A Ukrainian Philosopher on What Putin Never Understood About Ukraine
About this episode
Klein speaks with Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko, recorded in Kyiv as Russian missiles strike the city, about what the war is revealing about Ukraine and about Europe. Yermolenko describes evacuating his daughters, how war reorganizes one's sense of time, space, and home, and why Putin catastrophically misread Ukraine — mistaking Russian-speaking Ukrainians for Russians and underestimating a bottom-up civic culture built on local self-government and a plural national identity. They discuss Zelensky's transformation, Russian propaganda, Europe's complacency, the moral stakes of the war for liberal democracy, and what Ukraine needs from the West: weapons, accountability for Russian crimes, and a commitment to reconstruction.