Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume II of B.H. Magazine. For access to future issues, subscribe here.
On August 6, Russia was invaded for the first time since Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941, invading the Soviet Union on multiple fronts in violation of the Molotov Pact, a non-aggression agreement that was later revealed to contain a secret accord divvying up northern Europe between the two non-belligerents once broader hostilities concluded.
Having been forced into the USSR at gunpoint by Moscow in 1922 – and with Poland occupied – it was the Ukrainians who bore much of the kinetic brunt of Germany’s unexpected betrayal, culminating in the Battle of Kiev – still the largest siege ever conducted in the history of warfare.
More recently, it was the Ukrainians that kicked in the door.
Under cover of darkness, two fully armed combat brigades of battle-hardened Ukrainian special operators crossed the border into Kursk and, at close quarters with small arms, killed every Russian soldier that didn’t flee his post, then ran up Ukraine’s flag.
As the Kremlin scrambled to contain news of the stunning incursion from spreading internally, an image of four Ukrainian combatants with their faces redacted, standing by a sign demarcating the border with Russia, began to circulate on several Telegram channels popular among occupying Russian forces inside Ukraine.
The image’s caption read: “Knock-knock, motherfuckers.”
Three weeks later, Ukraine had seized 1,300 square kilometres of Russian territory, destroyed a critical railway resupply route between Lgov and Belgorod, and consolidated its position with an occupying force of conventional infantry, heavy armour, and artillery.
The blue-and-yellow standard of Ukraine still flies over most of the captured territory today. But despite routing their marauding invaders on their own turf, recently the mood among Ukrainian military planners has darkened.
Because unlike Vladimir Putin’s murderous and illegal invasion of Ukraine, the purpose of the operation in Kursk was not to advance any designs on capturing Russian lands permanently. Nor was it primarily aimed at seizing territory to be traded away later in a negotiated ceasefire.
In-person, the top brass of the Ukrainian military say openly that the operation was planned foremost to demonstrate Mr. Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling and threats of escalation should Russia be attacked at home were empty, in the hope of finally persuading Western leaders to properly arm Ukraine.
On that score, the assault on Kursk has thus far failed, and the gloomier tone creeping into discussions with officials in Kyiv and commanders on the eastern front, stems from a difficult truth most now utter – often privately – with a candour not present here before.
Absent a reliably sustained increase in the flow of Western weaponry and authorisation to use it to strike inside Russia, Ukraine will lose this war.
It was with these stakes in play that President Zelensky arrived at the United Nations General Assembly in late September.
Instead of the one standalone meeting it typically conducts alongside the General Assembly, this year the United Nations Security Council put on three. President Zelensky was invited to open the session convened exclusively to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russia’s permanent representative to the Security Council, Vassily Nebenzia, sought to pre-empt his remarks with a deliberately insulting falsehood-laden statement, accusing Zelensky – Ukraine’s first ever Jewish president – of presiding over an authoritarian neo-Nazi regime that forced Russia’s hand in mounting the initial invasion.
“I don’t know how Nebenzia gets up there and says this shit with a straight face,” one US official with experience testifying in the Security Council chamber – but who wished to remain anonymous – told me later during a conversation about the meeting.
Zelensky didn’t take the bait, delaying his arrival at the Security Council until after the cynical point-of-order had been heard, before ignoring Nebenzia’s attempt to knock him off balance, then matter-of-factly reporting the shocking catalogue of atrocities Russia now commits against the civilian population of Ukraine every day.
In conclusion, he offered his frank assessment on the viability of a diplomatic solution to end the killing.
“Putin has broken so many international norms and rules that he won’t stop on his own. Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed,” Zelensky said.
From the outset, the unilateral veto each permanent member wields over Security Council policy excluded the possibility of an injunction against Russia’s crimes issuing from the special session on Ukraine, but Zelensky never intended on departing New York with a binding Security Council resolution in hand.
Instead, he came to the Security Council to signal to its three Western permanent members that their strategy of appeasement and diplomatic coercion had failed, leaving only one feasible option on the table: to both arm Ukraine more potently, and allow it to recapture the initiative by taking the fight onto Russia’s own territory.
On the heels of Nebenzia’s earlier contribution, the Ukrainian president’s appeal could not have been better timed. But the only update to military doctrine publicised by a member state the week the United Nations met in New York was issued by Zelensky’s aggressor.
“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” Putin said.
The announcement was plainly aimed at discussions about authorising Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia that were ongoing in Washington.
It was the latest mealy-mouthed Russian attempt at nuclear blackmail in a history dating back to Nikita Khrushchev’s threats to employ “terrible means of destruction” in striking London with “modern destructive weapons” if Britain didn’t withdraw from the Suez in 1956.
