January 16, 2024 • 42 mins
In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a sprawling, brutal follow-up to his land-grab of Crimea in 2014. The war initially produced an international show of support for Ukraine and its embattled leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – after all, the broader fate of Western Europe hung in the balance, a consequential geopolitical reality for the United States, as well. The Gaza War has now captured the world’s attention and headlines, diverting attention from Ukraine, and further financial and military aid for Ukraine from Europe and the U.S. has dried up. Yet the stakes haven’t changed, and the world remains at risk. Marc Champion is a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion who has lived and worked in Russia.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Putin versus Ukraine's Forgotten War.
In early twenty twenty two, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched
a full scale invasion of Ukraine, a sprawling, brutal follow
(00:22):
up to his land grab of Crimea in twenty fourteen.
Casualty figures are hard to assess precisely, but tens of
thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded
on both sides of the war, with the full tally
estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. The war
initially produced in a national show of support for Ukraine
and its embattled leader, Vladimir Zolensky. After all, the broader
(00:45):
fate of Western Europe hung in the balance, a consequential
geopolitical reality for the United States as well, and Ukraine
itself fought back courageously, beating back waves of murderous assaults
and defying expectations that it would quickly buckle. But wars
are trench, stubborn things, and as Putin's troops, missiles and
tanks laid waste to Ukraine, and as Ukraine responded in kind,
(01:07):
a military stalemate has settled in the Gaza war has
now captured the world's attention and headlines, diverting attention from Ukraine. Further,
financial military aid for Ukraine from Europe and the US
has dried up. Yet the stakes haven't changed and the
world remains at risk. Joining me today to discuss the
Ukraine War is Mark Champion, a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion.
(01:29):
Mark has lived and worked in Russia, reported from Ukraine,
and has covered foreign affairs extensively for a number of
leading publications. He is wise and shrewd, and he joins
me today from our London office where he's based. Greetings, Mark, time,
so tell me a little bit before we get into
the specifics of Vladimir Putin's journey as Russia's president and
(01:50):
the war in Ukraine, a little bit about your own
journey as a correspondent, particularly the time you spent in
Russia and what you learned from those years.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, I first went to Russia when it was still
the former Soviet Union and was there for just at
the very end before the collapse, and then went back
right afterwards and stayed for about seven years. So this
was the time of Yeltz and it was the time
of great hope in some ways for reform. There was
a big pro Western sentiment among especially younger urban Russians.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And privatizations, privatizations, privatizations.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And very quickly, you know, economic pain and disappointment, resentment,
you know, across much of the country, which really suffered
terribly as the whole system came apart economically and so on.
But I think, you know, looking back, there are two
things that really strike me as things I didn't quite
understand the important stuff at the time. One was that
(02:50):
had many friends mostly almost all of them would have
been younger and kind of pro Western. But I remember
that whenever you would start to talk about Ukraine, it
was almost always there was a skepticism that it really
was a country, and that I think is important to
remember among younger Russians, the younger Russians, you know, just expats,
but Russian not at all. Now it's about Russians, and
(03:11):
you know, I think it's important to remember when we
talk about this as Putin's War and so on, and
we wonder as to why he has support for some
of the things that he's doing. It's just important to
remember that what it is to be Russian, what it
was to be Russian, was very confusing at the time.
You know, it was the first time in centuries there
had never been a Russian state in the borders that
existed in nineteen ninety one, and so that was a
(03:34):
confusing time. And then where Russia stopped what it was
to be Russian. These are things that have been getting
worked out ever since nineteen ninety one, and in many ways,
I think that is exactly what's happening now, and sometimes
it's difficult for us to understand it. We tend to
be so self obsessed. We think it must be about
something that we did or we didn't do, and we
forget that other countries have histories and agencies. So looking back,
(03:55):
that's very important. And I think the second thing that
I would say is, you know, it was a really
huge moment in nineteen ninety three when you may remember
that Boris j Elsen blew up the parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
About one hundred and fifty people.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Died just under and there was days of fighting, and
we all remember that as a constitutional crisis, struggle for power,
which essentially it was. But what's often forgotten is that
one of the other reasons, one of the reasons that
that parliament was made up predominantly of Communist Party, members
of the New Communist Party and also nationalists, and one
(04:30):
of the things that they had consistently clashed with the
elsinover was that they refused to ratify what were called.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
The Beelavisia push Accords.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
And what that was was that was the moment when
Jelson with some other leaders, leader of Ukraine in particular
and of Beelarus, they dissolved the Soviet Union essentially, and
the Parliament was refusing to ratify that. And we forget
that right from the beginning, there was a resistance throughout
the system, in much of the population, to this idea
(05:02):
that the Soviet you know, they had to accept the
loss of empire.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And everything that goes with that prestige, self esteem, absolute
economic wealth, military power, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
So, in many ways, I think what we are seeing
is the delayed playing out of all of those unresolved issues.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
A response to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and
putin really his rise is in the wreckage of all
of the moments around that from the dissolution of the
Soviet Union to botched privatizations, where there was a feeling
among average Russians that the privatizations really benefited a kind
of financial and political eat in Moscow and not in
(05:44):
other parts of the country. Right, Yeltsin brings Putin in.
You know, always mysteriously to me why he never recognized
that Putin could potentially be a threat or had the
appetites in him to end up where he's at it up.
But at the time, Yeltsin was a dysfunctional leader, essentially
struggling with alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Is that a fair He had issues with alcoholism, He
had heart trouble, he had heart surgery.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
He was at the end.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And then Putin essentially moves in and very quickly. This
is in January of.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Two thousand exactly, So he takes over in two thousand
and you know, ninety nine is the end of Yeltsin,
and puts In takes over this young, much younger, much fitter, dynamic,
but kind of yes enigmatic character. We didn't know a
lot about him. Russians didn't know him. They'd only really
come to have any kind of recognition of who he
was as a result of the Second Chechen War that
(06:38):
began towards the end of you know, in the second
half of nineteen ninety nine. It's just a very rough war,
and that really put in on the map.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And he embodies these resentments against the loss of empire
and sort of I think what he regarded as a
pernicious Western influence.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, well, there was definitely a kind of progression in
fact that you know, he was doing his marathon an
your kind of Q and A session, and he kind
of mused about this, you know, and he talked about
how he was naive at the beginning. He'd thought that
he could make friends of the West, the West, would
work with Russia, would make room for Russian interests, and
all that sort of thing. And so that's the narrative
(07:18):
that I think he would like us to see, which
is that he had the best of intentions, that it
wasn't his fault, it was the West fault that they
didn't treat Russia properly, didn't give it respect or room,
tried to humiliate it, and therefore we are where we are.
That's his narrative. I think the whole idea of a
career KGB officer who then cut his teeth in Saint
(07:42):
Petersburg in a basically mafia like environment, that he was
naive and put upon and so on by wiley Western
leaders and diplomats kind of unlikely, but there is something
to the fact that it took time to recognize exactly
what it was, you know, the West was willing to
(08:02):
accept and you know, what they saw as legitimate Russian interests,
and that those were absolutely not the same as the
ones that he figured that he needed to further and protect.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And presumably very early on Ukraine and his own imagination
and his practical day to day affairs as a Russian leader,
Ukraine is a thorn in his side.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
He has been obsessed with Ukraine for a very long time,
and the first time it really kind of burst onto
the scene was with the two thousand and four Orange Revolution,
and he saw this as a threat to Russian interests.
These were basically pro Western, pro democracy and therefore pro
(08:47):
Western protests against a leader who Russia had been comfortable with.
So that's two thousand and four. You had this big fight.
Viktor Yanikovich wins the election, but through for all in Ukraine,
you then have these big protests and he's forced to
redo the election, loses with a real count, and then
(09:09):
is replaced by somebody who is kind of pro European
and setting Ukraine on a different path, and to Putin
who does not believe in popular agency. You know, it
is leaders who make decisions. He saw this as a
threat and he spends the next decade trying everything through energy, blackmail,
giving money, giving cheap energy, taking it away. He tried
(09:31):
everything to maintain Ukraine within his sphere of influence, keep
it out of the US and European sphere of influence
the way that he saw all this, And you know,
finally twenty fourteen, you have another big protest revolution on
the streets. Again it is Yanikovich, who is Putin's guy,
who gets thrown out. And that was it, that was
(09:52):
put In deciding that I can't do this through these
various different tools, economic tools and so on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Are going to have to use force.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Tell me during the you know, the arc of that
first decade and a half after Putin comes to power
in two thousand, how did Ukrainians generally see this? Because
it wasn't with a unified voice. There were parts of
the country that remained.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Strongly pro Russia absolutely.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And there were significant, obviously parts of the country that
also were looking west, away from Moscow and away from Putin.
