1
Dmytro Lytvyn is 40 years old. He was born in the very center of Soviet Kyiv — in Lypky. This is the district where in the 1980s lived the party elite and, as they said then, the creative intelligentsia. The same district where the Presidentʼs Office is now located and where Lytvyn works.
His family was neither elite nor bohemian — "ordinary Soviet people". And thatʼs all that Lytvyn is willing to say about the family. This topic is taboo for him. In his social networks, we found only one mention of relatives in Russia.
"Family is not decisive for what I do. Iʼm all for valuing personality, not background. The starting point is what is in the character, in the mind and psyche," Lytvyn explains to Babel and clarifies that he does not communicate with any of his relatives except his mother.
His childhood and school years were spent in Lypky. Lytvyn studied at the prestigious Lyceum of International Relations No. 51. In high school, classes were divided into humanitarian and mathematical areas. Lytvyn chose the first — he did not like mathematics, and it was mutual. His class was the last to learn Russian.
Dmytro Lytvynʼs class at Lyceum No. 51. Dmytro is in the second row, first on the right. At school, Dmytro was not the life and soul of the company or a leader. In the photo, he is the second on the left in a white shirt. Almost none of Lytvynʼs classmates agreed to talk to Babel about him. The photo shows the first one on the left.
Lytvyn was neither the life and soul of the company nor the leader of the class. Almost all classmates contacted by Babel refused to talk about the past. However, Lytvyn was warned that a text was being prepared about him. The only classmate who agreed is the current MP from "Servant of the People" Anastasia Radina. She remembers that Lytvyn was a calm guy, he didnʼt get into trouble. They talked on the phone for a long time — about life, about books, but after school they lost contact. In adult life, they crossed paths only after the beginning of the full scale — at the end of 2022. Radina was looking for a person in charge of the Officeʼs communications, and she was given Lytvynʼs phone number.
"I didnʼt immediately realize that it was the same Dmytro," the MP recalls.
In general, the Lypky registration helped Lytvyn in the future.
"Then I learned a lot due to the fact that my friends were someoneʼs children. You could get to know a person whose father is an oil and gas tycoon," Lytvyn recalls and clarifies once again that he himself is not one of the rich.
2
In 2001, Lytvyn entered the State University of Trade and Economics, where he studied law. He quickly realized that jurisprudence was not interesting to him, but he did not drop out of university — he wanted to get a "good systematic education". In 2006, he received it and forgot about it — he did not work as a lawyer for a single day.
Lytvyn graduated from the military department at the university. In the profile of his blog on the Russian website "Snob", he wrote about this experience with irony.
"I attended some courses at the National Defense Academy. This allowed me to stay out of the army and become a ʼreserve officerʼ. When I swore allegiance to what I had to live in, I missed the part about ʼprotecting the constitutional orderʼ. The officer taking the oath smiled approvingly. Everyone here perfectly understands that you can only serve your own dream,” Lytvyn now says that those words are part of the image he was creating. “This is the ʼSnobʼ site. If I had a profile on a gaming site, what would I write there? If something is written, it is not necessarily reality,” he explains somewhat annoyed. Lytvyn now says that those words are part of the image he was creating.
“It is physically impossible to take an oath in the presence of other people and miss something," one of Lytvynʼs peculiarities is that he smooths out uncomfortable questions, shifts the emphasis and makes the interlocutor doubt whether it is worth talking about it at all.
When the Orange Revolution began in Ukraine, Lytvyn was 20 y. o. At the end of November 2004, hundreds of thousands of people came to the center of Kyiv to protest the falsification of the presidential elections in favor of the pro-government candidate Viktor Yanukovych. The main thing people demanded was an honest vote count. Students from different parts of the country became active participants in the revolution.
Lytvyn did not take part in the revolution. Later, he was reprimanded for this more than once in the comments on Facebook. His answer was that he did not support the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
"I was friends with the children of politicians and heard that he is a person who will not pull Ukraine out. He is a good family man, a patriot, but not energetic enough to do something," Lytvyn explains and does not specify whether he considered Viktor Yanukovych, Yushchenkoʼs rival, to be a better alternative and a rather energetic person.
