Dirty Dirty Giuliani
Now that Manafort is in prison, Giuliani seems to have taken his place, especially in trying to drum up Democratic scandals to distract from Trump’s many investigations. We examine one of Giuliani's longtime moneymakers: Ukraine.
Theme Music
Andrea Chalupa: Welcome to a special episode of Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa: a writer, filmmaker, and the screenwriter and producer of the upcoming journalistic thriller "Mr. Jones." Today we're going to focus on that faraway battleground state: Ukraine. Why should the average American voter care about Ukraine? Because the average American voter likely didn't think about Ukraine much back in 2016. If they had, they would have known Paul Manafort was a Kremlin-linked operative experienced in the dark arts that aided Putin's attack on Ukraine's democracy and our own. As we always say on Gaslit Nation, from election hacking to information warfare, Ukraine is a laboratory for Russian aggression. Ukraine is an important framework for us in the West to understand the challenges of the 21st century, and how best to confront them. That includes: kleptocracy, resisting autocracy, asymmetrical warfare, and so forth. If Ukraine can resist the Kremlin's aggression and confront corruption, then so can we. It's in our best interest to care about what happens there, which is why the E.U. and U.S. have historically been united in their support of a strong, stable, and democratic Ukraine. Things have been playing out differently under Trump, with the president's own lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, encouraging corruption in Ukraine in order to dig up dirt; any conspiracy theory that might stick against the Democrats. Now that Manafort is in prison, Giuliani seems to have taken his place, especially in trying to drum up Democratic scandals to distract from Trump's many investigations, just like Manafort did. Giuliani has been deliberately, desperately searching for a way to frame Trump's opponents like Clinton and Biden, and punish whistleblowers like my sister, a former DNC consultant, and Ukrainian reformer, Sirhiy Leshchenko, who both tried to warn the public during the 2016 election about Trump's Kremlin ties. Like Manafort, Giuliani has his own long history of furthering the Kremlin's interests. Ironically, just as Manafort worked unpaid to run Trump's campaign, Giuliani too worked unpaid as Trump's lawyer on the Russia probe. Apparently, both men had other reliable sources of financing. Giuliani has been entrenched in blood money for years, including being hosted in Armenia by a Putin ally, speaking alongside a sanctioned Russian official there for a conference in fall 2018 to strengthen the ties of the Eurasian Economic Union. What is the Eurasian Economic Union? It's the Kremlin's answer to taking on the European Union. It's an economic union of post-Soviet states that largely have atrocious human rights records like Belarus and Kazakhstan. They tried for years to get Ukraine to join it. And Ukraine is like, "No thanks. We are trying to join the EU." Giuliani's presence at this conference served the Kremlin's interests, as do his years of working for pro-Kremlin Ukraine officials with ties to organized crime. Last September, democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, wrote a letter to the Department of Justice inquiring whether Giuliani had filed as a foreign agent. Here's what their letter said, "Giuliani's work on behalf of the city of Horokhiv, Ukraine, whose mayor is a member of the Party of Regions, is also concerning. The Ukrainian Party of Regions connections to the Russian government and anti-democratic activity are well-documented. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who both served in senior roles on the president's 2016 campaign team, were convicted of or pleaded guilty to criminal acts, in part, because of their work on behalf of this Russian-backed Ukrainian political party. Mr. Giuliani's financial connections to the organization, the organization's close ties with the Russian government, and Mr Giuliani's ongoing public advocacy against Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election raises further questions that warrant review. " Now, Giuliani may have even played a role in obstructing justice in the Mueller investigation. During the investigation, Giuliani told CNN he was in contact with Manafort's attorneys, getting briefed on Manafort meetings with Mueller as the Mueller report lays out. Manafort had assured Gates that he had spoken to Trump's personal counsel and they were going to "take care of us." The word pardon was never used, but it didn't have to be. The question remains, if Manafort had flipped, how many more indictments could there have been? What else would have been revealed? We may never know because the influence of the president's own counsel, which includes Giuliani, apparently made a difference. Oddly, soon after Trump took office, he named Giuliani a top adviser on Cybersecurity. Everyone laughed at the time and made fun of Giuliani for being as relevant to the issue as an AOL CD. Months later, Trump announced a cyber security plan with Putin. It was quickly killed, following inevitable backlash as multiple reports have revealed the Kremlin's cyber work continues on our country and threatens our election in 2020. What is so called "cybersecurity expert" Giuliani doing about this when he's paid by the same interests furthering these attacks? There's an even darker thread to Giuliani's blood money. He's also consulted for Bahrain, (yet another regime with an abysmal human rights record), Brazil, Turkey, and a shady opposition group from Iran known as the MEK, which has killed Americans, Iranians, served as a private militia for Saddam Hussein, and was labeled a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. Giuliani himself helped to successfully lobby to get the group's terrorist label removed and he has repeatedly called for the overthrow of Iran's government. Now that very same shady Iranian opposition group is being used in John Bolton's obsessive campaign to go to war with Iran, despite U.S. intelligence, just as during the case of Cheney/Bush in Iraq, insisting that there's no legal basis. If Trump and Bolton get their Iran War, this will be Bush's invasion of Iraq all over again. Hundreds of thousands of civilians will be killed. Allies of the White House will profit. America's standing in the world will plummet, and in the chaos and destruction, terrorist groups will be born, just like ISIS was born from Bush's Iraq invasion. One has to wonder whether Trump possibly pardoning a Navy SEAL platoon leader, Edward Gallagher, who killed Iraqi civilians, as well as a Blackwater contractor who did the same, among other accused war criminals, is to normalize a type of mercenary he needs for his war with Iran. So when you see Giuliani entertaining cable news pundits on TV or on Twitter sounding like a shameless conspiracy theorist glued to a recliner in front of Fox News, keep in mind that this is a man with the influence and clear determination to unleash incalculable destruction on the world in exchange for power and profit.
