Lawfare Daily: A Ukraine Update with Eric Ciaramella and Anastasiia Lapatina

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[Intro]

Eric Ciaramella: The nuclear saber-rattling, the warnings of additional types of weapons use, the kind of creativity here, it's really just, in my view, throwing a bit of spaghetti against a wall to see what gets our attention.

Ben Wittes: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, here with Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It's a bad situation and analysts have described this moment in time as the worst moment for Ukrainian armed forces since the very beginning of the full scale invasion. This is right now the toughest moment we're in.

Ben Wittes: Today we're talking the latest in the Ukraine-Russia war, Russia uses an intermediate range ballistic missile, Ukraine uses ATACMS, the front keeps eroding for the Ukrainians, and they're weirdly optimistic about Donald Trump.

[Main Podcast]

So, Nastya, how did Russia's launch of an ICBM against Ukraine affect you and your family?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Well, there was a lot of, kind of, short-term panic around that launch. And most of the panic actually wasn't among Ukrainians. It was about the Westerners living in Ukraine because four embassies, including the American embassy closed for the day because they got some intel that a big attack was coming.

Eric actually texted me being like, you know, be careful. I've heard this embassy closed, whatever. So, and like people, and not just Eric, other people would text me as well. So, people were kind of freaking out, especially those who are in touch with somebody in the U.S.

So, you know, I had to think about like, okay, my kid is going to be with a nanny for a day. They should probably hang out somewhere where there is like a shelter nearby in case something happens. So there were these kind of freaky considerations that by the third year of war are pretty normal for us, but it just sucks that we have to think about these things, right?

So then, when the launch and actually nothing happened in Kyiv on the day of all of this panic. It happened the following early morning in Dnipro and they launched what they called Oreshnik, it's this experimental missile that the Ukrainian authorities initially called an ICBM. And, you know, Ukrainians flooded social media with, you know, dramatic posts about Ukraine being the first country in history to be attacked by an ICBM. It wasn't actually an ICBM. It was, as the U.S. clarified later…

Ben Wittes: It was an IRBM.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes.  It was slightly less bad.

Ben Wittes:Yeah. So just for those who don't know these acronyms, ICBM is an intercontinental ballistic missile, has to go over an ocean to be an ICBM, unless you're North Korean, in which case, you can bomb the ocean itself, that counts as an ICBM. This was an intermediate range ballistic missile, which is used really for land-to-land targets within the same continent. Is that a fair summary, Eric?

Eric Ciaramella: I think so. I admit I'm not a missile expert, but yes, that is.

Ben Wittes: Yeah, but for the purposes of this conversation. Yeah, it's really important. It was not an ICBM. It was an intermediate range missile, but you know, these distinctions matter to the people for whom they matter.

Anyway, Nastya, you were saying.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. So they launched this thing and they launched it at some military target in Dnipro, like there were no casualties. No one died. The damage was really minimal. And so that was kind of underwhelming in a way, just because people were kind of like preparing for this dramatic response from Russia and, you know, an attack from Russia, but it didn't really happen.

And, basically, this missile, as far as I understand it, was this, like, experimental model that's based on an actual ICBM that Russia has, a different one, but they like just adjusted that model and did it for an IRBM. The big important thing was that this missile was capable of carrying nuclear weapons, a nuclear payload.

Ben Wittes: And multiple payloads.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes. Multiple payloads. But from a military standpoint of view, that attack was completely useless. Like a bunch of other Russian missiles can reach Dnipro very easily, no problem. And also there are other Russian missiles that are able to carry a nuclear payload like an Iskander, which Russia has launched at us without the nukes many times.

