Wolodymyr Yermolenko, 43, is a Ukrainian philosopher, essayist, and journalist who lives and works in Kyiv. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, his podcast "Explaining Ukraine" and the website of his media platform "Ukraine World" https://ukraineworld.org/ have become a critical English-language source of information and analysis for the international community. According to the organization's website, the Ukraine World project emerged from a volunteer initiative helping international journalists during the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013-2014. Today it operates thanks to the support of USAID, the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian Institute, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the NATO Centre in Ukraine, and other donors. In late 2022, Yermolenko was elected to the presidency of Ukraine’s PEN club, succeeding novelist Andrej Kurkov. He is married to literary scholar (and podcast co-host) Tetyana Ogarkova, with whom he has three daughters.

STANDARD: Mr. Yermolenko, what are the working conditions for Ukrainian journalists these days?

Yermolenko: It is a very challenging situation for the Ukrainian media because we work under martial law. Take television, for example: Since the first days of the war, all the key channels, public and private, have unified to ensure the 24/7 broadcasting of streamlined news and analysis. We call this the "single marathon." Since then, all political discussion on TV that we were accustomed to before has disappeared. Therefore, political competition between parties is practically non-existent today because virtually all the major platforms for discussing these ideas are gone.

STANDARD: Can standards of objective journalism even apply when your country is under attack?

Yermolenko: I understand some people think objective journalism and patriotism are contradicting concepts. I, in contrast, think you can perfectly be a patriot and an objective journalist at the same time. Then again, there is a big problem: wishful thinking, which today is very prevalent in Ukrainian media. The truth is that nowadays, there is a lot of information that we cannot verify. What is generally called "the fog of war" is real, and we all know it. So it is sometimes not even necessarily disinformation that constitutes the most significant problem but information that is being spread but cannot be verified.

STANDARD: What have been the biggest changes your own organization has experienced since February 2022?

Yermolenko: As our audience has expanded massively, we have added social media channels in German, Italian, Spanish, and French. We also added accounts on Reddit and Quora to the existing ones on Facebook, Twitter, and youtube to reach the biggest possible audience and to be able to provide more in-depth reporting. Our most important format is still our podcast, in which we give a voice to Ukrainian experts on all kinds of topics. Many Ukrainian experts are not English speakers, but they know important things. So we interview them, translate what they say, and present it to an international audience.

We have also traveled across Ukraine a lot in the past twelve months, reporting from different places, doing video documentaries. However, at Ukraine World, we do not consider ourselves "pure" journalists, as we cannot separate our journalism from our civic activism and engagement. I myself am combining the roles of a journalist, a philosopher, and a volunteer. That means, for instance, that when we go to some place, we never go empty-handed. We always gather equipment for the military or civilians who fight and live there.

STANDARD: While you represent a private organization, what role does Ukraine’s public broadcaster have in the current media environment?

Yermolenko: I think the public broadcaster has done a remarkable job over the past few years and continues to do so. It grew both in quantity and quality and is now one of the country's most reliable sources of information, including the digital information space. The problem is that the current government, just like the previous one, is not really that fond of the idea of having an independent public broadcaster, and the war has certainly not contributed to changing their minds. Having said that: It is not like Zelensky’s government is trying to monopolize the public information space, but the situation is complicated.

STANDARD: Can you elaborate on that?

Yermolenko: When Zelensky became president in 2019, he did not have the backing of the big Ukrainian TV channels owned by oligarchs who have been using them for their own purposes for decades. So he had a hard time broadcasting his ideas and vision for the country and communicating the government line in the way he would have liked. A tricky situation, which he tried to resolve in two ways. Firstly, he attacked the oligarchs in his speeches, attempting to reduce their influence by putting public pressure on them. Secondly, he was trying to use state TV channels – which he partly created himself – as platforms for his government to promote its policies. He would have been totally dependent on the oligarchs’ channels reporting if he had not done that. So while this may be considered problematic, you could somehow understand his actions.

STANDARD: What has changed in that context since the start of the war?