Lytvyn does not really like answering questions about the first Maidan. He says that in those days he was quite distant from politics, and at the same time quotes the Georgian reformer Kakha Bendukidze, whom he went to meet when Yushchenko was already president. Lytvyn remembered Bendukidzeʼs answer to the question of who should be trusted.
"He looked like this and said: ʼDonʼt trust anyone! Think!ʼ It made a lot of sense to me," he recalls, and to reinforce his words, he emphasizes that Bendukidze also had a low opinion of Yushchenko.
3
Before graduating from the university, an acquaintance Lytvyn, who had connections in the media, suggested that he try his hand at journalism.
"It was a site that no longer exists. I tried it and it worked,” he recalls.
Lytvyn wrote little by little for various media (for example, for "Telekritika"). However, its then editor-in-chief Natalia Lihachova does not remember such an author. In general, at that stage he was "more interested in life" than work.
"Iʼm generally a very lazy person — I donʼt need a lot for life. I filled the surplus of free time by talking with friends, walking."
When asked what he lived for, Lytvyn gives a vague answer: "My parents had something, and I had something. I wrote something — I received money."
He refuses to talk about the familyʼs state.
Lytvyn became more and more interested in politics — he liked to follow and analyze it. He wrote a lot in "Zhyvoi Zhurnal" (ZhZh) — the intellectual predecessor of Facebook — and ran a blog on the Tumblr social network. There, texts could be combined with pictures. An obvious thing now, according to Lytvyn, was a rarity then. In his profile on “Snob”, he even noted among his achievements: he taught many people that illustrations are just as important as text.
In 2008, the Gorshenin Institute launched the newspaper "Left Bank" (LB), a year later — a website of the same name. As the then editor of the "Kyiv" section of the newspaper Mykhailyna Skoryk told Babel, zero media had the same problems as now: the same authors and opinion leaders were published everywhere. They wanted to find new names for LB. The deputy editor-in-chief Artem Horyachkin, who previously worked at “Interfax” and “Gazeta 24”, decided that Lytvyn could become such a new expert. He met and became close to him in the ZhZh community. And although, apart from Horyachkin, Lytvyn did not communicate with anyone in the editorial office, Skoryk remembers that he was very productive and wrote a lot.
Lytvyn began by criticizing the Festival of New German Cinema, and already a few months later, in April 2010, he wrote his first political column in LB — about the Kharkiv Agreements, which were signed the day before by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, Viktor Yanukovych and Dmytro Medvedev. According to the agreements, the stay of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea was extended from 2017 to 2042 in exchange for a discount for Ukraine on Russian gas. Unlike the opposition, which called the agreements treason and a violation of the Constitution, Lytvyn did not see anything seditious in them.
His arguments were reduced to several points:
- despite all the desire, Ukraine could not expel the Russian fleet from Crimea;
- his stay there did not prevent the integration of the country into either NATO or the EU;
- Ukraine had to make concessions to Russia in order to preserve its gas transportation system.
In 2010, the opposition in the parliament hall opposed the Kharkiv agreements signed by Yanukovych. Smoke grenades were used in the Verkhovna Rada. Despite resistance, Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn dragged out the vote.
After Yanukovych came to power, 26-year-old Lytvyn chose for himself an image that would now be called soft and pro-government. When the opposition, journalists and public activists scolded the new president for his pro-Russian policy and the first steps towards a dictatorship, Lytvyn, on the contrary, praised the authorities and mocked the "Vyshyvankas in some Ukrainians". He called Hitler, Putin and Stalin effective leaders for their contemporaries, while Yushchenko was not. He argued that Yanukovychʼs cancellation of political reform and the increase of his powers are not a problem, but the inventions of the opposition.
In 2010, Lytvyn went against sentiments and trends, just as in 2019, when almost the only one in the bubble of journalists and activists supported the presidential candidate Zelensky. In 2019, he promoted Petro Poroshenkoʼs team, and in 2010 — the opposition to Yanukovych.
"If until 2004-2010 it was still possible to hope for these people [the opposition to the ʼParty of Regionsʼ], now hoping for them is the same as instructing kids to develop an atomic bomb," Lytvyn wrote in a column for LB in October 2010.
