Paul Massaro: If that's Russophobia, fine. But I want to advocate realism toward Russia

Paul Massaro, a senior policy advisor for the U.S. Helsinki Commission, has become known in Ukraine for his unwavering support for Ukraine, particularly on Twitter.

Almost every day he reminds his followers that "Russia is a terrorist state" and "The best way to stop Russian terrorist attacks on Ukraine is to give Ukrainians what they need to win. ATACMS & F-16s."

He advocates for maximum military support for Ukraine and the imposition of the harshest sanctions against Russia.

It was Massaro's third visit to Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, and this time he visited the south – Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kherson.

We talked to Paul about what impressed him in Ukraine, the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, the fight against corruption in Ukraine, participation in the information war, and his plans for "after victory".

So today in our studio, we have Paul Massaro. Paul, you are well known as an ambassador for Ukraine, especially in the Twitter community. Can you explain how that happened?

Oh my God, I don't know how it happened. It's as much a mystery to me as I think it is to anyone else.

You know, when this awful, full-scale invasion started, I was at my place and watching Putin's Hitlerian speech – I'm sure everybody here remembers it – as he declared his intention to wipe Ukraine off the map and wipe Ukrainians off the map and declared war on, in my opinion, really, all of us, declared war on democracies, declared war on freedom. I just started tweeting like crazy. And I've been tweeting before that. I mean, I've been tweeting like a D.C. expert at tweets with sort of threads of 20-tweet threads, on "Here's how sanctions work, and here's what's going on."

And after that happened, it was kind of rapid fire, just kind of very raw, I think. And that's really maybe what resonated with people, I feel – maybe a desire to hear what was going on at the time, this time of extreme confusion. And over those first few days we stayed up every night seeing if Kyiv would be free in the morning, and it was, every single time. I remember that so vividly.

But it was around that time that, you know, I was getting like 10,000 followers every few hours. And it was like, what's going on? Where’s all this interest coming from? And at that time, you don't really think about that. You're just thinking, oh my God – and this really is how I've seen it since it's happened – this is the end of what we would term, I think, the post-Cold War. This is the birth of a new paradigm. February 24th changed everything. And I think really, we're still recognizing that. But we all need to get there, that we are in a completely new paradigm now.

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But there were not very good predictions for Kyiv and for Ukraine, especially in the U.S. So you said that you were waiting to see if Kyiv was free or if it was captured. When did these things change?

Yeah, of course, we had General Milley coming to Congress and everything else you saw in the press, briefing on: "Kyiv is going to fall in three days. It's got three days." I think in one sense, we allowed Russia to infiltrate our narratives.

We didn't understand Russia, we didn't understand Ukraine. We overestimated Russia. We wildly underestimated Ukrainian potential. And I think that after the three-day mark, it started getting kind of like, "Oh, my God, are they going to win this?" And then as time went on, it got to a week, I was like, "Oh my God, Ukraine is going to defend itself."

I mean, the minute you knew things really had changed was when Zelenskyy and his advisors came out. That now-legendary video: "President tut" [the president is here - ed.], it was unbelievable when you saw that. That was a moment that for me, I think for a lot of people, but for me in particular, it was kind of like, oh my God, these people, this guy [Zelenskyy - ed.], this is out of a history book. I've never seen this kind of political leadership. I've never seen such a heroic people in my life.

I mean, I'm a kid of the postmodern post-Cold War. Every act of heroism, every act of bravery or courage or leadership, is in the history books. You know, we've never seen it, really. I was born after the fall of the Soviet Union. It's been this kind of weird malaise. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, you all come. And it's just like, oh my God, this is what courage is.

And at that point, for me, it was clear that Ukraine wasn't about to get conquered. In fact, Ukraine was going to win.

You are one of the people who spread Ukrainian narratives, especially on your Twitter. And as I saw, for example, you have tweets in the Ukrainian language. Do you know it or do you use a translator?

I don't speak Ukrainian. Well, not yet.  It's not a translator, though. So let's keep some mystery about it there. But yes, I do periodically, infrequently, throw out a Ukrainian tweet. And I have been voraciously devouring all I can learn about Ukraine, culturally, historically. Everybody here probably knows Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe – highly recommended. Anything one can learn about this country, because oh my God, this is the place. This is the place where I think the next paradigm is going to be, is already being born. One that prizes values that for me are really central: freedom, bravery, heroism, independence.

