Sam Greene
Good morning to those of you who are joining us from Washington. Good afternoon to those joining from Europe and places beyond, my name is Sam Greene. I am Director of the Democratic Resilience Program here at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, Senior Russia Hand at CEPA as well as a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London. Very happy to be joined, first of all by you this morning this afternoon depending on where you are, we will have hopefully more people joining us as time goes but I don’t want to abuse your time since you made the effort to to be here at the start. Very pleased to be joined as well by three of my esteemed colleagues at CEPA. Elena Davlikanova is a Democracy Fellow, political scientists, and analysts from Kyiv in Ukraine joining us here from Washington. Volodymyr Dubovyk, also political scientist, specialist International Relations Professor at Odessa I. Mechnikov National University in Ukraine currently joining us from Toronto, and Pavel Luzin also a Senior Fellow with us at CEPA, specialist in Russian foreign and security policy, and a visiting fellow at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts from where he also joins us today. Pavel, Volodymyr, and Elena are very much representative of the group of people that we brought together to produce the report that we wanted to share with you today and talk about the broader implications there of. We were very fortunate over the last year or so to be able to work with a diverse group of Ukrainian, other European, US and Russian analysts to begin to think about the challenge that Russia presents not just in the day to day right, but to begin to think up 18, 24 maybe considerably further down the road, about what are the contours of the world in which the US and Europe will need to be engaging with Russia? How is Russia likely to behave in that world? And what are the what are the imperatives that that creates for us and allied policymakers. It’s also an attempt to put the day to day issues, whether that’s the conduct of the war or the conduct of politics on Capitol Hill here in Washington, or in Brussels and elsewhere, in a clear, analytical context. The we’ll have a moment and have a chance in a moment to take questions on the report itself, if you have the opportunity to see it, or on the broader issues that we’ll discuss. Very eager to get you and all of my colleagues involved in the conversation. But I’ll start with just a few thoughts. Summarizing where I think the report has taken us. Three key findings really, one when we look in depth at how Russia ended up where it is, how Russia found itself and decided that it was in its interests to launch the war, first initially in 2014, and then to escalate it in 2022 in Ukraine and against Ukraine. We find a Russia that appears to be durably committed to three geostrategic objectives. One of which is regional, political, economic, and military domination in its former empire, what we might think of as the post Soviet space broadly. The second is undermining the institutions and structures of Western powers that have impeded that domination, whether that is military cohesion, the cohesion of the European project and the North Atlantic project and NATO, whether that is the structures of economic power that enable sanctions to be effective and to impede Russian policy. And the third is the fusion of of domestic authoritarianism, with international conflict, which allows the Kremlin both to weaponize international conflict and geopolitical confrontation for the purposes of enforcing domestic political and economic domination, as well as to weaponize essentially the entirety of the Russian system. Whether that’s the economy, whether that’s the political system, whether that society for the purposes of pursuing its geostrategic aims regionally and globally, when we look not in an attempt necessarily to predict the future of Russian politics. But we look at when we look at the building blocks from which Russia’s future will be built, whether that is a future simply after and some end to the war in Ukraine or whether that’s the future that might even extend beyond the region. And we can talk about the, quote unquote elections coming up next month in, in Russia, if you like. We see very little prospect for a change in Russia’s adherence to these three geostrategic goals. And we see very little, or in fact, pretty much nothing that the US and its allies can do to change this policy environment. So this is something that, again, my colleagues and I have concluded is a durable factor that the US and Europe are going to have to deal with. Another durable factor, and this is the second finding, is that Russia retains the capability to to pursue these aims. Russia has taken losses, obviously on the battlefield in Ukraine, but as we have seen, remains fully capable of keeping this war going. The report delves into the contours of Russian reconstitution and its ability to rebuild its its forces and its military capabilities, as well as the other tools that Russia could bring to bear whether that’s in strategic arms, nuclear arms, whether that is in its economic relationships, whether that is in hybrid, and other tools of confrontation. And the third broad finding is that failure now multiplies costs later. A failure to understand that containment needs to begin with the war in Ukraine and then extend beyond the war in Ukraine carries with it multiple risks. One is that it embeds the perception in the Kremlin right that the foreign policy it has been pursuing, is, in fact, sustainable and encourages the Kremlin to continue to pursue it, again, a greater cost to the US and Europe. The second is that it multiplies, what we described in the report is the confluence of challenge, right. So Russia is not acting in a vacuum and there are other actors that are looking at what Russia is doing and how the West is, is responding to that. And so effective containment and deterrence of Russia reduces the likelihood