Taras Kuzio on Western Academic Orientalism, Ukraine’s Identity, and Canada’s Fading Influence

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/02/16

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a Toronto-based political scientist and leading international expert on Ukraine and post-Soviet politics. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Sussex, an MA in Soviet and Eastern European Studies from the University of London, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Birmingham, complemented by a post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University. Kuzio has held appointments at leading institutions including the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins, and the NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Kyiv. He is the author and editor of numerous books on Ukrainian nationalism, corruption, and the Russian-Ukrainian war—most recently Russia’s War on Ukraine. The Four Roots of Russia’s Invasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), and Russia and Modern Fascism. New Perspectives on the Kremlin’s War Against Ukraine (Columbia: University Press, 2025).

In this in-depth interview, Kuzio speaks with Scott Douglas Jacobsen about the enduring flaws in Western scholarship on Eastern Europe, particularly the legacy of academic Orientalism and Moscow-centric analysis. Kuzio critiques the West’s overestimation of Russia, its underestimation of Ukraine, and its failure to recognize systemic corruption within Russia’s military and state institutions. He explores the evolution of Ukrainian national identity, the myth of a powerful Ukrainian lobby in Canada, and the geopolitical caution that hinders Western strategy. The discussion also examines Israel’s and Canada’s limited support for Ukraine amid an ongoing struggle for autonomy and recognition.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to focus today with you—and thank you very much for joining—on presentations and assessments of Western scholarship on the Eastern parts of Europe, primarily within the concept of academic Orientalism. Regarding Western scholarship on the Russian-Ukrainian war, for example, what do they tend to get right, and what do they tend to get wrong? 

Taras Kuzio: Throughout this full-scale war since 2022, I think there has been an overestimation of Russia and an underestimation of Ukraine.

This is a legacy from the past. It stems from many factors. It is partly due to bias but also to the legacy of who occupies positions in policymaking, think tanks, academia, and journalism. Many factors are involved.

Linked to this underestimation of Ukraine and overestimation of Russia is a certain Western arrogance. For example, there is a continuous claim that Russia is afraid of starting a war with NATO because NATO would defeat Russia. I disagree—this view rests on assumptions about a twentieth-century NATO or a pre-Donald Trump NATO rather than present political realities.

A NATO without the United States coming to its rescue is unlikely (in my view) to be a NATO capable of winning a war with Russia. Recent events underscore the concern: on the night of 9–10 September 2025, roughly 19–23 Russian drones breached Polish airspace, prompting a NATO quick-reaction response and several shoot-downs. Poland subsequently convened NATO consultations under Article 4.

The political messaging around that incident also signaled hesitation: former U.S. President Donald Trump publicly suggested the drones might have been a mistake; Polish leaders rejected that interpretation as false and called the incursion deliberate.

There is a failure to recognize that we are living in a different world today. If I were working in national security for Estonia, Finland, or Poland, I would have to plan scenarios in which my country and perhaps some allies would be fighting Russia without U.S. support.

On the issue of overestimation and underestimation—it is no secret that much of the post-communist studies ecosystem, along with many academic and think-tank centers, has long been dominated by “Russianist” perspectives. Most of the people who dealt with the Soviet Union became Russianists after 1991, and many have continued to view the region through Russian eyes.

Many remain intellectually complacent despite today’s ease of access to information. You can be anywhere in the world and access Russian or Ukrainian media. You no longer need to buy physical copies. If you are in Washington or Toronto, you can access a Russian-language publication from Kyiv just as easily as one from Moscow.

You can also use browser translation to read Ukrainian-language sources. There is no excuse for the fact that many so-called experts—think-tank analysts, policymakers, academics, journalists—still rely primarily on material published inside Russia as their main sources and references.

I have seen that repeatedly in books I have reviewed, where you look at the footnotes around 90 percent of the sources are from Russia. I even reviewed a book about a year ago where the author had clearly added a final chapter on the full-scale invasion at the last minute, likely written in early 2022. That entire chapter on the invasion and war did not include a single reference from Ukraine. Every source came from Russia.

