Transcript: Ukraine weathers new geopolitical climate
This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Ukraine weathers new geopolitical climate’
Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast comes from Kyiv in Ukraine. My guests are a wife-and-husband team — Lesia Vasylenko is a member of the Ukrainian parliament and Oleksandr Khomiak is director of Drone Space Labs.
Drone warfare has been crucial to Ukraine’s ability to resist Russia. But if America cuts off military aid, can Ukraine still fight on?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Ursula von der Leyen voice clip
A free and sovereign Ukraine is not only in the European interest, but it is in the interest of the whole world, because the autocrats around the world are watching very carefully whether there’s any impunity, if you violate international borders or invade your neighbour or if there is true deterrence. This is not only paramount for Europe. It is also important for Asia, for Africa and for both sides of the Atlantic. An investment in Ukraine’s sovereignty is an investment in the prevention of future wars.
Gideon Rachman
That was Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, speaking in Kyiv this week at a meeting with President Zelenskyy and a host of other world leaders who were in town to show solidarity with Ukraine. I was in the room watching that meeting unfold. One of the things that struck me, though, was who wasn’t there. There was not a single representative of the United States government. Later that day came a much bigger shock at the United Nations as the US voted on the same side as Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution on Ukraine.
The following day, I met Lesia Vasylenko and Oleksandr Khomiak for breakfast in a Kyiv café. Please forgive the occasional sound of coffee machines in the background. The interview is in two parts. In the first half, I talked to Lesia about the political, diplomatic and military challenges facing Ukraine. And then I turned to Oleksandr to talk about how the war’s evolved and why Ukraine’s mastery of drone warfare gives him hope. But I began with Lesia Vasylenko and asked her about the mood in Ukraine as the war enters its fourth year.
Lesia Vasylenko
We are living in war, and as far as the mood goes, we have gotten used to living in the war, which is very sad because I think if you ask any average Ukrainian outside in the street, they’ll tell you that we don’t know any more what it’s like to live in a peacetime condition where you can have a bland life, and where you can even plan as far as the next week or the next month.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And we’re very preoccupied in the UK by the change in American attitudes. How concerning is that for you guys?
Lesia Vasylenko
It’s concerning and frustrating, but it’s also something that we cannot do much about. There is President Trump, who has been elected as the US president, and he has his mind set on bringing peace to Ukraine through negotiations with Putin. To be fair, every single world leader had a go at talking to Putin, even President Zelenskyy when he was elected in 2019. He tried to reason with Putin, believing that he would deliver the peace to Ukraine. Those talks failed. So did talks that President Macron, the French president, was trying to have with Putin. That also failed. And basically that goes for every single leader.
Now we can be hopeful about President Trump having a different attitude and using all his rhetoric, which is sometimes, well, let’s put it mildly, very much impolite towards the Ukrainians, that maybe this is just the method he uses to get in the door and to sit down with Putin, to have a direct conversation. But where is that conversation going to lead if one party — that is Russia — is completely unwilling to settle and to let Ukraine go as an independent country and accept Ukraine as a sovereign, independent state?
Gideon Rachman
So do you think even if there’s a ceasefire agreed, that Putin is likely to violate it and go back to war at some point? Or do you think there’s a possibility you would get a lasting ceasefire?
Lesia Vasylenko
It would be great to get a lasting ceasefire, but unfortunately, through practice, we have zero reason to believe that a ceasefire would last. In 2014 and then in February 2015, we signed the so-called Minsk agreements. Those so-called documents was about the ceasefire. Russia hasn’t respected a single day of the ceasefire. So imagine we have had no 24-hour window of no shooting on the frontline. Russians would always break that ceasefire or would create provocations and say that the Ukrainians were breaking the ceasefire. So, you know, why would things change now, 2025, why would Russia be suddenly respecting any ceasefire?
Gideon Rachman
So I guess the danger for Ukraine is that Putin nominally agrees to a ceasefire, Trump says war is over, keeps and then breaks the ceasefire, and Trump in his way, blames the Ukrainians and says, well, I’m not going to come in anyway, you know.