Andrea Chalupa: Now we turn back to Ukraine. The country recently elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular comic who won the hearts of Ukrainians by playing a schoolteacher, whose viral video ranting against corruption leads him to becoming president. It's called "Servant of the People." That's also the name of his political party. Zelensky is a blank slate. During the election, he was vague about his positions and his advisers. Well, now that he's been sworn in as president, we're getting a clearer picture. And so far, it's not promising. Zelensky has appointed as his chief of staff, a former top official from the government of Yanukovych, the Putin puppet overthrown in Ukraine's Euromaidan Revolution. Other Yanukovych ex-officials and allies have returned to Ukraine having been driven into exile by the revolution. Clearly, they feel it's safe now. Popular anti-corruption reformers are also included in the government, but they may just be window dressing. Only time will tell. During the elections, Zelensky battled allegations that he was a puppet candidate, a revenge candidate for a powerful oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, who was busted for massive bank fraud by the outgoing president and driven abroad. That has been confirmed. So Zelensky's new chief of staff is also Kolomoisky's lawyer. While Kolomoisky has done much good for the country, including financing a private army in the early days of Russia's invasion when Ukraine's own military had been depleted under Yanukovych, Kolomoisky is ruthless and famous for having had an actual shark tank in his office. Look it up.
Andrea Chalupa: As with any administration, there's always a power struggle. The dust still has to settle, but talks of Zelensky's government potentially holding a referendum, like the Brexit referendum, to let the people vote on how best to address Russia's invasion are troubling, especially in a country saturated with oligarch-owned television networks that push their own propaganda. While Ukraine's outgoing government has cleared up Giuliani's accusations, namely against Joe Biden, (which we will go into on this show), corruption runs deep. Giuliani may get lucky, yet.
Andrea Chalupa: On today's show, we're speaking with a longtime Ukraine watcher, the Russian-American journalist and editor of the literary magazine "The Odessa Review", Vlad Davidzon, who met last month with Zelensky for about an hour on the campaign trail. Vlad, a longtime friend of mine, shares his impressions of the new president and whether he'll be up for the job. Our interview took place in early May 2019, in the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant in York City, where the great filmmaker, Sidney Lumet, a director of “12 Angry Men” used to hold rehearsals. Vlad himself is a character out of cinema; a young man who dresses in tweed suits as though he's been set designed by Wes Anderson. And, he keeps these gorgeous steampunk-like journals filled with collages, sketches, all sorts of impressions. His intricate journals have been displayed in a gallery exhibit in Odessa. During our interview, Vlad sketched in his journal, and I just wanted to paint all of that for you, of the scene of this often entertaining and always enlightening expert on the modern Ukraine, as well as on why we, here in the West, should care about what happens there.
Andrea Chalupa: So, here I am with Vlad Davidzon, the founder and editor of “The Odessa Review,” man about town, man about the world—
Vlad Davidzon: True. Thank you.
Andrea Chazupa: —a journalist and, disclaimer, Vlad and I are friends. We have been for many years. But the reason why I brought him on to the podcast was because he recently had a one-hour meeting with the newly elected president of Ukraine,
Vlad Davidzon: Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky. Thank you for having me on, Andrea. The noble Andrea, it's so great.
Andrea Chalupa: It's “Andrea.” Why did you Americanize my name just now?
Vlad Davidzon: I don't know. It's not something I typically do, but I just did. I guess,
Andrea Chalupa: When in America. Vlad, you split your time between Odessa, Ukraine and Paris?
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah. I'm based in Paris two weeks a month, and I spend a week a month in Ukraine, and a week a month in New York, which is not bad, but it is tiring sometimes.
Andrea Chalupa: Let's cut to the chase here. So, in the U.S. right now, we're all Ukraine experts. We're forced to be, because Ukraine is factoring, in a very big way, in our national politics here. It's, for one thing, a petri dish of Kremlin aggression, and another, we have the Trump White House and also Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is essentially trying to, as we've seen in recent reports, trying to get dirt on Trump's opponents out of Ukraine. That's normally not how the U.S. government works. Usually the U.S. government fights corruption. But here, in this case, we have the U.S. government trying to make a deal out of corruption. So, I want to hear from you, all your thoughts on what we can expect out of Ukraine with a changing of the guard; a new president that very much seems like an empty vessel, a blank canvas. A lot of voters, nearly 75 percent of voters voted him in, which is an overwhelming condemnation of the outgoing administration and a big vote of faith in him. Even though, he was, as has been reported, pretty vague on his advisors and his positions and so forth. And so I think Americans have been getting a lot of questions, which is why I ask you come on the show, where is everything going in Ukraine? And just sort of giving us the lay of the land there, what we should expect? What should we look for? Then we can go into issues from there.
Vlad Davidzon: Okay, so let's unpack all that. Piece by piece. First of all, Ukraine absolutely is the battleground in the middle of everything, the liberal-Democratic/Undemocratic split, east/west, the future and the past. It is the battleground where lots of other processes are taking place. It is the place where, I think, the European Union and the Western alliance make their stand. It's an extremely important country. It is a post-Soviet republic, which is chaotic and undemocratic, but has many, many, many problems and is making an attempt to break from the past and reinvent itself. It will be a light on to the rest of the post-Soviet world, as Mr. Zelensky himself said upon winning the presidency, now two weeks ago. It is a remarkably important country and people are only understanding that now. Now with Mr. Giuliani, it's very interesting. I think the entire American political class, to a great extent, has debased themselves. We'll go off into the details, but just to start with Mr. Giuliani. This is a gentleman who is accusing Mr. Biden, whose son unwisely took a job on a board of directors in Ukraine a couple of years ago, and thus opened his father up and himself up to accusations of political chicanery. Mr. Giuliani himself has spent the last five years running around Ukraine making money. America's mayor in Kharkiv, meeting with the "mobster mayor" of Kharkiv, Mr. Giuliani has. I try not to be partisan. I live outside of the United States and I see what both parties have done, in terms of making money in Ukraine, which is plentiful there. But Mr. Giuliani is the last person who should be talking about corruption in Ukraine, because he's been running around Kyiv and Kharkiv for the last four or five years making money, hand over fist.