That problem of academic Orientalism—viewing Ukraine through Moscow and Russian eyes—persists. It is made worse by the fact that many, or practically most, Western media outlets still have their correspondents based in Moscow, as they did during the Soviet period. They continue to cover the entire post-Soviet region from Moscow. If there is an election in Ukraine, for example, they simply send someone there temporarily. They are not based in Kyiv, Tbilisi, Riga, or Tallinn. This practice reinforces a Moscow-centric perspective on the region.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, nearly all Western experts, academics, and policymakers got everything wrong—an astonishing failure. They overestimated the Russian army and underestimated Ukraine.

Regarding Russia, how did they not realize that Russia is a mafia state? The first time this was explicitly stated was in a 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable, one of many leaked through WikiLeaks, where Russia was described as a “virtual mafia state.” By the time of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, that characterization had been public knowledge for more than a decade.

If Russia is a mafia state, that means corruption permeates everything—not just small-scale graft but systemic rot. Why did analysts fail to understand that the so-called reform of the Russian army was a complete illusion? Most of the money was stolen. Why did they assume that this corruption applied only to politics and economics and not to the military and security services?

One of the reasons Ukraine has been so successful in this war against Russia is precisely because of that corruption and mafia structure in Russia. So much is stolen, and what actually reaches the troops is often of inferior quality. That, combined with poor training and incompetent officers, has undermined Russia’s military effectiveness.

Some of the persistent overestimation of Russia also stems from a lingering Soviet complex—the idea that Russia is still the Soviet Union, a superpower. You see this in political figures like Donald Trump as well. But that view is absurd. The Soviet Union lost the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and today’s Russia has an economy smaller than that of Italy or California.

As for Ukraine, the underestimation comes from how many analysts have written about the country over the last thirty years. The main focus has been on regional and linguistic differences—portraying Ukraine as divided. That framing encouraged a Russocentric perception that Russian speakers in eastern and southern Ukraine would be disloyal to Kyiv.

The irony is that, in early 2022, Western experts, policymakers, and academics shared the same mistaken belief as the Kremlin: that Russian troops would be greeted as liberators. Both sides were wrong. They failed to grasp that speaking Russian does not make someone pro-Russian or pro-Putin.

It is like claiming most of Ireland wants to return to British rule because they speak English, or that most Canadians agree with Donald Trump and want to become part of the United States because they speak English. The idea that sharing a language automatically implies political loyalty or disloyalty is absurd—it simply does not reflect reality.

Austrians speak German, but they are Austrians. They do not want to be part of Germany. That was the same flawed perception in much of the West about Ukraine. It translated into serious consequences for Ukraine because, in early 2022, President Biden and several Western European governments did not want to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry.

They only provided Javelins, Stingers, and NLAWs, believing Ukraine would be quickly defeated and would need only small arms for guerrilla warfare. It was only after the Kyiv region was liberated in late March and early April 2022, and the Russian army withdrew, that heavier Western weapons began to arrive. Ukrainians had demonstrated that both Western and Russian assumptions were wrong.

Much of this problem can be traced back to how Western historians and academics have written about Ukraine, and how Western policymakers have linked Ukraine and Russia right up to nearly the present day. It has been difficult for them to view Ukraine and Russia as distinct entities. That might sound strange now, during a war, but they only truly began to distinguish between the two after the Orange Revolution in 2004, and again after the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity in 2014.

Let us remember: it took the European Union three decades to invite Ukraine to begin accession talks. Until 2022, Ukraine was not considered fully European. The EU repeatedly rejected Ukraine’s membership aspirations, viewing it as peripheral—“Christian Turkey on Europe’s eastern fringes,” as some put it. Ukraine was often seen as “kind of Russian.”

All of this contributed to the academic Orientalism and the persistent inability to see Ukraine and Russia as two different countries. These misconceptions remain influential, even within Donald Trump’s political circle. For example, Trump has reportedly placed informal pressure against Ukraine joining NATO, ostensibly to avoid offending Russia.

We have a strange situation today where countries like Poland and the 3 Baltic states are asking Ukrainians to train them in anti-drone warfare, yet Ukraine is still not allowed to join NATO. Ukraine is treated as the “ugly duckling” in the room—indispensable but excluded.

It is an absurd situation. Ukraine is the only country in Europe with direct military experience fighting Russia. It now has one of the most innovative and effective defense sectors in the world (https://jamestown.org/program/russias-war-transforms-ukraine-into-a-world-leading-military-producer/). And yet, NATO still denies it membership—while simultaneously relying on Ukrainian expertise and training, as Poland is doing now.