Lesia Vasylenko
That is one scenario. Another scenario, which is also . . . applies to Russia and their vision of the resolution of the situation, is that there’s a ceasefire called. Fair enough. They respect it for as long as is needed for Ukraine to lift the martial law, to call on elections into which Russia would, of course, meddle in to positioning their technical candidates, placing political parties that would be backed by Russia and run in Ukraine. And essentially the result of the elections will either be a Russian candidate winning. This is the best-case scenario for Russia. That would lead us to the signing of a peace agreement with Russia, which would essentially hand over all of Ukraine to Russia.
Or second scenario, the Russian candidate doesn’t win. Ukrainian candidate wins, which means that Russia will not sign a peace agreement and will simply restart the war, but restart the war in much, much stronger positions because they would have had the time to regroup, to rearm, possibly in that period, since martial law would be lifted. And there’s a good progression towards peace, sanctions would start to be lifted as well, so Russia would be in a much stronger position to attack and a much fiercer and stronger way and possibly attack not just Ukraine, but other countries as well.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And you mentioned this whole question of lifting of martial law and elections and obviously Trump, his infamous remark that Zelenskyy is a dictator was based around the idea that he wasn’t having elections. As I understand it, you’re not in Zelenskyy’s party.
Lesia Vasylenko
No, I’m not. I’m an opposition MP. I’m from the Holos party.
Gideon Rachman
But what do you think of the demand for elections now then?
Lesia Vasylenko
We are in martial law and every single Ukrainian understands that holding elections now would be insane. It’s prohibited by our constitution, the same as it’s prohibited by constitutions of most countries in the world. When it’s martial law, you cannot hold elections. Why not? Because the soldiers who are defending you in the trenches, they will not be able to come out of the trenches and vote. Because when you have territories of Ukraine that are under Russian occupation, you cannot organise elections there. There’s 7mn Ukrainians abroad. How do you get them to vote? Do you organise voting stations in their respective countries? But who is going to pay for that? Who is going to guarantee their security? Who is going to guarantee that the elections there are held according to Ukrainian laws? Those questions have no answers. And this is exactly why Ukraine, just like many countries across the globe, have a prohibition to holding elections during martial law. We have an understanding of that.
But when President Trump calls President Zelenskyy a dictator because he doesn’t want to hold elections at wartime, there’s another question to ask President Trump. How many elections did Ukraine have in the last 20 years as opposed to Russia? The answer is simple. Ukraine had five cycles of elections in the last 20 years. We have re-elected our parliament five times. We have elected our president five times. And we have had many more elections at local government level. In Russia, who is the one guy who runs the country for 20 years? I think the answer is Vladimir Putin. So who is the dictator?
Gideon Rachman
Indeed. I’ll come to you, Oleksandr, in a second, because I’d be very interested in the situation in the war. But Lesia, before I let you off, I think you might have to go back to Parliament. If, worst case, American military aid stops, do you think Ukraine can fight on?
Lesia Vasylenko
Yes. We are in a much better position now than we were in February 2022, three years ago. Three years ago, our international partners were placing bets as to how many days or hours Ukraine can hold against Russia. And we held. We held because of our willingness to live and to exist as an independent country. Ukraine hasn’t been fighting a war against Russia for three years, 11 years. Ukraine has been fighting for hundreds of years against Russia and its imperialistic goals. So we have it in our DNA. We know how to you fight those guys. We know how to make sure that we exist as an independent country next to a very aggressive and expansionist neighbour.
Gideon Rachman
Oleksandr, you were saying to me that the nature of the war has changed very fundamentally because of the kinds of things you’re doing in drone technology and that Ukraine is getting towards self-sufficiency in drones. Can you talk me through that?
Oleksandr Khomiak
You remember the famous phrase of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the very evening when the war started saying that I don’t need a taxi, I need ammo. And now we produce that ammo and the drones. We need some financial support to continue fighting. But most of the weapons which are the most effective at present at the frontline are made in Ukraine.