So the launch of this experimental missile was just a political signal to the West that like, okay, you guys are letting us finally strike our territory with your weapons. We have to do something. There has to be a response. Here is this scary response, so we have a new missile. And then of course they did other stuff. They changed their nuclear doctrine as well, but we will get into it. So, but I mean, in Ukraine, that, that attack was like very underwhelming.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah. I mean, I think Nastya is right that it was, you know, much more of a political signal than something of military utility. And I think it's interesting, you know, the Russians clearly felt the need to respond differently to Biden's change of policy, allowing ATACMS to be used on Russian territory. But, you know, Russia is hemmed in on this escalation dynamic because, you know, it's a pretty stark choice when you're faced with doing more against Ukraine, which essentially Russia's done everything possible to, you know, devastate Ukrainian infrastructure and kill civilians and so on.

But, you know, there's a pretty bright line between all of that and then launching some sort of, you know, attack or operation against a NATO ally. So Russia, as far as I, you know, can still tell wants to avoid a war with NATO, that they understand that they would lose. And so their real, only choice is to escalate against Ukraine.

And again, they didn't have much, you know, left in their toolbox except this kind of fancy new thing that I think got a lot of missile experts and arms control-type people scared because it's never been used before in combat. But again, you know, if that's all that they're going to do, I would say message received, but it's not going to change the White House's policy.

Ben Wittes: Okay, so help me out with this, Eric, because I don't actually fully understand the signaling of this. This is a nuclear-capable missile. But nobody's ever doubted that the Russians were capable of nuking Dnipro or Kyiv or any other place in Ukraine that they wanted to. And by the way, they could do that with a fighter bomber. And so the capability to do it is not something that was ever in question. The willingness to do it is what's in question.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly.

Ben Wittes: And by the way, showing that you can, that you're willing to use a different vehicle to deliver conventional explosives doesn't really address the willingness to do it question. So why did people take this again, more in the West than in Ukraine, but why did people take this as a scary escalation?

I mean, the New York Times did a whole, you know, podcast, The Daily episode about a dramatic escalation in Ukraine. And it seems to me that the escalation such as we saw it was number one, that Putin changed his military doctrine as he has done a number of times before. And number two, that he used a different device to deliver conventional explosives to a target that he would have hit, might've hit anyway. So what is actually escalatory about this?

Eric Ciaramella: The Russians have had a problem with signaling and deterrence from the get go. I mean, the first day of the invasion, Putin warned that, you know, anyone who interfered with the so-called special military operation would face extraordinary consequences.

And the problem is that Russia, at that time, probably didn't have the capabilities to, you know, kinetically target, you know, U.S. weapons shipments into Ukraine, and there was no real way, and they got bogged down very quickly in the invasion around Kyiv and all of that. So, there was no real way for the Russians to kind of cut off this Western weapons supply.

And then, as the war has gone on, the Russians have tried to reestablish some kind of deterrence. You know, I think we're in a landscape where they are still successfully deterring us from sending boots on the ground, you know, and getting directly involved in the war. But the nuclear saber-rattling, the warnings of additional types of weapons use, the kind of creativity here, it's really just, in my view, throwing a bit of spaghetti against a wall to see what gets our attention.

And the fact of the matter is, you know, at least under the Biden administration, I don't see a path to getting us to significantly change our policy based on this kind of toolkit. The question of whether it's going to affect Trump's view of, you know, the possibility of World War III breaking out and all of that. I mean, that's a different story.

So with all of these kind of maneuvers, you're trying to affect the psychology of the other leader. And what's going to scare the other leader into thinking we've gone too far and need to pull things back? Maybe it is all, you know, New York Times podcasts about an ICBM and how we're on the precipice of disaster.

Some of which, again, was partly because of Russian rhetoric, but also partly because of Ukrainian rhetoric that like, oh my God, this new weapon is being used against us in a way that hasn't been before and all of that. I mean, it gets people scared and fear is ultimately what, you know, constitutes deterrence.

And so we're all in this game of chicken now, and it's kind of unclear what is going to affect the other side's calculus. So I understand that they're just sort of throwing things out there to see what works. And I don't think this one did, but we'll see what it does with Trump.

