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A nuclear spectre is haunting Europe once again. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilisation of some 300,000 reservists and announced that he will use ‘all available means’ to defend Russia, adding, ‘This is not a bluff.’ As one senior European policymaker noted to me, such nuclear brinkmanship is an invitation to dust off old Cold War tomes such as Herman Kahn’s On thermonuclear war.

To be sure, amid the euphoria following recent Ukrainian battlefield victories, some commentators are cautiously optimistic that Ukraine could win the war by the spring. But Putin’s latest moves suggest that Russia is settling in for a long war of attrition. In addition to issuing more strident threats, he has also reduced two significant asymmetries that have characterised the conflict so far. The first is the gap between Russia’s ‘special operation’ and Ukraine’s whole-of-society response to it. Deploying 300,000 more soldiers may not be enough to overwhelm Kyiv or occupy Ukraine, but it will keep Russia in the game.

The other asymmetry is at the level of international support. Ukraine would have disappeared from the map many months ago had it not received billions of dollars of military supplies, intelligence support and economic aid from Europe and the United States. By contrast, Russia has been at pains to attract any meaningful external support. But at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Samarkand, Putin got to catch up with fellow travellers like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Putin’s most important supporter is Xi, who has continued to stand by him. As I learned from speaking with Chinese academics this summer, China seems to view the situation in Ukraine as a ‘proxy war’ in its own looming cold war with the US. A pertinent lesson from the original Cold War is that when both sides in a proxy war are receiving enough support to keep them afloat, neither side will ever prevail. While the Ukrainians have used this fact to argue for continuous Western arms shipments, it also could motivate China to scale up its practical support (namely, trucks and semiconductors) to Russia.

If the conflict does move in that direction, we know what the result will be. The people of Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Angola and many other places can all attest to the horrors of proxy wars that drag on for years or even decades, soaking their countries in blood, crippling their economies and depriving younger generations of a future.

Still, in the short-term, the West must show that it is not cowed by Putin’s threats of escalation. As my colleagues at the European Council on Foreign Relations have shown, Europe can weather a long war if it adopts a comprehensive plan to provide Ukraine with the three key elements of military supplies, security assurances and economic support.

For the first pillar, they devised a ‘leopard plan’ to furnish Ukraine with desperately needed armoured vehicles and outlined concrete ideas for gradually supplying Ukraine with more Western technologies as its old Soviet kit runs out. But, in addition to careful planning and execution, this will require money. Given that Ukraine’s army is larger than the Bundeswehr (the EU’s largest land force), and that its armoured brigades outnumber those of Britain, France and Germany combined, we estimate that its military supply needs will cost €100 billion.

Second, to agree to a settlement to end the war, Ukraine will need credible long-term security guarantees. To that end, my colleagues have developed a framework comprising formal assurances of support, consultation mechanisms, promises of supplies and threats of sanctions. These should apply only to territories that are fully controlled by Ukraine, so that Ukrainian leaders won’t have to concede any occupied territories in order to agree to a settlement.

Finally, economic support must cover not just the costs of rebuilding the country and preparing it for integration into the European Union but also the Ukrainian state’s ongoing day-to-day needs. Right now, tax revenues are covering only 40% of public spending, leaving a US$5 billion monthly funding gap.

Maintaining European political support and solidarity will be the biggest challenge, especially as the costs of the long war continue to rise. According to some of our estimates, supporting Ukraine in the ways described above could cost more than €700 billion. That is larger than the EU’s pandemic recovery plan, which was already seen as a revolutionary step even though it applied to all member states. Mustering the same level of support for a single non-member state will require a heroic feat of political leadership.