How were these popular uprisings generally received within Ukraine itself?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So Ukraine was a very divided country, and you could
see that in pretty much every election. You know, you'd
see it just kind of split down the middle, or
actually what you saw was a moving line. If you
think of the country's politics and colors, the orange color
has been for the Orange Revolution two thousand and four
and ever since it's been the color of often the opposition,
(10:50):
but of the kind of pro European, pro Western track,
and blue has been the color of the more pro
Russian track, and that was the overtch Is party color.
And you could see when you had these electoral maps,
you could see the zone of orange creeping from basically
being more or less in the west and more than
(11:12):
half the country blue, and it just kind of crept across.
It overtook all of Kief and you know, the central
parts of Ukraine. But the thing that really changed everything
was twenty fourteen. It was the decision to a next
crimea and then to ferment a conflict in the east
of Ukraine. I was in Crimea at the time. I
(11:32):
went to the Dombas region at the time, and it
was really clear what was happening. But at that time,
for example, I was in Mariopaul a number of times
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and Mariopaul was really a solidly
pro Russian city, but diancecorso nearby it and all along
that southern coast. You know, people have very divided loyalties.
They'd always voted solidly Blue. And I went back just
(11:55):
before the war, but you got eight years after that,
you know, after twenty fourteen, Crimea has taken begins this
war that really kind of there's a ceasefire, but it
continues at a low level for eight years. So I
went back just shortly before the invasion began in February
twenty two. So I was there in January, early February,
and I went back to Marioopol spent a bunch of
time there. It was transformed. Whereas it had been really
(12:19):
a solidly pro Russian city. Now even the people from
the Blue parties were not pro Russian. They might not
like the Orange parties in Kiev that didn't like them
at all. Wouldn't vote for them. They had their own parties,
but they did not want to be part of Russia, but.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Would slow down for a second. That point was that
because of the twenty twenty two invasion, or had that
sentiment already solidified.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Before that, This was before so specifically when it gave
rise to it.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, why did an area that had been so
deeply blue, so pro Russian gets swept up into the
Orange Revolution and affiliation with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There are a number of things.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
One was that the annexation of Crimea and and then
the violence that followed in the East. Over time, those
started to be deeply resented. And you have to remember,
you know, just the front line that the ceasefire created,
and there were trenches where there's daily firing. There were
only like one hundred meters apart in many places, the
Russian and the Ukrainian trenches through the eight years, and
(13:19):
there's constant firing, constant fighting, constant body bags. And it's
I think that it's twenty about twenty kilometers from the
center of Mariyable, you know, just not far from the suburbs,
and people died, you know, they were shelling into the city,
and people got killed, and over time a resentment built.
(13:40):
And also they could see what happened in the occupied
parts of the Dunbass. You know, parts of the Dunetsk
and the Luhunsk regions were successfully occupied and behind the
by the Russians, well by the Russians and separatists. Yes,
they were behind these trenches and Ukrainians could see what
was going on behind there, and it did not look pretty.
(14:01):
It was run by a mix of clowns and mobsters
with Russian agents as the first Defense Minister was a
Russian former military intelligence if there is such a thing
as a former intelligence officer. People understood that this was
a very manipulated situation.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
It did not produce anything good for the people who
were living there. It didn't look like a future that
people in Ukraine wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And presumably Putin saw the annexation of Crimea as a
sort of warning shot to the rest of Ukraine. I'm
asserting my authority in the region. If you stay in
this direction, I will come in and fix this for myself.
But in reality, what the annexation did was solidify opposition,
(14:45):
at least in Crimea in southern Ukraine against Russia and
turned what had been a solidly blue area orange.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean Crimea itself of course was gone. And
it's the only part of Ukraine, the only province of
Ukraine it had a majority of ethnic Russians living there.
The whole east and south is predominantly Russian speaking, but
the Hessan region, for example, which has been fought over,
and the Russians took Hesson. It was the only provincial
capital that they took, you know, in this latest invasion,
(15:17):
and then they lost it. But that region was fourteen
percent ethnic Russian, but almost you know, entirely heavily Russians.
And the huge mistake that Putin made was to think
in twenty twenty two that he was invading the Ukraine
of twenty fourteen, and secondly that if people are Russian speaking,
(15:37):
they must be basically Russian. And he wrote a long
essay before the invasion, you know, a year before the invasion,
is five thousand word essay all about you know, the
connections between Russian Ukraine and his version of the history
very dubous. But nevertheless, they spent a lot of time
clearly thinking about it. And it's clear he wrote it
not some flunky, and that that showed how he thought
(16:01):
about Ukraine and explains a lot about why he got
it wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And what was the clear takeaway from that essay in
your mind.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
That his belief was that Ukraine was essentially, along with Yalarus,
a part of Russia, of the Russian people, and during
the Russian Empire it had always been called, you know,
little Russia, and Ukrainians were little Russians. So his view
was that these are really one people and they belonged together.
(16:31):
As he said, the borders, you know, Ukraine was created
by Lenin when they drew the borders, and before that,
Ukraine hadn't really existed, and it's all, you know, Lenin's fault,
and that's all in there. Of course, Ukrainians have a
national history. They've just been part of an empire for
centuries and mostly unwillingly.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And they see it as their specific history. Yeah, and
that they owned that history and it's not going to
be expropriated by anyone else.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They do.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And that version of history that put In wrote was
the version that everyone was taught, you know, throughout the
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and so on, and
so Ukraine, just as much as Russia was having to
work out up to nineteen ninety one, what it meant
to be a Ukrainian, Where was Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What was Ukraine? Just as Russians were.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
This is a process that's been going on.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
On that note, Mark, I want to take a quick
break to hear from one of our sponsors, and then
we'll come right back. I'm back with Mark Champion, a
Bloomberg opinion columnist, and we're discussing the war in Ukraine. Mark,
you were laying out quite eloquently and with great specificity,
the context for Putin's paranoia about Ukraine, his desire to
(17:44):
reassert Russian control over Ukraine, and how the Ukrainians themselves
saw all of this. And one thing you pointed out
on the top of the show was that whatever Putin's
goals were when he annexed Crimea, he ended up getting
the opposite result. He didn't tamp down an interest in
independence among Ukrainians, and he didn't make Ukrainians more loyal
(18:07):
to Russia. But apparently he didn't learn that lesson very
well because in twenty twenty two he amounts a full
scale invasion, maybe because he didn't get the results he
wanted in twenty fourteen, But he certainly scenes to have
expected something very different in twenty twenty two than what
he got.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Correct, absolutely, I mean, we know for a fact that
when the Russians came in and columns, you know, not
only did they not form the columns in the way
that you would if you were going in to fight
a war, which left them very vulnerable, they also carried
parade uniforms with them and only a few days supply
of food. Clearly, the idea was that they expected to
(18:49):
more or less march into the major city's takeover the administration.
There wouldn't be much fighting, if any, and it would
all be done very smoothly, rather like in Crimea, which
is an un bel believably successful operation virtually without bloodshed
and very very smooth.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
How did he get it so wrong? Because so many
things have emerged since that invasion. You know, the mighty
Russian war machine was inept and bedraggled and poorly led.
The machinery itself wasn't in top condition that he was
relying on, and he clearly underestimated the kind of opposition
that he would encounter and that his military would encounter.
(19:28):
How did that happen? Given that Putin is a well
known control freak and scoops up as much information as
he can about the things he oversees. Yet there appear
to have been massive gaps in his knowledge.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think the best explanation of that
is that he built a system and coacherie around him
entirely based on loyalty rather than merit, etc. And over time,
as so often happens in these kinds of regimes, people
stop telling him things that they don't think he wants
to hear. And so I have no doubt that there
(20:03):
were people in the Russian intelligence Service, precisely because they
were deeply penetrated into Ukrainian security agencies, etc. Who knew
what was going on. But the question is what rises
through all the way to the people who actually engage
with Putin and what they are willing to tell him
and what story they want to tell him, because they
(20:24):
may have an agenda of their own in terms of
what they want him to actually do. So, you know,
there's a lot of talk also about that. You know,
there was the COVID period when he was very very isolated.