[Commercial break] Andrea Chalupa: Are you using social media sites to stay in touch with friends and family, only to discover that these sites are monitored by autocratic governments and spies? Well, Gaslit Nation fans, we have an alternative and safe way of documenting your life and staying in touch with the people you love. And it makes an amazing gift for Father's Day too. It's called "StoryWorth." Here's how it works. First, you purchase a subscription for someone you love, and each week, Storyworth sends them an email with a question about their life. Then, they simply reply to this email with their story. All stories are private and only shared with the people that you choose. Finally, after a while, their stories will be bound into a beautiful, keepsake book. This is a great way to stay in touch with your loved ones and preserve your memories for generations to come. Data on StoryWorth is secure and everything is private by default. You control who sees your stories. Take that, Cambridge Analytica. Storyworth is a great way to record your family history without nosy, data mining companies getting in your business. Visit storyworth.com/gaslit for 20 dollars off when you subscribe. That's storyworth.com/gaslit. [End commercial break]
Andrea Chalupa: And to be clear, that New York Times piece that came out by Ken Vogel, who also was the author of The Politico piece claiming my sister colluded with Ukraine in 2016. So there's a bit of a pattern that's clearly emerged with Vogel's own reporting and being an easy mark in journalism. We can place hit pieces on opponents, clearly, as we've seen. But in terms of the prosecutor, Shokin, that Biden was pressuring to have fired, Shokin was one of the worst prosecutors that was in that government.
Vlad Davidzon: That's absolute true. First of all, anyone who works in Ukraine and follows Ukrainian politics, as I and my colleagues do, knew that Shokin was really, really, really bad news. Mr. Shokin was a corrupt member of the old guard, and he was installed by President Poroshenko, who will now be leaving office in about a month for three weeks, (no later than June the second), he was installed to keep control over political and politically sensitive cases. Mr. Shokin was bad news. Whenever the Americans, or the Dutch, or the British, or the French, or the NATO ambassador, or the U.N. ambassador, or whoever, or the IMF resident representative, whichever responsible adult was coming into Mr. Poroshenko's office to have a conversation with him off the record about things that needed to be done, the first thing that they would always go through the top of their list was the need to sack Mr. Shokin. For like a year and a half, this is all responsible elites from Europe, America, Canada, NATO, the European Union, demanded of the president of Ukraine. So, Mr. Shokin was really bad news and that interpretation of the facts is, to me, a Ukrainian, frankly ridiculous.
Andrea Chalupa: Yeah, without question. And there is zero indication, from anywhere, that Biden had anything to do with any potential investigation into the company that his son served on the board for. So, independent of all that, this was a prosecutor general, which is the same position in the U.S. as attorney general, he was somebody who was caught up in his own corruption schemes. Could you go into that a little bit?
Vlad Davidzon: That's been widely reported on in both the Ukrainian press and within specialist press, the Atlantic Council blog, foreign policy. If you go back and look at the kinds of things that he was accused of doing, Mr. Shokin was more accused of being a kind of a roof for political cases which Mr. Poroshenko didn't want touched. I mean, the corruption was more that his job was to guard the old elite from being prosecuted. That's what Mr. Shokin was doing. Mr. Biden, his son, that was not good wisdom to have taken a job like that on a board while his father was vice president. He was put on that board because of who his father was, not because of his own business experience. All sorts of political analysts and political operatives and journalists that I know who have talked about that case have said, yeah of course, this is a silly article and a silly accusation from Mr. Giuliani. But, Mr. Biden's son made a bad decision in terms of his own father's political career taking that job, which he should not have done. And if I if I had a son in that situation, I think my son would know not to do that.
Andrea Chalupa: Without question. But at the same time, Biden was one of the best allies for Ukraine, as we all know, in the Obama administration. And it was too bad that his son got involved, then we all thought that was weird at the time. With Poroshenko though, specifically, the outgoing president who took a beating, a beating...
Vlad Davidzon: He was brutalized.
Andrea Chalupa: They spanked him out of town.
Vlad Davidzon: I was an election monitor, these elections I was an international election monitor. In the election precincts that I observed in southern Ukraine, I observed 14 or 15 election precincts. In some precincts that I observed, President Zelensky was getting 10 votes for every vote that the sitting president was getting. He was outvoted 3 to 1. This is the biggest margin in the history of Eastern European politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think any East bloc, Warsaw Pact country; Romania, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, this is the biggest beating that anyone has gotten in a presidential election in the last 29 years, 28 years. This is an utter and total, and categoric humiliation for a sitting president, who twice negotiated peace accords with the Russians.
Andrea Chalupa: So tell me, how do you explain such a beating?
Vlad Davidzon: It's a great question. I mean, it's been five years since the Maidan. Expectations were really high. They were unmet. They probably could never have been met. Much of the reform agenda, and there's been tremendous reform, the Ukrainians did more in four years than they had in the previous 25. Much of that reform is very technical, very difficult to explain to Ukrainians. That said, the president certainly continued making money, and he continued shielding old elites. He certainly did not do as much as he could have. He could have really done a lot more, a lot of people thought. The economy is growing at 3 percent but, you know, when between 2014 and 15, the economy collapses because of the war, and the hryvnia loses 70 percent of its value, a lot of people are living very very difficult lives. And they know that it'll be another generation before they catch up with Poland, the way they were, if they continue growing at 3 to 4 percent a year. The war has ground on. 13,000 Ukrainians are dead. There's just a lot, including the complete monopoly on the airwaves by President Poroshenko's political opponents; who, for years and years were saying that he's a very bad guy, that he is not doing enough. The propaganda, or the television coverage from the television stations owned by his political opponents, it really hits mark after a couple of years of attrition.
Andrea Chalupa: So he wasn't actually that bad? All those factors combined, the high expectations following a revolution where dozens of people gave their lives to live in a stable democracy free of widespread corruption, as well as Putin's ongoing invasion, which certainly was not his fault. And then the propaganda apparatus of all these oligarch-owned TV networks. So you think that all those factors combined, he just caught a bad break?