We can see it, for example, you have several vyshsyvankas [embroidered shirts], you posted photos on your Instagram. So everyone can see that you stand with Ukraine. So maybe you have some advisor or some person who is deep in Ukrainian context and can advise you? 

You know, I have Ukrainian friends. What attracts me to Ukraine and what has made me, I think, so committed to the Ukrainian cause here is, it's my cause. I'm an American patriot. I mean, you don't just miraculously end up working for the American government. You seek that out. I believe in what I see is really deep, consistent American values (since 1776 – that's sort of our revolution and the founding of our country) of freedom, of self-determination, of courage in the face of tyranny.

And I've always been looking for these in America. It's like, where are these things? Obviously we have our myths, particularly World War II or our fight against the Brits, or even the abolition of slavery and the Civil War and all this kind of stuff. But there's nothing modern there. It's no secret we're in a strange malaise right now in the United States. Deep polarization. A lot of anger.

But I see these values in Ukrainians. And when I'm in Ukraine, I feel more American than anywhere in the world. It's really amazing. I feel like I want to distill some of this spirit and bring it back to America.

So I think my support for Ukraine is really an extension of my American patriotism, my belief in American values, which are, to me, really universal values and which I see displayed all over Ukraine and by every Ukrainian in a way that I only wish sometimes they were displayed in the United States.

Have you seen similarities between Americans and Ukrainians?

Oh, so many. I mean, to me, there's no country in the world more similar. It's amazing, right? Because you wouldn't think so. Most Americans, until the full-scale invasion, didn’t even know where Ukraine was. But I think there are reasons for that.

I think we were both products of independence wars against, and independence movements against, larger empires – in our case, the British Empire, in your case, the Russian Empire.

And we're also kind of frontiersmen, you know – "cowboys and Cossacks" – there's kind of a culture of freedom that's deeply instilled in each one of us.

Whereas if you look at the normal European state model, which is kind of "ethnicity – religion – language", Ukraine has a much more American style of identity, which is a values-based identity. There's a diversity, we were between empires, there's different languages and different ethnicities and different religions, and a high level of tolerance, but we're all united around a common set of values, of freedom, of independence. So in that sense, I actually think there's no two countries in the world more similar than the United States and Ukraine.

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You have mentioned that before the full-scale invasion, people in America didn't even know where Ukraine is situated. And what about now? What do people in America know about Ukraine? 

Well, I think we're learning a lot. There are still those that have no clue. And I think most of those that have no clue are actually those who have been most vehemently opposed to supporting Ukraine. It's people that are maybe more anti-establishment in their views and [think] "If the establishment wants it, then I don't," and it doesn't really matter what it is.

But I think those that have learned maybe the first thing about Ukraine are absolutely taken with Ukraine. They're like, "Oh, my God, this place exists." I don't need to tell you (because I know every Ukrainian understands this) that Russia has made it a major foreign policy goal to define Ukrainian identity, what it means abroad, and to push narratives of Ukraine as this kind of corrupt backwater: "Oh, you don't really need to know about it, it's kind of our neighborhood, we'll take care of it."

Now that these narratives are breaking apart and the Ukrainian narrative is shining through, I think more and more people in America, but also all over the world, are recognizing, it's just like, "oh my God, these amazing people have been there the whole time. They've just been stuck under this crust of Russian colonization and Russia's centuries-long attempt to eradicate Ukrainian identity. But it's still there, stronger than ever".

And now everybody can see it clearly. And it's just glorious, it's amazing to see.

But if we speak, for example, about you in particular, it seems that you know more about Ukraine than a typical American. You can even post some jokes about Ukraine, some photos with "bavovna", which is not so easy to explain to the foreigner. [Russian propaganda, initially refusing to use the word "vzryv" (explosion), used "khlopok" (a bang) instead. However, "khlopok" also means "cotton", and this has since become a meme – ed.] Where do you know this information from?

Well, I listen to Ukrainians. I've learned it all from Ukrainians, obviously. I encourage everybody to listen to Ukrainians. And in fact, I think one of our big failures has precisely been not listening to Ukrainians.

