The Next Phase of War

Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center for public affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to proposition articulated by Lipman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, Counsel at the Center for Strategic and budgetary Assessment, a bulwark contributor, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. My normal partner in this enterprise Elliot Cohen is traveling in Europe. So once again, I’m flying solo, but I have a very special guest, and former colleague and friend, Ambassador Stephen Pfeiffer.

Ambassador Pfeiffer was Ambassador to Ukraine, but has had a long and distinguished foreign service career, he was an adviser to the US INF delegation, a adviser to late Paul Nitza who negotiated the INF Treaty, he was senior director for Russia and Ukraine In the NSC, in the Clint administration, he was a deputy assistant secretary of state, and he served in Warsaw, and London as well as Moscow, where he and I were colleagues, in the US Embassy political section. He’s also an author. He is the author of the eagle and the trident, US Ukraine relations, and turbulent times, and co author with Michael Hanlin, who we hope to have on to discuss his new book soon, a book on the Opportunity about the prospects for for arms control, the book which I actually even went and blurbed. So Steve welcome, it’s great to have you.

Thanks very much, Eric.

So today is Ve Day, tomorrow will be Victory Day in Moscow, and they will have a parade of some sort, although it’s not clear how large that parade Will Saletan a lot of extra steps for security have taken place. Before we get into that though, as a former US ambassador to Ukraine, Why does all of this matter to Americans? I mean, increasingly you see in some polling that there are concerns about this turning into an endless war, you see some, particularly on the Republican side, questioning the value of the US assistance, Ukraine. Why should we care about this?

That’s a good question to ask. I mean, Ukraine is five thousand miles away. We have to worry about things like the rise of China. But let me give you several reasons why I believe what going on in this war matters greatly to American interests. First of all, going back nearly seventy years, the United States has defined as a vital national a stable and secure Europe.

There are political economic security reasons for that. How this war before Russia Ukraine turns out it’s going to have a big impact on the kind of Europe that we face. Should Russia when it’s going to be an unstable, an insecure year, and that’s gonna require a lot more American attention in the future. The second rule is, again, since the World War two, we’ve had this idea of the rules based international order, which I believe has served not only Western interests well, but most countries, I mean, China under those rules lifted six hundred million people out of poverty. Well, the fundamental or the first rule of that order is you don’t use military force to take territory from other countries.

That’s exactly what Putin is doing in a war that really looks somewhat imperialist. The third reason I think we should be carrying is that I have to be humble. We don’t know how far Vladimir Putin’s ambitions extend. Should he prevail in Ukraine, would he go, would his ambitions go beyond that? He’s talked in the past about war against Ukraine as recovering historic Russian land.

Well, look at a map of the Russian empire of the nineteenth century, Finland, the Baltic states, much of Poland, were part of that Russian empire, and therefore, in Putin’s use, maybe historic Russian lands. In Ukraine, we’re sending money and weapons, in Eastern Estonia would be sending American troops. Now, I don’t think this is a high probability that it goes beyond Ukraine. But I think three or four years, Eric had somebody asked us, we would have said the probability of the kind of war that we’ve seen Russia inflict on Ukraine over the past fifteen months would be a very small probability. And I think the last reason we should care is that thirty years ago, we told Ukraine we would care.

Ukraine, at the end of the when the Soviet Union collapsed, head out its territory, the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, and that included nineteen hundred strategic nuclear warheads that could target the United States. Ukraine gave those weapons up in large part because of the Buddhist membrane on security assurances, in which Russia, the United States, in Britain, committed respect to Ukraine sovereignty, its territorial integrity, its independence, and committed not to use force or threaten to use force against Ukraine. Now, when we negotiated that, the equitian said, what will you Americans do if the Russians violate this? And we said, we will take an interest, we will do things, We did say that we were not prepared to commit American troops. So it’s an memorandum of assurances, not guarantees.

And that word is important, I think, to most American here, or at least American diplomatic here. But I think it’s important that we live up to that commitment. So, I do think that what’s going on in Ukraine matters greatly, and we do have a big interest in how this war turns out.

