There isn't a single NATO country with a military that can fight the way Ukraine does
Ukrainska Pravda
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A US diplomat with more than three decades of service, George Kent is widely regarded as one of Washington's most knowledgeable voices on Ukraine and the post-Soviet region.
He served under five US presidents, held senior positions at the State Department, and from 2023 to 2024 was the US Ambassador to Estonia. Earlier, Kent worked extensively on Ukraine, including as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kyiv.
Now retired from official duty, Kent has not stepped away from Ukraine. He continues to visit the country regularly, supporting it in less formal but no less tangible ways – from organising a cross-country bicycle ride with his family in the United States to raise funds and awareness among ordinary Americans, to building bridges between Ukrainian initiatives and foreign partners, and fostering networks between Ukrainians and international actors who can contribute to the country's recovery and resilience.
In this interview with Ukrainska Pravda, Kent reflects on the current state of US policy towards Ukraine and the implications of Donald Trump's return to power. He also speaks about negotiations with Russia, the future of NATO, and why Ukraine's position in the world is stronger – and more influential – than many still assume.
"Donald Trump thinks about Donald Trump"
With Donald Trump returning to power, relations between Ukraine and the United States have become more strained. Do you think Trump still holds a grudge against Zelenskyy over his role in the 2019impeachment?
What they would say is that Donald Trump thinks about Donald Trump. And I think that is the most important reality. He is somebody who is a narcissist, and therefore other people can be concerned about what their position is, what he thinks about them, but ultimatelyDonald Trump thinks about Donald Trump.
You've worked under five different administrations, including President Trump's first tenure. How is his position now different from the previous term?The first Trump administration was full of professionals who are competent. And I think we've always had this tradition, regardless of who the party in office is, of seeking competent people who could promote and defend US national interests. For 80 years, Americans understood our national interests, our security and prosperity were helped by the security and prosperity of our allies and our partners
And that's why the US spent so much energy and money promoting the success of partners and allies.Donald Trump in the second time has taken a very different approach. It's a transactional approach. It's what you do for me – not what you do for the United States, but me, Donald Trump and his inner circle.
And the people who are the ministers and his government are not competent professionals. They're incompetent. They have no strategic vision and they seemingly have no understanding or awareness of history or geography, and that leads to bad policy decisions, as we now see this week [the interview was recorded on 19 March – ed.] in the war against Iran and the impact on the global economy. And unfortunately, we've also seen it in the negotiations led by real estate developers who know nothing about Russia and Ukraine, in terms of Russia's war on Ukraine.
Inyouropening statementbefore the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, you said that "Europe truly whole, free, and at peace is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas." How would you assess overall US support for Ukraine since 2014?
If you look, since 2014, when Crimea was occupied and the war started in Donbas, the US, up until last year, 2025, was the leading supporter of Ukraine. We gave over US$60 billion of assistance, military and economic. And again, we did it because we wanted Ukraine to succeed.
We wanted Ukraine to meet its European future because that was good for Ukraine, good for Europe and good for us. That was the policy under the first Trump administration. Clearly, it's not been the policy of 2025 and 2026.
Do you get the sense that the US is deliberately not helping Ukraine win to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia?
I think that was a concern some people expressed about the Biden administration policy – that even though the Biden administration gave more assistance to Ukraine than any other, it oftentimes came too late and in insufficient amounts. So assistance that we may have given in 2023 and 2024, we should have given in 2022.
I think that is a fair assessment of our policy three or four years ago. Again, we now have a different policy, which isnotproviding assistance to Ukraine. I think that is short-sighted and not in our US interests. It obviously doesn't help Ukraine.
Can we expect any changes after the congressional elections in November?
I think it's important to understand the division of power in the United States. Congress has the power to pass budgets, and so there are important implications for assistance and how we spend our money. Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war, although that has been weakened in the past 50 years. But an administration has the responsibility for carrying out policies. President Trump will remain president through the end of his term in 2028, even if the balance of control of Congress changes.
We also have two houses, so it's possible the Democrats may take a majority in the House of Representatives. We don't know if they would also take a majority in the Senate. SoI think this is a year of real politics in the US. No one knows how the results will turn out.