Vlad Davidzon: I think he could have done a lot more than he did, especially with communications. He didn't communicate well what he did well, which was foreign diplomacy, which was stewarding international relations, which was getting two very big things: the free visa deal with Europe, and the creation, after three or four hundred years, of an independent Ukrainian church outside of Moscow. Those things, which is to say international relations, he still did very well, and there were real successes. But I think it just wasn't enough. The election campaign was based on his slogan, something like "army, language, religion", and so those three things which were real accomplishments; the language policy, the cultural policy, the creation of a really serious Ukrainian army and a capacity to defend the state, and the creation of an independent Ukrainian church, I think ultimately, people said "those things are great", but what I care about is corruption. What I care about is my pocketbook. What I care about is my living standards, which are really down. What I care about is the fact that none of the corrupt political elite has been replaced, that this man has served his role as a bridge between the old Ukraine and the Ukraine, and it's time for him to go.
Andrea Chalupa: And it certainly doesn't help optics when you go through something like 4 prosecutor generals in five years.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah it really doesn't help. He really wasn't willing to give up control on that. He really wanted to keep control of which cases go up and go down, which cases are open, which closed. He was not willing to open an independent court for anti-corruption. He wanted some kind of chamber alternative to a court. He didn't do that till after the first round of the presidential election when he was trounced before the second round. It was too little, too late. He was not willing to do certain things that he should have done three or four years before, until two weeks before the second round, when he knew he was going to lose and he needed to do as many things as quickly as possible.
Andrea Chalupa: So Ukraine's revolution that overthrew Yanukovich , who was arguably the most corrupt president Ukraine has had, it very much had a mandate of fighting corruption, and out of that emerges this oligarch President Poroshenko. And you would think, even though he was an oligarch, he was on the ground there in Maidan, Maidan being in a leaderless movement that brought together people from all walks of life in Ukrainian society, and even all over the world. And so it's sort of strange that after all the violence that he saw up close, that he wouldn't be transformed by that on any level and do what his mandate ordered, which was fight corruption from the very beginning of his term. So why did he wait so long?
Vlad Davidzon: Well look, it's not fair, totally, to say that he didn't do anything to fight corruption there. From sector to sector really varies. On procurement, especially, the Ukrainians did a fantastic job of cleaning up procurement which, is 10 percent of GDP leaking away a year. Or was it 10 percent of GDP or 10 percent of the budget? I forget, but one or the other. Basically, 10 percent of a budget was leaking away every year for procurement abuse. They set up a market for procurement, which was just totally automated, totally on the Internet, that got rid of certain kinds of corruption. Other kinds of corruption were minimized. Certain kinds of things, like V.A.T. corruption, tax corruption, they set up international best practices to get rid of that stuff. On other things like the Army Procurement, which was never really reformed, medical reform didn't go through, pension reform didn't really go through, it really depends which sector you're looking. Banking reform? They did. Education reform, they did a lot, but they didn't do quite enough. They certainly didn't communicate enough what they did, and he wasn't willing to give up power. Certainly Ukraine is much better now than it was five years ago in terms of corruption, and really you have to prepare people for a generation-long fight to build a new country. And I think people were expecting in one presidential term, things would really change overnight and would be Disneyland. But that's not the way things worked in a country like that.
Andrea Chalupa: There is also an antagonistic relationship that he had with reformers in the country and activists, and simply being called out, and people feeling isolated from the reform process itself.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah, he was just very thin skinned, but autocratic, very arrogant.
Andrea Chalupa: Burying the lead here Vlad.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah, he was not very good on the campaign trail. He's autocratic in terms of his style, democratic in terms of the policy, but in the way that he campaigned, he was not very charismatic. He was not very open. He's an old guard man, he's definitely "homo sovieticus." He's about 52, 53 years old now. He comes from a Red director’s family. He did not adapt very well to the new democratic way of doing things, and he was not great on the campaign trail. So, he was outmaneuvered by a young, energetic, very open, very socially media savvy young man by the name of Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky.
Andrea Chalupa: And so you touched on something which is still a big problem in Ukraine, which I think everyone should be aware of now that we're talking a lot in the U.S. about authoritarianism and how it works, and it's this "Soviet mindset". ROSIN For Ukraine, this nonprofit group in New York asked me to moderate a panel with Ukrainian journalists just to talk about the "Soviet mindset", and to confront it, because they feel like it really stands in the way of people growing Ukraine into a modern, stable democracy. Poroshenko, for everything I've been reading over the years, he suffered from that Soviet mindset. It's that top-down command, autocratic command, and not allowing the democratization of ideas and talent to rise to the surface and just letting go of controls of all sorts.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah, I mean, there is this concept that political scientists and Sovietologists, and Soviet people, and Russia studies people, Ukraine studies people use called "Homo Sovieticus", Soviet man. So I don't think that Poroshenko was the worst example of this, but he certainly is a byproduct of his time. He was already an adult man when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he was already formed. And he was formed even more in the in the wild 90s. He's been in politics, I think, since 1997 or 1998. He was already 30, I think, by the time he was in the Ukrainian parliament, twenty-nine or thirty, and he's already set in his ways. He wasn't able to adapt to new ways of doing things.
Andrea Chalupa: So now, you have this young, modern, western -facing President which was able to leverage the power of social media to communicate to everyone in a very fresh and different way. And what's really interesting about him which I don't think was utilized enough on the campaign from what I read certainly not in the Western press is his wife is really impressive. She's a screenwriter who collaborated very closely with her husband in building their famous show where he plays the president of Ukraine. That's the first seasons available on Netflix, it's called The Servant of the People. The future first lady of Ukraine Mrs. Zelensky, she did an interview with Anna Nemtsova at the Daily Beast where she came out sounding like a lot of the hipster kids from Hromadske.tv, an independent media network and who are you know backing Maidan and sounds very modern. Can we believe that when they talk about human rights and the importance of protecting a free press and multiculturalism in Ukraine and sort of that whole spirit that is very much this new face of Ukraine that the outgoing administration shut out?
