# Dmytro Kuleba — "Russia is not strong on its own" > [!quote] "Russia is not strong on its own. It is strong because it has China behind its back, and China is extremely strong all over the world." > — Dmytro Kuleba, interview with Al Jazeera, February 23, 2026 ## Context Speaking to Al Jazeera from Kyiv around the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, former Ukrainian foreign minister [[Dmytro Kuleba]] made this point while explaining why Russia's perceived influence in the Global South is overstated. His larger argument across the interview was that Russian power is contingent and propped-up rather than inherent: Russia "failed" in its original war aim of demolishing Ukrainian statehood, and Ukrainians, though "exhausted," are "not broken." ## Why this matters This is Kuleba's version of the "paper tiger" thesis — the claim that Russia looks more formidable than it is. The framing is worth filing carefully: the viral "paper tiger" phrase about Russia belongs to [[Donald Trump]], who used it in September 2025 and was publicly mocked for it by [[Vladimir Putin]] ("Go and deal with this paper tiger"). Kuleba never used that phrase. His own formulation is more precise about the mechanism — Russia's strength is borrowed from China, not generated at home — and it functions in the knowledge base as the diplomatic counter-case to the isolationist right's "Russia is winning, Ukraine should concede" narrative. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Al Jazeera interview, Feb 23, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/23/slim-chance-of-ceasefire-ukraines-ex-fm-reflects-on-four-years-of-war), conducted by video link from Kyiv; quote transcribed verbatim from the published Q&A. - **Corroborating earlier statement:** In a [December 2024 Belfer Center interview](https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/dmytro-kuleba-says-pressuring-russia-supporting-ukraine-only-viable-strategy) Kuleba argued Putin's deeper aim was "to expose the weakness of the West to the whole world," warning that Western failure in Ukraine would force other states to "bow their heads to China" — the same Russia-is-contingent-on-China logic. - **Note on the "10 feet tall" line:** A widely circulated formulation — "Putin is dangerous, but he is not 10 feet tall... made to appear stronger than he is by years of wishful thinking, self-deterrence and delay in the West" — is commonly attributed to Kuleba (it tracks the thesis of his December 2023 *Foreign Affairs* essay "There Is a Path to Victory in Ukraine"), but it could not be confirmed to a verifiable primary source and is therefore not used as the receipt here. - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed. ## See Also - [[Dmytro Kuleba]] - [[Russo-Ukrainian War]] - [[Ukraine NATO Accession Debate]]