And it's a country of 340 million people, with elections in all 50 states. So lots of people are looking to November. No one knows for sure what the results will be.
"Ukraine's fate and future depends on Ukrainians"
Is there a clear vision in Washington of how this war should be ended? And to what extentdoes this vision align with how Ukrainians see victory?When people use Washington as a metaphor, that can mean the Trump administration, that could mean collectively all Americans in office, which includes Congress, and it could mean all Americans, including the thinking policy elite.
I think what's most important is thatUkraine's fate and future depends on Ukrainians. And Ukrainians should not give in to pressure from anybody who wants Ukraine to make concessions and create a deal so they can feel good about themselves that somehow they brought an agreement.
An agreement against Ukraine's interests will not bring peace, because an agreement which is not just, durable, and addresses Ukraine's interest is just cover for further occupation and further death. That has been the case in Ukraine since 2014, and it was the case in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
All photo: Alexander Chekmenev
I was ambassador to Estonia. The Estonian prime minister at the time is now Kaja Kallas, the EU High Rep, and she said: "Peace without justice is just another word for occupation."Countries that have been occupied by Russia or the Soviet Union know that occupation means death.Ukrainians know that, Estonians know that, Americans who've studied the history of both countries know that.
Is there any case, any scenario, where the United States might start pressuring Ukraine into making a deal?
I think it's clear from the accounts of previous meetings, to include the public messaging, that over the past year the US has put pressure on Ukraine to make a deal. It reminds me of the dynamics after the 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements.
At the time, it was the French and the Germans who led Western efforts. The teams of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President [François] Hollande wanted Ukraine to make concessions to Russia because they wanted to show that they had brought progress and peace.
The original Minsk Agreement did not achieve peace, and additional Ukrainian concessions would not have achieved peace. So that goes back to the Ukrainian position.Any peace needs to be just, durable, and address Ukraine's needs. If it doesn't, it's not a peace agreement, it's a capitulation agreement, and that's not in Ukraine's interests.
Do you believe in negotiations with the Russians?I think the reality is that countries have to negotiate not with their best friends, but with their opponents. And that's just a reality. So when a country has had to go to war – not of its own choice, because they were invaded – to end that war, started by Russia, requires Russia to stop the aggression. So that requires talks.
But it's also clear that Russia under Putin wants to dismantle the current Ukrainian state on terms that are unacceptable to the Ukrainian people. Soyou have to talk, you have to defend your interests, but you do not have to capitulate.
In the current situation, when the people who are negotiating don't have enough power to make decisions from the Russian side, is it possible to reach any agreement?
I think you just identified a reality that the Russians aren't interested in negotiating a peace deal. They're interested in essentially a"pokazukha"[a constructed performance designed to look like genuine activity or progress, but with no substance behind it– ed.] to show that there's the appearance of a process. That's what they did under Minsk. That's what they're doing now.
The people that get sent to the meetings aren't people that have the authority to make commitments. The terms of an agreement to end the fighting have always been clear –capitulation, agree to what Russia wants. But that's not necessarily going to end the war, because if Russia gets what it wants and this set of demands, they'll just continue.
As they did after the Minsk Agreement: it was signed, there was a ceasefire deadline, and they kept on going three more days and captured Debaltseve. And Debaltseve wasn't enough, and they kept fighting and fighting until they started the wider war in February 2022.
So this is a process of not four years, but 12 years, countless tens of meetings,supposedceasefire agreements that never ended the firing, and here we are.
Trump saidin Januarythat Ukraine has no cards. I think you remember thatmeeting.Has that perception changed given the situation in the Middle East?
I think many people in Washington, even before President Trump returned to the White House, did not understand the reality of Ukraine and they did not understand the reality of the Russian army.
There were a lot of people in 2022 who thought that Kyiv would fall in three days. They didn't understand the Ukrainian will to fight. They didn't understand the capabilities of the Ukrainian army and societyin the eight years since the Revolution of Dignity. And they overestimated the abilities of the Russian military. It was a massive failure of intelligence and analysis.
So I think this goes back to when you say "What does Washington believe?",there are a lot of people in Washington who have opinions about what goes on in Ukraine. There's a lot less wisdom and understanding. And if you have bad analysis, you're going to have bad conclusions and policy choices. This was a dynamic before President Trump entered office, and it obviously is a dynamic now.