It is deeply frustrating. And with Trump’s unpredictability—he changes his mind more often than I change my socks—it becomes even more confusing. If Ukraine were inside NATO, as a formal ally of the West, Russia would be unable to defeat NATO. Ukraine has learned how to fight Russia effectively and has inflicted heavy losses of over one million casualties despite being a far smaller country.

Jacobsen: How do Ukrainians see themselves on their own terms now? How did they see themselves twenty-five years ago?

Kuzio: National identity is always a fluid process—we must remember that. Identity constantly evolves; it is contested and renegotiated over time. The identity Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union was a mixed one. There was a territorial allegiance to the borders of Soviet Ukraine, but the country was far from unified.

Some parts of the population felt nostalgia for the Soviet Union; some spoke Russian and disliked the Ukrainian language. All of these tensions had to be addressed. The best way to understand this is to see it as a competition between two forms of identity: one pro-Ukrainian, and the other “pan-Russian” (i.e., Ukraine as part of Eastern Slavic unity)

Ukraine was long viewed as part of an Eastern Slavic world—alongside Russia and Belarus. That competition between two identity groups within Ukraine—one favoring a distinct Ukrainian identity and the other aligning with a pan-Russian, Eastern Slavic identity—continued up until the Euromaidan Revolution.

Russia supported pan-Russian identity, while the West offered only weak support for Ukrainian national identity. Then, with the Euromaidan Revolution, the killing of over one hundred protesters, and Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, the pan-Russian or Eastern Slavic identity became marginalized. The Ukrainian identity, in contrast, became far more dominant and hegemonic.

This development alarmed Russia. The major political forces that had promoted the pan-Russian worldview inside Ukraine were the Party of Regions and its ally, the Communist Party. After 2014, the Communist Party was banned, and the Party of Regions disintegrated. In their absence, the Ukrainian identity—rooted in European integration and opposition to the “Russian world” (Russkiy Mir) and Eurasianism—grew stronger, leading to greater national unity.

Russian media and literature became increasingly marginalized, as did Russian-language media originating from Russia. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine received autocephaly—independence—from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019. This was an earthquake for Russia, since the Russian Orthodox Church considers Ukraine part of its canonical territory, and nearly half of its parishes were located in Ukraine.

All these developments showed that the long-standing identity struggle from 1991 to 2013 culminated decisively in 2014 with the triumph of a hegemonic Ukrainian identity. Putin tried to circumvent this new reality by pushing Ukraine into accepting a subservient arrangement in the Donbas region through the Minsk Accords negotiated in 2014-2015. Both President Petro Poroshenko and later President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to accept Russia’s understanding of the Minsk Accords that would have transformed Ukraine into a Russian puppet state.

This rejection led Russia to abandon the Minsk Accords and from early 2021 to prepare for a full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022. Russia’s strategic goal was regime change—to turn Ukraine into a state resembling Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus, essentially a Russian puppet state.

Of course, that plan failed. Most Russian policymakers—perhaps 90 percent—along with Russian academics and think-tank “experts,” fundamentally misunderstood Ukraine. Those few who truly understood the country are now in exile or part of the diaspora. Russian leaders genuinely believed their relatively small invasion force of 170,000 troops would be greeted as liberators.

When that fantasy collapsed and Russia began suffering defeats in the fall of 2022—first in Kharkiv, then in Kherson, after already being pushed from Kyiv—Putin panicked and launched a mass mobilization inside Russia to increase troop numbers. To put this in perspective: 170,000 troops are negligible for a country the size of Ukraine and its armed forces.

For comparison, in 1968, when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia—a country of only 10 million people—they used a quarter of a million troops. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, therefore, was massively under-resourced and based on false assumptions of “Little Russians” welcoming the Russian army.

That invasion, ironically, only deepened Ukrainian identity and accelerated the nation’s separation from Russia. It led to the widespread dismantling of Soviet and Russian monuments, the renaming of streets associated with Russian historical figures, the marginalization of the Russian Orthodox Church within Ukraine, and a growing insistence on Ukrainian language and culture in public life.

