As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine inches toward the three-year mark, all eyes are on a potential peace agreement to end the war.
If the parameters of any peace deal are likely to remain obscured for months to come, Ukraine’s ex-Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says one thing is clear — Russia is not going to ask for peace.
“Russia wants to be begged (to engage in the peace talks),” Kuleba told the Kyiv Independent in an interview late last year.
Kuleba worked as a minister for over four years through most of Russia’s full-scale invasion until his resignation in September during the biggest wartime government reshuffle.
He is one of the most recognized Ukrainian politicians abroad, known for his impassioned appeals to partners to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Amid news of the latest Russian advances on the front and global talks on how U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will seek to negotiate an end to the war, the Kyiv Independent sat down with Kuleba in Kyiv to discuss a potential peace agreement and a path forward for Ukraine.
Editor’s note: This is a transcript of the video interview with the former foreign minister. It has been edited for clarity.
The Kyiv Independent: What do you expect from the next few months?
Dmytro Kuleba: I don't think any negotiations will begin before the inauguration of President Trump. We will spend the upcoming months in a whirlpool of news and comments and leaks coming from all corners about the peace talks, but even now, if you put the noise aside and look at the essence of what key stakeholders are saying, they just keep repeating the same speaking point in different ways. Everyone says, “We want peace.”
Russia has a different stance on this. Russia wants to be begged — this is its strategy. It doesn’t want to make the first move, it wants others to approach it and beg it to do something.
The Kyiv Independent: What do you say to people who want to build friendly ties with Russia again, especially in Europe?
Dmytro Kuleba: It's hard to find someone who would openly tell you that they want to build good relations with Russia today, but there are people with the underlying argument that the day will come and there will be good Russia. They don't want to analyze the past in an unbiased way and admit that all attempts to democratize Russia failed.
Liberal Russia exists only as a dystopia. It's a classic 19th-century empire. It's a country that wants to be seen and sees itself in terms of the classic 19th-century empire.
Liberal Russia exists only as a dystopia.
We saw it with Germany, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and Yugoslavia. And there is only one way to deprive a country of its aggressive instincts. And that is to take it through loss, through defeat.
This is the only viable way of ensuring that the war will not repeat and that Russia will not pose a threat to anyone, not only to Ukraine but also to other countries.
But the people you are referring to think differently. They come up with traditional foreign policy concepts and game-playing in politics, saying that there should not be a zero-sum outcome for everyone. “Russia should get something,” (they believe). And then we end up in this messy intellectual and political setting where partners want Ukraine to win, but they don't want Russia to lose.
The Kyiv Independent: What would Ukraine winning without Russia losing look like?
Dmytro Kuleba: It just doesn't work this way. If you make Ukraine win, but Russia doesn't lose, what you get is revanchism. Russia will immediately undertake another attempt to reach all the goals of what they call “the special military operation.”
It will be just a pause before the next war between Russia and Ukraine starts. If you have something in the middle, where diplomats like to say that a good agreement is when either everyone walks out from the negotiating room happy or everyone walks out of the room unhappy, then it was a good deal. But if both Russia and Ukraine walk out of the negotiating room unhappy, this is again an invitation to revanchism for both sides.
Ukraine's potential for revanchist policies toward Russia from a mid-term perspective should not be underestimated and written off.
The Kyiv Independent: Could you elaborate on potential revanchist policies in Ukraine towards Russia?
Dmytro Kuleba: The next generation of Ukrainian politicians will be focused entirely on the recovery of Ukraine after the war. But the generation after them will come to power on the slogans of revanche towards Russia. “Retake territories, make Russia finally pay.”
The moment we are up from our knees economically, you will see these arguments being played out in domestic politics.
The Kyiv Independent: There was an idea that sanctions were going to make it too costly for Russia to continue the war and it would stop at some point. We're not seeing it happening now. Is that because sanctions don't work? What can we do to make them work?
Dmytro Kuleba: Sanctions, political isolation, support of providing Ukraine with weapons and financial assistance, resolve to deliver a message to Russia that it’s not going to get what it's looking for — when all these pieces come together, strengthening Ukraine and shattering Russia from the inside, then we will have victory.
“Sanctions don't work” is a Russian narrative. Sanctions do work. But they serve their function on two conditions: first when you keep introducing new sanctions, stepping up pressure on the sanctioned country.
And second, when you continuously and regularly close the loopholes that are used for the circumvention of sanctions. These two things have to work hand in hand. Unfortunately, we see desynchronization.
People read headlines in the news like “The European Union approved a new set of sanctions.” People feel relieved that something is happening. But if you look deeper into the list of what was adopted, this is not really damaging stuff for them. Russia will keep selling its oil.
The key to the Russian economy is, of course, revenues from oil. This is fundamental. And it would be a huge help if Russia could be stripped of its oil revenues. But it’s not the only element that can help Ukraine win.
The Kyiv Independent: Does it mean that the countries talking about stopping Russia from getting revenues from oil just can't keep up with the methods that it finds to go around the sanctions, or are they not very resolute in employing the sanctions that will actually make a difference?
Dmytro Kuleba: I think so far, oil-related measures were half-measures. They couldn’t deprive Russia of its access to oil revenues. And the reason for that is what one could call global energy stability and the balance of power among oil exporters and regulators.
The Kyiv Independent: Western partners believe that if they give Ukraine a lot of weapons, they will cross Russian “red lines,” and Russia will do something terrible. This is why they are stalling on providing Ukraine with enough military aid. Is this a real thing, Russian red lines?
Dmytro Kuleba: Every conversation we had with our partners on weapons started with a “no.” “It's an escalation. It's not what you need. It's too complicated. It's going to take too much time.”