I think for the longest time, our knowledge of this region, Central and Eastern Europe, has come from experts who listen to Moscow and who have relationships with Russia and who have this kind of "great powers" narrative of "Well, Washington talks to Berlin, talks to Moscow, talks to Beijing, and we’ll organize the world accordingly." And it's ridiculous.

This entire time, if we'd been listening… I've been working on this region for ten years and I think I was more hawkish than others toward Russia, but I still wasn't hawkish enough. Nobody was, because we needed to really be listening to the Ukrainians, to the Poles and the Lithuanians, to the Estonians, to the Latvians, to the Finns, to the Czechs. Because everybody was saying this, everybody was screaming this out. And so many people were dismissed. So many people were told, "Well, you're just traumatized." And it's such a goofy thing in hindsight and it's so victim-blaming. These people know Russia better than anybody. And we should have been listening. If we were listening, we probably could have deterred this war.

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Do you think that these things will change after this war?

They're already changing rapidly. Rapidly. And nothing succeeds like success, right? I mean, seeing Ukraine fight back, seeing Ukraine defeat, decisively defeat Russia in a number of engagements already and well on its way to liberating its entire country and winning this war… Even if you don't want to, even if you're not like me and you don't feel this really deep solidarity with the Ukrainian people, you're just going to be forced to recognize the reality that what Ukraine is doing is working. And what Russia has done is not working. You know that the Russian model is broken, it's failing, it's falling on its face. And the Ukrainian model is succeeding and showing the world what a free people can do.

When I asked my friend about you, "What do you think about this person?", she said "I think that he's more Russophobic than I am." Do you agree with this statement?

Look, I think part of our problem has been not understanding Russia. I think there's this inherent part of the American mentality and our liberal sensibilities and our way of seeing the world. America's the land of second chances. We want to see individuals, and rightfully so. It's part of my culture that I really believe in. My ancestors were poor Italian-Americans who came over and built a wonderful life for themselves. And look, I mean, after 1,500 years of farming in southern Italy, I get to do this job. That's amazing. America's just this land of opportunity.

And we want to believe that we can talk to Russia, and we want to believe that we can change Russia. And we want to believe that the individual Russian… that there's good in the individual Russian, because that's what Americans want to believe. We want to believe, and I think it's a good impulse. But it's one that Russia constantly takes advantage of.

You give an inch to the Russians, they'll take a mile. Every single time you do a good deed toward the Russians, they will abuse you for it. You know, they will take it from you. And they've always done that. They've always done it to us. They've done it to you. They’ve done it to everybody. And we need to stop making the same mistake.

It's a case of "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." We need to stop getting fooled by Russia. Russia has not changed in mentality. It's not changed in identity form since basically the Mongols. It's extremely slight in the way that it's changed. It's still an empire. It has colonies. There's a colonial war.

I mean, this could've been waged 500 years ago and looks familiar. And it had been. The Ukrainians could tell you that – that it had been. So we need to get smart. That's what I advocate. I mean, if that's Russophobia, fine. But I advocate realism toward Russia. I advocate finally seeing Russia for what it is.

And this could change in the future. I think maybe a hundred years from now, you know, it's possible that Russia decolonizes like every other European empire has – every single other one has – and there is some successor state, let's call it, you know, Moscovia or something like this. But in the same form as the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire dissolved, Ataturk had to create a whole new identity called the Turk. Turkiye was founded. And maybe one day there will be a successor state.

There can be some level of reconciliation with Ukraine once Russia recognizes its historic crimes, including the crimes of World War II, including starting World War II – you got to get past the whole great "Great Patriotic War" fantasy and recognize the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and that they were allied with the Nazis and starting World War II.

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But maybe after all of that, there can be reconciliation. But that's a long way in the future. And we got to address Russia as it is today, which is a colonial empire that has over and over and over again thrown the world, thrown its neighborhood, thrown us into instability in order to pursue its colonial aims.

That's true. I agree with you. You're also part of the NAFO Fellas movement. 

Yes.

Can you explain what it is in several words and why you are a part of it? 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. NAFO is sort of an amazing treat – totally unexpected – of this conflict, as a response to it, a groundswell of freedom-loving individuals from across the world who basically just went to kind of call out Russia on its crap.

