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--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Are you in the market for a bank or are you one of those people that like stuffs all your money under your mattress?
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): I'm not going to make a joke about that. Anyway, the point of the story is Aspiration is a financial partner that wants to put you and your conscience and the planet first. And right now you can download the Aspiration app to open up an Aspiration bank account today. You can try and save money and save the world.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Okay, crazy news out of Ukraine. Before we get into it, can I have you say your name and how you want us to ID you on the show?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): My name is Vladislav Davidsson. I am a Russian-American journalist and editor. I am based in Ukraine and France and between Paris and Kiev. And I am the chief of the Odessa Review, a fine journal of culture and policy, and I am an expert on Ukrainian and Eastern European politics.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So we had an election here in Ukraine, which I monitor as an election monitor, which is a historical election. Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko was voted out of office after five years for a few different reasons. And the Ukrainian voters, by an overwhelming majority, has put into power an amateur comedian television actor into the presidential chair. By a landslide.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Yes, on Sunday night, I watched the results, as did all the other journalists and analysts covering the elections. It was between 72 and 74.5% projected that Volodymyr Zelensky received in the count.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): And who is this gentleman? This gentleman is a 41-year-old actor, a comedian. He is a guy who plays the president on TV. It's as if Martin Sheen, after having played President Bartlett on The West Wing, was elected to that exact same office.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I hope that by the time we're done with our four years here, we'll have seen to it that every young person who chooses can go to college and beyond, regardless of their economic status. But also having included subplots within the show being part of the actual campaign with a wink and a nod to the electorate.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So for those people who haven't seen the show, what was the president he played on TV like?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): He plays a history teacher from the outskirts of Kiev who makes a kind of profane, curse-filled speech to the Ukrainian population about the elites and the oligarchs and how bad they are. You know why you're throwing my dogs? Because we start with our choices in the woods. It's clear! And you'll choose one! No one! And then he has that speech taped by one of the students who uploads it to the internet. And a crowd sourced campaign takes place, and he becomes a president of Ukraine without really trying, being a very clean and pure fellow who represents the spirit of the people, an ordinary man of the street who becomes the president by accident.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): How did he become a president in real life? Did someone say, hey, you're really good at doing that thing on TV? You want to try it IRL?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Yeah, he ran for the presidency, started his campaign on the same exact television station on which the show had aired. He was backed by a Ukrainian oligarch, a very profane and funny fellow by the name of Mr. Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky, a banking, energy and media tycoon with a fortune put at $1.8 billion by Forbes last year. Who owns one of the biggest television stations in Ukraine.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Was that it? Did he think he could win?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I honestly think that he never, ever expected to go this far. I think that he was what we call a technical candidate in Ukraine, a candidate that was deployed to siphon off votes from another candidate, a more serious candidate. I think that he expected to win 10, 12, 14 percent in the first round of a presidential campaign and then go on into the parliamentary elections in October. And then he'd win 25, 30 seats in the parliament and that he would be a member of parliament and have his own guys in the parliament. But I don't think he ever expected the president.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): You've actually sat down with him, right? What's he like?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I'm one of the few journalists or policy analysts or anybody really to sit down with him. He does not really give interviews. He is surprisingly very macho. He's not a very big guy. He must be about five foot five. He is very muscular very slim. He obviously lifts weights. He is psychologically and emotionally extraordinarily intelligent and sizes up people very very very quickly. He has not really talked about what he actually intends to do for the most part, with some small exceptions in terms of policy.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So he represents, I think, different things to different people. And he hasn't really dissuaded people from the fact that he doesn't really believe what they might think he believes. And he's Jewish. Is that significant for Ukraine?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): It's amazing. I'm actually someone who works on the Jewish-Ukrainian relationship a lot. I myself am Jewish. I'm a Russian Jewish American. And this is the second country after Israel, which has both a Jewish prime minister and a Jewish president-elect at this moment. It's utterly remarkable in that way. This is the cradle of Jewish civilization in many ways, of Ashkenazi Jewish civilization. But only about a third of one percent of the population are of Jewish descent. He is not religious. He has openly spoken about his Jewish identity in the public sphere. He would say things like, I am of Jewish blood, Russian culture, and Ukrainian patriotism. And everyone here knew that he was a Jew. And no one cared about it, I think, for the most part. And that is really an indicator of the fact that this country has changed in a lot of ways. And anti-Semitism is not really a big deal here.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Tell me about the campaign. He was running against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. What was it like?