21 – "Our Enemies Will Vanish" – Does the West Still Underestimate Ukraine and Overestimate Russia?

00:00:00: Welcome to Berlin Side Out, the podcast that takes an expert look at how Germany sees the

00:00:05: world and the world sees Germany.

00:00:07: With me, Benjamin Tallis.

00:00:09: And me, Aaron Gash-Bernett.

00:00:11: Hello, and welcome back to Berlin Side Out, the Foreign Affairs podcast with the German

00:00:20: Council on Foreign Relations that takes an expert look at how Germany sees the world

00:00:24: and the world sees Germany.

00:00:26: I'm Aaron Gash-Bernett, a journalist and security analyst specializing in German politics and

00:00:31: foreign policy.

00:00:32: And I'm here, as always, with my friend and co-host, Benjamin Tallis, senior research

00:00:37: fellow here at the Council and head of its action group, Seitanwende.

00:00:41: Ben, one of the main reasons there even is a Berlin Side Out at all is that Russia's

00:00:47: invasion of Ukraine laid bare how the West, and particularly Germany, has been consistently

00:00:54: wrong about how to both engage with Central and Eastern Europe as well as to deter Russia

00:01:01: for decades.

00:01:02: And it's made this mistake, I would say, in two clear ways.

00:01:07: One is by overestimating Russia, and the other is by underestimating Ukrainian resilience

00:01:13: in particular, as well as the citizens of other countries who have lived under Soviet

00:01:17: and Russian occupation.

00:01:19: That's right, Aaron, but I actually think the problem goes even deeper than that.

00:01:23: And I think the last two years have really laid bare this lack of understanding for why

00:01:27: we should be even defending democracy and freedom, that alone how we can actually go

00:01:31: about doing that.

00:01:32: And while Ukrainians have been doing the fighting and dying, something that has to be said has

00:01:37: provided something of a wake-up call to a lot of people in the West, as well as an inspiring

00:01:42: example, and we're going to hear more about that later.

00:01:45: Too many of our leaders are still dithering and holding out on Ukraine.

00:01:49: And as regular listeners to the show will know, the approach of the German government

00:01:53: is a case in point.

00:01:54: At the beginning, Germany was slow to react, or even to work out why it should.

00:01:58: And then we went through the insult of the 5,000 helmets.

00:02:02: And eventually, after the Titan Vendor speech, after the Schultz government dragged its feet

00:02:06: every step of the way, after much kicking and screaming, we did get to the delivery

00:02:10: of heavy weapons.

00:02:11: But only after extreme pressure was really applied by allies, and after Ukraine's resilience,

00:02:16: its resistance had given us the chance to supply Ukraine.

00:02:20: Now here we are stuck again in Groundhog Day, with the same lame excuses being wheeled out

00:02:24: for why Germany shouldn't deliver tourist cruise missiles, as were made last year, or

00:02:29: back in 2022, for why Berlin shouldn't send leopard tanks.

00:02:33: That's right.

00:02:34: And shockingly, though not surprisingly, Olaf Schultz has still not said that Ukraine should

00:02:39: win the war.

00:02:41: And that shows in the German government's approach, as we've talked about on previous

00:02:44: episodes.

00:02:45: And I think that's really why, despite having spent a lot of money, and despite being in

00:02:49: absolute terms, the biggest European donor and military donor to Ukraine, Germany doesn't

00:02:54: get the credit that Olaf Schultz thinks it deserves.

00:02:57: 56 billion and little to show, as you've said before.

00:03:01: That's right.

00:03:02: It's a really expensive way to damage your country's reputation, as well as to make

00:03:04: Europe less safe.

00:03:06: And unless that changes, and Germany commits to Ukraine's victory, and thus to this goal

00:03:10: shared by allies from the Baltics to Britain from Finland to France, now we've seen very

00:03:14: strongly committing the joint op-ed between David Cameron and Stefan Sejourn yesterday

00:03:19: that are just actually recommitting to that saying Russia must be defeated in Ukraine.

00:03:23: So unless Germany actually commits to that common goal, it will remain just that, an

00:03:27: expensive way to damage Germany's reputation and make Europe less safe.

00:03:32: But I think the problem is, like those misreadings that you mentioned before, of Russia, of

00:03:36: Central and Eastern Europe, which we've talked about on the show, and of Ukraine, and this

00:03:40: lack of understanding for both the threat to freedom and democracy, and why as well as

00:03:45: how we should defend it, this all combines to mean that the Schultz government is really

00:03:49: unlikely to change course, as its key decision makers simply lack the understanding of the

00:03:54: stakes involved.

00:03:55: They lack the understanding of the urgency or the reason why this war has to be won.

00:04:00: Now both of us, and thankfully also many others here in Berlin, see that as a major problem,

00:04:05: and one that needs to be overcome, including by continually explaining what is the situation

00:04:10: in Ukraine, what is its wider geopolitical context, what's at stake, what we can do about

00:04:16: it, and why we should.

00:04:18: And Ben, that is why it is a tremendous privilege for us to welcome to the show an outstanding

00:04:22: world leading journalist whose work has highlighted all of these elements that we've just talked

00:04:27: about right now.

00:04:28: So from the frontline experience to the political context, and joining us this week is Yaroslav

00:04:33: Trofimov.

00:04:34: He is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, a paper he has

00:04:38: been with since 1999.

00:04:40: He was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for his work covering his native Ukraine and

00:04:46: the author of three books.

00:04:48: The most recent of those books is called Our Enemies Will Vanish.

00:04:52: The title is actually taken from the Ukrainian national anthem, and it is a book about Russia's

00:04:57: brutal assault and what he calls Ukraine's war of independence.

00:05:02: It's about Ukrainian resilience against all odds, which defied Western expert opinion

00:05:06: here before February 2022, and also defied the political judgments being passed in Berlin

00:05:11: and elsewhere on the morning of the 24th of February 2022.

00:05:16: That's right.

00:05:17: We remember the Ukrainian ambassador being told in several different ministries in Berlin,

00:05:21: "There's no point in helping you because you're going to lose within days."

00:05:24: Yeah, exactly.

00:05:25: Or even ours in some cases, as the assumption was.

00:05:29: Your book contains many riveting, sobering, but also hopeful stories, not just from Ukrainian

00:05:34: politicians like Zelensky and his inner circle, but everyday Ukrainian civilians and soldiers

00:05:39: during many trips to the front lines.

00:05:41: It also makes extremely clear the difference that Western assistance, that particular types

00:05:45: of heavy weapons like Heimars, like Leopard tanks made in helping Ukraine not only hold

00:05:50: out, but also in pushing Russia back.

00:05:53: The book also makes equally clear the negative consequences, the deterioration in the military

00:05:58: situation and the human suffering caused by the delays in providing various types of weapons

00:06:04: that Ukraine has requested over and over again.

00:06:07: I know we're both honored to have you here to talk about your book and Western, including

00:06:12: a German policy in Ukraine.

00:06:14: Yaroslav, welcome to Berlin and welcome to the show.

00:06:16: Great to be on the show.

00:06:17: Thank you for having me.

00:06:18: It really is great to have you here and really congratulations on the book and thank you for

00:06:22: the book.

00:06:23: I think it's absolutely essential reading and having lived and worked in Ukraine myself,

00:06:26: it brought back a lot of memories for me of places that I'd been to, the types of encounters

00:06:30: that I'd had, albeit under different circumstances.

00:06:34: What really struck me was how much of a visceral experience it actually was to read.

00:06:37: We really convey the feeling, the urgency, the tension that is there.

00:06:41: It's a cliche, but I really couldn't bring myself to put it down so much so that as I

00:06:46: had a fair-sized car journey to make while I was reading it, I bought the audiobook

00:06:49: version too and ended up listening to it in the car.