4
Yanukovychʼs team began to put pressure on the media almost immediately after coming to power. In the spring of 2010, journalists of the main news programs on the TV channels "1+1" ("TSN") and "STB" ("Vikna-novyny") declared the interference of the authorities in the editorial policy. The management of the channels and the authorities denied everything. In response, journalists and media organizations launched the "Stop Censorship" movement in May 2010. There were many demands, among the main ones: to stop the pressure on journalists, not to fire those who publicly declared censorship on the channels, to introduce representatives of the public into the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting, to ensure access to public information.
Blogger Lytvyn did not become part of this movement. Moreover, he actively criticized him. He devoted many posts on Facebook and columns on LB to this topic. The main thesis of one of them was reduced to the fact that "censorship fighters protect not so much freedom of speech as the repressive function of mass media". Literally, a few days later, his words were repeated by Yanukovych-loyal “Obozryevatel” journalist Alyona Berezovska.
Lytvyn did not praise the government thoughtlessly. Sometimes he said the right things. For example, about the fact that many Ukrainian media fulfill the orders of their owners and engage in political murder instead of journalism. Or that not so many mass media conduct real investigations, but instead publish outpourings from interested parties under the guise of them. On the other hand, Lytvyn accused Ukrainian journalists of imitating and copying Russian media instead of creating something unique. Although he himself named two Russian journalists among his main teachers — the "Golden Pen of Russia" Igor Maltsev and presenter Yevgeniy Kiselyov, as well as politician Andriy Illarionov. And the most important thing: Lytvyn never talked about government censorship, which was a reality in 2010.
In 2024, he does not abandon his position, although he formulates his opinion chaotically:
"This was not a story about the need to stop censorship. It was a certain movement of certain journalists working in certain media. They achieved a lot with this movement."
Lytvyn insists that the methods of "stop censors" were wrong, but he says that he did not oppose the movement:
"I wouldnʼt say that I ʼdespisedʼ them. Sometimes I agreed, and sometimes I didnʼt."
5
In December 2011, two people with a bad reputation — Russian Semen Uralov and Ukrainian Volodymyr Petrov — launched the website “Revizor.ua”. Uralov is a Russian political technologist who, since 1998, has worked in election campaigns in the territories occupied by Russia: in Transnistria and South Ossetia. Subsequently, he supported the occupation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine. Volodymyr Petrov engaged in black PR and fought with "Stop Censorship" — he publicly accused journalists of well-known publications of venality and dishonesty. Petrov learned his craft from famous Russian political technologists and propagandists. Among them is Tymofiy Sergeytsev, who in April 2022 called for the destruction of Ukraine and part of its population.
Pro-Russian journalist Oleksandr Chalenko, a friend of the influential "regionalist" Borys Kolesnikov, was invited as the editor-in-chief of "Revizor". In his post about his transfer to "Revisor", Chalenko wrote:
"I will be assisted on duty by two young, but already voracious (intellectually), like large Haitian crabs, gifts — Monsieur Horyachkin and Monsieur Lytvyn. For those who donʼt know them, I introduce them: former proletarians at Sonya Koshkinaʼs factory. She exploited their brains at LB.ua. Now I will oppress them in Revisor".
Oleksandr Chalenko and Russian political technologist Semen Uralov.
A long and fruitful cooperation did not develop — Lytvyn worked on the site for several months. "Revisor" is almost the only fact in his biography that he is ashamed of.
“They wanted me to launch them a site that was different from others, and I knew how to do that. They promised that I would do what I wanted. I came, saw that it was not, and left," Lytvyn explains.
He quarreled with Horyachkin, who brought him to “Revizor”, and stopped communicating. He says that "Revisor" behaved badly with the editor-in-chief of LB Sonya Koshkina, and she had to be reprimanded.
"This story hit her hard, and Iʼm still ashamed of it," says Lytvyn. He does not specify what exactly it was about. Koshkina says that she also does not remember what it was about.
Lytvyn broke off relations with the “Revizor” team, but he communicated with Chalenko all the way to the Maidan and even went to a birthday party, where, according to him, "the whole local Russian crowd was present”.
"My last communication with Chalenko was at the end of the Maidan, I asked him on Facebook how he plans to walk the streets of Kyiv after everything. He banned me and ran away," says Lytvyn.
