Juno News - August 26, 2024


What is the West's role in Ukraine？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

155.53949

Word Count

789

Sentence Count

42

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I want to ask you, because right now, the decision as to what the West should be doing
00:00:05.340 in order to help Ukraine is of major debate in the U.S. presidential election.
00:00:09.900 It's increasingly becoming more of a debate in Canada as well.
00:00:13.280 What do you believe the West's role should be in Ukraine?
00:00:16.460 Is it to continue what they're doing?
00:00:18.940 Is it to move towards boots on the ground?
00:00:20.620 Or is it to push for a diplomatic end to this war?
00:00:24.160 What do you think the West's role should be?
00:00:25.600 It's a very good question and an incredibly difficult one,
00:00:31.020 and one that I have on a personal level very, very mixed emotions about.
00:00:37.180 I've been to Ukraine recently.
00:00:39.740 I traveled through the country.
00:00:43.160 I met with many people in the military, met with many people in Kiev,
00:00:46.720 Harakiv, and Line Zero.
00:00:48.980 And it's an incredibly difficult, look, it's a horrible war
00:00:57.600 that is costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
00:01:02.000 I think that the decision at the end of the day lies in the hands of the Ukrainian people
00:01:07.420 and the Ukrainian leadership.
00:01:08.860 If the Ukrainians have the will to keep fighting and the desire to keep fighting,
00:01:14.200 and if they believe that they can defeat the Russians,
00:01:19.240 and I don't think it's an implausible proposition,
00:01:22.560 then I think we can only respect their wishes.
00:01:27.240 I don't think we can force and decide for the Ukrainians.
00:01:30.820 I wouldn't really want to speak for them,
00:01:33.460 especially because I'm not Ukrainian.
00:01:36.320 I've spent a lot of time in Ukraine.
00:01:38.120 I lived there briefly in 2018 and 2019.
00:01:40.600 And it's a country I have a great fondness for and a great affinity for.
00:01:46.180 But I think they have proven on a military level
00:01:52.020 that they are capable of at least holding the Russian bear back.
00:01:58.760 And they've done it with impressive success.
00:02:01.340 You know, the three days theory of Kiev will be taken
00:02:04.340 and the Russian propagandists who are sort of prophetizing the demise of Zelensky
00:02:11.440 and his administration within days couldn't have been more wrong.
00:02:15.620 So credit where credit is due.
00:02:17.560 I think that obviously there are some concerns to be had,
00:02:22.840 especially about corruption.
00:02:23.900 Obviously, it's far worse on the Russian side,
00:02:26.640 but I do think that unfortunately there are some issues with corruption in Ukraine.
00:02:30.360 But yeah, if Kiev believes it can keep the fight going,
00:02:34.760 and if Ukrainians want to keep fighting,
00:02:37.420 then I think we should leave that decision to them.
00:02:40.120 Right. And what do you think victory looks like?
00:02:42.540 It's not something that we often get an insight into from the Canadian side
00:02:47.240 when we fund the effort.
00:02:49.280 We don't know what that victory looks like.
00:02:51.400 So in your opinion, what would that be?
00:02:52.920 Would that be taking back the occupied territory?
00:02:56.020 Would that be solidifying lines and just downing tools?
00:03:00.220 What do you think that looks like?
00:03:02.520 From a Ukrainian perspective, victory is very obvious.
00:03:05.580 Victory is a return to the internationally recognized borders
00:03:10.060 before the Russian aggression.
00:03:12.140 And I'm not talking about the aggression of 2022, but of 2014.
00:03:15.680 Right. So that's from me as well.
00:03:17.460 From a Western point of view, correct.
00:03:19.140 From a Western point of view, for me speaking as a Polish citizen,
00:03:27.140 to me, victory would most certainly be an end of the Putin administration in Russia
00:03:34.360 and a disintegration of the Russian Federation into multiple states.
00:03:40.400 This isn't, I don't believe this is a stated goal of the Ukrainian administration.
00:03:43.800 But that from a Western perspective, I mean, I think that obviously this is a complicated matter
00:03:51.240 for Americans to understand and for Canadians to understand.
00:03:54.560 Even though I know you have a physical proximity to Russia that we forget about
00:03:59.260 because the world is a globe.
00:04:01.120 But being Polish and having a very difficult history with our Russian neighbors,
00:04:08.900 two of my grandfather's brothers were massacred in the mass graves of Katyn and Starobjelsk in 1940,
00:04:14.500 part of the purchase of the Polish intelligentsia.
00:04:16.860 It is a very personal animosity to me.
00:04:20.820 We really believe that, you know, Russia is an existential threat
00:04:26.280 and it is an imperialist power that has not given up on any of its imperialist beliefs.
00:04:32.160 Just as the West exactly has given up these ideas of imperialism
00:04:36.840 and retreated very much from large parts of the world,
00:04:39.840 that the Russians have and the Russians see certainly my country, Poland,
00:04:44.380 as their rightful sphere of influence.
00:04:47.040 So to me, Russia is still, is a terrifying neighbor
00:04:51.600 and it's a terrifying power even in its current sort of weakened form.
00:04:58.740 So a disintegration of Russia into multiple states would be kind of,
00:05:02.300 I think that would be victory to me.