00:06:52: This backfired as chapters five, six and seven got so tense that I had to stop the car because

00:06:57: it wasn't actually going to be safe to drive while paying proper attention to what was

00:07:02: happening at Hostamel in those chapters in particular.

00:07:04: We're still here a moment, also still sends shivers down my spine reading about it.

00:07:09: That's something to note too, this viscerality of it, the closeness of experience.

00:07:15: You've reported on many wars and conflicts and seen terrible things in different parts

00:07:18: of the world, but this time was a little different.

00:07:21: This was at home.

00:07:22: You grew up in Kiev.

00:07:23: Can you tell us about that and about the experience of writing the book as well as your motivation

00:07:27: to do so?

00:07:28: Thank you.

00:07:29: I'm sorry for your hands-saving driving experience.

00:07:31: I've spent much of my career in the last 23 years covering wars in Mayhem in other people's

00:07:37: countries.

00:07:38: I was in Iraq during the invasion and during the long and bloody war there.

00:07:46: In the following years, I was running our bureau in Kabul covering the US involvement

00:07:54: in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plenty of other wars in between.

00:07:58: I was actually in Kabul in August 2021 as the American military was withdrawing.

00:08:07: I remember watching President Ashraf Ghani inspect the troops at the outskirts of Kabul

00:08:12: and say, "We will fight to the last man."

00:08:15: Then 12 hours later, he was in a helicopter heading to Uzbekistan at the Taliban where

00:08:19: my hotel.

00:08:22: Within days, they were already taking possession of American weapons and by the end of the

00:08:28: following month, they were flying Blackhawks and driving around in Emirates and Humvees.

00:08:33: I think those images are very much a factor determining American and Western policy in

00:08:40: Ukraine in the following month.

00:08:43: I think a lot of people having seen how quickly the Afghan army collapsed and how all this

00:08:50: scientific American weaponry ended up in the wrong hands were even more reluctant to provide

00:08:56: weapons to Ukraine.

00:09:00: The few people at the time who were telling the administration of Washington and other

00:09:04: capitals that all Ukraine may have a chance were unfortunately the very same people who

00:09:08: were telling them that the Afghan army will hold out.

00:09:12: They were discredited, I think, to a degree.

00:09:16: Me myself, I have to be honest.

00:09:18: When I was in Kiev, the day of the invasion and seeing how everything was in utter chaos

00:09:26: because people were just trying to figure out how to react.

00:09:29: I had it back in my mind this year.

00:09:31: What if President Zelensky does an ashram gunny?

00:09:33: President Zelensky was denying until the last moment that the war would erupt.

00:09:37: What if he also flees?

00:09:39: What if he also listens to the advice he was being given that very day by Western leaders,

00:09:44: Boris Johnson told me that I offered him to come to London and create a government in

00:09:49: exile the way Poland had done in 1939.

00:09:52: Maybe another president would have done that because everybody knew that Russia had infiltrated

00:09:56: the Ukrainian society, the Ukrainian government.

00:10:01: Nobody knew who's friend and foe.

00:10:03: The West didn't know how the Ukrainians would react, but the Ukrainians also didn't know

00:10:05: how the Ukrainians would react.

00:10:08: The Zelensky's National Security Advisor at the time, Danilov, told me that the most difficult

00:10:14: decision making in the first hours of the invasion was trying to figure out who is on

00:10:18: your side, who has switched, who hasn't, who are the Russian assets and who are and whom

00:10:24: can he trust.

00:10:25: I think it took the Ukrainians a good 48 hours to figure out.

00:10:32: As you said, Zelensky so courageously coming out of this presidential administration and

00:10:40: recording this video, at the time when Russian television was saying he's already in Lviv

00:10:45: or already in Europe and saying, "No, no, we are here.

00:10:47: We're not going anywhere."

00:10:48: I think that really changed everybody's minds.

00:10:52: As for me personally, of course, it's much harder to cover a war in a country in the

00:10:57: city where you're born, where every little piece of geography has emotional meaning,

00:11:01: where you remember your first kiss, the hospital you went to with your mother, the school,

00:11:10: and now all of a sudden you have to wear a flag jacket and a helmet in its battlefield

00:11:14: and bombs of holling.

00:11:15: Obviously it's hard.

00:11:17: But I think on the other hand, it was an extra motivation to go places and see things and

00:11:24: take risks that I probably wouldn't have taken in other people's wars.

00:11:31: And again, of all the conflicts, of most conflicts I've covered in my career, in the journal,

00:11:38: I think this one had the biggest moral clarity because there were different shades of gray

00:11:42: in other places, Afghanistan, Iraq, in Israel, Gaza.

00:11:46: Whereas here, this was a very clear cut case of an invasion of a candidate that hadn't

00:11:52: done anything to provoke it, hadn't ever threatened its neighbor and was being destroyed.

00:11:57: Absolutely right.

00:11:58: And this point that you mentioned about working out who's on your side and so on, indeed,

00:12:03: our enemies will vanish, some of them from within, some of them from without.

00:12:07: But in the past, it's been a case of in times of need, Ukraine's friends have vanished too.

00:12:12: And this is something that struck me.

00:12:13: I thought it would be different this time, I have to say.

00:12:15: When I listened to the, it was a BBC broadcast from Nick Robinson on the 25th of February,

00:12:21: so the second morning of the war.

00:12:22: And he guided listeners' eyes around the city saying, "Look over this dynamic, vibrant

00:12:27: European city."

00:12:28: I thought, "I haven't heard BBC journalists refer to Kiev like that before."

00:12:32: And I've been following Ukrainian affairs for a long time, I've written a book about

00:12:36: it myself.

00:12:37: And I thought, "I wonder if this time Ukraine's friends won't vanish and they will actually

00:12:40: stand up and help."

00:12:42: I mean, you've written about how the support wasn't quick enough, the support wasn't enough,

00:12:47: and I fully agree with you.

00:12:48: But nonetheless, I think the support has actually outpaced what I thought would happen at the

00:12:53: very beginning of the war.

00:12:54: Is that something that surprised you too?

00:12:56: And why do you think it was different this time?

00:12:58: I think it was a surprise.

00:13:00: Maybe.

00:13:01: I think it was different.

00:13:02: First of all, Ukraine didn't have France in 2014.

00:13:05: So, in 2014 it was still a obscure country, corrupt, we don't know, probably Russians,

00:13:11: other real country.

00:13:14: And in fact, there was no help.

00:13:15: 14,000 people died in 2014, 2015.

00:13:19: President Obama at the time refused to send any meaningful help and sat on the record

00:13:24: that there is nothing the US can ever do to stop Russia from controlling Ukraine, full

00:13:28: stop.

00:13:30: And everyone else, Germany was more than happy to move on and signed the Nord Stream 2 deal.

00:13:36: Obama was much more focused on getting Russia to play ball with him on the Iranian nuclear

00:13:42: deal negotiations.

00:13:43: And so Ukraine didn't really matter.

00:13:45: But I think those eight years, lots of things happened in Ukraine.

00:13:49: I mean, first of all, Ukraine showed that it is a democracy, a functioning democracy.

00:13:56: President Poroshenko lost an election, President Zelensky, and without any drama yielded power.

00:14:05: So it had shown that it's able to have a democratic transition.

00:14:07: I think also the fact that Ukrainian society, especially the youth, have grown up in these

00:14:14: eight years of divorce from Russia.

00:14:17: The fact that borders were opened, the Ukrainians could go on the weekend to Vienna or Berlin.

00:14:24: And the Europeans will go to Ukraine for anything from stack parties to just holidays.

00:14:31: So I think this people-to-people contact with the Europeans, especially, was something on

00:14:37: a much higher level than what's happening before.

00:14:41: Right.

00:14:42: I mean, this struck me as well.

00:14:43: Ukraine had the luck or the chance to work on visa liberalization for Ukraine on that

00:14:47: back in 2016.