Ralph Goff, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and former chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia, said it’s time to call Putin’s bluff. “This is just gamesmanship. NATO and Washington made a strategic mistake allowing Putin to dominate the discussion about red lines,” Goff said. “His threats ring hollow. This is a guy who was afraid of Covid. He doesn’t strike me as somebody who’s ready to play nuclear poker.”
In April, Goff and I travelled to Kharkiv to meet General Sergei Melnik, the youngest commanding general in Ukraine’s armed forces who goes by his call sign: “Marsel.” As we sat for lunch, Melnik’s security detail convened a hurried meeting, then relaxed when a second call arrived.
A Russian attack drone had been picked up on radar vectoring towards our meeting. The second call was confirmation it had been shot down. Melnik – who narrowly survived two hypersonic Iskander missiles with his name on them in February – didn’t leave his seat.
Shortly after I returned from that trip, before the deadlock in Congress cleared, I was in Washington, D.C., attending the Middle East Institute’s annual gala ball at the Smithsonian Museum. I approached Congressman Eric Swalwell – a current and former member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, respectively – to report what I had learned in Ukraine and inquire about the state of the negotiations.
About 20 seconds into my spiel, he interrupted me. “So, you’re the guy that was out there with Ralph, then?” he said.
At the beginning of the summer fighting season, shipments of American lethal aid to Ukraine were halted completely due to one of several factional confrontations that have crippled the US federal government, from inside the Republican party room, in the last couple of years.
On April 3, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Donald Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters in Congress – and an architect of the bid to freeze American support for Ukraine – threatened to shut down the US Government if a new aid package was authorised, even if it included an appropriation for her current signature issue: the southern border.
One bipartisan proposal to deliver aid to Ukraine containing an agreement for it to be repaid later drew Greene’s ire in particular, amounting in her estimation to, a “heaping, steaming, pile of bullshit.” that she found – somehow – to be “insulting to the American people.”
Owing to a rule introduced by populist Republicans last year to curtail the initiative of their own then-speaker, Kevin McCarthy, allowing a single lawmaker to trigger a vote to dismiss the speaker, Taylor Greene’s gun threat was so persuasive it halted all lethal aid to Ukraine, in the midst of a full-scale war with a nuclear power, for six months.
Somehow, they held on. But the damage that was done to Ukraine, and its war machine over the period, was catastrophic.
The day after Taylor Greene swore about aiding Ukraine on CNN, I called her from Kharkiv to report that overnight, dozens of ballistic missiles and drones had slammed into the city. With no ammunition to arm their patriot missile defence systems – which would have knocked out the incoming ordnance – Ukrainian forces got creative.
Red tracer rounds illuminated the skies over streets that echoed with gunfire as Ukrainian forces scrambled to intercept explosive-laden kamikaze drones with volleys of .50-calibre machine-gun fire directed from the ground – a strategy ineffective against hypersonic missiles that arrive about seven seconds after being launched in Russia, usually before the air raid klaxons sound.
Taylor Greene never returned my call, but outside of the populist MAGA caucus in Washington – and particularly among military and intelligence officers – the importance of supporting Ukraine remains obvious.
During the drought in Western lethal aid, General David Petraeus, the American four-star commander of all Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, who later served as director of the CIA, told me that the cost of not arming Ukraine was increasing each day.
“The damage being done to Ukraine’s ability to fight Russia may not be irreversible, but it is very, very serious, and Ukraine will remain in a very difficult situation until the US pipeline is full once again,” Petraeus said.
Glenn Corn was Ralph Goff’s number two at the CIA and served extensively in Russia. Despite learning half a dozen languages over 20 years at the agency, he still hasn’t shed the accent he refined valet parking cars at nightclubs around Long Island as a teenager. Corn grew to appreciate Russian society during his time posted there and sees Putin’s hijack of the Russian state as a tragedy for the people of Russia, too.
“Take the World Cup in 2018; how much money was spent making Russia a presentable and attractive place for tourism? It was a smart investment, and it worked,” Corn said. “People came from all over, and the Russians were great hosts. Now, every shred of goodwill towards the Russian people has been squandered on this stupid, horrible war.”
Goff was quietly enjoying a drink nearby and interjected to add his two cents. “You know the tagline the Russian tourism board uses in its advertisements in Eastern Europe?” he asked me, deadpan. “Come visit us, before we come visit you,” he said.
