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Recording of Q&A "What the West gets wrong about Ukraine" (Patreon)

Published:
2022-11-08 07:23:05
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

Content

Dear community members,

Thank you to everyone who was able to join us for our Q&A “What the West gets wrong about Ukraine” with our Editor-in-Chief Olga Rudenko and CEO Daryna Shevchenko. Here is the recording for those who weren’t able to attend.

Olga and Daryna talked about the misconceptions that Westerns have about Ukraine – like that the relationship between the two countries can be easily repaired or that Ukraine and Russia are “brotherly nations.”

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions – they form the backbone of our discussions. These conversations wouldn’t be possible without your participation.

Files

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Comments

Eric Pritchard

Reinforcing what Norma said above and the limited view in the West of the relationship between the Soviet Union and its SSRs, my wife is from Ukraine, I had the privilege of getting to know her parents before they died, they both remembered the Holodomor though were too young then to understand what was going on. My mother in law said that in Kharkiv in the war they were treated better under German occupation than when the Red Army were there. Few in the West know of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact under which the Soviets invaded Poland from the East two weeks after the Germans invaded from the west, or of the unprovoked invasion of Finland by the USSR in the Winter War of 1939-40. Then there was Operation Frantic where in exchange for an American bombsight an American bomber group were allowed to operate from Poltava then betrayed to the Germans by the Soviets, and denied air cover so German bombers could destroy the bombers on Poltava base. With a record like that it is not surprising that the father of a Lithuanian colleague of mine joined the Wehrmacht to get the chance to fight the Red Army rather than be conscripted into their ranks. It is a tribute to Soviet propaganda and western selective blindness that we know little of this and only of the defence of Stalingrad and Leningrad. Most here don’t even realise that Kyiv was a city when Moscow was a forest and St Petersburg was a swamp!

LMG

Thank you so much for this. Highlights: "As much as we are grateful for all the support we are also entitled to that support because we are sacrificing so much in this war for other people and other countries..." Thank you, Ms. Shevchenko - well said. The corruption issue is critical. I am a lawyer, former journalist and writer - as a member of the Ukrainian diaspora, the corruption has been the reason I have not spent more time in Ukraine. You are right that every country has to fight corruption. The point is it is a continual fight. No country ever reaches a low corruption state, and stays that way, without continual effort. Australia is now about to launch a federal anti-corruption commission - this is an example that even Western nations see corruption as a problem within their own borders and have to continually fight it. The reality about corruption is: It does not end without continual systems and institutions to provide oversight, investigate and prosecute, wwhich are unaligned with the political system and remain in place, well funded and well resourced, regardless of the government of the day. What would be most helpful is to write stories with specific details about what Ukraine has done (specific initiatives, so people in the West understand that Ukraine recognises this is an important and continual fight). And the stories need to show that Ukraine is and will remain committed to fighting this, so benefits of investment get to the people they are intended to benefit, rather than oligarchs or corrupt politicians.

LMG

Please understand that my comments above, are not intended to discredit that Ukraine is entitled to support - both to win the war, defeat Russia and rebuild. But rather, I want Ukraine to tell its story about fighting corruption, so it can counter the narrative that it is too corrupt to save.

LMG

The West has historically looked at this region "through the Russian lens". Well said. Will continue to support your efforts to change this with Ukrainian voices, reporting from Ukraine, and getting exposure around the world. Slava Ukraini! You are an inspiration.

California Norma

Just want to share an alternative perspective and reality from Northern California. I have a friend whose parents were Estonian refugees after World War II. They experienced horrors in refugee camps in Germany. Thus, he understands exactly how much is at risk when Russia wins. There are many many people in the "West" with exactly the same experience. My girlhood friend whose grandfather went to Germany on business in the 1930s, returned to Denmark and said, those people have no idea what is happening. 💔 Jewish friends whose families were exterminated. So many understand the horror of war on civilians, the cavalier breaking of international laws of treating others decently, wholesale removal of children, killing of men, raping of women as genocide. I offer that the US Native American movement likewise sees the direct parallel between the russian invasion of their friendly neighbor, and the European invasion of Turtle Island. I don't know enough about Russia to look at anything through a Russian lens I definitely understand abusers. I will always be on the side of the underdog, the attacked. Slava Ukraïni

Penina Scullion

This encompass my feelings very closely.