On this episode of its World. Last week, Ukraine attacked Russia with drones, launching them from semi trucks and destroyed or damage at least a dozen Russian aircraft, including many of Moscow's nuclear capable strategic bombers. On Friday, Russia responded by launching four hundred and seven drones in decoys, nearly forty crews missiles, and six ballistic missiles from land, air, and sea at towns and cities across the breadth of
the nation. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, it appeared to be the second largest drone assault of the war, after Russia launched nearly five hundred drones last weekend. As the war in Ukraine escalates, how will the United States respond? I'm really pleased to welcome my guests, Anatole Levin. He is the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible State CREP. Anatole, welcome and thank you for joining me.
On news World. Nice to be here. How long have you been.
Looking at Ukraine and Ukraine Russian relations?
Since nineteen ninety when I was a British journalist for London Times. It was sent out to the then Soviet Union and spent seven years there. I visited Ukraine a lot, I can't remember how many times in those years. And then I wrote a book about the Ukrainian Russian relationship called A Fraternal Rivalry, which came out in nineteen ninety nine.
And so you were actually there during the whole transition from the Soviet Union to Russia and from a Russia trying to grapple with openness to the rise of Putin. I was, yes, were you surprised by the rise of Putin?
No? I mean, in fact, given what happened to Russia in the nineteen nineties, I was afraid at the time that it could be even worse, that you could have, I mean out right fascism and persecution of national minorities and civil war. Of course, what we've got has been bad, but in Russia things can always be worse, because you had a combination of things that very few countries have faced before, which was a combination of the loss of empire,
because that's really what the Soviet Union was. Now. Of course other countries went through that, Britain went through it, France went through it, but that was combined with catastrophic economic collapse whereas one of the things that made the loss of Empire easier for the British and French in the fifties and sixties was that these were years of great economic prosperity and expansion. And then on top of that you had the end of communist ideology, which left
people morally and intellectually and ideologically completely at sea. And so I was expecting backlash against the backlash is what we got. I mean also, I have to say, and this alerted me in advance to some of the things that we've seen, well we're already seeing. We've seen much more since then. It was the absolute contempt and indifference of the Moscow and Petersburg liberal intelligentsia to the mass
of the Russian population. They absolutely despise them. Well, there were reasons they despise them as ignorant Soviet educated backward, but in the meantime, the liberals fell absolutely headlong for every Western latest intellectual and moral fashion, while being totally indifferent to the suffering of ordinary Russians in these years, and especially older Russians, and Putin's most important base but also the one he's most afraid of, are in fact,
the pensioners it's rather funny Putin crushes other opponents with police force and battles and tear gas. You can't do that to grandmothers. And whenever the grandmothers start to protest, Putin backs down because for them he paid their pensions on time. I mean, that was as important as anything else.
Do you see him, despite everything, as relatively stable in power.
Wells Jogi Berra said about never making predictions, especially about the future. So I say this with hesitation, but yes, I think so. Now. There was of course a very serious wobble because he and his cronies well launched the Ukraine War and then hideously mismanaged it, in part because of the corruption that they had tolerated or even encouraged within the Russian military. And there was the co attempt
by one of his cronies, Pregosion of Wagner. But he overcame that, in part, of course, because Pregosian was hoping that enough of the army would mutiny junior officers and soldiers on his side because of anger at the way that the war had been mismanaged. But of course they all knew that if they did that, that was the shortest road to defeat. In Ukraine, and first they didn't
want to be defeated. But also, of course they don't need to learn the history of the Weimar Republic to know that if you're trying to come to power as a new regime, you don't want to inherit defeat. So yes, I think he's relatively stable unless the economy completely collapses. But it's in trouble, but it showed no sign of collapse yet.
Given the Russian capacity for endurance, what we would think of is the terrible recession. They would think of as normal.
Yeah, and they went through much worse the older ones in the nineties. And what the nineties, on top of the terrible experiences of Russia in the twentieth century left ordinary Russians is this deep fear of chaos, of anarchy, of civil strife and violence, and that does make them naturally conservative. The old British poem always keep tight hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse. The Russians have a kind of absolute gut feeling of that.
If I understand you from their perspective, an authoritarian regime that blocks the criminals and that blocks the chaos is preferable to a soft regime that allows the society to decay.