I don't need to tell you, Russia is a disinformation superpower. I mean, Russia is a big lie. I mean, Russia's amazing advantage… like, look, Russia’s military is a joke. It exists to kill, rape, steal. Russia's whole strategy is that they lie to you. They destabilize your system internally through corruption, through lies, through infiltration. And then once you’re destabilized enough, they send in their horde to destroy you. But their horde can't actually fight, you know – it's very bad at doing actual operations. They need to destabilize you first. So fighting against that infiltration, fighting against the infowar, fighting against corruption, fighting against all kinds of stuff – that's been, in a very real way, where part of the war is.

Of course the war is on the battlefield, too. You win on the battlefield, but Ukraine’s showing they can win on the battlefield. Now we need to win the infowar. We need to win the war against corruption. We need to win all this stuff that Russia [created – ed.].

And NAFO basically is this groundswell against Russian disinformation. That's what it is. It's an operation. I mean, it's decentralized. It's led by nobody. It's just a bunch of people that are sick of it. And to me, it's really exciting because they're taking as their example the Ukrainian people, who are experts at decentralized organizing.

I mean, Ukraine just will pop into action when something is needed. Networks of Ukrainians form to get stuff where it needs to go and get where it is. And that is democracy at its most foundational level. There's a democratic spirit in Ukraine. There's a democratic spirit that we've long since kind of ignored in a sense.

We've come to see institutions as the critical things. Do you have your institutions clean, are you having periodic, regular elections? All this is important. But there is no democracy without democrats. There is no democracy without the individual belief, without the self-organizing potential, without the engagement in the community. And I think Ukrainians have this. And I think NAFO demonstrates for us that it's kind of coming back.

But I've always seen NAFO, and I've seen Ukrainians, as the paragon of this self-organizing, of self-responsibility. What do you do when something bad happens? Do you wait for the government to take care of it, or do you take care of it? Do you get your people together and take care of it? And that – getting your people together to take care of it – that is foundationally democratic.

Okay. NAFO is like a part of the information war who helps Ukraine, as I see it. And there was a point of view at the beginning of the war that Ukraine had won this information war. And it was a point of view inside Ukraine. Can you comment on it from outside Ukraine? 

I think Ukrainians are experts in info warfare. I wish we’d do it more like them. I mean, the infowar, first of all I think the West has a tough time even seeing it as an infowar. We usually address it as "countering disinformation", which is the most high-nosed kind of bureaucratic, technocratic way of addressing it.

It really is an infowar, it's basically a propaganda fight that Russia is very, very good at because Russia sees it as like: We need to get in, we need to destabilize, we need to get our lies into every nook and cranny, everybody's brain. We need to cause questions and skepticism in everything we can.

And I think for a while we had them on the ropes. It's because Russia wildly underestimated Ukraine. They did not expect Ukraine to be as good at counter-disinfo as Ukraine was. They did not expect NAFO to come out of nowhere and start just trolling their ambassadors and hitting them on all these information fronts.

But I'm sad to say, I think our lead has kind of evaporated. For a lot of different reasons. One of them was Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and the way that that's all shaken out - that was maybe one battle that was very decisive in the Russian return. But I also think like usual, we got pretty far ahead, and then Russia figured stuff out and kind of counter-attacked. Russia's major advantage is in info. They're very, very good at it.

They have a lot of money. 

They put a lot of money in it. I mean, they put a lot more money in than us. We have a lot more money than they do. If we’d actually fight back, we would.

Russia puts a lot of money in this, and we should put a lot of money in it, too. We should recognize that really the infowar is a real war. We're at a point right now where if we gave Ukraine everything it's asking for, Ukraine would win the war tomorrow.

There's no doubt about Ukrainians’ willingness to fight. There's no doubt about Ukrainians’ commitment to fight. There's no doubt about Ukraine's war goals, which is a return to 1991 borders, liberation of Ukraine. But the partners are still kind of like, "Well, you know, what about escalation?" Whatever that means.

And that's a huge info op. I mean, a very successful info op. It's a very sophisticated info op. This isn't like, I don't know, the bio labs or something like that. They do both. Russia does "bio labs" to get at the rural whatever. And then they do "escalation" to get at the sophisticated: "Oh, escalation. Oh, but what if we collapse? What if Russia collapses? That's very bad for you – then there's instability." These are all info ops. So it's been very successful and we've got to figure that out.

So there are two ways: some insane ways of disinformation they spread, and some sophisticated ways of disinformation they spread. And from your point of view, how can we protect ourselves from it, how can we fight it?

