Ukraine will not submit

Transcript

Good morning, Daria. I’m with Daria Shepetko, who is currently in, you’re in Latvia, is that correct, yes. Let’s have you give us, straight from the ground literally, you were in Ukraine, what happened. Let’s start with your background, who you are, and what you do.

Yeah, so basically, I’m Ukrainian, as you said correctly, and then three years ago, I moved to Latvia. I received a scholarship to study at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. I’m currently in my graduate year, graduating in a couple of months working in VC in venture capital. my family was based in Kyiv in Ukraine, and I was going there from time to time. On the 18th of February, I flew back to Ukraine for different reasons, and then, I was there in Kyiv when everything started. I woke up from the bombs. Basically, on the 25th of February, we left Kyiv to leave Ukraine and it was a long 72-hour trip from Kyiv through the polish border to through Lithuania back to Riga, where is my I would say second home or at least I have my student dormitory, and we spent around uh 17 hours on the polish border during the nights without any food support or anything and that’s what many people are experiencing right now and talking about my family uh my dad was a is an interpreter but, unfortunately, he had to I would say close down his business he paid salaries to all the people and send all the cash reserves that were there to the needs of the army. So basically, I’m currently I’m 19 years old, and I’m currently the only person supporting my family financially.

Is your family now in with you? My dad stayed in Ukraine, he’s not in Kyiv, but yeah, he stayed in Ukraine. My sister and my mom are currently in vega together with me.

We have the impression at least watching the news as we do that this is what’s going on, women children, grandparents are moving or are leaving if they can difficult to leave and the men who are capable of fighting are staying taking up arms going to defend the country is that correct