00:14:49: And that ability for people to travel, to show that Ukraine, far from being the great

00:14:53: unknown of Europe as the lonely planet had called it in 2012, Ukrainians were just like

00:14:59: us and they could show that.

00:15:01: And with that situation of similarity plus moral clarity, and as you say, the developments

00:15:05: that had gone on Ukraine over the previous eight years from the Revolution of Dignity,

00:15:09: Euro Maidan, to the democratic development in the country, I think that formed a powerful

00:15:15: combination of showing why Western leaders should stand up.

00:15:18: But also there was a groundswell of public opinion in the West saying, "This is wrong.

00:15:22: Something needs to be done about this."

00:15:24: But despite that, Aaron, there have been a lot of misunderstandings still, haven't there?

00:15:27: Definitely.

00:15:28: And I also think that part of those misunderstandings come from how the West also reacted after

00:15:35: 2014.

00:15:36: As you said, the Germans were very happy to sign the Nord Stream two deals.

00:15:39: So on one hand, I think that the people-to-people context, that's a very good point.

00:15:43: And I think that also played a big part in why we saw the groundswell of public support.

00:15:48: Also here in Germany, it must be said, at times that as we've highlighted before, has

00:15:52: repeatedly outpaced the government.

00:15:54: But was there perhaps in Ukraine any potential consternation that perhaps the West would

00:16:03: revert to form at any point?

00:16:06: Probably in the first little while and just say, "Okay, well, the Europeans in particular,

00:16:11: the Germans might just want to go back to business as usual with the Russians as fast

00:16:14: as possible."

00:16:15: Well, I think the advance were really fast-moving at the time.

00:16:19: The Ukrainians didn't really get much help in the decisive first couple of weeks of the

00:16:24: war.

00:16:25: I mean, we'll talk about the Western weapons, but the US supplied a total of 90 javelins,

00:16:31: 90, before the war began, against thousands and thousands of Russian tanks and fighting

00:16:37: vehicles.

00:16:40: So the initial Bleeds Creek plan to take Kiev by Putin in three days was decided with Soviet

00:16:47: made weapons that were in the Ukrainian arsenal before the war.

00:16:50: All this Western chillery and Heimers and everything else came into play much later.

00:16:56: There were some N laws and so on that have been delivered before, but the numbers, as

00:17:00: you say, weren't there.

00:17:01: So they came from the UK and from other places.

00:17:03: Right.

00:17:04: The N laws were, Boris Johnson pushed through a meaningful number.

00:17:07: So I actually did see N laws in the battlefield.

00:17:09: I did not see any javelins until the summer when thousands of them were supplied by then.

00:17:16: Right.

00:17:17: Yes.

00:17:18: St. Javelins season is the summer, as we know.

00:17:20: But indeed, yeah, I mean, there's a misunderstanding about that.

00:17:23: It wasn't that immediately the West jumped in and supplied all that was needed.

00:17:27: And a common theme when we've spoken to Ukrainian guests on the show has been the very sad truth

00:17:33: that the West seemed to have to wait for another tragedy, another massacre, another upscaling

00:17:38: of Russian brutality to upscale their assistance.

00:17:40: So after Butcher comes the artillery, after Mariupol comes the Heimers, et cetera.

00:17:46: And this, I mean, this must have been a truly awful thing for Ukrainians to live through,

00:17:50: to see that link support to the killing.

00:17:54: Is that what it felt like there?

00:17:55: Very much so.

00:17:56: You know, I'm not a Ukrainian official, so I can be frank.

00:17:59: You know, they have to be very thankful and kind of keep their bitterness private.

00:18:04: But you know, there is a lot of resentment in Ukraine about how slowly this aid was provided.

00:18:11: And I mean, the analogy I hear a lot is about extinguishing fire.

00:18:15: And you have a fire going on, and you need a bucket of water.

00:18:19: And the Ukrainian God is bucket of water.

00:18:21: God has tens of billions of dollars and eight, but in little coffee cups over two years.

00:18:27: And if you do it drip by drip, that does not extinguish the fire.

00:18:31: And so that's why these delays had the fundamental effect in the battlefield.

00:18:37: Because every time the nuclear ability was introduced, be the Heimers, you know, being

00:18:42: the leper tanks, will be, you know, F-16s in the future, you know, they come in such

00:18:47: small numbers and so slowly.

00:18:49: So much advance warning that the Russians have the time to prepare and to deflect a

00:18:55: lot of their ability.

00:18:56: The Heimers now are a lot less efficient than they used to be because the Russians learned

00:18:59: how to jam the GPS, you know, how to, you know, revamp the logistics.

00:19:04: And so while they were very efficient, you know, for a month or two or three in the summer

00:19:08: of 2022, now they're just, you know, not nearly as efficient as they were.

00:19:14: And that has been the problem all along because the supply never came in a critical enough

00:19:19: mass to make a massive difference in the battlefield.

00:19:22: Yes.

00:19:23: I mean, this is another thing that we've seen and talked about repeatedly is the missed

00:19:25: opportunity of 2022 there where the Russians were there for the taking.

00:19:30: And it was dithering, particularly in Berlin, but also in other places that lost us that

00:19:35: opportunity.

00:19:36: There must be a tremendous amount of bitterness about that, about how many more people had

00:19:39: to die and how less likely their victory became or how much more drawn out the war has become.

00:19:44: Because of that, is that something people talk about a lot, that delay?

00:19:47: Oh, yeah, very much.

00:19:48: So I think it's not, I don't think it's just the Ukrainians.

00:19:50: I think there are people in Europe who also realize that not necessarily, you know, in

00:19:56: the administration in Washington, because I think there's a lot of batting themselves

00:19:59: on the back and telling each other that, you know, we already won the war.

00:20:02: Russia's already defeated because they didn't take it.

00:20:05: But I'm right about this in a book.

00:20:08: So if you look at this, the objective situation in the summer of 2022.

00:20:14: So Russia, by August, had about 100,000 combat troops left in Ukraine because the cream of

00:20:21: the Russian army, the Vedeva Airborne Forces, and most of the professional units were destroyed

00:20:26: by then.

00:20:29: And Paris-Naputin was refusing to carry out a mobilization because doing so would have

00:20:33: meant acknowledging that the so-called special military operation is not going to plan.

00:20:39: The Ukraine had, despite being a smaller country, had a massive advantage in manpower.

00:20:45: What it did not have an advantage is, and was firepower.

00:20:49: And so it was asking, you know, it was not asking for the moon.

00:20:52: It was asking for what it got the following year.

00:20:54: It was asking for, you know, hundreds of tanks, you know, hundreds of familiarized systems,

00:20:57: you know, several hundred artillery pieces.

00:21:00: And it was all dismissed out of hand as fantasy.

00:21:02: We'll never get this.

00:21:03: How can you ask for this?

00:21:06: And so when Ukraine actually broke through Russia lines and exploited this advantage

00:21:12: in manpower in Kharkiv, it couldn't finish the job because it just ran out of supplies.

00:21:20: And at the very same time, Putin very successfully used nuclear brinksmanship to make sure the

00:21:25: West would not increase its supply at the time.

00:21:29: Right.

00:21:30: I mean, it seems as though a lot of Western leaders, in military leadership as well as

00:21:32: in political leadership, were still stuck on crisis management mode of from the previous

00:21:36: 15 years or so of military operations, rather than war winning mode, where you have to seize

00:21:41: those opportunities, strike quickly, follow it up.

00:21:43: You don't throw a jab, stand back, see how it's gone, and then maybe think about another

00:21:47: one.

00:21:48: You follow it in.

00:21:49: And that it seemed as though that lack of killer instinct was there in the West as well.