I just would add to your description of the budapest memorandum that in addition to Russia, the US, and the UK, France subsequently associated itself with the assurances as well, the the negative security assurances provided to Ukraine.

As did China. Both the Chinese and separately did.

Yeah. So let’s get to the the current moment. Just the other day, we saw this drone attack, two drones, attacking the Kremlin grounds, the Kremlin complex, one one of them exploding and creating some fire damage on the roof of the of the senate building in the Kremlin complex. Lots of speculation about what this is. You know, was it a Ukrainian attack?

The Russians, of course, were quick to say this was an assassination attempt against Putin, which the United States was actually behind since all the decisions were made in Washington, not in Kiev, Many people have suggested this actually a Russian false flag. Others have said could be Ukrainian partisans inside Russia or Russian dissidents, opposed to the Kremlin’s war or even right wing nationalist opponents of Putin who are angry that he’s not prosecuting the war aggressively enough who want to embarrass him. I mean, a lot of different speculation, Steve. As a long time observer of this part of the world, what do you make of it?

Yeah, I don’t totally exclude that the Courneys might behind this, but I think it’s much more likely is a false flag operation. I mean, you have seen in the past, well, actually going back into December twenty twenty two, the Russians improved, enhanced their air defenses around Moscow, including they have air defense systems in place on the top of the Ministry of Defense, and several other buildings, that lived within a mile surrounding the Kremlin. So, we’re asked to believe that these drones came from somewhere outside penetrate several rings of air defenses around Moscow, including that inner ring of buildings, and then we’re only shot down over the Kremlin coincidentally in the view of many cameras. Maybe the Ukrainian pulled that off, but it also seems to me that could have been the Russians doing it. It’s also interesting, well, two other points.

One is, the Russians said this was an attempt to assassinate Putin, However, everyone knows, and certainly the attorneys know that Putin rarely spends a night in the Kremlin. He’s usually at his complex Southwest of Moscow. So, it would have been much more believable, perhaps, had there been an attack directed to that, if in fact, the argument was this was an assassination attempt. But then Eric, I remember, I was in Moscow. I was assigned at the MC in Moscow.

I was actually in Helsinki for a couple days when this happened, but in nineteen eighty seven, Matias Rutes, a German flew a cessna from Finland into the Soviet Union. Landed on the bridge right opposite of Red Square, and Bulwark accounts was not at all molested by any of Russia’s or Soviet sponsored air defenses. Within a day or two, you had the Ministry of Defensepired, the Head of Soviet Air Defenseired, As far as I can tell, nobody has been fired for this flagrant violation of air security over the Kremlin. So, that to my mind points to this being a false flag operation that was designed. I think the purpose is not really clear to me.

And I think it may have in fact backfired, is there some reporting that seems to suggest to increase the unease of people in Moscow. When these things are going in like this.

Yeah, I agree. I think anybody who confidently tells you they are certain about what happened probably wrong. I mean, I think we, you know, don’t know enough yet, but I’m with you. I find the failure to fire anybody hold anybody accountable for what would be a enormous lapse in air defense and a huge embarrassment right before the May ninth parade and and ceremony that that it’s just in applicable to me unless there was some Russian hand in this — Yeah. — of course, you know, you pointed out the Russian air defenses, I mean, in part in response to this, the Russians launched a whole barrage of missiles and and drones at Kiv, and the Ukrainians intercepted, thirty five out of thirty five headed towards Keith the other night, apparently.

So, I mean, at a minimum, this suggests perhaps Russian air defenses are not quite what they’re cracked up to be, and Ukrainians are maybe better at air defense than we give them or I’ve heretofore given them credit, which which raises a question about the much talked about yet to begin Ukrainian counter offensive that people have been talking about for some time. There’s been a lot of discussion while we’ve had this ongoing sort of world war one like static battlefield in Bakmoot since last fall, really. A lot of discussion about Ukraine getting ready for a counter offensive that would try and take back some of the territory that Russia has occupied. Somewhat along the lines of what we saw in October, in the Karkiv area, and then somewhat later in Khearson where the Russians were able to withdraw in a little bit better order than they did out of Charlie Sykes. Let’s talk a little bit about what you think the prospects are for this.

