Ukrainian U.N. Ambassador: Russia Is ‘Mold That Invades Your House’

Early last year, as Russia was chairing a late-night emergency session of the United Nations Security Council aimed at preventing its own country from invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops across the border. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.N., announced the news during the meeting and demanded that his Russian counterpart hand over the gavel to another member of the council, even brandishing his mobile phone at one point and advising the Russian ambassador to call his foreign minister.

Before being appointed by then-newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in December 2019, Kyslytsya had a long history in the United States, including a stint in his country’s embassy in Washington, and stretching back to a year he spent as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. After Moscow occupied Crimea in 2014, he shuttled between Kyiv and the U.N. headquarters in New York, and he still keeps those U.N. badges under glass by his desk. 

Foreign Policy sat down with Kyslytsya for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the Black Sea grain deal, his country’s African diplomacy, war crimes reparations, and the importance of catharsis. We met at Ukraine’s mission to the United Nations in a converted four-story townhouse next to a coffee bar and sushi shop. Just before we met, things went nuclear. 

On Friday, May 26, he tweeted an allegation by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense that Russia might use the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant for a provocation. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), would be headed to New York shortly to make his pitch to the U.N. Security Council for the IAEA’s five principles to safeguard the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that Russia has occupied since March 2022. What Grossi didn’t demand was a Russian withdrawal. (For his part, Grossi described the IAEA principles as a “bare minimum” to avoid the worst-case scenario in remarks after the Security Council meeting.)

Kyslytsya had thoughts on that, the wider war, and much else. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign Policy: Let’s begin with the elephant in the room. How much can Ukraine hope to accomplish at the United Nations while Russia, as one of five permanent members of the Security Council, can veto any resolution you bring there?

Sergiy Kyslytsya: Even though the Russian Federation immobilizes the meaningful action of the Security Council on Ukraine, it is still very important to have meetings there because they are broadcast around the globe and every member must state its position. For some countries, that’s why they don’t like discussions on Ukraine. It puts them in the spotlight. And if you repeatedly refuse to call it a war, but instead say “crisis in Ukraine,” then no matter what you say in other settings, you are on the record as a country that has no guts to call a spade a spade. 

FP: On May 30, the Security Council heard from Grossi about the IAEA’S new proposal for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. You have criticized the proposals for not including a Russian withdrawal.

SK: Without undermining Grossi’s authority, and no matter what the board of IAEA approves, Russians couldn’t give a monkey’s. Only the de-occupation and the de-militarization of the nuclear power plant is an answer. What is important, however, in my opinion, is that if you fail with aggression, it means that you also fail on many other things. And Russia totally failed with Zaporizhzhia. It doesn’t serve their military purposes. It doesn’t serve their economic purposes. It doesn’t serve their political purposes. And I think that the only logical thing is withdrawal. 

FP: What about the potential for nuclear blackmail?

SK: Our defense intelligence has issued a statement about that. My tweet was intended to call out Russia because they read my tweets.

FP: Well, speaking of that, the Belarusian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, said a few days ago that Russian tactical nuclear weapons were already on the way to Belarus.

SK: I think that is a part of the agony of the Putin regime and its desperate attempt to, once again, use the nuclear card for blackmail. Putin promised [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping not to engage in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He immediately broke, in his usual manner, that promise. Lukashenko is probably thinking very hard about how to find a way to escape another trap set by Putin. 

FP: In that vein, what about the current campaign between Belarus and Slovenia for a two-year seat on the U.N. Security Council open for a member state from Eastern Europe? 

SK: There are two candidates, but I don’t really see Belarus campaigning ever since they became the auxiliary to Russian aggression. Belarus is in clear non-compatibility with the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter. It cannot deserve to be elected to the Security Council while its territory is used for aggression. 

FP: Russia grudgingly agreed to another short-term extension of the Black Sea grain deal, even though they seem to be blocking one of the ports, Pivdennyi Port, near Odesa. But Ukraine has also accused Russia of using the Black Sea grain deal to transport stolen Ukrainian grain.

SK: There were many instances where we had to call on several governments because we literally, physically, saw the ships loaded with Ukrainian grain originating from the occupied territories. It is so simple to prove it in the 21st century. You just need one grain to identify the origin.

FP: What would it mean if Russia walked away from the deal and started blocking shipments?

SK: Well, first of all, it would mean a lot to the starving nations. But Russia would also lose a lot in terms of their standing with many countries.

FP: Your foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is making an African tour with stops in Morocco, Rwanda, and the African Union headquarters in Ethiopia. Has Russia’s war and the Black Sea grain shipments, many of them ultimately bound for Africa, become part of your African diplomacy?

SK: Our African diplomacy is on the rise after many years of a very simplified attitude, which I think that my government has made very clear it regards as an institutional failure not to attend to the interests of Africa. But fundamentally, I don’t really know of any particular country with a successful African diplomacy.

