Kyiv Post Chief Editor Bohdan Nahaylo spoke with historian, journalist and author Anne Applebaum shortly after she interviewed head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov at the Security Architecture Forum in Kyiv on June 1.
Kyiv Post: You’ve just interviewed Budanov on stage here at a security forum in Kyiv. What are your takeaways after this meeting with him?
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Anne Applebaum: Ukraine is at a very interesting turning point. We’re at a moment when the views of Ukraine and the outside world are beginning to shift.
Some of this is thanks to Ukraine’s incredible success with military technology and drones, and the fact that they’ve held the Russians on the front line for so many weeks now.
Some of this is because when the war in Iran began, to whom did the Gulf states turn first for advice about intercepting drones? It was to Ukraine.
And this, I think, suddenly made Ukraine seem less like a kind of poor country we have to help and more like a provider of security rather than just a consumer. And I think that has shifted the perception very much.
I think the Ukrainians correctly see this, and they are beginning to look at what kind of security relations we could have in the future and what kind of security architecture we could build in Europe.
I don’t think anybody has real clarity yet, partly because what the United States really thinks about this region is still pretty unclear and shifting all the time.
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