I I noticed over the weekend, Steve, that defense minister Reznikov gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he cautioned people against you know, too high expectations for what the Ukrainians might might accomplish, New York Times had an article suggesting that their divisions inside the administration over whether the Ukrainians can actually accomplish a lot and some suggestion that there are some people who are actually fearful that the Ukrainians will en enjoy what General Franks once described in a different context as catastrophic success that they might be so successful that, you know, it could provoke real disorder and unrest in in Russia and make it more difficult to negotiate an end to this. To this conflict if that’s even possible. So what do you make of all this? And where do you think we are in the counter offensive? How do you think it’ll go?

Yeah, for I mean, there will be Ukrainian counter offensive. There’s no doubt about that. It probably requires a little bit more drying out of the mud. There have been some really interesting pictures of vehicles bogged down in the mud. That results from the thaw and the rains, but that’s only a matter of time.

Where will the counter offensive strike? I think bear in mind, I mean, you alluded to Harkeve and Harrison. Be prepared for some misdirection by the Ukrainian you a call last August. They talked about the counter offensive that was coming, coming, coming in hair sewn. And in September, they struck, and they liberated all of Harkiv.

And then it was two months later that they turned their attention, and they were able to push the Russians back across from the western bank of the Danipa River. So, there’s going to be some misdirection here. We’re also — it’s going to be, I think, a different conflict for both sides in a way. I mean, the ukrainians will be carrying out trying to carry out a fairly major, counter offensive using combined arms tactics. And the Russians are going to be fighting from prepared defensive positions.

So, I’m not sure if what we’ve seen over the past fifteen months gives us a lot of basis to judge exactly how this fight will play out. My own expectation though is that the Ukranians will liberate more territory. They will have some success whether they can achieve called catastrophic success, I’m not sure. But again, I think a catastrophic success, it means, say they, for example, succeeded in and driving down to the Sea of Oz off and cutting the land bridge between Russia and Crimea, which would be a big step towards isolating occupied crimea. Catastrophic success actually might cause people perhaps not Putin.

But others in the club need to say, where is this war going? And so, I’m not sure we should be all that fearful of catastrophic success. Now, also having said that, I believe that the Ukrainians can probably liberate a lot of territory, getting back to will luburn all of Ukraine or even getting back to the February twenty three line from last year, that’s a pretty tough order. I mean, it would require probably the collapse of the Russian Army in the way that you saw the Russian army collapse. In nineteen eighteen at the end of World War one.

Again, I don’t rule that out, but that kind of success I think is going to be a tough order, but I do think we’re going to see some success by the Ukrainian. The question is how much.

So the Ukrainians have been asking for lots of things, some of which we have given them reluctantly like tanks, other things we’ve been much happier to give them, including armored personnel carriers, you know, bridging equipment, demining equipment, lots of of ammunition of obviously, the High Mars, the longer range artillery with the Gimbler’s rounds that we’ve given them that have extended out their their fires quite a bit and and played no small role in the Harrison fight. Lots of things though that we haven’t given them. No. High performance fighter aircraft like f sixteen’s attack of missiles that would extend the long range fires out to about three hundred kilometers, which would allow them to go after the kinds of logistical targets that they went after once we gave them the High Mars that enabled them to liberate some of their territory. In the same interview in which he counseled against overly high expectations, minister Reznikov also sort of without being explicit about it basically is that if we got these things, it would actually push Russian logistics further and further back, making it more difficult for them to respond to our counter offensive.

So where do you come down on on these systems? Do you think we should be supplying them to the Ukrainians? Why do you think that the administration has been so hesitant, what do you make of that whole debate?

Yeah. Well, let me just start with what we have given them. I mean, the tanks armored personnel carriers, Bradley Fighting, vehicles. I I think it would have been in the interest of the United States and the West to give their brains actually more of that stuff. Increasing the prospects of this counter offensive could be successful.