I think it was Lavrov, who once supposedly equipped, you know,
not quite recently, Sergaylvro, Sergailavrov, the foreign minister, when someone
asked him, you know, so who does put and take
advice from, and he just mentioned three different stars and himself.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think there was a big element of that.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Were you surprised when he invaded?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Well, the reason I went to Mariopaul was that I
was convinced that he would not because I had some
special insight or anything. But it was very clear that
there were two things going on. One was that the
Americans were shedding a lot of intelligence, making your public
and saying very clearly that this was going to happen.
And while I'm not a huge believer in everything that
American intelligence says, this made a lot of sense. And
(21:15):
there was so much going on on the ground that
only made sense if they were going to go in.
This was the second year in which they had piled
up troops against the border, and so it didn't surprise
me at the moment it happened. What was interesting was
talking even to people I've known for frankly decades who
advised the Kremlin and are talking to them, they genuinely,
(21:39):
I'm absolutely convinced that that they weren't sort.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Of making it up.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
They genuinely did not think he would do it, because
in their view, it was not rational, and it would be,
as one of them put it, just a week or
two before the invasion, a couple of weeks, you know,
it would be catastrophic for Russia's interests.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Like firefighters who run into burning buildings instead of out
of them, Mark is a foreign correspondent who runs toward
a looming war rather than run away from it. I
think it speaks to both his incredible dedication to his
job and his courage. When you were in Mariupol, were
you also surprised in any way by the sentiments you
(22:18):
were encountering among Ukrainians themselves that gave you an inkling
of how courageous and purposeful their own response to the
invasion would be.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yes, I think so.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I mean, there were a few things that struck me.
One was that, you know, if you talked to over
sixty fives, you know, in the suburbs there was still
a pro Russian kind of current there. So that's one
thing that struck me, was that it's not like everybody
had changed their views. The second was that, as I
mentioned before, this sort of huge change compared to a
time when it had been just solidly pro Russian and
(22:51):
even the mayor, who was, you know, from the Blue Party,
he was very much pro Ukraine and so on, and
it was clear that they would fight.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Clear to me.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
But also what was very striking is that in the
entire time, I don't think I met anybody who thought
among the Ukrainians, and certainly Zelenski the president, didn't think
that the Russians were actually gonna invade.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And Zelenski himself turned out to be a much more
capable and courageous leader than some thought he might be
when the war first started. But also at least it
was curious to me how torn some Western powers were
at the time about whether or not to commit themselves
to support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia, particularly Germany,
(23:37):
which I think was a little bit slow off the
mark early on, and other European nations. What accounted for
some of that early hesitation.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Well, I think it's different for different countries. I mean
Germany is a really good example. Germany just had so
far to travel. They had an Ostpolity because they called
it for a very long time, which was always about
engaging Russia. Economically kind of drawing it in so that
it would have an interest in being cooperative rather than disruptive.
And they stuck with that long after. You know, many people,
(24:08):
especially in Eastern Europe, were warning them that this wasn't
really working, and there was, for example, with the annexation
of Crimea, there was some evidence there to say that
it wasn't. But nevertheless, and all the while becoming heavily
dependent energy experts exactly on Russian energy, and a huge
investor in Russia, so with a great deal to lose.
So when this happened, that when the invasion happened, that
(24:30):
policy just suddenly was incinerated. But they just had so
far to travel to get from that kind of oss politique,
all the way over to Germany post war Germany actually
arming a country to fight Russia. They just had a
really long way to go. And actually, you know, in
terms of Germany, I think they moved a lot faster
than I.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Would have thought.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Eventually, the West did develop a coordinated response, and I
shouldn't say just the West. Japan was an active participant
in the response, but arms, money, and economic sanctions eventually followed,
all in an effort to support Ukraine isolate Russia and
tried to bring the war to a conclusion. NATO became
more fortified, which I think is something Putin didn't want
(25:14):
and probably didn't expect out of this action. And it
went so well for Ukraine in some of the early stages.
That's putting aside all of the deaths that the country
has had to absorb and all of the grotesque aspects
of warfare that accompanied those deaths. But it did not
only make a strong stand, it actually began progressing towards
(25:35):
the Russian border in its own military efforts, which I
don't think anyone expected. Here we are now, it's reached
a stalemate, and all of these countries that have supported
Ukraine till now are definitely wavering. I'm not saying they're
turning their back yet, but the tens of billions of
dollars in financial and military aid that has flowed from
(25:57):
Western Europe and primarily the UK and Germany and then
the United States, tens of billions of dollars more is
up for grabs. How did we get there? How did
we end up in a place where people are having
doubts about whether or not to continue to support Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, I think there are two ways to look at this.
If you look at it from outside, from the point
of view of the Americans, the Germans, French, the uk etc.
So from that point of view, I think there was,
as so often in these cases, a mismatch of expectations.
So the expectation was set, you know, after Ukraine started
to do well that the measure for winning was actually
(26:38):
it was to take the territory back, and of course
that was encouraged by the Ukrainians who wanted their territory back. Politically,
it became impossible to say we're not going to take
it all back, so you had Zelenski saying we're going
to carry on fighting until we take back Crimea, and
we're right back to the borders in twenty thirteen, you know,
right back to the nineteen ninety one borders when we
had everything those expectations who were unrealistic from the start,
(27:02):
And the reason you need to sort of look at
it from two sides is that from the Ukrainian point
of view, they were unrealistic because the West chose to
drip feed arms to Ukraine. So at the moment when
the Russians were unprepared and when they were losing territory.
They hadn't dug in and the Ukrainians had momentum, and
they even had more personnel in the field than the
(27:24):
Russians did at that moment. The Ukrainians did not have
what it would take in order to push their advantage
all the way through. They didn't have enough combat jets,
they didn't have enough tanks, they didn't have enough longer
range missiles. They just didn't have enough of anything. If
they'd had everything they have now back in last fall,
(27:46):
then this would have been over. That's the Ukrainian point
of view. The reason that the stuff was drip fed
was that there was always a concern in the US
in particular, which was really calling the shots that escalation management.
You wanted to make sure that the Russians didn't panic
and push a red button, you know, of one kind
or another. So they really wanted to kind of stage things.
(28:08):
We don't know, for example, what conversations the Americans might
have been having with the Chinese. You know, we know
that the Chinese have had something influence on the Russians.
Do not want this to turn into a nuclear conflict,
and so on. There's stuff that we may not know
until archives are opened about you know, everything that went
on behind the scenes. But it's clear that escalation management
(28:28):
was a big deal and that it governed how things
were distributed at what pace.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Mark, let's take a quick break on that note, and
then we'll come back to this very interesting conversation. I'm
back with Mark Champion of Bloomberg Opinion Calumnist, and he
is educating me about what a stalemate in the Ukraine
War might involve. On that note, Mark, the idea of
a stalemate, what's at stake for Europe and the US
(28:58):
specifically in addition to you, of course, if military aid
and financial support doesn't continue. Packages have been held up
recently in the United States, Republicans in Congress have blocked
about sixty billion dollars in usaid to Ukraine, and more recently,
Hungry blocked a package of about fifty five billion dollars
(29:20):
in euaid to Ukraine. That's life support literally and figuratively
for Ukraine. What are the consequences of drawing all that down?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I mean they are severe.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
So I think if we start from the point of
view of what happens on the ground, the important thing
to understand and categorically to understand is that the consequence
of stopping support for Ukraine is not peace. The consequence
is lost, and it will be many human lives lost,
(29:55):
it will be territory lost, and it will be sovereign
independence of country lost. The Russians have made this very
very clear. Putin has made it clear. The Russian ambassador
at the UN said, you know, we're happy to talk
to Ukraine about a ceasefire, but it will require their capitulation,
and Putin reiterated what our goals are. He was asked
(30:17):
for what would it take to have peace in Ukraine
and he says, well, we'll have peace in Ukraine once
our goals are achieved, same as he said in twenty
twenty two. It's denatification, which means regime change, it's demilitarization,
which means disarmament. So one has to kind of bear
in mind that the option for a peace and cease
fire where everybody just stops fighting does not exist because
(30:40):
Russia is very confident now. They now believe that they
can win. Having been kind of humiliated for a couple
of years, nevertheless, they can ultimately win.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think in that same speech you reference from Putin,
he said he believed that momentum was on his side,
and he is.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I mean, he's correct.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
What's happened this year is that the Ukrainians to the
counter offensive and it ran into sand. There is a stalemate,
but those can be easily broken, and the Russians are
the ones who are on the offensive now across the east.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
For Europeans and Americans who are saying, how does it
really hurt us to stop paying for this war? Why
should we? There's all sorts of social needs in our
own countries that we could use tens of billions of
dollars for. Why keep paying for this effort? How do
you answer that kind of a question.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well, I think the first one is have some perspective, right, So, yes,
fifty five billion dollars from Europe, something similar maybe a
bit more from the US. There's a group called the
Ramstein Group, which is since the beginning of the invasion,
it's been meeting to organize what to get to Ukraine.