that the US has to face more assertive challenges elsewhere around the world. And then, the third aspect of that is that it simply fails to deter a wider war. If we we latch on in the report to the idea of containment obviously, a Cold War concept, but the initial impetus for containment right stems from the recognition that we face an adversary that cannot be strategically, militarily defeated, cannot be taken off the map, it cannot be subjugated, but at the same time, it cannot be persuaded diplomatically to pursue a different course of action. And so the primary objective for the US and its allies needs to be to institute guardrails that shape the likelihood of certain decisions being made in the Kremlin, and prevent an inevitable conflict from growing into a larger, global conflagration. The report points to four pillars of a strategy of renewed containment. One, as I’ve already hinted at, is defeating Russian aggression in Ukraine, the idea being that the outcome in Ukraine must make future war unpalatable to whoever occupies the Kremlin, whether that’s Putin or a successor. The second is reestablishing deterrence by denial in Europe. That means solidifying geostrategic unity and cohesion among the North Atlantic allies, as well as solidifying the defense industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic. The third is hardening the soft targets of Russian influence. This has at least two elements to it. One of which is focusing on disinformation and kleptocracy things that we had been shown to disrupt both consensus within European and North American societies and within the alliance as a whole. But also, you know, focusing on the attractiveness of, of the Western offer, right, that we cannot simply expect to contain the challenge from Russia and potentially others if all that we do is point to the negative sides of what Russia has to offer to the world. We need to make sure that we are investing in the positive sides of what the US and Europe have to offer to the world. And then finally, the report points to a fourth pillar of undermining Russian dominance in its former empire. This is not a recipe or a call for lighting fires in parts of the post-Soviet space. But it is a call for giving society states and economies throughout the former Soviet Union options and opportunities to engage strategically with Europe and with the United States. There is a lot more detail is a long report, I do recommend that if you have the time you take a look in, in detail. I will stop there open the floor for questions again for for all of us here on the panel, including Elena, Volodymyr, and Pavel. And looking forward to getting the conversation started, again about the report itself or any of the issues adjacent to it that we’re dealing with whether in on the ground in Ukraine, in Russia, or in European and American politics, such as they are. And now is when somebody tells me that I had been unmuted for the last 10 minutes and nobody heard a word. Great. Okay, well, um, while people are hopefully coming up with questions I might turn to you Volodymyr first. There have been a range of ideas put on the table. Right, there’s been a discussion about NATO accession, which seems to be deadlocked at the moment, there has been a discussion about G7 bilateral arrangements. And we’ve seen the first of these promulgated by the United Kingdom. From your perspective, and when you look at the discussions in Ukraine, how would you evaluate this range of security options that are available for for Ukraine, and where this process is going?
Volodymyr Dubovyk
Sure. Ukraine, of course, needs to think about long term security arrangements for itself. We couldn’t just think about the current moment, even though the current moment is dire, and as essential for Ukraine. But we need to think beyond that as well. Like what would happen if this stage of this war is over, or this war is over, but then there’ll be more wars because one of the main findings of the report is actually that Russia will continue to be a threat and that’s a problem. And we need in Ukraine to prepare better than than we were prepared on February 24, 2022. Therefore, we need to look for options and ideal options. Ideal option is to become part of NATO. That is kind of a finding, or that is an assessment, assumption, which is shared by most Ukrainian experts now, and also by the public and political elites, because for a long while in Ukraine, where you had experts who were agreeing on this, but public was lagging behind, and sometimes political elites, political forces were kind of in disagreement and behaving opportunistically on this subject. But now it’s clear that vis-à-vis Russia, it’s asymmetric conflict, Russia just stronger. So it’s very hard for us to fight just alone against Russia. So we need to be part of this collective security arrangement. Is that realistic or not? I mean, can we expect something from a Washington Treaty, or Washington Summit this year by NATO, something that wasn’t delivered in Vilnius or not? There’s been some ideas on the surface about maybe inviting Ukraine into NATO, but without the currently occupied by Russia territories. That has been debated. I mean, I think I personally have questions about how is it feasible? Is it workable? Can it actually be working or not? But this is some kind of a compromise, because it’s better than no ideas about how to invite NATO. So maybe that should be explored more like can Ukraine indeed been invited the current territories that are under control of Ukrainian government, which is 80 plus percent of Ukrainian territory. But even without it without a clear, you know, immediate membership perspective, then Ukraine should definitely deepen relations with NATO. And the way I always put it, that Ukraine is de facto a NATO member, just without Chapter Five of the Washington Treaty, so just without anyone rushing to send troops to defend Ukraine, against Russia anytime soon. So, but we’re getting so much support financial institutional weapons, like of