolov was the dreamer, Vasyl Stus was, as the poet, was the martyr, and the politician, Viacheslav Chornovil, was the herald, was the one who proclaimed. He was the mastermind, one of the masterminds for this.

And here we are in the days of August 1991 with independent Ukraine. A time of great hopes, great expectations. Even I remember a TV ad, like a social TV ad, saying that, have fun, we are 52 million, 52 million of us here in Ukraine. We are a separate nation of 52 million people. It's a time of hope. And then we go to the next chapter.

And the last chapter?

Yeah. And the last chapter is called No Room for Slaves in Heaven. It was a super popular slogan during the Maidan Revolution, saying that people who do not fight for their own freedom, who give up on today's enslavers, they do not deserve anything better in their life if you do not fight for freedom. And again, since in Ukrainian history things interconnect, it's something that is characteristic of Ivan Sirko, the Cossack leader. This is what he, according to legends,

this is what he used to say: no room for slaves in heaven. And people were having their slogan on their lips in the Maidan revolution. And this time, it was about a lot of lost opportunities, ditched opportunities in terms of the military just being in shambles. And all that military equipment that was sold off or given back to Russia. Nuclear weapons, munitions, many things. A time when a very promising country got bogged in corruption, in political strife, in looking up to Moscow, in staying, in preserving

this friendship with Russia just for the sake of it. And not really noticing that this friendship with Russia, so-called friendship with Russia, just turned them back into the colony. So it was about a lot of time wasted, terribly a lot of time wasted, a lot of opportunities also wasted but at the same time with Ukraine still having this inside its soul like the loyalty to language like this loyalty to traditions of freedom, of self- determination. I give this example of the Ukrainian affection to political

TV shows, talk shows on TV. Like 20 years ago, they were super, super popular. It was almost characteristic for Ukrainians to watch this endless talk shows of politicians just thrashing each other live on TV about many other issues. And with different TV channels owned by different oligarchs and different political groups competing with each other in terms of this idea. And it created something that is very weirdly creating the atmosphere of

openness, the atmosphere of competition, the atmosphere of political struggle, political life, something that is deeply opposed to Russia, at least since the beginning of Putin era. So in many ways, the state of Ukraine being a country where you can mock politicians, where you are allowed to compete with their ideas, with everything, when you are allowed to vocally hate them. So it's...

You talked about the rise of President Zelensky's career.

It's just another good example of him making a career of mocking politicians, and now he's in the same seat, now everybody else is mocking him as a politician. It's just like I said, we said a lot about the Ukrainian being very distinctive from Russians in their mindset and their political traditions, and this is one of them. In Ukraine, you cannot have those things that Russians have. You cannot silence things, because people got used to very

different things here in this country. And with these funny examples of Zelensky mocking people, these TV talk shows that are totally shitty, but still they got us our political life and most importantly the understanding of people that they are entitled to go up in the streets and say their words if they are not happy about those things. And here we are in the Euromaidan. And here we are now in this war.

And even though you talk about this, the right to take to the streets and make your voice heard, even in war when it's technically not allowed, President Zelensky has had to allow at certain moments...

No one's asking him, actually. A lot of people think about Ukraine as a country in the martial law that you are absolutely not allowed to take to the streets and rallies are not allowed, which is technically maybe correct, which is technically maybe in the textbook. But in Ukraine it's not. It's simply barely possible, especially in our time with social media. Try to silence everyone on social media, and especially with Ukraine, with our ingrained

antagonism towards anything that is authority. By definition, an average Ukrainian is very opposed to those in power. So it's not... There are lots of things that Zelensky cannot do despite us having martial law, and one of those things is barring Ukrainians from protesting in the streets. That's not going to happen.

Well, and that's provided a serious check last summer, the protests against the NABU situation, and then this summer the protests about the commander-in-chief.

Commander-in-chief, defense minister, again producing a lot of anger, a lot of hate, and people simply losing their patience and going to the streets. Because of the wartime, there are things that people are ready to forgive to Zelensky because he's a wartime leader. That's why he still has like 60% of support rate in this country. People are forgiving a lot of things that he does and a lot of ugly things that happens to his entourage. But still, there are things that people are not ready to forgive him.

They took to the street because it's more than about his political life and his political career or the money of his buddies. It's about the country, and one of those things was the independence of anti-corruption agencies and the question of military command, even though from probably the same point of view, you know, it's probably not these crowds in the street who need to decide on who commands the army. But in Ukraine the situation came to be that...

That was a very Cossack kind of tradition.

Again, we're getting back to the tradition of Veche that gets back to tribal times in which ancient Slavs were coming out in the open and voting on things and yelling and deciding on things. It's simply... Ukraine as a nation has a very healthy and very useful traits of knowing when it's better to stay home and knowing when it's better to press on the authorities and say no, up to the fighting in the barricades. Yeah.

