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Trump administration officials are set to meet with a delegation from Russia in Saudi Arabia this week to talk about ending Russia's war in Ukraine. So far, Ukraine says it is not involved in those talks and says there cannot be a peace deal unless it is involved. Ukraine's former foreign minister, who served during most of the full-scale war, spoke to NPR's Joanna Kakissis about the challenges facing Ukraine.
JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Until last fall, Dmytro Kuleba was Ukraine's top diplomat and perhaps the highest-profile member of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's wartime cabinet.
DMYTRO KULEBA: So now that I'm - I've been liberated from the duty of negotiating and operating, I can double down or triple down on communicating.
KAKISSIS: Kuleba begins our conversation with a bit of context. He says every American government in the last three decades has feared the consequences of a destabilized Russia, even, he says, Ukraine's strongest advocates in U.S. history - the Biden administration - which misread the stakes for both Ukraine and Russia after the 2022 invasion.
KULEBA: The thing here is that if Ukraine loses the war, the state of Ukraine, the nation of Ukraine is gone. If Russia loses the war, Russian Empire is gone. These are two completely different consequences, and this is what I believe the administration was struggling to accept and reconcile with its foreign policy actions.
KAKISSIS: President Trump, he says, does not seem to care about historical precedent.
KULEBA: He's unchained. He can break away from any foreign policy tradition of the United States. And our job, and the job of our friends, is to make sure that this framework is fair towards Ukraine.
KAKISSIS: Kuleba says ensuring that this happens is going to be complicated.
KULEBA: The beauty of Trump is that both risks and opportunities are extremely high. But it's a gamble. You can get both. It really depends on how skillful you are in communicating with him, in dealing with him, and, most importantly, how effective you are in building channels of communication where other people and nations and leaders whom he respects will help you to shape his opinion.
KAKISSIS: And for any peace deal to last, Kuleba says, Trump has two challenges as a negotiator.
KULEBA: The first one is how to ensure that the peace plan will not lead to a greater war after a temporary break. The second is how to make sure that Ukraine does not blow up from the inside as a result of a genius peace plan crafted outside of Ukraine or without taking Ukraine's red lines into account.
KAKISSIS: Zelenskyy, he says, has his own challenges. He must bring peace to a nation yearning for it, but with a fair deal that includes security guarantees and sovereignty.
KULEBA: The army has the moral right to ask a question - what we were fighting for, what we were dying for - and he will have to give a decent answer to them.
KAKISSIS: As negotiations to end the war come into focus, Kuleba says he hopes the Trump administration - and Americans - will value Ukraine for more than just its mineral wealth.
KULEBA: The best product we can sell is not raw materials but the idea of liberty, and no nation fights for freedom more vigorously and fiercely than Ukrainians do in the 21st century.
KAKISSIS: Joanna Kakissis, NPR News, Kyiv.
(SOUNDBITE OF IDK SONG, "DENIM (FEAT. JOEY BADA$$") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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