265. Ukraine's Next Chapter
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Hello and welcome to Battleground. Well, we've been caught in the chaos of recent events and haven't had the chance to share more of our material recorded on the ground during our recent trip to Ukraine. So coming up is something that's quite opposite at the moment. It's a fascinating chat with Anton, who's the director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, which is an independent think tank which forecasts changes and designs policies.

possible scenarios for Ukraine going forward. I mean, it goes without saying this was recorded before all the recent developments, but clearly it gives a window into what the Ukrainian stance is on any potential future peace deal. So here it is. Enjoy.

So thanks to Mark Neville, we've arrived at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future. We're down in the bowels of the building and there's some rather fascinating bits of military kit which will all become clear in a minute, including one drone that's got a record on the top of it of a

At least 10, I think, Anton, 10 missions that the drone has done. 10 successful missions. Successful missions. In 2022, interestingly enough. So this was one of the earliest pieces of kit used against the Russians. Yeah, yeah. When Ukraine didn't have enough equipment, we still don't have enough equipment. But at that time, these drones were used. It was the necessary thing for battlefields.

And we had only maybe 10 or 20 drones on the front line, such drones. That's why this drone is a hero. It's still alive. Hero of Ukraine award. Is that a thing actually in Ukraine? You know, you used to be hero of the Soviet Union. Do you have that medal? Of course, hero of Ukraine. So, Anton, before we start or as we start, can you explain, give us your full name and what you do at the Institute?

Anton Guledin, I am Chief Operational Officer in Ukrainian Institute for the Future.

Ukrainian Institute for the Future is the biggest and the most famous Ukrainian think tanks. We do here a lot of research about politics, about military things. We make some laws, advices for laws, and we give our resource to our government, and they look and make some decisions based on our...

Now we are the biggest think tank in Ukraine. Because alive think tanks maybe not more than 20 in Ukraine. Other think tanks mostly look political things. And we look for future, for Ukrainian future. What to do to make Ukraine successful.

Has the war, Anton, been good for democracy in Ukraine, would you say? I wanted to answer first word. It's not funny question because democracy in Ukraine now is difficult to answer because you can see that constitution now, like we say, on a stop. A lot of Ukrainians can't live like they want. And

People who have not been here don't understand how we live now. We can't live normally. Our kids can't live normally. A lot of Ukrainian men are now defenders and they can't leave military forces. They can't see their families and they can't do what they want. They can't live normal life. The same thing with Ukrainian women. They can't do and live normal life like you

European society because they need to work and to be the head of their families because they have kids and so on. So, question about democracy? Bad question. So, you seem to be saying that democracy is sort of on hold until the war is over. You know, comparing to Russia and other countries, we are a democracy country.

But to speak that democracy on hold, we can't have now elections, we can't travel, we can't do what we want because of war, because here we are protecting European world. And you saw a lot of materials about problems in mobilization, problems in business.

problems in the energetical sphere. And it's everything connected to democracy. And now because of war, Russia tried to destroy our democracy. They want to see Ukraine as Russia totalitarian system.

Yeah, and we don't want to live in a normal country. Now we understand that it's for some time democracy on a stop. No, not democracy, like we say, our constitutional rights. But Ukrainians, we love freedom. All our history we fight for freedom. All our history we fight against Russia.

And our opportunity to survive is to be a more critical country. So, Anton, we've been following the conflict, as Mark's already explained, from the earliest days, and we've seen the ups and downs of fortunes for Ukraine on the battlefield, the advances in 2022, the possibilities that were suggested with the counteroffensive in 2023. And since the start of 2024,

At least on the battlefield in terms of territory, it has been a case of tiny grinding and very expensive advances from the Russians. And yet at the same time, Ukraine, we think, has been incredibly resourceful in finding a long range capability, even before the West gave the permission to use weapons to strike at Russia's ability to make war. And this seems...

finally, as we open in 2025, to be having a real effect. We're beginning to see all the economic indicators looking bad for Russia. Also, we now have a new president of the United States who's beginning to talk about peace and peace sooner rather than later. What we're beginning to see is a kind of a split, almost like a

A division in the minds of a lot of Ukrainians between, of course, we want peace, but we don't want peace at any price. And actually, we may be on the cusp of forcing Russia into a position where we will get a much better peace. What is your take on all of this? Because we've been following Trump's

pronouncements, what he might be trying to do. Do you think there's real hope for Ukraine to recover some of the lost ground without having to, you know, effectively lose a chunk of Ukraine because America is going to force you into that position? Interesting question. Do you remember year 1994, as I remember, when Budapest Memorandums has been signed?

When Ukraine lost military nuclear industry, when we lost our strategical aviation, everything was signed at that time.

