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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29203 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Summary of the Lex Fridman-President Zelensky interview

https://youtube.com/watch?v=u321m25rKXc&t=1142s

This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication. Fridman even made a warning popup saying "2-3 second delay!" when Zelensky began speaking Ukrainian and it was being interpreted. I've only seen one other Lex Fridman interview, with Milei, but there were no such warnings and disclaimers despite how it was live interpreted between Spanish and English. Zelensky does say he can explain some concepts in Russian if Fridman wants clarification but refuses to do the interview in general in Russian. Zelensky says he's also fine if Fridman speaks in Russian the whole time or switches between Russian and English. Also Fridman does understand a bit of Ukrainian himself but is not fluent.

Everyone I've seen, including Zelensky and myself, has seemed rather confused/upset by Fridman's very strong desire to do the interview in Russian, since the symbolic concerns seem to obviously outweigh those. Especially since using an interpreter is not really a big deal. Especially for a Lex Fridman interview, his interviews are known for him getting really excellent guests, but he just asks them a few vague guests and do 95% of the communicating themselves. There's little benefit to Fridman understanding Zelensky slightly better when all the listener's are going to get it dubbed anyway. Adding more fire to people thinking Fridman is a Russian sympathizer, in his introduction he goes out of his way to emphasize the nuance of the conflict and that he just wants peace for both sides. Many people would call the Russia-Ukraine war a fairly one sided war of aggression by Russia where peace could be achieved whenever Russia decided to withdraw from Ukrainian borders.

Points:

  1. Zelensky talks about Odessa, how it's a beautiful city, and fairly transparently tries to build sympathy by talking about how great and Ukrainian it is. Not that I can blame him.
  2. Zelensky talks a bit about how his father fought in WW2, and about how WW2 began. He compares Hitler to Putin in how they both are aggressive expansionists. Also Fridman continues small digs throughout the interview- "It took me a second to catch the joke", or Zelensky says "bullshit" while talking and Fridman says "I understand, I caught that one word". Fridman continues that passive-aggressive behaviour a few more times throughout the interview, I won't mention every time. And again, he did nothing like that for the Milei interview, the translation and dub was very seemless for that interview. You could miss that it even was translated if you started halfway through and didn't notice that lips were desynced from words.
  3. Zelensky talks about how in the beginning of the way, he had to make fast decisions and do a lot. They started distributing weapons to regular civilians in the capital. He also spent a lot of time communicating to the citizens of Ukraine, appearing in videos he could share through the internet, and that it was very important digital networks weren't disrupted. It was important because from day 1 there really was Russian disinformation, claiming Zelensky ran away, but he could show videos of himself just walking outside his office.
  4. In the beginning of the war, Zelensky, with the help of media contacts, would speak Russian in videos directed to Belarusians and Russians and other Russian speakers, asking them to speak out against the war and protest. He is upset about how Russian speakers seemed to have ignored him and weren't not interested in resisting Putin at all. That's part of why he doesn't want to speak Russian now, because in his experience speaking Russian doesn't actually convince any Russian speakers of his cause.
  5. Lex Fridman is confident this video will reach Russian speakers and will help, that it will spread over the internet even though youtube is blocked, that even Putin will see it. Zelensky calls Putin deaf, "even if he speaks to you".
  6. Zelensky talks about a meeting he had with Putin, I believe this one in 2019. Zelensky says he had a conversation with Putin where Putin offered a ceasefire deal, Zelensky did that math on the numbers Putin offered there and told Putin it would take 20 years for all soldiers to withdraw given those terms. Zelensky says that made him realized that Putin was not actually deeply involved in the details of what it'd take to make a withdrawal happen, that if Putin was serious he'd already have been constantly briefed on these numbers and know how to make things happen. But instead Putin was not serious or interested in a withdrawal.
  7. Zelensky says three things were agreed upon at that meeting. A deal for Germany to continue buying gas from Russia, a hostage exchange deal, and a ceasefire agreement. Russia violated the ceasefire after a month, and Zelensky called Putin in response to ask what happened. Putin didn't explain anything, there were more calls with Putin over the next few months, Putin eventually stopped responding. Zelensky wanted to make a ceasefire happen, Putin was not interested. Russia was talking bullshit, and meanwhile sending snipers into the contested areas.
  8. Zelensky says any ceasefire needs security guarantees, because lives are at stake, and Russia can't be trusted to keep their word on purely diplomatic deals with no military backing. Zelensky wants a security guarantee like partial NATO membership, and/or an arms aid package that would only be used if Russia violates the ceasefire. Zelensky is certain that if any ceasefire happens without security guarantees, Putin will just come again after three months.
  9. Zelensky wants more sanctions on Russia too, particularly on Russian energy. Zelensky wants to see the world buying more American oil instead of Russian oil.
  10. Lex Fridman's first idea for peace is "What if Ukraine and Russia are both accepted into NATO".
  11. Zelensky thinks security guarantees without the US's involvement would not be enough to stop Russia from breaking a ceasefire. Europe being involved in peace talks and Ukraine's future is important too, but the US by itself outweighs the rest of NATO/Europe combined in Zelensky's eyes.
  12. Zelensky seems to lose patience with Fridman as the interview goes along. Fridman keeps talking about Zelensky, Trump, and Putin sitting down together to strike a peace deal. Zelensky keeps trying to explaint that Putin is not a good faith actor and that strong security guarantees from the US are necessary for any peace.
  13. Another of Zelensky's security guarantee suggestions was for the US to give Ukraine Russia's 300 billion frozen assets, and then Ukraine buys American arms with that Russian money. Another suggestion is non-NATO alliance like what Israel has, where countries like the USA, France, Britain assist to shoot down missiles.
  14. Zelensky praises Trump a lot. Probably just politics because he knows he needs to brownnose Trump.
  15. Ukrainian elections will probably only be held after the war ends, because of all the difficulties with occupied territories voting, all the millions of Ukrainians who are abroad, the risk of cyber attacks. Zelensky hopes the war will end in 2025 and elections will then be held immediately. He is unsure if he'd run again himself.
  16. Ukraine has been fighting hard against corruption, it has set up sophiscated and independent anti-corruption agencies, but Ukraine is not corruption free yet
  17. The US has lots of weird, arguably corrupt, strings about how weapons purchases can happen itself. For example, Ukraine wanted to transport weapons from the US to Ukraine on its own fleet of cargo jets. The US said no, that if Ukraine wanted the America to send it weapons, they'd have to pay for American jets to move those weapons.
  18. One time in 2019 Zelensky was visiting the white house and he wanted to go for a morning jog, but US security policy would have a bunch of bodyguards in suits jogging alongside him, and he felt too awkward to make them do that when he was just in athletic wear.