00:21:52: Well, it's, if you look at this sort of like how the pattern of behavior seems that the

00:21:58: main priority was not to provoke Russia into a nuclear response, which means that Putin

00:22:04: very successfully used this nuclear brinksmanship to not to cut off Western aid, but to throttle

00:22:09: it to a level that was slow enough, low enough to prevent a defeat of the Russian forces.

00:22:17: And I think this actually goes a little bit as well into how Western leaders understand

00:22:22: diplomacy and how they also understand how Russia uses diplomacy.

00:22:28: Russia uses diplomacy in a way that is very, very, very different to the ways that we use

00:22:33: it or that we at least fancy ourselves as using it, critical distinction to make there.

00:22:40: And in your book, you talk quite a bit about the early negotiations, so Istanbul, those

00:22:45: sorts of summits.

00:22:47: And to me, that suggested another recurring theme.

00:22:51: Russia presented its withdrawal from suburbs around Kiev, like Bucha and others, as a

00:22:58: diplomatic gesture.

00:23:00: In reality, as you write, it was a military necessity.

00:23:04: It just didn't have the ability to hold those places.

00:23:08: Yet we, I think that this kind of faking out by Russia also on the nuclear issue, but on

00:23:15: this one as well.

00:23:16: And that's the common thing we see in Russian diplomacy.

00:23:17: It still seems to convince a lot of Western politicians.

00:23:21: We have social democrats here in this country wanting a negotiated peace to freeze the conflict.

00:23:28: But there's no indication that Russia really does want to negotiate unless it wants to

00:23:32: legitimize its occupation.

00:23:34: It uses...

00:23:35: There's no understanding of how well that would take.

00:23:36: It would take a German division in Ukraine to actually back that up, which no one's willing

00:23:39: to send.

00:23:40: So, I mean, it's pie in the sky, but it does show that sort of still dealing with the

00:23:44: Russia we wish we had rather than the Russia we had.

00:23:47: The Russia that social democrats in particular, but also others and other Western capitals

00:23:52: think is interested in some kind of negotiated settlement or way out, when in fact it's not.

00:23:58: It's interested in diplomacy for something entirely different.

00:24:00: Why do we seem to keep getting this so wrong despite the number of years we have of experience

00:24:08: with it?

00:24:09: I think it probably speaks to the vision of the world and also that sort of thinks that

00:24:18: anything can be solved peacefully, which is maybe true for debates within the European

00:24:24: Union about tariffs, but not necessarily when you're dealing with the aggressive new colonial

00:24:30: power.

00:24:32: And I think what I hear a lot from Ukrainians and actually the Russians in opposition, it's

00:24:39: as though some of the life experience of many people leading governments in the West who

00:24:44: have never seen a war, have never served in the military, and have never had an experience

00:24:49: of violence in their lives and didn't know how to deal with violent people.

00:24:53: That's so interesting.

00:24:54: I mean, we're at the 75th anniversary of NATO's founding these weeks.

00:24:59: And one of the real common factors between the politicians who set up NATO, the leaders

00:25:04: of national countries at the time, the first supreme Allied commander, Hastings Ismay,

00:25:10: the first secretary general, think of politicians like Harold McMillan or so on at the time.

00:25:14: They'd served.

00:25:15: They'd actually seen combat themselves.

00:25:17: War and violence was meaningful to them.

00:25:19: They understood what it took to fight and to win.

00:25:22: And we don't have that anymore.

00:25:23: No, no.

00:25:24: I mean, who was the last US president serving the military, George Bushfather?

00:25:28: Right.

00:25:29: Yeah.

00:25:30: I mean, the Texas Air National Guard doesn't count quite so much, I think.

00:25:32: No, George Bush Jr misses that one.

00:25:35: But yeah, I mean, this is what many people think.

00:25:36: It was a shame John McCain never was elected because he did have experience of serving.

00:25:40: And he was someone who at the time when Barack Obama was saying, there is nothing we can

00:25:44: do, he took a very different stance.

00:25:47: But it seems as though Washington at the moment is caught somewhere between the two.

00:25:51: It's not committing.

00:25:52: I mean, what is your take on that?

00:25:53: On why the Sullivan-Biden axis is not working to deliver victory for Ukraine?

00:25:57: Which by the way, also is moving in lockstep with Olaf Scholz in the chancellery, particularly

00:26:04: on Ukraine.

00:26:06: First of all, the White House was quite happy to step away from Ukraine when it all started.

00:26:11: The idea was, walk away, we don't fight this war, then it's not our loss.

00:26:17: And so the fact that the embassy was closed and basically an invitation was made to what

00:26:20: he wanted is not our problem.

00:26:21: Here, Ukrainians have a box of javelins, enjoy insurgency.

00:26:24: That was the policy at the time.

00:26:26: The US sort of got dragged into backing Ukraine by the fact that Ukraine didn't collapse

00:26:31: by the public opinion.

00:26:32: And a lot of the decisions that were made were reactive decisions.

00:26:36: I don't think President Biden or Jake Sullivan were expecting in March 2022 to have made

00:26:43: such giant commitments to Ukraine that were made in the following two years.

00:26:47: I think the Russian nuclear factor is still a constraint.

00:26:51: Again, there is still this fear.

00:26:55: I think, but also there is the issue that in Europe, a lot of the, not just Putin thrushed

00:27:03: tears, but open Putinists on the far right of the political spectrum stopped being so

00:27:11: when the war began.

00:27:13: So you see in Italy, you see even in Le Pen and in France, they're not praising Putin.

00:27:19: They're not necessarily supporting the war in Ukraine, but the language has changed in

00:27:24: Ukraine is a real life issue in Europe.

00:27:27: Everybody knows Ukraine refugees.

00:27:29: You know, everybody's familiar with the tragedy.

00:27:31: It's something unpalatable to be

00:27:35: pro-Putin openly in Europe now.

00:27:36: But in America, there are very few Ukrainian refugees.

00:27:40: It's still very abstract issues.

00:27:42: And so the number of politicians who are very openly

00:27:47: rooting for Putin in US Congress is quite high

00:27:50: on the Fragments of the Republican Party

00:27:52: and in American politics.

00:27:53: And so because the war in Ukraine ultimately is not

00:27:57: a national security issue for the American homeland.

00:28:00: It is.

00:28:01: I mean, who is in charge in who controls Kiev,

00:28:04: let alone Lviv, is a national security issue for Poland,

00:28:09: for the Baltic States, for Germany,

00:28:10: and the United States of France.

00:28:11: You know, President Macron saying it's

00:28:13: an existential war for Europe,

00:28:14: but it's not existential war for the United States of America.

00:28:17: - No, the effect, the lever is longer.

00:28:19: That's for sure.

00:28:19: I mean, we've made the argument before that this is a matter

00:28:22: of American vital national interest

00:28:23: because it affects America's ability to order the world

00:28:26: in ways that actually benefit Americans

00:28:29: and America as such,

00:28:31: but it doesn't have quite that direct connection.

00:28:33: It is a much more existential issue for Europe.

00:28:36: But what then baffles us a little bit

00:28:38: is why some Europeans think it's okay to follow that line

00:28:42: that Sullivan and Biden are pushing through.

00:28:45: - Well, I think, again, there's probably lack of understanding

00:28:50: of the historical gravity of the moment.

00:28:52: And again, people who have not experienced cataclysms

00:28:57: have a hard time understanding how likely they are.

00:29:00: I mean, I agree, people in Kiev

00:29:01: did not expect the world to happen

00:29:03: because they didn't have an experience of the world.

00:29:05: And so I think the failures of imagination

00:29:09: have been a feature of all this.

00:29:11: Nobody could imagine that, you know,

00:29:14: Ukraine would invade Russia.

00:29:15: Nobody would imagine that Russia would invade Ukraine.

00:29:17: And now a lot of people cannot imagine

00:29:19: that Russia would test NATO and the European Union

00:29:21: in a few years.

00:29:22: - Right, because it seems so crazy to do so.

