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In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum discusses President Trump’s announced diesel deal with Russia, the administration’s abandonment of Ukraine, and why Trump is giving up so much to gain very little.
Then, David is joined from Kyiv by Illia Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian journalist and the author of the new book The Land of Tears and Hope. David and Illia talk about the history of Ukraine, its current state as the war with Russia rages on, and how and why the Trump administration seems so hostile to the country.
Finally, David concludes with discussion about why so little literature exists about the history of slavery in Eastern Europe.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
David Frum: Those Americans who want the United States to take a more pro-Russian point of view or who denigrate the Ukrainian cause—the vice president of the United States and the people around him—they will insist that this war is about NATO expansion. But when you actually listen to actual Russians, they say, No, no, no; this is all about Yaroslav the Wise. And from a Russian point of view, this is not about NATO expansion, except when they’re talking in English to gullible Americans.
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David Frum: Hello, and welcome to The David Frum Show. I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Illia Ponomarenko, author of a new history of Ukraine, Land of Tears and Hope, available from Bloomsbury in the month of November. Illia and I will discuss the deep history of Ukraine, the recent onslaught of Russian drones and missiles on Ukrainian cities, and how Ukrainians feel about their abandonment by the Trump administration.
This week’s book will also be Eastern European–focused. It’s not a book that exists. It’s a book that I would like to read, and I set out a research assignment for some intrepid Eastern Europeanist to deliver a book I would like to know more about in, again, in the deep history of the lands that are now Ukraine, now Poland, and now Russia.
But before either the dialogue with Illia or the book discussion, some opening thoughts about the most shocking recent turn in the U.S.-Ukraine story.
When Illia and I recorded our dialogue, we did not yet know about this announcement that was pending from the Trump administration, declaring or imagining or proposing, or whatever the word is, for what is likely vaporware. Not a real deal; a big purchase, a massive—in the words of President Trump—a massive purchase of Russian diesel fuel for the United States.
Now, I wrote an article for The Atlantic this past weekend with the facts and figures about just how negligible an achievement this so-called deal really is. The United States is a diesel superpower. It’s probably the largest producer of diesel on Earth. We don’t exactly know that for sure, because we don’t know really how much China produces, but probably the United States is the largest producer of diesel in the world. It is certainly the largest exporter of diesel in the world. And it produces much more than it uses at home. So it exports about a million and a half barrels of diesel fuel a day.
The reason American prices have been rising so fast for truckers and farmers and others who use diesel fuel is not because of anything that’s happening in the U.S. market, or even the North American market. The United States imports a little diesel fuel from Canada because it’s easier sometimes to import from Canada and then to export from the Gulf Coast than to supply the United States entirely from its own resources. The reason that the price has been rising is because of disturbances in the global market. What matters is world demand and world supply of diesel, not U.S. demand and U.S. supply of diesel.
Now, if this Russian deal exists at all, it’s a matter of a few hours’ worth of U.S. production and U.S. consumption. It’s not a big event, and it won’t change world prices because Russia doesn’t have a lot of diesel to sell. Although Russia used to be a big diesel producer, Russian oil facilities have been damaged so intensely by Ukrainian missile and drone fire that Russia has very little diesel to contribute. In fact, Russia has had an export ban on diesel since July. If Russia has any diesel to sell, it’s going to take it from another consumer; India, maybe. And by diverting diesel oil from India to the United States, it doesn’t do anything for the United States, which has more than enough diesel here at home. It makes life a little tougher for India, and it doesn’t change the world price at all, because nothing happens in global supply and demand. The whole thing is a complete nothingburger.
But it does two things that are important. The first is: The Russians have dangled in front of the Trump inner circle the prospect of enormous wealth for them if American sanctions on Russia are dismantled. And it’s taken a first step toward the dismantling of those sanctions and put the United States on the path to confrontation with Ukraine, because President Trump now has to worry the only way he can get Russian diesel is if the Ukrainians stop attacking Russian energy facilities, which they are doing in retaliation for the Russian attacks on their cities and schools and historical societies and hospitals, on their civilian population. They have struck back against Russian energy infrastructure to cramp Russia’s war-making ability.
President Trump has now created a situation where his goal of seeming to do something about diesel and maybe also enriching a lot of people who are in his inner circle is in conflict with Ukraine’s self-defense, and the only way he can get what he wants is by ordering Ukraine to stop defending itself. And we have seen already Trump’s pressure on Ukraine: If you continue to strike the Russian energy infrastructure, you are making an enemy of me.
