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 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 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, 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. 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 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.
Yeah.
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.
And privatizations, privatizations, privatizations.
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 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 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 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,
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.
About one hundred and fifty people.
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 of the things that they had consistently clashed with the elsinover was that they refused to ratify what were called.
The Beelavisia push Accords.
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 that the Soviet you know, they had to accept the loss of empire.
And everything that goes with that prestige, self esteem, absolute economic wealth, military power, et cetera, et cetera.
So, in many ways, I think what we are seeing is the delayed playing out of all of those unresolved issues.
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 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.
Is that a fair He had issues with alcoholism, He had heart trouble, he had heart surgery.
He was at the end.
And then Putin essentially moves in and very quickly. This is in January of.
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 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.
And he embodies these resentments against the loss of empire and sort of I think what he regarded as a pernicious Western influence.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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 put In deciding that I can't do this through these various different tools, economic tools and so on.
Are going to have to use force.
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.
Strongly pro Russia absolutely.
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?
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, 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 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 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 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
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.
Would slow down for a second. That point was that because of the twenty twenty two invasion, or had that sentiment already solidified.
Before that, This was before so specifically when it gave rise to it.
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.
There are a number of things.
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
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. 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. 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.
You know.
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.
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, at least in Crimea in southern Ukraine against Russia and turned what had been a solidly blue area orange.
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,
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,
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 about Ukraine and explains a lot about why he got it wrong.
And what was the clear takeaway from that essay in your mind.
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. 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.
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.
They do.
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?
What was Ukraine? Just as Russians were.
This is a process that's been going on.
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 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
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.
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 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.
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. 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.
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 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 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.
I think there was a big element of that.
Were you surprised when he invaded?
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 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, I'm absolutely convinced that that they weren't sort.
Of making it up.
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.
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 were encountering among Ukrainians themselves that gave you an inkling of how courageous and purposeful their own response to the invasion would be.
Yes, I think so.
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 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.
Clear to me.
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.
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, 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.
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, 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
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.
Would have thought.
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 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 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 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?
Right.
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 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, 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 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, 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. 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 was a big deal and that it governed how things were distributed at what pace.
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 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 in euaid to Ukraine. That's life support literally and figuratively for Ukraine. What are the consequences of drawing all that down?
I mean they are severe.
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, 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 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 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.
I think in that same speech you reference from Putin, he said he believed that momentum was on his side, and he is.
I mean, he's correct.
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.
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.
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 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, 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 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
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.
So if they don't pay now, they'll pay later.
They will pay later, and they will pay more.
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, 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.
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
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, 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.
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 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.
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. 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 a joint NATO and Sweden, et cetera. The whole kind of strategic situation in the Baltic Sea has changed.
So he would be.
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?
Yes, I'm quite sure.
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.
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.
Absolutely.
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
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.
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.
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, 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 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. 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.
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 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
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 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.