Moreover, the winter will bring mounting energy bills and higher costs for housing-desperate Ukrainian refugees. Governments have already been toppled in Italy and Bulgaria, and the far right seems to be making gains on a new populist wave. European leaders will need to prepare their populations for a long war while also continuing to search for solutions. Even as they demonstrate their long-term commitment to the Ukrainian struggle, they must structure their support in ways that will keep the door open for an eventual settlement. An endless proxy war is one of the last scenarios that anyone should want.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war of aggression against Ukraine on 24 February, he evidently expected a quick and easy victory. Having implied in his speeches that Ukraine was a flimsy fiction of a nation, he assumed that it was bound to collapse, although he committed almost 85% of Russia’s active-duty army to his so-called ‘special operation’.

With the sudden success of the Ukrainian armed forces’ counteroffensive in the past weeks, the war has entered a new phase.

Obviously, Putin severely misjudged the country he was invading. He should have known better. In 2014, following his annexation of Crimea, he tried to take much of eastern and southern Ukraine with a combination of proxy forces and direct military intervention, but the Ukrainians marshalled a determined defence of their freedom and independence—and they have done so again this year.

By April, the Kremlin had already been forced to admit that its effort to capture Kyiv and topple Ukraine’s leadership had failed. Russian forces’ retreat from the areas around the capital revealed a landscape of wanton destruction and war crimes. Russian military leaders in a second phase of the aggression then shifted their focus to capturing the Donetsk and Luhansk districts that comprise Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, as well the entire Black Sea coastline east of Odessa.

Over the past six months, Europe has witnessed its most intense fighting since World War II. Russian artillery has pummelled Ukrainian cities and villages, indiscriminately striking residential areas, hospitals, kindergartens and power plants. Yet Russia’s progress has been far more limited than anticipated. Supplied with modern Western weaponry, Ukrainian forces were able to hold the line. The conflict seemed to have become a prolonged war of attrition. Although Russia’s offensive had stagnated, Russia’s substantially larger size meant that it would be able to keep committing resources (albeit of diminishing quality). Ukraine’s prospects remained highly uncertain.

But now the tide appears to have turned. Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in the south, around Kherson, and then staged a lightning assault on Russian positions in the northeast, around Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city. Having been in Kyiv as news of the Ukrainian forces’ rapid advance started to come in, I can report that the mood was jubilant. ‘Now,’ everyone said, ‘we have demonstrated to the world that victory is possible.’

The mood in Moscow is reportedly the opposite of jubilant—as well it should be. Russians are quickly coming to recognise that defeating the Ukrainian military and occupying the entire country, as outlined by Putin, is not possible.

Hence, pro-Kremlin bloggers have begun to complain about strategic missteps and a lack of supplies for the troops. As one commentator put it, ‘We have already lost, the rest is just a matter of time.’ Even in the official Russian media, one finds shock and despair. While some analysts desperately call for a declaration of total war and a general mobilisation, others argue that it wouldn’t help, and that it’s time for political negotiations with Ukraine. But there’s no clear message overall. Putin, from his Kremlin bunker, continues to insist that everything is going according to plan. But that claim has clearly lost credibility.

Without any real possibility of a military victory, Putin is now cutting energy supplies to Europe, hoping that a harsh winter will force Europeans to abandon their support for Ukraine. But that is another misjudgement by the Kremlin. Europeans will do no such thing. Europe has reduced its dependence on Russian gas from 40% to 9% in the space of just a few months, and its gas reserves for the winter are already filled up to 84%. Though there will still be difficulties, they won’t have any decisive political effect. Energy blackmail was one of Putin’s last weapons, and it is becoming duller by the day.

Now, Europe and the United States must step up their support for Ukraine. Providing the €5 billion per month needed to keep the Ukrainian state going will require only around 0.03% of EU GDP. That support must come on top of a sustained effort to strengthen and re-equip the Ukrainian armed forces with more Western weapons. The US has clearly been leading here, but Europe must also do its part.

My guess is that Putin will remain holed up in his Kremlin fortress (and information bubble) through the winter in anticipation that his political strategy against Europe will succeed. Eventually, however, it will become clear even in Moscow that both the military and political strategies have failed. At that point, a radically new situation will emerge. Not only will it be obvious to everyone that Russia can’t win, but it might even start to look as though Russia will lose the war that Putin started.