But looking at other weapon systems, attackums, I’ve been arguing since the fall that we should give them attackums. What we saw last summer was that the Ukrainian in a very strategic way used the Gimmers rock which have a range of about fifty miles to strike Russian command posts and ammunition dumps in occupied Ukraine. That caused the Russians to have to move those ammunition dumps in commandos back thirty or forty miles. That their effort. And I think that’s one of the reasons why in the latter part of the summer, you saw the rate of Russian artillery fire begin to decline.

It was simply harder to get the shells to the guys who were loaded and firing the artillery pieces. Attackums would allow them to range any Russian target or any occupied Ukraine. And it would cause them, basically, they have to put some of those logistics back into Russia proper. I think that would be useful. I mean, that would further complicate the logistics of the Russians, and further degrade their performance on the front line.

Now, I think there’s one concern out there with Ukrainiansians use these to strike targets in Russia. In fact, the Ukrainian have said for, I think, three or four months now that they would not use Western provided weapons distract targets in Russia proper. And by Russia proper, I mean, Russia is this nineteen ninety one border, not the borders that Putin has been trying to adjust. So I think we could provide some of these systems, and they perhaps would not need a large number, but it could have been very important. On F sixteen’s, I guess I had the feel that I was talking to some other folks about this last week.

The conversation that’s now going on F sixteen’s kind of strike me about the same way that the conversation about tanks was going, say, four or five months ago. My guess is certainly within a year, there will be F-16s given to the Ukrainians. Now, the F-sixteen is some ways that they may not be the best aircraft for the ukrainings. They’ve got to have a pretty clean runway to operate from. But having said that, you’ve also got with the F-35s coming out now, lots of F-16s in the American Air Force and in European air forces that are either now excess or soon to be excess.

And again, my guess is that the Ukrainians could use these or air defense, but also ground attack. And if the Ukrainians continue their policy of not striking targets in Russia with Western provided weapons, I’m not sure this crosses any red line. You and I both know Alexi Arbatov from our time in Moscow. He had an interview about three months ago where he was asked about Kremlin red lines. And the first thing, he says, well, they’re not explicit, and he’s right.

They’re pretty vague and tacit. But he saw two red lines. One was if Western troops would end of the war. And it’s pretty clear, I believe that Western country are not going to cross that line, in part because the equinions have never asked for Western troops. But the second line was, if the equinions were to use Western provided to conduct deep strikes into Russia, particularly against cities.

And again, the Union thus far seem to have ruled that out. So it seems to me that there is much more room for the rest to be providing the Ukraine’s things like advanced fighters, atacam’s, and still be under whatever red line the Kremlin may not have. And part of the problem here is that the Klement has not articulated those red lines in a clear way.

Yeah. I mean, to the extent that the Ukrainians have had some of these drone attacks that have been inside Russia they appeared first of all, they’ve been domestically produced drones, not anything supplied to them by the United States. Exactly.

It’s a strange kind of war that the Russians are trying to impose on the Ukrainiansians, where the Russians claim the right to be able to strike any target military or civilian anywhere in Ukraine, but somehow it’s out of bounds unfair in breaking the rules should Ukraine strike anything in Russia.

Yeah. No. It’s ridiculous. I agree. But, I mean, the point I was gonna make is even the attacks that they I mean, if you’re in the administration and you’re concerned about the escalatory risks.

Right? About giving them attack ons or f sixteens despite the Ukrainian protestations and won’t use them the way we’re afraid they might, Their own attacks actually have been very, very strategic. I mean, they’ve been against air bases, they’ve been against fuel storage, facilities, and things like that. I mean, it it it seems to me that the Ukrainians have done a pretty good, you know, job of of this.

Yeah. The Ukraine has been very discriminate. And they — and I’m part of it, I believe it’s probably because they have limited resources. For conducting those kinds of strikes against targets in Russia proper. But as you said, they’ve used them to hit military targets.