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah first of all, shout out to Ana, great journalist and a friend and she's lovely and hardest working woman and Russian American media. She's great. The new first lady is a woman who wears cool dresses with sneakers. She is modern they have a modern sensibility of a modern marriage obviously. Is Zelensky really a modern man? I think he's half and half. He's very interesting. In this case he’s from the Ukrainian south. He's from the southeast. You have to really understand his background. He is 12 years younger than Mr. Poroshenko. He's 41 years old. He is born to a Jewish intelligentsia family in Kryvyi Rih, in southeast Ukraine, which is a very, very, very gritty industrial town. He's from a Russian speaking family. His culture is much more Russian than it is Ukrainian. And he made a lot of crude ethnic jokes and gay jokes of a kind that wouldn't pass muster in New York in 2019 or anywhere in American in 2019. The humor is very 80s, early 90s kind of vaudeville borscht belt kind of rough humor. I don't think It's badly intentioned, but it's not the kind of thing that would pass muster here. So he is from a Jewish intelligentsia family. He is very post-Soviet, post-Soviet like early nineties, as opposed to the 80s and late 70s when Poroshenko grew up. His culture is modern Ukrainian in a different way than with some of his other reformers in that he's not really an ethno-nationalist. He doesn't speak Ukrainian all that well. He's learning it now. He spoke to me in English more than Ukrainian. I spoke to him in English and Russian, mostly in English, and a bit of Russian. And he doesn't like to speak Ukrainian for very long. He drops back into Russian. He's very, very Russian culture oriented. His election represents the victory of the cohabitation of two visions of Ukrainian culture, as opposed to Ukraine-ization. So that's very obvious. The 2014 to 2019 process of Ukraine-ization as it was being shepherded along by half the country is over. That's what this represents. For better or for worse, right? That process has been halted. Maybe it'll start again. Maybe things will go differently after the next president comes to power from another part of the country. But he really represents a kind of Russian speaking, Ukrainian patriot intelligentsia that is cool with speaking Ukrainian a little bit, and will send their kids to Ukrainian speaking schools and is OK with the grandkids being totally Ukrainian speaking, and as a patriot of a country and has done business and lived in Moscow. But he's not the same guy, certainly, as Poroshenko, with his Vinnytsia power base of people from western Ukraine. It's a different thing. So is he modern? Yes. Is he modern in the same kind of way that we think of modern here? Maybe not so much. It's very interesting, he's a hybrid case.
Andrea Chalupa: Okay, so what does that mean for the country?
Vlad Davidzon: He has a buy in from the Russian speaking part of the population which was certainly doesn't want to live in Russia, certainly doesn't want war, certainly doesn't want to be dominated or occupied by Russian business or Russian political elites, but is uncomfortable with change taking place very quickly. In the first round he won 19 out of 24 regions, with two regions going to the ultra-Russian candidate, Lugansk, Donetsk obviously and then two regions going to President Poroshenko in the far west and one region going to mister Tymoshenko former Prime Minister Tymoshenko. He won 19 out of 24 regions in the first round and he won twenty three out of 24 regions in the second round with only Lviv going to sitting President Poroshenko by a very small margin of 57 to 43, 57% only for sitting president. Some regions, including my own Odessa, 85% for President elect Zelensky. Next to the war zone, Donetsk Lugansk, almost 90%, nine voters out of 10 went for Zelensky. This is a rebuttal to the sitting president. You could read in different ways, you could also read it as a refrain, a repost against Ukraine-ization as it was taking place.
Andrea Chalupa: What does that mean? There's also a lot of patriotism that came out of the revolution itself. I heard a lot more Ukrainian in the streets of Kyiv you had kids painting bridges and fences and things like in the colors the Ukrainian flag. So why would there be a backlash against that?
Vlad Davidzon: It's a very interesting thing. Anyone who says that Ukrainian was being put upon regions south and east, that's not true. The effect of the Maidan was to change Ukrainian nationalism of the flag and the blue colors in the Ukrainian language from being an ethno-nationalism to being a civic nationalism. Anyone who ran around with Ukrainian flag before 2014 was an ethno-nationalist as opposed to a civic nationalist. So the might Maidan Revolution of was very good in that it made Ukrainian and the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian aesthetics and the Ukrainian semiotics and symbols and history and culture into something that Greeks and Bulgarians and Russian speakers from Odessa and people in the Belarussian border could accept as a national identity outside of its traditional ethnic components. I'm certainly not against this and I'm talking about this as an outside observer and that said the process of Ukraine-ization which was changing the language that people outside of Ukrainian speaking regions were teaching their kids in which was making minimum percent of Ukrainian language that that had to be heard on television on radio which, by the way, totally normative, because the French do it, lots of other people do it. There's no problem with that. Ukrainians passed the law saying that 40% of television content and radio content had to be in the Ukrainian language. That is ok. Ukrainian is the one government language that normative for liberal democracy in Europe. However, some parts of Ukraine in the Southeast and in the East were not comfortable at the pace of change. So whether President Poroshenko was voted out of office because of the language politics or because of the poverty or because of a corruption or because of the fact that he was a bad communicator, or because Ukrainians historically don't give presidents a second chance. Out of six presidents of Ukraine, only one has ever been re-elected to a second term. No one else has ever been re-elected other than President Kuchma. You could look at the results in many different ways. But certainly, his view of the way that Ukraine will deal with competing visions of the culture for the future is going to be more like Belgium than like France. Which is to say two nations cohabiting easily uneasily with arrangements with understandings. But certainly the 2014 to 19 period of the Ukrainian language and Ukraine-ization spreading in educational and institutional and cultural positions that is not going to be rolled back probably but that's coming to a halt. And I make no normative judgments about this as an outsider. I certainly don't believe that the country should have two languages Ukrainian should be the language of policy and administration and of the legal system and of the educational system. Obviously, there's a lot of minorities in Ukraine who need to be allowed to educate their children also in the local level. That’s a question of Federalization. I'm not against Ukrainization, but certain people in the southeast are.
Andrea Chalupa: Just to provide some context for audience wondering why we keep going on and on about language why that's such a hot button issue for Ukraine.
Vlad Davidzon: Well, it's a number of things. Number one, the history there of eastern Ukraine, it was before Stalin came in with a deliberate policy of colonization which included banning the Ukrainian language forcing everyone to speak Russian.
Vlad Davidzon: And importation of Russian speakers from other parts of the Soviet Union. It's an incredibly important and interesting history. People in the West who say that the language issue is a huge issue typically don't know what they're talking about, or they're spouting Kremlin talking points
Andrea Chalupa:zThat's exactly right. I was in Civic Hall, a wonderful, forward thinking progressive organization that focuses on tech freedom and a lot of important democracy issues and a very bright young woman from a very democratic pro-Western progressive organization was talking to me about Ukraine and she's not Ukrainian. And she's saying Oh how are the Russian speakers in Kyiv. Are they safe?