Well, that's right. And if you talk to small businessmen or business women in Russia, they dislike the corruption of the top elites in Moscow. But the ones who are around in the nineteen nineties or whose parents were still say that now is much better because you know, in the nineties the mafia was everywhere. There were competing mafias all extorting from small businesses and ruining them. And now
you know, it's got much more regular. It's you know, if you like it's you make your payments to the police, Widows and Orphans Fund, and they do protect you against the mafia. And so it's sort of become a regular, predictable, limited form of corruption that businessmen can live with.
You know, those I think parents that we just don't appreciate in the West, that fit the historic experience. And I think also if you remember that two weeks before the Russian attack on Ukraine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milly, testified in front of a Senate committee he thought the Russians would be in Ukraine in three days. So it's not abnormal that the Russians thought they'd be in Kievan three days and then it just all fell apart.
That's right, But you know, all the same, I actually expect them to try and go for the whole country, because I didn't think that they had the troops to do that. I thought they were going to seize the Russian speaking areas of the east and south, which they could have done if they ignored Kiev and gone for that. Then they were going to try to negotiate on that basis and do a deal, which of course they did
in March of twenty twenty two. But by then they had already suffered so many defeats that their bargaining position had gone way down, and the Ukrainians were able, i mean, possibly foolishly, but still to refuse to do that deal. And of course the Russians were also still asking some absolutely unacceptable things, as they are today.
Seems to me that it's pretty clear that Putin's interest is a totally neutralized Ukraine, incapable of defending itself.
Yep, that's what the Russians are asking for or demanding, But of course the Ukrainians will never agree to that. I think it's possible that you might get a deal, which is the terms of the Austrian State Treaty in nineteen fifty four that the Ukrainians give up certain categories of weapons like long range missiles that are capable of striking deep in Russia. But that's as far as they can go in my view. And look, maybe if the Russians go on and on, the Ukrainian army will collapse.
But as everyone says over the past year, I mean, the Russians have been making progress, but very very slowly and with heavy casualties. So you know, in the end, I'm afraid this will be decided on the battlefield, and we just don't know, We cannot be sure what's going to happen on the battlefield.
Were you surprised by the Ukrainian ability to drive trucks thirty four hundred miles from Kiev and then have them launch automated drones that were reasonably effective in taking out very expensive aircraft.
Well I was, yes, I mean it was clearly a brilliantly planned operation, I mean, a masterpiece of its kind. But then of course, you know, look at what is the miss terrorists have been able to do inside Russia over the years, these ghastly massacres, I mean, of course this has happened in Europe as well, but then you know, putin state is a kind of police state. You expect police states to be able to stop this kind of thing. Clearly, the Russian system is also very incompetent and leaky.
I mean, the whole idea that you could drive these trucks and not a single one of them got picked up struck me as amazing.
Yeah, well, you know, could have been bribes to the police along the way if you claimed that these trucks were actually full of some kind of smuggled goods and then paid the police a few thousand dollars to let them throw and not to check. And of course the thing is, just as there are so many Russians in Ukraine, there are millions and millions and millions of Ukrainians in Russia, and so it's not that you could spot Ukrainian agents automatically,
and they clearly have a network within Russia. From that point of view, it's almost a little bit like the IRA in Britain in the past.
Does that just make it interesting or does it make it a serious sign that the Ukrainians may be able to balance off Russian mass by being more agile and more inventive.
Well, I think the real thing that's holding the Russians back on the battlefield is the change of military technology. Many people have made the analogy with the First World War, and I think that's right in many ways, because I was in Ukraine and talked to Ukrainian veterans and what they said was, you know, we hear all these reports of supposed Russian human waive attacks and meat attacks. They said,
that's absolute nonsense. They said, you cannot do that because the battlefields are absolutely choked with mines, and of course you can clear minefields, but it takes a long time, and somebody trying to clear a minefield in the open with a drone hovering overhead as a dead man. The Russians can't bring tanks up to the front line. So this whole old Russian approach, or what we thought of in the Cold War of a huge tank army sweeping forwards and you know, advancing over hundreds of miles just
not possible. And they're bringing up their reinforcements to the front line, apparently in groups the smallest three, because anything bigger will be spotted by drones and destroyed.
Given how inexpensive some of the drones are. Now, how much should we be re thinking the American defense system in the light of these capabilities.
Well, I think we should be rethinking it very seriously, as should the Europeans, because I think it does mean, for example, that the Europeans could stop a Russian attack on Europe but relatively low cost, which would give them time to build up their own defenses. As far as America is concerned, well, one thing, you know, well, several European countries have already withdrawn from the Anti land Mine Treaty. America was never part of it because of South Korea.