Petrov did not flee the country. And after Zelenskyʼs victory in the presidential elections, he was even the host of the state TV channel "Rada" for a short time. Due to the indignation of journalists and public activists, he had to leave this job. Now he is engaged in his YouTube channel "Iceland". Lytvyn says that since the days of "Revisor" he communicated with Petrov only once.
6
In the spring of 2012, Lytvyn came to work for the pro-government Inter TV channel, in the program "Big Politics" of Russian journalist Yevgeniy Kiselyov. At that time, the owners of the channel, the oligarch Dmytro Firtash and the head of the Administration of President Yanukovych — Serhiy Lyovochkin — divided "Inter" into spheres of influence: Lyovochkin controlled news broadcasting, which was handled by the company "National Information Systems" (NIS), Firtashʼs team — all other products.
Ex-President Viktor Yanukovych on Yevhen Kiselyovʼs show "Big Politics".
Kiselyov was a star of the channel and part of the media trend of inviting Russian journalists to Ukraine — for example, Savik Shuster came to Kyiv in 2005 at the invitation of businessman Viktor Pinchuk, he hosted the popular political talk show "Freedom of Speech" on ICTV. Kiselyovʼs program was to repeat this success.
Lytvyn was brought to Kiselyov by his friend Yaroslava Artyushenko, then the graduate editor of “Velyka Polityka”. Kiselyov recalls that Lytvyn seemed to him an erudite guy who could work with social networks. Then this competence was included in the price. When Lytvyn got the hang of social networks, he was assigned to write analytical reports. He does not remember what his position was called, he says, it never mattered to him.
"Dmytro was always very well-mannered and tactful, with the right socio-spatial orientation," Kiselyov recalls their conversation. By the obscure term about orientation, he means Lytvynʼs ability to properly build relations with the manager. Lytvyn respected Kiselyovʼs authority, but when he considered it necessary, he could gently point out his mistake. His ambitions, if they were there, were not obvious to anyone. Lytvyn will later use almost all these qualities to build a career in the Presidentʼs Office and earn Zelenskyʼs trust.
In the summer of 2013, Lytvyn was noticed by Igor Shuvalov, a Russian political technologist of Sergei Lyovochkin and an informal curator of the “Inter” information service. Formally, Shuvalov was the deputy director for the development of "National Information Systems". At that time, Kiselyov switched to the Sunday news program "Weekly Digest", Shuvalov added Lytvyn to it — he prepared analytical reports for the presenters. Later he became an editor and did well.
Meanwhile, the country was moving towards the Maidan. Thanks to Lyovochkin, “Inter” remained pro-government and fulfilled the whims of the government. Sometimes eccentric. For example, in the fall of 2013, the channelʼs team had to film a mini-tournament in tennis with the participation of Yanukovych. He wanted everything to look large-scale, like Roland Garros. The tournament was filmed at the presidential dacha in Crimea by at least ten cameras, Yanukovych won all of them, and Kiselyov had to make an introduction. Lytvyn knew about what was happening on the channel, and in particular about this story. When asked how he felt about it, he says — ironically.
Lytvynʼs colleague from “Velyka Polityka” recalls that on the eve of the Maidan, his behavior and views could be attributed to Russian liberals.
"His position was not pro-Ukrainian, but it was also pro-Russian," she says on condition of anonymity. Another colleague says that Lytvyn tried to occupy the niche of a skeptical observer — often it was like something "half-bigots".
Lytvyn really enjoyed satirizing things and images dear to many Ukrainians. He said that Kyiv did not become a city because of the Bolsheviks, but turned into a cluster of hamlets near metro stations, "and what kind of cluster it is is determined by the language spoken there, and it is usually Russian." He criticized "Okean Elsy" and the groupʼs fans for the lack of taste and lack of rock and roll background. For him, Russian journalists remained at the top of the profession. Russian politics and its heroes fascinated him more than the local ones. Everything changed at the end of 2013.
"At that time it seemed that the Russians and I could read the same books and watch the same movies. But the Maidan blocked everything. It became obvious that our idea of Russia was wrong," Lytvyn admits now.
7
On November 21, 2013, the government decided to suspend preparations for the Association Agreement with the European Union and strengthen cooperation with the Customs Union, that is, with Russia. On the same day, the first protesters went to the Maidan in the center of Kyiv. Lytvyn, an employee of the pro-government "Inter" at first, habitually criticized the opposition, but after the beating of students by "Berkut" on November 30, 2013, he began to actively support the protest.
"Maidan was a moment when a moral person could not make another choice than to support him. Up to a certain point, it was possible to be in a kind of fog, not to understand something, but everything should have been clear on the Maidan," he explains.
At the beginning of December 2013, he explained on social networks why the Maidan was needed, was glad that the monument to Lenin was taken down in Kyiv, regularly came to rallies, posted photos from there, was on Khreshchatyk during several assaults by security forces, supported "Right Sector" and Dmytro Korchynskyi.
Lytvyn supported the Revolution of Dignity and often published photos from the Maidan on social networks. He constantly went to rallies. He was glad that the monument to Lenin was dismantled in the center of Kyiv.
At the same time, a revolution of its own was going on at "Inter" — but less loud. After the beating of the students, Lyovochkin wrote a resignation letter from the Yanukovych Administration, and Firtash — with the help of his media manager Hanna Bezlyudnaya — ousted the already unreliable NIS team from the channel. The media called it "Lyovochkinʼs team". Journalist Olha Chervakova, Yevgeniy Kiselyov, director of NIS Nazim Bedirov, executive director Lavrentiy Malazonia and Igor Shuvalov left Inter. Lytvyn was on vacation at that time and did not have time to resign with everyone, which he still regrets. He was kicked out of the channel as soon as he returned.
After that, "Inter" began active propaganda against the Maidan, and Lytvyn wrote a post on the day of the shootings of protesters, which was very different from everything he had published before.
"We are united here in one culture by an unconscious love for life! And they are united in one culture by the historical inevitability of transferring the throne from the past to the future. Thatʼs why everything is a little different with us, although we seem to be so close to the Russians."
The former editor-in-chief of the “Telekritika” magazine Yevhen Minko recalls how he met Lytvyn in the company of friends at the end of February, when Yanukovych had already fled and Russia had not yet begun its aggression in Crimea.
"I thanked him for the fact that he took a decent civic position and did not deviate from it. Many journalists on the channels could not resist the pressure from the authorities," Minko tells Babel.
After the Maidan victory, many of the bad things done by Yanukovychʼs team were rolled back. At the end of February 2014, the NIS team returned to Inter, including Lytvyn. He worked on the Sunday editions of "Weekly Digest", edited the "International" and, according to former colleagues, was balanced and comfortable.
Since May 2014, Kiselyovʼs program "Black Mirror" began to be broadcast on "Inter", Lytvyn was in the team, which became smaller and smaller over time, and by the end of them there were almost two left — Kiselyov and Lytvyn. At that time, he knew and did a lot of things — he planned topics, determined the heroes of programs and, as former colleagues say, he knew how to convince journalists to do stories they were not interested in — Lytvyn had the talent of a negotiator.
Yulia Tymoshenko in the talk show "Black Mirror" on the "Inter" TV channel, June 26, 2015.
8
On New Yearʼs Eve, a few minutes before 2019, showman and businessman Volodymyr Zelensky informed about his intention to run for president in a video message on the "1+1" channel. Almost all well-known journalists and activists of the country spoke out against him on social networks. Facebook was full of posts about why Zelensky is the worst choice: a drug addict, a "pig in a poke" and a "canned" person. He was publicly supported by only a few. There are Serhiy Leshchenko, Lytvyn, and a former MP from Petro Poroshenkoʼs “European Solidarity” party were among them. The latter wrote numerous posts and texts in defense of Zelensky, harshly criticized his rival Poroshenko and the "Porokhobots". Lytvyn started supporting Zelensky at the end of 2018.
"For him, Zelensky was a fresh wind that will finally sweep away everything that came before and send all his predecessors to the dustbin," believes one of Lytvynʼs former colleagues at "Inter".
Before the start of the campaign, Lytvyn did not know Zelensky personally. He says that the information that he consulted "Kvartal" while working on the TV series "Servant of the People" is false.
Lytvyn started writing texts in support of Zelensky back in 2018.
At the beginning of 2020, Lytvyn was brought into the government team by an MP of the "Servant of the People" faction Yevhenia Kravchuk. Previously, she was engaged in communications in the "Ukrop" party, and in SN she worked with the media together with the then deputy head of the Presidentʼs Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
"I read his [Lytvynʼs] Facebook and blogs on ʼLeft Bankʼ. I liked the course of his thoughts and the speed of reaction. It happened that I just thought, and then I saw that Dmytroʼs post had already appeared, and most of his thoughts coincided with mine," Kravchuk recalls.