00:29:25: And we wouldn't do that and we're not crazy.

00:29:26: So, you know, let's imagine they're not in hope for the best.

00:29:29: - Yeah, so we're talking about a moment

00:29:30: where, you know, the inconceivable becomes real.

00:29:33: And then suddenly there's a new inconceivable,

00:29:36: which is really is all about Russian strategy.

00:29:39: Is it not, you know, creating new inconceivables

00:29:41: and somehow building up a tolerance

00:29:42: for what used to be inconceivable.

00:29:44: And yet there's still this sort of tendency

00:29:47: to assume that Putin and the Russian regime

00:29:50: is behaving in some sort of rational way.

00:29:52: That they're kind of grandstanding about what they want.

00:29:54: Maybe, you know, what they really want,

00:29:57: according to some people who want to quote unquote,

00:29:59: freeze the conflict as they just simply want

00:30:01: to keep Crimea and they want to keep the Eastern territories.

00:30:03: When in fact, Putin and Medyeveth are on record saying,

00:30:07: no, we want the whole country.

00:30:08: This is what we want.

00:30:09: Why are we not understanding Russia in the right way

00:30:13: in terms of how it goes about what it wants?

00:30:15: And what does Russia want?

00:30:17: Also, what it strikes me here,

00:30:19: you wrote about how Ukrainian Foreign Minister,

00:30:23: Dmitry Kuleba, his talks with Sergei Lavrov

00:30:26: in the early days of the invasion

00:30:28: and how Kuleba remarked how Lavrov

00:30:31: and the Russian regime really seemed

00:30:32: to now believe their own narrative.

00:30:35: This wasn't something that they were simply spinning,

00:30:38: you know, Lavrov seemed to actually believe

00:30:40: that Ukraine was full of neo-Nazi Russophobes

00:30:43: and he needed to believe this

00:30:45: in order to press ahead with this particular policy.

00:30:49: Are we taking this seriously enough and the rest?

00:30:51: We assume that Russia is somehow rational,

00:30:53: that it wants something that it's not telling us,

00:30:55: but what does it want

00:30:56: and are we making the wrong assumptions about it?

00:30:58: - That's a very good question.

00:30:59: And the presumption of rationality is based on the idea

00:31:04: that we all have the same reality.

00:31:06: But if you live in a different reality,

00:31:09: then your behavior is different.

00:31:11: I mean, the invasion itself was based in the idea

00:31:15: that Ukrainians are Russians

00:31:16: and the Ukrainians will welcome Russians with flowers

00:31:18: because they all love us and it's just as Putin wrote.

00:31:21: - And said there were sunflower seeds.

00:31:23: - Yeah, exactly.

00:31:24: And it was just small clique set up by the CIA

00:31:27: that is preventing them from reuniting

00:31:30: with the brotherly Russian people.

00:31:31: So that was the reason why the Russian military

00:31:33: was not prepared.

00:31:35: Now, I think what, you know,

00:31:38: as Medvedev and Putin and others in Russia

00:31:40: have made it very clear that they still want

00:31:42: all of Ukraine if they can get it.

00:31:44: Now as to the,

00:31:45: how far the beliefs are removed from reality,

00:31:52: it's a very good question.

00:31:53: You know, but the Russian propaganda keeps saying

00:31:56: that but was never happened.

00:31:59: It was, you know, stage CIA,

00:32:01: PSYOP, you know, Chris crisis actors and all that stuff.

00:32:05: Despite, you know, plenty of evidence,

00:32:08: the filming of the Russians executing prisoners.

00:32:11: You know, it's just one of the most documented

00:32:13: war crimes in history of war crimes.

00:32:15: The question I have is,

00:32:18: and I ask this to a lot of people who sort of know

00:32:21: the Russian system,

00:32:22: do you think Putin believes

00:32:24: that the Russians did not go in a butcher?

00:32:27: Or do you think Putin believes

00:32:31: that it was the Ukrainians, not ISIS,

00:32:33: that blocked the Crocus concert hall in Moscow?

00:32:36: And the answer I have is he probably does believe

00:32:40: that it was the Ukrainians who blocked Crocus.

00:32:43: And he probably does believe that Butcher was staged.

00:32:46: Just like, you know, if you ask does Donald Trump

00:32:49: believe that he won the election in 2020?

00:32:51: He probably does because otherwise he's entire,

00:32:55: Putin's entire conceptual worldview, you know,

00:32:58: has to crumble.

00:32:58: - Yeah, so it's not just cynicism.

00:33:00: It's actually true, but they've drunk the Kulayd.

00:33:02: - Exactly.

00:33:03: Which drives policy,

00:33:04: which, you know, makes Russia even more dangerous.

00:33:06: And, you know, if you listen to what people like

00:33:08: the Russian national security, because I say, you know,

00:33:11: the outlandish, it's even more scary

00:33:13: that these people probably believe a lot of that.

00:33:15: - Right. And this, again, as Aaron said before,

00:33:17: we're still not taking this seriously.

00:33:19: Partly, I think, as you mentioned,

00:33:21: because of this failure of the imagination that we have,

00:33:23: the failure to put ourselves in the shoes of others as well

00:33:25: to understand there are different rationalities

00:33:27: in operation that have different goals

00:33:29: than we would have in that situation.

00:33:31: And we need to get out of that arrogant mindset.

00:33:33: That's for sure, to be a little more flexible.

00:33:35: But in terms of bridging that gap of imagination,

00:33:37: that's something I think your book does a wonderful service

00:33:40: of actually doing, is to bring that visceral experience,

00:33:43: as I said.

00:33:44: So if you were to convey some messages to people

00:33:47: around Western Europe, around Germany,

00:33:50: and others, what are the big misunderstandings

00:33:53: about how the war is being fought

00:33:54: and about the reality of war that you would convey

00:33:57: from your time in Ukraine?

00:33:59: - First of all, just the toll of the war,

00:34:01: just the amount of killing and death and destruction

00:34:05: that is occurring in Ukraine every day,

00:34:07: you know, hundreds of people die in Ukraine every day,

00:34:09: is really difficult to convey to people

00:34:12: who have never witnessed that, never seen that.

00:34:14: I mean, the lived experience of cities

00:34:18: that are being flattened, you know,

00:34:20: (speaks in foreign language)

00:34:24: is being once again, you know, bombed every day

00:34:28: with Russian bombs.

00:34:29: And those are old people who had lives

00:34:32: that were very similar to the lives

00:34:34: that people in Europe or the US had.

00:34:36: And before the war began, same ambitions, same goals,

00:34:40: you know, holidays, career, education.

00:34:42: And what really struck me is that in Kiev

00:34:44: before the invasion, the full-scale invasion,

00:34:46: very few people believed that this was happening,

00:34:49: that this would happen.

00:34:50: And everything was kind of normal.

00:34:53: And for me, having seen how the normality turns

00:34:55: into war in one instant, in other places, you know,

00:35:00: I could see this, I could sort of have this sort of

00:35:04: foreboding of all this being shattered.

00:35:06: But problem is that people in other places in Europe

00:35:08: also live in the illusion that this can never happen here.

00:35:11: And it can.

00:35:12: - No, absolutely.

00:35:13: And that's something we try and convey

00:35:14: in both the writing that we do

00:35:15: and the podcast as well is talking about

00:35:18: that sense of vulnerability that we should actually have

00:35:21: and the sense of fragility we have, but we don't.

00:35:23: We're so insulated or we think we're so insulated from this.

00:35:26: And a lot of Germans will say, for example,

00:35:28: but you know, I wouldn't touch us.

00:35:29: They, the Russians would have to quote unquote,

00:35:31: "Come through the Baltic States, come through Poland.

00:35:34: They hit us." Well, a brief look at the missile strikes

00:35:36: that Russia is happy to visit upon,

00:35:38: population centers of any kind,

00:35:40: should be enough to wake people out of that,

00:35:42: but it still hasn't.

