Kursk Operation Exposes Putin’s Weakness

Peter Zalmayev, Ukraine director for the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, talks about recent developments in Ukraine and reflects on global media coverage of Russia’s invasion.

As Ukraine is making surprising gains on the battlefield, advancing into Russian territory in the Kursk region, FORBES spoke with Peter Zalmayev, director at the Eurasia Democracy Initiative, a non-profit supporting free elections and human rights in former Soviet bloc nations. Zalmayev is also a TV host and commentator from Kyiv, Ukraine. He moved to Kyiv from New York in 2016, after receiving his Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, with a concentration in Eurasian studies. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, in addition to his continued work at the Initiative, Zalmayev has served as a commentator for global media outlets, sharing his insights on the situation in Ukraine and countering Russian propaganda. We’ve met with Zalmayev at FORBES in New York City to look back at the past two and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion and the global media’s coverage of Ukraine, as well as analyzing the most recent developments in the battlefield.

About the Kursk Incursion

Katya Soldak: It’s been two weeks since Ukraine started a successful incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. What is going on there?

Peter Zalmayev: It is a daring operation; maybe we can look at it as Ukraine trying to do everything, go above and beyond to change the narrative of this war. Being on the defensive all the time – it’s not attractive, even to Ukraine’s backers. You have to find ways to fight asymmetrically, to make decisions to gather sympathy and support again. And to inspire – not just the allies, but your own troops, people behind the front lines. We have [Ukraine’s President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s confirmation that Ukraine is behind this, however we don’t know the end goal. This operation exposed Russia’s weakness. We’ve got quite a few POWs [prisoners of war] and this will be our exchange fund. For Russia to stage a proper defense, they would have to move troops from the Donbas area. And there will be a waiting game again: what will happen in Kyiv? What will be Russia’s retaliation? Maybe Russia will hit a few symbolic sites here in Kyiv – including Bankova [the presidential office], Verkhovna Rada [parliament]… Right now Russia is probably accumulating resources, identifying targets, preparing. I think it’s likely to be something dramatic as Putin needs to show the response to his people, who are craving blood.

K.S.: How does the Kursk incursion help Ukraine fight this war?

P.Z.: Ukraine is already building fortifications in that area; it has no plans to leave, pretty much till the end of the war. It’s a “sanitary zone” that Russia claimed it was building in Kharkiv, and now Ukraine is doing something very similar. It will be transporting launch beds for rockets to strike Russian troops that would try to push Ukrainians out. Keep in mind, it’s only within 20 kilometers of the E38 highway, which is a supply route for [the Kremlin’s] Kursk formation. So, it will be useful to cut off these logistical links that are feeding Russia’s war efforts elsewhere in Ukraine.

Western Media Coverage and Ukraine Fatigue.

K.S.: Tell me a little bit about yourself, your background and what you’re doing in Ukraine currently.

P.Z. I’m a Ukrainian-American, born and raised in Donetsk, Ukraine. I left Donetsk in 1994 to study the Bible and be a preacher in Tennessee, USA. I did preach a little bit, but I moved to New York in the late nineties and have lived there since 1999. I went to SIPA [School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University]. Since Russia’s aggression in 2014, I had to move my family out of Donetsk [after Russia occupied the area]. 2016 is when I moved back to Kyiv and established my residence there. I host a weekly TV program, where I do live news programs on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m also involved in some YouTube broadcasting to Russian audiences in the Russian language. My program is with Ilya Ponomarev, who is a well-known former member of Russia’s Parliament and who’s been in Ukraine for years and became a Ukrainian citizen. We’ve been doing this together with him since this invasion of 2022. There’s not been a day that I wasn’t on air, either taking interviews or giving interviews. Very, very heavy schedule.

K.S.: At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, you were in a very unique position, having Western vocabulary and perfect English and a deep understanding of Ukrainian politics and social issues, so you were commenting for a lot of programs everywhere in the West and also around the globe. Did you find that the narrative in the West changed in two and a half years?

P.Z.: It’s not a secret to anyone that there’s fatigue, there’s Ukraine fatigue. There would be fatigue with any conflict that has been going on for longer than a year. And the Ukraine conflict, in its sheer intensity, is such, that it demands significant infusion of a country’s resources. There are various problems, internal problems that Western countries are undergoing, having to do with populism, having to do with illegal immigration and dislocation of various parts of the population. The Ukraine issue gets hijacked by various politicians, especially of the right-wing variety, but not only. And it becomes harder to reach a consensus on what to do about Ukraine and whether to continue supporting Ukraine at the same level.

We’re seeing it in the United States, where the second aid package was almost not approved. We are seeing it in France, a serious division there, and two political forces that are diametrically opposed to each other, including vis-a-vis France’s position on the conflict, on the war, and on Putin’s actions there. So, throughout the Western world we’re seeing this kind of turbulence that obviously impacts our situation quite negatively.