FP: What about China and Russia? They’ve certainly focused on their African diplomacy, and Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has just made a similar grand diplomatic tour of Africa.

SK: I would compare Russian policy with mold that invades your house. I’m sure that Lavrov will follow in the footsteps of my foreign minister, trying to neutralize whatever my foreign minister may achieve. China, on the other hand, is very wise. I mean, you can’t really compare the potential of China with the negligible, nonexistent potential of moldy Russia. China is wiser because what they do is fill every niche that they identify as empty. And they have enough human and financial resources to fill the empty spaces. Unlike Russian mold, China is a glue that binds regions of continents to their interests.

FP: Does China have a role to play in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine?

SK: China, of course, has a role to play. It doesn’t mean that the powerful voice is in line with the chorus. The Chinese are allegedly trying to make the Ukrainians give concessions. It won’t fly because Ukraine won’t make any territorial concessions. It is against international law. It is against multiple resolutions of the U.N. General Assembly that we have successfully passed, including that one on Feb. 23, 2023, when 141 member states voted to condemn Russia’s invasion. It is against the peace plan put forward by Zelensky that is widely supported by many. And, fundamentally, no matter what the General Assembly says, no matter what the international law reads, the Ukrainians would not accept it. And Ukraine’s leadership is super accountable to its constituents.

FP: Do you imagine the war ending with negotiations at the United Nations? Because U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently told a Spanish newspaper that he did not see an immediate opportunity to negotiate a comprehensive cease-fire at the moment.

SK: I agree with him. I think that many governments agree with him. Because we see no signs whatsoever that Moscow is coming to its senses, that Moscow realizes that everything they do is suicidal. If we allow the Russians to have a prolonged pause, they will use it to replenish their arsenal.

FP: Will the war end in a bilateral peace settlement, with Ukraine and Russia sitting across the table?

SK: It’s very early to say that. Multilateral diplomacy, at the end of the day, is more important than bilateral. Because if we speak about a challenge that many of us believe is of a global nature, then global challenges require global action. You cannot put an end to a war like the one the Russian Federation wages against us by just reaching a bilateral arrangement. But even if there is a bilateral arrangement with Russia, and I’m not saying that there will be, but any bilateral arrangement with Russia should be certified, guaranteed, insured. There should be many, many layers that Russia would not be able to disrespect. And nobody will remove from the table the issue of compensation, reparations, accountability, and delivering justice to victims.

FP: The Council of Europe is creating a register of damage caused by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.

SK: The scale of conflict and damage is immense. You can only compare it with what happened after World War II. And even based on previous conflicts on a smaller scale, everybody knows how fundamental it is to collect evidence and preserve evidence, and that it should be done in a very systematic, scientific way. So if we look at the criminal proceedings, what the International Criminal Court does now, it collects pieces of evidence. Compared to the Balkan War, we are in an entirely different world. And Russians do realize that, given the satellite imagery, given the DNA evidence, given other means to verify information, they will not escape responsibility.

FP: Were you surprised by the extreme violence in Bucha and Mariupol? 

SK: No, not knowing the degradation of the Russian social psychology. That’s not a Russophobic statement, by the way, but Russia has degraded in the last 20-plus years. Why do we forget about the images of Grozny razed to the ground? Why do we forget the images of the trenches filled with Chechen bodies? If you put next to each other the images of Grozny and the images of Mariupol, many people may not even perceive the difference. 

FP: So you don’t believe that Putin alone bears responsibility for the war in Ukraine?  

SK: The Putin regime was the logical continuation of the sequence of events. And I’m sorry to say that Putin was nobody and that he became somebody only because we collectively allowed him to. All of us—Ukrainians, Americans, the French, the British, the Germans. We’ve allowed that regime to evolve into something that is today beyond any control. 

I believe that catharsis is a very important thing. And Russia should go through the very painful costs of catharsis. Nobody knows how. And that catharsis is taking place elsewhere. I’m very much encouraged by the fact that many countries have done everything possible to get rid of their dependency. Germany has done many exceptional things, both in terms of cutting their dependency on Russian gas, and in terms of their attitude to the supply of weapons. And on a personal level, [former U.S. President] Bill Clinton has said that he regrets the role that he played in the Budapest memorandum. If you listen now to Hillary Clinton, she has profoundly revisited her ideas and policies when she was the secretary of state. Even [former U.S. National Security Advisor] Henry Kissinger, who in my opinion is very questionable on many things, he literally said to [then-President Richard] Nixon in 1973 that if the Soviets put the Soviet Jews into gas chambers, it’s none of the U.S. government’s business. But the reason I mention him is because even Kissinger, who is 100 years old, says that Ukraine should be part of NATO now.

FP: So even Kissinger can learn something new at 100 years old.

SK: Right. Exactly.