Ambassador Discusses Ukraine

Magierowski expects that intelligence agencies are now beginning to underestimate Russian power.

“Emma asked me if I spoke any languages, and I told her I speak Mandarin and Cantonese,” Kan said. “She invited me to facilitate the Cantonese Conversation Hour, and I thought it was a good opportunity to practice my Cantonese and make friends, so I got on board.”

Conversation hours facilitators lead conversations to groups of students who attend their weekly meetings.

“For [Russia], diplomacy is a zero-sum game, someone has to win in order for someone else to be crushed, to be irreversibly and painfully defeated,” Magierowski said. “This is something we heard in the ’60s. And this is something we heard in the ’70s, in the ’80s, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse and what we can hear, even today — still a zero-sum game.”

Magierowski stated that not much has changed in contemporary Russia in comparison with the late Soviet Union, as diplomatic hostility towards the United States and the West in general continued even after the USSR’s fall in 1991.

According to Magierowski, Russia’s zero-sum foreign policy has been proven by international law violations at the war’s front lines, including Putin’s indiscriminate bombings of Ukrainian civilians and the mistreatment of human bodies using mobile crematoriums.

Magierowski found that the United States’ perception of Russia’s military power is still nebulous, despite the abundance of information on the war. He spoke to Gen. James Mattis, who served as the secretary of defense under President Donald Trump (R-Fla.), and learned that the West had once overestimated Putin’s military prowess. However, following numerous Russian failures leading to a stalemate in Ukraine,

Despite Putin’s relentless political attacks on Ukraine, Magierowski pointed out how these attacks have repeatedly backfired. He stated that rather than diminishing the Ukrainian identity, Putin’s actions have caused the West to become more aware of Ukraine and its cultural identity. NATO membership has

Magierowski said that Poland also wishes to shift its image from being a net recipient of security to a net provider of security for European powers. He used the country’s reliance on American military manufacturing as an example, stating that Poland is attempting to become self-reliant due to worries that they will not keep up with the war’s rapid pace.

Despite making acknowledgements that Ukraine may very well lose the war and keep a realistic outlook on its outcome due to Russia’s nuclear arsenal, Magierowski nonetheless held out hope that the Ukrainians could pull off an unlikely victory.

“Last semester, we would usually have three or four people come in during our weekly Conversation hours in the evening, and it’d just be a normal conversation. We would talk about how classes are going, for example,” said Pedro PontesGarcía ’26, a facilitator for the beginner Spanish level. “Now that we have changed our weekly time to the afternoon, we have seven or eight people attending one section. We often play games like Pictionary to get everyone involved and have fun.”

Hours, the type of conversation is different because there are generally more native speakers that attend.”

Moustafa shares a similar sentiment, stating that her Conversation Hours with native or heritage speakers developed more advanced goals.

“Last semester, my students were all native speakers, and we were all able to communicate using a more advanced vocabulary,” Moustafa said. “We focused more on differences in dialect, which we don’t really do with beginners and intermediates.” also expanded, with Sweden and Finland applying for official membership.

Although Conversation Hours allow students to converse with multiple speakers, some students believe they could benefit from one-on-one dialogues.

Magierowski returned to the topic of Polish-Ukrainian relations, highlighting the crucial role that Poland has held for assisting Ukrainian refugees. The population of Poland has increased from roughly 38 million to roughly 40 million due to the influx of Ukrainian and Russian refugees, and more than 200,000 Ukrainian children have been integrated into the school system. Magierowski attributed the Ukrainians’ easy assimilation into Polish society to cultural and linguistic similarities.

“When I’m talking about the vestiges of the Soviet mentality in today’s Russia, blatant disregard for human life and for human dignity, especially in the times of war, for Mr. Putin, human life is irrelevant,” Magierowski said. “That’s why I’m not terribly optimistic about the course of this war, because I believe President Putin can still flood Ukraine with men and cannon fodders, because again, their treatment of human life.”

To conclude his lecture, Magierowski addressed concerns that Russia would use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or a Western country.

Suzanna Moustafa ’24, who leads the Arabic and Georgian conversation hours, facilitates more personal conversation hours since her groups tend to be smaller.

“I facilitate conversations based on the learner’s vocabu-

“While I appreciate the group conversations, I think one-onone meetings would also be helpful because they would allow for more individualized instruction and more directed language practice,” Sokol said.

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