course, from alliances itself and members of alliances. So that’s already something and in terms of security guarantees, again, there is a big gap, or Ukraine would like to prefer to have some kind of guarantee that would be binding and meeting and triggering quickly, you know, anytime soon. Russia attacks again, then we would have some kind of Chapter Five guarantees, but that’s not going to happen because imperative, the priority for many of our best allies in the West is to avoid direct confrontation with Russia. So therefore, we’re looking for instead something like security assurances and security assistance packages of the type that we’ve signed with the United Kingdom and others are looking the same way. And I would say it’s better than nothing. It probably, you know, come short of our expectations in Ukraine of what we really need what we really hope to get. But at the same time, it’s better than just be alone vis-à-vis Russia. So if other countries are willing to put in place a long term commitment to Ukraine, financial and otherwise, you know, how much, four or five years ahead and how much money each year will be given to Ukraine on weapons. That’s already big deal. So if the number multiplies those countries, that will be great. But in the meantime, of course, we understand in Ukraine, we need also to double down on our military preparedness, no matter what, because this war is not over yet. Much of what we’re going to see in the future will depend on how this war ends. And that’s, you know, but many of the things that we’re thinking about are kinda even not relatable directly to how this war ends, because we understand that Russia, no matter what will be, will continue to be a threat. We need to think accordingly. Thank you.
Sam Greene
Thank you for that. I think we’ll circle back to a lot of that. And again, I would invite you know, there’s a lot of people on this call, who spend a lot of time in a lot of depth on these issues. So I would invite you to join, join the conversation with thoughts and and questions, either in the chat, or I think you should be able to unmute yourself and ask a question, use the raise hand function if you’d like. Elena, obviously, people in Ukraine are focusing and aware of what’s happening in Washington or I should say, what’s not happening in Washington, right, a lot of going around in circles. The Ukraine supplemental, as with so much else in Washington seems to be stuck. What impact is that having on discussions in Ukraine itself? How is that changing Ukrainian perceptions of what is possible and likely in the future?
Elena Davlikanova
Thank you, first of all, Ukrainian government and Ukrainian people are very much grateful to American people and American government for all the help that has been provided by them. As you know, there have been more than 100 billion US dollar of American tax payers provided to Ukraine to oppose Russia’s aggression. Even though majority of this count stayed in the United States creating new jobs boosting defense sector. And moreover, according to my information, more than 200 billion US dollars is now it will be now investment from the European Union, because the orders from the defense sector of European Union are coming to the US. So we are truly hoping that these two ports will continue because American leadership is essential if we talk about not just not losing the war, but when we are talking about winning, because what is going on in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. And that’s why these this report is very, very important because it presents a strategy that will help ensure that not only Ukrainians, but also Americans and Europeans will feel safe in their homes. And they will not repeat the fates of Ukrainians. And that’s why it would be very, very important to look a little bit into what was described as the strategy towards ensuring Russian defeat in Ukraine. And the first one was to shift from the narrative support as long as it takes too as long, as fast as we can. Because this prolongation of political debate in the capitol actually puts Ukraine in a pretty difficult situation. And understanding that the border issue is very important for Americans in their national interest. I think that this issue should be decoupled from the issues of foreign help to Ukraine, Israel and Palestine. This would be a very strategically biased step. Because the defeat of Russia in Ukraine is also in US strategic interest. The next important thing Volodymyr already talked about this is the accession to NATO and the Washington Summit which should send a very clear message that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is inevitable. In parallel, we should go and concentrate on EU integration. And this I think that Ukraine has already made a lot of steps to successful European integration. But we need investments. And again, lack of investment, brings us back to the question of security and brings us back to the issue of NATO. As a Ukrainian, of course, I truly believe that it is important to ensure that justice will be served. And we’re talking not only about Russian leadership, here, we are talking about those people who committed war crimes, we’re talking about propagandistic enabled and fueled this acceptance by the Russian society of all the crimes that have been created against the nation that used to be the growth of a nation. And also there should be a talk about collective political responsibility in the Russian society, because without this talk, there will be no in-depth changes. Russia will remain the way it is for decades to come. And it will be a growing threat, not only to Ukraine, but the whole region and the world, especially that we hear the talks on the Capitol about the US’s powers, someone calls it the US and some evil. And I think that we should do everything in everything possible. And by we, I mean, Ukraine, and all the Western allies to prevent further damage, not only to Ukrainian, but all the nations in Europe and also the European Union.