The combined GDP of the Ramstein Group is forty to
(31:51):
seven trillion dollars. This is affordable. So the first thing
is that when people start saying, you know, oh my gosh,
fifty billion in EU. This is again a multi multi
trillion dollar economy, so fifty billion is affordable. The second
is that it's not we pay it or we pay nothing,
(32:11):
because the consequences of having a Russian victory mean that
you will then have to deal with and prepare for
all kinds of new eventualities which are created by facts
on the ground, the fact that as in Beelorus, where
the Russians have said they're stationing their nuclear missiles, now
the situation in Ukraine will be very different. I mean
(32:34):
Putin said he was talking about you know what was
Russian and so on, and the Odessa is Russian in
his view, so that also is unfinished business. If he's
an Aandeessa, he's right next to Transnistria, which is a
breakaway pro Russian piece of Moldova. The Russians have spent
billions to try and destabilize Moldova. They will go in.
Then they're on the border of Romania, which is an
(32:55):
EU country. It changes everything, Like you know in a
game of risk, when you control different pieces of territory,
it changes the nature of the game. And Europe and
the US will have to pay to prepare and adjust
for these different things.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
So if they don't pay now, they'll pay later.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
They will pay later, and they will pay more.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I'm curious about how this has all affected Putin's standing
in leadership within Russia. There was a lot of speculation
that if he was to be removed from power, it
would have to involve some sort of an internal coup
or meaningful opposition at the highest levels within the Kremlin,
and that if this war dragged on for a long time,
(33:37):
over time, perhaps his invincibility would erode and you might
see action against him. That certainly appears to have changed
as well. But maybe this is just reading tea leaves
without any real certainty. But I'm curious how you think
about that.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
To me, this idea that he was at political risk
has always been a fantasy. He's never been at political risk.
He's not dumb politically. He made mistakes in Ukraine, strategic mistakes,
and he has some i think misguided ideas about foreign
policy and Russia's place in the world what it needs
to be. But politically he's not done at all. He
built a system, he understands it's completely and it's not
(34:14):
for nothing that he called this invasion. By close to
two hundred thousand troops, a special military operation, and not
a war. He wanted to sell this to Russians as
something that he's got in control. It's not existential, and
we have this. So I think even if he had
had to settle and stop, he would have been fine. Politically,
(34:36):
he'd be fine. Now, of course, he's got the bit
between his teeth again. He has the opportunity to show
that he didn't make a mistake, that Russia is capable
of being the kind of great power again that he
was trying to demonstrate in the first place. So he's
in a stronger position he's been for a while.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
He's been willing to essentially put tens of thousands of
troops through a meat grinder, sending them on to a
battlefield almost as cannon fodder. Russias emptied out its prisons
to populate its military forces. There had been one argument
that if there wasn't any kind of a coup against
Putin at the very top, there might be popular sentiment
(35:15):
that gained so much momentum once average Russians and grandmothers
saw their sons disabled or killed in this war, that
you might see at ground swell from the bottom up.
But I take it. You don't think that's likely either, No.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Not at all. I mean, Putin understands his own military
very well. He knows how they fight, and you know,
once did it all become clear this is going to
be a proper war, he knew how ugly it will be.
And for that reason he has not issued a general
mobilization which would affect the children of the elites and
the middle classes in Moscow and St. Petersburg, et cetera.
(35:54):
You know, the recruitment, as you say, has been in prisons.
It's also been in predominantly in provinces, in villages where
not only is sort of political power more dispersed, so
it's less likely that you're going to get, you know,
a coordinated protest. Also, families are being offered quite significant
(36:14):
compensation when their sons or husbands and fathers die, you know,
relative to the salary that someone can expect in a
small village in Siberia. These compensations are very significant. So
that has all helped to make sure that there isn't
a big blowback, and so far he really hasn't seen it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If he emerges as a victor in this war in
Ukraine and slowdifies control over the entire country. What do
you see as the first steps he takes in the
wake of that, strategically and tactically, like, what would his
next moves be.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, I think he is now convinced that he is
at war with the West, he is at war with
the US, he's at war with Europe. So I think
if he succeeds, I suspect the first thing as part
of that success, I think he would move into Moldova,
so he would have that done through the battlefield, if
you like. And at that point, I think there would
(37:11):
be a considerable pause as he reconsolidates militarily and so on.
I mean, Russia is now on has rejigged its economy
so that it is now a war economy. They're producing
three and a half million artillery shells a year now,
and that I am quite convinced would continue, if not
(37:32):
quite at the intensity that it is now. The budget
for twenty twenty four, I think it's close to forty
percent of the budget is defense, so it might not
be quite that level, but it would continue at a
high level, and he would re equip and get ready
in his view, because he's at war with the West. Remember,
and that now Finland is part of the West is
(37:53):
a joint NATO and Sweden, et cetera. The whole kind
of strategic situation in the Baltic Sea has changed.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So he would be.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Preparing for the worst that his generals can imagine can happen.
So they would be a build up of forces along
the Finnish border, and there would be a big build
up in the Baltics, I think. And what would happen,
you know, would he destabilize and make efforts to destabilize
the Baltic States?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yes, I'm quite sure.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Would he invade I'm not so sure about that. He
probably would feel he doesn't need to. You know, when
you invade a NATO country, that's a pretty high stakes move.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Twenty twenty four will be in an election year in
the US. Do you see a material difference in how
the US responds to Putin in a Biden administration versus
a Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
That would have been a different question if we were
seeing the first Trump term. You know, if we remember,
you could see Trump's instincts doesn't care about NATO. It's
quite friendly towards Putin, you know, it's totally disinterested in
the kind of strategic game in Europe. But you know,
he had people around him, generals and someone who he's
appointed to his own administration who had a much more
(39:04):
traditional view of US interests. If he comes to power
a second time, none of those people will be there.
Only loyalists will be there, and they will be pre
vetted to make sure that they will implement the policies
that he wants, and you know, those may be fairly erratic.
I'm not sure that Trump has a specific sative foreign policies,
but they will be there to do his bidding.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Mark. I always like to ask guests what they've learned
about topics that we're discussing, and as a veteran observer
of Russia and putin, what have you learned in recent
years about him and his country's aspirations in the world.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Well, I have to say, so, I became a journalist
because I wanted to go to Russia. I wanted to
go to the former Soviet Union. Didn't want to be
aspire a diplomat to do that, so I had to
be a journalist, and I'm glad I did so. I
obviously had a pretty deep interest and fascination for love
for Russia, lived there for seven years, had a wonderful time,
(40:03):
got married there, etc. The process since has been one
of gradual loss of hope and disappointment. And by this
point I see it, it's very difficult to imagine, even
post Putin a regime that's very different from the one
that we have now in Russia in my lifetime and
the turning from the West. I think it's going to
(40:24):
last a while. It's not permanent, but it's going to
last quite some time. It will become quite deep, I think.
And yeah, it's rather depressing, and unfortunately I do believe.
I don't think I would have said, you know, some
years ago. I do believe that this is an empire collapsing,
unhappy like all empires are, with its collapse and resisting it.
(40:47):
It's always ugly if you do not make it clear
to Russians and to Putin in particular now, but Russian's
more generally, and whoever succeeds him that it's over with
the empire. They need to learn to live in their
new skin. Then we will be fighting versions of this
conflict for quite some time to come.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
We're out of time. Mark, Thanks for coming on today.
Thank you, Mark, Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. You
can find his work online at the Bloomberg Opinion website
and on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also find him
on Twitter at Mark Champion One. Here at Crash Course,
we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that
(41:33):
Vladimir Putin is much more entrenched and as much more
warewithal as a dictator, military force and swear of minds
within Russia than I thought at the beginning of the
conflict in Ukraine. What did you learn? We'd love to
hear from you. You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion
handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the
(41:53):
hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our
show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a
reviv It helps more people find the show. This episode
was produced by Anna Maserakis, moses On Dam and Me.