yeah exactly, the first reason is that men are not able to leave the country because of mobilization, and the second thing yeah basically women, especially with young children, are given the priority in leaving the country overall the society in the Ukrainian society although it had its divisions in the past there were at least three major parties as I understand it. It seems the country has united against this onslaught or this invasion. Is there any dissent going on? We shouldn’t be fighting against Russia, or is the country completely united? Of course, you cannot say that the country is always completely united. Given the propaganda that everybody is experiencing from this experiencing from the side of Russia but what I can say for sure because I was flying back to Ukraine all the time for three years is that since 2015 after the revolution, we had Ukraine united a lot especially iIfeel this national sentiment that Ukraine is the country that we want to live in and the country where which we want to support. I was really proud to see that every time coming to Ukraine, I was really proud to see how the tech system is developing, really proud to see how businesses are thriving, how young people are building the communities, and that’s why I was so willing to come back to Ukraine afterward. So I would say that there was less division after the revolution and there was more unity uh afterward, of course, there is there are people with uh Russian sentiment but the overwhelming majority that we can see right now especially from the sentiment in the country um they are willing to we felt freedom Ukrainians felt what is freedom like they understood how great it is to build a democratic nation how much they can achieve so Ukrainians are not being willing to give up this freedom that’s what I can feel right now. Yeah, we see a great deal of nationalism expressed but there is also it’s also the freedom issue. You know it’s been 30 years, just under 30 years, since Ukraine became a country in 1990, 1991, I believe, but really became free in the mid-90s and grew from there. What I think I’d like to mention is many people don’t under are not aware that Ukraine has become a technical powerhouse. Also, there is a great deal about sourcing. There’s a great deal of technology, and I use companies all the time that I see are based in Ukraine I mean, there are uh e-document signature rights companies. There’s many many companies grammarly grammarly grammarly exactly great hub is ukrainian that cube by ukrainians amazing companies are ukrainians the tech ecosystem is there is amazing and that’s something that i was really willing to develop this was one of the reasons why i flew back to ukraine to explore ukrainian tech ecosystem and on monday i remember didn’t remember the date but on monday i went to for example to unit city to meet the ukrainian founders and that is amazing people very talented people and i’m really sad to see that this kind of thing is happening well this this uh invasion which it clearly is is also destroying the economy uh but i want to ask you a a a question about the government in estonia which i think you our introduction came to a fellow a friend in estonia their entire government operates in the cloud cloud services and they did that some many many years ago and they’re very pleased that they did it and they were attacked and so on like that is the Ukrainian government in the cloud also or have that given a technical promise in the society yeah i’m really proud to see what Estonians did that that’s a great example and i’m just always impressed by what they are doing ukraine didn’t have the leaders at that time to to make that so that’s why ukraine started the transition to the cloud only when for around the time when Zelinski came so this transition is very visible when he became the president so that’s that’s a very recent transition and Estonia is a great example to tell like it’s it’s clearly visible how Estonia and ukraine they are having a very close cooperation and Eestonians are giving also this knowledge to Ukraine but Ukraine was not there, but lots of things were made, more or less. I have the impression and I’ll ask you to validate this or give us a gear insight that the countries that were in the Soviet area of influence Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, they are the most adamant they’ve lived under Russia domination if you can use, that they are the most adamant, whereas Germany and France are not so adamant about this or they’re not as assertive about this. So we have to do something. Is that accurate or maybe you can shed some light on that concept. Yeah, that’s clearly visible from the support; for example, countries expressed to Ukrainian ascension to the European union so countries that were under Russian regime or uh or under the authoritarian regime they understand the boundaries but the life that entailed this Russian domination, so I know like the reason why for example, Polish people are so adamant in supporting Ukraine, and they are providing so much support on the border that it was impressive to see and I was so welcomed. I was so welcome there is that they understand. They are next. The people in the Baltics are currently really scared they cannot work because they understand that they are their next, and many people are thinking about what to do next. Estonians are really supporting Ukrainians right now because they are bordering on Russia, and they manage to escape from Russian domination thanks to this transparency of the digital system. But they’re also afraid that they’re next, and they understand that Russia is going to proceed if they take Ukraine, and Putin is not going to stop. Yeah, that’s a great point, and I think there’s that is not as in the U.S. at least from my perspective, people don’t quite accept that as a certainty or a high high high probability that this is just the first step by Putin. So I’ll let you add a little more to that in your read on the Russians the mentality and the Putin motivations. Is this just the first of a broader plan you want to add? Yeah, to make it clear, I don’t have anything against Russians I don’t like what the government Russian government is doing, so if you could look at the history, Putin is repeating the same step by step. We look at Russia within Russia but Georgia and other countries. So he’s methodic methodologically or how to say that he’s willing to take Ukraine. Then after several, for example, it took eight years to build up the military forces to take Ukraine; then, after a couple of years, it’s obvious that we have Finland that is not in NATO. We have Sweden that is not in nato we have politics that are quite vulnerable, and then uh Putin has expressed a very clear interest in taking these countries if you look at the interview that he gave after Lukashenka’s speech so it’s I I personally engaged in a conversation with different Europeans and what I see is short term view. People are suffering people are losing their income, or where people are suffering, they don’t have they’re not willing to support Ukraine. But they miss the point. They don’t understand the long-term consequences. Putin is not going to stop right there. He is moving, step by step, he is using the same tactics, and after five years of building up the strength again, he can go to the next target, and it’s upsetting to see that Europeans are giving up, giving in, and giving up some of the territories. Yes, Ukraine is not a part of the European Union, but it’s in the territory, and Putin is very happy to see that Europeans are giving up some of the territories and, for example, the U.S. is not like engaging as much as some have wanted. There’s a great deal of debate about this the no-fly zone there’s a reluctance. Obviously, it’s been delivered, the message is, we can’t do that, that’s from NATO that’s a consensus among the NATO countries, So I don’t think any one country dominates that decision. But there is the second question that Zelinski has made public. Give us the planes. There are many Russian planes that were left abandoned when the soviet union fell apart in the various eastern european countries at that time i’m wondering why why would the planes not be delivered i mean you know at this point putin can declare anything being an act of war while he’s doing all the destruction but it seems to me that that would be a major move if the um ukrainians had planes that were formerly russian planes in which many of the military people have been trained in is that accurate yeah so the first point is that uh air or like yeah protection from air is the weakest point the weakest ukrainian link link right now so um the second point is that uh there are lots of amazing stories of uh air airplanes just protecting protecting people from from the air so that is the support that ukraine would definitely need i personally understand the motivations of nato not to close the sky and i got attacked by some of the europeans for for me supporting the idea of closing the sky because many europeans who i talked to they are saying that it can provoke the uh world war three um if nato engages okay there are some motivations around that but yes ukraine ukrainian sky is currently the weak link and that’s how different people are getting in the country and start spreading around the country i just don’t have the right military language to describe that but that’s how it’s happening yeah we had just a brief conversation where we started and you uh gave me i asked you about the insights of friends or connections what you’re seeing is a a parochial or a a very local mentality it’s not us it’s them it’s their problem not our problem but your point is today it is our problem not yours tomorrow it will be yours and you feel very strongly about that and but you’re getting pushback on that on that discussion is that correct exactly so basically i’m not saying that everybody is just closing their eyes to everything that is happening there are three types of people there are people though who are showing me immense support immense support there are people who are silent for example they have relatives in russia and they don’t know how to react and i also respect that but also also there are people who have very short-term perspective that’s exactly what you mentioned that they they understand okay we want safety now we want to protect ourselves now very like individualistic approach so we want to be fine now but they forget that there is long-term vision the history is repeating repeating itself and we saw this kind of stories and yeah many europeans are just forgetting that uh in long term um he is going to go forward two things i want to ask you about first of all this is in europe and many people are very familiar with europe north americans all of europeans are very familiar with the history and the buildings and the society and they’re seeing the buildings in the society crushed demolished just taken down completely now this happened in chechnya and other countries too but it wasn’t viewable this is viewable every night on television there’s fresh video fresh from the individuals from the news everybody’s seeing this and i just i go yes we didn’t want world war three but what we’re seeing here is essentially recorded genocide and we’ve never had recorded genocide in my to my knowledge you have an opinion about that yeah the problem is that for example people around the world don’t understand that they are already engaged in a war i think many people think that it’s somewhere in ukraine but they don’t understand that they are already there because yes uh putin saw that kiev is not going to capitulate quickly in like five days that was their expectation they are not uh ukrainians have a very strong sentiment to choose to to not to give in and they became much more violent and we we see people record how buildings are being demolished we see how how people are being killed how more than 30 children were killed so far that’s what i would have the information that i have yeah so the things that are being recorded and the another horrible thing is that is that russian troops are making their best efforts to to take the nuclear plants they make one day ago i think yeah one day ago they were trying to take over the zappo the nuclear plant in zappos it’s one of the biggest nuclear plants in europe one of the biggest is six times as big as chernobyl and they are trying to take that one to be able to manipulate the other countries they are saying okay this is ours and we can do anything we want i want to ask you one other thing about this and it’s just my personal calculations ukraine has 40 million people as a population i’m going to give it a low estimate there are roughly 10 million maybe 12 million males fighting age there are 200 000 troops in ukraine the fighting people the males of maybe somewhere when some females too frankly uh who are now have weapons not not huge weapons that’s a lot of people that have uh in a country against you okay as a you know invasion and it will get to be you know a city by city neighborhood by neighborhood process how at this point are people mentally prepared to have that long-term drawn out neighborhood by neighborhood fight yeah so what what i see in social media like we in social media ukrainians have is that ukrainian spirit is strong because ukrainians saw what freedom is like and they are not willing to give it up and we have this feeling of unity, of course, given the war psychology first five seven days are really hard and right now people are start like losing hope but we are getting support from all over ukraine just supporting each other to continue the fight and yet the sentiment is strong the ukrainian spirit is strong that’s what they can say and that’s how ukrainians are willing to um when when this work is possible to say so in the beginning when we first started you uh as we were just getting connected here you told me about a um a campaign to raise money for ukrainian families would you like to give us some details about that yeah uh so basically there is uh one project it’s called the 1k project uh this is the peer-to-peer donations project started by a ukrainian uh based in uh in in the us he moved 30 years long time ago and he started the project to help families across the world during colbit now he’s transforming this this idea to to help ukrainian families help directly direct help from u.s families to ukrainian families not uh sending your money to u.s of ukrainian army for example or just some big charity organizations many people don’t want to do that but this this project it verifies families that actually need help and us families can easily send $1,000 to the family whose life or hopes or homes were fully destroyed and I’m personally helping to coordinate the project and verify families and it’s horrible to see in which situation in which situation people end up they their homes are destroyed everything is like they don’t have anything even money or something so it’s a great cause that every U.S. citizen can help and they can personally decide whether they want to support the cause or not. Families are verified, and U.S. families have the right to say whether to send the $1,000 or not. Let’s spread this information and read about it.