Sam Greene
Indeed, thank you for that, again, I, there’s a lot to unpack there. But I want to turn again, and I’ll sound like a broken record. But I would invite people to, to join into the conversation. But Pavel, I mentioned, you know, Russia’s military capability, military reconstitution as well as its ability to really consolidate resources and coordinate resources in a way in fact that Western governments have struggled to when it comes to defense, procurement and putting the economy on a war footing. Looking out to the midterm, right, we’ve seen lots of analysis of what Russia could put on the battlefield. Now we can get into that if people are interested. But looking out to the midterm, you know, a few years from now, how would you evaluate the prospects of Russian military reconstitution, its ability to expand aggression if it so chooses.
Pavel Luzin
Thank you Sam, and good morning, everyone. So towards the midterm, there are several challenges which Russia wants to solve. First of all, its restoring of arms, restoring the park of armored vehicles, main battle tanks, artillery, cruise missiles, and so on. And currently, what what we see today, Russia was able to increase some production rates during 2023. But the significant decrease was only in those industries in those factories, where we saw a significant decrease in previous several years. So it’s a kind of low base effect in those industries, where, for instance, main battle tanks. In 2023, Russia was back closer to the peak production rate of 2017 in terms of battle tanks. In some industries, we even see a decrease for instance, aircraft industry, spacecraft industry, we don’t see any, any increasing of explosives because you may produce millions of artillery shells but without explosives it’s just a piece of metal. And we don’t see many any significant increase of production rates in explosives. The same is true towards towards […]. So how, how to go farther. As, as I can say, the Russian government as for today doesn’t know how, how to go farther. They will try to invest more money in import substitution for instance. But import substitution leads to spreading as limited resources and it does not allow to concentrate them in some specific parts. However, Russia relies on the Soviet era storages of arms. And Russia started to do this by the end of 2022 and during all 2023. It’s hard to say how long Russia will be able to rely on this torch, but definitely this storage of Soviet era weapons is not endless, it is not endless. Right now we see how from two or three main battle tanks in store Russia restore one main battle tanks which which can be operation. So, Russia faces limits here, and I presume in midterm prospects, Russia will face this limits. Also in midterm prospects, the problem of machine tools will become much more painful as in now, because currently Russia works with using machine tools purchased from Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, United States, Taiwan in previous years. Russia started massive purchasing in late 2000s and early 2010s. So, this machine tools are working right now. But in midterm prospect, they will need replacements, they will need parts, they will need special oils, and so on and so on. And even if Russia increased the amount of machine tools imported from China, the quality of this machine tools is not enough for producing of advanced weapons like cruise missiles like I know hot combat helicopters the new generations of Main Battle Tanks, advanced artillery, and it’s all so there is limits. And also, big part of the problem is manpower. Yes. Regardless, the massive losses of 2022, 2023. And I should mention that invited I guess the last rate was the Russian army was two times higher than itn 2022. So regardless, this process was Russia was able to restore the quantity of its armed force, not the quality. Currently the Russian run forces is the kind of, especially ground part of this process, of course, is a cocktail of contracted soldiers mobilized soldiers, prisoners, volunteers, mercenaries, guys from Nepal, Somalia, Syria, and so and so on. But in a midterm prospect, even in this year, 2024 Russia needs to choose how to how to maintain as the number of troops because because there is also a limited amount of people who would like to join the armed force, even if they’re paid by two $3,000 per month. So Russia will need to choose whether or not to conduct another wave of popular mobilization or maybe to send conscript soldiers to to the battlefield. Because conscript soldiers at least 200,000s of them it’s kind of elephant in the room. Russia does not send them in the battlefield, just because of political will just because of political will. So it’s another problem. And currently the Kremlin does not know how it will solve this problem in midterm prospects. But I should mention, concluding my speech. I should mentioned that despite all this limits all this challenges, Russia’s leadership still wants to achieve its its strategic goals. The first strategic goal is eliminating of Ukrainian state. The second strategic goal second to the last but not the least, eliminating elimination of NATO. And the third main strategic goal is changing of rule based global order is destroying rule based global order. So even if Russia will not be able to solve all the changes with Russian Armed Forces, Russia will try to export instability in Africa, in the Middle East. Remember how Minister Lavrov is shaking hands with Hamas guys. Russia is hoping for troubles in US-China relations, and so on and so on. Russia will be remain to be a troublemaker, strategic troublemaker. Thank you.