Ben Wittes: Yeah. And just in defense of Putin's strategic thinking here, there's two American audiences. There's the incumbent administration and there's the future administration. And both Ukraine and Putin are in a kind of feverish effort to influence the thinking of the incoming administration.

And so if you can convince them that it's World War III, it might not matter if you convince the incumbent administration that it's World War III. And so keep in mind that there are multiple American audiences here.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I think we also have to describe what happened with Russia's changing its nuclear doctrine. I'd say that's like, for me, that seems kind of scarier than the actual attack because what they did is, they signed into law, they officially changed their nuclear doctrine. And they've been talking about these changes for several months.

And as far as I understand, they started talking about like, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, exactly around that time when these debates about ATACMS were happening, and they were trying to, you know, stop that from happening, they didn't want the U.S. to lift the restrictions.

But that failed, the U.S. did lift the restrictions. And so now they actually, they are not, they're no longer just talking about it, they actually did change it. And they basically lowered the threshold for under which consequences can Russia consider using nuclear weapons. And if, it used to be that Russia could respond with a nuclear weapon to, I'm pretty sure Eric, correct me if I'm wrong, but it used to be that it's either another nuclear attack or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

And now they lowered it to a conventional attack that threatens Russian sovereignty. And they also said that, you know, if a non-nuclear state is attacking Russia, let's say Ukraine, and it's backed by a nuclear power, then Russia considers all of that as like a nuclear state type of attack. So it's now responding, not just to the single attacker, but to that entire coalition.

So basically, that hypothetically could mean that some sort of large scale Ukrainian attack that includes American weapons, includes ATACMS, includes Storm Shadows from the U.K., includes its own drones, something big like that.

Ben Wittes: London, Washington toast in response.

Anastasiia Lapatina: In theory, that could warrant a nuclear response. And so they've lowered that threshold on paper. And so I guess, and again, I may be wrong about this, but I guess there is nothing left for them to do in this way of deterrence, other than like now actually do it. Because how much more can you threaten to do it? You know what I mean? So, what do you guys think about that?

Ben Wittes: Well, they do, I mean, they do a lot of threatening.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Sure.

Ben Wittes: And you know, they, saber rattling is itself a form of, it's not a very effective form of deterrence a lot of the time, but look, if the goal is to rattle the Fox News crowd, because the Fox News crowd will rattle Trump. That's not a crazy theory.

 I mean, to my mind I mean, I think they're kind of rattle-able, honestly. And, you know, Trump has been consistent about very few things, but he has been consistent about not wanting to let Ukraine cause dangerous friction in the U.S.-Russia relationship. And, you know, poking at that over and over again is not a crazy strategic move from Putin's point of view, in my view.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I would just make the point that it's interesting. We have basically the same problem the Russians have at the moment, which is it's not really a problem of deterrence. Deterrence is trying to prevent the adversary from doing something, starting something against you that they're not doing.

In many respects, deterrence is kind of working in the sense that we are both trying to deter each other from getting into an active shooting war between NATO and Russia. That's basically working.

Compellence is to try to get the adversary to stop doing something that they're already doing, and that's always a lot harder. So it's hard for them to get us to stop a policy that we've invested almost three years into that we're really committed to. And that it's just not just the United States, but most European countries and our partners in the Asia-Pacific region, in terms of supporting Ukraine. That's very hard to compel us to stop. It's equally hard for us to compel the Russians to stop attacking Ukraine because they're already in it. They're already committed.

And so, you know, when you talk about these cost imposition strategies and all of that, I mean, on our side, sanctions, ATACMS, you know, blah, blah, blah. All of that is designed to try to raise the costs on the other side so significantly that it forces a policy change and it forces them to stop an ongoing attack. That's really, really, really difficult. And so I think we're seeing sort of the mirror imaging of the fundamental challenge that once you get into a war, it's just very difficult to get the other side to stop.