Since 1994 until 1999 we lost our possibility to do something. After that time our military forces slowly is being destroyed by Russians because we had ministers who had Russian passports and so on. Russia prepared this invasion for a long time and

Ukrainian politicians, you know, seems to me like supported this preparation. Now we receive what we receive. To speak about time 2022-2023,

If we had more techniques, more support, as we asked, Russian military forces would be out of Ukraine on position 1991. But Russians also started to study, study on their mistakes, study on the situation on the battlefield. And now we see that we lost territory every day. We lost territory.

territory. In year 2022-2023 we had enough well-motivated soldiers. It was the best persons of Ukrainian nations.

who ran to military forces to protect our country. At that time we didn't need to find someone and us to go please and protect our country. People ran to military forces and us take us, we want to be soldiers, we want to protect. Well-motivated people, but we didn't have enough opportunities and techniques. Now we see that

We have enough techniques. No, not enough, but we have now F-16s. On a third year of war, why not to give these F-16s on the first day of the war? Now we have some Patriots. We were suggesting two years ago, all of this and the tanks. Anyway, you need to know the backstory of

of what we've been saying, but there've been a lot of voices in the West supportive of giving Ukraine weapons sooner rather than later. But it is interesting your point that actually that really would have made a difference and you could have won the war and recovered all the territory by 2023 if you had had that equipment. - Yeah, and let's look back in history, Hitler about Czechoslovakia, you remember what's happened later.

about Soviet Union, about Czech Republic for example, Prague Spring, let's look about Hungary, what happened also there. And Europeans need to remember that with Russians no deals. Russian humans understand only power. When they will see that Euro Union stands with Ukraine like one nation,

that we protect our civil world, they will understand that it's a problem. Let's look now at fleet, dark fleet of Russia. European companies worked with them, buy Russian gas and oil. This way they supported this aggression. This way they supported preparation of Russia

to make invasion in Euro Union. Let's look on like Russia behaves now. What they do in the Baltic? I see. How they try to make some small aggressions to destroy some pipes, some internet network between Finland, for example, Euro Union and so on. Let's...

Look, for example, at, I don't remember name of pipe, between Norway and GB, what is the biggest oil transport and gas transport underwater system. Can they attack this thing? For sure. And when we don't make normal sanctions against dark fleet, Russian dark fleet,

We will receive this aggression in nearest future and for example if the conflict will for example for one, two years next Russian aggression will be against whole Europe not only against Ukraine. You will see it.

Because we gave Putin opportunity in 2014 when we asked to protect our Ukrainian territory. But we lost Crimea, we lost Donetsk, we lost Lugansk.

and what did united states or euro union or gb nothing now we need all human or humans or who live in this country now need to spend money because all help goes on taxes what simple people pay because of politicians who didn't make some steps turned

10 years ago, in 2014, to start sanctions since 2014. Okay, we'll take a quick break there. We'll be back in a minute.

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Can we talk about the future? This is what this institute is here for. Say there was an end to hostilities tomorrow, what would be the first steps that you would see Ukraine taking to return to some sort of

state of democracy and what reforms do you think would be fundamental to making the new Ukraine? Thank you for this question because it's that what we do right now in this building. First of all, we need to make reform of Ukrainian system because we need to understand that we received this old Soviet Union system. We little bit transformed it

But all system must work not on a party or not on a country. System must work on a citizen. That's why we need to make reforms in election system, in economical system, in tax system. We need to restart our country, it's like Ukraine 2.0, with system for citizens. That's why we need to rewrite our constitution.

That will be the start of all these processes. We need to make elections, but according to new system. We need to remake financing of political parties according to new system. And here in this building we make propositions how to rewrite, how to restart our country.

And we made here vision Ukraine 2035. It's strategical vision. What steps we need to do to restart our country and start to rebuild everything here. And do you think President Zelensky is the right man to lead that process of regeneration and, as you say, reset that will establish a Ukraine 2.0? You know, it's not only one person, not...

Only president can do this. Whole country must to do this. But what I'm getting at is you think he's too much associated with the old way of doing things to be credible as a kind of renaissance leader, if you want to put it like that. You know, this question is everything depends on him. If he want to make changes, the changes to enter in history, like Likvanyu, for example. Yes, he can.

If he makes some other, if he has some other vision, that's his decision. But now we have super opportunity to restart Ukraine, to make Ukraine great again.

like we were two centuries ago. Yeah. I'm just interested, do you have concrete plans for how this reset would happen? You say it's got to be about the citizens. We get that, we understand that. There's a long history of corruption, as you say. The Soviet system is in the DNA of the existing system still. So what practically would you actually propose to say to get a new political structure based on citizens' rights?

that would bring about the transformation? Have you got detailed practical steps of how this would happen? It will be a long answer, but I will answer also on previous question about when bright person come in dark system, dark system eats bright person because one warrior on the battlefield is not a warrior.