She wrote to him, they met and started talking. Lytvyn gave advice as a media person and a person "over the process". Later, he was involved in writing theses for "servants", which the media often erroneously called "talking points". In fact, these were recommendations of analysts on how to better comment on certain topics. Due to the fact that many people without any political experience entered the parliament under the brand of "servants", such crib notes saved the MPs from embarrassment. But not always. Kravchuk says that Lytvyn did not write theses, but gave advice.
In 2019, he launched the Telegram channel "Telekoshmar". He declared the launch in a traditionally caustic and ironic manner.
"As for the funniest, disgusting and informative things that are on our TV. I dedicate its creation to Matviy Hanapolskyi, he inspired me."
At that time, Hanapolskyi worked on the "Pryamyi" TV channel, which actually belonged to Poroshenko. The channel, and in particular Hanapolskyi, constantly criticized Zelensky — Lytvyn was constantly indignant. In his own channel, he criticized oligarchic TV channels, Viktor Medvedchukʼs media, and later various websites, in particular "Ukrainian Pravda" (UP), which published Putinʼs statements and thus — in Lytvynʼs opinion — spread Russian narratives. Lytvyn quarreled with many journalists in absentia due to his caustic posts and irrevocable criticism. An exception was another sympathizer of Zelensky — former journalist Serhiy Leshchenko. Lytvyn actively criticized him even before the Maidan, but after the victory of the "servants" they conducted joint streams, where Leshchenko praised Lytvyn a lot.
In April 2020, Mykhailo Podolyak became the anti-crisis adviser to the head of OP — communications began to be rebuilt in OP. Lytvyn began to be more actively involved in the work of the team. In January 2021, he left “Inter”. The interlocutor of Babel, who was part of the communication team of the Office, says that over time Lytvyn began to be called to media meetings, in which Podolyak, press secretary of the president Serhiy Nikiforov, Yermakʼs senior adviser Daria Zarivna, the head of the OP information policy directorate Iryna Pobedonostseva and other people are situational.
"Before the full-scale invasion, I was in cooperation with Podolyak. We discussed and together we searched for meanings and formulated positions," Lytvyn recalls that period. He did not work directly with the president, only crossed paths.
Before the full-scale invasion, Lytvynʼs posts completely duplicated the position of the authorities: he ridiculed the United Statesʼ warnings about the danger and criticized the embassies of Western countries that left Kyiv. Lytvyn called these steps stupid and disproportionate to the circumstances.
9
On the morning of February 24, 2022, after the first explosions in Kyiv, Lytvyn woke up, packed his things and went to Bankova. Since he did not formally work in the Office, because he did not want to have anything to do with the civil service, he had to ask Podolyak to issue an ID card.
"I just wanted to be useful," says Lytvyn. He mentions that then some bloggers and journalists also came to the Office, but he does not specify who exactly. “Everyone tried to pull themselves together. The president, Yermak and others came, and then everything stiring up."
Lytvyn stayed at Bankova for a month and almost never left, except to go home for things. From the first minutes of the invasion, the Russians convinced everyone that the government had fled from Kyiv. The President had to address the people and say that the front did not collapse and that everyone was working in the Office. His first address was prepared by the former screenwriter of "Kvartal" and the speechwriter of the president Yuriy Kostiuk. Then Podolyak worked on theses for several days. Lytvyn cannot remember exactly when he started writing speeches, but it is most likely after February 28, when Podolyak went to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia.
Lytvyn spent the first months of the full-scale war in the Presidentʼs Office in Lypky, where he grew up.
Sasha Maslov / «Бабель»
On Bankova, Lytvyn settled in a room next to the presidential room — they began to see each other every day. Zelensky spoke the main theses of the addresses, Lytvyn put everything into text.
"Now Lytvyn is Presidentʼs chief speechwriter, whose everyone names. But in fact, the ideas of the best speeches and everything unusual about them are Zelensky. He and Kostyuk know how to wrap things up so that everyone around them cries. Dmytro writes well, but thinks more linearly," says the interlocutor of Babel in OP.