Sam Greene
Thank you for that, again, a lot to delve into. And I got that for the quite helpful to see. You know, both that there are, there are challenges that the West faces, but there are challenges that Russia faces. And that means that there are opportunities, I think it’s become a little bit easily. And maybe, you know, a little bit too easily accepted in the West, that we are failing that Western governments are failing to undermine the Russian military machine. And so it’s helpful to know that there is in fact, there are things that are possible. We have a question from Elisabeth Malo from Defense News for you, Pavel. She asks, do you believe that we are still under estimating Russian military capabilities two years on? Or do we now have a more realistic view of what it can and cannot do. Our estimates of what Russia can can and cannot do have really fluctuated right over the course of this war from an assumption in the early days that they would win very quickly to an assumption maybe by the summer or the fall of 2022, that, in fact, they might lose rather quickly. And now we’re back probably closer to the, to the previous assumption. But But if the question isn’t, you know, what’s your analysis of their capability? What’s your analysis of Western analytical capabilities? Do we understand Russia better now than we used to?
Pavel Luzin
Thank you for the question. I, on the one hand, yes, well, currently, we understand the Russian leader capabilities better. But at the same time, many of us still tend to overestimate Russian capabilities. Like we did this in January, February 2022. And we do this now. Many of my colleagues, not in CEPA, I mean, broadly, in the world, many of my colleagues still believes that, oh, Russia is to big Russia is so powerful. Ukraine will never will never win, the West can cannot strategical defeat Russia. I think, no, we shouldn’t underestimate Russia. Because look, look at other parts of the world to during the last decades. Irregular armies like ISIS army, like Hamas battalion, so some something like that, they still could create a lot of troubles and they made a lot of troubles. And for instances, a campaign against ISIS took four years, took four years. And we shouldn’t underestimate Russia. But at the same time, we shouldn’t overestimate it. We shouldn’t believe that oh, Russia is demographically endless. Russia is endless in terms of arms in terms of production capacity. Russia cannot be defeated. No Russia can be defeated, and Russia must be defeated because it’s not the issue of you know, Russian Ukrainian war. It is the issue of security of Europe is a issue of security of the United States. It is the issue of security of democracy and safety of this world. And sorry for my pathetic war words, but it is true Russia openly declares that NATO must be eliminated Russia, Russia openly declares its hateness towards human rights towards freedoms towards capitalism and market economy. And Russia will do everything will try to do everything to undermine all the things and of course, Russia hates American leadership.
Sam Greene
Thank you for that. So we have a question from from John Davison from, from Reuters, about Russia, China. Right. He writes, you know, they keep talking up their new partnership and opposition to the US led order. You know, what, they’re the limits of that partnership. You know, Moscow leaning on China and other Asian countries to evade sanctions making it weaker in, in the longer term. I’ll pass this off to Volodymyr in a in a moment, but I think, you know, we’ve seen we seem to be seeing right, a mixed picture. Right. And I think it is sometimes a little bit too easy to assume that because they do assume that rhetoric is going to match action or that action will inevitably follow rhetoric, right, they were very quick to jump out to this discussion of a no limits partnership. But we do see some of the limits of that partnership. Right. So, you know, gas has not flowed to the extent that that that Russia would like certainly, and it’s not being sold at prices, that that Russia would like we saw news just this week, that now most of the largest banks in China servicing Russian import and export activities have blocked transactions with Russian domiciled entities in it as well as Belarusian, Russian domiciled entities. And we might expect that, in fact, to expand to other jurisdictions where sanctions evasion is, is a problem. So there are some structural limitations. I think there appears to be a conversation, a quiet conversation right in in China about exactly how much of a hit China is willing to take, especially given its current economic difficulties. And we should look for opportunities there, although I wouldn’t exaggerate them. But Volodymyr, you wanted to come in on this.