He is taking away Ukraine’s war-making ability for his own reasons, in ways that will not help American motorists even slightly, American farmers, American truckers. And of course, he is doing nothing to bring about a resolution of the conflict in the Persian Gulf, which has removed so much diesel fuel from Europe and Asia because that’s where those countries get their supplies from.
Trump from the beginning of this second presidency has taken Ukraine as a kind of personal affront. Now, a lot of this is a little hard to understand, but maybe we don’t need to understand it. You know, when I was working on my story about Trump’s vaporware diesel deal, an editor asked me, Do you think Trump believes it? Do you think he imagines that these few barrels he’s getting from Russia are, in fact, going to make any difference to American supply? Or is he totally delusional? And I had to answer, I don’t actually—of course, I don’t know the answer to that question. My instinct—it’s just an instinct—is that President Trump was much more of a self-aware con man when he entered politics a decade ago than he is now. He now may be kind of lost: truly in a world of illusions, where he no longer himself knows what is true and what is a lie.
But it doesn’t matter, because there’s a consistent through line, whether these are deceptions of others or deceptions of himself. The through line is: He just is tantalized by the prospect of vast wealth for himself and others by doing deals with Russia. And he’s willing to sacrifice the lives and security and independence of Ukraine to his ambition. And he treats Ukraine’s self-assertion and self-defense as an act of impudence and defiance—not against those who are trying to invade and aggress and annex Ukraine, but against himself. Because Ukraine bothers him, and he doesn’t like it, and he wants it to go away.
What he’s leaving all Americans with is one of the most shameful passages in the history of American foreign policy. A people that are defending their national sovereignty, that are fighting back under the most difficult conditions with the supremest forms of human bravery. Who ask only from the United States the wherewithal with which to defend themselves, and who are being denied that wherewithal by President Trump for reasons we can’t understand, but none of which look good. I hope anyone who can hear my voice will join me in sharing their dismay and their shame at what President Trump has done to the good name of American democracy and American world leadership.
And now my dialogue with Illia Ponomarenko.
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Frum: Illia Ponomarenko was born in 1992 in a small town in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. He studied at Mariupol State University. When Russia invaded his home region in 2014, Illia began his career as a reporter. He has never stopped.
His first book, I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv, was published in 2024 to global acclaim. Illness closed his path to military service, so he turned to a deeper fight: the fight over whether Ukraine has a history of its own. His new book, The Land of Tears and Hope, tells the Ukrainian story from the Slavic tribes and the Vikings through the Cossacks, Soviet terror, and the Maidan to this very war today. It will be published next month. Order it now.
Illia Ponomarenko, welcome to The David Frum Show.
Illia Ponomarenko: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Frum: Illia, you have written this deeply moving history of Ukraine, and I want to address it in full, but the events of the past days in Ukraine have been so dramatic and so horrible I think we must start there.
So tell us, we’re speaking in the early part of October, tell us the situation as it is now and what has happened in the past days to your country.
Illia Ponomarenko: Well, of course, the centerpiece of any news and the spotlight is Kyiv, this capital city, and what’s happening. The air battle over Kyiv that’s going on nonstop for days and weeks already, with drones, missiles. Never stopping, day and night.
So the central attention is given to the defense of the capital and to preserving life in the capital. And Russians are really trying to abrupt the very existence of the city, to instill fear, to abrupt transportation, normal food supply, water supplies. Bridges over the Dnipro River that divides the city, which is extremely vital. So Russians have switched to this tactic of trying to absolutely paralyze the very heart of the country—to install fear, to enforce the capitulation, since they can’t get any substantial military success for the fifth year of this war.
But I must say that, you know, I live just outside Kyiv in suburbs, and also in several places in Kyiv Oblast, in the outskirts. But I spend as much time as I can in the city, in many ways just to be there with my city, in there. And I would say that over the last three days, which is what I said on social media, the air battle—this constant attack—the entire environment had become a little less stressful, a little calmer. I would say I think, this my feeling, that Ukrainians managed—the Ukrainian military managed to overcome this surprise and shock and managed to adapt to this new situation. And I think if the situation continues, we might say that Russians have weakened in terms of their ability to strike Kyiv on the daily basis. So Ukrainians have made another move to adapt to what Russia does, and it goes on and on and on. So it’s constant battle between Ukrainian adaptation and Russian attempts to paralyze the city.