Well, Illia, that's a very good summary of the book. I hope to get back into it in detail. I think as soon as people hear this podcast, hopefully it will be released on the 10 November release date. And I really appreciate having a conversation with the storyteller, Ukrainian. I strongly believe that this young generation of Ukrainians, which you represent, is going to write the history that defines this country and make sure that this time the history

sticks, that the history is a better outcome than we've seen in the past attempts for independence.

Yeah, we certainly hope so, because one of those things that brought us in this war is the appreciation of this country. You stand at the brink of losing this, and you start to really appreciate what you have. Of course, I'm not talking about absolutely everyone, but I'm talking about the broader things. That's why people fight against one of the most terrible and largest war machines in human history in far worse position and still having it and still holding the ground.

That's happening when people really believe in this country.

Well, you're playing your part, telling the stories that I think will inspire your generation and future generations to appreciate the history, the rich history of this country. And it's a pleasure having you on the podcast to hear about it.

Always glad. Always glad to be talking about Ukrainian history and Ukraine in general because Ukraine is seriously worth it. It's a cool country. It's a really cool country. And we discovered this sudden fact ourselves in many ways because of this war, amid this war, and that's why I'm talking about this. Ukraine is worth it. It's absolutely worth it.

It certainly is. Thank you so much, Illia. Thank you. That was Illia Ponomarenko, war correspondent, co-founder of the Kyiv Independent, and the author of Land of Tears and Hope. Two and a half hours on a thousand years of Ukrainian history. Ukraine is not Russia's backyard. It is a country that has been trapped in a circle for a thousand years. Invaded, ruined, reborn, and every time it has to, the Zaporozhian host comes back. This generation is fighting to break the circle for good.

Illia, thank you for reporting that gave so many of us hope in the winter before the invasion, and for writing the book, your country was missing. Land of Tears and Hope is out now. The link to buy this book is in the description. I encourage all of you to get it. Before the ads, one ask. Help people find us. If this episode taught you something, share it. Send it to an officer, a founder, an investor who needs to hear it. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and on Apple.

If you love it, leave us a five-star review. The honest reason, we don't have a marketing budget for this podcast, and reviews is the only way people hear about us. And a share is how the next reader of Illia's book will find this show. Now, our sponsors. Starting with the one thing I want you to act on. March 15th to 18th, 2027 in Dallas, the Ukraine Freedom Summit. In cooperation with the George W. Bush Institute at SMU's Cox School of Business. Four days.

A defense technology exhibit of real Ukrainian battlefield systems. Open for defense companies to sponsor. With the U.S. premiere of Drone War One and a charity dinner. The Ukraine Freedom Golf Tournament. The Defense Innovation Forum. Government, military, and policy, and defense tech founders and investors all in one room, hearing directly from Ukrainian soldiers, officials, and industry leaders. And the future of Ukraine Day. The full schedule is on the site.

This is where we let you meet the people writing history now. Attend, sponsor, or both. The link is in the description. And the team on that golf course is the point. The Ukraine Center for Traumatic Stress is the foundation's second center. Led by Major General Retired Vladyslav Klochkov. The man who stood up and ran the moral and psychological support forces for the armed forces of Ukraine. Under General Zaluzhnyi. His vision is to turn the trauma of this war into strength.

With world-class care built by Ukrainians for Ukrainians. The first program is rehabilitation through golf. A team of wounded combat veterans training for our tournament in Dallas. $5,000 will put one of them on the first tee, including their flights, their training, their place in the tournament. Donate to the center to back General Klochkov's team. The link is in the description. That is a tangible thing you can do to support us today. The Ukraine Military History Institute makes this podcast.

Free with full transcripts published at ukrainemilitaryhistory.org. If you're serving military or a veteran, register on the site. Everything we publish is free to you. The university course, the journal, and the officer workshops are coming soon. The Borderlands Group. The defense consultancy I run that funds the entire foundation. We work with Western defense and technology companies here in Ukraine. And the history Illia tells is the context most of them arrive without.

If that is your world too, watch my free talk from AUSA in Washington and the panel that followed. It was made for defense tech executives, investors, and governments. And it shows you how we work and how to work with us. The link is below. And StoryFunnels. A thousand years of Ukrainian history told in two and a half hours. Should not vanish from the feed in a week. That is a problem we built StoryFunnels to solve for podcast hosts. And it is how this episode reaches you for a month after it airs.

We publish articles, clips, posts in your own voice. Put where search engines and AI systems actually find them. One month episode in, a month of content out. It is live now at storyfunnels.ai. My name is Sam Cook. Thanks for listening to the Ukraine Military History Podcast. Where we make sure that Ukraine's heroes are never forgotten.