Volodymyr Dubovyk
Yeah, Sam, you’ve done a great job already in beginning to answer that question. I completely agree. It’s not that simple. There is no simple answer to that question. China is very having very ambiguous position with regard to the war. On the one hand, of course, we see rhetorics, propaganda, which is aligning with Russia, which is blaming all the whole war on the West and NATO, US and basically saying Russia is just defending itself. On the other hand, you see China being worried about the war. And initially, of course, Xi probably knew about Putin going to fight in Ukraine, but didn’t know of course, that that will be prolonged, long war destabilizing the whole region, destabilizing world markets, which is detrimental to China as well, because actually have a slowdown in economic growth as a recent. So China is aware of those red lines, they don’t want to cross so maybe, yeah, the propaganda diplomatically supporting Russia, they’re extending breaks, we’ll see, we will not actually have any effect or not, things like that, because China needs Russia. China doesn’t have too many allies, frankly. And Russia standing next door even weakened Russia, with all this territory and resources and nuclear weapons. It’s a big deal to China. So they cannot just abandon Russia, obviously, they don’t have enough leverage to perhaps to just tell Putin to stop the war because Putin might not listen, he is absolutely possessed or obsessed with a war against Ukraine, that’s too important to him. So he wouldn’t listen to anyone. But as you mentioned, that China is trying not to cross the line and not to send weapons definitely in big numbers into Russia, of course, they’re sending tons of stuff of dual use, you know, which has not made weaponry, not military, but Russia using it to make weapons, unfortunately, to kill more Ukrainians. So that’s unfortunately, the, you know, it’s really bad for us in Ukraine. But at the same time, we still believe that China might play a positive role at one point, they’ve been said that when we see that both sides Russia and Ukraine are exhausted, maybe their diplomacy will kick in. We’ll see about that. Zelensky continues to invite Chinese diplomats to all forums, including, you know, discussions of future peace negotiations and stuff like that. And that’s not because Ukrainians are naive or not seeing how close Russia is ideologically to China and vice versa. But because we tried to decouple them a little bit, and there are there are not they’re not seeing a seeing everything in sync. There are some frictions they’re starting from who’s number one. I mean, historically, it will be Russia, right now it’s definitely China. and that’s not pleases a lot of people in Moscow. So here on China issue, I think that you can, if you’re in the West, if you’re US, you should understand, first of all, that they are connected. So whoever says don’t focus on Russia extensively, because you’re distracted from China, they are wrong. There is a connection there by weakening Russia, you weaking China, and that needs to be understood and also you need to throw into the game Iran and North Korea there is clearly a lot of coordination there. Right now you’re dealing with access. I mean, a lot of people decry the whole term access accessible for a good reason, maybe. But at the same time, there is clearly an alliance, which is undermining US and Western interests around the world. And they’re coordinating their activities. And Chinese Russian access is key here. So by weakening Russia by undermining Russian capacity to wage war, you’re also weakening Russia. So that’s something that a lot of people in the US should understand.
Sam Greene
Right. So we’ve got a bunch of questions coming in, as always happens to come to the end, but happy to try to take them. They do, I think, and I’m just trying to read this as I talk, so I apologize for that. But as well, they start with Russia. Right. So the question from Charlie Hancock from the from the Moscow Times about the domestic situation in Russia, will the election in March in particular influence strategy in Ukraine over the coming year? We don’t deal with this directly in the report. So I’m going to speak a little bit out of school, Pavel might disagree with me on this, but I’ll begin with my own take, which is no, I don’t expect it to have much of an impact, right. We’ve saw just just today the decision, surprising nobody that Boris Nadezhdin was not registered for the for the elections, there will as a result be no anti war candidate in in the elections again, you know, no, great surprise. But one of the things that means is that nobody actually has to talk about the war during the election, and we have not seen candidates really talk about the war during the election. In fact, we’re not in the campaign, seeing many people talk about much of anything at all, except for the fact that we need to come together as a country. And so there’s a sense of geo political confrontation, right. And that’s kind of the the the campaign, but it’s not about the conduct of the war. On the front lines, there are theories out there, obviously, you we’ve all seen them that once Putin gets to the elections, he can turn to, to, you know, large scale military mobilization call up more men, I am highly skeptical of that. I think that they will continue to see that as a risk, elections, its odd for an autocracy, elections are important to Putin, but they certainly understand that it’s not elections that actually keep them in power, they need to maintain control of the street between elections. And I think their memories of how things went back in the autumn of 2022, right, are such that they will not want to repeat that particular experiment. Particularly because in the interim, they have been able to get about as many men onto the front line as they need and probably about as many men on the front line as they can handle. And so the the risk reward ratio right, in, in both escalating the war and escalating mobilization, I think, probably argues for steady state, and again, I think Putin is is until things change in the way that the West supports Ukraine, Putin is it seems to be calculating that things are working more or less the way he would like them to, or at least as well as they can. Okay, lots of big questions coming up, so ethnic mobilization and separatism in, in Russia. But with an interest in Ukraine twist from, from Dor, so I’m gonna pass that to Elena, in in a second. Elephant in the room, what happens when and if Trump returns to power? Does Russia win? That’s a big, big conversation. And are there substantial indications that Russia might expand the conflict in the in the future? So I’ll put those three out there. And then maybe just do a quick round of of the panelists to respond to anything that you feel you would like to respond to? So Elena, I might turn to you, because just start with because Dor’s question. You know, asks, in particular, does Ukraine take these separatist movements and sort of ethnic decolonizing movements in Russia seriously?
