#LiveFromUkraine

Svitlana Khytrenko (@s_khytrenko) is a Ukrainian student who has lived in Germany and Poland since escaping Kyiv back in March. We talked about her experiences as a refugee, her life in Poland, and her feelings about Russia and its imperial clownishness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oleksandra Povoroznik (⁦@rynkrynk) is a Kyiv-based journalist, film critic and translator, who joins us to discuss the changing politics of language in Ukraine, as well as the country's defiant wartime culture and humor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vitalii Ovarchenko is a Ukrainian army soldier who participated in the defense of Kyiv and is now stationed in the Donbas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On February 22, she was a city councilwoman in Kyiv. Since February 24, she has been a combat medic in the Donesk region. Alina Mykhailova chats with us from the front about her life before and during the war and about the current situation on the front lines of the fighting in Donbas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Terrell Jermaine Starr is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the host of the Black Diplomats podcast. He is an independent journalist based in Brooklyn and Kyiv, Ukraine covering the Russo-Ukrainian War. He previously worked at The Root and Foxtrot Alpha, a blog that focuses on the military, technology, and policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katya Savchencko (@shanovna_s) grew up in the Donbas region of Ukraine and moved to Bucha following the Russian invasion of that region in 2014. This year, following the full-scale invasion, she survived several days of the brutal and murderous Russian occupation of Bucha before escaping by train with her sister. She kept a diary of her days in Bucha, which she recently published on Medium in English translation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob Lee is a former Marine Corps officer and a PhD candidate at the War Studies Department at Kings College London. He is also a collector on Twitter of a huge array of videos of Russian and Ukrainian military hardware in action, a collection he uses to analyze the performance of the Russian military in the field. Our first non-Ukrainian guest, he joined #LiveFromUkraine to discuss how the Russian military has actually performed. Did we overestimate it? Are we now underestimating? What kind of fighting capacity does it have left? And who is really prevailing as the full-scale invasion nears five months in duration? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maria Avdeeva is research director of the European Experts Association in Ukraine Maria Avdeeva. Based in Kharkiv, she has not left the city during the full-scale invasion and joins to zoom in on the fighting in Donbas, where she just visited. Donbas is a hotspot in southeastern Ukraine that has been partly controlled by Russian groups since the Russo-Ukrainian War started in 2014. Avdeeva gives us her outlook on how far Russians will be able to advance in the region and considerations for Russian strategy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olexander Scherba was a career Ukrainian diplomat whose most recent post as Ukrainian ambassador to Austria ended in 2021. He has spent a total of 28 years in service to Ukraine. He and Benjamin Wittes discuss the misalignment of different global actors in the anticipation of the war in Ukraine, his perspective on the U.S.-Ukraine relationship from the Ukrainian side, and what Scherba sees as an “organic” effort by Ukrainians to create a unified message about the nation of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anastasiia Lapatina is a college student in Canada. In Ukraine, she is a reporter for the Kyiv Independent—where she cohosts the podcast, "Did the War End?" She talks about the rise of the Kyiv Independent as a trusted Ukrainian news source in the West, her work on the ground in the days after the full-scale invasion started, and her reaction to the the swirl of Western voices that have been offering thoughts on the fate of her country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Svidomi Media, the tagline of which translates to “True News about Ukraine'' in English, was founded by this episode’s guest, Anasasiia Bakulina, with a mission to reach Ukrainian youth. Bakulina talks to Benjamin Wittes about her perception of generational understandings about Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia and whether or not there is such a thing as a “good Russian.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stas Olenchenko and his partner didn’t mean to start Ukraine Explainers. But when the war started and they found that mainstream media sources weren’t able to cover the developments with sufficient attention to the colonial nuances, their work began. Stas sits down with Benjamin Wittes to talk about Ukraine Explainers’ contributions to understanding the Ukrainian War and dive into the complexities of Ukrainian national identity through the lenses of ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Catarina Buchatskiy, a Stanford University undergraduate from Kyiv, joins the show to talk about the manipulation of narratives from Russian actors and the role language plays in shaping—or destroying—a national identity. Buchatskiy is the co-founder of the Shadows Project—which seeks to preserve, protect, and popularize Ukrainian culture—also wrote a piece for Lawfare about this topic entitled “The War Over Ukraine—On Wikipedia.” She also cohosts a podcast entitled "Did the War End?" produced by the Kyiv Independent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Melaniya Podolyak started her YouTube channel, her goal was to help provide civic education: explain governmental procedures, policy decisions coming out of Kyiv, and “internal politics of Ukraine to Ukranians.” Then the war started. Podolyak and Wittes talk about what she’s doing now: working for the Serhiy Prytula Foundation, which has supported the Ukrainian Army since 2014, and helping to combat misperceptions of Ukrainian identity through communications work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Walter Lekh started the Walter Report—a show on Twitter Spaces that has livestreamed, 24/7 without pause since the full-scale invasion started in February. Lekh talks with Benjamin Wittes talk about the origins of the Walter Report, about the situation on the ground since the Russian invasion on February 24, about grassroots organizing, and local efforts to elevate Ukrainian forces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the inaugural episode of #LiveFromUkraine, Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes talks to Bodhana Neborak, editor-in-chief of The Ukranians, an online magazine producing long-form and visual journalism in Ukraine. Neborak and Wittes discuss media decolonization, the residual effects of Russian rule on Ukrainian culture-building, and recommendations for listeners on what to read, listen to, and watch to understand Ukraine as a country. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.