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Ukrainians on the War in Ukraine

Politics &
Economics

Is the West doing enough to help Ukraine? What kind of endgame should Ukraine be seeking – all-out victory over Russia or a negotiated settlement that will allow both sides to claim they have won?

As the war in Ukraine enters its bloodiest phase, there’s no shortage of experts in the West holding forth on how best to bring the violence to an end. But what do the Ukrainian people themselves think? In May 2022, Intelligence Squared brought together three prominent Ukrainians, all currently located in Ukraine, for an urgent conversation: Kira Rudik, the MP who went viral on Instagram when she posted a photo of herself wielding a Kalashnikov and urging her fellow citizens to take up arms against the Russian invaders; Michael Bociurkiw, geopolitical analyst and humanitarian; and Olha Poliukhovych, a cultural historian and academic based in Kyiv. 

Is the West doing enough to help Ukraine? What kind of endgame should Ukraine be seeking – all-out victory over Russia or a negotiated settlement that will allow both sides to claim they have won? Our speakers engaged with these questions which have profound implications for their own country – and for the rest of the world.

Speakers for the motion

  • Kira Rudik

    Ukrainian MP and leader of the Golos (Voice) Political Party

  • Michael Bociurkiw

    Writer, global affairs analyst and Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council

  • Olha Poliukhovych

    Literary critic and associate professor at the Department of Literature of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

Chair

  • Philippa Thomas

    Journalist and academic, who has anchored daily live news shows on World TV and the BBC News Channel

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speakers

Kira Rudik

Ukrainian MP and leader of the Golos (Voice) Political Party

Member of Parliament of Ukraine, leader of the Golos (Voice) Political Party and First Deputy Chairwoman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Digital Transformation. Before entering politics, Rudik was an IT entrepreneur who headed Ring Ukraine company and scaled the team from 10 to 1000 employees. In 2018 she secured the acquisition of Ring Ukraine by Amazon for $1 billion.  She is the co-head of the Inter-Factional Deputy Association ‘Humanna Kraina’ (‘Humane Country’), which was established to promote humanistic values and protect animals from cruelty. She has been included in the top 100 most successful women in Ukraine according to the Focus and Novoe Vremya magazines. She is a graduate of the Executive Programme in Women’s Leadership at Stanford University.

Michael Bociurkiw

Writer, global affairs analyst and Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council

Geopolitical analyst, Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council and two-time TEDx speaker of Ukrainian heritage, whose geopolitical commentary is regularly featured on CNN Opinion. He is a frequent voice on BBC World Television, CNN, CNN International, Al Jazeera, and Bloomberg Television. His writing has appeared in several media outlets, including The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, the South China Morning Post and on MSNBC.com. He is the founder and co-host of the popular podcast/vodcast, Global Impact and is a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council.   Bociurkiw is a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, and a former global spokesperson for the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF). He is the author of Digital Pandemic- Covid-19: How Tech Went From Bad to Good. 

Olha Poliukhovych

Literary critic and associate professor at the Department of Literature of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

PhD, literary critic and public intellectual is an associate professor at the Department of Literature of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Since the full-scale Russia-Ukraine war, she has been featured on LitHub podcasts and has published essays in Agni, Consequence forum, and Prospect Magazine. Currently, she is working on her book of Yurii Kosach’s intellectual biography.
Chair

Philippa Thomas

Journalist and academic, who has anchored daily live news shows on World TV and the BBC News Channel

Journalist and academic, known for her high-profile broadcasting career with BBC News. Most recently, Philippa anchored daily live news shows on World TV and the BBC News Channel. She spent many years as a foreign correspondent based in Washington DC and before that was a political correspondent at Westminster. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Thomas has chaired the independent Trust in News conference, focusing on information warfare in Ukraine and beyond, and later in May she will be on stage at the Oslo Freedom Forum interviewing Amnesty International Secretary-general Agnes Callamard about the ways the world has responded – and failed to respond – to the crisis in Ukraine.