Well, we have to, first of all, recognize that this is an infowar. We need to do more. I mean, we need to recognize that it's not enough to debunk lies. It's not enough to just tell the truth. We have to tell the truth, but that's not sufficient. It's necessary, but not sufficient.

We have to be really purposeful with our narratives, counter-narratives. We need to be out there. We need to know what we're fighting for and talk about it all the time. We need everybody to be out there.

We basically need to decide that we're going to win, and to talk about winning and talk about victory, and just get there.

That's kind of the problem. The Russians talk a lot about flooding the zone. And that's kind of their term for getting all this nastiness, all this poison out there.

Now we need to respond to flooding the zone by flooding the zone with truth. Flooding the zone with true narratives, and also with ridicule for Russia's lies. I mean, debunking, fact-checking – nobody cares, because in some sense Russia's information is meant to activate confirmation bias.

If you're someone that's going to worry about escalation in the first place, then they get you with the escalation. If you're someone that's going to say, "Oh, well, the CIA is blah-di-blah," they're going to get you with the CIA. They're always going for "What kind of a person are you?", and they play off your fears.

So we need to be ready for that and we need to give opposite confirmation biases. We need to understand our audiences and start talking to them in a way that they understand, in a way that will get them interested in the truth.

Okay, I have some serious questions for you. You are a senior policy adviser for counter-corruption and sanctions. So here are two questions. The first one: how can you rate the corruption level in Ukraine?

Well, look, Ukraine has had a struggle with corruption. I don't think that's a surprise to anybody. One of the amazing things about the country is precisely the civil society that's fought it. Ukrainians are well aware of it. They have an extremely vibrant democratic system. It's an enormous topic in their politics.

Every country struggles with corruption. Every country is different. In the USA, there's kind of this revolving door lobbyist style corruption. Corruption also exists in Berlin, obviously - a former German chancellor is working for Putin, that's a pretty high level of corruption. In Ukraine it's usually noted that the judiciary, the old Soviet-style judiciary, has corruption problems.

I'll say that a lot of Ukraine's corruption problem was driven and exacerbated by Russia. It was a weakness. What Russia does everywhere is, it looks for: what are your cleavages? Let's exacerbate them. Let's find ways to tear your society apart.

One of those ways was corruption. The Russians didn't invent corruption in Ukraine, but they certainly made it worse. And that's gone now. I think that Ukrainian society is united against Russian influence, so it's very hard for Russian corruption to be as effective as it once was and driving Ukrainian society apart.

But it's still an important topic, and I think Ukrainians are aware of it. And I think there's less tolerance here than there's ever been for corruption. I mean, Ukrainians – the young Ukrainians you speak with who are really driving this whole thing, both the Ukrainian defense, the future of Ukraine – they see a Ukraine with curbed corruption.

Look, you never get rid of it totally. I mean, America has corruption scandals, like everywhere has corruption scandals. So it never totally goes away. But you get it down to a level at which it's no longer like the political issue. And I think Ukraine will get there. And I think the Ukrainian people are determined to get there. And I think this is an opening to get there. And I mean, if it's not achieved, then what was all this for?

It certainly feels like Ukraine has a definite vision of its future in the EU, in NATO, as this beacon of liberty in the world. And I think it's going to make it there.

On the other hand, Russia also has a lot of corruption and that’s helped Ukraine in this war. And how do you estimate, will Russia fight corruption?

*laughing*

Will Russia fight corruption? Russia's model is based on corruption. How can they possibly fight corruption? I mean, they'll set up whatever, a corruption-fighting board - it’s all a joke. They use their anti-corruption laws to attack anti-corruption campaigners. They put their anti-corruption people in jail through anti-corruption laws.

I mean, of course, that was the story of Sergei Magnitsky. He revealed a fraud, so they killed him for it. But that’s what they always do. No, that whole system is run through corruption. And they view corruption as a weapon, of course.

It's like their system, it's their model. It's a model they want to export. They want everybody to be as corrupt as them. Again, I don't think that's any surprise for Ukrainians, but when the Russians see somebody like the Ukrainians and they see somebody succeeding, they don’t think, "Oh, that's nice, we should try to be like that." They think, "How can we pull them down? How can we bring them to our level?" And that's what they want to do with the whole world. They want to make everybody as corrupt as they are. No, they can't fight corruption. The state form of Russia would have to evolve beyond empire to fight corruption.