Again, when you look at the meeting rooms of negotiations, whether it's negotiations about Ukraine and Russia, whether it's negotiations with Gaza and Israel or negotiations with Iran, it's unprecedented that you don't have professionals who speak the languages and understand the people across the table.
Ukraine has to negotiate with Russia. The US, at this moment, we'll have to negotiate with Iran. And when you have real estate developers who know how to cut a deal to develop and put up a building in New Jersey or New York, that doesn't mean that they understand the Russian way of war, the Iranian capabilities for asymmetric warfare, but here we are.
AndI think this is going to go down in history as a great failing of the second Trump administration.The first Trump administration had competent professionals. The second Trump administration demonstrates no strategy and no competence.
"NATO is the most successful alliance in history, and it remainsso"
You mentioned that you served as US ambassador in Estonia. How do you assess the risk that Russia will invade other European countries by 2030, especially the Baltic states?
The population of the Baltics and the governments are preparing and expecting that they could be attacked. That's actually what competent responsible governmentsdo – youassess the dangers. If you're in a country that was part of the Russian Empire – and countries that are in Europe and in NATO that were long part of the Russian Empire include Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – it is only responsible to be prepared for war.
I had Bolt drivers including Ukrainians in Tallinn last week. One of them was from Donetsk, one of them was from Odesa. They both thought that their new country where they live and work, Estonia, needed to be prepared because they felt that when the fighting stopped here in Ukraine, Estonia or Lithuania could be next.
I know many Estonians. I sang in an Estonian choir – they were a part of what's known as the Estonian Defence League, a sort of territorial informal network. They would be training once a week, once a month, in the nearby woods. And they would even send their six-year-old kids to summer drone camp because they felt that was a set of skills that their young Estonian kids needed to know.
So if you go to the Baltics, they're very serious about preparing their military and their society to be prepared for war. They don't want to go to war, but they want to prepare.
This year Estonia is spending more than 5% of its gross domesticproducton defence. Estonia and Poland lead all NATO countries, all of Europe, in defence spending because they take the threat seriously.
Do you believe NATO's collective defence would actually work in the event of an attack on Estonia, for example?
NATO has lead countries for the various Eastern flank countries in NATO. For Estonia, it's the UK. The US is the lead country for Poland. There are about 1,000 UK troops, about 600 US troops and about 300 French troops in Estonia. Other NATO countries have their troops in these more exposed NATOAllies – to train, to understand the terrain, and to be prepared. I think that is a direct tangible result of being NATO Allies.
And Germany is the lead nation for Lithuania, Canada and other countries have the lead for Latvia, and so on and so forth along the Eastern flank. So NATO is serious about preparing and deepening cooperation.
And then you have the two countries that joined two years ago – Finland and Sweden. Sweden, having been a neutral country for 200 years, was driven by their population's demands to be part of collective security because they felt the threat.
Do these countries feel secure being part of NATO, because with all Donald Trump's statements, it seems not as strong as it was before?
I think what you may be referring to is thedebatesearlier this year, to include the Trump administration's threats about Greenland, which is part of the territory of NATO Ally Denmark, as well asinsulting languagethat President Trump used about NATO countries not being willing to fight on the front lines.
Estonia served in Helmand Province [during the Afghanistan war–ed.] with the US Marines and the UK, and the UK, Estonia and Denmark suffered casualties in Afghanistan at essentially the same rates as the US military did. NATO countries deployed troops to Afghanistan after the attacks on the United States on 11th September.
So those words were deeply insulting to Allies as well as being wrong factually. Soyou can see without question that there is greater tension now than a year ago or five years ago. But if you look at the history of NATO, there have been many moments where Allies disagreed deeply.
It goes back to the 1950s in the Suez Crisis, where the US did not support the British and the French in their position. We went through other points of deep division. You had the Vietnam War, which was in Asia, but was a point of disagreement with some NATO Allies. The Iraq War, particularly the Second Iraq War, was a coalition of the willing, but the French in particular were very vocal that it was wrong.