Ben Wittes: All right. Let's go back in time a few days before the non-ICBM launch. What precipitated this was Ukraine using the new authority that Biden has conveyed to use ATACMS deep inside of Russian territory. Nastya, what do we know about the use of ATACMS so far? Has it been significant or has it just been more symbolic at this point?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I mean, this news when it came out was, at least to me and from my understanding to many others, as underwhelming as the non-ICBM launch.

And I, to be completely honest, I was quite sad when the news came out, cause like Ukrainians have been waiting for this moment for, I'm pretty sure over a year. We've been doing this active lobbying of like, let us strike Russia, let us strike Russia. And so now they did it and they didn't even lift restrictions as much as we wanted them to.

What they did is they replaced, like one restriction with another one, because as far as I understand from the reporting, we can only use these ATACMS and also Storm Shadows to hit Russia around the Kursk area. So, to help us with that particular operation. And there are also a bunch of other questions about, you know, the quantity of ATACMS and Storm Shadows we have, and the type of ATACMS that we have, because there are different ranges.

So it's as always, not really what Ukrainians would prefer, it's something smaller scale. And so I was quite sad because I was like, wow it took like, so many years to come to this decision that's from a purely military standpoint of view, if you take the politics out of it, it's, like, absurd that it didn't happen sooner, right? But there are the politics, unfortunately.

And so, I mean, yeah, there have been some successful strikes. There was a Storm Shadow strike, an ATACMS strike at a weapons depot, also at a, what seemed to be a command headquarters, which was pretty significant, near Kursk area. So as far as I understand, it happened now because the Biden administration is trying to help Ukraine hold on to that territory, which has been increasingly hard.

The losses have been really high, higher than people usually talk about. I haven't seen any significant reporting about the cost of this operation in Kursk, but it's pretty high. And so, basically, the White House is trying to help us keep that territory if there is some sort of negotiation that's forced on us in a few months, so we have some bargaining chip left. Because that was initially the idea for why we launched the operation in the first place.

Ben Wittes: And just remember for those who don't have the geography in mind, Kursk is the area of the Russian Federation that is currently occupied by Ukrainian forces. It's kind of the Gettysburg of this war.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So anyway it's of course a good decision, but it's very late and it's, like most of these weapons decisions, it's not going to be any game changing consequence.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I agree, and I would just say I do want to come back to Kursk in a minute because there's a lot of nuance and complexity.

We have to talk about there, but I think on the ATACMS decision, it really, it turned into something enormous in the collective imagination about a potential game changer in the war. And I think this was a huge point of frustration on the side of American officials who understood that it was never going to be a game changer.

Ben Wittes: The game changers never seemed to change the game.

Eric Ciaramella: No, I mean, that's the thing. There's no silver bullet at this point, but you know, I think the Pentagon was trying delicately to, you know, over the course of the last year, get Ukraine to not focus on this so much because they understood that with our stockpile limitations and all of that, this wasn't really going to be a huge deal. But it kept gaining this, you know, aura of some sort of silver bullet. And I think that's part of why it has been disappointing is that, you know, again, it never was going to be able to do much more than help the Ukrainians target a few facilities.

In terms of what restrictions there are, I mean, I think we really don't know in open source, things have been communicated very differently. And ultimately what restrictions are being placed, you know, is going to be between the two militaries, and then whatever restrictions the U.K. and French place on the Storm Shadows, again, is their own business. But it's a good new capability, but, you know, I think the focus has been too much on that and not enough on some of the other steps that have been taken by the United States and Europe over the past couple of months, that in my view are more significant.

So number one, the Biden administration changed the rules on contractors being allowed to be on Ukrainian territory, and that will enable repair teams to go in and service the equipment that we've provided, because there's a tremendous logistical chain that is very difficult. If a Bradley breaks down in Ukraine, you know, the Ukrainians have some capability to maintain and service this equipment, but depending on what parts are needed and what actually is wrong with it, they might have to send it back to Poland or Germany. And then you're talking weeks or months offline.

So now, you know, the U.S. government has allowed some contractors to go there and service the equipment directly, which is going to mean that it can be put back into the fight much more quickly. So I think that is a big shift that will help a lot. Again, not a game changer, but I think it does help patch some of these holes.

The second one is this initiative that's been led by Denmark to invest directly in the Ukrainian defense industry. It's referred to as the Danish model, you know, the Swedes, the Norwegians, other countries have started contributing to this. I was in Copenhagen last week meeting with some Danish officials.

And this is a really, really significant effort because Ukraine can produce more weapons, faster and more cheaply and more targeted to Ukrainian needs because the innovation and adaptation cycle, particularly on drones is so fast that Western defense industry can't keep up.

So now the Ukrainian, you know, units that are using these weapons can feed the data back to Ukrainian manufacturers and get things to the frontline much faster. And so it's a much better investment in the kind of long term sustainability.

The United States has also invested some $800 million directly into the Ukrainian defense industry. So, the Danes are not the first, but they are the first to kind of start pooling resources. You know, they're sending inspectors to Ukraine to make sure that the money is being used properly and all of that. But they've demonstrated in principle that this can be done.

Ben Wittes: This is so important.

Eric Ciaramella: It’s so important.

Ben Wittes: I mean, you know, this is, if Ukraine has a future managing this conflict, the model is Israel, right? And one thing Israel does is produce an enormous percentage of its own weapons. And there's just no viable path for Ukraine to be simply a consumer of Western weapons rather than a generator of its own.

Eric Ciaramella: Absolutely. So, anyway, I think we should, you know, keep these other steps in mind that may not be as, you know, splashy in the media headlines, but are actually probably much more important for the, you know, for Ukrainian capabilities.

Ben Wittes: All right, so let's talk about Kursk, because there has been some reporting that the Ukrainian Army has now lost about 40 percent of the territory that it had seized in the area. Nastya, you mentioned that the costs have been very high.

What do we know about the situation in Kursk and then secondly, has the erosion of the front in Donetsk continued at the alarming rate that it was at the time the Kursk region was, operation was initiated?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I mean, on Kursk, we know as much as you've just mentioned, I think. I haven't seen any extensive fresh reporting on it. I've been kind of surprised to see, like, just since it started happening, there hasn't been all that much coming out of there.

But yes, we do know that Ukraine has been losing some territory because, the Russians launched some of its counter offensive operations there. And of course the North Korean factor is big, at least 10,000 North Korean troops are reportedly in the area taking part of the fighting. So that's all contributing to the hard situation there.

The situation in Donbas in the East is also quite bad. I don't know if the rate of the offensive slowed or not, but it's, it doesn't seem so to me. It says alarming, because people are now also starting to talk about Zaporizhia as well, which is a bit more to the south of Ukraine and how, you know, Russians may be thinking of, you know, going there as their next target once they bog down in the east. So it's a bad situation and analysts have described this moment in time as the worst moment for Ukrainian Armed Forces since the spring of 2022.

So since the very beginning of the full scale invasion, this is right now the toughest moment we're in. So it's really not pretty. The situation is terrible, very complicated. Yeah. As far as the front line goes that's the situation.

Ben Wittes: Eric, what's your sense of Kursk and the larger environment in the actual progress of the war.

Eric Ciaramella: I mean, talking to some, you know, contacts in the Ukrainian military and security sector, I would make a few points, I think on Kursk, it's pretty clear with hindsight that it was a brilliant tactical success in terms of the way it was planned and executed and, you know, taking advantage of weaknesses in the Russian line, but it was a strategic blunder.

And it was a strategic blunder because Ukraine decided to hold onto the territory and didn't just get out quickly after basically making the point, look, we can do this to you. We're withdrawing back across the border, but you know, FYI for the future. Don't underestimate us.