And that’s precisely what Vladimir Putin is counting on: that sooner rather than later the Western countries will one by one fall off the bandwagon, so to speak, and stop supporting Ukraine. He’s got politicians like Fico, like Orban, who are actively helping him, sort of ruling this consensus as much as they can. He’s counting on Donald Trump’s victory. So all of this obviously is a big concern, but the very simple answer to your question is that in the first year of the war, I was on CNN and BBC almost every week, now it happens once every five or six months. It’s much more rare now.

K.S.: In western media outlets, who’s commenting on Ukraine? Or they’re not talking about Ukraine?

P.Z.: They do talk about Ukraine but now they’re limiting themselves to people like retired US generals when it’s about a war or maybe the US’s ambassador to Ukraine. They’re just limiting the sheer scope of their coverage.

K.S.: In Western media, do you think it’s still important to speak to people who are in Ukraine, who are watching and experiencing the situation on the ground? Or do we know enough and we just need some updates on what’s happening?

P.Z.: Well, it seems like they have a pretty good presence in Ukraine. As much as Ukrainians are not happy for not being on the front pages of newspapers, Ukraine still gets plenty of coverage. And in the Times, there’s some pretty good analysis of the state of war, about the front lines, etc. And sometimes, I have to be honest, I have to go to Western media to get a more kind of unvarnished coverage.

Anti-Western messages and Pro-Russia bias in Arab Media and the Global South.

K.S.: Have you noticed any change in the coverage of Ukraine outside of the western media outlets? What are your observations?

P.Z.: India is actually a very good example. So-called Republic TV [non-public, English language broadcaster] is one such channel I was on in the early months. I was there twice a week maybe. I was on Al Jazeera Arabic quite a lot. We talked about several dozen times. Also, Sky News Arabia, a few African channels, as well as some in Latin America. The host of that Republic TV program that was on in India was a well-known personality, and he would have a panel of nine people: some of them from Russia, some ostensibly neutral academics, maybe a couple of Western academics, me, maybe another Ukrainian. It’s like a Bollywood-style show with nine windows on the screen, literally. And there were times you would be surprised, right after Bucha [Kyiv suburb where invading Russian troops massacred estimated 1400 Ukrainian civilians in March 2022] happened, where he would scream at the Russian participants, and ask, how do you explain this? And the Russian participants would say that it’s all just orchestrated, it’s all made up. And they’re saying this as the TV channel’s correspondent in the middle, I mean in between us, on the screen is just walking around and showing Bucha, and they have the audacity to contradict what he’s seeing with his own eyes.

K.S.: How would you handle that? Did you scream?

P.Z.: Yeah, you have to… The first months of the war were so emotional. I would scream at [the Russian commentator] in Russian, only we could understand each other. And I was very emotional. But that’s precisely what TV likes, and especially Indian TV. They like a little drama. I tried to control myself, but a few times I just flew off the handle completely, because it was mind-boggling…coming face to face with the complete denial of facts, of truth…an alternate informational reality, a universe. Now it’s kind of par for the course, that’s how Russian propaganda works.

K.S.: Did the coverage evolve into something more factually accurate, over the past two and a half years?

P.Z.: At first, it seemed like the vast majority of the comments under all of the YouTube videos of all of these programs that I took part in were sympathetic to the Russian message. And the hosts, with a few exceptions, eventually just tried to steer the discussion in a direction of this being a Western plot against Russia. “Russia is this anti-colonial power” and all of a sudden it’s not about Ukraine anymore. “Ukraine is not even an actor, it’s without any agency whatsoever.”

Same was with Arabic channels. The questions are always, still: “when are you guys going to give up? Russia is constantly on the attack.” How many times I tried to explain to them: you know, Russia was supposed to invade and force Ukraine into capitulation in the first few days of the war. And two years into it, you’re still talking about this and saying this is inevitable and that it’s just a matter of time. The narrative is very much skewed towards the Russian position. It is more than clear that Russia has done its homework in those countries. It’s prepared the ground, it’s influenced public opinion, it’s injected its healthy dose of propaganda, and disseminated its propaganda talking points, playing on the people’s anti-Americanism. Wherever that is the most salient kind of emotion, and it is in the Arab world at least, you know that instinctively the audience will be disposed against you and your message. And a case in point, Crocus City Mall. You remember that? Huge terrorist attack, 200-something people dead, which the Russians immediately blamed on the Ukrainians. And as I was commenting on that particular incident to Sky News Arabia, the anchor cited the poll numbers being conducted as we were speaking by the audience. Eighty percent of the audience thought that it was not Russians behind it, but it was Western powers and Ukraine and others. So 80% fully did not believe that it was Islamic terrorists… they thought it was a plot against Russia.