There are still problems and complications of many kinds. I think the Ukrainian perspective today has shifted—from euphoria in 2022 and 2023, when people believed Ukraine could win the war, to a more despondent outlook. The reason is simple: the West has always provided just enough weapons for Ukraine not to be defeated, but never enough for Ukraine to win.

You will rarely hear Western leaders—except perhaps the British or the Polish—declare that their goal is Russia’s military defeat. The Americans, Germans, and French avoid saying this outright. So, what is the Western strategy? What is the goal? Frankly, there isn’t one. It increasingly feels as though the policy is to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

That perception breeds despondency and anger in Ukraine, especially because there seems to be little serious effort to end the war quickly. For Ukraine, time is not an ally—the longer this drags on, the more soldiers and civilians die, the more cities are destroyed, refugees stay abroad, and children are traumatized. Yet Western governments show no urgency in helping Ukraine achieve a swift victory. They refuse to send long-range missiles such as U.S. Tomahawks or Germany’s Taurus system. This leads to understandable frustration.

Of course, there are positive developments as well. Several countries—Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states—have been consistently and robustly supportive. They are working with Ukraine on joint military production, while Ukraine’s domestic defense industry has expanded dramatically. This has made Ukraine’s defense sector one of the most innovative in the world (https://jamestown.org/program/russias-war-transforms-ukraine-into-a-world-leading-military-producer/).

For example, Ukraine’s domestically produced “Flamingo” missile, now being used against targets inside Russia, reportedly outperforms the U.S. Tomahawk. Some of its components and fuel are made in Denmark. This cooperation highlights a growing ecosystem of Ukrainian-led defense innovation.

However, Ukraine has been disappointed with two countries in particular: Canada and Israel.

In Canada’s case, dissatisfaction stems from what was seen as weak leadership under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There was a long-standing belief in Ukraine that Canada—because of its large Ukrainian diaspora—was the country’s strongest ally. In practice, that was not true during Trudeau’s tenure.

Some argue that Canada simply underinvested in its own military and therefore had little to give Ukraine. That explanation is nonsense. Canada could have purchased weapons for Ukraine or invested in Ukraine’s defense industry. Instead, Trudeau made several questionable decisions, such as allowing the return of a Nord Stream turbine to Germany for repair in 2022, undermining sanctions pressure on Russia.

Thankfully, this appears to be changing under the new government and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s leadership.

Israel is another story. Ukraine has a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whose family members were murdered in the Holocaust. One would think Israel would stand firmly with Ukraine, especially given the remarkable Jewish cultural revival underway there. In fact, Ukraine has seen the largest Jewish revival in Europe since 1991, particularly in Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk), where I have done field research.

Yet Israel has refused to provide Ukraine with meaningful assistance—not even defensive systems like the Iron Dome. The official explanation I was given for this was, frankly, absurd: that Israel wanted to not offend Russia, which was allied to the Assad regime in Syria, who it was supporting militarily at the time. I always thought that was nonsense, and it has since been proven to be nonsense. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown in December of last year, yet Israeli policy toward Ukraine has not changed.

I think the real reasons are different. Prime Minister Netanyahu has a long-standing personal relationship with Putin. During Israel’s last election, there were billboards showing Netanyahu and Putin shaking hands and embracing. Netanyahu receives significant electoral support from Jewish immigrants from Russia, many of whom are staunchly pro-Putin and consume Russian television daily.

Russian Jews in Israel tend to vote for far-right Israeli parties, and that political base influences policy. So, I believe that is the more realistic explanation for Israel’s reluctance to support Ukraine.

There may also be a historical element—what I would call residual “Ukrainophobia.” Many forget that in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a high-profile case involving a Ukrainian American named John Demjanjuk, who was accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard at Sobibor. He was extradited to Israel and tried there but ultimately acquitted. That case, heavily exploited by Soviet propaganda and the KGB, contributed to anti-Ukrainian sentiment that still lingers in some Israeli circles.

You also have figures like Mr. Witkoff—Donald Trump’s informal emissary—who comes from the same Russian Jewish milieu, one that is culturally pro-Putin. Similar communities exist in Brighton Beach and “Little Odessa” in New York. It’s the same network of people, shaped by the same pro-Russian worldview.