But mines, in my view, are well they're not good, of course, they're hideous things, but they are critical to the battlefield now.
Which means that we're moving towards the defense having a great advantages over the offense.
Well, that's right. And for Taiwan this has two very interesting things. I think One is if the Taiwanese are actually prepared to spend a lot of money and build up their defenses, they can really deter and badly damage Chinese attempt at invasion. I think the Chinese would suffer very heavily. But on the other hand, of course, this is very worrying for the US Navy if the Chinese instead impose a naval blockade on Taiwan, because look at
what happened to the Black Sea Fleet. I mean something that I got completely wrong, but I have to say so did every other analyst I know. Is that we thought that the Black Sea Fleet would simply dominate the Russian Black Sea Fleet would dominate the Black Sea. The Ukrainians had no navy at all. Instead, they have defeated and very badly damaged the Russian Black Sea Fleet, forced it out of its base in Crimea, simply with land based missiles, drones, seaborn drones as well as airborn drones.
You have an eleven billion dollar aircraft carrier, and you have seventeen hundred Chinese merchant ships that visited the US last year. Now, it would be pretty easy to put ten or twenty or thirty drones on every merchant ship. We wouldn't have another ammunition to stop all.
Look what the Ukrainians did, you know, containers full of drones operated from a distance. But on the other hand, you know, if you look at the First and Second World Wars, it hasn't perhaps been sufficiently noticed because it wasn't very dramatic, unlike the Great Naval battles. But of course, if China can blockade Taiwan, the US Navy can still blockade the whole of China's maritime trade. China still doesn't have a blue water navy that could unblock the Straits
of Malacca or challenge America in the Indian Ocean. Now, of course that's a key reason why the Chinese are building Belton Road and their overland energy supplies. But I think that is a good deterrent against the Chinese. Look, you may think you can force Taiwan into surrender, but we can blockade you the way that the British did to the Germans, which, of course, in the First War War at least crippled the German economy and eventually won the war.
There's a bill which I have frankly have encouraged in the Senate that has eighty co sponsors on basically draconian sanctions against Russia, which Trump doesn't seem to be very happy with. But at the same time, I have a hunch that as things above, the Senators may pass it anyway, and at eighty you really have a pretty big statement. How do you see this dance continuing over the next six months?
What would you expect? Well, I mean, on this bill. The real problem is countries like India, and above all India, which are of course very important US partners, but are very heavily dependent on imports of Russian oil and LNG. And the Indians they have this tremendous sense of themselves as a great independent power and as a partner of
the US, but not a satellite or dependency. Is America really going to slap five hundred percent tariffs on Indian imports and other countries South Korea that are important US allies. I mean, so I think somewhat the Europeans are doing it may be more effective, but I think we've already learned there isn't an economic knockout blow against Russia. There's pressure, there isn't a ko as to what will happen in the next six months, you know, as President Trump has said,
he's going to walk away from the peace process. The big question though, is does the US continue military and above all intelligence aid to Ukraine. I think intelligence is more important than weapons, even because without US satellite intelligence and the Ukrainians don't know when the Russians are building up
their forces. Without terrain mapping, they can't actually fire the European cruise missiles they've been given because they can't hit their targets, and without starlink they can't talk to each other. So if that is cut, the Ukrainians will be in very serious trouble. I mean, if it's not, then we will, I think, see a continuation on the battlefield of this
war of attrition. Plus the Russians, as they've been doing in the past couple of days, trying to wear down the Ukrainian economy by attacking above all Ukrainian's energy infrastructure, we will have to see by the First World War analogy. On the one hand, you can have a stalemate lasting for years. On the other hand, as you well know, eventually one side or the other did crack. And it doesn't seem to me that if either side cracks, it's
going to be the Russians. And so there is this risk that eventually the Ukrainians well above all, will run out of men because we can provide well. Our stocks are now very low, but still we can corn providing weapons to the Ukrainians and intelligence unless we send our own armies, which every administration has vowed not to do. We can't provide men for the Ukrainians, and that's their gracious weakness. I think.