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): He didn't really campaign at all because I don't think he really has much grasp of policy issues. So he basically just kept giving comedy shows. And he challenged the president to a debate in a stadium, which was basically not unlike a boxing match. I am not a politician. I am not a politician at all. I am just a human being, an ordinary human being, who has come to break this system. I am the result, Petro Poroshenko, of your mistakes and promises.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): This gentleman is a 41-year-old actor, a comedian. He is a guy who plays the president on TV. It's as if Martin Sheen, after having played President Bartlett on The West Wing, was elected to that exact same office.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): He plays a history teacher from the outskirts of Kiev who makes a kind of profane, curse-filled speech to the Ukrainian population about the elites and the oligarchs and how bad they are. You know why you're throwing my dogs? Because we start with our choices in the woods. It's clear! And you'll choose one! No one! And then he has that speech taped by one of the students who uploads it to the internet. And a crowd sourced campaign takes place, and he becomes a president of Ukraine without really trying, being a very clean and pure fellow who represents the spirit of the people, an ordinary man of the street who becomes the president by accident.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): How did he become a president in real life? Did someone say, hey, you're really good at doing that thing on TV? You want to try it IRL?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Yeah, he ran for the presidency, started his campaign on the same exact television station on which the show had aired. He was backed by a Ukrainian oligarch, a very profane and funny fellow by the name of Mr. Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky, a banking, energy and media tycoon with a fortune put at $1.8 billion by Forbes last year. Who owns one of the biggest television stations in Ukraine.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Was that it? Did he think he could win?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I honestly think that he never, ever expected to go this far. I think that he was what we call a technical candidate in Ukraine, a candidate that was deployed to siphon off votes from another candidate, a more serious candidate. I think that he expected to win 10, 12, 14 percent in the first round of a presidential campaign and then go on into the parliamentary elections in October. And then he'd win 25, 30 seats in the parliament and that he would be a member of parliament and have his own guys in the parliament. But I don't think he ever expected the president.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): You've actually sat down with him, right? What's he like?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I'm one of the few journalists or policy analysts or anybody really to sit down with him. He does not really give interviews. He is surprisingly very macho. He's not a very big guy. He must be about five foot five. He is very muscular very slim. He obviously lifts weights. He is psychologically and emotionally extraordinarily intelligent and sizes up people very very very quickly. He has not really talked about what he actually intends to do for the most part, with some small exceptions in terms of policy.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So he represents, I think, different things to different people. And he hasn't really dissuaded people from the fact that he doesn't really believe what they might think he believes. And he's Jewish. Is that significant for Ukraine?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): It's amazing. I'm actually someone who works on the Jewish-Ukrainian relationship a lot. I myself am Jewish. I'm a Russian Jewish American. And this is the second country after Israel, which has both a Jewish prime minister and a Jewish president-elect at this moment. It's utterly remarkable in that way. This is the cradle of Jewish civilization in many ways, of Ashkenazi Jewish civilization. But only about a third of one percent of the population are of Jewish descent. He is not religious. He has openly spoken about his Jewish identity in the public sphere. He would say things like, I am of Jewish blood, Russian culture, and Ukrainian patriotism. And everyone here knew that he was a Jew. And no one cared about it, I think, for the most part. And that is really an indicator of the fact that this country has changed in a lot of ways. And anti-Semitism is not really a big deal here.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Tell me about the campaign. He was running against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. What was it like?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): He didn't really campaign at all because I don't think he really has much grasp of policy issues. So he basically just kept giving comedy shows. And he challenged the president to a debate in a stadium, which was basically not unlike a boxing match. I am not a politician. I am not a politician at all. I am just a human being, an ordinary human being, who has come to break this system. I am the result, Petro Poroshenko, of your mistakes and promises.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So why did people ultimately vote for him? Because he was funny, because he was fresh, because he was famous, all of the above?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): What? First of all, Ukraine is in the midst of an economic situation where after the war was started by the Russians, after the Russians invaded, the economy collapsed. We have 1.1 million internally displaced people from the war in the East and the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia. At the same time, it is an economic crisis as well. It's 20% of our economy. And people's life savings evaporated. And after that happened, the Ukrainian population gritted their teeth and waited for a long time for things to get better. And things are getting better. The economy is growing at 3% a year, but people aren't feeling it.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So there's a lot of oligarchs also who have television stations, which kept pumping propaganda to the population that things are really bad and the president's on the take and corrupt. And whether that's true or not, and he is a billionaire and he is an oligarch and that's true and he is making money. And he didn't stop making money during the course of the war.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): How did it happen that Ukraine has practically the poorest government with the richest president in history?