Our supervising producer is Mangos Hendrickson, and we had editing
help from Saige Bauman, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nitze and Christine
(42:15):
Banden Bilart. Blake Maples does our sound engineering and our
original theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien.
We'll be back next week with another crash course.
Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Putin versus Ukraine's Forgotten War.
In early twenty twenty two, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched
a full scale invasion of Ukraine, a sprawling, brutal follow
(00:22):
up to his land grab of Crimea in twenty fourteen.
Casualty figures are hard to assess precisely, but tens of
thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed or wounded
on both sides of the war, with the full tally
estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. The war
initially produced in a national show of support for Ukraine
and its embattled leader, Vladimir Zolensky. After all, the broader
(00:45):
fate of Western Europe hung in the balance, a consequential
geopolitical reality for the United States as well, and Ukraine
itself fought back courageously, beating back waves of murderous assaults
and defying expectations that it would quickly buckle. But wars
are trench, stubborn things, and as Putin's troops, missiles and
tanks laid waste to Ukraine, and as Ukraine responded in kind,
(01:07):
a military stalemate has settled in the Gaza war has
now captured the world's attention and headlines, diverting attention from Ukraine. Further,
financial military aid for Ukraine from Europe and the US
has dried up. Yet the stakes haven't changed and the
world remains at risk. Joining me today to discuss the
Ukraine War is Mark Champion, a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion.
(01:29):
Mark has lived and worked in Russia, reported from Ukraine,
and has covered foreign affairs extensively for a number of
leading publications. He is wise and shrewd, and he joins
me today from our London office where he's based. Greetings, Mark, time,
so tell me a little bit before we get into
the specifics of Vladimir Putin's journey as Russia's president and
(01:50):
the war in Ukraine, a little bit about your own
journey as a correspondent, particularly the time you spent in
Russia and what you learned from those years.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, I first went to Russia when it was still
the former Soviet Union and was there for just at
the very end before the collapse, and then went back
right afterwards and stayed for about seven years. So this
was the time of Yeltz and it was the time
of great hope in some ways for reform. There was
a big pro Western sentiment among especially younger urban Russians.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
And privatizations, privatizations, privatizations.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And very quickly, you know, economic pain and disappointment, resentment,
you know, across much of the country, which really suffered
terribly as the whole system came apart economically and so on.
But I think, you know, looking back, there are two
things that really strike me as things I didn't quite
understand the important stuff at the time. One was that
(02:50):
had many friends mostly almost all of them would have
been younger and kind of pro Western. But I remember
that whenever you would start to talk about Ukraine, it
was almost always there was a skepticism that it really
was a country, and that I think is important to
remember among younger Russians, the younger Russians, you know, just expats,
but Russian not at all. Now it's about Russians, and
(03:11):
you know, I think it's important to remember when we
talk about this as Putin's War and so on, and
we wonder as to why he has support for some
of the things that he's doing. It's just important to
remember that what it is to be Russian, what it
was to be Russian, was very confusing at the time.
You know, it was the first time in centuries there
had never been a Russian state in the borders that
existed in nineteen ninety one, and so that was a
(03:34):
confusing time. And then where Russia stopped what it was
to be Russian. These are things that have been getting
worked out ever since nineteen ninety one, and in many ways,
I think that is exactly what's happening now, and sometimes
it's difficult for us to understand it. We tend to
be so self obsessed. We think it must be about
something that we did or we didn't do, and we
forget that other countries have histories and agencies. So looking back,
(03:55):
that's very important. And I think the second thing that
I would say is, you know, it was a really
huge moment in nineteen ninety three when you may remember
that Boris j Elsen blew up the parliament.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
About one hundred and fifty people.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Died just under and there was days of fighting, and
we all remember that as a constitutional crisis, struggle for power,
which essentially it was. But what's often forgotten is that
one of the other reasons, one of the reasons that
that parliament was made up predominantly of Communist Party, members
of the New Communist Party and also nationalists, and one
(04:30):
of the things that they had consistently clashed with the
elsinover was that they refused to ratify what were called.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
The Beelavisia push Accords.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
And what that was was that was the moment when
Jelson with some other leaders, leader of Ukraine in particular
and of Beelarus, they dissolved the Soviet Union essentially, and
the Parliament was refusing to ratify that. And we forget
that right from the beginning, there was a resistance throughout
the system, in much of the population, to this idea
(05:02):
that the Soviet you know, they had to accept the
loss of empire.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
And everything that goes with that prestige, self esteem, absolute
economic wealth, military power, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
So, in many ways, I think what we are seeing
is the delayed playing out of all of those unresolved issues.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
A response to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and
putin really his rise is in the wreckage of all
of the moments around that from the dissolution of the
Soviet Union to botched privatizations, where there was a feeling
among average Russians that the privatizations really benefited a kind
of financial and political eat in Moscow and not in
(05:44):
other parts of the country. Right, Yeltsin brings Putin in.
You know, always mysteriously to me why he never recognized
that Putin could potentially be a threat or had the
appetites in him to end up where he's at it up.
But at the time, Yeltsin was a dysfunctional leader, essentially
struggling with alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Is that a fair He had issues with alcoholism, He
had heart trouble, he had heart surgery.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
He was at the end.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And then Putin essentially moves in and very quickly. This
is in January of.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Two thousand exactly, So he takes over in two thousand
and you know, ninety nine is the end of Yeltsin,
and puts In takes over this young, much younger, much fitter, dynamic,
but kind of yes enigmatic character. We didn't know a
lot about him. Russians didn't know him. They'd only really
come to have any kind of recognition of who he
was as a result of the Second Chechen War that
(06:38):
began towards the end of you know, in the second
half of nineteen ninety nine. It's just a very rough war,
and that really put in on the map.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And he embodies these resentments against the loss of empire
and sort of I think what he regarded as a
pernicious Western influence.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, well, there was definitely a kind of progression in
fact that you know, he was doing his marathon an
your kind of Q and A session, and he kind
of mused about this, you know, and he talked about
how he was naive at the beginning. He'd thought that
he could make friends of the West, the West, would
work with Russia, would make room for Russian interests, and
all that sort of thing. And so that's the narrative
(07:18):
that I think he would like us to see, which
is that he had the best of intentions, that it
wasn't his fault, it was the West fault that they
didn't treat Russia properly, didn't give it respect or room,
tried to humiliate it, and therefore we are where we are.
That's his narrative. I think the whole idea of a
career KGB officer who then cut his teeth in Saint
(07:42):
Petersburg in a basically mafia like environment, that he was
naive and put upon and so on by wiley Western
leaders and diplomats kind of unlikely, but there is something
to the fact that it took time to recognize exactly
what it was, you know, the West was willing to
(08:02):
accept and you know, what they saw as legitimate Russian interests,
and that those were absolutely not the same as the
ones that he figured that he needed to further and protect.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And presumably very early on Ukraine and his own imagination
and his practical day to day affairs as a Russian leader,
Ukraine is a thorn in his side.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
He has been obsessed with Ukraine for a very long time,
and the first time it really kind of burst onto
the scene was with the two thousand and four Orange Revolution,
and he saw this as a threat to Russian interests.
These were basically pro Western, pro democracy and therefore pro
(08:47):
Western protests against a leader who Russia had been comfortable with.
So that's two thousand and four. You had this big fight.
Viktor Yanikovich wins the election, but through for all in Ukraine,
you then have these big protests and he's forced to
redo the election, loses with a real count, and then
(09:09):
is replaced by somebody who is kind of pro European
and setting Ukraine on a different path, and to Putin
who does not believe in popular agency. You know, it
is leaders who make decisions. He saw this as a
threat and he spends the next decade trying everything through energy, blackmail,
giving money, giving cheap energy, taking it away. He tried
(09:31):
everything to maintain Ukraine within his sphere of influence, keep
it out of the US and European sphere of influence
the way that he saw all this, And you know,
finally twenty fourteen, you have another big protest revolution on
the streets. Again it is Yanikovich, who is Putin's guy,
who gets thrown out. And that was it, that was
(09:52):
put In deciding that I can't do this through these
various different tools, economic tools and so on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Are going to have to use force.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Tell me during the you know, the arc of that
first decade and a half after Putin comes to power
in two thousand, how did Ukrainians generally see this? Because
it wasn't with a unified voice. There were parts of
the country that remained.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Strongly pro Russia absolutely.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And there were significant, obviously parts of the country that
also were looking west, away from Moscow and away from Putin.