In the middle of all this, as you know, President Trump spoke with Putin and then posted on truth Social sort of his version of what they talked about. And it was a little chilling in that he said. The call lasted approximately an hour and fifteen minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia's dock airplanes by Ukraine, and also various other attacks have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that
will lead to immediate peace. President Putin did say and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields. He promptly turns it and says, we also discussed Iran. It's as though I like to have Russia as an ally, but he knows he really ought to try to get peace in Ukraine and he's sort of torn between the two strategic goals.
Well, I think that's right. I think the problem as well is that, for reasons I don't fully understand that Trump administration has not put together a professional team with the detailed knowledge to be able to negotiate with Russia, because as far as I can see, the only hope is that you get Russia to withdraw or reduce its demands on Ukraine the things that the Ukrainians cannot accept, withdrawal from more territory disarmament in return giving the Russians
some of what they want. That's also in accordance with Trump administration policy when it comes to US Russian relations because clearly, I mean Putin is very anxious not to
completely ruin his relationship with Trump. And there you're talking about new arms control agreements, talking about maybe limiting US forces in Europe, which is what Trump wants to do anyway, You're talking about some kind of institutionalized you recognition of a Russian, say, in European security, and of course if you're looking at an end to further NATO expansion, which I think Trump is totally uninterested in any way. So there are things we can offer the Russians that could
potentially lead them to reduce their demands on Ukraine. But of course, under the surface, but not entirely under the surface, there's a big debate going on within the Russian establishment. Over this, there are the hardliners who really do want to press on for complete victory in Ukraine, and the others who are saying, look, this isn't militarily possible, it's not worth it anyway. You know, all we get is a keep of ruins populated by people who hate us.
So let's try and do a deal. I think both of those elements are present in Putin's mind from what I gather, so we need to find a way to strengthen the one and diminish the other.
How seriously do you take the worry that if he does win in Ukraine, that it puts Estonia, Lautfia, Lithuania and Finland under an increased threat.
I don't, to be honest, partly because look, I mean, if you see the problems that Russia has faced in Ukraine and its failures to launch a direct attack on NATO would be hideously risky, and the question then is what do you actually get out of this? But also there's a contradiction here because many people have said, and in part quite rightly, they're not just Putin, but Russians have this particular obsession with Ukraine for a whole set
of historical ethnic, cultural, whatever reasons. But the Russians don't have these feelings about the Baltic States and certainly not about Finland. The Russians are a bit bewildered about Finland joining later because they said, look, we haven't done anything to Finland since nineteen forty four. We've never threatened Finland. We always had a good relationship with Finland. We like
the Finns. What's going on here. The Russians didn't like NATO enlargement to Poland and the Baltic States, but you know, if you remember, they never did anything about it, and they could have done. The Russians could have really stirred up the Russian minorities in Latvia and Estonia to revolt. They could have carried out terrorist attacks and then tried to stimulate ethnic conflict. They could have laid claim to
Russian majority areas on Russia's borders. They didn't do any of that because it wasn't worth a catastrophic clash with NATO for the sake of the Baltic States. But if they didn't do it, then there really isn't a reason why they would do it now. Also, I think there is this desire, certainly to get on with Trump and
hopefully his successor Republican success, whoever that is. There's also, of course still this desire to reach out to the right in Europe, who of course have if you look at the pen in France and so forth, they've lined up by NATO against the Russian invasion. But still they and their supporters are not at all enthusiastic about unlimited
permanent support for Ukraine. If you ought a direct attack on NATO and the European Union, because of course all these countries are also you members, well, all that simply goes out of the window. Then you have well the risk of nuclear catastrophe, but you also have of course a permanently foreseeable time rect relationship with the West, and of course you put yourself even more deeply in the
pockets of the Chinese. Now. The Russians are being very disciplined in public about not talking about their fears in this regard, but believe me, if you talk to them in private, a lot of them are very unhappy with the way in which Russia is becoming dependent on China.
Goes right to the heart of going all the way back to the Mongol yoke and the fear of being absorbed by the East and seeing themselves as a unique civilization between the West and the East. It's an amazing time. I want to thank you. I think Anatole, this is such a complex area and it was very helpful to get your insights and your understanding. I want to let our listeners know they can follow the work you're doing at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft at quincyist dot org.
We're going to have that on our show page and make sure that people can stay in touch and follow what you're doing. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.
It was a great pleasure, sir, Thank you.
Thank you to my guests, Anatole Evan. You can learn more about the war in Ukraine on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Genglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Slum. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to kam Special thanks
to the team at Ginglish three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at gingwishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld