Leftist Vermont Rep Tanya Vyhovsky Toured Ukraine. Here’s What She Learned. 

Wednesday night, Russia staged its largest attack on Ukraine since President Donald Trump started the so-called peace process. Moscow launched 598 drones and 31 missiles on targets in Ukraine. Most of them were shot down, but many others still evaded Ukraine’s air defense systems, hitting over 20 locations in the capital, Kyiv, and severely damaging a building next to the European Union mission.

That came on the heels of a Russian missile strike on a U.S.-run factory in the country. Thus, despite the recent two summits that Trump called to reach a peace deal, Russia is in fact escalating its war on Ukraine.

In Alaska, Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has an arrest warrant on his head from the International Criminal Court. In Washington, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy along with several European heads of state. Trump has promised to orchestrate another meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, something that now seems highly unlikely, as Ukraine opposes the imperialist conditions Russia expects from any settlement — annexation of land and a veto for Moscow on any security guarantees against future Russian attacks.

Trump wanted to cut a deal with Putin for the partition of Ukraine. He hoped that would ensure U.S. corporations opportunities to plunder Ukraine’s mineral reserves and profit from the neoliberal reconstruction of the country. Likely above all he wanted a settlement so that he could turn Washington’s attention to its main imperial rival, China.

Trump and Putin planned to bully Zelenskyy into accepting “land swaps,” essentially agreeing to Russia’s illegal conquest of a whole swathe of Ukraine in return for peace. But the Ukrainian President is legally barred by the country’s constitution from surrendering sovereign land.

Moreover, 70 percent of Ukrainians oppose any such land for peace deal. They know such a compromise would likely doom people under occupation to brutal oppression and that Putin will at best pause his war only to start it again to achieve his stated goal of subordinating Ukraine in Russia’s imperialist sphere of influence.

During this charade of a peace process, Putin actually escalated the war with increased missilestrikes and drone attacks with the aim of annexing more land. In the midst of Putin’s escalation, Vermont State Senator Tanya Vyhovsky was in Ukraine on a speaking tour to build solidarity with the country’s progressive movement.

Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, clinical social worker, and a member of Vermont’s Progressive Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. In this exclusive interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity and concision, she speaks with Truthout about conditions in Ukraine, its progressive forces, and why the U.S. left should rally to support the country’s struggle for self-determination.

Ashley Smith: You were in Ukraine on a speaking tour to build solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion and occupation of the country. What were conditions like?

Tanya Vyhovsky: I met with the broad progressive movement, including unions, political parties, leftist NGOs, and student unions. It was a powerful experience to connect to the people fighting for real leftist social change in Ukraine amid a full-scale invasion.

The war’s impact really depends on where you are in the country. In the capital, Kyiv, I saw many buildings that had been bombed — apartment buildings, factories, and small businesses. These were generally outside of the city center. But it’s not as bad as in other cities. The indirect impact of the war, though, is everywhere.

For example, you can’t visit the parliament, the Rada, because it is protected by razor wire and military patrols in order to keep the government safe and functioning. All the cities’ fountains have been turned off to save money. All the statues are sandbagged and wrapped, and in certain districts, the lower windows are sandbags. So, at first glance, Kyiv may not seem like a war zone, but if you look just beneath the surface, you see the signs of the war.

In Kryvyi Rih, which is closer to the front line, the war is in your face. The Russian forces bombed one of the city’s parks in April. There is a memorial there for the 19 people, including nine children, who were killed when the Russian military targeted the park with cluster munitions. I couldn’t stay in the city’s hotels because they have been bombed by Russia. Schools have been relocated to bomb shelters.

Dnipro was functioning much as usual, except that the windows all have sandbags and there are above-ground bomb shelters on nearly every corner. Three hours after I left the city, they suffered multiple ballistic missile attacks.

In Lviv, it feels for the most part like there isn’t a war. The statues are netted, people casually mention a church statue whose head fell off during a bombing, and there were occasional air raid sirens. But the curfew is very loosely adhered to. When I was there, there hadn’t been a Russian attack in six weeks. But the day after I left, there was a massive missile attack that killed people. So, despite differences, everywhere I felt like I was in a country under siege.