How were these popular uprisings generally received within Ukraine itself?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So Ukraine was a very divided country, and you could
see that in pretty much every election. You know, you'd
see it just kind of split down the middle, or
actually what you saw was a moving line. If you
think of the country's politics and colors, the orange color
has been for the Orange Revolution two thousand and four
and ever since it's been the color of often the opposition,
(10:50):
but of the kind of pro European, pro Western track,
and blue has been the color of the more pro
Russian track, and that was the overtch Is party color.
And you could see when you had these electoral maps,
you could see the zone of orange creeping from basically
being more or less in the west and more than
(11:12):
half the country blue, and it just kind of crept across.
It overtook all of Kief and you know, the central
parts of Ukraine. But the thing that really changed everything
was twenty fourteen. It was the decision to a next
crimea and then to ferment a conflict in the east
of Ukraine. I was in Crimea at the time. I
(11:32):
went to the Dombas region at the time, and it
was really clear what was happening. But at that time,
for example, I was in Mariopaul a number of times
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and Mariopaul was really a solidly
pro Russian city, but diancecorso nearby it and all along
that southern coast. You know, people have very divided loyalties.
They'd always voted solidly Blue. And I went back just
(11:55):
before the war, but you got eight years after that,
you know, after twenty fourteen, Crimea has taken begins this
war that really kind of there's a ceasefire, but it
continues at a low level for eight years. So I
went back just shortly before the invasion began in February
twenty two. So I was there in January, early February,
and I went back to Marioopol spent a bunch of
time there. It was transformed. Whereas it had been really
(12:19):
a solidly pro Russian city. Now even the people from
the Blue parties were not pro Russian. They might not
like the Orange parties in Kiev that didn't like them
at all. Wouldn't vote for them. They had their own parties,
but they did not want to be part of Russia, but.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Would slow down for a second. That point was that
because of the twenty twenty two invasion, or had that
sentiment already solidified.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Before that, This was before so specifically when it gave
rise to it.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, why did an area that had been so
deeply blue, so pro Russian gets swept up into the
Orange Revolution and affiliation with Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There are a number of things.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
One was that the annexation of Crimea and and then
the violence that followed in the East. Over time, those
started to be deeply resented. And you have to remember,
you know, just the front line that the ceasefire created,
and there were trenches where there's daily firing. There were
only like one hundred meters apart in many places, the
Russian and the Ukrainian trenches through the eight years, and
(13:19):
there's constant firing, constant fighting, constant body bags. And it's
I think that it's twenty about twenty kilometers from the
center of Mariyable, you know, just not far from the suburbs,
and people died, you know, they were shelling into the city,
and people got killed, and over time a resentment built.
(13:40):
And also they could see what happened in the occupied
parts of the Dunbass. You know, parts of the Dunetsk
and the Luhunsk regions were successfully occupied and behind the
by the Russians, well by the Russians and separatists. Yes,
they were behind these trenches and Ukrainians could see what
was going on behind there, and it did not look pretty.
(14:01):
It was run by a mix of clowns and mobsters
with Russian agents as the first Defense Minister was a
Russian former military intelligence if there is such a thing
as a former intelligence officer. People understood that this was
a very manipulated situation.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
It did not produce anything good for the people who
were living there. It didn't look like a future that
people in Ukraine wanted.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And presumably Putin saw the annexation of Crimea as a
sort of warning shot to the rest of Ukraine. I'm
asserting my authority in the region. If you stay in
this direction, I will come in and fix this for myself.
But in reality, what the annexation did was solidify opposition,
(14:45):
at least in Crimea in southern Ukraine against Russia and
turned what had been a solidly blue area orange.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean Crimea itself of course was gone. And
it's the only part of Ukraine, the only province of
Ukraine it had a majority of ethnic Russians living there.
The whole east and south is predominantly Russian speaking, but
the Hessan region, for example, which has been fought over,
and the Russians took Hesson. It was the only provincial
capital that they took, you know, in this latest invasion,
(15:17):
and then they lost it. But that region was fourteen
percent ethnic Russian, but almost you know, entirely heavily Russians.
And the huge mistake that Putin made was to think
in twenty twenty two that he was invading the Ukraine
of twenty fourteen, and secondly that if people are Russian speaking,
(15:37):
they must be basically Russian. And he wrote a long
essay before the invasion, you know, a year before the invasion,
is five thousand word essay all about you know, the
connections between Russian Ukraine and his version of the history
very dubous. But nevertheless, they spent a lot of time
clearly thinking about it. And it's clear he wrote it
not some flunky, and that that showed how he thought
(16:01):
about Ukraine and explains a lot about why he got
it wrong.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
And what was the clear takeaway from that essay in
your mind.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
That his belief was that Ukraine was essentially, along with Yalarus,
a part of Russia, of the Russian people, and during
the Russian Empire it had always been called, you know,
little Russia, and Ukrainians were little Russians. So his view
was that these are really one people and they belonged together.
(16:31):
As he said, the borders, you know, Ukraine was created
by Lenin when they drew the borders, and before that,
Ukraine hadn't really existed, and it's all, you know, Lenin's fault,
and that's all in there. Of course, Ukrainians have a
national history. They've just been part of an empire for
centuries and mostly unwillingly.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And they see it as their specific history. Yeah, and
that they owned that history and it's not going to
be expropriated by anyone else.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They do.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
And that version of history that put In wrote was
the version that everyone was taught, you know, throughout the
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and so on, and
so Ukraine, just as much as Russia was having to
work out up to nineteen ninety one, what it meant
to be a Ukrainian, Where was Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
What was Ukraine? Just as Russians were.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
This is a process that's been going on.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
On that note, Mark, I want to take a quick
break to hear from one of our sponsors, and then
we'll come right back. I'm back with Mark Champion, a
Bloomberg opinion columnist, and we're discussing the war in Ukraine. Mark,
you were laying out quite eloquently and with great specificity,
the context for Putin's paranoia about Ukraine, his desire to
(17:44):
reassert Russian control over Ukraine, and how the Ukrainians themselves
saw all of this. And one thing you pointed out
on the top of the show was that whatever Putin's
goals were when he annexed Crimea, he ended up getting
the opposite result. He didn't tamp down an interest in
independence among Ukrainians, and he didn't make Ukrainians more loyal
(18:07):
to Russia. But apparently he didn't learn that lesson very
well because in twenty twenty two he amounts a full
scale invasion, maybe because he didn't get the results he
wanted in twenty fourteen, But he certainly scenes to have
expected something very different in twenty twenty two than what
he got.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Correct, absolutely, I mean, we know for a fact that
when the Russians came in and columns, you know, not
only did they not form the columns in the way
that you would if you were going in to fight
a war, which left them very vulnerable, they also carried
parade uniforms with them and only a few days supply
of food. Clearly, the idea was that they expected to
(18:49):
more or less march into the major city's takeover the administration.
There wouldn't be much fighting, if any, and it would
all be done very smoothly, rather like in Crimea, which
is an un bel believably successful operation virtually without bloodshed
and very very smooth.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
How did he get it so wrong? Because so many
things have emerged since that invasion. You know, the mighty
Russian war machine was inept and bedraggled and poorly led.
The machinery itself wasn't in top condition that he was
relying on, and he clearly underestimated the kind of opposition
that he would encounter and that his military would encounter.
(19:28):
How did that happen? Given that Putin is a well
known control freak and scoops up as much information as
he can about the things he oversees. Yet there appear
to have been massive gaps in his knowledge.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think the best explanation of that
is that he built a system and coacherie around him
entirely based on loyalty rather than merit, etc. And over time,
as so often happens in these kinds of regimes, people
stop telling him things that they don't think he wants
to hear. And so I have no doubt that there
(20:03):
were people in the Russian intelligence Service, precisely because they
were deeply penetrated into Ukrainian security agencies, etc. Who knew
what was going on. But the question is what rises
through all the way to the people who actually engage
with Putin and what they are willing to tell him
and what story they want to tell him, because they
(20:24):
may have an agenda of their own in terms of
what they want him to actually do. So, you know,
there's a lot of talk also about that. You know,
there was the COVID period when he was very very isolated.
I think it was Lavrov, who once supposedly equipped, you know,
not quite recently, Sergaylvro, Sergailavrov, the foreign minister, when someone
asked him, you know, so who does put and take
advice from, and he just mentioned three different stars and himself.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think there was a big element of that.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Were you surprised when he invaded?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Well, the reason I went to Mariopaul was that I
was convinced that he would not because I had some
special insight or anything. But it was very clear that
there were two things going on. One was that the
Americans were shedding a lot of intelligence, making your public
and saying very clearly that this was going to happen.