We turned every “no” into “yes” and unlocked these options — tanks, Patriots, howitzers, fighting jets. But we still hear the argument of non-escalation.
Non-escalation is a very politicized term. When you have a country with nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which attacks its neighbor with a clear goal of destroying it to the ground — this is called escalation.
When you have a country with nuclear power, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which attacks its neighbor with a clear goal of destroying it to the ground — this is called escalation.
But everything the country that defends itself does to exercise its right to self-defense cannot be considered as escalation per se. This country is fighting for its life and survival.
So when anyone says that Ukraine cannot do this or that, because it will be an escalation, they basically invite Russia to finish Ukraine off.
All the nice words — calls for peace, not feeding to the war, not escalating — when it applies to helping Ukraine, this is an invitation for Russia to continue destroying Ukraine.
Second, the escalation argument is flawed for another simple reason: We see that Russia keeps escalating at any cost. Russia brought North Korean troops to the front line because it lacked its own resources, not in response to Ukraine’s actions or to the actions of its partners.
Russia is destroying our energy system and our civilian infrastructure not because Ukraine is escalating, but because Russia is committed to achieving its goals.
So it's hypocritical for our key partners to think of helping Ukraine in terms of avoiding escalation.
The Kyiv Independent: Why should Trump support Ukraine's membership in NATO?
Dmytro Kuleba: Because it's the only way to prevent the next war.
From a short-term perspective, you can reach a ceasefire without Ukraine's membership in NATO. But a ceasefire is not the end of the war. Once you bargain membership in NATO for a ceasefire, you lose the opportunity to end the war.
NATO is the only way to end the war conclusively and prevent future wars for two reasons.
NATO is the only way to end the war conclusively and prevent future wars.
First, whatever we know of Putin, he will attack NATO only if he defeats Ukraine. If Ukraine comes out of this fight as a winning power and joins NATO, the combined military force of the alliance against Russia will be invincible.
Second, in the prospect of maybe 10 years or so, I anticipate the emergence of revenge-driven political forces in Ukraine. It may sound counterintuitive, but the only way to prevent Ukraine from waging a war on Russia will be to have it in NATO, to make it bound by legal obligations of not exposing its allies to the risk of war with Russia.
The Kyiv Independent: Does it mean that some Ukrainian territories stay occupied as a result of the deal to end the war?
Dmytro Kuleba: No one can tell you now what the parameters of the deal will be. History has many cases when both territories had been occupied for decades and then liberated by their motherland power, like Alsace in France.
There are other cases as well. One of the most popular references in Washington these days is the Korean example. Those who lean more towards Ukraine prefer to bring up the West and East Germany example.
So there are plenty of cases in the world that you can learn from when it comes to territorial control.
If a nation remains resolved and committed to the goal of restoring its territorial integrity, it doesn't matter how many years it will take. It’s also a possibility that a nation learns over time how to live without these territories.
And we don't know in which direction Ukrainian society will follow.
The Kyiv Independent: Is Ukrainian society divided on how it sees victory in war?
Dmytro Kuleba: Quite to the contrary, it's united. It set the bar very high. They want the victory that will consist of reaching the borders of 1991.
But we are not having any conversation in our society on what other ways of winning are. Is temporary compromise acceptable at all? Or we are going to fight for every square meter of our land, whatever it takes?
No one is talking about what could be temporary solutions on the way to the ultimate goal. Society is kind of telling the government, “Now you are in charge of it, you show us what you achieved, and then we will decide whether to punish you or to praise you.”
The Kyiv Independent: What do you think should be the ultimate goal for Ukrainian society?
Dmytro Kuleba: If we ever accept in our heads and hearts, in our minds and hearts, the idea that we abandon these lands, the currently occupied territories, this will be the beginning of the end of Ukrainian statehood.
Because if you draw a line here, Russia will immediately point out: then why don't we draw it 100 kilometers further? Even today Russia claims that they want full territories of Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts.
Now imagine you even engage in a conversation with them about where a temporary line could be drawn. For our partners it's an easy exercise, this is how history works. There is always a shining bright general coming from the West who comes to the land of war, takes the map, draws a red line and says, “Be it so.”
Our own land was divided this way after World War I and we clearly remember it. So it's easy for them to draw these lines, but for us as a nation, this is a swim-or-sink moment.
But it doesn't mean that there can be temporary solutions on the way to restoring territorial integrity. As I said, what we have to ensure is that the idea of recovering these territories should be part of our national identity and national idea.
The Kyiv Independent: But on the way there, can Ukraine find itself in a situation where it's decided for us what the temporary solution is to end the war?
Dmytro Kuleba: I don't think so. I hold the position that no one can send Ukraine down the drain except the Ukrainians themselves. No decision can be imposed on Ukraine if we do not agree that it is imposed on us.
When we look at Ukraine from the perspective of today's headlines in the news and social media, we seem weak, bleeding and exhausted. But when we zoom out, we inevitably come to a conclusion that today Ukraine is in the strongest position ever in its history.
For the first time in hundreds of years, we have the state, the army, and the leadership. With all discussions taking place in the media and on the streets, we have national unity and clear national and political identities. For the first time, we are united in our attitude towards Russia.
And finally, we have partners. We can complain a hundred times about what they've done wrong, but they've done a lot for us. And this is the first time in history that we have partners who actually stand by us despite all of their shortcomings.
So in this generation, we have no right to lose this struggle, because we are today in the strongest position possible compared to all the preceding generations of Ukrainians who had fought and lost, unfortunately.
We should not repeat their mistakes. And we have all the conditions for that. We don’t have the right not to succeed.
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