![Sergiy Kyslytsya: 'Security is something you need to discuss [in Ireland], but which makes you very nervous.' Photograph: Lara Marlowe](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/6R3MNMEBAVGALMSMGB5LRJ3IPI.jpg?auth=01a25f9dbc1fb5f1e3b8b8ee44bd4037733919900f1ea7908608256c564250e8&smart=true&width=1024&height=768)
The face in the photograph hanging in Sergiy Kyslytsya’s office is splattered with mud. “Imagine you are a foreign diplomat, and you come to see me,” says Kyslytsya, first deputy head of president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office. “You have the eyes of a Ukrainian soldier looking into your eyes. His name is Artem Shevchenko and he is fighting on the front line.”
Kyslytsya gained notoriety on the day of Russia’s full-scale invasion when, as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, he lambasted his Russian counterpart in a Security Council meeting. Kyslytsya left the foreign ministry in January to become first deputy to Kyrylo Budanov, the former head of military intelligence who now heads Zelenskiy’s office.
Kyslytsya is fond of Ireland. He hopes the upcoming Irish EU presidency will draw up a draft accession treaty for Ukraine. He warns of the “subversive activities” of Russia’s large diplomatic mission in Dublin.
In a closed-door discussion with TDs in Dublin last November, Kyslytsya expressed his opinion that geographical remoteness no longer protects countries such as Ireland and Portugal. He had inadvertently trampled on Irish neutrality. “Stop. You have crossed a line,” Fianna Fáil TD John Lahart, cathaoirleach of the foreign affairs committee, told him.
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Kyslytsya was stunned. He compares sensitivity surrounding security to past attitudes towards birth control. “Several decades ago, the Irish were reluctant to speak about contraceptives. Security is something you need to discuss, but which makes you very nervous.”
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Kyslytsya insists he did not impose his opinion on anyone. “In today’s world, some things that used to be an advantage, including during the second World War, today are vulnerabilities.”
An air raid siren blares, as if on cue, as Kyslytsya pronounces the words “second World War”. He doesn’t blink. Nor does he pause half an hour later at the sound of a loud bang, a drone strike on a nearby empty building. Zelenskiy’s compound is paradoxically the safest and most dangerous place in Ukraine; safe because it is well protected, dangerous because it is a prime target for the Russians.
Kyslytsya is a veteran participant in trilateral negotiations between Russia, the US and Ukraine. Talks in January in Abu Dhabi raised hopes. The Russians changed the composition of their delegation, sending representatives from their defence ministry and the GRU military intelligence agency instead of Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister prone to long lectures about history, and Russia’s truculent foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
Kyslytsya’s boss, Budanov, headed the political talks, while Kyslytsya was assigned to ensure that military-to-military talks did not breach the parameters set by Zelenskiy. “It was very important that the Americans confirmed in the military-to-military group that they were willing to be an active participant in the system of monitoring and verification,” he says. “They also committed to provide necessary technical and human resources. To monitor and verify thousands of kilometres, you need satellite imagery. You need aerial observation. You need sensors on the ground.”
If the talks went so well, why was there no agreement? I ask Kyslytsya. “Because the Russians continue to insist on us pulling out of the remainder of Donbas,” he says. “They have not shown any flexibility … They continue to insist that they could occupy the remainder of Donbas in two to three months. They said that in the winter of 2024-25, in the spring and summer of 2025 and this winter as well.”
The Trump administration has reportedly exerted relentless pressure on Ukraine since the August 2025 Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage to cede to Putin’s demand. Kyslytsya nuances reports of US bullying. “Let me answer in a different way,” he says. “We don’t see the US putting pressure on the Russian Federation.”
US pressure is more implied than explicit, he says. “The Americans clearly say, ‘You should make a deal with the Russians if you want our security guarantees.’ They say, ‘We will not give you security guarantees without a deal.’ They believe that is a huge motivation for the Ukrainians to make a deal, because we will get in return ironclad security guarantees that will be ratified by the US Senate. Then they say, ‘Putin is only interested in you pulling out of the remainder of Donbas. You’d better make a deal’.”
Kyslytsya says it’s unlikely that Ukraine will cede the rest of Donbas. “President Zelenskiy is very clear about it. It’s not because he is stubborn. We cannot violate the constitution. Secondly, the remainder of Donbas is the most fortified part of the touchline … Because the Russians cannot take it militarily, they developed this system of diplomatic pressure on us.”
European diplomats in Kyiv estimate it would take Russia at least two years to take the remainder of Donbas by force. “Most importantly, it may require them to waste a million or more Russian lives,” says Kyslytsya. “Do they really have this million and then who is taking responsibility? Of course, Putin couldn’t care less about the wellbeing of people outside his pool of elite cronies. But still, it’s a huge number given the Russians are losing between 30,000 and 35,000 dead and wounded every month.”
Kyslytsya condemns attempts by France and Germany to grant Ukraine a sort of “membership lite” of the EU as “segregation” and “legalised discrimination”. There is no provision in EU treaties for associate membership. “So you have to set it up,” he says. “If you go to all the trouble of getting agreement from 27 countries to set it up, why don’t you just go with full membership that already exists?”
Negotiations with the US and Russia were stopped by the US-Israeli attack on Iran. “The US is totally fixated on Iran,” says Kyslystsya. The same negotiators, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s golf buddy Steve Witkoff, are supposed to resolve both wars. “I don’t think they are even physically available.”
Kyslytsya laments the fact that more PAC-3 Patriot air defence missiles were fired in the first week of the Middle East conflict than Ukraine has used in more than four years of war with Russia. Ukraine desperately needs more PAC-3s because they are the only weapon that can intercept a Russian ballistic missile. “The volumes that are produced are very incompatible with the scale of the conflict in Ukraine plus the conflict in the Middle East,” he says. “Everybody wants them. There is a long queue around the world for PAC-3 missiles.”
Zelenskiy recently concluded defence agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, exchanging Ukrainian expertise in intercepting Iranian Shahed drones for investment. Kyslytsya confirms that Ukraine hopes to obtain some PAC-3s from Gulf Arabs.
Kyslytsya attended an inconclusive meeting with Witkoff and Kushner in Miami in the third week of March. He praises Kushner as “commonsensical” and “well-prepared”. He pointedly does not mention Witkoff. The US negotiators have travelled at least seven times to Moscow, not once to Kyiv.
A copy of Kushner’s book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir, lies on the conference table, between me and the soldier’s shrapnel-pocked photograph. Kyslytsya bought it to check Kushner’s account of the 2019 telephone conversation between Trump and Zelenskiy, during which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter. Zelenskiy politely declined. That phone call led to Trump’s first impeachment and marked the beginning of his grudge against Ukraine.