And while I'm not a huge believer in everything that
American intelligence says, this made a lot of sense. And
(21:15):
there was so much going on on the ground that
only made sense if they were going to go in.
This was the second year in which they had piled
up troops against the border, and so it didn't surprise
me at the moment it happened. What was interesting was
talking even to people I've known for frankly decades who
advised the Kremlin and are talking to them, they genuinely,
(21:39):
I'm absolutely convinced that that they weren't sort.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Of making it up.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
They genuinely did not think he would do it, because
in their view, it was not rational, and it would be,
as one of them put it, just a week or
two before the invasion, a couple of weeks, you know,
it would be catastrophic for Russia's interests.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Like firefighters who run into burning buildings instead of out
of them, Mark is a foreign correspondent who runs toward
a looming war rather than run away from it. I
think it speaks to both his incredible dedication to his
job and his courage. When you were in Mariupol, were
you also surprised in any way by the sentiments you
(22:18):
were encountering among Ukrainians themselves that gave you an inkling
of how courageous and purposeful their own response to the
invasion would be.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yes, I think so.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I mean, there were a few things that struck me.
One was that, you know, if you talked to over
sixty fives, you know, in the suburbs there was still
a pro Russian kind of current there. So that's one
thing that struck me, was that it's not like everybody
had changed their views. The second was that, as I
mentioned before, this sort of huge change compared to a
time when it had been just solidly pro Russian and
(22:51):
even the mayor, who was, you know, from the Blue Party,
he was very much pro Ukraine and so on, and
it was clear that they would fight.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Clear to me.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
But also what was very striking is that in the
entire time, I don't think I met anybody who thought
among the Ukrainians, and certainly Zelenski the president, didn't think
that the Russians were actually gonna invade.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And Zelenski himself turned out to be a much more
capable and courageous leader than some thought he might be
when the war first started. But also at least it
was curious to me how torn some Western powers were
at the time about whether or not to commit themselves
to support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia, particularly Germany,
(23:37):
which I think was a little bit slow off the
mark early on, and other European nations. What accounted for
some of that early hesitation.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Well, I think it's different for different countries. I mean
Germany is a really good example. Germany just had so
far to travel. They had an Ostpolity because they called
it for a very long time, which was always about
engaging Russia. Economically kind of drawing it in so that
it would have an interest in being cooperative rather than disruptive.
And they stuck with that long after. You know, many people,
(24:08):
especially in Eastern Europe, were warning them that this wasn't
really working, and there was, for example, with the annexation
of Crimea, there was some evidence there to say that
it wasn't. But nevertheless, and all the while becoming heavily
dependent energy experts exactly on Russian energy, and a huge
investor in Russia, so with a great deal to lose.
So when this happened, that when the invasion happened, that
(24:30):
policy just suddenly was incinerated. But they just had so
far to travel to get from that kind of oss politique,
all the way over to Germany post war Germany actually
arming a country to fight Russia. They just had a
really long way to go. And actually, you know, in
terms of Germany, I think they moved a lot faster
than I.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Would have thought.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Eventually, the West did develop a coordinated response, and I
shouldn't say just the West. Japan was an active participant
in the response, but arms, money, and economic sanctions eventually followed,
all in an effort to support Ukraine isolate Russia and
tried to bring the war to a conclusion. NATO became
more fortified, which I think is something Putin didn't want
(25:14):
and probably didn't expect out of this action. And it
went so well for Ukraine in some of the early stages.
That's putting aside all of the deaths that the country
has had to absorb and all of the grotesque aspects
of warfare that accompanied those deaths. But it did not
only make a strong stand, it actually began progressing towards
(25:35):
the Russian border in its own military efforts, which I
don't think anyone expected. Here we are now, it's reached
a stalemate, and all of these countries that have supported
Ukraine till now are definitely wavering. I'm not saying they're
turning their back yet, but the tens of billions of
dollars in financial and military aid that has flowed from
(25:57):
Western Europe and primarily the UK and Germany and then
the United States, tens of billions of dollars more is
up for grabs. How did we get there? How did
we end up in a place where people are having
doubts about whether or not to continue to support Ukraine?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Right.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, I think there are two ways to look at this.
If you look at it from outside, from the point
of view of the Americans, the Germans, French, the uk etc.
So from that point of view, I think there was,
as so often in these cases, a mismatch of expectations.
So the expectation was set, you know, after Ukraine started
to do well that the measure for winning was actually
(26:38):
it was to take the territory back, and of course
that was encouraged by the Ukrainians who wanted their territory back. Politically,
it became impossible to say we're not going to take
it all back, so you had Zelenski saying we're going
to carry on fighting until we take back Crimea, and
we're right back to the borders in twenty thirteen, you know,
right back to the nineteen ninety one borders when we
had everything those expectations who were unrealistic from the start,
(27:02):
And the reason you need to sort of look at
it from two sides is that from the Ukrainian point
of view, they were unrealistic because the West chose to
drip feed arms to Ukraine. So at the moment when
the Russians were unprepared and when they were losing territory.
They hadn't dug in and the Ukrainians had momentum, and
they even had more personnel in the field than the
(27:24):
Russians did at that moment. The Ukrainians did not have
what it would take in order to push their advantage
all the way through. They didn't have enough combat jets,
they didn't have enough tanks, they didn't have enough longer
range missiles. They just didn't have enough of anything. If
they'd had everything they have now back in last fall,
(27:46):
then this would have been over. That's the Ukrainian point
of view. The reason that the stuff was drip fed
was that there was always a concern in the US
in particular, which was really calling the shots that escalation management.
You wanted to make sure that the Russians didn't panic
and push a red button, you know, of one kind
or another. So they really wanted to kind of stage things.
(28:08):
We don't know, for example, what conversations the Americans might
have been having with the Chinese. You know, we know
that the Chinese have had something influence on the Russians.
Do not want this to turn into a nuclear conflict,
and so on. There's stuff that we may not know
until archives are opened about you know, everything that went
on behind the scenes. But it's clear that escalation management
(28:28):
was a big deal and that it governed how things
were distributed at what pace.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Mark, let's take a quick break on that note, and
then we'll come back to this very interesting conversation. I'm
back with Mark Champion of Bloomberg Opinion Calumnist, and he
is educating me about what a stalemate in the Ukraine
War might involve. On that note, Mark, the idea of
a stalemate, what's at stake for Europe and the US
(28:58):
specifically in addition to you, of course, if military aid
and financial support doesn't continue. Packages have been held up
recently in the United States, Republicans in Congress have blocked
about sixty billion dollars in usaid to Ukraine, and more recently,
Hungry blocked a package of about fifty five billion dollars
(29:20):
in euaid to Ukraine. That's life support literally and figuratively
for Ukraine. What are the consequences of drawing all that down?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I mean they are severe.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
So I think if we start from the point of
view of what happens on the ground, the important thing
to understand and categorically to understand is that the consequence
of stopping support for Ukraine is not peace. The consequence
is lost, and it will be many human lives lost,
(29:55):
it will be territory lost, and it will be sovereign
independence of country lost. The Russians have made this very
very clear. Putin has made it clear. The Russian ambassador
at the UN said, you know, we're happy to talk
to Ukraine about a ceasefire, but it will require their capitulation,
and Putin reiterated what our goals are. He was asked
(30:17):
for what would it take to have peace in Ukraine
and he says, well, we'll have peace in Ukraine once
our goals are achieved, same as he said in twenty
twenty two. It's denatification, which means regime change, it's demilitarization,
which means disarmament. So one has to kind of bear
in mind that the option for a peace and cease
fire where everybody just stops fighting does not exist because
(30:40):
Russia is very confident now. They now believe that they
can win. Having been kind of humiliated for a couple
of years, nevertheless, they can ultimately win.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think in that same speech you reference from Putin,
he said he believed that momentum was on his side,
and he is.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
I mean, he's correct.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
What's happened this year is that the Ukrainians to the
counter offensive and it ran into sand. There is a stalemate,
but those can be easily broken, and the Russians are
the ones who are on the offensive now across the east.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
For Europeans and Americans who are saying, how does it
really hurt us to stop paying for this war? Why
should we? There's all sorts of social needs in our
own countries that we could use tens of billions of
dollars for. Why keep paying for this effort? How do
you answer that kind of a question.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Well, I think the first one is have some perspective, right, So, yes,
fifty five billion dollars from Europe, something similar maybe a
bit more from the US. There's a group called the
Ramstein Group, which is since the beginning of the invasion,
it's been meeting to organize what to get to Ukraine.