At that point, Russia will have no choice but to put the profound strategic failure of the Putin regime in the past.

‘We all need to have perestroika,’ Mikhail Gorbachev would often say. The Soviet Union’s last leader lived by that credo. After becoming the general secretary of the communist party in 1985 and implementing his program of restructuring and glasnost (openness), he even changed his job title, preferring to be called president.

The first and last Soviet president was the most democratic leader that Russia (the USSR’s de facto centre) had over the last century, if not ever. And in the 31 years since the Soviet collapse, his belief in peace, mutual understanding, dialogue and democracy remained unwavering.

It was these values that led Gorbachev to withdraw the Soviet Union from a decade-long disastrous war in Afghanistan, and in 1993 to use the money from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize to help fund Novaya Gazeta, the flagship media outlet of Russia’s democrats whose editor, Dmitry Muratov, received his own Nobel Peace Prize last year. Along with dozens of other independent media outlets, Novaya Gazeta was forced to suspend operations soon after President Vladimir Putin launched his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine in February.

Gorbachev, too, suffered for his beliefs. Perhaps if he had died in 1991, people back then would have busied themselves assessing his place in history. Faced with the living, breathing Gorbachev, however, there was animosity and awkward silence. For years, when he was spoken about at all, it was usually to deny his achievements.

By starting perestroika, which many in Russia today, including Putin, consider a disaster, Gorbachev exposed himself to criticism from every direction: for being too radical, too conservative or too feeble. But he did not flee from public scrutiny. Even weakened by age and illness, he continued to embrace it as director of the Gorbachev Foundation, whose work embodied his values.

Like Putin, Gorbachev thought that it would have been better if the USSR had continued. But, unlike Putin, he envisaged a reformed, democratised federation, rather than a union of nations unwillingly submitting to Kremlin rule.

In the 2000s, Gorbachev told me why he didn’t send tanks to Germany in 1989 to prevent the destruction of the Berlin Wall (built in 1961 on the order of my great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev). ‘We shouldn’t dictate to sovereign countries their way of life,’ he said.

Gorbachev himself was partly to blame for the antipathy he faced after the Soviet collapse. Reformers often lack patience, and his plan for sweeping economic changes in just 500 days was as utopian as Khrushchev’s 1961 promise of ‘developed communism’ in 20 years.

What made Gorbachev different from other Russian leaders was that he accepted responsibility for the consequences of his rule. While Khrushchev and Gorbachev’s successor, Boris Yeltsin (incidentally the only other leaders in Russia who were forced from power or left voluntarily before their death), also did, they left public life altogether, privately berating themselves for all they failed to accomplish. Gorbachev, by contrast, joined historians, politicians, his own comrades and the public in reviewing his rule. Ironically, he helped bury himself as a historical figure while still alive.

While the consensus in Russia is that Gorbachev’s reforms all went astray or failed because of his bad choices, his legacy is perceived very differently internationally—and justifiably so. The last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of this one were the heyday of globalisation in large part because of Gorbachev’s efforts to embrace the world, establish ‘new political thinking’ and mitigate Russia’s usual suspicion and animosity towards the outside world.

As a man of conscience who reflected on his leadership from outside the Kremlin, Gorbachev was eager to address the problems for which he felt responsible, including economic hardship and political instability. Although his position was weak, his quixotic candidacy in the 1996 presidential election made casting a ballot worthwhile for at least some Russians (like me). Yeltsin’s candidacy that year, during a period of even greater chaos than the Soviet Union ever experienced, inspired very few.

It would have been a shame had such an exciting event (Russia was new to electing presidents, and the novelty imparted a festive air) become just another occasion to register dissatisfaction. I never believed that Gorbachev had a serious chance of winning, or that he would be a good president. But he was the first president in Russian history to succeed in re-emerging as a candidate after years of efforts to bury him, able to speak as both a leader from the past and a voice for the future.