Instead, Ukraine, which, you know, had initially hoped that this would be trade bait with the Russians for other territory, or that it would draw Russian forces from other parts of the front and relieve some of the pressure around Donetsk. The reverse happened, which is that it drew Ukrainian units from the fighting around Pokrovsk, which is the most tenuous position. It drew some of Ukraine's best fighting forces and fed them into, I mean, it's not quite a meat grinder, but it's extremely costly to hold this territory. And so now the Russians are, you know, they've assembled a counterforce and they're very methodically, you know, pushing Ukraine out.

And I think it's really only a matter of time until Ukraine has to vacate all of this territory. What they’re holding onto it for at this point is not entirely clear to me. I think it's just a resource sink and there should be probably some sort of organized retrograde to reinforce other parts of the line.

The problem now, of course, is that Ukraine is going to have to leave a substantial force on that part of the border. Because now there's going to be a big Russian force on the other side. And so, whereas there was not a huge threat before, now Ukraine has, in a sense, you know, lengthened the line that they're going to have a pretty significant presence. So again, it's not looking great with hindsight.

I think when we look at the other part of the front, Russian gains are, I would say, still accelerating and Ukraine has a real crisis of manpower. I think we have to acknowledge that it's not necessarily in total recruitment numbers, but it's, in particular about recruitment for infantry units. No one wants to fight in infantry. I mean, it makes sense. It's the toughest job with the highest risk of, you know, loss of limb or life. And, you know, a lot of these frontline units are having really serious, you know, manning problems.

Ben Wittes: And they can't just rent North Koreans.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah. And, you know, no matter how many trenches you dig and no matter what kind of fancy Western weapons you get, if there's no one to man the trenches and there's no one to fire the weapons, then you're going to keep falling back.

So this issue needs to be urgently resolved. You know, there's a crisis of trust in the Ukrainian military leadership, I would say. Where, and I'd be interested in Nasta's reflection on this. But, you know, there's a sense from people who stand to be mobilized that, you know, they don't want to be wasted by some commander who's, you know, thinking in that kind of this Soviet legacy mindset of just throwing a bunch of guys, the reverse Russian tactics, you know, throwing a bunch of people saying, go take that hill, you know, even when it's, you know, stupid to do so based on where the Russians are positioned, and so on and so forth. So it just seems like a lot of resources are being expended.

Some of the best units on the front that have really smart commanders and all of that have no problem recruiting. But it's some of these other units where there is a crisis of trust in the leadership that are having a lot of trouble getting people.

And so Ukraine's civilian and military leadership really needs to get together and figure out how to build on what's working with the units that are getting people and that are attractive for people to sign up to, widen that and somehow get rid of some of these toxic commanders that, you know, are causing a lot of people to desert, frankly.

I mean, the desertion level is going up, and it's not necessarily people running from the war, it's people leaving one unit and going to fight for another because they're like, I don't want to be fighting for this guy who's crazy and doesn't know what he's doing. Let me go fight for this other guy. Cause I still believe in the cause, but I don't want to be wasted and sent, you know, to my certain death.

Ben Wittes: Nastya, your thoughts on this?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I mean, I agree with everything Eric has said. It's a huge perception problem because the government, in my opinion, has failed at messaging when it came to mobilization completely, like the mobilization efforts, not only did it come years late, but it also, the way it happened was pretty much completely ineffective.

And people have already talked about this and accepted this as truth. And, you know, these are the kinds of conversations on the, you know, people deserting, and the Soviet system in the Ukrainian military not working, and the commanders being terrible. These are like everyday kitchen table conversations for Ukrainians.

Like it's a fact that everyone has accepted. And of course, not everything is as bad as it may seem sometime in the media. And that's something that the military people would also say they would get frustrated with Ukrainian journalists, you know, amplifying some video of a Ukrainian official dragging someone on the street and putting them into a bus to mobilize forcibly.

And, you know, those videos are very dramatic. They're going to get millions of views and they're going to contribute to, you know, the rate of people trying to evade mobilization. So I agree that, you know, things for a long time weren't as bad as they could have seemed in the media, but that doesn't mean that they're still not quite bad.