Let’s get to spelling right.

The 1kproject.org. So far, more than 450 thousand dollars were raised, that means that more than 450 families can be supported and we are hoping to be able to support more families because the situation is just horrible.

Well, we’ve never had this in most of our lifetimes where it was so visible on television videos and so much you know the internet may have changed the way wars are conducted, we’ve never had it quite this way. Daria, any other comments you’d like to add.

I just would encourage people to consider having long-term thinking. I’m not saying what to believe in but to think long-term, not only short-term like where you are right now or in which situation your family is, especially for those people who are in Europe just think long term and consider long-term consequences because the stories are repeating themselves. Are you open to follow-up contact by anybody who watches the show or the podcast? I’m happy to engage in a conversation with people who are ready to engage in a conversation.

In what way would they do that?

Via LinkedIn or say with LinkedIn.

Okay, and it’s your name there Daria Shepetko. Okay, we’ll put that in there. Well, I really want to thank you for your time and insights, and I hope to keep in contact with you and follow up. Let’s keep this going, and maybe periodically, we’ll have an update on progress and which way things are going okay.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you.

No one can predict how this war in Ukraine is going to end or just how far and how serious will be the geographic spread of military conflict. But we plan to use our connections to partners in the technology ecosystem to understand the causes and potential solutions to areas in conflict. If you are one of those people, please indicate your willingness to share information at our website GameChangers.tv.

This show was made possible by a friend of ours, Ivar Siimar, who is a partner at Trind Ventures in Estonia. Thank you, Ivar, for connecting us to Daria. During this interview, we mentioned how the government of Estonia now runs its entire government systems from the cloud. I have a link in the notes about how Estonia decided to go “all in” on cloud services. Thank you for joining us in this podcast.

We share your concern about this invasion of Ukraine and where it might lead. If you’d like to follow this thread as well as other stories, There’s an icon on the right side of the screen; click on it to become a subscriber. we look forward to your continued engagement and participation in upcoming shows.