So, I would say Israel and Canada remain the two countries with which Ukraine is least satisfied in terms of support.

The bigger question, though, is why the West as a whole lacks a coherent strategy. Why is the West so afraid of Russia’s defeat? This mindset reminds me of President George H. W. Bush’s administration in 1990–91, when Washington feared the Soviet Union’s collapse.

That same fear persists today—the fear that a Russian defeat would lead to the disintegration of Russia itself. In 1991, that anxiety led to Bush’s infamous “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1st, when he addressed Ukraine’s parliament and warned them against pursuing independence.

We’re seeing a modern version of that same timidity. The West’s reluctance to ensure Russia’s defeat—and its refusal to provide Ukraine with sufficient weaponry—will prolong the war and cause far greater suffering for Ukraine.

Ukrainian leaders, however, will not allow the conflict to drag on indefinitely. They are determined to end it as quickly as possible. You can expect to see more Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, targeting energy infrastructure, military facilities, and logistics hubs. The key advantage is that these are Ukrainian-made weapons, meaning Kyiv does not need Western approval to use them.

Jacobsen: How has Canada done?

Kuzio: Yes, that’s right. At the beginning of the full-scale war, Germany sent helmets, and President Zelensky quipped, “We can’t win a war with helmets.” Canada’s response was similar.

I lived in Toronto for about fifteen years—from 2001 until 2015—and when I first arrived, I too believed in the myth of a powerful Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. I quickly realized that wasn’t true.

People forget that the influence of ethnic lobbies changes over time. The Ukrainian diaspora in Canada was indeed influential during the Cold War—no question about that. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, for instance, was very pro-Ukrainian, as were others in that era. But after 1991, Canada changed.

New immigrant communities—South Asian, Chinese, and others—invested heavily in political engagement and lobbying. They became more influential. So, I wasn’t surprised by Canada’s weak response to Russia’s 2022 invasion. I had already concluded that the so-called “Ukrainian lobby” was largely a myth by that point.

One thing I noticed while living in Canada is that much of the Ukrainian diaspora remains fixated on the past. It celebrates historical and cultural preservation but pays little attention to contemporary political realities. As a political scientist, I received no financial or institutional support from Canadian Ukrainian organizations. I had to work in the United States instead. The diaspora’s priorities tend to be language, culture, and heritage—not modern Ukrainian politics or defense.

They focus mainly on historical issues like the 1933 Ukrainian famine, the Holodomor. They don’t really engage with contemporary Ukraine. There’s some activity in Ottawa, but not much. When you look at academic publishing on contemporary Ukraine, Canada doesn’t stand out. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, for example, does almost nothing on modern Ukraine.

That’s one factor. Another is personality and leadership. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in my view, has been a weak leader—much like Barack Obama was. Trudeau tried to follow in his father’s footsteps, but that was impossible. His father, Pierre Trudeau, was a political giant in Canada. Justin simply doesn’t have his father’s intellectual or moral presence, though he certainly tried.

The real surprise, I think, was Chrystia Freeland. She’s highly capable, intellectually sharp, and influential within the Ukrainian-Canadian community, yet she remained remarkably quiet after 2022. I understand that, as part of the government, she couldn’t speak freely—but still, she was very reserved.

Another major misconception concerns military aid. There’s a myth that Canada’s financial support is sufficient. Denmark, for example, launched a program me to help Ukraine build up its domestic defense industry. Canada could have done the same. As a result of Denmark’s approach, replicated by other countries like Britain, about half of Ukraine’s current military equipment is now produced inside Ukraine. That provides jobs for Ukrainians and reduces the need to transport military equipment from the West. The Trudeau government could have pursued a similar strategy but instead remained passive and detached.

The final issue is that Canada has lost its sense of direction in foreign and defense policy. All Canadian governments—Liberal and Conservative alike—have underinvested in defense for more than three decades. Among NATO members, Canada ranks near the bottom in military spending. Of course, Canada never felt the same pressure as European nations—it shares a border with the United States, and the last time the U.S. tried to invade Canada in 1812, it failed.

All of these factors together explain why the idea of a powerful Ukrainian lobby in Canada has become more myth than reality.

Jacobsen: Taras, thank you for the opportunity and your time.

Kuzio: Thanks very much.

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