#456 – Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Ukraine, War, Peace, Putin, Trump, NATO, and Freedom
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The following is a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. It was an intense, raw, and heartfelt conversation, my goal for which was to understand and to do all I can to push for peace. Please allow me to say a few words, first about language, then about the president, and finally about history. Please skip ahead straight to our conversation if you like. We spoke in a mix of languages, continuously switching from Ukrainian to Russian to English, so the interpreter was barely hanging on. It was indeed, in many ways, a wild ride of a conversation. As the president said, the first of many. Language, like many other things in a time of war, is a big deal. We had a choice. Speak in Russian, Ukrainian, or English.
The president does speak some English, but he's far from fluent in it. And I, sadly, don't speak Ukrainian. Yet. So Russian is the only common language we're both fluent in. In case you don't know, the Russian language is one that the president speaks fluently and was his primary language for most of his life. It's the language I also speak fluently, to the degree I speak any language fluently, as does a large fraction of the Ukrainian population. So the most dynamic and powerful conversation between us would be in Russian, without an interpreter, who in this case added about two to three second delay, and frankly, translated partially and poorly, for me at least, taking away my ability to feel the humor, the wit, the brilliance, the pain, the anger, the humanity,
of the person sitting before me that I could clearly feel when he was speaking fluently in the language I understand, Russian. But all that said, war changes everything. The Ukrainian language has become a symbol of the Ukrainian people's fight for freedom and independence. So we had a difficult choice of three languages. And faced with that choice, we said yes to all three, to the consternation and dismay of the translators. We make captions and voiceover audio tracks available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. So you can listen either to a version that is all one language or to the original mixed language version with subtitles in your preferred language. The default is English overdub.
On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then clicking audio track, and then selecting the language you prefer. English, Ukrainian, Russian. To listen to the original mixed language version, please select the English UK audio track. Big thank you to Eleven Labs for their help with overdubbing using a mix of AI and humans. We will continue to explore how to break down the barriers that language creates with AI and otherwise. This is a difficult but important endeavor. Language, after all, is much more than a cold sequence of facts and logic statements. There are words, when spoken in the right sequence and at the right time, that can shake the world. and turn the ties of history that can start and end wars.
Great leaders can find those words, and great translators can help these words reverberate to the outskirts of a divided civilization. On another note, let me say that President Zelensky is a truly remarkable person and a historic figure. I say this as somebody who deeply understands the geopolitical complexity and history of the region. I am from this region. My parents were both born in Ukraine, Kyiv and Kharkiv, both my grandfathers too. I was born in Tajikistan and lived for a time there, then in Kyiv, then Moscow, then United States. And while I am now for almost 30 years and to the day I die, I am a proud American. My family roots grow deep in the soil of nations that comprised the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Tajikistan.
I've gotten to know and have spoken for hours with members of the president's team and people close to him. I spoke to hundreds of Ukrainians since 2022, including soldiers, civilians, politicians, artists, religious leaders, journalists, economists, historians, and technologists.
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