On August 19, I posted a short, blunt assessment to X: that Mykhailo Fedorov — Ukraine’s founding Minister of Digital Transformation, and briefly its defense minister — looked to me like someone who had been drawn into the Musk and Thiel technology-influence network, and that this, rather than anything else, was the likeliest reason President Zelensky removed him. It traveled further than I expected, and it drew the objection it deserved to draw: recruited is a strong word and deserves some explanation.

The Ukrainian outlet Guildhall asked me to discuss this, on the record. The resulting interview ran in Ukrainian on August 20th. What follows is the English version, with my thanks to Guildhall — their questions were insightful and captured nuances not easy to convey on social media.