The Ukrainian Rada deputy Inna Sovsun never thought that she would one day be able to tell different types of tanks apart. Now she is campaigning for increased arms deliveries and has found an ally in FDP defense politician Marcus Faber. In an interview with ntv.de, Sovsun and Faber tell how they experience this war.
ntv.de: Mrs. Sovsun, on the table in front of us is a piece of shrapnel that Mr. Faber brought from the Ukraine.
Sovsun: I also have shrapnel in my car. It always slides back and forth when I suddenly have to turn. My partner has been fighting in the war since February 24th. I've hardly seen him in the past year. In the summer he was in Kyiv for a few days and said: I'll show you the spot where we blew up the dam to stop the Russians advancing from the north. That's where we found this splitter. That was his gift.
Faber: So it's not in your car, it's inside.
Sovsun: Exactly. We just took it with us, those things are lying around everywhere.
Faber: Inna told me the story of how she got a call on February 24th in the morning. You should come to Parliament earlier to pass martial law. And that the deputies were then handed weapons to defend the city.
Sovsun: I'm actually against guns. I don't want them in my house or near me. And then, suddenly, around noon on February 24, I'm in line to get a gun. I figured I might need them, at least to defend myself. Then my father called me and said to give him the gun.
And do you have?
Sovsun: Yes, but it wasn't that easy. I had the gun at the end of the day, but couldn't bring it to my father. My parents live in a western suburb of Kyiv, I live in the north of the city. Because the roads were completely blocked in the first days of the war, I could only give him the weapon after the attack on Kyiv was repelled. He was a soldier for the Soviet Union in the Afghan war. So he knows how to deal with it.
Your partner, where is he now?
Sovsun: I wrote to him yesterday that I'm in Berlin. He wrote back: And I'm in New York.
In New York?
Sovsun: Yes, but in New York in Donetsk Oblast! There is a small town by that name there that was called that at the end of the 19th century. The name was changed in the Soviet Union, but it was renamed again last year. Incidentally, the city was founded by German merchants who probably had a connection to New York.
Faber: New York is not a pleasant place at the moment.
Sovsun: Yes, it is very close to Bakhmut. The situation there is very, very bad at the moment. We're proud to still hold the city, but we're paying a very high price. The Russians do that too. We're losing so many people there, it's crazy. It's very intense. My partner wrote me that sometimes they fight the Russians in the same house.
How do you deal with that?
Sovsun: We write to each other every day. He texts me and tells me he's fine. Of course, if I don't hear from him, I get nervous. He tried to calm me down and told me that if he couldn't get in touch, it didn't mean anything bad. If he were dead, I would get a call, not a text.
How can you even work? At first glance, Kyiv is supposed to appear surprisingly normal.
Sovsun: That's true again since last week. People are on the streets and there are, as always, a lot of traffic jams. Up until two weeks ago, however, we had major problems with the energy supply. However, the situation has improved because the Russians are no longer attacking the power plants and infrastructure so intensively. During the pandemic we have become accustomed to working from home a lot. We continue to do so. But if there are bottlenecks in the power supply, that causes us major problems. Then I might have electricity for a few hours in the morning, but my colleague only in the afternoon. That makes it difficult.
What about the air strikes? We have heard that many no longer go into the air-raid shelter.
Sovsun: No, I don't do that anymore either. Except when I'm in Parliament, then always. It could be a goal. And when I'm with my son. In schools, the children have to go down to the basement whenever there is an alarm. However, some do not have enough space for all the children. That's why they do exchange classes. One week there is one class in present tense, another week. Because they wouldn't have enough room in the basement for all the kids.
But why don't you go into the air-raid shelter?
Sovsun: In the beginning I did. But if you sit there for hours and can't do anything, you eventually get fed up with it. You have to keep going. The risk of being hit is manageable. Civilian buildings are rarely attacked in Kyiv. The risk of being hit is much greater if you live next to military or utility installations. People still go to the metro for protection, but they don't sleep there anymore. The last time I was in the air raid shelter with my son was in December.
Faber: That's also because Kyiv has a functioning air defense system. Unlike in the south, for example, the Russians are not firing at the city with imprecise S300 missiles that are actually made for anti-aircraft defense. But even in Kherson, where there are artillery attacks almost every minute, people don't go into the shelters. They say that then they could also leave the city.
Sovsun: The warnings are often very vague as well. We have an app that notifies us of possible air raids. Sometimes a warning is issued for the whole of Ukraine because a plane that may be carrying missiles has taken off from Belarus. You can't let that ruin your life.
They come from Kharkiv, where mainly Russian is and was spoken. It's hard to understand from the outside how Russian can be your mother tongue but you're still Ukrainian.