The combined GDP of the Ramstein Group is forty to
(31:51):
seven trillion dollars. This is affordable. So the first thing
is that when people start saying, you know, oh my gosh,
fifty billion in EU. This is again a multi multi
trillion dollar economy, so fifty billion is affordable. The second
is that it's not we pay it or we pay nothing,
(32:11):
because the consequences of having a Russian victory mean that
you will then have to deal with and prepare for
all kinds of new eventualities which are created by facts
on the ground, the fact that as in Beelorus, where
the Russians have said they're stationing their nuclear missiles, now
the situation in Ukraine will be very different. I mean
(32:34):
Putin said he was talking about you know what was
Russian and so on, and the Odessa is Russian in
his view, so that also is unfinished business. If he's
an Aandeessa, he's right next to Transnistria, which is a
breakaway pro Russian piece of Moldova. The Russians have spent
billions to try and destabilize Moldova. They will go in.
Then they're on the border of Romania, which is an
(32:55):
EU country. It changes everything, Like you know in a
game of risk, when you control different pieces of territory,
it changes the nature of the game. And Europe and
the US will have to pay to prepare and adjust
for these different things.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
So if they don't pay now, they'll pay later.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
They will pay later, and they will pay more.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I'm curious about how this has all affected Putin's standing
in leadership within Russia. There was a lot of speculation
that if he was to be removed from power, it
would have to involve some sort of an internal coup
or meaningful opposition at the highest levels within the Kremlin,
and that if this war dragged on for a long time,
(33:37):
over time, perhaps his invincibility would erode and you might
see action against him. That certainly appears to have changed
as well. But maybe this is just reading tea leaves
without any real certainty. But I'm curious how you think
about that.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
To me, this idea that he was at political risk
has always been a fantasy. He's never been at political risk.
He's not dumb politically. He made mistakes in Ukraine, strategic mistakes,
and he has some i think misguided ideas about foreign
policy and Russia's place in the world what it needs
to be. But politically he's not done at all. He
built a system, he understands it's completely and it's not
(34:14):
for nothing that he called this invasion. By close to
two hundred thousand troops, a special military operation, and not
a war. He wanted to sell this to Russians as
something that he's got in control. It's not existential, and
we have this. So I think even if he had
had to settle and stop, he would have been fine. Politically,
(34:36):
he'd be fine. Now, of course, he's got the bit
between his teeth again. He has the opportunity to show
that he didn't make a mistake, that Russia is capable
of being the kind of great power again that he
was trying to demonstrate in the first place. So he's
in a stronger position he's been for a while.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
He's been willing to essentially put tens of thousands of
troops through a meat grinder, sending them on to a
battlefield almost as cannon fodder. Russias emptied out its prisons
to populate its military forces. There had been one argument
that if there wasn't any kind of a coup against
Putin at the very top, there might be popular sentiment
(35:15):
that gained so much momentum once average Russians and grandmothers
saw their sons disabled or killed in this war, that
you might see at ground swell from the bottom up.
But I take it. You don't think that's likely either, No.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Not at all. I mean, Putin understands his own military
very well. He knows how they fight, and you know,
once did it all become clear this is going to
be a proper war, he knew how ugly it will be.
And for that reason he has not issued a general
mobilization which would affect the children of the elites and
the middle classes in Moscow and St. Petersburg, et cetera.
(35:54):
You know, the recruitment, as you say, has been in prisons.
It's also been in predominantly in provinces, in villages where
not only is sort of political power more dispersed, so
it's less likely that you're going to get, you know,
a coordinated protest. Also, families are being offered quite significant
(36:14):
compensation when their sons or husbands and fathers die, you know,
relative to the salary that someone can expect in a
small village in Siberia. These compensations are very significant. So
that has all helped to make sure that there isn't
a big blowback, and so far he really hasn't seen it.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
If he emerges as a victor in this war in
Ukraine and slowdifies control over the entire country. What do
you see as the first steps he takes in the
wake of that, strategically and tactically, like, what would his
next moves be.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Well, I think he is now convinced that he is
at war with the West, he is at war with
the US, he's at war with Europe. So I think
if he succeeds, I suspect the first thing as part
of that success, I think he would move into Moldova,
so he would have that done through the battlefield, if
you like. And at that point, I think there would
(37:11):
be a considerable pause as he reconsolidates militarily and so on.
I mean, Russia is now on has rejigged its economy
so that it is now a war economy. They're producing
three and a half million artillery shells a year now,
and that I am quite convinced would continue, if not
(37:32):
quite at the intensity that it is now. The budget
for twenty twenty four, I think it's close to forty
percent of the budget is defense, so it might not
be quite that level, but it would continue at a
high level, and he would re equip and get ready
in his view, because he's at war with the West. Remember,
and that now Finland is part of the West is
(37:53):
a joint NATO and Sweden, et cetera. The whole kind
of strategic situation in the Baltic Sea has changed.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So he would be.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Preparing for the worst that his generals can imagine can happen.
So they would be a build up of forces along
the Finnish border, and there would be a big build
up in the Baltics, I think. And what would happen,
you know, would he destabilize and make efforts to destabilize
the Baltic States?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yes, I'm quite sure.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Would he invade I'm not so sure about that. He
probably would feel he doesn't need to. You know, when
you invade a NATO country, that's a pretty high stakes move.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Twenty twenty four will be in an election year in
the US. Do you see a material difference in how
the US responds to Putin in a Biden administration versus
a Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
That would have been a different question if we were
seeing the first Trump term. You know, if we remember,
you could see Trump's instincts doesn't care about NATO. It's
quite friendly towards Putin, you know, it's totally disinterested in
the kind of strategic game in Europe. But you know,
he had people around him, generals and someone who he's
appointed to his own administration who had a much more
(39:04):
traditional view of US interests. If he comes to power
a second time, none of those people will be there.
Only loyalists will be there, and they will be pre
vetted to make sure that they will implement the policies
that he wants, and you know, those may be fairly erratic.
I'm not sure that Trump has a specific sative foreign policies,
but they will be there to do his bidding.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Mark. I always like to ask guests what they've learned
about topics that we're discussing, and as a veteran observer
of Russia and putin, what have you learned in recent
years about him and his country's aspirations in the world.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Well, I have to say, so, I became a journalist
because I wanted to go to Russia. I wanted to
go to the former Soviet Union. Didn't want to be
aspire a diplomat to do that, so I had to
be a journalist, and I'm glad I did so. I
obviously had a pretty deep interest and fascination for love
for Russia, lived there for seven years, had a wonderful time,
(40:03):
got married there, etc. The process since has been one
of gradual loss of hope and disappointment. And by this
point I see it, it's very difficult to imagine, even
post Putin a regime that's very different from the one
that we have now in Russia in my lifetime and
the turning from the West. I think it's going to
(40:24):
last a while. It's not permanent, but it's going to
last quite some time. It will become quite deep, I think.
And yeah, it's rather depressing, and unfortunately I do believe.
I don't think I would have said, you know, some
years ago. I do believe that this is an empire collapsing,
unhappy like all empires are, with its collapse and resisting it.
(40:47):
It's always ugly if you do not make it clear
to Russians and to Putin in particular now, but Russian's
more generally, and whoever succeeds him that it's over with
the empire. They need to learn to live in their
new skin. Then we will be fighting versions of this
conflict for quite some time to come.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
We're out of time. Mark, Thanks for coming on today.
Thank you, Mark, Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. You
can find his work online at the Bloomberg Opinion website
and on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also find him
on Twitter at Mark Champion One. Here at Crash Course,
we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that
(41:33):
Vladimir Putin is much more entrenched and as much more
warewithal as a dictator, military force and swear of minds
within Russia than I thought at the beginning of the
conflict in Ukraine. What did you learn? We'd love to
hear from you. You can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion
handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the
(41:53):
hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our
show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a
reviv It helps more people find the show. This episode
was produced by Anna Maserakis, moses On Dam and Me.
Our supervising producer is Mangos Hendrickson, and we had editing
help from Saige Bauman, Jeff Grocott, Mike Nitze and Christine
(42:15):
Banden Bilart. Blake Maples does our sound engineering and our
original theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien.
We'll be back next week with another crash course.
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