Frum: Let me try a little context. I think from the point of view of a lot of people in the Western world, in the United States—we’re so far away. It seems like this is an endless story of Russian attacks, Ukrainian defense. But there was a true intensification of the Russian air attack on the capital of Ukraine beginning at about the end of September, with some new technologies, some new methods. And the first effect was very devastating. A much greater loss of life, much greater damage than had been the case until the later part of September, the beginning of October. And so it is this new campaign—this intensified campaign at the end of September, beginning of October—that you say is now running out of impetus and faltering a little bit?
Ponomarenko: It gets significantly visibly weaker in terms of the number of drones, Russian drones, that made it to the capital and strike. So there are far less booms in the sky over Kyiv over the last few days, which is good. Which is something that enlightens us, because the military also reports a lot of new technologies, counter-technologies that are being applied to intercept jet-powered Russian drones that are super difficult targets to get.
Frum: These jet-powered drones, this is the new—because drones, until now, have been slow. And they could be shot down with a .50-caliber machine gun if the weapon-wielder was fast and skillful enough. But a jet-powered drone moves much faster, and so can’t be intercepted by a machine gun. You need a much more sophisticated technology to catch the jet-powered drone.
Ponomarenko: Yeah. One of the bright pictures of life in Kyiv is always seeing, in the streets, pickups with machine guns—sometimes it’s M2 Browning machine guns—with the mobile air-defense groups that try to shoot these things down.
But when it comes to jet-powered drones, which is the next step essentially, and especially when it comes to mass-produced, jet-powered drones, it’s a huge problem. Because they move at velocity of 700, 600 kilometers per hour. So it’s an insanely complicated target to get. And they are cheap; they are easy, simple. They are massive. So could be swarms of them over the Ukrainian cities.
Nonetheless, within weeks we started getting new solutions to this. There are—you know, Ukrainian defense in many ways is comprised of many, many private companies that suggest many, many technical solutions. Right now we have five or six prototype interceptor drones that are engine-powered, or jet-powered, that are being presented by various companies in Ukraine. And they are simply showing the first results, just the first results, on videos intercepting these Russian jet-powered drones. So surprisingly, it goes fast. The entire Russian campaign against Kyiv was a shock. It was sharp. It intensified really quickly and shockingly. But at the same time, the Ukrainian response to this is very fast and very sharp. So our big question is whether we could launch the mass production of a successful prototype that works well. And this is exactly, essentially, how this war works.
Frum: Ukraine is striking deeply at Russian targets, especially energy-production targets, ever farther into Russia. And there are reports—I don’t know how much weight to put on them—of surrenders among Russian ground troops, of deteriorating performance among Russian ground troops, that make us think that maybe something deeper is happening in the war than just the strike, counter-strike—the cycle of innovation and counter-innovation you describe.
Ponomarenko: But also, another front of this war is actual battlefield war, that’s happening along from the frozen front line in Ukraine’s south and east. And we have a situation in which Ukrainian military, in one of the most important, if not the most important axis of Russian attack, which is near the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk—the very core of the industrial part of Donbas that’s still under Ukrainian control, and also the belt of the fortress cities in Ukraine’s east.
The Ukrainian military, over the months of very careful, very clandestine operations, managed to inflict a very, very serious defeat to local Russian forces. So that’s why we get pictures of surrendered Russian troops, because they got encircled; they got captured. That’s how the Ukrainian military, and it’s pretty open, and it could be independently verified that Ukrainian military have tactical gains. And also they managed to cut off one of the accesses of Russian attacks on these fortress cities: the northern claw, as we call it.
So Ukraine, despite all the bombs, despite all the bravado from the Russian side, Ukraine has pretty significant tactical successes on the field, on the battlefield. Which are pretty impressive on the scale of this war, five years on.
Frum: What can you tell us about the present state of American assistance to Ukraine?
The Trump administration has cut off aid to Ukraine. Such American weapons as you get are paid for by your European counterparts and allies. Is there any American intelligence flowing to Ukraine? Is there any non-material assistance you’re getting? Or is the attitude truly as hostile in Ukraine as it seems to be from the point of view of Washington, D.C.?
Ponomarenko: Well, of course, we are very far from being in the place where we’ve been under the previous administration when we had consistent and very serious and very regular packages of assistance. Right now, you are right to say that what’s being delivered to Ukraine from the United States is being purchased as part of the Pearl program by European backers. It’s mostly about supplies, technical maintenance, things that help maintain the U.S.-made hardware in possession of Ukraine. Very important part of this American participation is, of course, the intelligence. And I must say that despite all the complexities or all the complications that Ukrainian administration has with the United States, this intelligence sharing is one of the most important things that Ukraine has from outside the country, because it’s about saving lives. It’s about giving early warnings about Russian missile attacks. This is what we get from Americans, essentially.