00:35:43: And I wonder, I mean, these personal experiences

00:35:45: you talked about, this was something

00:35:46: that struck me in the book as well.

00:35:48: As you said, people with normal dreams,

00:35:49: normal lives to live, being busy on a Tuesday,

00:35:51: trying to rush home to get dinner for the kids,

00:35:53: while make sure they keep that project alive at work

00:35:56: and so on, that was them.

00:35:57: And then they got transformed.

00:35:59: Maria, the medic who appears in chapter 41

00:36:02: as well as other places, the battle of Terny,

00:36:04: she was one of those people.

00:36:05: She was studying somewhere else, wasn't she?

00:36:07: - Yeah, so she was studying in Poland,

00:36:09: like many Ukrainians.

00:36:10: And the reason she was studying in Poland

00:36:13: is because her mother, after 2014,

00:36:15: didn't really want her to do anything dangerous.

00:36:18: But she came back.

00:36:19: She came back to Ukraine after having,

00:36:21: after working in a good job in Poland.

00:36:23: And as the sort of clouds of war started gathering,

00:36:27: she trained as a medic.

00:36:28: And when the war began, the full scale war began,

00:36:31: she told her mother she was going to a camp for children

00:36:35: in Western Ukraine to be a camp counselor.

00:36:37: And instead she enrolled in the military

00:36:39: and she had up in the front line.

00:36:41: So her call sign was camp counselor, bozata.

00:36:44: And it's only after the volunteer battalion

00:36:48: that she enrolled in, became part of the formal military

00:36:52: several months later that she came home

00:36:54: with some medication to tell her mother the truth.

00:36:57: And her mother fainted as expected.

00:36:59: So she had to administer some aid.

00:37:01: But that's the kind of personality you find.

00:37:03: And Maria sort of, we followed her

00:37:08: through some of the worst battles

00:37:09: in the Ukrainian drive to liberate

00:37:14: parts of the Netsk province.

00:37:15: Sort of one of the last lands that were,

00:37:18: regained there in the fall of 2022.

00:37:20: - Yeah, after that, there was a real juicense

00:37:22: to that time as well.

00:37:23: When the fast moving advance was going from Kharkiv,

00:37:27: and we saw the footage of people driving on armored jeeps

00:37:31: and so on firing machine guns,

00:37:32: taking kilometers at a day in a day,

00:37:34: which was really something that I think

00:37:37: a lot of people really responded to

00:37:38: and thought, terrific moment.

00:37:39: But we've seen the character of war change a lot as well.

00:37:43: - So this was the moment, as I said,

00:37:44: when the Russians had 100,000 troops

00:37:48: in all of Ukraine and advantage manpower.

00:37:50: The reaction to that days later

00:37:52: was putting announcing a mobilization,

00:37:55: 300,000 that were announced,

00:37:57: plus many, many kinds of thousands more recruited

00:38:01: in the Russian prison camps into Wagner,

00:38:03: and then directly into the military,

00:38:05: and then all the other hidden mobilizations ever since.

00:38:07: So Ukraine no longer has a manpower advantage,

00:38:11: and it never had an advantage in ammunition

00:38:14: or in all the other gear in artillery,

00:38:17: and certainly not in planes.

00:38:19: And so now, Russia has had all this time

00:38:25: to dig in, to create the fortifications and minefields,

00:38:28: and that really made it very difficult

00:38:30: for the Ukrainians to succeed in the counter offensive

00:38:32: that was launched several months later.

00:38:36: But I think also what we've seen is that

00:38:38: the nature of warfare has changed,

00:38:43: generally speaking, because of the development of ecology.

00:38:45: I think people in Western militaries are learning,

00:38:50: not enough from the experience of that war,

00:38:52: because it's been transformational.

00:38:54: It's very, very hard for anyone to advance now

00:38:56: because any advancing, you cannot mass troops anymore

00:38:59: because they're discovered almost immediately with drones,

00:39:03: and I think its discovery can be destroyed.

00:39:05: So we have seen columns of tanks and fighting vehicles

00:39:10: that the Ukrainians had, including the German tanks,

00:39:13: trying to advance in Zaporozhye and being knocked off

00:39:16: in September, October last year,

00:39:18: but now we're seeing the same images every day

00:39:20: of the Russian columns trying to advance.

00:39:23: And if you look at the, you know,

00:39:24: the tanks were made to fight against other tanks historically,

00:39:28: but the statistics are now there by only 5% of tanks

00:39:31: in Ukraine, in the Ukrainian war,

00:39:34: are being destroyed by other tanks.

00:39:36: - But this changing nature of adaptation,

00:39:39: the adaptation battle is something that McRyan

00:39:41: and others have written a lot about,

00:39:42: but one personal story that brought that home in the book,

00:39:44: again, was the story of Valentin Kovale,

00:39:46: who was the crew member, one of the crew,

00:39:48: or the commander of the first high-marts unit

00:39:50: that was trained.

00:39:52: That was, I found to be an interesting story also

00:39:54: because of what then happens to him later.

00:39:56: - Right, yeah, so Valentin, he was initially working,

00:39:59: serving as a young officer, as a unit attendant

00:40:03: in the Ukrainian Uragan, sort of multiple launch rocket

00:40:08: system, which, you know,

00:40:09: is a much cruder version of the high-marts, you know,

00:40:12: and they were one of the units that were prepared

00:40:15: for the Russians to come in.

00:40:16: So they were loaded up with ammunition

00:40:18: and sent to the forest of Chirniyev, northeast of Kiev,

00:40:22: where they were waiting for the Russian columns to advance,

00:40:25: and they, you know, they played a major role

00:40:28: in destroying the Russian sort of advance units in the area,

00:40:33: but there was a lot of heavy work,

00:40:35: and unlike the high-marts, the Uragan's have to be loaded

00:40:38: by a special loader, which broke down,

00:40:41: and it's a very, very heavy rocket that they're using.

00:40:44: And so a lot of the soldiers in his unit

00:40:47: were veterans of the fight in Donbas,

00:40:49: so they had some improvisations, so they used their belts,

00:40:53: and literally, you know, dozen men with belts

00:40:55: managed to use them as levers to load up these missiles

00:40:58: and to destroy the Russian column.

00:41:00: And so when the first hammers were promised,

00:41:04: you know, the Valentinian men, his men were among

00:41:06: the first peoples to be sent to Germany

00:41:09: to be trained in how to use the hammers,

00:41:12: and I think there was only four of them sent initially.

00:41:15: And so these four trucks were driving up and down

00:41:18: the front line, you know, from Harkiv to Herzog.

00:41:21: - And when asked what time is it, the answer was?

00:41:24: - Hymars o'clock, obviously.

00:41:26: That had a major impact for a short time

00:41:29: on the Russian ability to replenish the military,

00:41:34: they destroyed a lot of, because the Russians built

00:41:36: their logistics network outside the range

00:41:39: of Ukrainian artillery, but it was now

00:41:41: within the range of hammers.

00:41:43: And so all this ammo depots and stockpiles, you know,

00:41:46: went up in flames one after another those few weeks.

00:41:49: But you know, the Russians have adapted since then.

00:41:51: They don't have to jam the GPS signal

00:41:53: and they have dispersed the logistics.

00:41:56: And so hammers now is nowhere near

00:41:58: as efficient as it used to be.

00:41:59: - Yeah, Paul Valentin also was hit, right?

00:42:01: And he lost his legs.

00:42:04: - Yeah, well, he lost one of his legs.

00:42:05: - He lost one of his legs.

00:42:06: - He lost one of his legs, the other leg,

00:42:07: he thought he had lost, but he saved it.