So it's like, anyway, you look at it, I think the Ukrainian government has just, you know, people… It's kind of funny because people talk about Zelensky being a showman and his team being all of these like marketing PR people from TV who know how this works. They know how perception works and they just completely failed at this one arguably most important job they've had, like making mobilization look attractive. It just did not happen, unfortunately.

Ben Wittes: All right. I would be remiss, Nastya, if I did not bring this all together and say, okay, you have a bad situation in Kursk. You have the Russians using intermediate range missiles. You have ATACMS that are, you know, just not going to change the game as Ukrainians expected them to. You have an eroding situation at the front and you have a failure of mobilization.

Oh, and you have an incoming U.S. administration that hates, publicly, hates Ukraine and likes Vladimir Putin. And yet, your contrarian country is optimistic about Donald Trump.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It’s a thing, it’s a thing.

Ben Wittes: And so, I just want to understand what basis, given everything we've talked about, given everything that Donald Trump says, given their history of perfect phone calls, why is President Zelensky and the people around him, and, you know, what's the basis for optimism here that, you know, it's all going to be fine. We're going to Make Ukraine Great Again, January 20th?

Anastasiia Lapatina: You're right. There is a lot of optimism in Ukraine about Trump, and there are a few reasons for why. Number one, we don't really have a choice because we are pretty much entirely dependent on the U.S.

Ben Wittes: So delusional necessity, reason number one.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Pretty much, like, I mean, we can't like officials can't go on TV and talk about how Trump is terrible. Like it's just a non-starter, right?

Ben Wittes: No, but what they can say privately, they can, I mean, there's a reality that they don't seem to be enthusiastic about facing.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes. Yes. So, I mean, people are certainly worried.

There is definitely a lot of anxiety about what will happen because these are uncertain times and, you know, something you'll hear everyone say here is Trump is unpredictable. We don't really know what he's going to do, which I guess there is some truth to that.

But the second, I think in my opinion, the main contributing factor to this is just how much people in Ukraine despise the Biden administration and in particular, his national security advisor, and what the White House has done throughout the war. Which I realized recently is like not really a thing that Americans were aware of until very recently, like Biden, and Austin, and in general, Washington thinks that they've done a good job, right?

Like Biden said at the debate that he stopped Putin and Austin recently said as well, that, you know, Russia hasn't achieved its objectives. And there's all of this talk of like amazing American leadership. And then of course, preventing nuclear weapons from Woodward's book and things like that.

But from the American point of view, Ukrainians think that basically, approach to the war has been pretty much a failure, because we're very frustrated with just how long the White House took when deciding on certain weapon deliveries. It's like with every single weapon, pretty much, that Ukraine would ask for, it would be like a year long public deliberation of, oh, why Ukraine needs it and Ukraine doesn't.

And then sometimes American officials would go out and publicly say, we don't think Ukraine needs this weapon, which would sound ridiculous from a Ukrainian point of view. And then three months later, they'd give it anyway. So it's like, and it would constantly happen, like on and on. And people think that the White House is just really scared of Russia and terrified of escalation and leading to nuclear war.

And I mean, there is partly truth to that, because we've seen that reporting that like in the beginning of the war, Milley had these like flashcards with things that he needs to achieve when it comes to this war and one of them was like, prevent World War III and prevent a nuclear war with Russia. So it's like from the get go, this was one of the goals, from the get go one of the considerations, as far as I understand, Eric, you can correct me, was preventing a nuclear escalation with Russia.

And that's just not something at all that any Ukrainian is concerned about because we're living amidst the genocide. Like we're not thinking of nuclear weapons. We're thinking of trying to win. So people just really hate the Biden administration. They don't like their approach. And so it's kind of this thing, how I see it as like, just like half of America, we just want radical change. And that's one thing that Trump actually genuinely does represent for better or for worse, it will change. The policy will change.