Yermolenko: While the role of the oligarchs in Ukraine keeps diminishing, and the ‘single marathon’ arguably works in the government’s favor, I guess the question is why the Zelensky administration still seems to be so afraid of the political opposition. There are now some private youtube channels that have become very popular, and even though I cannot confirm this, there are rumors at least one of them may be linked to Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office. However, it is not like I am worried about authoritarian trends or anything like that.

We are at war, and we all understand that in wartime, we have to focus our efforts on one goal and one goal only. Concerning freedom of speech and open political debate, the problem is that the Russians are using any plurality of opinion for their own purposes. They have been engaging in this abuse of free speech for decades to undermine Ukrainian statehood. Russian media’s key narrative about Ukraine has always only served one aim: to destroy the trust of Ukrainians in their own state, their government, their institutions, their army, their society, their neighbors, et cetera.

STANDARD: What does the current state of the Ukrainian media landscape tell us about its future?

Yermolenko: If the war does not end this year – and I think that is unrealistic – the question will be: Do we bring back at least portions of open democratic debate at some point? For instance, do we bring back political talk shows on TV in which people openly argue? Or is that too dangerous, given the situation? Those are very tricky questions. I think we gradually – if very cautiously – need to come back to this state of affairs and that public television is the only platform that can safeguard us against oligarchic influences. But television is only one part of the story, with its role more and more diminishing. Online media has seen massive growth in Ukraine in the last two decades, starting with outlets like Ukrainska Pravda, of which there is now also an English-language edition. The latter’s impact on the Orange Revolution was immense at the time, and it has only been increasing since. The war has somewhat turbocharged this development. People want the kind of information TV cannot deliver, while online, you find anything you are looking for at any given time.

STANDARD: From your vantage point working inside Ukraine, what constitutes the most significant difference in the war’s perception outside the country?

Yermolenko: I think many people outside Ukraine do not understand that we are not pro-military per se. We are simply pro-ourselves because we know that if there is no military, there is no us. The Russians will simply kill us all. I understand some people in Western countries are surprised when they see local intellectuals supporting the Ukrainian army. The problem with these people is that they have entirely forgotten the fundamentals of what makes the free world free and what the sources of democracy are. They think democracy is all about having a dialogue because that is what they know from their societies, and they seem completely unable to acknowledge the limits of their paradigms. People, like, say, Juergen Habermas, simply do not understand that you cannot have a dialogue with a murderer who is determined to kill you. Then again, this is not exactly a new phenomenon. The history of Western philosophy is full of characters who were seduced by terrible ideas. Just think of people like Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre.

What Putin wants is to destroy democracy and Europe as we know it. This is not a matter of interpretation. He has literally said so, and what happened in Bucha is a perfect illustration of this. I understand that in Austria, Germany, or France, some people think this is a fairytale. Well, I invite those people to come to Ukraine and visit the same cities, towns, and villages I have been to in the last twelve months and see the unfathomable scale of death and destruction for themselves. You know, on the rare occasions I travel outside the country these days, and I go to, say, Paris, I always feel a little bit like I am entering The Matrix. Nearly everyone there acts like nothing is happening at all. But it is, and therefore I always feel more comfortable being back in Ukraine despite everything because I feel like I am much closer to European reality here.

STANDARD: Does it help when President Zelensky tells Ukrainians that EU membership in the next two years is realistic when the chance to accomplish this goal in that timeframe appears equal to zero, given the political realities within many EU member states?

Yermolenko: I remember many times over the past two decades when some politician gave us a definite date when the country would allegedly join the EU. It appears to be a defining feature of every new generation of Ukrainian politicians that they do not learn from past mistakes, so people here are accustomed to this kind of rhetoric. Still, I think Zelensky is not necessarily lying when he says stuff like that, but he may really believe it. He feels he can change history, and it is not like he has no reason to feel that way. The fact is that we have been entering a period of what you may call accelerated history. For instance, on February 23, 2022, nobody would have predicted that Ukraine would be given EU candidate status anytime soon, and yet here we are. So things are changing fast, and people understand that history is unpredictable. And why not? There have been so many black swan events that one feels it will soon be the white swan that is the exception to the rule. (Klaus Stimeder, 23.5.2023)