00:42:09: And again, it's a story that's very inspiring

00:42:11: because to me as a journalist, but you know,

00:42:14: also as a human is so many people were so moved

00:42:18: by reports of what's happening in Ukraine

00:42:21: by the images that they were seeing,

00:42:24: by the courage and the suffering

00:42:26: and the experience of the of the Ukrainian Ukrainians

00:42:31: that some went to Ukraine to fight,

00:42:33: some went to Ukraine to help.

00:42:34: In this particular case,

00:42:36: there was an American philanthropist, Hamid Han,

00:42:38: who was helping this hammers unit.

00:42:41: And when Valentin was injured,

00:42:44: he arranged for him to be taken to Switzerland.

00:42:48: He paid for his treatment, you know,

00:42:49: kept him in a house, you know, by the engineer.

00:42:52: And his leg was rebuilt.

00:42:54: And so he's now back in Ukraine, back in the military

00:42:56: and he's able to walk.

00:42:57: - Wow, I mean, that's an inspiring story

00:42:59: of courage twice over.

00:43:01: Let's talk about a couple of the other figures

00:43:03: who appear in the book.

00:43:04: There's another person who returned,

00:43:05: who came from a very different background

00:43:07: than Maria, the medic of Sevallod Kozhmyako.

00:43:11: - Yes.

00:43:12: - Can you tell us a bit about him?

00:43:13: - Well, I mean, he didn't really return.

00:43:15: He was on holiday.

00:43:16: Sevallod Kozhmyako was sure.

00:43:17: - But he could have stayed abroad, right?

00:43:18: He had enough money, he had the cash.

00:43:19: - Definitely, definitely.

00:43:20: So Sevallod Kozhmyako was ranked by Forbes,

00:43:23: I think as the 88th wealthiest man in Ukraine,

00:43:25: with, you know, hundreds of millions to his name.

00:43:28: And he owns one of the biggest, you know,

00:43:31: food agriculture processing companies in Eastern Ukraine.

00:43:34: So he was, he's from Harkiv and he was involved

00:43:38: with helping the Ukrainian military units

00:43:41: since 2014.

00:43:42: And he hired many of the Dermat veterans

00:43:43: to work for his companies.

00:43:44: And when I met him, he was speaking Russian.

00:43:46: So he was skiing in Austria, Lech, when the war began.

00:43:51: So he drove to Vienna, you know,

00:43:54: left behind his wife and his kids,

00:43:57: and then walked across the border to Ukraine.

00:43:59: And he walked across the border

00:44:01: with another character in the book,

00:44:02: who is a tennis player.

00:44:04: - So he walked across the border with Sergiy Stakhovsky.

00:44:07: - Right, that's down at Medica, right?

00:44:09: The one walking border crossing that you could use?

00:44:12: - Yes, exactly, at Medica.

00:44:14: The Polish, so the, you know, hundreds of thousands

00:44:16: of people trying to go the other way,

00:44:17: not that many, usually men crossing towards Ukraine.

00:44:21: - And so the 88th richest man in Ukraine

00:44:23: and the Ukrainian tennis star walk the other way.

00:44:25: - Exactly, and Stakhovsky also,

00:44:28: Stakhovsky was in Dubai when this happened.

00:44:29: He didn't have to go back.

00:44:31: He was living in Hungary at the time,

00:44:33: you know, he had a beautiful wine business

00:44:35: in Western Ukraine.

00:44:36: And so the two of them headed back to fight,

00:44:38: one to Kharkiv, one to Kiev.

00:44:39: And Kozhymychko basically tried to do something different.

00:44:44: You know, he felt that instead of joining the formal military,

00:44:49: joining these structures,

00:44:50: it could be better used just creating his own.

00:44:52: And so he found, he basically established the battalion

00:44:55: that now has become a brigade using his own money,

00:44:58: using the money of other volunteers

00:45:00: that really played a key role in the battles on Kharkiv.

00:45:05: And he was, you know, I went with him and his men

00:45:10: and the first engagement when they retook the village

00:45:14: of Rusko-Lozavodsk, north of Kharkiv city.

00:45:16: And then he was famously filmed

00:45:20: reclaiming the Russian-Ikranian border in September 2022.

00:45:23: And he was walking a few steps into Russia

00:45:25: and saying sort of putting the stop sign saying,

00:45:27: okay, now you stop sign, you cannot cross to the Russians.

00:45:31: - Right, but again, an inspiring story of personal courage,

00:45:34: someone who could have ducked out, but instead went back.

00:45:37: And so you see from across the spectrum

00:45:38: of Ukrainian society, people who stood up

00:45:41: and answered the call.

00:45:42: - Right, and you know, let's be fair.

00:45:43: I mean, you know, there are also Ukrainians

00:45:46: who did the opposite.

00:45:47: And there are lots of Ukrainian men who paid bribes

00:45:50: to be smuggled across the border and escape the war.

00:45:53: And you know, there were heroes

00:45:54: and there were cowards and there were traitors.

00:45:55: And you know, another character in the book, you know,

00:45:57: is Keryl Stimosev, who was a famous, you know,

00:46:02: anti-vax activist in the south city of Herson,

00:46:05: who worked with the Russians and became, you know,

00:46:07: the spokesman for the Russian occupation

00:46:09: until mysteriously dying, you know,

00:46:11: once the Russians abandoned Herson.

00:46:12: - In Herson, yeah, indeed.

00:46:14: Yeah, I mean, another anti-vaxer on the side

00:46:16: of the Russians doesn't surprise me tremendously.

00:46:18: It must be said that the whole book

00:46:20: is completely full of fascinating characters.

00:46:23: And I'll leave you readers to discover those,

00:46:25: rest them for yourselves.

00:46:27: But there's a lot of very interesting information

00:46:28: on people like Keryl Bodanov.

00:46:30: We've talked about on the show before.

00:46:32: And Vitaly Kim, who's a governor

00:46:34: of one of the regions in Ukraine.

00:46:36: But Aaron, this raises some wider questions, doesn't it?

00:46:38: - Well, yes, I mean, you have gone a lot further

00:46:43: than a lot of Western reporters

00:46:44: in terms of covering Ukraine,

00:46:47: because of the number of stories

00:46:49: that you have from everyday Ukrainians

00:46:51: like this from all walks of life,

00:46:53: as we've been discussing just now.

00:46:55: - And before you mentioned exactly that gap in imagination,

00:46:58: which these stories help to fill, I think, very well,

00:47:01: but it's also there's a gap in imagination the other way.

00:47:03: - We hear a lot from Ukrainian officials

00:47:06: about how grateful Ukraine is

00:47:08: for the support that it gets from the West.

00:47:12: But at the same time,

00:47:13: there is always under the surface

00:47:15: behind a certain veil, an amount of frustration,

00:47:18: which I think we would argue a lot of is very justified

00:47:22: in terms of, as you put it, the drip drip

00:47:24: of supplies and aids of weapons, as you've said,

00:47:28: trying to fill a bucket of water

00:47:29: over two years with coffee cups.

00:47:31: So if we're talking about regular everyday Ukrainians

00:47:35: that you've covered so well in this particular book,

00:47:38: how do they in general feel about Western countries,

00:47:41: particularly one like Germany or Europe as a whole right now?

00:47:45: - I think unfortunately, you know,

00:47:46: the longer the war drags, the higher is the toll

00:47:48: and the more reluctance there is,

00:47:50: especially now with the USA being frozen.

00:47:52: I think the narrative of betrayal is taking hold.

00:47:57: And that's very poisonous and toxic in the long hold.

00:48:00: And you know, I mean,

00:48:01: there is unfortunate element of truth to it.

00:48:04: You know, the US had promised to stay

00:48:06: stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.

00:48:08: And it's not standing with Ukraine now

00:48:10: in terms of actual material help.

00:48:12: And that is the reason why Ukrainians are dying

00:48:14: and that is the reason why Ukraine is losing territory.