And so people think that if Ukraine is smart enough and if officials are strategic enough, they can persuade Trump that helping Ukraine is in his interest. They can tell him that, you know, you can't broker a bad deal that will plunge us into another war in three years, because that will look bad for you, right?

Like if Trump is so concerned with looking strong, with being a leader, with having this image of a strong guy who ends wars, he has to broker a good deal. And we have to tell him that, you know, you have to stand up to Russia because if you don't, it's going to make you look bad. It's going to be bad for your legacy.

So it's just all of these things that like, we don't really have a choice and we're trying to appeal to whatever instincts there are, like to whatever hawkish part of the Republican establishment there is still left, that, like, it's just not going to be good for Republicans if they let Ukraine lose. And that's kind of the gist of it.

Ben Wittes: So, Eric, bring us home here. What Nastya describes, which is clearly right as a matter of how Ukrainian policymakers are thinking about this, from an American national security perspective sounds completely crazy to me that.

You know, the idea that you would, like, that Ukrainian policymakers would actually think that the guy of the perfect phone call who held up military aid to, you know, who sent Rudy Giuliani to run around Ukraine to dig dirt on Biden, who has admired Putin publicly forever, is a guy who's going to be tougher on Ukraine than Biden, who notwithstanding Ukrainian frustrations has kind of been a solid B+ on this set of issues.

So my question is, is there anything from your point of view to be said for this, or is it just Ukrainian policy makers, as Nastya says, making the best of a situation that in their hearts they know to be a bad one for them?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I think like Nastya was saying, there's really no choice but to try and make the case to Trump and hope for the best. It's clear that he's going to change up policy and that the current strategy is not working in terms of getting us closer to some sort of end state that respects Ukrainian and Western interests.

So if the current strategy is not working and you've got someone who's coming in, who's gonna maybe rip it all up and do something different, it's an enormous gamble, it's like playing the lottery, but you do have a chance of winning. And I think when you're in the mindset, when, you know, there's really nothing left to lose at this point, which is where the Ukrainians are. You may as well try to go for broke.

And so, you know, I think it is extremely unclear what Trump has in mind when he's considering how to approach this whole idea of negotiating a peace. And so, you know, I do think that there are scenarios where he gets in and he starts to talk to Putin and Zelensky and has his envoy, whoever that is, go out and do some shuttle diplomacy. And he starts to get the intelligence reports and so on, and realizes that, you know, he's going to need to do something to help the Ukrainians build some leverage at the table and put pressure on the Russians. That is a scenario.

I mean, I think there's an equal scenario where he says, let's just cut and run and I don't want to do any more aid to Ukraine. And that's obviously the catastrophic scenario for Ukraine. So, you know, whereas Biden, like, you know, if Harris had been elected, there was probably a, you know, pretty narrow spectrum of outcomes that would be more or less the status quo policy, plus or minus a little bit. Trump has way widened the spectrum of outcomes to something that could really shake things up with the Russians and put them on their back foot to something that again, could be really disastrous and fatal to the Ukrainians.

And so, you know, they're going to need to work a lot with the Europeans, I think. I mean, we kind of think of this in a bilateral dimension between the United States and Russia or some tri-lat U.S-Russia-Ukraine, but really, the Europeans are huge players here. I just got back from a bunch of meetings in Europe, and I think what's at the core of this is some sort of new transatlantic bargain on Ukraine.

And I think Trump wants to emerge from this gambit and making a deal with the Russians and some sort of peace in Ukraine with also, some sort of sense that he got NATO allies to step up and do more. And so I think that's all part of the deal. And, you know, I hope leaders in Europe are thinking about ways to frame the narrative to him and come to the table with some sort of deal that he can get behind that respects European security interests and, you know, leads to some sort of enduring peace, but we're going to just have to see, you know, how he approaches this in the initial months.

Ben Wittes: We are gonna leave it there. Anastasiia Lapatina, Eric Ciaramella, thank you both for joining us today.

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