Sovsun: Only Ukrainian was spoken in my family. But yes, in Kharkiv many people speak Russian as their first language. This is also due to the fact that many Russians were resettled in the east of Ukraine in the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian language was suppressed. People who spoke Ukrainian were portrayed as country suckers. In kindergarten I was teased for always speaking Ukrainian. There are some who today have Russian as their first language, but whose grandparents may have had Ukrainian as their first language. But something has changed. Today in Kharkiv, when I speak to someone in Ukrainian on the street, they answer me in Ukrainian. That would not have happened before. The answer was always in Russian. For many, Russia was very close. That tipped after the attack a year ago. An acquaintance told me that he took Ukrainian lessons as soon as he heard the first explosions. If the attacker says you're a people, but then tries to kill you, that's not very convincing.
You belong to the liberal opposition party Holos. Is there any opposition at all at the moment? Didn't everyone gather behind President Zelenskyy?
Sovsun: We united behind the army. We support whatever the army needs because it protects our lives. If Zelenskyy does something that helps the army, we support him. Should he change course, we'd stay with the army. Before February 24 he was not so pro-army and ignored them.
Isn't he a hero to you?
Sovsun: My partner is a hero. For me, the soldiers are heroes who fight for us. But I admit that I was wrong about him. Before the great invasion I was very critical of him, but I was pleasantly surprised by his behavior. I didn't think that he would stay in Kyiv after the attack. That was good. We would be in a very different position if he hadn't done that. It was also wise to leave military decisions entirely to the army.
Mr. Faber, you are one of the most vocal supporters of more aid to Ukraine. How does Ms. Sovsun's visit help you?
Faber: That is very helpful. Most members of the Bundestag only read the news and know, for example, that there are drone attacks. But they don't have a face for it, they hardly find out what that means for kindergartens and elementary schools. They learn that this war is not taking place anywhere, but in Europe. That you have to deal with it and not just close your eyes to it and hope that it will be over soon.
Ms. Sovsun, what are you trying to achieve during this visit?
Sovsun: First of all, there is the big event at Café Kyiv, which was formerly called Café Moscow but has been renamed. There I will speak about the sanctions against Russia. For example, about the fact that there are no sanctions against Rosatom, the Russian nuclear company. The Russians are currently building a nuclear power plant in Hungary, that is, in the EU, in a NATO country. This is a great danger. Of course, I'm also concerned with arms deliveries. I never thought I would know so much about weapons, about the different types of tanks for example. Now that the decision has been made to supply Leopard tanks, our goal is to increase the number. 14 or even 18 is not enough. The Russians have thousands of tanks. We don't need thousands, but at least 300. I'm trying to do some convincing.
Of course, we wonder how long this war will last.
Sovsun: So do we.
Do you have any indication that it might happen this year?
Sovsun: I don't make predictions. That would be unprofessional. No one can say how long this war will last. If we act as if the war could be over in the summer, people might think we just have to wait and see. But you can't sit back and relax now. You have to do something now. People need to understand that the length of the war depends on the supply of arms. The more weapons are delivered, the shorter the war becomes.
Must Crimea remain part of Ukraine?
Sovsun: There are many reasons why Crimea should remain part of Ukraine. It was illegally annexed, it has economic importance and, of course, it is a starting point for Russian attacks. Mariupol was also destroyed in this way because Crimea is in Russian hands. So there is no security for Ukraine as long as Crimea is occupied by the Russians. Even if we get all other areas back, a new February 24th could happen anytime. Then there is the question of the Crimean Tartars. They already have it in their name - the Crimea is their home and yet they are being pursued by the Russians. Most of the Crimean Tartars had already left the peninsula.
On the other hand, Crimea is extremely important to the Russians. Is it even possible to conquer them?
Sovsun: Unless a miracle happens, the best time for me is the day after Putin died. This will throw Russia into chaos because they don't have a succession plan. This will be the best opportunity. The day after Putin's death, we're taking back Crimea.
Now that you are here in Berlin, what do you see there?
Sovsun: On the one hand, I see a lot of Ukrainian flags. That struck me particularly when I was here last spring. But there is also the other side. On the way from the hotel I saw graffiti that read: "This is not our war". There is that too. I probably won't be able to convince those who are against us. But I want to reach those who are still undecided. I often hear that for some Germans, for historical reasons, the idea of German tanks fighting Russian ones is painful.
Faber: The picture hurts people while people are dying.
Sovsun: That's hard for me to understand. But I try to talk about it. Then I say that more Ukrainians were killed by Nazi Germany in World War II than Russians. That most of the fighting took place on Ukrainian territory. So when we talk about historical responsibility, we shouldn't talk about Moscow, but about Kyiv. Nazi Germany had occupied all of Ukraine. In the Bundestag there is a piece of the Berlin Wall on which the names of supposedly Russian soldiers who liberated Berlin are written. When I look at these names, there are rows and rows of Ukrainians among them.
Does that make you angry?
Sovsun: I try to deal with it constructively and not react hysterically. If those are the arguments being made, let's talk about them. One must also understand that the Russians have strengthened ties to Germany on an economic, political and cultural level over the decades. You can see that from the size of the Russian embassy in Berlin. Ukraine has never thought so strategically. We should change that. There is still a lot of work ahead of us to improve mutual understanding.
Volker Petersen spoke to Inna Sovsun and Marcus Faber