The retired Khrushchev could only dream of that after his ouster from the Kremlin in 1964. Before his death, with ample time to contemplate the past, my great-grandfather concluded that his greatest achievement was not the policy of the ‘thaw’—denunciation of Stalin’s crimes, along with some political and cultural liberalisation—but, in fact, his own dismissal by means of a simple vote. He was neither declared an ‘enemy of the people’ nor banished to the gulag; he was simply forced into ‘a retirement of merit’ at his dacha. He was not physically liquidated following his political demise, as he certainly would have been in the 1930s. Nevertheless, Khrushchev regretted his lack of courage and wished he had used his time to push his thaw further, so that even political death would be optional.

Twenty-five years later, Russian history made that liberal turn. Death and disappearance were no longer the only options. Political death had become a matter of choice. If Gorbachev did not have a chance to win in 1996, he at least had the chance to run. Perestroika and glasnost, so derided nowadays, prepared the ground for that under Yeltsin, who, while no fan of his Soviet predecessor, was democratic enough to keep the spirit of change.

With the Ukraine invasion and the destruction of media outlets that became possible because of glasnost, Gorbachev’s legacy today seems to be dead. But Gorbachev himself was more optimistic. He often noted that he was a product of Khrushchev’s thaw, and he would no doubt encourage us to believe that a new leader will emerge in Russia one day, start a new perestroika, and resurrect the values to which he devoted his life.

Ukraine is seeking out innovative weapons and other military equipment developed by Australian companies to give its troops a technological edge in their war against Russia.

In an interview for ASPI’s podcast, Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, said Australia’s Bushmaster troop carriers had saved many Ukrainian fighters. So far, Australia has committed 60 Bushmasters—34 of which have been delivered—along with M113 armoured personnel carriers and six M777 howitzers.

The ambassador said Ukraine’s forces were outnumbered and outgunned, and for every shell Ukraine fired, Russia fired 10. ‘It’s important that Ukraine gets all the ammunition, all the guns we need to be able to keep on fighting.’ He said he was convinced Ukraine could win a conventional war.

‘It’s an existential fight for us. If Russians stop fighting, it’s the end of the war. If we stop fighting, it’s the end of Ukraine. However, Russia has more troops, more ammunition, more guns, more weapons and long-range missiles. Most important, Russia has nuclear weapons. We don’t.’

Farmers were still on their tractors and disabled men and women were making Molotov cocktails.

ASPI Executive Director Justin Bassi asked the ambassador if Kyiv had specifically requested the Australian-made DefendTex Drone40 now being provided to Ukraine. The D40 is a small ‘kamikaze’ drone that can be deployed manually or from a grenade launcher to destroy enemy troops, armoured vehicles and ammunition depots.

‘Absolutely,’ said Myroshnychenko. ‘These are basically fighting drones. We can inflict damage remotely and thus save lives of our personnel.’

He said he’d travelled extensively ‘exploring’ Australia’s defence industry in search of modern weapons. He’d discovered that Australia made some of the world’s best military communications equipment. Other materiel he’d requested included mine-detection systems. An Adelaide company made state-of-the-art batteries to be used by armed forces.

Australian companies made small, mobile ‘passive’ radar sets that allowed troops to identify approaching enemy aircraft without giving away their own positions. They could be carried in a backpack.

But, he said, Australia had very limited stocks of 155-millimetre artillery ammunition, and he hoped it would begin producing more. ‘Australia uses up to 15,000 shells per year in training. This is what Ukraine spends in three days.’

Precise long-range weapons such as the HIMARS rocket launchers provided by the United States allowed Ukraine to hit Russian supply depots.

Ukrainians had never been more united, he said. ‘Russian-speaking, Ukrainian-speaking, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants all together are now united to defeat Vladimir Putin and his troops in Ukraine.’