What’s your take, Steve, on why the why the administration has been so reluctant? I mean, I I’m with you. I’ve been arguing for attack ins, you know, since last fall as well. And and the f sixteen’s at a minimum why aren’t we training the pilots now, even if it’s a ways away. I mean, I I think it I think it’s a little bit less urgent than the f sixteens because, yeah, actually, the Russians have not although they on paper, you know, have air superiority over Ukraine in terms of number of aircraft and, you know, quality of aircraft, The reality is, you know, everything they’re firing is pretty much standoff.

They’re they’re they seem to be pretty intimidated by Ukrainian air defenses. So I I thought that’s as a less high priority, but attack them. So I’ve, you know, I don’t understand why the administration has been so reluctant. Do do you have a a view on more? I think

No. No. First of all, I would agree, I think, attack rooms is the more urgent need that would be more usefully incorporated into Ukraine’s war plans now. And the F-16s, again, are — it’s a lesser priority. But again, kind of thing that we ought to be thinking about now.

You know, at one point I heard somebody say that, we don’t want to give them the F-sixteen’s, because it would take two years to train them to fly an F-sixteen? No. It would take US Air Force, two years to train me Steve Pfeiffer, probably three years to fly an F-six seen. But we actually — I’ve talked to somebody in the — heard from somebody in the Air Force, who is an F-sixteen pod and he said, if you take an experience, make pods just had four or five years in a they basically know the basics. It’s maybe six to eight weeks to train and how to operate an F-sixteen.

Well, it only took three months, right, to train the Ukrainians up patriot, and they seem to have knocked down a Kinzall super hypersonic cruise missile, which was supposedly Putin’s wonder weapon, that should tell you something about how quickly we can train ukrainians on advanced systems. Right?

And it’s not I mean, it’s sort of across the board. I mean, it’s really, I think, been one of the remarkable things of this fight. How quickly the Ukrainians have incorporated equipment into their battle plans and put them to use, and have them cope with things like what they have, five or six different types of artillery pieces coming from the west. They seem to be making it work. So, again, I think that that f-16s, it’d be a challenge probably in the maintenance side, but I think the Ukraine would find ways to overcome it.

On that point, which you made, which is, I think, incredibly important, and it doesn’t get enough stress. The Ukrainians have this kind of really weird petting zoo of systems. Right? Because we’ve got this, you know, Jerry built support system in which our NATO allies and other partners are providing, in some cases, Soviet era equipment from, you know, from their Although most of that’s now exhausted, from their stocks, we we’ve got a variety of different western systems, whether it’s our High Mars, our m triple sevens, the French says our problem is, particularly given the volumes of fire, you know, these artillery systems that tubes need to after a certain number of firings need to be switched out, and reboard, and serviced, etcetera. So The Ukrainians have had this enormous logistical challenge

imposed on them.

It it’s costly in terms of manpower and and money and yet as you say, Steve, they’ve seemed to have somehow made this thing work.

Yeah. No, it’s I think it’s it’ll be a fascinating story for somebody to write about afterwards searches exactly how they were able to blend all these systems into their planning and use them in very effective ways. But but your question, I mean, I look at the Biden administration, and I give them I tend to be a tough grader somewhere between a B and B plus for how they handle last fifty months. In some ways, I think they’ve done the diplomacy superbly, particularly in the run up to the war. And one of the reasons why NATO and the G7 and the European moves so quickly after the Russians actually launched the full scale invasion in February of last year was because there’d been three months of preparing the ground diplomatically led by the United States.

And in conversations I’ve had with administration officials, they say there’s really two goals here. One is to help the Ukrainians win and defeat the Russians, and the other one is to avoid a direct NATO military clash. And I agree, those are the right two objectives, But if I had to fault the administration or why I’m not giving them an A, it would be because I think when they blend those objectives, they tend to be a little bit too cautious. In a way that, again, from what I can read and see. Now, maybe there’s something in the super secret world that we’ve missed, but based on the way the criminals acted, And with your cognitive said, I believe we are somewhat deterring ourselves in terms of the capabilities that we could be providing the Ukrainian.

