YouSaid · the spoken record

Olga Onuch

lines on the record: 27
first: 2022-12-12
most recent: 2022-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Voting intention support for Zelensky. And we do find that there is about 25 or so plus percent of the population that declare that they would vote in an outright question that say yes, we would vote for Zelensky. But then when you ask them in a manner that hides them in some way, I guess disguises them from the interview. Then they, in fact, say no, we would vote for somebody else or we would not vote for Zelensky in this case. So his critics and opponents have not gone away. He has high support, but he knows it is not, in fact, in the 90s, as Henry already said. And Zelensky is made by the people instead of being against the people, as Putin might be. So he will need them and he will need to pay attention and listen to them and what they want in this war.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Territory or accept that some territory is now remaining in the hands of Russian control. Quite frankly, he would lose the people, very simply. This is not an autocracy. This still is a wartime democracy with all its issues, right? And there's a lot of centralization of power happening and a lot of criticism of that in the media sphere, for instance. But Zelensky will need his people. And if he goes against them, they will vote him out, I think. That's very clear right now. So I think it's a little bit trickier. And we talk about this also in the book. We conducted a list experiment to figure out what is the true”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that's a very interesting question. Here I'm going to cite the title Our Colleague's Book, Sam and Graham, Graham Robertson and Sam Green. Their book title is Putin V, the People. Now, I think that's very much the kind of scenario that we do have in Putin. Zelensky, as we keep saying in the book, is a product of his nation, is the embodiment of the median voter in Ukraine. He is with the people and they are with him because he is embodying their central aims, goals, and views on things. Right now, according to surveys that we've been running this year with Henry, we know that the population is not supportive of negotiations, certainly when it means losing territory, right? We've asked this question more than once, and we know that there is no appetite for this sort of negotiation. So if Zelensky word to negotiate a way”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And he was naming them, calling them out, interrupts that, and says this poem. And he does it in a way that everyone just gets chills when they hear it, right? To a different audience, it's probably not poetess Lina Costenko. But nonetheless, he knows exactly what to use at which moment.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To use in his speeches, and he does so also for the Ukrainian audiences. One of the things that we did in the book is we took this one poem by Lina Kostenko, Travadumatimizerno. You don't have to think meagerly that he used in a particular wartime speech. And Lina Costenko is a very famous poetess and dissident from the 1960s. She is adored and beloved by many, many Ukrainians, so much so that her poems are graffiti on walls in Kiev and Lviv and Kharkiv. Youth love, Lina Kostenko. And he was able to very cleverly interject this poem. There's no need to think meekerly. When he was talking about those politicians in Ukraine that were calling to give up or to succumb to Russia's aggression,”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Land particularly well with a given audience. And of course, he was able to do that with audiences around the world in a way that I think few, quite frankly, politicians globally can. But also, I saw him speaking to our students in the United Kingdom, Ukrainian students and others around the United Kingdom. And he did this obviously through a video address. And he was able to speak to them not only as this wartime president and international figure, but in a way that resonated with them, right? Talking about the sorts of things that are important to them in their daily lives. He was able to connect to them on a very personal level, even though he was doing it on a screen from, you know, many, many miles away. And I think that's exactly this. He reads his audiences very well. He knows exactly which he's nugget.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, certainly, I think Zelensky is able to communicate in a way that not everyone can. He co-writes his speeches. He has a team helping him out, obviously, as well, but he is able to both write and deliver a really impactful and quite frankly beautiful speech. And when he addresses you, he knows how to place the emphasis on the right words in the right moments, taking the pauses where necessary. So I think that's clear, right? And certainly his career as an actor and on stage in theater has helped. But he also has this capacity to understand which pieces of information, some of that you just identified are the ones that need to be deployed because they will”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They both stayed as well, and they're doing their duty and they are playing their role in trying to defend Ukraine. I really don't think it's helpful to make Zelensky into this really, truly incredible. It is incredible. He is an incredible figure, but I don't think he's that extraordinary. And actually our colleague who we cite in the book, Professor Harain, says Zelensky was doing what any good ordinary Ukrainian would do, play their role in defending the country. And I think that is really what we know about Zelensky. He embodies that civic spirit of ordinary Ukrainians that all of you have seen on your smartphones, on your television screens, where elderly people are trying to stop tanks with their hands, where farmers are trying to take tanks out of the field. There is this real incredible resilience and bravery.