Vlad Davidzon: Yes, they are safe. I speak Russian in Kyiv all the time and no one's ever been anything but very, very, very polite to me. I've never in my entire life asked anyone to speak Russian to me without them offering I'm not a native speaker of Ukrainian. My Ukrainians, okay now, you know I'm from a Russian-American diaspora and my wife is Ukrainian. We speak Russian and French to each other but no one's ever said to me, "don't speak Russian in any part of Ukraine", and I've never asked anyone not to speak Ukrainian to me. And you know I've always made an effort to demonstrate respect for the language and everyone does. It's a country where no one demands that anyone speak the language that they're not comfortable in. Language politics is not very important. It is something that was mobilized historically by politicians once every five years before elections for the most part, not to say entirely, but for the most part, it's not important whatsoever.
Andrea Chalupa: The reason why we're getting the weeds on this is because Russian propaganda has exploited this to the point where they've tricked westerners into thinking that there's an oppressive thing going on against Russian speakers inside Ukraine when it's simply not. And that's why we're kind of beating this dead horse quite a bit. But I do want to say also you know my grandfather is from eastern Ukraine, from Donbass, which is now Russian speaking. But when he was born and grew up there, it was Ukrainian speaking and Stalin came in and just shut down Ukrainian national identity and imprisoned the intelligentsia killed the intelligentsia shut down all their organizations and churches and so forth. Whatever was left of any sort of churches at that point and forced everyone to speak Russian. So it is very painful. It is a symbol of Kremlin imperialism and genocide also, because all those conditions of attacking Ukrainian national identity were followed by Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, which deliberately mass murdered millions, 90 percent of the victims were Ukrainian there. So with that, it is a very loaded issue for Ukrainians, but there as Vlad said, that people should carry on with their day and speak whatever they want ,and I've run errands with a friend in Kyiv who's from Donbass and he spoke Russian when he's picking up his prescription pills and the woman behind the counter spoke Ukrainian and they got along fine and everything. Nobody batted an eye.
Vlad Davidzon: That happens every day, people speaking to each other and one speaks Ukrainian, the other speaks Russian. And also, a lot of people speak a Slavic patois which is just a very, very odd and illiterate rural mix of Ukrainian and Russian. Lots of people just mix up Russian and Ukrainian in the same sentence. They conjugate words incorrectly, they make up Russian-Ukrainian conjugations on the go.
Andrea Chalupa: And the big cherry on the Sunday of this topic is that Putin invaded Ukraine claiming that he needed to protect Russian speakers
Vlad Davidzon: And Russian speaking minorities. That's a good transition back to Ukraine's new Jewish Russian speaking Ukrainian nationalist president elect.
Andrea Chalupa: So what is Putin going to do now that the other favorite line that Kremlin propaganda likes to use not only in their whole propaganda machine domestically but also in the social media box they'd like to drive this fake narrative that Ukraine is a fascist far right state and there was all these neo-Nazis and the Euromaidan Revolution was neo-Nazi. And even though there is a far-right problem of course in Ukraine there is in every single country in Europe like there is in the U.S. like there is in Canada, it gets blown out of proportion because the Kremlin makes sure it gets blown out of proportion and really tries to label anything Ukrainian with a with a neo-Nazi far right framing. And so, the big joke is OK well what's the Kremlin going to do now that the president is Jewish?
Vlad Davidzon: And the Prime Minister's Jewish also by the way. Ukraine is now the only country other than Israel whose Prime Minister both head of state and head of government are Jewish gentlemen who were both born in the same exact week in 1978 in the first month, I think was second month of 1978. One in Vinnytsia, the other one in Dnipro. Yeah, it's totally bizarre. Yeah. It shows how accepting Ukrainians are that they didn't really care whatsoever about Mr. Zelensky is philosophically Jewish and of Jewish descent and as a Jewish identity. Although I do think he baptized his kids in the Orthodox faith. But you know it doesn't matter. He's as Jewish as the day is long. When you look at him and you talk to him and the entire Ukrainian electorate knew this and voted they voted against Mr. Poroshenko anyway.
Andrea Chalupa: They didn't really care. That's the thing.
Vlad Davidzon: And he was open about it in the election interviews. He didn't hide it. He never played it up nor played it down he said, “Yeah, I'm Jewish. You know I also speak Russian and I'm a Ukrainian. Who cares?” The entire population who was watching television and saw those interviews knew and didn't care.
Andrea Chalupa: You're Jewish yourself, and you focus on a lot of those issues, and in your writing, you write for Tablet and a lot of other Jewish interest outlets. So you've been covering Jewish issues in Ukraine for a very long time and you have a very long lens on the very rich history between Ukrainians and Jews going back many, many centuries. And could you speak a little bit about that?
Vlad Davidzon: Yes. So obviously the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukrainian jurors becoming more Ukrainian and obviously there most of them spoke Russian at home. But now the Ukrainian Jewish population is more Ukrainian speaking. Jews live a normal life and in Ukraine and Kyiv and in Kharkiv, in Odessa, there are large Jewish communities of Ukrainians who are of Jewish descent and go to synagogue. They've transition from being Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine citizens of Jewish descent to being Ukrainian Jews. It's a very important and interesting process. Again, both the president and the prime minister of Ukraine now are of Jewish patrimony. And it just shows that the country is safe. And you know the relationship between Ukraine and Israel is very strong and very important and in fact the last thing that President Poroshenko did in foreign policy that no one really noticed even after the—
Andrea Chalupa: The independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow.
Vlad Davidzon: The last thing that President Poroshenko did symbolically in January February of this year was signed a long expected and long negotiated Israeli Ukrainian trade accord which had been under negotiation for seven years and he fast tracked that so he could have done before the elections.