And I pointed to things that go back to last, I guess it was this February, when it was clear that from announcements out of Washington and out of Europe, that we’re going to begin giving leopard tanks, and a little bit later, m1 tanks to the Ukrainian, the kremlin response was, kind of, we don’t like it, but I mean, you didn’t have them threatening some large new retaliation. So, from what I’ve seen in the outside world, in the unclassified world, the Russians are not going to overreact to some of these things. And so we don’t have to be as cautious as we have been.

For all those who want to argue that NATO enlargement was somehow responsible for what Putin has done in Ukraine, whether in twenty fourteen, fifteen, or the war he started in February twenty two. I mean, Finland and Sweden, you know, Finland’s now in NATO. Finland, Sweden, hopefully, will soon be in NATO. And yet, you know, it hasn’t created this kind of huge response from the Russians that people anticipated. So, I mean, I’m with you, I think that the administration has been cautious to a fault and way too willing to let itself be I don’t wanna say intimidated, but they’ve become I think way too risk averse.

I do agree with you, by the way, as well. I give a a very high grade to Secret Podcast Blincoln who I think is done. A really good job of, you know, alliance management and coalition maintenance. I don’t think any of us would have predicted that NATO would hang together quite as well as it has over the last fifteen months. I do give the secretary of state a a lot of of credit there but I I just don’t understand the just a high degree of risk aversion, particularly since as you point out, you know, not just the leopard and m one a ones.

I mean, it’s been consistent. I mean, the same was true of the high Mars and the range that that provides There was a lot of concern about that would be, you know, breaching a red line. You know, they’re now getting some mig 29s from from Central Europe, supposedly, that was a red line. So, you know, these lines are if they’re red at all, they’re really kind of very pale pink. And they’re being breached without any kind of real response.

So you would think that the kind of adaptive learning process for the administration would suggest perhaps they don’t need to be as risk averse as they have been, but they they seem to maintain that concern.

Yeah. And I think there is a risk to be in that risk averse, which is the long Of course, it’ll belong to this war drags out. You know, the greater the tragedy for Ukraine. But I do think that the longer the tour goes, as you said, I have been impressed and surprise, but how well Europe and the West have hung together on this. My guess is few people would have predicted in February of twenty twenty two, that you would have the amount of support going to Ukraine, the weapons going to Ukraine, the sanctions still being made on Russia.

So, that’s gone well, but my guess is, it’s going to get tougher along with the war goes on. And sort of sustaining that support, I think, is a real question, including in the United States. So I’d rather see kind of a push to get the Ukrainian more of aware all they need to try to resolve this sooner rhythm?

No. I agree with that. And and I think there’s actually polling data to support this. You know, there is a recent poll that I think both you and I are aware of by shipley Telhami at at the University of Maryland that does show that after quite a long period of pretty robust support, there’s beginning to be a little bit of decline in public support for aiding the Ukrainians, Some of that’s being driven by, you know, Trump and DeSantis and Josh Holly and other Republican leaders who are, you know, Tucker Carlson, who are critiquing, have been critiquing this policy all along, But some of it’s coming from independents and Democrats as well, and I do think there is a risk that we can fall into of playing a too long game that that I think Putin thinks plays to his strengths rather than ours, undermines public support, in the US, and then potentially Europe as well. But also in in Shibley’s polls, he finds that the public actually has pretty high tolerance for giving the Ukrainians everything they need to win this now.

It’s that the public doesn’t want another endless war they wanna, you know, see this, you know, over and done with as soon as possible. So I think there’s political support for it.

Yeah. And I also I mean, this is the curious thing. I mean, I Don’t pretend to understand all the calculations in the White House about politics, but it would seem to me that, of course, the twenty twenty four election will be decided first and foremost on domestic issues. But to the extent that foreign policy issues come into play. Rock Ukraine is going to be one, and my guess is that on that issue, the president’s gonna be in a much stronger position.

And twenty twenty four if Ukraine has either won or is clearly winning the war as opposed to if Russia has prevailed or if there’s a long tailgate.

