Christiane Amanpour Speaks to One Woman Ready to Defend Kyiv

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko says that after a month of this, she, like her president and countryfolk believe the Russians will never take this city. Though fighting does continue in the suburbs. She was wanted to meet here at Maidan Square where Ukrainians stood up for their rights in 2014 and brought down Putin’s wrath and his revenge. Given his battlefield setbacks though, I asked whether his shifting demands make a diplomatic compromise easier for Ukraine to accept. Now, there’s word we don’t know whether it’s going to be bear fruit. But that that they might allow Ukraine to join E.U. as long as you renounce NATO. Is that a compromise that Ukraine would accept?

LESIA VASYLENKO, UKRAINIAN MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: All of this started 34 days ago because one country cannot declare itself more sovereign than another country, and Russia tried to do just that. We cannot go for that compromise because that compromise to Putin would also mean a compromise of the general framework of defense and security of the world. Giving into dictators means incentivizing them.

AMANPOUR: Ukraine’s dramatic resistance surprised the whole world including Vladimir Putin.

VASYLENKO: Three days they gave us, right? Putin thought he would be here for a matter of hours. We are doing this for our very survival. And when survival instinct kicks in, people can do amazing things. People become superheroes. And this is what you are witnessing in Ukraine.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Lesia is armed with her guns, the AK-47 is at home today, but she shows me her pistol held close to her heart.

AMANPOUR (on camera): Lesia, when we spoke in the first week of the war before I got here, you said, I’ve got my machine gun, and you’ve tweeted, that I’ve also got my manicures.

VASYLENKO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Your resistance takes many, many forms and you are actually carrying your pistol right now.

VASYLENKO: I am. I am. I do have my P.M. with me, and I carry it actually with me all the time.

AMANPOUR: And did you ever imagine in your life that as an M.P. in 2022 in Ukraine you’d be forced to carry a gun around?

VASYLENKO: No. Never, never. I’m actually very much anti-gun. And this gun posed a lot of guns for me because in order to recharge it, you have to sort of like do this thing. And with the nails, I had very nice, beautiful long nails, it was impossible to do so. They had to all come off.

AMANPOUR: And just so people are clear, the idea of beauty, self- maintenance is also resistance.

VASYLENKO: Yes. All joke aside, it is an important element for all women who are fighting alongside the men folk here. The women still want to be beautiful. They still want to have dignity as women.

AMANPOUR: And to be human?

VASYLENKO: And to be human.

AMANPOUR: He basically, Putin, that Ukraine doesn’t exist as a nation. You don’t exist as a people.

VASYLENKO: And we say to him, life goes on. We carry on living. Your war – – you are fighting against us is in the background now and we’ll go on fighting it for as long as we have to, but we will go on living at the same time.