The Ukrainian Schoolmaster Teaching History to His Invaders

New York Times

17-04-2025

On a recent afternoon in Bila Tserkva, a quiet city in central Ukraine, a 59-year-old history teacher settled into a colorful cafe, opened a laptop and logged into Chatroulette, an online platform that connects strangers worldwide.
His goal? To teach Russians, citizens of a nation that has invaded his, a bit of Ukrainian history.
Within minutes, a middle-aged Russian man appeared on the screen, speaking from what looked like a grocery store. Vitalii Dribnytsia, the history teacher, wasted no time, opening with a deliberately provocative question: 'Who does Crimea belong to?' he asked, referring to the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
'To us,' the man replied without hesitation.
What followed was a dizzying exchange on the historical roots of Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine's war of independence from 1917 to 1921, and the Ukrainian language. At times, the Russian man hesitated about historical facts, but in the end, he waved it all away. 'The internet will tell you everything,' he said. 'Ukraine never existed and never will.'
This was just one of hundreds of online conversations Mr. Dribnytsia, a former middle school and high school teacher, has had with random Russians over the past three years of war, as he seeks to challenge the Kremlin's narrative that Ukrainian nationhood is a fiction and, by extension, that Ukraine belongs to Russia.
Almost every day, for several hours at a time, Mr. Dribnytsia engages with Russians on Chatroulette, using a matter-of-fact tone and sharp questions to try to debunk widely held beliefs in Russia: that Ukraine as a nation was created by the Soviet Union, that its leaders are neo-Nazis or that its language is merely a dialect of Russian.
Videos of Mr. Dribnytsia's candid discussions, which he uploads to YouTube, have attracted a huge following in Ukraine. His YouTube channel, called 'Vox Veritatis,' Latin for 'The Voice of the Truth,' boasts nearly half a million subscribers, with Ukrainians watching the conversations to learn more about their own history and sharpen their arguments in defense of Ukraine's right to sovereignty.
His exchanges have offered a rare and unusual window into the politicization of history in Russia, shedding light on the ideological foundations behind Russia's attempts to erase Ukraine's past and identity, including by systematically destroying Ukrainian cultural sites.
'People usually don't know their own history. That's normal. But in this war, in Russia, it's not just ignorance — it's the weaponization of history,' Mr. Dribnytsia said in a recent interview in Bila Tserkva, his hometown. 'I'm just trying to set the record straight.'
A burly man with a white beard, Mr. Dribnytsia knows from experience how history can be used as a political tool. He studied history in Kyiv in the final years that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, when liberalizing reforms were beginning to lift the lid on decades of hushed-up historical events.
He still remembers one of his professors describing the Holodomor, the Kremlin-engineered famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33, as 'an invention of Western bourgeois historians' — only for students to later read about the famine in Pravda, the Communist Party's official newspaper.
'We entered university as typical Soviet students. But by the time we graduated, the ideological landscape had completely changed,' said Mr. Dribnytsia, who graduated with a master's degree in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine declared independence.
He began teaching the same year, using textbooks that had not yet been updated from Soviet times. Mr. Dribnytsia had to rely on his own research and books written by little-known reformist historians to present a version of events as accurate as possible.
'I understood that I had to teach children this new information — the facts that had either been hidden from us or distorted by Soviet history,' he said.
Former students of Mr. Dribnytsia in Bila Tserkva remember him as a demanding yet passionate teacher.
'He wanted each of us to know our history because a person can only move forward and make informed decisions by understanding the past,' said Iryna Semyhailo, 31, now a math teacher in Bila Tserkva.
In 2021, Mr. Dribnytsia retired because of serious health issues. That summer, Mr. Putin published a 5,300-word essay distorting history to claim that Ukrainians and Russians are 'one people' — an argument he would later use to justify his invasion as a liberation of Ukraine from the West.
Alarmed by the Kremlin's propaganda, Mr. Dribnytsia began devoting his time to engaging in online discussions with Russians about history. But what started as an attempt at open dialogue quickly evolved into a project focused on debunking Moscow's narrative, particularly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Drawing from his teaching skills, Mr. Dribnytsia often peppers his interlocutors with precise questions and cuts them off to point out factual errors — ultimately pushing them to confront the inconsistencies in their reasoning.
In a video of a conversation recorded two years ago, seen by 1.7 million people, Mr. Dribnytsia responds to a man who claims that Russians and Ukrainians are brothers, echoing Mr. Putin's argument. 'How do you define brotherly nations?' Mr. Dribnytsia asks.
'From history,' the man replies. 'We have a shared past.'
'If Austrians and Hungarians lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, does that mean Austrians and Hungarians are brothers?' Mr. Dribnytsia snaps back, pointing to two nations that are now neighbors but speak different languages and have distinct traditions.
The Russian man then points out that Russia and Ukraine share a common religion, Christian Orthodoxy. Mr. Dribnytsia responds by noting that about a tenth of Ukrainians are Greek Catholics, before pressing again: why should Russians and Ukrainians be considered brothers?
'Maybe I'm mistaken,' the Russian man concedes, 'though I don't think so.'
Since mid-2021, Mr. Dribnytsia has recorded over 1,500 conversations — enough to plant seeds of doubt in some of his interlocutors, though he often encounters outright hostility.
By his own admission, he hasn't had much success changing peoples' minds. Most Russians he encounters either dismiss his arguments outright or echo Kremlin talking points. Only a small minority, usually those who oppose the war, engage in genuine historical debates, he says.
During a recent online chat, a Russian woman praised Mr. Dribnytsia's work, urging him to keep 'laying out the facts.' Dimitri, a 27-year-old Russian who opposes the war, said in a phone interview that the videos had taught him about events overlooked in Russian textbooks, such as the existence of a Ukrainian state in the late 1910s.
Over time, Mr. Dribnytsia realized his true audience isn't Russians, but the millions of Ukrainians who were educated in Soviet times and now want to update their knowledge — part of a broader movement in wartime Ukraine to break free from decades of Soviet and Russian influences.
Some of his videos, where he discusses the first appearance of Ukraine on world maps or the complex history of Ukrainian nationalist movements — two topics that were either ignored or distorted in Soviet textbooks — have garnered over a million views.
'I'm learning a lot from him,' said Natalia Tylina, a 64-year-old Ukrainian retiree who described herself as 'formed in the Soviet Union.' She said she now feels more confident to argue with acquaintances who 'don't know our history at all' and spread Russian narratives.
In his conversations, Mr. Dribnytsia is often asked about the darker chapters of Ukrainian history, including the collaboration of nationalist movements with the Nazis during World War II. He doesn't shy away from the topic, acknowledging their collaboration while also noting that the Nazis later suppressed those same groups.
Three years of war and as much time trying to correct historical falsehoods have taken a toll on Mr. Dribnytsia. He loses his calm more often during online conversations, and he has come to believe it is futile to try to change the minds of his Russian interlocutors.
'Most of them go on Chatroulette to target Ukrainians and push their fabricated narratives,' he said. 'They're not here to hear a different perspective or learn something new.'
Yaroslav Hrytsak, a prominent Ukrainian historian who has watched Mr. Dribnytsia's videos, said his work might seem in vain. But if nobody sets the record straight, he noted, then 'Mr. Putin wins.'
'His efforts actually make perfect sense,' Mr. Hrytsak said. 'It's about restoring our dignity, proving that Ukraine as a nation exists.'