Myroshnychenko said the Ukrainian people wanted Putin put on trial at the International Court of Justice in the Hague for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, inciting hatred, looting billions of dollars from the people of Russia, depriving Russians of a proper future, depriving Russians of their freedoms and human rights, and doing huge damage to the reputation of Russia. ‘Everything Russian is toxic,’ he said. ‘Russian culture is toxic, Russian poets are toxic, Russian people are toxic and that took Vladimir Putin just six months to achieve. How is he going to be remembered?’

Six months after the invasion, Russia now occupied 20% of Ukraine’s territory but Ukrainian forces were carrying out a counteroffensive in the south aiming to recapture territory in the Kherson area, the ambassador said. ‘It’s a very strategic region for us because this is where we have some major grain ports and we use the Dnieper River as a transporting route for other grain.’ Before the invasion, Ukraine was number four in the world in wheat exports and number one in the world in sunflower exports.

Kherson is where the Dnieper flows into the Black Sea and the river is an important transport route to the ports there. ‘We need to get rid of the Russians out of there to make an easy flow for other goods.’

Last year Ukraine had a record harvest of 107 million tonnes of grain. Domestically, it needed only three million tonnes. Normally, the rest was exported, much of it to the Middle East and Africa. Russia had forced a food crisis to blackmail the world to give up on Ukraine, he said. Exports had slowed to a trickle from the required five million tonnes per month and people were starving.

Myroshnychenko referred to Russia’s plans, long abandoned, to hold a victory parade in Kyiv soon after its invasion. Noting the savagery of Putin’s war, he said Ukraine opted this month to hold its own parade of destroyed Russian tanks and other military equipment, but President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government warned citizens not to assemble in large numbers. ‘This is something Russians do not like. They get rattled, and they may retaliate in a very nasty way,’ Myroshnychenko said. ‘So it’s important we don’t congregate in large numbers anywhere in any big city of Ukraine and try to stay away from the main squares.’

Asked how long the war might last, Myroshnychenko said he didn’t have an answer. ‘I wish it ended today, tomorrow. It doesn’t look like it’s going to end that soon.’

The Russians thought it would be a quick war, and it was not. ‘When the war started, many analysts said that Ukraine wouldn’t last longer than three days.’

Much would depend on Ukraine’s allies, on countries like Australia and the US, on NATO allies and other partners, he said. ‘We need to get more military assistance. We need jets, we need tanks, we need long-range missiles. We need it all.’ The longer the war lasted, the more Ukrainians would be murdered and raped, he said. ‘It needs to be stopped. We can’t have this scale of war in the middle of Europe. The world cannot afford it.’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered to thousands of Australian students a heartbreaking account of the impact of Russia’s war on his country.

The images painted by this entertainer turned mega statesman—of homes and hospitals targeted with missiles and bound civilians murdered by the hundreds—will stay with his young audience for a very long time.

During the hour-long video-linked session hosted at the Australian National University and broadcast to institutions across the country, Zelensky did not once name Vladimir Putin other than through his biting references to ‘he’ who had ordered murders, rapes and bombings of cities.

Zelensky said the world must not become accepting of new Russian atrocities every day. That would mean it had opted to ‘put up with death’ and to find ways for Russia to save face.

But, he said, someone who wants to save face doesn’t fire rockets from multiple launchers into cities, doesn’t hit households with cruise missiles, doesn’t destroy living quarters with phosphorous bombs, doesn’t launch rockets into railway stations or into a mall where shoppers are buying food. ‘It’s been already 161 days,’ he said. ‘It’s important not to forget any of those days.’

He said a nation concerned about its image did not ‘drop bombs on birth houses and hospitals, on kindergartens, schools and universities, on museums, theatres and temples’. It doesn’t target artillery against cemeteries and doesn’t strike with rockets the memorial to Holocaust victims in Babi Yar. Its leaders don’t commit thousands of military crimes and crimes against humanity and mass executions of civilians.

‘They don’t put handcuffs on peaceful people, don’t put them on their knees and kill them with a shot in the back of their heads. Don’t rape wives before the eyes of their children and children before the eyes of their mothers.’