As Lytvynʼs trust grew, he was assigned new tasks, such as the presidentʼs speeches on the international stage. In mid-March 2022, Zelensky spoke before the parliaments of various countries, including Canada, the USA, Germany, Italy, and France. Speeches were written by a whole team — the President, Lytvyn, Yermak and his deputy Andriy Sybiha. If necessary, representatives of embassies and Serhiy Leshchenko were involved. He helped with speeches in the parliaments of Japan, Norway and Iceland. Kostyuk also remained in the team, but he is preparing speeches for important dates. In 2022, Lytvyn became a freelance adviser to Andriy Yermak.
"Since Lytvyn worked a lot and was more proactive than other team members, he quickly gained authority, while, for example, Podolyak lost it," says the interlocutor of Babel in OP.
"In the first months of the war, a true brotherhood was formed in the OP bunker. Those who were there in the most difficult times received a head start and credit of trust from the president. Thatʼs where the stories about Oleh Tatarovʼs "Chechens" and the strengthening of Lytvyn come from," says the interlocutor of Babel.
He adds that Podolyak, who was also a member of the brotherhood, surrendered his position later, including because of wars within the media team, in particular because of a conflict with Yermakʼs senior advisor Daria Zarivna. Podolyak ignored Babelʼs offer to comment on this topic.
Thus, Lytvyn moved from speeches to the field of communications with journalists, and on September 8, 2024, the president appointed him as his communications adviser. Within a month, a scandal broke out around him — "Ukrainian Pravda" accused Lytvyn of forbidding officials and security forces to communicate with the publication and not letting the UP journalists to meetings with the President. Lytvyn denied everything. According to him, he did not prohibit anything to anyone, and if he really wanted to prohibit state companies from supporting the siteʼs activities, as UP says, he could have done it.
These words outraged the editor-in-chief of "Media Detector" Natalia Lihachova. She and Lytvyn exchanged posts on social networks, and after that they met in person. After the meeting, Lihachova shared her impressions with Babel. According to her, Lytvyn is a good analyst and knows how to persuade.
"When you listen to him, you believe his arguments, and only when you hear other arguments do you begin to doubt his correctness," says Lihachova.
After the meeting, Lihachova and Lytvyn took a joint photo. The conflict was resolved.
Currently, Lytvyn has almost no serious competitors in the Office. At the same time, she is completely focused on Andriy Yermakʼs tasks and does not deal with the Presidentʼs communications. Nikiforov, as one of the members of the media team says, did not compete with a more active and persistent competitor. Podolyak lost aithority and simply comments on the decisions of the authorities in the media. Among other things, Lytvyn has a relationship with the communications of various ministries and the General Staff.
"I can advise the Ministry of Defense on what to do and what not to do. Letʼs say, he changed his mind — to talk to the media or not. But I cannot forbid speaking," he explains.
However, according to Babel information, it was Lytvyn who made sure that the interview of head of the Syrskyi did not appear in one of the leading media.
Lytvyn was at the meeting between chairman Oleksandr Syrskyi and volunteer Serhii Sternenko. It took place after the sanctioned Strana.ua and Russia Today reported that Sternenko was wanted for failing to appear at the territorial recruit center. Sternenko stated that this was a "direct instruction" from Syrskyi.
"Lytvyn took charge of communications with the president and coordination with him. He is hard-working, ready to work constantly, even on weekends — Zelensky appreciates that. Lytvyn visits the president two or three times a day. He expresses what Zelensky thinks," the interlocutor of Babel in OP evaluates the role of the communicator.
Another interlocutor says that Lytvyn is almost a unique player for the Office — he is equidistant from everyone, it is difficult to say whose person he is. Actually, the Presidentʼs [person]. What is important is that he managed to establish a normal relationship with Andriy Yermak, who does not like new people appearing in the close circle of the president. No such problems arose with Lytvyn. In particular, because of the qualities that Kiselyov talked about: Lytvyn respects authority, knows how to gently defend his opinion and does not show ambition. However, he certainly has them. Lytvyn says, Ukrainians still do not have a historical narrative, cleansed of previous eras — imperial, Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet.
"I would be interested in contributing and developing such a narrative. This is a political activity, but not a politician one — itʼs not about seats," he reflects.
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