And I would say the other real emotional point of debate within NATO was the deployment of intermediate nuclear missiles in the late 70s and early 80s in response to the Soviet deployment of intermediate nuclear missiles, aimed at Europe, not the United States. So if you look through the history of NATO, it's not like it was always everyone agreeing with everyone using polite language.
You had very harsh language used between treaty Allies, putting aside the fact thatGreece and Türkiyeare both NATO Allies – I'm talking more of the transatlantic issues – and yet the Alliance held. France was outside the command structure for many decades. [Charles] De Gaulle took France out of the command structure in the 60s, but Sarkozy came back in.
So I think an argument can be made that until the rhetoric of this year, NATO has been stronger and more unified than in its 80-year history. So I would take a longer perspective and note that Allies can and do disagree, sometimes strongly, but it still is the most successful alliance in history, and it remainsso.
Do you think it is possible that Ukraine could join NATO in the nearest future?
I think that that is something that has been discussed. First of all you would have to define "the nearest future". It clearly is an issue in play in the negotiations with Russia. It also is an issue between Ukraine and all the members of NATO. There was a big push at the most recent summits, particularly in Washington and Vilnius, and a number of NATO members, to include the United States under President Biden, were not supportive of Ukraine's request. So if you say the nearest future, it does not look like there are prospects.
I think what's most important for the future of Ukraine as a European country is to secure first and foremost membership in the European Union, which has both an institutional benefit and an economic benefit.
The economic benefits are clear when you'repart of a much larger common market, and also the institutional reforms are essential for a successful modern European society. So I think for the success of Ukraine going forward, European standards and European Union membership should be the clear short-term goal, even as the medium- to longer-term aspiration is to become a full member of the Euro-Atlantic security community, NATO.
I think what the developments in the Middle East and the Gulf, the war with Iran, show is that Ukraine has great expertise now – military technical expertise that the wider European and transatlantic community desperately needs.Ukraine, and unfortunately the Russian military, fight in a way that no NATO military can fight at this moment.
The unmanned-centric warfare, which is not just FPV drones or Mavic drones, but is a whole ecosystem of multi-domain unmanned vehicles, plus the mentality and the technology cycle to constantly refine technology, mass-produced, lowest-cost, most effective, and constantly evolving because of the need to evolve the technology in the race with the Russians – that mindset, that ecosystem, and then the actual technology of drones, anti-drones, electronic warfare, fiber-optic, sub-sea drones – all of this has become the military reality of Ukraine fighting Russia.There isn't a single NATO country with a military that can fight the way Ukraine does.
And so that is a huge benefit potentially in the partnership that Ukraine brings to European and transatlantic security, and – as we've seen this week withUkrainian drone expertsgoing to the Gulf – for the wider Middle Eastern region, given the fact that the Shahed drones started as Iranian technology and became Russian technology. There are a lot of downsides to the current conflict in the Gulf. But whatit'sshowing is thatUkraine has something to offer, not just asking for people to help.Ukraine can actually help countries that can't fight like Ukraine and don't have the technology that Ukraine has developed.
And do you think this will be our trump card in the negotiations to join the European Union in the future?
I think it's not even a question of the future – it's already happened. I believe that Denmark made an investment in funding with Fire Point. I know that there are Estonian companies who have been running their R&D outfits here in Ukraine for two, three years. And so I think that Danish model, or the Danish-Ukraine-Estonian model, is already part of the reality. And I think the NATO countries understand that the future is collaboration, co-production.
Ukraine has the technology. It doesn't necessarily have the financing to scale up production that a co-production effort [can provide], where there's external financing and where – whether all the production is in Ukraine, or part of it may be in Denmark or Estonia or the UK – the immediate production goes to defend Ukraine, and then the medium-term production goes to defend European countries who in some cases think that they might be next.
That's the classic win-win situation, where parties that have technology on the one hand are financing the other needs, perhaps at different times. It can be a beautiful opportunity for partnership. And I hope that accelerates. And I also hope that the United States participates more than it has to date.
I think, again, Western countries, NATO countries, to include the US, should be accelerating the deep discussions on how they can help Ukraine win, not just survive, and then work together as partners and then eventually as allies for our collective security and defence.
