photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at the Dole Institute of Politics on Nov. 12, 2024.

The largest land war in Europe since World War II is complicated in many regards, but the American public’s attitude about it should be very simple, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday in Lawrence.

“I believe everyone who wants to make America great can not allow Ukraine to be defeated,” Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s United Nations ambassador, told a Lawrence crowd at the Dole Institute of Politics. “If Ukraine is defeated by our common enemies, you are not a great nation.”

Kyslytsya was in Lawrence this week, in part, to reconnect with a place that he said was formative in his understanding of the world. Kyslytsya was an exchange student at the University of Kansas from 1992 to 1993. He credited his time in America’s “heartland” — rather than at Ivy League schools like many of his colleagues in the diplomatic corps — for giving him a more complete understanding of America.

Now, he hopes the America that he knows will stand firm with Ukraine in its battle against Russia, even as questions swirl about whether the incoming Trump administration will continue to provide arms, intelligence and other support to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Kyslytsya refused to buy into speculation that Trump will force an end to the war on terms that are unfavorable to Ukraine.

“If anyone tells you today what the next move is of Trump, he or she is a charlatan,” Kyslytsya said in a press conference before Tuesday’s event, saying that the media and others had been guilty of “cherry-picking” statements from Trump about Ukraine and the war. “It is all speculation.”

Kyslytsya, like a salesman, did come equipped with a list of reasons why Americans should continue to support the war effort. He noted that Trump has said Europe should be more responsible for its defense in the future. Kyslytsya said Ukraine likely already has the most capable military in Europe, and after a successful completion of the war, it will be a tremendous asset to all of Europe.

He told the crowd of how he has a map in his U.N. office in New York showing which American states are benefiting from increased manufacturing as a result of the U.S. weapons that are being provided to Ukraine. He said many of those weapons are produced in the heartland, and that the weapons systems would produce revenue for U.S. companies for decades to come as Ukraine will pay for maintenance, spare parts and other such services to keep the weapons functional in the future.

Kyslytsya even dug deep into American history, reminding the crowd of Charles Lindbergh and his America First movement that tried to keep the U.S. out of World War II. He noted how Lindbergh often said no amount of American help could save the British from Germany. He said that sounded familiar to the refrain that nothing America could do could save Ukraine. Lindbergh, he reminded the crowd, stuck with his position of remaining out of the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Do you really need a Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century” to become convinced of America’s role in this war, he asked.

Finally, he said Americans should take special notice of more recent developments — North Korean forces entering the war. Kyslytsya said, in some ways, that is a more dangerous development for America and the western world than it is for Ukraine.

“It is a very dangerous situation beyond Ukraine because it is the very first time the North Korean military is deployed outside of North Korea,” he said of reports from the front-lines that more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are now in the Ukrainian war theater. “Most of them will be killed. We will kill most of them, given the statistics of how we eliminate Russians every day, every week.

“But what represents danger is some of them will survive and they will go home with the experience of a real war. That presents a particular menace to the immediate neighbors of North Korea.”

The war is changing in ways that could make American enemies beyond Russia — North Korea and Iran, in particular — more powerful, he said.

If none of that is convincing, Kyslytsya offered a more elementary argument as well. He said America has already invested in this war, and it is important that its enemies not win.

“Otherwise you look like losers,” he said. “Nobody wants to be a loser, right? If you were a Jayhawker do you want your team to lose? No, no you don’t.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at the Dole Institute of Politics on Nov. 12, 2024.

Kyslytsya undoubtedly could have gone on, and he had a large, receptive crowd there to listen to him. More than 100 people filled all the seats in the Simons Media Room in the Dole Institute of Politics building, and people stood along the walls and several stood outside, listening through a pair of exterior doors that had been opened.

Kyslytsya said Ukraine will continue to fight, and anyone who believes that time increases the likelihood of Ukraine giving into a Russian-friendly peace deal is misunderstanding a key calculus of the Ukrainian people.

“If we lost our brothers, our fathers, our nephews, those losses should not be for nothing,” he said. “We did not fight so many years just to give up our territory.”

But Kyslytsya said he truly does not believe America will try to force such a peace on Ukraine. He said the Western world will understand that any such peace will leave the war unfinished and will only lead to more costly war in the future.

“If we finish this war the wrong way — and the wrong way means the conflict is frozen, that the job is half done, half cooked — Russia will strike again, maximum, five years, no more,” he said. “The price that taxpayers in the United States and Europe will pay will be even higher.

“Unless of course the United States decides that another major war in Europe has nothing to do with American interests, and they abandon their allies in Europe, which is a scenario I don’t really envision. That would be the end of the American intention to be great.”