Someone who wanted to save face would not blockade cities depriving people of food, water, medical supplies, warmth, communications and hope, Zelensky said. They would not use civilians for forced labour, kidnap children, separate families, leave generations in mass graves, hijack nuclear power stations, hit power plants with tanks, threaten nuclear war and force an energy crisis. They would not blockade ports to stop ships carrying wheat, threatening famine.

Russia had brought mobile crematoria to destroy bodies and hide the torture and other atrocities they had endured. It had lost its mind, its heart, its conscious dignity, ‘and all that a human has’, Zelensky said.

‘The difference between a terrorist and Russia is that terrorists hold themselves accountable for their actions and Russia cannot do even that and tries to accuse other people for their atrocities.’

It was time, Zelensky said, for the nations of the world to give up their own interests for the interests of the planet and stop all trade with the Russian Federation. Providing political or economic benefits to Russia, and paying it for energy supplies, cost the lives of thousands of people killed by Russian weapons.

Russia had to be recognised as a state sponsor of terrorism.

‘The world has to make that choice, the UN has to make that choice, the Security Council has to make that choice, the International Committee of the Red Cross has to make its choice.’ So did the OECD, the EU, NATO and the G7 and G20 countries.

Zelensky said many Australians sent financial aid to Ukraine, provided medical supplies and volunteered in its hospitals. They helped with humanitarian deliveries ‘and also they are on the front line,’ he said.

Students and teachers in Australian classrooms could dismantle the myths about Ukraine fabricated by Russia’s propaganda machine.

Zelensky said he was very grateful to the government of Anthony Albanese for its military and humanitarian assistance, sanctions against Russia and Russian entities, and cancelling of taxes on Ukrainian goods.

Australia was one of the biggest suppliers of military support to Ukraine among non-NATO countries, he said. ‘We will be thankful for continuation of this support. Today, as never before, we need your support, need the support of all civilised countries along with whom we will most surely start to conquer evil.’

An auditorium packed with students and their teachers rose as one in a standing ovation.

ANU chancellor and former foreign minister Julie Bishop told Zelensky the ovation reflected Australians’ recognition of the sacrifice being made by the people of Ukraine. ‘We acknowledge that they have a right to choose their own destiny and people around the world are sending a powerful message in various ways. We here at the ANU condemned the invasion in the very early days and suspended all research and academic activity with Russian counterparts. We must all do our part.’

Zelensky then took questions from students.

Sophia asked the president how, when many Ukrainians had lost their families and homes, he and his nation still had a strong fighting spirit and an optimistic attitude.

‘I am inspired by people,’ Zelensky said. ‘I am inspired by our nation, a strong, resilient, honest nation. The people who fight for its life, for their families, for everything that we have, for our Ukraine. This belongs to the Ukrainian nation and nobody else and that’s why I am proud of it and I’m proud that I’m one of the citizens of those people.’

Ukraine’s resilience did not depend on the nation’s leaders, he said. ‘Everyone in our country is a leader.’ And that could only happen because people valued Ukraine as much as their own lives.

‘I’m sure that thanks to resilience of our country, to our military, to our doctors and everyone, I’m sure we will win this war.’

Liam asked Zelensky if he believed a post-Putin Russia could democratise and be integrated into Europe and global society.

That depended on the Russian nation, Zelensky said. He used the example of Germany, which recognised after World War II that it had brought a bloody war on the world that stained the whole German nation.

‘It was a fascist Germany, but the German nation found the power to recognise the tragedy as a great, tragic mistake of their nation, of their people, of those who followed Hitler, because some supported this government and some just kept silent and everyone understood that everyone was guilty. They have chosen another path to recognise this tragedy, to recognise themselves as guilty and move on.

‘And today we see one of the most powerful economies in the world and one of the most powerful democracies in the world.’

Zelensky said the German people chose to give following generations the chance to live among civilised people. ‘And I think that Russia will have this opportunity for sure.’