I agree with that. So let’s talk about the prospect for negotiations. I mean, the Wall Street Journal had a story today that there is, you know, growing consensus, they say, in western diplomatic chancellaries and in in Washington that there’s gonna be some kind of negotiation increasing thought that China might play some kind of role in in mediating or brokering, some kind of agreement, including people pointing to statements that Tony Blinking has made suggesting some openness on the part of the administration to the PRC playing this role. Henry Kissinger, I think it was yesterday or maybe the day before, who was about to turn one hundred, later this month who said now that China is involved in this, he’s confident there’s gonna be a negotiation sort of by the end of the year between the two. I’m not as confident as he is that there’s gonna be any negotiation.

I don’t see any disposition on the part of of Vladimir Putin to negotiate anything, and I think given the ferocity of the Russian assault on Ukrainian nationhood, the war crimes, the abduction of children, the kidnappings. I mean, everything we’ve seen whatever room for maneuver president Zelensky might have had, you know, before this war started back in January of twenty twenty two, is much less now than it was then, and and you see that in polling of Ukrainians, that Ukrainians have not very much interest right now. In negotiating with Russians, and I certainly can understand that. What do you make of, you know, this Chinese potential role as a mediator and prospects for negotiation. Are you as bearish as I am about them?

Yeah, I believe at some point, there will be a negotiation between Keith and Moscow, but I don’t see any prospect of that anytime soon. The positions right now, they’re just I mean, there’s no overlap. I mean, the -And and when do they bizarre things here is that Russian demands of Kiev have escalated, even when they were losing on the battlefield. I mean, there’s this real connecting Moscow in August and September last year, you know, Russian forces were being driven back in Harki. They were coming back under greater pressure and hair sound.

They’re making no progress in Don boss. And then at the end of September, Putin sort of escalates his demands by saying Ukraine now has to recognize that we have and Exda, Asia, Luhansk, Harrison, and Donetsk. So I think there’s there’s just, at this point, there’s no reason to think a negotiation would work. The Chinese, it’s interesting. But I think the Chinese have to do more than simply put down a list of twelve principles.

And a lot of those pencils are very good, support territory integrity, that sort of thing. But nowhere in these principles, did you see withdrawal of forces from the other guy’s territory? And at least I’m prepared to have the Chinese persuade me otherwise, but right now it seems to me that that piece of paper and a couple of phone calls were designed by China today. We’re a player in world affairs. We have a plan on the table.

We But quite frankly, the Chinese are really they’re the ones who have significant leverage with Russians, There’s no sign that they’ve applied that leverage. Now, so at this point, I don’t think the West and to their credit, I don’t think the Biden has done this. The West should not be trying to push Zelensky into a premature negotiation. The negotiation, when it happens, I think, requires two things. First of all, an adjustment in the Kremlin negotiating approach where it looks like in fact, they are beginning to touch on the battlefield realities, and that means shedding some of their more bizarre demands.

And on the Ukrainian side, this gets to the Eric end of the point that you raised is, I think the Ukrainian government in the first week were I think was looking for a way landed. They offered neutrality. They even made some hints of that struck me as offering reduced to compromise on territorial issues. -Right. -That changed over the course of March of last year, particularly when places like Bucha and Pima were liberated, and the Ukrainian saw the atrocities.

The mass graves, the torture chambers, the reports of rapes, the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. And it seems to me that attitudes both in the government, but also in the broader public hardened in a way that some of the ideas that I believe Zelensky was prepared to consider in the first couple of weeks of March of last year, he’s not prepared to consider now. And if he was prepared to consider them, he could never sell it to the Ukrainian public. So I think we have to recognize that even once Moscow begins I think it also leads when Moscow begins to get a bit more serious about a negotiation. It’s got to be a call by the Ukrainian leadership because they probably cannot go into a negotiation and get everything they want.

They’ll have to be some compromises. But those compromises could be extremely controversial within Ukraine. So, I think the West on the one hand, we should not be pushing the Ukraine into a negotiation. At the end of the day, also, if the equinians accept some settlement that may fall short of the demands they have now, we also should not interfere with that. This should be a call for Keith.

