00:00 My question is for Olga Oleynikov.
00:02 I was born and grew up in Russia and I feel horrible about what my country has brought
00:05 this community in Ukraine and I stand with people of Ukraine in this war.
00:10 How do you think the President Zelensky will handle the upcoming sort of the election that
00:14 is supposed to be held this year but could not be because of the martial law?
00:18 It seems that the war could last for many more months and how will it impact the democracy
00:22 in Ukraine?
00:23 Yes, I say thank you so much first of all for your support for Ukraine.
00:27 Yeah, Ukraine has been in this full-scale invasion for the last two years, right, and
00:32 actually we've been in a war since 2014, right, so for us, for whole Ukraine, it's a long
00:38 process, not just two years, right.
00:41 When you talk about Zelensky, Zelensky came to power in 2019, right, so he came just before
00:45 the war, then the war started under his presidency and what is happening now, this should have
00:51 been in elections, right, scheduled for March 2024, so next month.
00:57 He gave a press conference I think in November when he said that, you know, they had internal
01:01 discussions and they all think that it's not a good time for having elections, first of
01:06 all under martial law you can't have elections.
01:09 Second thing, he spoke in interviews about that even if the elections will be held he's
01:14 certain that he will be elected again.
01:17 Again Zelensky had a lot of support and has a lot of support still but he has some challenges
01:24 as well, right, on the way and we should be open about that.
01:29 He's done tremendous things for Ukraine to gain Ukraine's attention, he helped us, because
01:36 I'm Ukrainian, I've lived here in Australia for the last 10 years but when I speak about
01:39 Ukraine I say myself because I still have family there.
01:42 He did a lot to win the media war, I think Ukraine fantastically won it, you know, even
01:47 in the first year.
01:49 But what's happening on the ground, we all can feel that in the last six months there
01:54 was not so many gains from both sides and how long it will last, how long Ukraine will
02:01 pay this price, that's the big thing.
02:05 So yes, elections are off for now and there is a united front on this but we'll see, we'll
02:10 keep watching what's happening, right, and technically under the constitution...
02:16 Sorry, no, no, Peter if I can bring you in, I mean at times of war is this what happens?
02:21 Freedoms are curtailed?
02:22 Well, being British we talk about the Second World War a lot, I mean remember Churchill
02:26 got elected, got booted out of office just after Germany being defeated in Europe so
02:32 politics is highly unpredictable as all of you know.
02:36 I think that the biggest challenge is how the fact that Ukraine wants to postpone elections
02:41 for very obvious reasons in terms of how do you actually conduct it if you have men and
02:45 servicewomen on front lines, how and where do they vote and in what kind of format, the
02:49 worry is that that gets exploited by misinformation, by agitation, particularly in Congress in
02:55 the United States where the worry is that those kind of noises about democracy being
03:00 pushed into something different, martial law can be very easily exploited in the election
03:04 cycle that's coming up in November and of course that will be music to ears in Moscow
03:09 and perhaps beyond too.
03:10 So I think it's very uncertain, it's up to the Ukrainian people to decide how to run
03:14 their own choices of leaders but we'll see how that logjam gets pushed out.
03:20 How much support do you think Zelensky still has on the ground?
03:24 I'd probably ask Olga to have an opinion rather than...
03:27 Olga do you think he's still...
03:28 Look like he's a leader, right?
03:31 People support, people are united around the one single aim to win the war, right?
03:38 He is leading the nation to win the war.
03:41 Yes there are hiccups, there are challenges definitely, like imagine us...
03:44 Well he got rid of his military chief for instance, who was more popular than him.
03:50 That's right, yeah again there's conversations about that, right?
03:52 And there is possibly Aristovic, another guy who was very popular in the beginning of war
03:56 who is now somewhere in the US probably and delivering a completely different narrative.
04:00 I think he's as well potentially another candidate.
