In Kyiv, U.S. presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were presented with symbolic T-shirts bearing the words “Kyiv regime.” Before the gifts were handed over, Ukrainian negotiating team member Davyd Arakhamia modeled one of the shirts.
The slogan is an ironic response to Russian propaganda. Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials routinely refer to Ukraine’s democratically elected government as the “Kyiv regime” in an attempt to undermine its legitimacy. Russian state media also use the phrase to justify the war against Ukraine.
However, Ukrainian political analyst Oleksandr Leonov suggested that the American envoys may not have understood the context behind the gift.
According to Leonov, the joke is highly specific to a Ukrainian audience and could be interpreted ambiguously in the United States—particularly given that Donald Trump previously called Zelensky a “dictator.”
Leonov believes that the slogan “Make Russia Small Again” would have been more appropriate and easier for Americans to understand. In his view, such a gift would have conveyed Ukraine’s message more clearly and left less room for misinterpretation.