That's why we need to restart our system. We have a program and steps what we need to do to restart our country. Everything this we will describe in our vision. In that book you will receive it. You would have opportunity to find it in internet too, in English version. And you will read what we want to see in 2035.

we describe cheap act we described our military industry and we described the

what innovations and what reforms we need to do everything you will find in this book because it will be a long speech you understand yeah Anton you spoke about making Ukraine great again and you've also spoken about the reset of the of the country and its political process but first you must have peace to start this process or maybe it can be started even before peace but

Peace is obviously something that the soldiers will want, that the families will want, everyone in Ukraine wants. The question is, what kind of peace is acceptable and likely, and is it likely anytime soon? What kind of peace? Territory of Ukraine, 1991. It will be the truth.

Yes, whole country want peace. Whole country retired. Retired to live in such conditions. But we understand that we can't stop at this moment on that positions.

what we have in these situations. And victory of whole civil world can be if one time we stop Russian economy and Russian economy will fall down. So we need to make harder sanctions, real sanctions. And this victory can be not in the battlefield. This victory can be in the diplomatical steps. And Russia can count if they won't give our territories back, for example.

They can lose Russia at all. What better solution for them? I don't know. How do you see things going in Russia? I mean, we all, I think, agree that Putin will, his reign will come to an end sooner or later. That is...

inevitable. Would you prefer chaos, which Ukraine could exploit in Russia, or would you prefer a stable government that is not interested in prosecuting Putin's war? What's the best outcome, do you think, for Ukraine? Here in Institute, we have Institute of Russia. We look at sociological questions, we make sociology here.

and we see and we investigate what's happening in Belarus and in Russia. We have experts who work every day about the situation in Russia, what's happening there. What do we see? We see that the Russian economy is now in bad condition. We see the level of prices. The inflation is incredible. We see what's happening in the industry sphere.

Also the situation is going worser and worser for Russia. So sanctions started to work because China and India understand that someday they need to stop trade with them. But it is time. How many lives of great people we lose and can lose this time? It's a huge question. How many families won't see their deaths? We understand. So to investigate

Putin's what he did, Putin what he did here in Ukraine, his soldiers and so on. Yes, it must be because every crazy dictator can do whatever he want any day, anywhere.

And he will say, oh, Putin's crimes not been investigated, why my crimes must be investigated. And what we see, I think Russia as a country will die in nearest 5-7 years. It is possible. If they won't stop now, they will lose.

their country, because as you can see in Russia lives only big cities, only 7 big cities. How lives small villages, how lives small regions, because small regions is the richest regions in Russia, they feed centers. Maybe someday people of these regions will understand.

Why we feed rich Moscow guys? So you feel a breakup of the Russian Federation, if they continue on this path, is most likely? Of course, of course. Because, you know, we look and investigate how people live in regions in Russia.

And they do not agree with conditions how they live. They have fear that if they will say it loud, they will die. They can get in prison. Do you remember about Khabarov's governor who started trying to make better conditions for citizens of their regions?

Now where is he? In a prison. Because someday, as I see that situation, he tried to make Khabarovsk better. But centers can lose money because this money can go for that region.

And the center understood that it's a bad story because other governors can look at him and try to be successful. And someday they will have a decision not to pay to the center, not to support the rich Moscow guys. Can you see a freezing of the conflict? I mean, what you seem to be saying, Anton, is that actually Ukraine needs to keep going. And it needs to keep going, preferably with support from Moscow.

America, certainly from Europe, but it needs to keep going because it's heading in the right direction in terms of this throttling of the Russian economy.

And yet everything we've been hearing from the Americans is that they are going to try and impose or encourage or twist arms to have a freezing of the battlefield. So how do you avoid that? How does Ukraine find a way to keep the pressure on Russia without allowing Russia this breathing space that a freezing of the conflict would give them? It's a hard question and...

we have some plans, we did some research according to this question

But I can't answer you because it's close information, because Russia don't need to know what we will do and how we will do it. But we have ideas and we share our ideas to our government, to our politicians from all parties, because when they have clear ideas and clear solutions,

They walk together, they do together. And some of them, no, not some, a lot of them understand that now is question of our survival.

Well, that was fascinating, wasn't it, Patrick? I remember actually when we recorded it thinking this is a character who people are going to need to listen to as we begin to work through the stages of both peace, but also what comes next, the reconstruction in Ukraine, but also the opportunities for the West in investing and also learning about military technologies.

Well, tomorrow the peace talks begin in Saudi Arabia between the US and Ukraine. So stay tuned this week and we'll bring you all our analysis to the latest developments. Goodbye.