"I don't think we're going to see a fundamentally transformed Russia"
Let's distract ourselves a little bit from the war. Your academic background is in Russian history and Russian literature...
They didn't have Ukrainian history and literature at Harvard in the early 1980s.
That's true. Until recently, most global universities had Russian Studies but they didn't have Ukrainian Studies or even Slavic Studies – if it's Slavic Studies, it's mostly Russian Studies. And how can Ukraine now win the battle of narratives in a world where Russia has invested so much money in its influence around the world?
I think that's a fantastic question. I did study Russian history and literature, as it was called at Harvard in the 1980s, it wasn't Soviet history and literature. Harvard has had a Ukrainian research centre at its university for decades. It wasn't directly integrated into the curriculum, but we actually had a Ukrainian professor,George Grabowicz, whotaught Ukrainian literature.
So within the Slavic Studies, there was a Ukrainian-heritage professor who taught Ukrainian literature, but clearly there were not that many US universities who had non-Russian professors or experts.
And this issue of decolonising area studies, I think, is a serious need. And that was actually the theme of the most recent gathering (which may be every three years) of the premier association of Slavic Studies professional academics in the US: the decolonisation of Slavic Studies.
Because I think it's a real challenge. Even people who did their PhD topics on non-Russian areas of the region oftentimes relied on access to archives in Russia when they opened up in Moscow in the 1990s. So they saw countries through the Moscow lens.
And I think because of the nature of how professors do their research, get their PhDs and then get to tenure, it will take decades to fully decolonise area studies. Having Ukrainian professors who then become professors, not just in the US and Canada but also in Europe, will help that process.
I think this is something where both people in the West and also Ukrainians can contribute to that process. Butit is a need, because the next generation of Americans and Europeans will go to universities and be exposed to old Russocentric narratives that were based on biases oftentimes rooted in Russian imperial history.
Is there a chance that Russia will change after Putin's death or is it a more systemic problem?
When I studied Russian and Soviet Studies in the 1980s, there was an entire book of essays about Stalinism, and the tension was: was Stalinism an individual top-down approach or was it the entire system?
Millions of bureaucrats participated in the system of repression of tens of millions, if not several hundred million people. So Stalinism as a system relied not just on people being passive, but required millions of people to be active persecutors of their neighbours, their family, of the system.
There has been a lively debate in the last several days because the winner of the documentary film [award] at the Oscars (which is not an objective standard of anything, it was a mechanism created by Hollywood to promote itself), wasMr Nobody Against Putin. And it gets into the debate about collective victimhood or collective responsibility.
I wouldn't want to grow up and live in today's Russia. It is Russians killing Ukrainians in Ukraine. It is not Putin.And so there is actually a collective responsibility: not just the million-plus Russian soldiers who have come and raped and killed in Ukraine, but the entire system that supports that in Russia.
And I think in every country, in every subgroup of humanity, there are decent people, and there are people whose souls are rotten and who do the wrong thing consistently.
And so I think the answer is somewhere in between, butI think the challenge for Russians who would like to see a better future for Russia is to avoid victimhood and to understand that in the same way they asserted superiority culturally for so long, they also have to accept responsibility for what Russia has done.
Germany accepted that after World War II, Japan accepted that after World War II. They emerged from autocratic backgrounds to become democratic societies, and part of that mental transformation was based on acceptance of their collective responsibility for what their countries and their societies did. If that doesn't happen with Russia,I don't think that we're going to see a fundamentally transformed Russia.
You advocated usage of "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev".Yes. And successfully.
But for many foreigners, when you try to explain this decolonisation question in a Ukrainian context, it's very hard, because for Americans, for example, decolonisation is different than for Ukrainians. How did you explain this and how did you make it important?
The name change actually was a two-part process. We started after the Orange Revolution and then completed it when I returned to our embassy in 2015. I think the US government's official usage of names depends on how widely a name is used. We're usually not the first adapters, but after the Orange Revolution, some other organisations – I think the UN and others – started using it.
And even simple Google searches showed the prevalence of use of "Kyiv". And so that allowed us to make the first case, where "Kyiv" became an option – the primary option, not the only option. And then only when I came back to Kyiv in 2015 did I go back – it's called the Bureau of Geographic Names, it's a special office – and I made the case that it should be the only option.