So in many ways, what you see, from the point of view of [President Volodymyr] Zelensky—the way he talks to Donald Trump, the way he tries to preserve a more or less stable relationship with the United States and with the Trump administration—it’s about intelligence. Because this is something that we would be extremely, extremely reluctant to lose. Because it’s about saving lives; it’s about air defense.
Frum: Can you offer any generalization about how Ukrainians today feel about their relationship with the United States? And what the United States has done for them as it has become less generous, but not yet zero generosity?
Ponomarenko: Well, I’m really trying to give you a very average attitude that’s been present in the Ukrainian public opinion. Of course, a lot of people are dissatisfied. A lot of people are stressed about this, because one of the things that we always thought of as unshakable, as static as the Earth itself, is the American support. Bipartisan support in both house chambers of the Congress, in the White House. We always thought that our interests are 100 percent complacent with America’s interests, and this is what we thought was unshakable and unmovable.
I am not going to lie to you that Donald Trump remains one of the least popular figures in Ukraine. Because of many reasons, mostly because of a lot of words that he said about Ukraine. And I cannot lie to you that this image also affects really badly on the image of the United States as a country, or on the United States as a people, in the eyes of Ukrainians. A lot of emotions are involved into this. We must understand that war, being at war, is a very emotional thing. It’s about a lot of strong words; a lot of strong thoughts about this.
But I would not say that a lot of people here still respect the United States, still consider America to be the leader of the free world, the cornerstone of this free world. And despite everything that has happened over the last couple of years, still consider America to be probably back anytime soon in terms of its presence and its posture and its leadership.
So I would say that, you know, of course, feelings are very complicated. Feelings are very emotional about Americans. I cannot say that I agree with a lot of those things that I hear from my fellow Ukrainians about Americans and American aid. I really try, and I think it’s extremely fair and just to separate what this administration, what politicians do, what they say about, about us, what they do. And also, I try to remind my fellow Ukrainians of how many Americans do support Ukraine up to this day. We have figures between 60 and 70 percent on both sides of the political spectrum. I cannot stress this enough that, after all these years, having so many people across the ocean being so eager in terms of supporting Ukraine—the country that they probably never heard about before this war—is something that is to be deeply appreciated and something that is very ours to have.
Frum: For those of us who, like you, believe in the role of the United States as the guarantor of the free world, and who believe that the phrase free world means something, this has been a shameful hour. And the patience, and maybe someday the understanding and even forgiveness of the Ukrainian people to this deviation from America’s role in the world, is felt here too, and should be felt.
Let me talk to you about your book. And again, the title is The Land of Tears and Hope. It is, as you say, it’s emotional. And it is not a classic history written with chapter one, chapter two, that we—you jump like a film director from scene to scene, and pass over a lot of years, and have a very arresting technique.
Frum: Ukraine is one of the world’s newest states. Or the present Ukrainian state is one of the world’s newest states, founded in 1991. You make us feel the antiquity of Ukrainian culture, language, sensibility. How do you manage this contrast between the newness of the government, the newness of the constitution, the newness of the state, and the antiquity of everything that the state is built on?
Ponomarenko: That’s a very interesting thing about modern Ukraine. By saying modern Ukraine, I mean the country that was built after the revolution of 2014, which is the newest phase of Ukrainian existence. Because Ukraine is very young in terms of being a political entity, especially when it comes to being very independently thinking, sensing itself as an independent nation-state, not someone’s backyard, not as also Russia. But in terms of feeling itself like an entity, a country, a nation with its own home. It’s a very new thing to Ukraine even compared to its just 35 years of its independence.
And at the same time, Ukrainians—and Ukrainian people in general as a people, as ethnicity—have a very long historical memory. And a lot of things that are dearest to us, that are part of our culture, of our everyday thinking about traditions, of the fairy tale that we tell to our children through the night, and many of those things date back to medieval times. Date back to the early modernity, like Ukrainian Cossacks. They date back to pre-Christian times, ancient Slavic tribes.
You know, when I was writing this book, it was a surprise even to me when I realized this: how many things we have from our everyday traditions, from our holiday celebrations, from our sayings that we get back from pre-Christian times, from thousands of years ago. A lot of things in our life go back to those times—when there was no Ukraine, neither as a nation, neither as a state, neither as in, even in a word in this. But they live with us.