In general, I got the impression Zelensky was trying hard to flatter the people he needed too and put Ukraine in the best possible light. Not that I can blame him, given his position. Lex Fridman seemed really weird in how he seemed very sympathetic to Russia but not outright saying that, despite how obvious it was.

Everyone I've seen, including Zelensky and myself, has seemed rather confused/upset by Fridman's very strong desire to do the interview in Russian, since the symbolic concerns seem to obviously outweigh those.

It’s not clear to me at all why these “symbolic concerns” should “obviously” outweigh the fairly straightforward practical reasons why an interview conducted in a language both participants speak fluently would be more intimate, more personable, and less stilted than one conducted via interpreters. And in this situation reinforces one of the central arguments of the Russian-sympathetic side; having Zelenskyy conduct the interview in the language he grew up speaking would inspire uncomfortable questions about why he grew up speaking Russian, despite growing up in Ukraine (supposedly a nation with deep historical pride and cultural distinctiveness), and why (as I understand it) he only felt compelled to become fluent in Ukrainian as an adult.

I don’t have a strong dog in the Ukraine-Russia fight, and I have assiduously avoided wading into previous Motte discussions of the conflict, which have shocked me with their low quality, contentiousness, and total lack of intellectual charity. I’m just pointing out how Zelenskyy’s “symbolic” posture in this interview could be fairly described as a method of maintaining the polite fiction — Ukraine has always been culturally distinguishable from Russia, Ukrainian cities don’t have any deep Russian history, Russianness has always been imposed upon Ukraine, etc. — which the larger global community has been asked to respect since the invasion began. I can understand why he’s doing it, but can you understand why it doesn’t strike neutral observers as “weird” for Fridman to want to put aside that artifice for the sake of what he hoped would be an incisive interview?

I think you nailed it with why does Zelensky speak Russian first?

And to steel man the point: the people Zelensky really needs to convince are the citizens of the LNR and DNR; those people consider themselves Russian, they speak Russian, and they want to be a part of Russia, not Ukraine. Speaking in Russian does have some symbolism, and the symbolism is “I’m not your enemy”. Refusing to even speak the language of the people you are supposedly fighting a war over certainly signals something.

Imagine Mexico invaded the US because El Paso, TX votes to secede from the US and rejoin Mexico.

What would be the symbolism if the Governor of Texas, in this thought experiment, spoke Spanish first, but refused to talk to the people in El Paso in that language, but instead insisted that he and by extension they, all spoke English.

Insofar as I've understood, while Ukrainian has always been widely spoken in the countryside, Russian has been a prestige language, which is one of the reasons why it has had a strong stature in the cities (other reasons include internal immigration inside Russian empire etc., of course). The Ukrainian national project is not just about making Ukrainian acceptable but making it the prestige language inside Ukrainian; Zelensky speaking Russian in an interview like this would obviously go against that project.

And to steel man the point: the people Zelensky really needs to convince are the citizens of the LNR and DNR; those people consider themselves Russian, they speak Russian, and they want to be a part of Russia, not Ukraine.

If the starting assumption is that Zelensky and the Ukrainian govt has already tacitly accepted that (the occupied areas) of Donbass are not going to be within Ukrainian suzerainty for the time being, it also means that the people currently residing in those areas are not really the ones to convince about anything any more.

If Zelensky will give up the disputed territories the war ends today, and young Ukrainian men stop dying.

If these Ukrainian people are so intent on fighting to keep control of the Donbas and Crimea, then why the need for conscription?

If he gives them up for nothing, the likelihood is he’ll be overthrown and killed.

So what's the plan? Just keep the war going until there's nobody left to kill him?

Give them up for something. EU membership and sufficient security guarantees, and put the contested territories in legal limbo so the god Terminus doesn't set down his lines.

The positive path forward for Ukraine goes through the EU, a Poland type trajectory economically, and perhaps using their vast store of veterans in those Cossack fantasies they have sometimes for cash and political capital.

If in 20 years Ukraine looks like Poland and Russia looks like Russia, contested provinces and people will be trying to join Ukraine.

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