Andrea Chalupa: And you're writing I think as your article for Tablet, you wrote that Poroshenko, the outgoing president, created a "golden age" for Jews in Ukraine.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah. Well what I said was a golden age of Jewish Ukrainian relations in Ukraine on the state level on the intergovernmental level on the level of Jewish elites’ relationship to the government in terms of the government listening to their interests and inviting them to speak at things it has is as good as it's ever been. I mean you know, President Poroshenko was a vital Semite, he put a lot of effort into the Jewish relationship. And the seventy fifth anniversary of Babi Yar in 2016, he really put a lot of effort into making that into a world class thing. And he should be remembered even though he's not, he's going to be a one term president, as a president who's done a lot for that very important relationship for a minority that has lived in Ukraine for hundreds and hundreds of years and has done so much to build the country.
Andrea Chalupa: Do you think Zelensky will continue that?
Vlad Davidzon: Well, Zelensky is himself a member of the Jewish minority. So obviously he's not gonna be any government anti-Semitism under a Jewish president clearly nor would we expect that. The relationship between Ukraine and Israel is extremely interesting and complicated because
Andrea Chalupa: It's not just about Israel as well right
Vlad Davidzon: No, no, no, no, no, it's not. It's not just about Israel it's about relationships to the Jewish diaspora and relationships between Ukrainian Jews and the Ukrainian government.
Andrea Chalupa: But you're right that Israel does play an important role for Ukraine for a number of reasons including a lot of Ukrainian soldiers get sent abroad to Israel for all types of medical treatment.
Vlad Davidzon: Yeah, yeah Israelis have been very helpful that and lots of lots of Ukrainian Jews who have service an Israeli Defense Force came back to Ukraine to fight in the east, including friends of mine. I know tons of guys from Kyiv in Odessa who were young guys and went off to study in Israel or live in a kibbutz and then serve in the army and find themselves who in their late 20s or early 30s came back to do business to Ukraine. A lot of these guys picked up rifles and went off to fight with their idea of training against separatists and Russian invaders. There are tons of cases like that. I know a lot of them a lot of IDF guys Ukrainian Jewish guys helped on the Maidan to train the Maidan revolutionaries. So that's a healthy relationship. Well you have to understand is that Russia is now with the American withdrawal from the Middle East Russia is now very much a Middle East power in the way that has not been since the 1970s. So Ukraine, Israel and Russia are in a triangular position which most people do not understand which is incredibly rich incredibly complex and incredibly interesting. So the Israelis have a very complex relationship. They have hundreds of thousands of citizens from both countries Russia and Ukraine and a lot of these people, Ukrainian Jews and Russian Jews and Israeli Jews they're literally relatives. So it's the first time since the First World War where European Jews aren't two sides of a war. This has not happened in 100 years. With the very quirky exception of Finland fighting on the side of the axis and not purging its army of Jewish officers there were like 500 Jews during World War fighting in black S.S. Uniforms in Finland. But nobody knows that. And that's a it's a quirky historical fact that no one knows about this. To really see European Jews on two sides of a war of a conflict, this has not happened in 100 years. And this is an extremely interesting thing to me.
Andrea Chalupa: Israel sort of caught in the middle of Ukraine and Russia.
Vlad Davidzon: Absolutely. Israel has Russian officers fighting shoulder to shoulder with al-Quds guys with Iranian expeditionary forces on the Golan Heights on the border. Netanyahu has literally flown several I think four times by now to Moscow to negotiate a buffer zone with the Russians. How closely will Iranian troops get to the Israeli border? That is to a large extent decided in Moscow.
Andrea Chalupa: Right. And Russia being a close ally of Iran.
Vlad Davidzon: A very close ally indeed yes. Certainly, in Syria it is. Again, some of the same troops who fought Ukrainians in the Donboss, in eastern Ukraine, were several months or a year later fighting alongside Iranian guys and Shiite forces expeditionary forces against Syria and Sunnis on behalf of the Syrian government. So it's all incredibly interwoven. This is the new Middle East and it's intimately connected to what's going on in Ukraine between the Russians and Ukrainians.
Music
Andrea Chalupa: We are living in abnormal times right now and you need a new strategy, and you need to evolve. And you did pivot, and you need to confront the challenges face-on. Not come out with this outdated strategy that makes you look so tone deaf to the crisis that not only the U.S., but the world is up against right now. So to deal with these abnormal times we find ourselves in, we hear a gasoline nation take a strong stance of saying no to Savior Syndrome. The only thing that's going to get us out of this is self-reliance and holding our leaders accountable. And the only power we have left that we can rely on is grassroots power. To illustrate our point, here's Cher providing a useful metaphor for these times. Rely on no one but your own hard work and dedication. That's the only way out of this. Awaken your inner Cher.
Interviewer: You said a man is not a necessity. A man is a luxury like dessert.
Cher: Yeah, a man is absolutely not a necessity.
Interviewer: Did you mean that to sound mean and bitter?
Cher: Oh, not at all. I adore dessert. I love men and I think men are the coolest. But you don't really need them to live. My mom said to me, “You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.” I said, “Mom I am a rich man."
Andrea: Andrea Chalupa: Welcome to the Gaslit Nation action guide available on our website, gaslitnationpod.com. Democracy is a lifestyle. Trump is a symptom of the corruption, institutional failure and indifference that we can no longer tolerate.
Sarah: Sarah Kendzior: Okay, so number one, get a guide. Stride toward freedom, the Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King, Junior is an essential guide to self-management, managing others and building teams. This inspirational case study of resistance written by a young MLK after successfully leading the Montgomery bus boycott shows how smart organization took on the authoritarianism of the Jim Crow south. Never forget the MLK was considered a radical in his day, even though there's nothing radical about demanding human rights and dignity. Today, the same remains true. It's not radical or socialist to demand that corporations stop polluting for profits and to call for an end to tax breaks like for sending jobs overseas that worsen the income inequality crisis. To help communicate these urgent issues, another essential guide is the all new Don't Think of An Elephant. Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff.
Andrea: Andrea Chalupa: Number two of the Gaslit Nation action guide. Focus on state races. States decide key quality of life issues and local candidates help drive votes up ballot for federal races. EveryDistrict and Future Now are two excellent groups working to build a progressive infrastructure and turn states blue from the bottom up. Get involved by donating what you can or join or start your own group with their help in your state. We provide in our action guide interviews with EveryDistrict and Future Now for more background.