Gideon Rachman
Explain why they’re effective and what the nature of the war is now.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, the nature of the war is basically changed a lot. And if you see again that the Russian assault on the first day, they were moving in large columns and amassing a large amount of troops. Now they are not doing that, and they are only moving in one to five soldiers, trying to penetrate the front line slowly and then amass some number of soldiers in one place, and then maybe use one or two tanks. Why is that? Because presently, if you see a large number of troops moving, they become easy targets for short-range drones, for longer-range drones. And also we have very advanced technology for the reconnaissance now. And we see all those movements. So we can easily predict when Russians try to amass troops in one place that there would be assault and we get prepared for that again with our drones, which stop those tanks and then artillery with support with some other drones which destroy the enemy on march.
Gideon Rachman
And does that account for the incredible rate of losses of the Russians? I mean, a British army person was telling me that the Russians lost 400,000 people killed or wounded last year and, you know, took 0.5 per cent of the Ukrainian territory for that.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, that’s a big part of it and a big part of it that the killzone now on the frontline is very wide because it’s not that the fighting is now around the trench. Basically, the grey zone now is around 20 to 30km. And if you are on your own in that grey zone, you are likely to be killed or wounded if you are spotted. And you’re very likely to be spotted if it’s day or even night and good weather when drones can operate.
Gideon Rachman
And how many drones a year is the Ukraine now producing? And give me a sense of how easy it is to produce because you said a lot of these things are 3D printed.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, I think Ukraine now produces more than a million drones a year. And in terms of FPV drones, first-person view drones, that number is even higher. And basically, they are very easy to produce because a person who is trained for maybe three to four weeks can already assemble FPV drones. And we have a lot of civic initiatives to teach people to produce drones. And we have some even fantastic initiatives when ordinary people can look at the YouTube videos or have special courses designed by our army and volunteers, assemble the FPV drone and send it to the army to be checked, and then to the frontline.
Gideon Rachman
And the drones. What are they made of? They are made of cardboard or . . . ?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Some of them are made of literally of cardboard, especially some drones which are reconnaissance drones or even some long-range drones. Deep strikes are made of the cardboard because it’s harder to spot them if they are made of cardboard, first of all, and then they’re way cheaper than if you use some materials that you would think would be most useful in making drones. So it’s cost efficiency first, but also it is harder to track them if they are made from wood or cardboard.
Gideon Rachman
And did they change the economics of warfare then? Because these things are comparatively very cheap to produce and yet they can take out a tank.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, absolutely. This is the reality of the modern war that you can destroy a tank with a drone worth $500 only.
Gideon Rachman
And are you confident that you can keep producing those? I mean, from Ukrainian resources? Aren’t you reliant on foreign components?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, we are reliant on Chinese components for now, but at this point, we already can produce a 100 per cent Ukrainian drone. That is already a reality. Of course, it would be more difficult to produce that on scale, but again, that is changing. Two years ago we wouldn’t be able to do that and now we already can produce a 100 per cent Ukrainian drone. So now with European efforts also to help us, we can do maybe 100 per cent drone made in Europe. And there are great initiatives which are led, for example, by the UK government, Drone Capability Coalition, which helps Ukraine to build capacity in terms of drones, but which also helps the western governments to produce the drones which are effective in Ukraine.
Gideon Rachman
And how fascinating, you said Chinese components. Do the Chinese sell you the components? I thought they were on the Russian side?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, we hope that they adjust on the business side and they like money more than politics. On paper, they do not sell components directly to Ukraine, and it is impossible to ship components directly from China to Ukraine. But, well, there are still ways and . . .
Gideon Rachman
They sell to a third country and then it comes to Ukraine. And explain to people. So these drones are made, but are they operated very near the front line, or could you be sitting hundreds of miles away?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, you can literally be sitting in London and operate a drone, which flies on the front line. The technology has developed so quickly and so greatly that an operator can sit in a protected bunker in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, in London and operate the drones, which is prepared on the front line and you just put on your goggles, you take your joystick and you fly it and hit the target.
Gideon Rachman
So it’s like a computer game, but deadly.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Absolutely deadly computer game. Yeah.
Gideon Rachman
But presumably, the Russians can do this as well. Are they good at it as well?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, this is a cat-and-mouse game. We advance in some technologies. Russians are advancing in counter technologies. We do better, they try to counter us. And this is actually a part of the process which made us so good in this military technology. But we have to acknowledge that Russians are also developing that, and they are also good at that.
