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Novynskyi has surfaced on Spanish-language YouTube to deliver important news: Orthodoxy is the backbone.
“What we are saying now, I think, will be absolutely uninteresting to the viewer” — this is the only time Vadym Novynskyi was right during his new hour-long interview on YouTube.
A very interesting place for an interview
A former member of parliament from the Party of Regions and the Opposition Bloc, Novynskyi fled Ukraine after the start of the full-scale war. Before becoming a suspect in a state treason case and a target of personal sanctions, he was known as an oligarch, a partner of Rinat Akhmetov, and perhaps the most prominent supporter of the Russian Church in the world. According to Liga.net, Novynskyi now finances around 90% of new Russian Orthodox Church communities created to influence Ukrainians in Europe.
No matter how many interviews this traitor gives, the most famous video of Novynskyi’s life will forever remain the moment when Petro Poroshenko calls him an "Orthodox bitch.”
Since fleeing, Novynskyi has barely appeared in the Ukrainian information space, occasionally surfacing in interviews with American propagandist Tucker Carlson, where he repeats stories about Ukraine’s alleged responsibility for the war. However, the interview released on March 20 was clearly aimed specifically at Ukraine.
At the time of writing, the original recording on the YouTube channel (whose name we will not advertise) has fewer than six thousand views and about thirty comments. Despite this, Novynskyi’s quotes were shared by several Telegram channels, including those of Ihor Mosiychuk, “Ukraine Online,” and “Times of Ukraine.”
According to sources cited by Holos MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, the Telegram channels “Ukraine Online” and “Times of Ukraine” are owned by Oleh Arutiuniants and Bohdan Tymoshchuk, co-owners of the Toba agency, which promotes Telegram channels. These are million-subscriber channels aimed at Ukrainian audiences, where this promotion was likely deliberately purchased.
Beyond Telegram, Novynskyi’s monologue was also covered by outlets such as “Pershyi Kozatskyi,” UA.News, and — and yes, this is a real website — Rascolam.net.
A particularly interesting article appeared in “Ukrainian News,” the news agency owned by Dmytro Firtash. Just look at the euphemisms in this sentence: “Former MP from the Opposition Bloc and oligarch Vadym Novynskyi, who is currently abroad, criticized past and current policies and stated that the war could have been avoided and that peace is the only path to Ukraine’s survival.” The outlet captured the essence correctly: the traitor indeed blamed Ukraine for the war and called for capitulation. But why did a Ukrainian news agency decide to help spread these claims?
By the way, about “abroad”: the YouTube channel that interviewed Novynskyi is a tiny Spanish-language media outlet with fewer than ten thousand subscribers that does not normally interview Ukrainian former MPs. In fact, it barely exists and has released only three videos over the past eight months: one about Novynskyi, one about fighting migrants, and one street interview praising the supposedly great new president of El Salvador. Earlier, the channel also published a conversation with an “expert” who denied Ukraine’s independence. Most of its content consists simply of street interviews.
The sudden appearance in Ukraine of so many publications about a small Spanish-language YouTube channel suggests that the interview is being deliberately — and likely not for free — distributed to Ukrainian audiences in order to deliver its main message: “Surrender.”
Even the channel’s attention to Novynskyi looks abnormal. His interview is the only one on the platform conducted without the journalist appearing on camera. It is in Russian — both from Novynskyi and the interviewer. Essentially, it consists of a one-hour monologue by Novynskyi (all questions have been cut) about the Ukrainian church and various Onufriys (why would Spaniards care?). The conversation was probably recorded before the New Year — at one point, Novynskyi refers to President Zelenskyy’s last “video clip” as the one released for Gregorian Christmas.
A typical video on the channel featuring an interview with Novinsky
An extraordinary amount of effort for a fugitive MP just to reappear in Ukraine’s information space — not even to boost his own popularity (the video shows no inflated views or comments), but simply to get his message across.
So what exactly was Novynskyi trying to say? Two main things.
“If everything had ended at the end of March or the beginning of April, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. There would be no demographic catastrophe in Ukraine. No destroyed infrastructure. No ruined economy.” For half the interview, the former MP tried to argue that Ukraine should agree to any peace terms from Russia right now. He used a classic online-store tactic known as the “lost opportunity syndrome”: sign now, because every next offer will be worse.
Of course, Novynskyi ignored that by the end of March 2022, Russia had already killed thousands of people, triggered a demographic crisis, and occupied a large part of Ukraine. That Russia had not fulfilled any previous agreements. That Russia started the war in the first place, and there was no reason to believe it would stop if it were not stopped.
Instead, the propagandist openly claimed: “The most important condition for Ukraine’s security is friendly relations with Russia. Everything else is nonsense. If Ukraine has good-neighborly, friendly, strategic relations with Russia, it will always be safe.” Just like Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine itself in 2013.
Novynskyi also told a whole detective-style story about how he allegedly helped facilitate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. In reality, these stories were simply different ways of pressuring viewers to pressure the authorities so that, out of fear, they would accept Russia’s demands, as if Ukraine were not killing about a thousand Russian soldiers a day.
In one particularly absurd moment, Novynskyi thanked Donald Trump for the “export of peace to Ukraine.” When will the Russian Orthodox Church canonize the U.S. president?
He also claimed that people lie to sociologists in street surveys, while the “truth” about Ukraine can supposedly be found in Telegram polls.
The second half of the conversation was devoted to alleged persecution of Orthodoxy. Novynskyi complained that Zelenskyy supposedly wants to ban the religion in Ukraine:
“Orthodoxy is the backbone of the Ukrainian people… Everything revolves around Orthodoxy. It is the greatest wealth of the Ukrainian people. They want to take it away from us… so that there is no morality, no faith, no history, no culture.”
First, today, Ukraine’s greatest asset is probably not Orthodoxy but drones. Second, it is interesting how the unfortunate majority of the world — and even most of the Christian world — manages to maintain morality and culture without Orthodoxy. Third, no one in Ukraine is fighting Orthodoxy — only Russian priests. And Novynskyi himself demonstrates in this interview exactly why.
The propagandist also claimed that after the war the church would reconcile Ukrainians with one another. That seems doubtful: previously, Novynskyi and his colleagues from Viktor Medvedchuk’s camp did the opposite—dividing Ukrainians through endless talk shows about language, the Tomos, and history.
Without any explanation, the last seven minutes of the interview take place at the hotel
Toward the end of his monologue, the fugitive also criticized modern Ukrainian patriotism. It was so awkward that he had to clarify that he was actually criticizing it: “Patriotism is when you hate Russians and wish to kill them… long pause… unfortunately.”
Will this interview influence Ukrainians? Fortunately, no. Novynskyi has never been charismatic, popular, or influential enough to suddenly persuade Ukrainians to capitulate — or even to be widely noticed trying. You might not even have known he fled Ukraine. So an hour-long monologue somewhere on Spanish-language YouTube is mainly a loss for the off-camera journalist.
What is more concerning is the attempt to spread this conversation in Ukraine at all. Russia is clearly digging up forgotten assets to help push Ukrainians toward an unfavorable peace. Novynskyi’s speech is just one method of influencing society — to frighten people, push them toward capitulation, and pull them back into the orbit of the “Russian world.”
In the end, the former MP from the Party of Regions and the Opposition Bloc even called on voters to support a party that would stand for peace rather than “revanchists.”
But in reality, the best remedy against revanchism is to win outright.