Sarah: Sarah Kendzior: Number three, join. Grassroots power is one of the strongest forms of power we have left in America, especially with Mitch McConnell and Trump packing the courts. Don't succumb to savior syndrome by expecting Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or whomever else you admire to do all the work. Representatives are human and need our help fulfill the far right's worst nightmare by creating generations of AOC by helping build a more progressive union. Join a local group from any of these great national organizations for important action alerts like demonstrations or getting out the vote Indivisible, Swing Left, Sister District, MoveOn, Flippable.
Andrea: Andrea Chalupa: Number four, fight global warming. Sunrise Movement is a grassroots organization demanding a green new deal. There are a lot of other groups working to adopt urgently needed green initiatives. C40 cities connect cities around the world committed to taking climate action. 350.org helps activists rise to the challenge of the climate crisis and there are more trusted organizations that need our support linked to on our action guide.
Sarah: Sarah Kendzior: Number five, unionize. In the age of Trump, there should be no more fear of starting or joining a union. Just tell your boss that you saw how unions protected workers during the universally unpopular Trump shutdown. Fight for 15 and its local variants are working to ensure a fair wage and strengthen unions in the service sector. Don't know how to get started? Read organizing to win: new research on union strategies and No Shortcuts: organizing for power in the new gilded age, both of which are linked to the Gaslit Nation website.
Andrea: Andrea Chalupa: Number six, run for something. There are a lot of great groups out there that demystify the process of becoming a candidate and running a campaign. Run for something is one of our favorites. There's even a book to help you get started. Run for something: a real talk guide to fixing the system yourself by Amanda Litman. If you believe in facts and science and are a compassionate human being, you need to run for something and recruit others to as well. Even if it's a long shot, you can still create urgent conversations and treat your campaign like a platform for discussions you care about helping bring together like-minded people to work for change even long past the election. Just look at what a refreshing discovery long shot Mayor Pete has been and all the great work Andrew Gillum continues to do to register 1 million voters in Florida.
Sarah: Sarah Kendzior: Number seven, protect the vote. EveryDistrict action fund just launched a quote "report card" identifying states with enough progressive support and local governments to push through important voting reforms like automatic registration and the abolishment of racist voter ID laws. Is your state on the list? You can click a link and find out. If so, EveryDistrict action fund empowers you to help your state reach the gold standard of voting. Concerned about vote hacking and Ivanka Trump branded voting machines? Yes, that is a thing. Secure Our Votes provides background information and other resources to take action. Other groups to check out are Spread the Vote, Let America Vote, and Project ID which helped people get the information they need to register, vote and get an ID. And again, these are linked to on our site.
Andrea: Sarah Kendzior: Number eight, launch ballot initiatives and laws. Why not launch a ballot initiative? Kate Faghe turned her Facebook post into the movement Voters Not Politicians to end gerrymandering in Michigan. It passed overwhelmingly. We have a link on our action guide for you to read more of her story or you could build a grassroots coalition to get a law passed in your state. In our episode "how to pass a law," I interview my mother about how she, while pregnant with me and a young mother already without any political experience, mobilized a grassroots army to pass the child car seat law in California. Yes, it can be done.
Sarah: Andrea Chalupa: Number nine, end terrorism in America. Moms Demand works to elect candidates and lobby for sensible legislation to stop the gun violence epidemic driven by the blood money gun lobby, the NRA. Southern Poverty Law Center exposes white supremacy, a leading terrorist movement in America to help immigrant communities deliberately terrorized by Trump's cruel border policies. We have a list linked here of groups that you can support.
Andrea: Sarah Kendzior: Number 10, make art. To say that art cannot make a difference stems from a tone-deaf attitude of privilege. Ukraine's Euromaidan Revolution of 2013 to 2014 relied on art and artists of all kinds to sustain protesters living in Arctic cold temperatures and under the threat of government sanctioned violence. North Korean dissident Yeon Mi Park said that Orwell's Animal Farm helped her heal after escaping the cult like dictatorship. And in our episode The Blue Wave continues, Kansas rising, we shared Davis Hammett's account of how painting a rainbow house created a ripple effect in Kansas leading to major electoral victories. We need the artists and storytellers of all kinds more than ever.
Sarah: Sarah Kendzior: So this is not a comprehensive list of suggestions of how you can create a more progressive America and stop entrenched corruption. There are many paths you can take, and we encourage you to think for yourself and to work together. There is no one solution whether you're in a blue state or a red state, these ideas apply to you. Do not take any of the freedoms you have left for granted. Never underestimate the power of hard work. Additionally, we have a reading list linked to you from there because it's essential to read widely to understand how we got here and the best ways to navigate the challenges of the 21st century. So again, all of this is available on our site, GaslitNationpod.com
Andrea Chalupa: Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon. It helps keep us going. Our editor for this was Karlyn Daigle, Original music for Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Visenberg, Nick Farr, Damian Arriaga and Karlyn Daigle. Our phenomenal logo was designed by the genius that is Hamish Smith at the New York based design firm Order. Thank you so much Hamish. Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level on Patreon, Allen Lew, Page Harrington, Adam Levine, Alexandria Lane Detweiler, David Porter, A.W. Nicholson, Lena De Guzman. Jared Lombardo, Jason Bainbridge, Jody Dewitt, John Ripley, Kate Cotton, Kelly Ranson, Kevin M. Garnette, Lorraine W. Todd, Phyllis Schroeder, Stephanie Brant, MD. Cary Brady, Zachary Lemon, Anne Marshall, Atila Halsey, Brian Tejuden, Carolyn Friend, Catherine Anderson, Corrina, Kathy Cavenaugh, Lorina Guardia, Ethan Man, Jason Rita, Jennifer Slavic, Yans Astrop Alinson, John Danverough. John Keane, Kenshiro Nakagawa. Kevin Christie, Kim Mellon, Christy Vital, Lawrence Graham, Luke Stranded, Margaret Mo, Matthew Copeland, Marine Murphy, Michelle Dash, Mike Beat Matheran. Mike Tropico, Ronda White, Rich Croft, Sonya Bogdanovic, Ted Gary Mitchell, Thomas Burns, Victoria Olsen and Zach Rowsdower. Thank you all so much for your help. We could not make this show without you.