Gideon Rachman
And the other concern is that people have said, well, Elon Musk provides Starlink, which provides the internet, which allows you to operate these drones. If Starlink goes, are you still able to fight in this way?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Well, if Starlink goes, that would be very unfortunate. And it will require some resources to be reallocated and some technologies to be replaced. But at this point, again, our technology is quite advanced to have the alternatives for Starlink. And we can find these alternatives with help of our European partners and also in developing our own technologies to replace Starlink. So of course, we really much like Starlink, and we are thankful for the US government and Elon Musk for providing that. We hope he doesn’t switch off Starlink for us, but yes, we will be capable of fighting the war without Starlink as effectively as we do with Starlink. It will just take some time to readjust.
Gideon Rachman
And your worst-case scenario, at least in my head, is that OK, America cuts off the military and Russia does keep fighting, and eventually Russia achieves its aim than it had at the beginning of the war three years ago and you do have Russian tanks in Kyiv. But you don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?
Oleksandr Khomiak
I think realistically now, the worst-case scenario for the next five years is Russia is close to Kharkiv, Russia is very close to the region, Russia is close to Dnipro.
Gideon Rachman
And these are hundreds and hundreds of miles from Kyiv.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, this is hundreds of miles from Kyiv. And for Russia to have the assault, same as they had in February 2022, it will inflict very high casualties on the Russian army.
Gideon Rachman
Because of this drone war?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Because of the drone warfare, because how the technology has progressed on the battlefield. So we will see them trying to amass large amounts of troops, you know, in Belorussia, in Russia, close to the border. And we will strike them with our deep strike drones, with our mid-range drones, drones which are Ukrainian-designed drones and which are mostly produced with Ukrainian-made components. So trying to repeat that assault will result in very high casualties for the Russian army. And I think at this point, they are not capable of sustaining that level of casualties once more.
Gideon Rachman
You are a lawyer, yeah? And you’ve had to learn all this stuff through the course of the war.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, I’m a lawyer, but I had to learn an engineering profession — how to become engineer, how to do drones — because of the war. I never thought this will be my reality. But at this time, engineering profession can help the war effort way more than the legal one. We see the international law doesn’t really work, but international engineering is really effective.
Gideon Rachman
OK. Do you think we’re seeing the future of warfare here in Ukraine? And are you finding interest from all over the world as military is trying to figure out if they have to fight, maybe (inaudible) technologies, the things we thought about, you know, tanks, aircraft carriers are no longer so relevant?
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, absolutely. I really hope that our partners in Europe and then in the west are really learning their lesson here and see how vulnerable any big thing on the front line can be or in sea. Those big tanks, big planes, large carriers, large ships, they’re all very big targets. There was a very big Russian Black Sea Fleet. There is no more Black Sea Fleet. And I hope that the western governments see that and learn how to adapt. And we are very happy to share the knowledge.
But I also hope that it’s not just the government but also the societies see that and people understand that it’s not some politicians which have to learn the lesson, but the ordinary people and businesses. And, you know, the tech industry is also looking at this and having their lessons, seeing that technology can help. And we are basically living at the beginning of the new age where all the world that we used to know for the last 30 years is slowly falling apart.
Gideon Rachman
Yeah. So one of the debates we’re having in the UK and right across Europe is can we afford to spend all this extra money on defence? But the defence world that you’re describing doesn’t really require as much money as some of the old technologies. The drone thing is not that expensive.
Oleksandr Khomiak
Yeah, it has to be smart money and money well and wisely spent to learn the lessons and to adapt. And I think Ukrainians can help a big deal in that, because we have the experience and we can bring that experience to the UK, to our partners in Europe and even to the US, and to show how the economy of war has changed and how with the very wise investment into technology you can advance your army to a whole new level.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Gideon Rachman
That was Oleksandr Khomiak of Drone Space Labs ending this edition of the Rachman Review. You also heard from Lesia Vasylenko. Thanks for listening. And please join me again next week.