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So there's just so much pent up rage and frustration with the presidential administration of Mr. Poroshenko that people voted against him. So you could have put up maybe a penguin or a camel or dog or a random person and they would have won this election. I could have won this election. You could have won this election if your name was put up against the president you would have won it. It's a total and utter and axiomatic and categoric humiliation for sitting president.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Russia's been messing with Ukraine for years.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Up next, how Putin feels about the actor running the country next door.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): This is Today Explained. Told you a little bit about Aspiration at the top of the show. Gotta tell you a little bit more now. Aspiration is a financial firm for people who want more money in their pockets and a little more power to do good. It's been featured in Forbes and the New York Times and Money Magazine, a magazine I still have never read. If anyone has a copy of Money Magazine, please get it over to me ASAP.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Aspiration offers a 2% annual percentage yield, zero ATM fees no matter where you are in the world, and the option to choose your monthly fee, which is to say, hey, Aspiration was great this month. I want to give him 20 bucks. That's cool. Hey, you know, I'm going to give Aspiration a quarter. You know, I think they're good with that too.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Aspiration throws 10% of their earnings to charities that help other Americans and even offers extra cash back rewards for shopping at socially conscious businesses. I think what Aspiration is trying to say here is that Aspiration is a socially conscious business. So put your money where your heart is, download the Aspiration app to open an account. You earn 2% annual interest, pay zero ATMs, and maybe save the planet while you're at it.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Vladislav, we haven't talked about Russia yet. How does Russia feel about all of this?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): So the Russians, obviously, it's a big deal because they really want a weak Ukraine and they want Ukraine to, you know, return to the Russian sphere of influence. President Poroshenko lost because he was not good on internal stuff, but on the external relationship with the Russians in terms of Ukrainian nationalism and the Ukrainian nation, he was very solid. So President Putin and the Kremlin really didn't like him, and they were happy, I think, very, very happy to have anybody else come to power, including an inexperienced young guy who's never worked in politics and has no experience of holding public office, who will certainly, almost certainly make mistakes, and who is set to have a chaotic and perhaps even weak presidency for at least the first year.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Has Zelensky said anything about his intentions with Russia? Does he have a firm position, a plan?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Look, he has said all the right things from the standpoint of the Ukrainian elections, and he's been fairly belligerent in his rhetoric. Certainly not as belligerent as President Petro Poroshenko, but he has said the things that you would expect him to say.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Why is Ukraine's relationship with Russia so important?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Well, look, Ukraine is one of the biggest countries in Europe. It's a strategically, geopolitically, politically, economically important country. And what happens here has a direct effect on, you know, the NATO and the East European defense posture. And Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and then it was part of the Soviet Union. Happily, unhappily, that's a different question. But it's a country that has never been independent except for three years in the last 300 years.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Do you think Russia will look at this inexperienced, fun actor who had his buddy do his own drug test that he called for and see some low-hanging fruit to go in and just walk all over this guy?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Look, these guys are really, really tough, to put it mildly. And they will look at this guy and will say, this guy is weak. This guy is inexperienced and we might use the opportunity to press our advantage. That could mean anything from a diplomatic campaign to a full-scale invasion and certainly there's a huge risk to the Ukrainians that the election of a young guy who's not had any kind of experience in this kind of thing before might lead to more aggression one way or another from Russia.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): You know, I hate to make everything about the United States, but it just seems so comparable that people were thinking, oh, this guy, he doesn't have experience, but he can do it. At least in the United States, people could say, oh, Donald Trump, he's got business experience, I guess. Maybe he can run the country. This guy, he's got acting experience. Maybe he could run the country. It seems even more far-fetched.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): Did they look at the United States and go, oh, that's working out well. Let's try that. Yeah, I'm not sure that they actually looked at the model in order to say, oh, that's a great thing. It's not quite the same as Donald Trump because he, Volodymyr Zelensky, is not really a populist in the Western European sense because he has not taken any right wing or ultra right wing positions. It's actually much more like Reagan than it is like President Trump. But Reagan ran the state of California, the biggest state in the union, for years before he became president.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Yeah, that's true.