Russia isn't even in a position right now – so long as it has colonies, it's really hard to imagine how they’ll fight corruption, because its colonies are controlled through corruption.

Kadyrov is an excellent example of this. Here's a guy who's just paid off by Putin. He's just a crony, you know. Putin runs that country through a circle of payoffs, corruption, bribery. You take the money, or we kill you. So that's the governance structure of Russia.

Thank you, I just wanted to hear it from the expert. Second question: how do all the implemented sanctions influence Russia and which additional sanctions from the EU and USA do we need to get more influence on Russia?

The sanctions environment right after the war, the first few weeks, I was actually impressed with the sanctions environment. We clearly thought a strong sanctions response would get Russia to back off. And that was our error. Our error in believing that everybody thinks like us. The West in particular has this problem of thinking like, "We're a bunch of free market capitalists. Everybody must really care about their pocketbook. Everybody must really care about gas prices and inflation and all that kind of stuff that we care about." Russia, sadly, did not care about that.

I mean, there was an excellent, excellent sanctions response in the beginning, including the freezing of sovereign reserves, which was the Central Bank.

Everybody's worried about this whole notion of Putin's war chest. You know, he's going to be able to hedge against sanctions for a very long time and prevent them from being powerful. But at the end of the day, we just froze those, too.

The big mistake that kept Russia in the game last year was the lack of energy sanctions. Europe kept buying gas, to some extent kept buying oil. Stopped coal pretty early. But now that's over. That took way too long. It was always the problem: Europe's gas addiction in particular, energy addiction. That was, of course, horrific, horrible policy that the United States had long been against, but was pursued by Europe in large part not because of national interest, but thanks to corruption, thanks to the co-opting of officials like Gerhard Schroeder, like François Fillon, former prime minister of France, like Karen Kneissl, former foreign minister of Austria.

There's so many of these at the top level. There's so many of these, though, that Russia paid off to create these energy deals that got Western Europe in particular addicted to Russian gas. But a lot of that's over now.

It's hard to be impressed with anything because this war shouldn't have happened.

But Germany is off Russian natural resources, which is a huge deal given that Germany basically built its entire future around buying Russian natural resources. Never should have happened, but there it is.

Oil. Of course, we still have the China problem there – China can buy oil pretty easily. But gas is kind of irreplaceable, you know. So we still need to tighten the sanctions. There's individuals we need to tighten the sanctions on. There's companies we need to tighten the sanctions on. We could probably bring the oil price cap down. I think that's really important, to kind of get at the oil. But Russia should have a tougher time this year. The big gas problem, which was the problem, should be over now.

It took a year.

I know.

And that’s a long time. And everything is taking a long time, especially weapons supply. How do you think, does the West want Ukraine to win this war? 

All of this stuff should have been done before the full-scale invasion. Ukraine has been at war since 2014. Russia invaded in 2014.

I think Ukrainians are correct. They call it "the full-scale escalation". It is. This is a war that's been going on for, what, six, eight, nine years. You see all the math going on in my head there! I mean, it's something we should have done much, much, much earlier.

Of course, Nord Stream II was built after 2014. So this wasn't even taken seriously. I mean, getting us out of this paradigm of "Russia's a great power" and "Oh, we need to do deals with Russia". So there's this whole philosophy of great power politics. But then also you got Russia coming with bags of cash to all our leadership and saying, "Hey, you know, when you're done with your job here, we got a job for ya. You can come work for one of our companies and make half a million dollars a year." Well, you know, that's not bad, and it is the end of history and blah, blah, blah.

So you had this horrible trend in the West over the last 30 years, very difficult for us to get out of - what I call liberal triumphalism, this notion that we won the Cold War and yeah, there will be setbacks, but at the end of the day, the triumph of democracy is basically guaranteed.

And there's been chips away at this for a while. But to me, this fundamentally ended on February 24th. So it's taken a long time. It never should have taken this long. It shouldn't require endless kicking and screaming to get every new tranche of weapons. It shouldn't take endless kicking and screaming to get to every new set of sanctions. I mean, we’re in the tenth sanctions package of the EU now. It shouldn't take this. And I understand Ukrainian frustrations.