We always talk about trying to win the hearts and minds of the global South but I’m just not sure what that message would be, that could resonate, because simply it’s not about the message.

You know there’s probably a certain proportion of population in all these countries that is highly educated, and the least brainwashed. But the vast majority are not, and governments are not motivated necessarily because they’re interested in what Russia can offer them monetarily. West Africa is a whole other thing. Russia has pretty much encouraged and propped up coup plotters, in some of these countries, to try to unseat the Western friendly presidents, and just kick out the Western powers from the region. But it’s our naive thinking at the beginning of the war that all you had to do is just explain to these people that Ukraine is a former colony of Russia that’s also engaged in an anti-colonial struggle. That didn’t really resonate with the larger public.

K.S.: Do you have any explanation?

P.Z.: Because the Russians are able to magnify their message much better. Their messages says that we, meaning the Russians, are fighting an existential battle, fighting against the oppressor, against the colonial power, without being saddled with this colonial history, the history of being enslavers, as opposed to the French and the British and the Americans. Russia has a certain advantage when it comes to that. It never was a colonial power in Africa. Ukraine has had several projects sending academics, journalists, and other people to African countries on tours. I think we should still be doing it, but the impact is limited.

If Ukraine stops fighting it will cease to exist as an independent state.

K.S.: Could you offer any insights into what’s going on in Ukraine right now? Are people willing to settle for something or is the spirit to fight and win still high?

P.Z.: There’s a realization that if Ukrainians don’t keep fighting, they will cease to exist as an entity. This is not to say that it will all disappear but the Ukrainian identity will be very much in doubt, or the survival of it. This is an existential battle, everyone understands that. When the mobilization started in earnest a few months ago, the war became a little bit less popular, and it’s simply a reality of the 21st century. People in the 21st century in Europe grew with the idea of – with the exceptions following the Balkan war — that the war is something that’s black and white, it’s from those old movies, etc. You know, you look at the Russians, how Putin’s been able to recruit the Russians when he did that first wave of mobilization; it really hit hard against, and ricocheted against them. They realized that this was very, very unpopular. This could present a risk to the stability of the regime. And Putin has had to rely on mobilizing its economic resources to entice men from poor regions into the army by constantly increasing the sign-up fee, and also the fee for a dead soldier that would go to their family. They could buy a car, they could buy a mortgage on a house, and so it’s become for a lot of poor people an attractive economic model of how to advance life.

Ukraine does not have that luxury, it cannot afford to pay as much to its soldiers, so there’s that disparity. People are also getting tired of this war. I’m not going to lie about this. People are exhausted.

Some households in Kyiv have only a few hours of electricity per day [FORBES: due to the large-scale damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure by Russia] and to think what Ukraine is facing this coming winter is pretty mind-boggling. It’s going to be probably the toughest winter so far. The first winter was bad, and we also suffered darkness, dark nights, and cold nights. But we had the sympathy of the world. People shipped generators from all over the world. You know, it was this big story of surviving Ukrainians, surviving proudly. We had all the sympathy. Now the sympathy is evaporating, because it’s a matter of time, and people are also growing tired.

K.S.: What about all this Western aid that was sent to Ukraine? Does it help?

P.Z.: Well, of course, everything helps. Without the help we just wouldn’t survive, economically or militarily. It all helps. This third winter, it’s not even going to be about how many hours a day we’ll have electricity. It will be about whether we’ll have water. It’s just this realization that we, people, are tired. We’re not the main story in the world, you know. Since the last October, it’s been Israel. We’ve shared the spot with Israel and also we don’t see the horizons anymore. Even our main intellectuals and our journalists are saying that this war could last decades, even though it is hard to imagine how Ukraine could survive this level of intensity.The consensus is that Putinism will outlive Putin. And even if Putin were to go, it does not necessarily mean that this war would disappear.

K.S.: So you do sound quite more negative than positive.

P.Z.: That is to say no one is a prophet. Looking back at the first year of the war and all the expectations that Russia would buckle under the weight of this fiasco and Putin was about to die. It was not just the Ukrainians but reputable British journalists and doctors that were studying footage of Putin. It was a lot of wishful thinking. Ukraine is fighting against a much bigger enemy. Obviously Russia is way too big, way too large.

Ukraine fights for the entire Western word and its values.

P.Z.: Ukraine says it’s an existential war…In fact, it’s not just Ukraine’s fight but the entire Western world, especially after the Western world has essentially given its guarantees to Ukraine, even though it’s not through NATO. All the rhetoric that we’ve heard, all the support we’ve gotten, it shouldn’t allow for the West to just quit Ukraine like this. And most understand that. And you do hear about it in the media but probably not enough.

This interview has been edited for clarity and consistency. Contributing editor Karina Tahiliani.