I spoke to many soldiers about what it’s been like for the past nearly four years. People say they’re tired but not broken and that they are not willing to give up. The vast majority of Ukrainians — from citizens to soldiers — oppose Trump’s attempt to cut a deal with Putin for the partition of their country. If that deal were struck, many service members told me there would have been a revolt among the troops.

While I was not able to go to cities on the front, I did speak to a lot of people particularly in Lviv that had been internally displaced from Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson. They’ve had to try and rebuild their lives in Lviv and other cities where they’ve found refuge. They described the horrors of living under constant bombardment, especially for their kids, and felt like they had no choice but to flee.

These internally displaced people have put a strain on housing and the cost of living in the cities where they resettled. But everyone I spoke with said it was the duty of all Ukrainians to ensure that internally displaced people are welcomed, cared for, and protected.

While you were in Ukraine, President Trump held his two summits, first in Alaska and then in Washington. What were the various responses to these summits from Ukrainians?

While I was there, I watched all the coverage of Trump’s summit in Alaska with Putin. Because of my travel dates, I was only able to watch parts of Zelenskyy’s summit in D.C. Frankly, neither I nor any Ukrainian I spoke with think that Putin or Trump are looking for peace. The plan they’re putting forward is unacceptable on its face.

A lot of Ukrainians did not watch the summit and did not expect it to yield any results. Russia is making demands that Ukraine can in no way agree to. It is demanding that Ukraine give up sovereignty and accept occupation. Trump has positioned the U.S. as a middleman but with clear sympathies with Russia. The Ukrainians rightfully demand sovereignty and the return of all their land. So, with such diametrically opposed positions, it’s hard for Ukrainians to take this so-called peace process seriously.

Ukrainians often asked my advice on what Ukraine should do. That’s a question that I have no right to answer. Here in the U.S., I don’t face air raids, fighting on the front, and occupation. Only Ukrainians can decide what to do. But I can say, based on Ukraine’s history and the geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe and globally, that if Ukraine accepts a “deal” that includes occupation and further annexation of land, it will not end this war and lead to lasting peace.

Such a deal will simply pause Russian aggression until Putin has time to regroup and come back for more Ukrainian land. This is, of course, what happened after Russia’s first invasion in 2014. Putin took Crimea and sections of Donbas, bided his time, cut a deal, and then launched the war again in 2022.

Any deal will banish people in annexed areas to brutal Russian oppression. Currently, Ukrainians suffer terrible oppression under occupation. They certainly have not found peace and safety. The stories from Crimea are horrific. I really worry that an occupation will lead to full-scale genocide as it has in Palestine after 75 years of occupation.

Finally, I worry about the implications for democracy and sovereignty if Putin’s aggression is rewarded.

People in the U.S. know little about Ukraine’s progressive forces. What kinds of groups did you meet with? What were their main struggles, and how do they combine those with support for the liberation struggle?

There is a surprisingly vibrant and diverse progressive movement. I met with the federated unions, which are run by the state, as well as with the independent trade unions, which are much more politically active. I talked with members of the student unions (both federated and independent). I visited NGOs that are doing a variety of different work supporting civil society, supporting the armed forces, and supporting veterans.

I also met with a new grassroots political party, as well as with leaders of the feminist movement, young LGBTQ activists, and small groups of volunteers making food and mats for the military. They are all organizing around their issues and demands. They all voiced demands for better working conditions, higher wages, fair taxation, and expanded rights and access to reproductive health care, as well as for a more representative government. These are the same challenges we as working people face in the United States.

But, astonishingly, Ukraine is not as neoliberalized as the U.S.

Ukrainians have universal health care, strong public schools, and affordable if not always free university education. They are actually concerned that the West will condition its support for Ukraine with a pledge to enact a neoliberal reconstruction of the country with the usual requirements of privatization, deregulation, and austerity.

The Ukrainian left was critical of the status quo and critical of the government. But they know that their fight for expanded democratic rights and better social programs, wages and benefits cannot be separated from the struggle to defend the country. In fact, they contend that the more those issues are addressed, the more united the country will be in fighting to preserve its independence.