Carolyn noted the impact of Russia’s invasion on food, fertiliser and fuel costs and asked how Australian students could help alleviate the human cost to Ukraine. ‘Is our empathy and moral support sufficient or can we do more?’

Zelensky responded, ‘You can’t stand aside, because the one who stands aside, in any corner of the world, is the one who helps Russia.’ Russia was powerful, with more people, more equipment and nuclear weapons and it was trying to overthrow a democracy, he said. He was sure most people wanted to protect the same values that Ukrainians were defending with their lives on the battlefield.

Young Australians could just sympathise, he said. ‘And thank you for your moral support. But you also need to support that with deeds. For us to win against tyranny, we need to have support with concrete actions, because every hour, every day, we are losing the most important thing we were given by God, the lives of people.’

Zelensky noted that many Australians were helping with material assistance. ‘Please continue,’ he said.

Russia spent billions on propaganda that was having an impact internationally, convincing people that it had not invaded anyone. He urged the students and other young Australians to use their social networks to tell the truth about what was happening in Ukraine.

‘That will help us indeed.’

Xintong asked Zelensky how he viewed China’s support for Russia while claiming to be neutral. Zelensky said China was balancing and was maintaining neutrality. That was better than it joining Russia.

Kyle asked if Ukraine and Russia could ever again be on good terms. This was, said Zelensky, the hardest question. ‘Frankly, nobody wants anything in common with people who did all the things to our people.’

The answer would depend on Russia.

‘I don’t know if we can have this peace. Every family has lost something.’ Every Ukrainian had lost something, he said, and would not forget who or what they’d given—a child or a father.

Bridget asked Zelensky what he found the hardest thing about being a leader in war.

He said that was what people were capable of. ‘On one side, our people who are capable of such heroism, who went out on the street and started to stop the military equipment, tanks, with bare hand in the areas which were occupied.’

On the other side, he was shocked by the invaders’ brutality. ‘We have seen different movies, thrillers, the horror movies, we all watched it, but I never thought that the reality in Ukraine would be even more scary than the scariest movies.’

Shingu asked how Ukraine’s economy would be rebuilt.

Zelensky said the war had displaced 12 million people. Most wanted to return and ‘Thanks to God, are not losing the desire to come back.’ That would make it possible to rebuild.

Having that many people displaced and losing their jobs and homes was a disaster that was causing a monthly US$5 billion deficit that was almost killing the economy. Russia’s blockade had prevented movement of millions of tonnes of grain.

Bailey, a disabled student, asked about disabled Ukrainians caught up in the war. Zelensky said his wife was helping support the handicapped with medical supplies and other support. Australians could join those programs.

Olivia asked how Zelensky felt about Ukraine’s winning the 2022 Eurovision song contest. ‘Do you believe music is an important tool for cultural connection during violence?’

Zelensky said culture, sport and science had great significance in times of war—’even more important than in peace time’. Ukrainians were motivated by any victory. ‘Eurovision is one of the greatest examples of where we support our cultural activists.’

Paulina asked how Ukrainian society and culture would be different after the war.

Zelensky told her Ukrainians were fighting for their freedom to live and to love. Before Russia’s invasion they did not need to think about those things. ‘The scariest thing is that someone else will choose where you need to live. And you hear it from me, but you can’t feel it right now. And I’m happy that you don’t have to face this choice. And I’m happy that you still have the peace in your country and [scanning the assembled mass of young people] such beautiful faces. You have the same values we have.’

Ukrainians now had different priorities. ‘The most important thing is my child, my family, how is our neighbour? Let him live. What’s going on at the front? What’s going on with our military, with our statehood, with our homeland? Are we retreating or we are going further? Are we wanting to give up our countries? We are changing the values.’

Zelensky said Ukrainians were different peoples with different values but they were united. ‘I would like to believe that we will stay this very united nation in the same way that we have during this war. And we’ll have the same unity after the war.’