I want to explain – not justify, just explain – that the West has been living in a fantasy world for 30 years. I've seen it, I've been there, I've worked in government for ten years. And I've seen the fantasy happen right before my eyes at a point at which we really shouldn't have had this fantasy any longer.

But it remained because there was a lot of greed. It was a mix of greed and just wishful thinking, a kind of notion of "Oh my God, if we're wrong about this, if we're wrong about the triumph of democracy, that means a closed world again, a second Cold War. We have to batten down the hatches." And it was almost like, "Well, don't look at it. Hear no evil, see no evil. We just don't want it to be the case. So we're going to ignore it."

And now we can't ignore it anymore because of the Ukrainians, because you guys fought. Nobody expected you to fight. You're winning. Nobody expected you to be winning. And you basically looked at us and you were like, "Hello? These are your values. You need to wake up. You need to get back here and start defending things again. You need to remember who you are." And so we started to remember. But it's been a long time. We were asleep for a long time. So we're still, I'm very sad to say, we're still sort of rubbing the sleepy times from our eyes.

But we have the same problem with weapons now. We wait for too long.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean that's the big question. Can we make this next step to essentially saying Ukrainian victory is what we want?

I mean, we're stuck in "as long as it takes". We're stuck in the hedging mode of not really knowing what's going to happen, of not wanting to… I mean, there's also kind of a fear of victory, right? What if Russia uses a nuclear weapon or instability? So this is what I’m talking about, these narratives. We talked about that earlier.

A lot of these narratives, we need to debunk them. We need to fight against them. We need to ridicule them. We need to get us through the dam that's been built by Russia of info tactics and to be like, "Wait a second. Obviously Ukrainian victory is what we want. What are we doing this for if we don't want Ukrainian victory? Why are we giving them weapons in the first place? Why are we doing any of this if we're not trying to achieve Ukrainian victory?"

I mean, Ukrainian victory is good in a moral sense, it's morally right. But it's also good in just a pure national interest sense. You look through the US national security strategy and it's like "Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia and China, Russia, Russia and China, Russia, Russia". And it's like, I mean, oh my God, when in history have we been able to knock out one of our primary adversaries without a single trooper, without a single person on the ground, without a single jet in the air? The Ukrainians are just doing it all, and they're doing it for what is essentially pennies in our national security budget. This is like a rounding error of stuff we’re giving the Ukrainians.

So we need to get through that information dam. And it's hard. It's hard because there's fear. Change is hard. It's the devil you know versus the devil you don't. And I think in Berlin, Paris, Washington, there's still hesitancy to say, okay, we're done with Putin, okay, we're potentially even done with Russia. And the new paradigm in the region is going to be a strong, whole, independent Ukraine, and strong partners too, a strong militarized Poland.

When I look at that, well, heck yeah! Think about it for two seconds and it's like, why wouldn’t we want that? I mean, look at what Russia's done for us.

That's because you're the ambassador for Ukraine.

I want to be really clear, you know, I'm thinking about this from the American perspective. I'm an American patriot. And American patriots should want to support Ukraine. They should want to see this region and think, oh my God, in Central and Eastern Europe, there are a bunch of countries and peoples who have the same fundamental values as the United States, the same commitment to freedom, the same commitment to independence. These are natural allies for us.

And who are they fighting? They're fighting against what we've identified over and over and over and over again as one of our primary adversaries. So let's quit the crap. I mean, let's just quit the warmed-over endless hand-wringing, circular thinking. Let's just embrace it. This is obviously good for us.

Okay. As an American patriot, answer me the question, will the United States help Ukraine after the elections? 

Yes. You mean the presidential elections?

Yes.

Yes.There's support in America for Ukraine, you know, that goes much deeper and broader than anything you might hear in our political debate, anything you might hear on Twitter. I mean, look, Gallup [the American Institute of Public Opinion - ed.], this latest Gallup poll, you may have seen it, shows 62% of Republicans, 58% of Democrats, view Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a critical threat.

A critical threat. I mean, that's as high as it goes to U.S. national security. The other side is important but not critical. So it's not like the second one was like, "Oh, no, we don't care." It's like, "Oh, it's important, but not so much." Big majorities of both Republicans and Democrats – and actually more Republicans than Democrats, very interestingly – view Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a critical threat.