You know, my own sense of this and I have absolutely no direct evidence to support what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. You know, I was puzzling a little bit about secretary Blake’s comments about the PRC. I mean, because among other things, you know, you mentioned the list of principles that the Chinese announced around the time of the Xi Putin meeting. One of the things that was notably missing was any kind of strictures against, you know, aggression, you know, armed aggression against your neighbors. And so, you know, it’s not completely clear to me how, you know, how much of a a really neutral sort of interlocutor and and potential mediator that Chinese can be.

I mean, your colleague at Stanford, former ambassador Mike Mcfall has pointed out that I think it’s ambassador Lee, who has been appointed as the the Chinese envoy, is actually a pretty pro Russian guy. He was he was Mike’s counterpart, I think, in Moscow as the PRC Ambassador there when Mike was ambassador in the Obama administration. And so, to me, I was trying to puzzle out. Why would the administration be, you know, so open quote unquote to to doing this and it occurred to me that there might be actually a good reason for them to do that which is We know that they have been urging the Chinese not to provide any lethal assistance as the Russians run down their own stocks of ammunition, whether it’s artillery ammunition or precision guided munitions, etcetera. Which we know they’re now getting very low on, and, you know, we see them using s four hundred air defense missiles and bastion coastal defense missiles in an offensive mode, which is obviously not desirable or, you know, not the way they’re designed to be used.

It occurred to me that the administration may want to try and use this Chinese offer of mediation as a way to keep them kind of from not playing in the competition between Ukraine and and Russia for military assistance, basically, well, if you wanna be a mediator, we’re open to that, but you can’t be really, you know, backing one side if you’re gonna play that role. And that, I think, would make some sense.

Yeah. No. That could be possible. But again, I think that part of it is in pushing in the burden on the Chinese that have to show that they’re and again, to my mind, a serious everybody the Chinese meet that they use some of this leverage that they vladimir Putin.

Yeah. I very much agree. I wanted to just talk briefly about President Zelensky speech. I know you haven’t had a chance to, you know, read it in full, but today is Ve Day in the United States and Europe. Tomorrow is Victory Day in Moscow because at the time that the allies took the Nazi surrender in nineteen forty five.

It was already May ninth in Moscow because of the time difference. President Zelensky today, interestingly, in his speech, it seemed to me was engaging in a bit of of an attempt to deal with president Putin’s cultural appropriation of Ukrainian history in his own, you know, seven thousand word essay back in the summer of twenty twenty one in which he essentially denied that Ukraine is a nation or even a separate people from the Russians, president Zelensky was number one saying that he’s asking the Ukrainian Rada to change the law to make vee day, May eighth, so that Ukraine will be aligned with us and the West in celebration at the end of the war, but also was using it to discuss the fact that the war between Nazis and the Soviet Union was largely fought out in Ukraine, and it was Ukrainian who did the bulk of the suffering and the bulk of the fighting for that matter in World War two. And so it from that point of view, was a a very, you know, interesting speech, I thought. Again, I kind of one of his, I think kind of tour de forces which we’re getting used to now.

But I I just wonder if you have some thoughts about that having served as ambassador there and knowing this history as well as you do.

Yeah. No. I think you’re right. I mean, Putin has tried to appropriate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. I mean, the Soviets deserve a lot of credit.

They fought probably three times as many divisions on the Russian front as the Russian allies did in in France and Italy. But it was the Soviets, it was not Russia, and Putin now seems to pretend that this history is just to the credit of Russia when, in fact, if you look at other parts of the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Belarus, those countries were fully occupied by the German Army in World War two. A relatively small portion of what was then the Russian Soviet Fitter to Social Republic was occupied by the Nazis. And on portion of bases, Ukraine and even in more so, Belarus suffered far more greatly than Russia did. So, to separate by Putin, pretend this is just a Russian victory.

It’s it’s his effort to abuse history and use it to a purpose, I think, for his domestic audience, primarily.

Our guest has been Steve Piper, Steve. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been great to have you. Unfortunately, we could go on I think for hours talking about this, but you have other things to do. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, drop us a line at shield republic at gmail dot com or give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get Secret Podcast, and we will see you next week.

Thanks very much, Eric.