And so at that point 2015 forward we, the US government, only used in English K-Y-I-V. Still, some people went to school [a long time ago], they're older, and so you still see it in English "K-I-E-V", but you don't see that from the US government. And we have changed the way we've spelled, for instance, Beijing – it used to be Peking – and in other countries, in India as well, some cities have changed.
I think the issue of common usage versus preferred usage by the country, again, there's a global conversation. But in the specific context of Ukraine and Russia, it was a reminder that Ukraine became independent in 1991, and so whatever legacy of the Soviet system remained in bureaucratic wording or spelling needed to be changed.
I also needed to get parts of the US government computer systems to properly spell "Tallinn", because the old Russian system was with one "n", and in "Tallinn" there are two "n"s because "linn" is the word for city. So I also fixed the spelling of Tallinn!
It shows you how long-lasting even the spelling legacy of colonial domination can be.
"The average American admires Ukraine"
You did a TransAmerican bicycle ride, more than 11,000 km, and raised more than US$100,000.During that trip, you spoke with a lot of different people. What does the average American think about Ukraine today?
Obviously it's a big country – 340 million people, and different people have different views on every topic.
The average American admires Ukraine.Different Americans have different issues that matter to them in their own lives in a domestic context, but I would say there were three themes that resonated to the people that we talked to. Ukraine's fighting for freedom. For Americans, that is a theme that resonates.
I've met many US volunteers who are here, as well as one in the US who was held as a prisoner of war in Russia for four months in 2022. They served in the US military, and when I asked them "Why are you here?", they said: "Because Ukraine is fighting for freedom. They're fighting for the same values that I joined, I volunteered for the US military."
And so I think that inspiration led those individuals to come. A hundred Americans have died in Ukraine fighting for Ukraine against the Russian army since 2022.
For some other people who are focused on more humanitarian issues, the idea that 20,000 Ukrainian children were essentially stolen – whether it was from orphanages or from villages where the adults may have fled or someone was killed – that really, mentally, had a clear impact when I mentioned that.
And then the third issue that had resonance, depending on the community, was the issue of religious freedom. There are parts of the US that are Evangelical Protestant, deeply religious – I'm thinking of Eastern Oregon and Idaho. And when I mentioned what happened to, say, Protestant pastors andlaypeople in occupied Donetsk – they were killed, some of them in their churches – that also had an impact.So I would say Ukrainian fighting for freedom, the theft of children, and religious freedom were three themes that meant something to Americans who otherwise don't care about international relations, may have never travelled overseas, but for them these were reasons that they wanted Ukraine to succeed. And for some of them, that led them to support our bike ride and campaign.
Your wife is a Crimean Tatar. And according to Wikipedia,you have the Virginia licence plate "KRYM.UA", and your wife has a Crimean Tatar one, "QIRIM.UA".
So that was before we went to Estonia – we now have fewer cars. So when we came back from Estonia, we reapplied, and so "KRYM.UA" is our primary car, our primary licence plate.
And even, I should say, Ukrainian colours, blue and yellow, because that's one of the options in the state of Virginia.
What do you think lies ahead for Crimea in the near future?
It's an incredibly difficult situation. It's under occupation. It's been under occupation for 12 years now. There's been a lot ofactiveCrimean Tatars, Ukrainians and ethnic Russians who are proud Ukrainian citizens who left Crimea rather than live under occupation. There are also many Crimean Tatars who were born in exile and, as awful as it is, want to die in the land of their forefathers – Crimea.
And there's no short-term hope for a military recovery of Crimea. But I think for Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars who see Ukraine including Crimea as Ukraine,there is always the hope that one day it can return.
And Estonia was occupied for 51 years. They were independent from 1919 – they fought a war of independence from Russia, Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia. They were independent until the 1940 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and then they were occupied from 1940 until 1991. And the US never recognised the Soviet control legally.
There were three countries – the US, UK and Brazil – who never recognised control.That willingnessto say "No, these countries exist, that occupation is not legal" was very important for morale and also legal purposes.
So I hope it's not 51 years. Obviously the russification of Crimea continues and is accelerating, but legally, morally, Crimea is Ukraine. And that's important not to forget.