Recently, Zelensky passed a bill that undermined the independence of the government’s anti-corruption agency. But after popular protest, he reversed course. Various forces you met with played a major role in organizing the protests. What is the significance of these protests?

I met with many of the leaders and participants in these protests. While they are of course thankful that this catastrophic law was halted, they all feel that these anti-corruption agencies need to be strengthened, not just returned to the status quo.

We should recognize that these protests occurred under martial law. They were illegal. But unlike in Russia, where they would have been met with brutal repression, they were allowed to happen, and they scored a victory. That shows the vibrancy of Ukraine’s democratic freedoms even amid this war, something that Russian conquest — as we know from the occupied territories — would eradicate.

People are very critical of Zelensky and his neoliberal policies. But there was also a recognition that the war is a major obstacle to addressing these issues. At this point, they said, there is also no major left party that has representatives in parliament or grassroots power to advance their demands. But people are trying to build such a party to ensure that their country does not become a carbon copy of the United States. They want social and economic justice for all in a free and sovereign Ukraine.

As a Vermont State Senator, you are one of DSA’s prominent elected officials. While the left has uniformly supported Palestine’s struggle for self-determination, it has not extended the same solidarity to Ukraine’s struggle. Why?

I think the answer to this is complicated and the result of a flawed way of approaching the question of Ukraine and its struggle for self-determination. Some on the left believe that anything the United States is involved in must be bad and therefore because the U.S. has supported Ukraine they should oppose such support.

This is a form of American exceptionalism in reverse — the idea that everything the U.S. supports must be reactionary. This leads some on the left to oppose not just the U.S. but also Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination and, in some cases, even to support Russian imperialism. Others simply know little about the history of Ukraine’s resistance, including left-wing resistance to Russian imperialism. So, there is not the same kind of knee-jerk sympathy with Ukraine as there rightly is with Palestine.

There are also those who oppose all funding of any war. They hold the naive belief that if Ukraine just stops fighting it will bring about peace. That’s obviously not the case. If Ukrainians didn’t resist, Russia would simply conquer the country and impose dictatorial colonial rule. The truth is that if Russia stops fighting, there will be peace, but if Ukraine stops, there will be no Ukraine.

Finally, there is a subset of the left that mistakenly thinks that Russia is not an imperialist power but a progressive force standing up to the U.S. In reality, Putin heads a neoliberal, capitalist dictatorship. So, people on the left have various justifications for not supporting Ukraine’s struggle against occupation, genocide, and imperialism, but they are all wrong.

In your meetings with Ukraine’s progressive forces, what message did they want conveyed to the U.S. left? What do they want us to advocate here?

The Ukrainian left wants the U.S. left to know that they exist, that they are strong and united, and that they cannot fight for leftist values and ideals under Russian occupation. They told me so many stories from the long history of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom and justice all the way up to today. They implored me to ask the U.S. leftists to open their minds and hearts to their fight for collective liberation in Ukraine.

We should actually follow the example of the Ukrainian left that just organized a demonstration against Israel’s manufactured famine in Gaza at the memorial of the Holodomor, the famine Stalin imposed on Ukraine. The international left should follow the words of the chant, “from Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is crime.”

Finally, with Trump collaborating with Putin on plans to partition the country so he can turn his attention to Washington’s imperial rivalry with China, what can people here in the U.S. do to materially support Ukraine’s people?

There are many opportunities for people to provide desperately needed material support. They can donate to the Ukraine Solidarity Network’s fund drive to support the Ukrainian Nurses Union, Be Like We Are, to purchase essential life-saving equipment to treat their patients.

But the list is really endless. People can donate to campaigns that make freeze-dried emergency food for soldiers at the front and tarps to protect soldiers. The independent unions need money to rebuild houses and provide more care to wounded veterans. The teachers need help to renovate their bomb shelter schools, and the feminists need funding for comprehensive reproductive rights education.

There really isn’t any part of civil society or the military in Ukraine that would not benefit from material support. But, most importantly of all, all people of conscience must stand with Ukraine and support its struggle for self-determination. Their struggle is our struggle — one for peace, justice, and equality.