Taras Chmut: "If anyone thinks they can build an authoritarian system here, I've got news for them: the Ukrainian people won't let them"
In recent years it's become something of a tradition for Ukrainska Pravda to sit down twice a year with Taras Chmut, director of the Come Back Alive Foundation. Talking to him is a bit like checking a compass – it helps us understand where Ukraine is heading.
We'd been trying to set this interview up for several months. Chmut postponed it more than once, saying he did not feel there were any genuinely new or relevant issues he hadn't already commented on.
By sheer coincidence, we settled on an interview date without knowing that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was planning to disband prime minister Yuliia Svyrydenko's government and oust Mykhailo Fedorov from the Defence Ministry. In the words of singer Viktor Pavlik: "It all happened by itself." We could hardly have chosen a better moment for this conversation.
In this new interview, Taras Chmut speaks candidly about the conflict between the now ex-defence minister and then-commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
During our conversation, Chmut describes the president's decision not to nominate Fedorov for the post of defence minister in new PM Serhii Koretskyi's government as "the biggest mistake of recent years".
He discusses the potential successors to Syrskyi, explains how the Ukrainian military has changed over the past year, and answers questions about the very public scandals surrounding the Skelia Assault Regiment and the 155th Brigade. We also took time to delve into the deeper reasons behind the public's hostility towards military enlistment office staff.