Interview: Roman Khimich
Ukrainian business consultant and conflict analyst on war, peace, assassinations, Sorosites, nationalism.
Questions and answers
It is not hard to get the impression that Ukraine’s expert class is made up of a bunch of irrational hysterics and death cultists. In fact, the country also once featured an abundance of rational, self-ironic intellectuals. Nowadays, there is little place for them at home.
While living there, I looked up to a number of Ukrainian journalists. Spending a serious time of my youth in Ukraine conditioned influenced my way of thinking as well. It was strange for a number of reasons to return to the west in late 2022. One thing in particular stands out — the proclivity for asking political questions bluntly. ‘So, what do you think about Putin/Zelensky/the war? Who do you support?’
What do I think… To begin with, what does it matter what I think? There is a fetish in western societies for individual opinion, that it can somehow change reality. In fact, processes unfold, events occur, all outside the influence of individuals. It often feels rather banal and stupid to give one’s ‘opinion’ about a locomotive that will keep on dashing forward without us.
Apart from that, that’s just not how you ask questions on the Eurasian steppe, so to speak. That is a space where ‘politics’, whatever that word means, certainly does mean something. Expressing the wrong opinion about it can cost one’s life, can send one to a torture chamber, a prison cell, can leave one unemployed.
On December 1, the western-sponsored hromadske.ua published an article complaining that an elderly west Ukrainian man had only been given a 2 year sentence in 2022 for a phone call. They wanted the sentence extended. In the man’s incriminating phone call, he called Russians ‘our brothers’ and ‘denied Russian war crimes. During his trial, he stood by his statements and described himself as a citizen of the USSR. I’ve written here about similar cases.
Anyway, that’s all to say that there are good reasons why political discourse in the post-soviet world tends to be characterized by a mix of indifference, irony, and double-speak.
But honestly, I often find this somewhat preferable to the thundering slogans of western politics. In the west, you can say whatever you want and face no consequences (unless you live in the UK, or you made fun of Charlie Kirk). But the words have no meaning. You can call yourself a fascist, a libertarian, a communist, whatever you want, but it’s all just another flavor of ice cream at the ideology store.
Political discourse in the east is rather more careful. Both more precise and less blunt. Sometimes those used to the western style, lacking subtlety, can be confounded. ‘But what do you really think?!’
Today I’ll be sharing some answers to questions I posed to the Ukrainian political analyst Roman Khimich. A consultant in the Ukrainian telecommunications market for the past two decades, his academic work on conflicts and civil society can be read here. I urge my readers to subscribe to his recently-created substack.
Let’s move onto my questions and his answers.
War, peace, nationalism
Roman: As a preliminary remark: I observe, study and analyse the processes taking place in Ukraine and in the world, the questions discussed in this interview and the topics they touch on, through the prism of my own applied model of conflicts. It is a typical framework that I developed in the course of my professional activity as a business consultant.
I had to create this approach because mainstream ideas do not offer adequate perspectives and methods for solving widespread problems. At the centre of my model are conflicts in which the parties use coercion as an instrument for achieving their own goals, including aggressive, up to and including extreme forms of influence, right up to lethal violence.
The applied model of conflict does not solve ideological tasks and does not pass moral judgement; value judgements are taken into account only insofar as they influence the behaviour of actors and their calculations. Essentially, it offers, on the one hand, cognitive templates for extracting from the body of empirical data information that is significant from the point of view of the target activity – engaging in conflict. On the other hand, it offers behavioural recipes – templates for action that increase the probability of success.
I use this model as an instrument for forecasting trajectories, assessing the chances of the parties, identifying defects in their strategies and putting forward proposals for reducing risks.
EIU: The main question many observers have regarding Ukraine’s most powerful volunteer military force and nationalist political movement, Azov, is the extent of its independence.
Some claim that Azov is a puppet of other forces, whether the president’s office (as a potential anti-Zaluzhny spoiler for future elections/coalition partner), or of powerful business groups (Akhmetov). Others view Azov as an ambitious opposition force, and predict an imminent Azov bid for power, including through a ‘military coup’.
The Azov leadership itself claims it will wait for politics until after the war ends, through it is often quite critical of the Zelensky government in the many interviews its leaders have given in 2025.
Finally, you can also find nationalists online complain that the Azov leadership has sold out to existing elites, and will never undertake anything politically risky. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Khimich: Within the applied model of conflict, the question of the boundaries of Azov’s independence is formulated differently – as the question of the limits of its agency.
It must be noted at once: agency is always limited by certain boundaries beyond which the subject has no influence. Only the Lord God possesses boundless agency – if we assume that He allows Satan to act within the framework of a Cunning Plan, a classic 4d chess move.
Identifying the boundaries of agency is one of the key elements of situational analysis. This question is never simple. The idea that agent X is a puppet of Y is, as a rule, a manifestation of radical reductionism and has no analytical value. Determining the agency of a given actor and its limits is possible mainly through careful study of its conflicts with other actors. Conflict, as the direct clash of interests and actions, makes it possible to understand who in fact dominates in these relations.
I know nothing about the relations of the Azov movement with Akhmetov – simply because I have never specifically studied this material. I cannot say whether such relations exist and, if they do, what their character is – I simply do not know.
The most telling, and therefore the most valuable for analysis, plot line is the clash between Azov and the late Iryna Farion.
This case deserves separate consideration. Let me remind you that the icon of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism, in sharp, provocative form, repeatedly insulted Azov and its leadership [she mocked them for speaking Russian - EIU]. Farion’s tone left no doubt about her intention to humiliate her opponents. Within the culture of “hyper-masculinity” characteristic of the movement, such insults cannot remain unanswered and are “washed away” if not by blood, then at least by a demonstrative act of retribution, such as putting the offender into a rubbish container. In this cultural logic it is impossible simply to ignore this kind of attack.
Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened: neither Zhorin nor other representatives of Azov undertook any actions that could be regarded, within their subculture, as an acceptable response to Farion’s attacks. On the other hand, the Ukrainian state, which regards Azov as one of its sacred cows and has invested significant resources in its media promotion and in strengthening its symbolic capital, also in fact removed itself from managing the conflict.
The attempts undertaken not so much by official structures as by pro-government bloggers, opinion leaders and the leadership of Lviv University, where Farion worked, turned out to be extremely feeble, inexpressive and inconsistent. The attempt to dismiss her ended in complete failure: Farion was reinstated in her job with compensation, which in fact meant her complete triumph – not only over Azov, but also over the Ukrainian state.
And in this situation of complete rout, of absolute, total triumph of the icon of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism – as if a deus ex machina – Russian (?) neo-Nazis appeared on the stage. They were the ones who put a full stop to this dispute. In the text of their manifesto there was a justification that is logical within the cultural code of “white supremacists” in the post-Soviet space. Azov and personally Biletsky [leader of Azov - EIU] are accused of shameful inaction and of ignoring their racial duty. Iryna Farion is accused of “racial treason” and wrecking.
The story connected with her murder is, in my view, very important. It is a distilled, concentrated material in which one of the many hidden, usually remaining in the shadows, contradictions of Ukrainian political life manifested itself. What is at issue is the hidden antagonism between two wings, the two most influential parts of the phenomenon that in recent years it has become customary to designate by means of euphemisms such as “nationalists”, “the nationalist community”, “ultra-nationalists”. The previously widespread “far right” and “ultra-right” now seem to be considered politically incorrect and as promoting Putin’s narratives.
One wing is formed by supporters of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism, the ethnocrats. The other is a conglomerate of movements, organisations and people whom, to simplify my life, I will designate with the euphemism “white supremacists”, so as not to use the heavily tabooed in Ukraine N-word. [note from EIU - I wrote about this conflict between broadly speaking western Ukrainian ethnonationalists and eastern Ukrainian white supremacists here]
One popular ‘alternative’ narrative about the war in Ukraine is that nationalist civic society, particular those affiliated with the Azov movement such as the National Corps, were the main force in Ukraine preventing Zelensky from moving further in implementing the Minsk agreements and reaching a rapprochement with Russia.
The ‘No Capitulation’ protests of 2019 following slight progress in Minsk are often brought up. Azov played a leading role in these threatening street protests, and the little progress in Minsk that had occurred was soon erased.
To what extent do you agree with this narrative, or do you believe there were other issues preventing the implementation of Minsk?
Let me say at once that I did not study this storyline in depth and did not conduct field research. At the same time, I know many of the key figures from the milieu which then challenged Zelensky.
To me it looked as though in 2019 Zelensky was confronted by a broad coalition that included supporters of ethnic nationalism, “white supremacists”, and a multitude of people who are used to designating themselves as bearers of liberal views and values, but in fact fully solidarise with the repressive cultural policy promoted by the ethnocrats – the supporters of ethnic nationalism. Therefore I consider it rational to treat these “liberals” as yet another variety of supporters of the ethnic-nationalist model, who for various reasons prefer to declare themselves liberals.
Among these “liberals” a special role is played by the public that critics label with the derogatory terms “sorosites” and “grant-eaters”, while mainstream media refer to them as “civil society”. These are participants in various networks of influence that have been formed over the past 20–30 years, a kind of “mycelium” grown primarily with US money, above all USAID.
In 2019 this public united, solidarised in order not to allow the implementation of the Minsk agreements, i.e. the key point of Volodymyr Zelensky’s foreign policy programme, who had gained a phenomenal 75% in the elections. The agreements were stigmatised by them as “capitulation”. It is now obvious that what was at stake was a typical compromise, an evil incomparably smaller than the catastrophe that befell Ukraine, including as a result of the disruption of the Minsk arrangements.
Were there other forces and factors that prevented the implementation of Minsk? Yes. Particular attention is drawn by the situation in which the street – albeit not very numerous, but aggressive – threw an open challenge to the legitimate authority that had just received a phenomenal 75% of the vote and, accordingly, an indisputable mandate of popular trust. In this situation the Ukrainian security forces – both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the SBU – preferred to remove themselves.
This was striking because at that time the Ministry of Internal Affairs was headed by Arsen Avakov – a man who had demonstrated his demonstrative disregard for those who were still then designated by the euphemism “far right”. Avakov had repeatedly shown that he was not only indifferent to what the far right said about him, but was ready, if necessary, literally to put them on their knees without consequences for himself.
That is, the technical possibility, the resource of coercion necessary to protect Zelensky, existed. However, the people who controlled this resource did not fulfil their legal duty. This raises questions: why did this happen? What was the driving force behind such a decision, at least in Avakov’s case?
To what extent do you agree with the claim that the Istanbul agreements of March 2022 were blocked by the intervention of western governments?
The same applies to the Istanbul agreements. I was not involved in this process, I do not have my own insider sources. The only thing I can note is that the discussed version of the reasons for the breakdown of the negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 was voiced not only by the “fallen angel” of the Ukrainian war Arestovych, but also by the quite active and authoritative Arakhamia, as well as by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The latter’s track record and overall appearance leave no room for me to fantasise that he became a victim of some manipulations or displayed naïveté – it is enough to look at his physiognomy.
What is currently blocking the resolution of the conflict?