04:04 Even yes there are some tensions in the Ukrainian government but I think everything goes secondary
04:13 after the main goal to win the war and to maintain, to return the territorial integrity
04:19 to the 100, sorry 1991 territorial, how Ukraine looked before, like at its independence before
04:27 2014.
04:28 Malcolm Turnbull if you look at what's happening in the United States obviously where this
04:31 has become such a polarised partisan issue, is the West's support for Ukraine wavering
04:39 and what are the dangers of that?
04:41 Well it's very, I mean the danger is that Putin will get what he wants.
04:44 I mean Putin is a ruthless dictator who has invaded Ukraine and he is seeking to demonstrate
04:53 that might is right.
04:55 That's what he's seeking to do, he's trampling on a democracy.
04:59 It's an illegal, criminal, brutal invasion.
05:03 The Ukrainian people have inspired the world with their courage and the leadership of their
05:09 President Zelensky has been an inspiration to all of us as it has been to Ukrainians.
05:15 Without the support of the West they will struggle to defend themselves.
05:22 Regrettably the Republican Party under Donald Trump and particularly the right wing of the
05:27 Republican Party are very sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.
05:32 I mean I've been with Trump and Putin.
05:35 Trump is in awe of Putin.
05:37 When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he's like the 12 year old
05:45 boy that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team.
05:51 My hero.
05:52 It is really creepy, it's really creepy.
05:55 And that struck you at the time?
05:57 Absolutely.
05:58 It struck everybody.
05:59 It was, you could touch it.
06:02 It was creepy.
06:03 The creepiness was palpable.
06:04 Are you trying to say they're having a bromance?
06:07 I'm not saying, I'm just telling you what I saw.
06:09 You saw that in that press conference they did in Helsinki.
06:15 You saw a similar thing.
06:18 The sad thing is that you've got the right wing of the Republican Party, you saw this
06:22 with Tucker Carlson, doing that sycophantic kind of non-interview with Vladimir Putin.
06:28 I mean it is terrifying.
06:29 A half an hour history lesson.
06:30 It is terrifying.
06:31 And the scary thing is that for countries like Australia and many European countries,
06:41 we may find ourselves, are we going to find ourselves not dealing just with two autocracies
06:46 in Russia and China, but what is Trump's America going to look like?
06:52 This is a guy leading a party that is no longer committed to democracy as we understand it.
07:00 That's...
07:01 I may know that there are questions around Trump, but I have to pick you up on that because
07:11 that's quite a statement.
07:14 Do you think that America is genuinely sliding into becoming a country that's an autocracy
07:19 that's no longer a democracy?
07:21 Well if by democracy you mean a country that's governed by the rule of law, yeah for sure.
07:26 I mean Donald Trump does not believe the law applies to him.
07:30 Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and refused to accept it and, you know, sulled a mob,
07:39 encouraged a mob to try to overthrow the constitutional process in the Congress, tried to overthrow
07:48 his own constitution.
07:49 And yet he's out-polling Biden at the moment.
07:53 And so there is a contradiction here.
07:56 If you look at the democracy in itself, people are expressing that they're interested in
08:01 him.
08:02 Look, tyrants are often popular.
08:06 You see, the key to democracy, liberal democracy, is that it empowers the majority but it also,
08:13 through the rule of law, constrains the majority.
08:16 And if you get to the point where anybody who can muster a majority - and I don't think
08:22 Trump can do that by the way - but anyone who can muster a majority is given absolute
08:27 power and then can do whatever they like to the minority, that's not a democracy.
08:33 That is a tyranny.
08:35 And that is an autocracy.
08:38 Even if it's got the support of 50, 51 per cent of the population, that is not what makes
08:44 a democracy.
08:46 A democracy as we understand it is one where the rule of law protects all citizens and
08:52 the rule of law applies to all citizens, whether they're the President or the Prime Minister
08:57 or an ordinary, you know, elector.
09:01 We'll keep this discussion going.
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