In the face of inconsistent diplomatic support, a broad chorus of volunteers have emerged as standard bearers for Western assistance to the Ukrainian war effort. Chris Garrett, co-founder of Prevail – an NGO that clears minefields in war zones – hails from the Isle of Man.
“These things are fucken nasty, mate,” Garrett said, demonstrating how a Russian anti-tank mine had been jerry- rigged with a second device underneath, intended to kill anyone who successfully disarmed the main charge.
“They’re leaving these things in people’s backyards – they’re everywhere – and there’s nowhere near enough manpower out here to clear anything that isn’t a strategic priority. It’s either volunteers or the mines stay there; we need all the support we can get,” Garrett said.
Away from the front lines, there is a pronounced sense of pride in Ukrainian culture that many say became more prominent at the outbreak of the war. Artists of all stripes have channelled their creativity toward promoting Ukraine’s distinct cultural identity.
Lubomyr Levitski, a well-known Ukrainian film director, was living in Los Angeles on a green card when the full-scale invasion started. He could have stayed in America – an option he says he never considered seriously. “I had to return to Ukraine,” he said, “I couldn’t stand by and watch my country go through this alone.”
Before the war, Levitski made box office feature films. Today he shoots documentary content from the eastern front. “The Kremlin is spending billions to push Russian propaganda, and part of their strategy is aimed at destroying Ukrainian self-identity,” Levitski said.
His latest film, We Were Recruits, follows the storied Third Assault Brigade – a conventional unit made up of volunteers – into battle on the eastern front. “Our soldiers are not just fighters; they are artists, musicians, fathers, and mothers who embody Ukraine’s spirit,” Levitski said.
Artur, a Ukrainian techno producer releasing tracks under the alias Indie Elephant, can no longer tour outside Ukraine, prevented from leaving by the prospect of compulsory military service on the front lines.
At Full Bar in central Kyiv, he now plays shows that finish several hours before he would typically have gone on stage due to restrictive city curfews. The bar’s manager, who goes by his DJ moniker, Neumateria, is quick to point out his venue’s name doesn’t wink at popularity but is an acronym.
“It means First Ukrainian Local Laboratory,” he said. When we sat down for dinner backstage, he served Chicken Kyiv. “We are trying to give people some sense of Ukrainian normalcy here, while donating to the war effort in the process.”
“I’m proud of it,” Neumateria said before producing a Ukrainian flag inscribed with messages of solidarity from soldiers at the front, who Full Bar has supported financially. Despite my carefully calibrated false protestations, the flag now hangs on the wall of my office in America.
As the venue cleared out and the music faded, Artur reflected on his new reality – one where at any moment he may be called up to fight. “I don’t even know how to shoot a gun,” he said, “I wish we could just go back to the way things were.”
Some of what you see here is gut-wrenching. In Kyiv’s Sofiyska Square, life-sized portraits of Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle stand as a solemn reminder to café goers their country is at war.
On a warm Saturday afternoon in September, a young woman stood before one of them in quiet conversation with her fallen husband. When her three-year-old daughter noticed the image on the memorial, she reached upward toward it, expecting to be scooped up into her father’s arms and exclaimed “Tato,” the Ukrainian word for “Daddy.” Tears streamed down the young woman’s face as she fell to her knees to accept her child’s hopeful embrace, but when a passerby stopped to comfort her, she resumed her full stature and turned to wipe them away.
But the horror of what is unfolding in Ukraine is punctuated by absurd, often hysterical moments that unfold every day. Amid this great tragedy, they serve as a reminder of the Ukrainian spirit.
Yevhen Klopotenko, a celebrated Ukrainian celebrity chef and 2015 winner of MasterChef Ukraine, founded Kyiv restaurant 100 Rokiv Tomu Vpered (which translates to “Fast Forward 100 Years”) to promote Ukraine’s culinary heritage. In 2020, he began advocating for borscht – a sour beetroot-based soup and a staple in Eastern Europe – to be recognised as Ukrainian by UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
As I sat in his restaurant with two retired CIA spooks, one of President Zelensky’s detail, and a representative from the Ukrainian Department of Foreign Affairs, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s advance team walked in, scouting it out ahead of his arrival in Kyiv a few days later.
And then, unannounced, Klopotenko entered the room and began addressing his diners. “Borscht is our dish, it’s in our DNA, and it’s our way of living. In each family, we have a special recipe,” Klopotenko said. “So, when a husband and wife have their first night together, before they have sex, they start to quarrel over what kind of borscht their family will cook.”
On September 11, Secretary Blinken dined at 100 Rokiv Tomu Vpered; he had the borscht.
Jack Wright is has conversations at the intersection of economics, politics, and diplomacy on his podcast, The Intersection.