Elena Davlikanova
Well, Ukraine takes seriously everything but we know that at the very beginning of the full scale invasion, there were high hopes that when the first wave of the Russian attack team, that there will be a response from not only Russian people, but also ethnic minorities, which Ukrainians believe, share the experience of being colonized of being oppressed and being treated as secondary by Russians, but unfortunately, lastly, what really happened what is going on now in the regions is not very much a good example. If we talk about anti political movements and even if we look at the composition of the international battalion that is fighting in Ukraine. While it has representatives of several nations, both Russians from Chechnya and so on and so forth. But the overall number of these people is very low. So, we don’t think that we need to have high hopes on that. And I also would like to add on the election issue, the last elections in Russia happened in 1996. And since then, Russia only had ritual routine. So we don’t really have much to discuss here because we already know the results. If we think about what’s going to happen if Trump wins elections, I don’t think that there is anyone who knows for sure. Trump is too unpredictable for many reasons. And on the one hand, we also how he praises Putin for being ‘strong leader’. On the other hand, now, there are a lot of different circumstances that might influence the decision on how to proceed with Ukraine. So we truly hope that Ukraine will be able to cooperate with any administration. And that’s why our diplomatic efforts are already there to just, you know, keep having this good relations, relationship and friendship with US. And now keep getting that support that Ukraine needs, for it’s existential fight, fight against Russia.
Sam Greene
Volodymyr, I don’t know if you want to come in on on that issue, as well as the question of other fronts, right. Is Putin so tied down in Ukraine that he cannot attempt escalation and other fronts? I’ll pass that that question to Pavel in a minute as well.
Volodymyr Dubovyk
Right, so well, I think that on this subject, I only can add, because I’m a historian by first degree that I remember that Ukrainian nationalists of all people in the middle of Second World War have created actually the anti-Bolshevik bloc of nations, which actually existed for several decades after the end of Second World War, where they were inviting other nations in the form in the in the Soviet empire, to join them in fighting against the Soviet Soviet soldiers. And that was a very interesting, but of course, that fight didn’t quite receive assistance or aid from the West, except for the Baltics, which were not recognized as a part of Soviet Union. And since 1950s, at least since Eisenhower administration, there was a captive nations initiative in place, but it’s only referred to three Baltic people and nations, not to Ukraine. But another question. So I might say, I would like to address the Trump issue as the elephant in the room or the question from John, we are very much worried, of course, about what’s happening in the in, in the Congress right now. And what might happen in November, we’re seeing the numbers we’re following the sociological polls, were seeing that Trump has a momentum. And you know, Biden’s ratings are not growing. You know, we have to now somehow solidarize with Biden. Reluctantly, maybe I don’t know, because some people in Ukraine are also critical of what Biden administration did too much attention towards the threat of escalation from Russia, too much of a delay in sending certain types of weapons to Ukraine, and so on. So basically making Ukraine fight with one hand behind his back, as a lot of people are saying those days, but at the same time, we’re seeing that Biden is committed to assisting Ukraine, and his administration will probably not change the course if he stays in White House, but the Trump, if you look at his rhetoric, so definitely is not friend of Ukraine, and that’s been the case for a long time. You know, it’s not something situation only this year, you can go back to 2016, when he said that probably Crimea should be recognized as a part of Russia. We should go back to you know, 2019 when he implied pressure against Zelensky, you know, for domestic political use. So he got up so himself up so high on the central Ukraine letter, so I’m not I’m not among those optimist who who are who exist in Ukraine about Trump, some people are saying he is so unpredictable, you know, impulsive, voluntary, so if he comes to power, he might very well do 180 and change his attitude and actually support Ukraine. And some people will remind us that actually, firstly, the weapons were given to Ukraine under the Trump administration, but I’m not seeing this time around. I see that as a best case scenario for Ukraine if Trump becomes President is that assistance would be continued but a much slower, much smaller level, actually just not to abandon Ukraine completely, not just not to throw it under the bus, you know, by 100%, but just giving some, some assistance to Ukraine. And also, I can imagine that if Trump says, okay, stop the war Putin, you know, I’m, I’m planning to do this within 24 