00:48:17: And it will be a factor in the collective memory.

00:48:26: And this is a message I think it should be clearly understood

00:48:30: around Berlin and around Europe

00:48:32: is that that narrative of betrayal is taking hold.

00:48:35: And with very good, good reason.

00:48:36: Yaroslav, what other messages would you like to send

00:48:40: to the German public and to German decision makers

00:48:42: and a big hello to all our listeners in the council amped?

00:48:45: - As we like to say.

00:48:46: - We know our avid listeners to the show

00:48:48: about why the war needs to be won

00:48:50: and what needs to be done to do that.

00:48:52: - Well, I think, again,

00:48:53: I was probably just out of imagination,

00:48:54: but I think it's very clear that if Russia wins in Ukraine,

00:48:58: it will use the resources of Ukraine to go further.

00:49:02: And the entire pattern of Russian expansion

00:49:05: was to conscript and mobilize,

00:49:08: the colonized peoples and go further.

00:49:09: We've seen Ukraine itself.

00:49:11: A lot of the manpower for the initial invasion

00:49:14: where people forcibly conscripted

00:49:16: in occupied parts of Ukraine, the Red Skull of Huntsk

00:49:18: where pretty much every able-bodied man

00:49:21: has been rounded up, taken from the streets

00:49:24: and sent to fight and die.

00:49:25: And so if Russia were to control the bulk of Ukraine,

00:49:30: it would be so much stronger to go for the next phase.

00:49:32: And they're not hiding their goals.

00:49:35: And what Russia demanded before the full scale invasion

00:49:38: in its negotiations was pretty much rolling back native

00:49:40: to pre-99, 1990 borders, right?

00:49:44: It's sort of reclaiming Russia's rights

00:49:46: to lord over central and Eastern Europe,

00:49:49: including Germany.

00:49:51: - Now, and that's an interesting point.

00:49:52: I think many people here don't think

00:49:54: that applies to them, but this is coming for you

00:49:56: if we don't stop it in Ukraine.

00:49:57: I think that has to be the message

00:49:59: that is given loud and clear.

00:50:01: Now, it's something to be fair that decision makers

00:50:03: in London, decision makers in Paris, have come round to,

00:50:07: increasingly and increasingly willing to say,

00:50:10: decision makers and leaders in the Baltic States

00:50:12: have been there from the beginning saying exactly this,

00:50:14: but until we actually get that unified support

00:50:17: with the material to match the morale that is there,

00:50:20: we won't see the victory that we need.

00:50:22: But very clear message there from Yaroslav Trofimov,

00:50:26: the Russia won't be done in Ukraine,

00:50:29: so we have to get it done in Ukraine.

00:50:30: - I think it's a message from the Russians.

00:50:32: I mean, they're not already hiding their objectives.

00:50:35: - No, well, they're not.

00:50:37: I mean, they're very clear about what they want

00:50:39: when they say, you know, this is the basis

00:50:41: of our negotiation strategy.

00:50:43: It's been nothing less than basically UN legitimized

00:50:47: annexation of Ukraine.

00:50:49: And yet we don't seem to be taking this to heart.

00:50:51: We assume that they're just bluffing

00:50:53: and, you know, there's plenty of evidence

00:50:54: to suggest they're not.

00:50:56: I'd like to ask one more question here

00:50:59: 'cause it goes back to the mindset

00:51:03: that we as the West collectively, I suppose,

00:51:06: had at the very beginning of the war,

00:51:08: not us personally, obviously.

00:51:10: You detail very clearly examples of how the West

00:51:15: and Russia as well treated invading Ukraine

00:51:20: as a foregone conclusion that Russia was going

00:51:23: to win very easily within a number of days.

00:51:26: And the West didn't see how it was possible for Ukraine

00:51:31: to win at that point.

00:51:32: Now, it's been two years and Ukraine has clearly

00:51:35: demonstrated incredible resilience,

00:51:37: but that hasn't translated into full whatever we can

00:51:41: support for Ukraine.

00:51:43: So obviously here, that's about things like delivering

00:51:45: tourist cruise missiles.

00:51:46: It's also about things like Europe in particular,

00:51:49: but the whole G7 actually deciding

00:51:51: to seize Russian state assets.

00:51:54: Does Western reluctance come a little bit?

00:51:58: Does it come from not wanting Ukraine to win

00:52:01: for fear of destabilizing Russia

00:52:03: and then, you know, having that nuclear question

00:52:05: hang over the thing?

00:52:06: Or does it come from still not thinking

00:52:09: that Ukraine can win somehow this hangover

00:52:12: of what they thought all the way back in February 2022

00:52:17: that hasn't left the collective imagination?

00:52:20: - I think it's all of the above.

00:52:21: I think it parted the nuclear fear.

00:52:23: It's parted the fear of the unknown in Russia.

00:52:26: You know, there's a lot of people think that, you know,

00:52:29: Putin after all is not so bad.

00:52:32: And the next person could be worse,

00:52:33: which, you know, a lot of Ukrainians

00:52:35: and Russians disagree with.

00:52:36: And I think it's also unwillingness to bear costs.

00:52:39: You know, for example, you know, Russia is able to,

00:52:42: you know, reap, you know, a lot of money exporting its oil

00:52:46: and nobody has seriously talked about constraining that.

00:52:49: In fact, the US has asked the Ukrainians

00:52:52: not to target Russian refineries,

00:52:54: not even all exports, but, you know, refineries

00:52:57: make fuel for domestic consumption out of fear

00:53:00: that could disrupt oil markets globally ahead of the election.

00:53:03: So, you know, that's where the priority is lay.

00:53:05: - I mean, that seemed a truly open admission

00:53:07: of the cynicism of that policy

00:53:09: in a way that the mask slipped at that moment.

00:53:12: I think which was very revealing for a lot of people in Europe

00:53:15: who hadn't realized quite what was driving US policy

00:53:18: in that regard.

00:53:19: I think it's very interesting also that you mentioned

00:53:20: this prioritization of the possibility of a Russian collapse

00:53:24: or of the next leader being worse or so on,

00:53:27: determining European policy or Western policy

00:53:30: rather than focusing on the very real harm

00:53:33: that Russia is certainly doing right now

00:53:35: and will continue to certainly do in future.

00:53:37: There's unwillingness to bear costs

00:53:38: as well as something we've talked about before, Aaron.

00:53:41: It's the ultimate false economy.

00:53:43: If we don't bear these costs now,

00:53:44: the costs will only get higher.

00:53:46: - We'll be much larger later in the future.

00:53:47: - And then again, that again speaks to the fate

00:53:48: of imagination.

00:53:49: - There we go.

00:53:50: So this is it.

00:53:50: We need to win the battle for the imagination

00:53:52: and Yaroslav Trofimov, you're helping us do that

00:53:54: with our enemies will vanish and with this podcast

00:53:57: and the event that we're now going on to

00:53:59: at the DGAP here in Berlin.

00:54:01: - Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

00:54:03: That is all for this episode of Berlin Side Out.

00:54:06: Join us in the next weeks

00:54:07: as we discuss German grand strategy or well lack thereof

00:54:10: and how it can address a world of authoritarians

00:54:14: if it is of course applied appropriately.

00:54:18: For now though, thank you very much to our guest,

00:54:20: Yaroslav Trofimov and his book,

00:54:22: Our Enemies Will Vanish is available now.

00:54:25: Thank you also to our project assistant,

00:54:28: Julein Stuckler, our technical producer,

00:54:29: Hendrik Vena and the DGAP,

00:54:31: a team from Berlin, Alphiris Zain and Pichus.

00:54:34: - Tschüss and double watchin'.

00:54:36: (upbeat music)

00:54:39: (upbeat music)

00:54:41: (upbeat music)

00:54:44: (upbeat music)

00:54:46: (upbeat music)