So look, this is what I was always trying to tell people too, even during the Trump administration: America's not just the president. It's not just the institutions of the executive branch. It's not just the loudest members of Congress. It is the people. It is the Constitution. It is the values that have defined us for 250 years. We've been around for a really long time and we've been amazingly consistent.

Right after the revolution, right after 1776, some of those that followed the revolution went to go fight in wars of independence in other parts of the world! We've got Americans right here, I’m pointing to one sitting right over there, fighting, fighting for Ukraine in the spirit of America right here, right now. We had them in the Spanish Civil War. We had them all over the place, because that's America. And America goes a whole lot deeper than whatever our most recent political candidate says. So I really want to encourage people to see that the support that we have for Ukraine is much more inherent in US DNA.

I think even those who just discovered Ukraine can get the very essence of this, which is: The Ukrainians are us. It’s 1776 over here. The Ukrainians are a tough democracy fighting against a tyrannical empire. What is more American than this? Not to mention that it's like 100% in our national security interest.

I mean, it's so rare that you see these two things align. But here it is.

Okay. The last several days you have traveled in Ukraine a lot. What have you seen and what impressed you in Ukraine? It's not your first time, of course, but…

It was my first time in the Ukrainian south. And I loved Odesa. I thought, what a town. And so that was a lot of fun. We went to Mykolaiv, which of course, is a hero city. It's amazing: after having withstood the horrors of Russia, life is pretty much back to normal there. It's amazing. I think it just goes to show you just how resilient Ukrainians are.

We went to Kherson. Now Kherson is not back to normal. Understandably so, because the Russians won't let it go back to normal. We have artillery in there every day. Sniper fire. Kherson is tough. I mean, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, they're tough, you know, they're holding it down. And I mean, eventually Kherson will be like Mykolaiv.

I mean, when the front moves, when Crimea is liberated, when the counter-offensive is successful, Kherson will return to normal, just like Mykolaiv returned to normal, because that’s how the Ukrainians are, you know. It'll be miraculously normal. Right now, though, they're still holding down the fort.

I was briefly in Dnipro. Dnipro is in good shape. We went and saw where the terrorist attack occurred at the apartment buildings. Obviously, that is beyond tragic. It kind of really demonstrates the magnitude of Russian evil and what Russia has done to the Ukrainian people. You see, there was a line next to the bus stop, you know - all sorts of stuffed animals. I mean, these people were just living their lives. Refrigerators open. And you see food in the fridge. You see the clothes in the closet. It's surreal. There's nothing military near any of this. This was just clearly Russia's tactic to attempt to terrorize the Ukrainian people into submission. Of course, this has only made Ukraine more determined to win the war.

But, you know, I mean, it also was like, wait a minute, we need to get Ukraine what it needs to protect its population centers, because this is a terrorist state. We need to recognize what we're up against here, how Russia operates. This is terrorism. This tactic is literally terror. They're trying to terrorize Ukraine into submission. So that was really sick. And I think we finally need to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terror.

And then finally I'm here, with you.

Have you some plans on traveling in Ukraine? Because, you know, there are a lot of invitations from girls on Twitter in different cities of Ukraine.

*laughing*

Well, I'm not… The invitations normally don't affect my travel plans, let's say. I’m trying to first go where needed and see things that others may not be seeing and be able to. Obviously, I never got an invitation to Kherson, but that was really important to go there.

I mean, I want to go to every city. I want to see all of this place. I'm blown away by every city I'm in. I'm blown away by the energy. I got across the border from Palanka into Ukraine, the border with Moldova, and I'm smiling the whole way back in Ukraine. The energy is in the air. It’s this spirit of resilience and a spirit of defiance that, to me, I would almost define as quintessentially American. And yet here it is. And it's exciting to see.

So I want to go everywhere and meet everybody, if I could. But this is my third time here since the full-scale invasion. I intend to come back and I intend to see new cities. And after victory, I intend to spend a longer period of time here. Hopefully we will not only be working on reconstruction there and ensuring Russia… one of my things I work on in my professional life is making sure Russia pays for Ukrainian reconstruction… but also having a good time doing it.

I'm hopeful that after victory we'll all be having a nice party.

I invite you to a liberated Crimea. 

Oh, thank you! I can't wait. You know, my great dream is to one day own a beach house in Crimea, my Ukrainian getaway.

Editing: Teresa Pearce