hours, as we hear, you know, and Putin does not stop a word that might irritate and annoy Trump and put him in an easy situation. So it might be by inertia saying, okay, let’s give some more support to Ukraine if Putin doesn’t want to, to follow our lead on this and sit down for negotiations. But yeah, people are very much in Ukraine very much worried about what’s going on in Congress right now still hopeful that the common sense would prevail, that Americans will see that supporting Ukraine is actually in US national interests. And that’s where I see it’s very important that the Biden administration, as of recent started actually talking to Americans about this, in this terms, not just violation of international order, or war crimes, or defending democracy against authoritarian regime, but actually explaining to Americans that this is very much in US interest and a lot of money given to Ukraine is actually stays in United States and helps to work to improve situation with American economy. So much time was lost, unfortunately, I think in terms of public communication, but this Biden administration in that respect, but we’re already seeing actually a little bump in sociological opinion polls about Ukraine, Americans supporting Ukraine, eight more often Biden started to employ this and they need to double down on that, I think.
Sam Greene
Pavel, you want to address any of this, as well as the, you know, the question on expanded conflict in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the Baltics?
Pavel Luzin
So first of all, we see Russia as a power in decline, yeah, power, which feels a lot of suffers from a lot of weaknesses. But again, don’t underestimate the Russia’s leadership will to fight, to continue fighting, their ideological motivation. And don’t underestimate their attention towards psychological aspects of warfare. If the Russian leadership, the Kremlin, will feel that the West is weak, or not too self confident, especially inside NATO, in relations between NATO and us, in case of some political turbulence in the United States. So Russia may strike, even being weaker, because Russia is not going to, you know, to conquer continental Europe, for instance. Russia is going to eliminate NATO, Russia is going to, to disintegrate, the Transatlantic unity. Or Russia will be happy if America will turn towards isolationist policy, and so on and so on. And Russia believes that sometimes a weaker, weaker power may win, because of a asymmetric asymmetric measures as asymmetric or asymmetric warfare. So in my opinion, the West must be united, the West must be self confident to support to prevent and to win.
Sam Greene
Point taken, and I think that, you know, really brings it back to to the report, which also, you know, I think, draws in both George’s question and the the Trump question, to, to a large extent, and that the conclusion of the report. And the reason we went in to do this research, right was to understand like, are we dealing with a challenge that is localized geographically and localized temporarily, right, that this will end when we come up with a solution for for the war in Ukraine. And the conclusion, I think that quite clearly comes from from the analysis is that in fact, Ukraine is a tragic and rather large symptom of a much bigger problem, a much longer problem and a fundamental inbuilt structural conflict between the way that Russia perceives its foreign policy imperatives and National Security imperatives and the way that the US does. One of the objects of this, I think for for the authors right is to begin that conversation and help that conversation happen in, in, in Washington and, and elsewhere. Pavel mentioned sort of asymmetries, and one of the core asymmetries that emerges from this is that Russia has a consolidated view and an ability to, to pursue its foreign policy objectives in a concerted manner. The US foreign policy establishment right, such as it is, at the moment has not settled on a view of the way that the war in Ukraine speaks to US national interest, I think in many ways, that’s much more consolidated in in Europe, but the European national security or European security apparatus, right, is not yet at the level that it would need to be to respond as Europe, it may get there. And that’s another paper, in fact, CEPA has been writing about that the European security architecture and forthcoming paper on on Ukrainian security solutions. But if there is one core recommendation, sort of reading between the lines, both of the paper and what my colleagues had been saying today, it is that you know, regardless of who wins the US presidential election, right, there needs to be a baseline bipartisan consensus about the importance of restoring deterrence and strategic containment in in the European space. I think we need to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, this afternoon, this evening, wherever you are, thank you very much to my colleagues Pavel Luzin, Elena Davlikanova, and Volodymyr Dubovyk. Please do be in touch. We’re not hard to find. Reach out to us on email, social media, however, or through our press team here, Michael and Sarah, and we’ll be happy to delve into more detail on any of this. Best of luck. Stay safe and see you soon.