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, do I personally believe or do I as an academic believe? Could I, shoulda, we don't know what would have happened. Were, well, Yanukovych did flee the country. So definitely you have an answer there. Perhaps would others, I can't say, but we do know that he talked to people within his administration in the days prior. Some of the folks that we spoke to off the record, of course, in those conversations that they had in that week, two weeks prior, they said, well, what do we do? And he said, well, you go home, you take your families, you take care of yourself, you leave if you need be, but I'm staying. So that was a message that at least his inner circle knew very clearly.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On his position on the war with Russia because he kept saying that peace, he's peace president. He was a president that kept saying we need peace, perhaps saying that we just need to talk to Russia. We can have negotiations with Russia. And Henry and I write in the book that we think his stance on the war in Donbass and possible negotiations with Russia on Minsk were a little bit naive. They certainly changed very quickly. This was at least how he presented himself during the campaign. Within that first year, it became very clear that this is just, you cannot simply talk with Russia. This is not going to work.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, certainly. I guess he can be described as an antibatronal politics candidate. Certainly he promised to get rid of Deputy Immunity, which his party did do. He talked about land reform, which they did manage to pass. He also talked about the de-Oligerization of the country, which he is in the process of doing, albeit not without criticism. At the same time, I think, and notably, he was definitely a pro-EU candidate. And the pro-European message is not only present in his campaign speeches and then later his speeches as president, but also very much so in the comedy servant of the people and then in his theatrical performances before. But where perhaps there was not as much clarity”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whereas Zelensky, he was playing a fictional president on television, but he was in fact doing his job. And he perhaps was seen on television by more ordinary Ukrainians than the actual president was seen on television doing his job. And so we think he benefited from this very real virtual incumbency effect in those few months of the last season of Servant of the People.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Donetsk based miners come to the rescue. The eastern Donetsk based miners come to the rescue of the Western Viv miners who are stuck underground. And in the very end, in order to pay off Ukraine's mounting IMF debt, makes this beautiful speech on how we need to do this ourselves. And overnight ordinary citizens of Ukraine in the show collect all of their wealth, belongings, watches, jewelry, money, and place it on the independent square, the Maidan, the location where all these mass mobilizations happened before. We call this in the book. Virtual incumbency. Because the reality is that Will's political science thinks that incumbents have this benefit of just because they're there, just because they're present and doing their job and people see them doing their job, they have this incumbency advantage.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then comes the third season of serving of the people. And the only way to understand that third season is as part of Zelensky's campaign, quite frankly. This is very much the substance of his campaign. It is running during the electoral campaign, so immediately following that January 1st announcement. And it is about a country at war. It is about a country divided. It is about a country that is divided along various different lines that he then shows are not the things that are important to ordinary citizens and to Ukrainians, right? And the whole season is about him piecing the country back together through whatever means he can, ending in a very beautiful few scenes where”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He announces, of course, his presidency in a New Year's Eve address where he goes from playing a child in a snow suit to now Vladimir Zelensky, which is the last time I think he calls himself that publicly, which is the Russian way of saying his name. And then goes on to announce his candidacy for president.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are controlling political power. All of this is displayed very, in times very humorously and not always my sense of humor, but nonetheless a little slapstick comedy in those first two seasons very clearly. So most ordinary citizens watching that servant of the people will have recognized that this is art imitating life. This is the experience of ordinary citizens. But then there comes that third season. Zelensky, there's a lot of rumors whether or not Zelensky will run for president in those few years, right? And the rumor mill was spinning and spinning.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where Zelensky stars as Hollyborg, who is a history teacher turned unexpectedly president after his students submit a video that goes viral and ordinary citizens provide money for this character to be able to pay the amount to become a candidate for president. And the whole entire series of servant of the people is actually just this real story of ordinary Ukrainians' lives. The fact that ordinary Ukrainians have to pay bribes to get basic things done, that they have to take out credits to buy very simple items for the home like a microwave, that the oligarchs”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if I'm convinced that he wanted nothing to do with Polly. So, poverty rates go through the roof in Ukraine. This is also one year into the Donbass war with Russia. There's instability in the country. And we're back for some people, for some ordinary citizens. We are back to the place where some people found themselves in the 1990s, not being able to afford to buy meat for dinner. That's actually something that Zelensky talked about as a childhood memory and his father promising that his friends would have always the ability to eat meat at their home. These are the kind of questions that ordinary Ukrainians were going through whilst also engaged in a war. And again, with having the sense of disappointment for some following a revolutionary moment. And all of these things are captured in this show Servant of the People.