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): In the way that he is like Reagan he is an actor who has a role that he played on TV that he actually playing in politics now. He just a guy who represents an opposition to the elite. And the elite here is really nasty and corrupt. It's not the same as it is in America where people pay their taxes. And you know it just very different. It's a really extraordinarily corrupt country. And people are really angry. So there are a lot of people who are promising an end to that. It's not only him. But the question is, I guess, can he do it? Can this guy with literally no political experience, who didn't think he could win, who is, you know, instituting all these stunts during the campaign, sure can he fix a country with deep-rooted issues regarding corruption and and influence and oh and he was and he was backed by an oligarch right. I mean yeah he was totally backed by an oligarch actually everyone who comes to power here is either of themselves an oligarch or backed by an oligarch so there's really no way to come to power if you don't have oligarchic connections money and television stations that's the most important thing it's really a corrupt country and things are really based on, you know, 15, 20 people fighting between themselves and arguing between themselves, right? It's a really complicated situation that way.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): That said, can he do it? I think it'll be extraordinarily difficult for him because politics here is so cutthroat and so shark-like that he will be eaten alive by the really cynical and vicious people in parliament. He'll have IMF debt to pay off. He'll have seven or 10 really vicious and very smart oligarchs positioning themselves to take stuff from him. He'll have the Russians. He'll have an ongoing war. He'll have poverty to deal with. It's an extraordinarily difficult situation for any president to deal with, let alone a young gentleman who's never done anything in politics.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): So can he do it? You know, he can do little things. And if he has a very strong team of reformers. Maybe he'll surprise us. But it's a really, really, really steep hill to climb.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Do you think because Zelensky didn't think he had a chance to win really wants this job? Do you think he might be terrified of actually doing this now that he's won the office?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): I really I'm really wondering myself, is he terrified? Why wouldn't he be? How could you not be terrified in this situation? If he fails, he will bring forth another popular revolution. And if that happens, this country will probably see the collapse of the economy and even invasion by the regular forces of the Russian army, taking large chunks of territory.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): How could you not be terrified if you're a rational person in that situation?
--:-- Guest (Vladislav Davidsson): We're going to find out for the rest of Europe and the rest of the world if voting for a television candidate, social media candidate actually gets what you want or you're always unhappy even with that. It's for me the next chapter of democracy by television. It's something that Americans and the British people and the French for a certain point have pioneered. The Ukrainians are going to teach us what the actual final frontier of this experiment is. And in many ways, the experiments in democracy and disinformation and propaganda that have taken place here have been exported to the West. And it is an extraordinarily important story for Americans and Western Europeans to understand.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Vladislav Davidson is a Russian-American journalist and editor. He is based in Ukraine and France and between Paris and Kiev. And he is the chief of the Odessa Review, a fine journal of culture and policy. And he is an expert on Ukrainian and Eastern European politics.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): A lot of the translation you heard in today's episode was done by Today Explains, engineer Afim the Dream Shapiro.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Thank you to Sir Shano Ramesfirm, the host of the podcast today and what it means. The main producer today and what it means – Irene Noguchi. The editor, a sometimes producer – Bridget McCarthy. The producer, a sometimes reporter – Noam Hassenfeld. The most new member of our team – Amina Al-Sadi.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Good morning, Washington, Columbia, Seattle, we are sorry. We have a special help this week from Britt Hansen from Maine and Francesca Paris here in Washington. Our student in this semester is Siona Petrus. Our composer is a legendary Breakmaster Cylinder. Today, what he means, is that he is working together with Stitcher. And we are a part of a podcast podcast Vox Media. You can find the show on Twitter at today underscore explained.
--:-- Host (Sean Rameswaram): Thanks to Aspiration for supporting the show today. At Aspiration. You get a 2% annual percentage yield, zero ATM fees, and you get to help save the planet with Aspiration's fossil fuel free account. Does your piggy bank do that? Save money, save the planet, download the Aspiration app to open an account today.
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