MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
What if the only way Ukraine can win its war against Russia is to stop fighting? Well, that's a controversial question, especially inside Ukraine, which has not stopped our next guest, who is in Ukraine, from asking it. Iuliia Mendel had a front-row seat to the run up to the war. She was President Zelenskyy's press secretary from 2019 to 2021. She has since left the government, and she has written a piece now for Time Magazine headlined "Ukraine Needs A Cease-Fire Now." Iuliia Mendel is on the line from Kyiv. Hi there.
IULIIA MENDEL: Hi. Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So in a sentence or two, what exactly are you arguing for? This is a peace deal that would not be a surrender to Russia but would involve territorial concessions?
MENDEL: I'm not a politician. I'm a journalist. And my call was to find the right diagnosis of what's happening today in Ukraine. I see that we are losing people in so many ways. This war turned so many territories of Ukraine into hell, literally hell.
KELLY: Yeah.
MENDEL: And economic, demographic and different other signs show that the only way to survive in this war is actually to make a pause in this war of attrition.
KELLY: You know, when I have reported from Ukraine, when I have reported about Ukraine these last several years, I keep meeting people, Ukrainians who argue Ukraine must fight. Ukraine must win, must not cede one single inch of Ukrainian soil to Russia, whatever the cost. At the beginning of the war, is that how you thought about things? Is that where you were?
MENDEL: Definitely, in 2022, there was existential threat. There were hundreds of thousand men who returned to the country with closed borders to defend the country. Everyone here was inspired to stand for our identity. But it was 2022. And I'm afraid what we are talking now is really a little bit far from the reality, and it's really very different in 2025.
KELLY: What about the argument, Iuliia Mendel, that a ceasefire, any kind of peace deal, wouldn't really end this - it would just allow Vladimir Putin to go home, rebuild his army, come back, attack Ukraine again.
MENDEL: If we have a ceasefire, we can build fortifications that we had not built before the war. We can rest. We can restore our economy. We can open the borders. We can restore democracy that has been also suffering during this time, and we can restore the trust of the people whom we are actually losing in liberated even territories. If we become stronger, then we can stand against Russia. If we are exhausted every moment here, we will not be able to stand in a year or two years.
KELLY: When you float this idea to your fellow Ukrainians, what do they say?
MENDEL: I was criticized by many people. But in fact, I've got much more thank you from around Ukraine. It's always very difficult to be a first person to say what others think, but I believe that I did not talk for myself. I believe that I talked for the people from Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, Sumy and many, many other Ukrainian regions where people are desperately looking for any kind of ceasefire.
KELLY: Before I let you go, the last time that you and I spoke, you were telling me about your family village near Kherson in southern Ukraine, about your childhood there and about eating apricots and cherries. What is left of your village?
MENDEL: Nothing. It's just ruins. And Russians control there with drones, so there are almost no people. People cannot drive there anymore because Russian drones are making safari, and they're hunting people there. It's not livable right now, unfortunately, but thank you for asking. And that's what I mean. You know, we are talking brave, but I think it's much braver to realize our weaknesses and to tell the world that we want to be strong in leadership. And strong leadership means to take care of all the people and to find the solutions to preserve the country.
KELLY: You're reminding me something else of what you told me when you and I spoke a couple of years ago. You said we are fighters, Ukrainians. And you called on the world to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine until this war was over. What would your message be today to Americans listening?
MENDEL: Ukraine would not exist if Americans did not stand with us. And thanks to this, we stand today as independent country. I ask you to understand that if you want us to be the independent country, if you want Putin not to come to Kyiv in a year or a year and a half, help us develop this process to a peace that would be just but also will help us survive as a nation.
KELLY: That is Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Her book about Ukraine is titled "The Fight Of Our Lives." Thank you.
MENDEL: Thank you very much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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