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was literally shooting at protesters, but it was also about dignity against this entrenched patronal oligarchic systemic corruption in the country, that these key figures not only control politics, but also the economy and become these barons of politics and economy in the country. That makes Poroshenko a very odd figure that rises to become the main opponent to Yanukovych. And then, of course, the post-revolutionary or the revolutionary president.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Patronal politics is really Henry's thing, so I'll let him maybe come in here a little bit. But I think it's really important that to highlight what you just said. An incredible personal wealth for himself in the 90s, right? And his different businesses that we don't need to go into right now. But this is somebody that becomes a billionaire over time and is always near or holding the hands of power. So I think it's very interesting that, of course, he becomes the main opposition figure in the Yevromaidan, the mass mobilization of 2013-14. It's interesting most because the Yevroma Maidan is supposed to be not only about this Euro-Atlanticist direction that Ukraine's supposed to be going in towards, not only about dignity and human rights, because Yanukovych's regime”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Buy flats now. And if they are buying flats, they're buying flats in euros and with, you know, the knowledge that the currency might completely collapse in the future and they won't be able to pay their bills. So this becomes yet again an unstable period for the independence generation and others just like Zelensky, although for him, this is a moment when he becomes actually quite famous, returning to Ukraine and working for Odin plus Odin, one plus one at the time, the top television channel.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becomes a free democracy at this point and then unfortunately goes back again backslides again. You have this period that is just full of instability. And if you were in your 20s and you grew up throughout the turbulent 90s, you had this moment of intense euphoria and feeling of ordinary citizens' victory. And then you realize that politicians are just yet again fighting, not able to find any compromises, deciding to use identity politics that, again, only divide the population. And you also see that there isn't a place for you at the table yet, right? This independence generation is not only not welcomed into the halls of power, but also they are not able really to”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have immediately after, right, is this complete disenchantment with politics because these revolutionary heroes, Victor Yushchenko, who became president on the heels of the Orange Revolution and his right hand woman, Yula Timoshenko, who becomes prime minister, you see them fighting constantly over who holds what reigns of power in the legislature, in government, and so on. And this becomes an incredibly unstable period of elite politics in the country. And you also see a decline in a lot of other indicators of well-being in Ukraine. So although you see an uptick in quality of democracy in Ukraine and general freedoms, in fact, Ukraine”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I think it's important to say here that although Zelensky is one of, and quite frankly, a very famous representative of the independence generation, he was not actually one of those who was A, visible in the Orange Revolution protest or known to have been a supporter of them. So that's important to note. But the Orange Revolution is this incredible moment of mass mobilization, of people power, a reaction to this fraudulent intellect. And within hours of the official announcement of what is known to be widespread electoral fraud and manipulation. About just about half of the population that was on the winning side.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 2019, right before Zelensky is elected, it's at 41%. But by the time of february 2022, right before Russia is about to start its all-out invasion of Ukraine, that number was just around sixty percent. And what correlated most strongly with this jump was having voted for Zelensky's party, Sluhanarodo, and also significantly correlated being from the southeast of the country or being from key areas of the southeast. So he was rallying this population for quite some time. And undoubtedly, these individuals, these people were the first ones at the front lines stopping tanks with their bare hands.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Important. There is one state language in Ukraine, but nonetheless, he was embodying civic patriotism of ethnic Russians, ethnic Jews, Hungarians, Russian speakers that made up a very large and significant minority of the country. And as Henry said, it is exactly this pre-war time period that he was able to really start rallying the southeastern population that perhaps prior to 2019 really didn't see themselves as part of the in-group when it came to civic patriotism in the country. So by the time the war starts, he's already rallied this population, right? And one of the things we mention actually in the book is that a very significant portion of Ukrainians come to support democracy as the best system for the country.”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, oddly enough, we haven't seen a president from the West really in Ukraine. That's a very long history of central Ukrainian, southern Ukrainian, and so on president. But here, I think it's really important to say that it's not so much that during the all out war with Russia, that it's important that he is from the southeast and that he is a Russophone, that he identified as such for a very long time, but rather it was already during his presidency. We say in the book that he was perhaps brave to just be very frank about his Russophon upbringing and demonstrate that it didn't mean that he was in any way less patriotic than other Ukrainians. Of course, the matter of language for some Ukrainians is very”
2022-12-12 · Intelligence Squared · How Did Zelensky Become One of the Most Significant Wartime Leaders of the 21st Century? with Olga Onuch and Henry Hale · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT