141. Perspectives Directly from Ukraine and Russia’s Governments

In this episode, I spoke with two members of the government, one in Ukraine and one in Russia. I don’t believe these guys necessarily have the view of an average Russian or Ukrainian. However, they do represent people in their countries. First I spoke with Sviatoslav Yurash, Ukraine’s youngest-ever MP. Sviatoslav is currently defending Ukraine from the ongoing Russian invasion and gives his perspective on the war and what it really looks like on the ground in Kyiv. He has an impressive story. He is deeply involved in the government and has been involved in the war between Russia and Ukraine for years. He is the former Euromaidan press centre organizer (which was the group that protested and eventually ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian president in 2014. Sviatoslav was the senior spokesperson for the current president Zelensky's 2019 presidential election campaign. Sviatoslav is currently in Kyiv and has taken up arms against the Russian military. I then spoke with Nikolai Burlyayev, a member of State Duma (an elected government official), First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Development of Civil Society, Public and Religious Association Issues, and member of the Orthodox Patriarchal Council for Culture. He is also a Russian theatre and cinema actor, laureate of 50 international film festivals including Venice, Cannes, San Francisco, and Acapulco, an Oscar nominee for the lead part in Pyotr Todorovsky's "Wartime Romance", and President of the Golden Vityaz Internationals Film Forum. Member of the State Duma. He came on to give the Russian government’s perspective on the war. As you guys might know, I have a lot of Russian friends and my 4-year-old daughter is half Russian. We were going to be there in the summer. Russian doctors saved my dad. I had some negative feedback about giving a platform to the government of an invading country, but I believe in untrammeled freedom of speech and letting people think for themselves. I'm not interested in contributing to censorship. Shutting down RT (Russia Today, the government news source) like some platforms have I think is a mistake. Russia blocking Facebook and Twitter is a mistake. This war is brutal and nobody knows what it’s going to turn into, but not being aware of what Russian citizens are being told is not the way to go in my opinion. If you want to help: