Lawfare Daily: An Update on Ukraine Politics with Eric Ciaramella

[Intro]

Eric Ciaramella: Looking at the battlefield, and the fact the Russians have been making, you know, steady—incremental, but steady—gains. With the Russians making that kind of progress, even though it's coming at enormous cost to personnel and equipment, why would they want to talk right now? They're winning.

Benjamin Wittes: I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the Lawfare Podcast here with Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Eric Ciaramella: If you look at the economic toll that this would take on future growth and prosperity for Ukrainians, it's a more severe economic punishment than what Germany faced after World War I in terms of reparations. And this is on Ukraine, the victim of the aggression.

Benjamin Wittes: Today we're talking a wild and wooly week in Ukraine politics: speeches by American officials saying not always the same thing, a Munich Security Conference that has European leaders with their hair standing up on their necks, and domestic politics in Ukraine that are getting a little worrisome.

[Main podcast]

Let's start with the awkward timing of this recording. We are recording on Monday at about 1 p.m. Washington time, which is not only a federal holiday, but is a time when there's a lot of stuff happening, and this podcast is not gonna run until Wednesday. And so, we're gonna be behind.

And so, Eric, as a, as a first step, just give us a sense of what's likely to happen over the next, you know, 36 hours between now and when anybody hears this.

Eric Ciaramella: Well, we're dropping into the middle of a very intensive week of diplomatic negotiations.

First of all, what will be tomorrow, Tuesday the 18th, you have high level American and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to talk Middle East, but also Ukraine without the Ukrainians present. There was a little bit of confusion in the media about what the format would be, but it looks like it's going to be a U.S.-Russia dialogue so the results of that will be a little bit more known by the time this airs.

Secondly we're recording as top European leaders have gathered in Paris at the invitation of President Macron to discuss what Europe's potential role could be in securing a ceasefire in Ukraine, including the very important question of whether European countries would be willing to deploy their forces as part of a peacekeeping mission or ceasefire enforcement operation.

And then finally, you have some diplomacy involving the Ukrainian side. So President Zelensky is currently in the Middle East. He's in the UAE today on Monday. He's headed to Ankara on Tuesday. And then he's going to be hosting President Trump's envoy for Ukraine, Lieutenant General, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg in Kyiv later this week to discuss, you know, Ukrainian expectations for this negotiating process.

And so all of this is sort of—I don't want to say coming to a head cause I think we're still in very early stages, but we've got a lot of strands that are moving in parallel after what was a frenetic week last week in terms of international diplomacy and some really surprising new statements coming out of senior American officials on the direction of U.S. policy.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so let's start with—because it's simpler, although not simple—a look back at the last week, and then we will venture a guess which people may begin to be able to see whether we're right about the week to come, a day and a half of which will already have passed by the time anyone hears this.

Let's start with what happened. What were these senior level statements, and why were they surprising?

Eric Ciaramella: So just zooming out, you know, it's been pretty clear, you know, throughout the election campaign and during the transition period that, you know, President Trump has really prioritized bringing an end to the war, to Russia's war against Ukraine. He said it many times, you know, on the campaign trail, it was about 24 hours, you know, getting a deal done.

Once he got into office, the statements became a little bit more cautious about the timeline for this, but the emphasis was still there. And so I think it was not very surprising when we all woke up one day and realized that Trump and Putin had had their first phone call. There was some reporting about them talking right after the election; well, that was not really formally confirmed by either side, but it was reported by the Washington Post.

But this call that happened last week was, you know, confirmed by both sides and it was the first conversation that a sitting U.S. president has had since Putin decided to launch his full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. President Biden had not had any direct talks with him.

So I think there was some kind of, you know, shock in certain quarters that this sort of happened without much preparation of the sort of, format of negotiations and in particular that Trump had talked to Putin before he had talked to Zelensky about exactly what the plan was going to be.

All things considered, you know, in my view, it wasn't that surprising because Trump had telegraphed very clearly that he views this kind of direct diplomacy at the high levels as, you know, part of his brand and something that, you know, makes him different from Biden and, and is kind of just based on the sheer force of his personality.

Benjamin Wittes: And he's said over and over again, as clearly as he can. Putin and I get along. I think we should get along with Russia. He's always emphasized the sort of personal dimension of his relationship with Putin, and so the idea that they would pick up the phone and have a conversation as though the war were between the two of them, rather than between Putin and a different sovereign entity, doesn't actually seem very surprising to me.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly. And again, I think, you know, there's, there's nothing wrong with a presidential phone call if it's, it's carefully embedded, I think, in a context of unity with your allies and partners. And so that, you know, allies in Europe and particularly the Ukrainian side are not taken, taken aback and surprised by what's going on.

Now, what's interesting is that, like you said, Trump had talked about this friendship with Putin, I can get along with him, so on and so forth. But his statements since the inauguration were actually veering on the, in the direction of actually tough. And he had issued a couple of tweets, you know, saying that the war was a disastrous decision by Putin and was ruining Russia and Putin needs to come to the table, otherwise there would be additional economic pressure and tariffs. Again, we can talk later about whether that's a credible threat given the low level of trade between the United States and Russia. But you know, Trump had been taking, I think, a bit of a tougher tack.

And so if that's the context in which an American president approaches the Russian president and says, Listen, I really disagree with what you're doing here. We need to end it. We need to, you know, start some sort of process to settle this. But if you don't come to the table, we're going to get even tougher. And also, we're not going to give away our leverage up front. That's fine.

But I think where people started to have some concerns was that, number one, it wasn't really discussed by the American side with, with the Europeans, the Ukrainians ahead of time.

Number two, Trump and senior officials had made a lot of mutually contradictory, but somewhat surprising statements about things that were or were not on the table. And essentially, the American side was negotiating with itself before the actual talks even have started. And it just gives, it cedes a lot of the advantage in any sort of negotiating format to the Russians, who can just sort of sit back and see as we negotiate our bottom lines in public for all to see.

Benjamin Wittes: And specifically, some statements seem to take off the table Ukrainian NATO membership, and some statements seem to take off the table European Article 5 NATO guarantees in the context of any European ground force that might back a Ukrainian ceasefire. Is that what you're referring to here?

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly, yeah, that's what I'm referring to. And you know, again, these are things that are probably going to be up for negotiation, both between Washington, you know, and Moscow and Kyiv, but also between, you know, among the allies and NATO about the exact format for some sort of post ceasefire guarantees or assurances.

But doing this all in public, giving the Russians data for them to shape their own negotiating strategy, I, I personally just don't see the benefit of doing that. You know, this really should all be done sort of in private and in close consultation with allies. But we are where we are.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. So, let's talk about—when you say negotiate with ourselves, I take that to be a reference to the fact that not all of the U.S. statements were fully consistent with one another, and some of them seem to be, shall we say, really not consistent with one another.

So what is, as you understand it, the variability right now within the U.S. position as we go into these talks with the Russians from which both the Europeans and the Ukrainians are excluded over an end to the war that we are not party to?

Eric Ciaramella: Well, I think part of the confusion about the statements is the fundamental confusion about who is in charge on the U.S. side. And I think most observers had expected General Kellogg would be taking the lead since he was, you know, appointed as Trump's envoy for Russia and Ukraine pretty soon after the election and had been making a lot of preparations for discussions with the Ukrainians and the Europeans, and–

Benjamin Wittes: I don't know, I would have expected Marco Rubio's name to be somewhere in the mix here.

Eric Ciaramella: Sure, and indeed he is. I mean he's in Riyadh now and is going to be talking to Sergei Lavrov–

Benjamin Wittes: But at the time of the statements, he was like nowhere, right? I mean, you had a statement from Pete Hegseth, you had a statement from Trump, and you had a statement from the defense secretary. But, you know, you would think that the secretary of state would have been mentioned, at least in passing, in some of those news stories.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, this, this is very reminiscent of the first Trump term when you had people who were in sort of positions of constitutional authority, you know, secretary of state and defense and whatnot, and then you had all these informal advisors who were working—sometimes in coordination with them, but often sort of freelancing—and bringing ideas and proposals to the president who would then make decisions that oftentimes, you know, then Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson wouldn't know about.

And it created a lot of chaos because there was not, you know, sort of rigid discipline and chain of command, like you saw in, for example, the Biden administration, which functioned actually quite coherently, and there was a lot of stability on the personnel side and everyone knew their authorities.

Benjamin Wittes: You might call it a unitary executive.

Eric Ciaramella: Sure, one might. But in this case, you've got a lot of people going off and doing their own thing. And so, you know, there was General Kellogg who appeared to have this mandate and was making a lot of statements, doing a lot of interviews on Fox News and, and whatnot, where I would say he was laying down a reasonable basis to enter into some sort of negotiating format from a position of relative strength and unity with the Ukrainians and the Europeans.

You know, he was making statements about again, pressure that would be applied to the Russian side if they, you know, tried to play games with negotiations, insisting on the principles of, of sovereignty and independence for Ukraine and coordination with European allies.

It was a pretty conventional approach, but in a very sort of Trumpian way where it all boiled down to the power of Trump to bring home the deal. But again, the policy pieces were being put into place in what I would say was a pretty logical format.

Benjamin Wittes: And you can see actually. By how little news coverage that those, that series of interviews got, how radical his statements weren't, right?

Eric Ciaraella: Right.

Benjamin Wittes: You know, it was, yeah, we're gonna negotiate, but, you know, you know, there wasn't a radical departure from what we had thought the policy was?

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly. Exactly. With the exception of the, the urgency and the intention to bring in the Russians at high levels earlier on, which was definitely not something that the previous administration was, was interested in doing.

Benjamin Wittes: Right.

Eric Ciaramella: And so, and that does, I mean, inject a certain amount of dynamism into the process and catches the Russians off guard and then they have to react.

And so, you know, I'm all for shaking things up because we're, you know, approaching the three year anniversary of this terrible war and Ukrainians need a reprieve, and many Ukrainians I talked to and including senior officials, support the, in principle, the idea of entering into some sort of negotiating process, but again, doing so from, from basic principles of, you know, Ukraine was the victim and the invaded party and the aggrieved party and needs to be consulted on the future of its own country.

So anyway, General Kellogg, I think, was doing a very good job sort of making the case to Trump's voting base through his appearances on Fox News about why there would need to be continued support for Ukraine throughout this process in order to keep our leverage up and you know, keep Ukraine fighting on the battlefield, pressure on Russia so on and so forth and sort of moderating expectations that this wouldn't, you know, come to some sort of deal in the next few weeks or months.

Then you have this presidential phone call. Simultaneously, Trump's envoy on the Middle East, one of his former business contacts from New York, Steve Witkoff, flew to Moscow to pick up a wrongly imprisoned American, Mark Fogel, who was a teacher at the American school in Moscow and had been arrested a couple of years ago for possession of a small amount of medical marijuana, I believe, and had been kept as a hostage by the Russian side.

Benjamin Wittes: And just to be clear, Witkoff has actually done a quite creditable job in his Middle East envoy role, nailing down the ceasefire in Gaza, getting, you know, getting a lot of relief to Israeli hostage families, and so Witkoff, for all that, he is, is somebody who has made a significant contribution in a different corner of the world.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah and I think that was, that was attractive for Trump. You know, this guy's delivering results; he's going out there, he's negotiating on my behalf, so let me send them to talk to the Russians.

And so you had this phone call, you had this prisoner release, and then sort of a foreshadowing of these Saudi talks that are going to be happening on Tuesday of this week where Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, and Steve Witkoff will be in Riyadh negotiating with Russian counterparts.

But who's absent? General Kellogg, which I think took a lot of people by surprise, because he had been sort of designated as the, the head person for this process. And meanwhile, Kellogg is going to Ukraine this week, so he's not completely sidelined, but it seems like Trump is sort of setting up two parallel tracks: one with the Russians that Witkoff is sort of managing at the envoy level and then one with Ukrainians and maybe the Europeans that Kellogg is managing.

How those two things come together, you know, what is the role of Rubio and Waltz, and also John Ratcliffe the CIA director was mentioned in Trump's tweet as being part of this negotiating format with the with the Russians how this all comes together—frankly, well, certainly none of us know. I don't even think Trump knows at this point. And I think it's a lot about putting out feelers, getting a sense of the positions on both sides, seeing in particular where the flexibility, if any, lies on the Russian side. 

I mean, there is a fundamental question of whether Russia has any interest right now in any sort of talks. Trump keeps reiterating, you know, what does Putin want? Putin wants to end the war, he told me. Looking at the battlefield and the fact that the Russians have been making, you know, steady incremental, but steady gains, chipping away at the Ukrainian front lines, getting closer and closer to the boundary of Donetsk Oblast and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which is going to put potentially some of the Ukrainian industrial heartland, you know, under fire; with the Russians making that kind of progress, even though it's coming at enormous cost to personnel and equipment, why would they want to talk right now? They're winning.

So, I think, you know, there is a fundamental question there, and whether or not Trump is willing to play with the levers that we have, which include potential further economic pressure on Russia. They've talked about trying to get oil prices down; again, I think a lot of this is, is a little bit of magical thinking, 45 a barrel. I mean, I don't see how that's possible.

But there are additional sanctions measures that we can take, export controls. We can start going after importers of Russian energy like China and India and trying to sort of sever this linkage that Russia's built up with these countries to be filling up its, its war chest, and then sort of additional aid to the Ukrainians. Is he willing to play with that? Is he willing to take his time and sort of get the battlefield dynamics into such a position where the Ukrainians are not completely on their back foot? Time will tell.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so there's a lot there and I want to unpack it in pieces. The first is, you know, I have heard conflicting reports recently about whether the Russian offensive around Pokrovsk and these areas that you've described is now sort of stalling out.

And so I guess I want to ask you is the situation for Ukraine as bad as it was the last time we talked, or is it starting that sort of depletion of Russian energy is finally kind of kicking in? How bad is the situation on the ground right now?

Eric Ciaramella: It has gotten a little bit better. The pace of Russian gains has slowed, but what I understand from my conversations with military experts is that a lot of that has to do with weather and the fact that, you know, you had the mud season and usually there's a freeze that allows for, you know, heavy armor to, to move more easily on the ground, but it was an unseasonably warm winter in Ukraine. One of the warmest on record, which is great from the context of, you know, fears about–

Benjamin Wittes: Heating.

Eric Ciaramella: Yes, the Ukrainian energy grid, which Russia had pounded over the course of 2024. So that's great for Ukrainians not freezing during the winter, but it means that it has sort of delayed this process of freezing and we could start to see an acceleration of the tempo of Russian advances in the next few weeks, because the temperatures have started to plummet. So we'll see there—I mean, I think that is one explanation.

You're also right that clearly there, there is some level of exhaustion in the force on the Russian side, given, you know, what I was seeing kind of 1200 to 1500 casualties killed and wounded on a daily basis, which is a huge number for the Russians. Again, they have enormous manpower, sort of a well that they can dip into, and they've had no problem mobilizing and recruiting through incentive payments and coercion and whatnot.

Benjamin Wittes: And rent to North Korean services.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly. So they're not anywhere near a point of total exhaustion, but there is definitely, you know, a depletion in the Russian force and they need, they need some opportunity to rest and refit.

So we'll see in the next few weeks, you know, whether the ground freezing and the fact that the Russians have had a few weeks to sort of sit back as the, the level of hostilities has been a bit lower, whether that leads to a resumption of a, of a major offensive.

Benjamin Wittes: One way to read what Trump and Hegseth and others are doing is to, you know, sweep everything off the table and, you know, as you described, you know, sort of upset the apple cart and then see whether there's, you know, probing room for a negotiated settlement, or a negotiated deescalation, and just kind of discombobulate everybody.

The other way to read it is more literally; that they've announced their intentions to abandon Ukraine, they want to cut a deal with Putin, and they've signaled that they want to do it on Putin's terms. And then if Ukraine doesn't accept it, they wash their hands of the thing and say, you know, heck with it, it's Europe's problem.

How do you understand—or do you think it's just one of those impenetrables that we just don't know at this stage—what they are trying to accomplish here?

Eric Ciaramella: I think we don't know. I think that these kind of statements are just sort of their thoughts as they're being formulated, without much discipline, and frankly, you know, the fact that a lot of these people are really rookies on the international scene and don't fully understand the gravity of them making pronouncements like this, as they're essentially having an administration internal negotiation on the international stage.

I mean these are the types of things that should happen in the White House situation room where you would have a real debate about what is the US national interest with respect to this war, what kind of outcomes can we live with, advance American security and prosperity, so on and so forth, but you have that conversation behind closed doors. And even though this is Trump's second term, it's almost entirely new people that weren't in the first term. These are not experienced diplomats, and so they're just sort of firing off these statements.

Again, for Hegseth, as if he were still on a Fox talk show, and it's just kind of interesting to discuss. It's interesting to say, well, you know, what is the realistic possibility for Ukraine to liberate its territories? I don't think it's possible for them to get back to the borders before 2014. Sure. We can have a debate on that, but now you're speaking as the secretary of defense of the United States. And so you have to be much more careful about the message that this sends to adversaries and allies alike.

And I just, I think that there is no, there's no strategy behind any of this at this point, except for the very, very broad outlines that Trump has previewed in some of his statements about the desire to make peace.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, just this sort of sense that if the war just stopped, meaning in place, that would be fine with him.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so let's talk about Munich, which is an appropriately named city for the week. We had the Munich Security Conference and, let's just say, statements from American officials on this and broader subjects involving Europe were not well received. What do you make of the U.S. performance at Munich and the response of our allies?

Eric Ciaramella: My first point is that I was surprised that the Europeans were so shocked.

Benjamin Wittes: I mean, it's not like we haven't been to this rodeo before.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly. And you just look at everything that J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth had been saying—this is the kind of performance that one might have expected.

Now, did it reflect well on the United States? I mean, that's a, that's a different story. I think J.D. Vance's points that were more directly aimed at meddling in, you know, Germany's upcoming election and backing the far right and saying things like the real threat is not Russia and China, but, you know, unelected liberal bureaucrats—I mean, that kind of stuff, again, was maybe a bit further than people expected.

But all of this on Europe needing to do more, take leadership and responsibility for its own security, need to spend more, you know, the United States is not going to necessarily be there forever in the current capacity as the preeminent guarantor of European security and the current status quo can't hold—none of that should have been very surprising. But the way I've seen European leaders talking about it, it was a wake up call, alarm bells, all of that, and now they're having this big conference in Paris about what to do about Ukraine.

And, and that is part of a broader conversation about what to do with European defense. And the fact that, you know, some allies like Poland are spending significantly, you know, above 4 percent of GDP and they're doing a massive rearmament program and the Poles are buying a huge amount of military equipment from the South Koreans, really rebuilding their, their army while others like France, frankly, are not even spending, you know, the minimum and are basically broke.

And what do you do about this? There's a discussion about common European borrowing and issuing Euro bonds like they did in the COVID. You know, early days of the COVID pandemic, because it's such a potentially existential crisis for Europe. But again, there's not agreement on that and with the German elections, you know, probably there's not going to be any clarity until, until after the elections and maybe even until a new government is formed.

But the Europeans have been so sort of with their heads in the sand, not seeing this avalanche coming at them, which all of us who've been watching it kind of have been warning, like, this is coming for you, the positions are not going to soften, and so here we are with this wake up call—frankly, better late than never, I guess—and if this is really what it takes to get the Europeans to be much more serious about their own defense and about securing Ukraine over the long haul, then in my view, that's a good result.

What I do think we don't know is what the deeper meaning of these statements that Hegseth and Vance made about whether or not the United States is going to be there over the long term for Europe and part of the transatlantic relationship.

If it's just a way to force this kind of shifting of the burden in NATO so that there is a strong and equal European pillar, and it frees up some American resources to deal with China and so on and so forth, that's fine. If this is the beginning of, you know, setting an argument for an American withdrawal from Europe, withdrawal from commitments under NATO and so on, then obviously we're on a much more dangerous path.

But it's just impossible right now because you had so many different types of statements and Hegseth walking certain things back and people clarifying and so on and so forth that it's really hard to tell anything beyond the fact that the United States is really fed up with the Europeans freeriding.

And this is not unique to Trump. I mean, this goes back to Obama and the Wales Pledge in 2014, and American presidents have been trying to get Europeans to spend more on defense for a very long time.

Benjamin Wittes: It's true, although Europeans here, as you note, are not a unitary actor. So, like, there's a France-Germany issue, and then there's, you know, Finland and Estonia and Poland, and there are some very good citizens of NATO who are, you know, spending a higher percentage of GDP on defense in that region than we are.

And so I, I think the, the argument that, you know, that we're in the same position as we were in the Obama administration when you couldn't get anybody to spend 2 percent except, you know, except, except Estonia, right?

Eric Ciaramella: Right.

Benjamin Wittes: Like the remaining problem in Europe is really a France and Germany problem, isn't it?

Eric Ciaramella: I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's also a Spain and Italy problem.  And really the further away you are from the acute threat, which is Russia, the less you spend on your defense and the more you, you know, prioritize social spending and other forms of government expenditures over defense. It's not that surprising when you think about it that way.

But you know, how much of this European willingness to spend more stems from really the shock of 2022 and the Russian invasion versus a European recognition that they can't rely forever on America to do all of the security in Europe. And I think that part is much, is a much slower realization for the Europeans that, that this model that they've been used to—

Benjamin Wittes: And has worked really well for them.

Eric Ciaramella: It has.

Benjamin Wittes: They get these amazing welfare states and all kinds of social benefits and they, at the same time get to protest U.S. imperialism. It's, it's a really good deal.

Eric Ciaramella: It is, it is a great deal. But that era is clearly over. And so, you know, the, the question for European leaders now is probably verging on an existential one. And what are they willing to put up in terms of real significant military expenditures over the next 10 years?

And I mean, there are some estimates out there that, you know, it's going to take a few hundred billion a year over an extended period of time to build up the kind of capabilities and defense industrial base that they need to be able to really stand on their own two feet, even if there is American still involvement in and commitment to NATO.

Benjamin Wittes: And they have to do it with far-right parties in every country that are getting Russian support and have a certain amount of popularity.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, and the far right is, is very different across Europe. You know, you've got the, the German AFD, which is pretty overtly pro Russian, but then you've got Giorgia Maloni in Italy, and the most far right Italian government since World War II, but she's been very strongly transatlantic, and strongly in favor of Ukraine. You've got very conservative hard right parties in the Nordics that are generally pretty skeptical of the Russians. So it's not a one size fits all–

Benjamin Wittes: No, but in but in the biggest economies–

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah.

Benjamin Wittes: –in Germany, in France, in the U.K. even, the hardest right parties have a, you know, have an anti-confrontational, they have a kind of traditional left foreign policy, funded by the Russians.

Eric Ciaramella: To a certain extent, yeah.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so, one thing the Europeans do seem to be willing to do is send troops to Ukraine to police a ceasefire. I have a kind of, I'll believe that when I see it attitude both to the ceasefire itself and to the idea that Europeans are going to send troops there without a U.S. security guarantee. Should I be less skeptical?

Eric Ciaramella: No, you are right to be skeptical. I, I would not say that there is willingness there yet. We've seen some positive statements, certainly from the French, dating back to last year when Macron first put this on the table in early 2024, to which there was a vociferous European response. Everyone from, you know, Olaf Scholz in Germany to the Poles saying, no way, no how. And so France was sort of left on its own. One could argue it was just for show and Macron was doing it all as, as a rhetorical device, but the French have been pushing this line for quite some time.

You had the Brits get on board; Keir Starmer made a, a pretty forward leaning statement the other day that the UK would be ready to put troops on the ground. You've had some cautiously sort of positive statements from Sweden. Less so from Poland, interestingly—the Poles have said they don't want to be part of any kind of troop contingent in Ukraine, I think, because for them, it's, even though they're strongly supportive of Ukraine, it's Poland first, and they do feel very, very vulnerable and don't want to overextend themselves, but again, that could change depending on the format of what we're talking about.

But we're still a long way away from any kind of agreement on a concept for what we're talking about here. Is it a peacekeeping, a traditional peacekeeping force? You know, would it be deployed in a DMZ? Would it be set further back from the frontline and be sort of a rapid reaction force, deterrent force, something like that? Would it be primarily tasked with training, a training mission, and then could be deployed in the western part of Ukraine? I mean, these are still really fundamental questions about the, the scope and mandate of a mission that hasn't been decided yet. But the Europeans are, they're meeting now to start discussing this.

I do think that ultimately, basically Trump has said, you know, if Europeans want to be at the table for these discussions, they need to be able to bring something, and what we're expecting from the Europeans is boots on the ground. And so the Europeans are scrambling to come up with some sort of credible proposal. But I think you're right to to put a lot of skeptical caveats around this because it will depend heavily on what kind of ceasefire we're dealing with and level of permissiveness for foreign forces to go into Ukraine after that ceasefire.

Benjamin Wittes: And also, it seems to me that, you know, if they're going in without the protection of Article 5, then it's a real question. You know, to go in as NATO allies on a kind of NATO force is one thing. Europeans do that sometimes. To go in as a, you know, as a group of allies of each other that are supporting Ukraine but have no U.S. backing at all—I'm trying to think of the last time European countries did anything like that, and, you know, the only thing I can think of is the Falkland Islands. But it's, it's not it's not something European countries really do.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, they've had EU missions in places like Mali, you know, which deployed without—I mean, there were probably some U.S. enablers involved in that in terms of heavy lift and so on and so forth—but it was an EU mission. So not, not NATO and there was no Article 5, but again, that's, that's completely outside of the European security context.

I think it is important to be kind of a little bit more detailed about what we're talking about here with the American role. So it's been pretty clear from, you know, Pete Hegseth and others that the American position is not to have American boots on the ground, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of American enablers—the intelligence and surveillance support, the sort of command support that would come through EUCOM and NATO headquarters and, and all of that in order to coordinate this multinational deployment, and then sort of some sort of rapid reaction if the troops were to come under fire or an expectation of how the Americans would react.

Whether you say it's covered by Article 5, I mean, I think that's—Article 5 is about protecting the territory of the countries that are part of NATO. So a deployment outside of NATO is never really going to formally come under Article 5.

Benjamin Wittes: No, but we all know what he meant.

Eric Ciaramella: We do. We do. But I think that can be finessed and negotiated.

I think what the Europeans want is, is a couple of different things. Number one. They need the American enablers that I just mentioned. They can't do this on their own without them.

Number two, particularly for countries like Poland, they want a reassertion from the American side that by sending their forces forward outside of NATO territory, the United States is recommitting to the defense of their tour territory if it comes under attack. Because what the Poles are worried about, for example, is they go out far in front, they have a contingent in Kharkiv Oblast that's attacked by the Russians, and then the Russians launched some sort of targeted attack on a Polish air base. And then the Americans say, well, you were out on your own, you provoked them, and so Article 5 doesn't apply even for Polish territory.

I mean, it's less about the forces that are in Ukraine, which are obviously gonna be in a very risky scenario and it's more about whether the United States fundamentally agrees with this whole construct and reaffirms that it's being done with the consent of the United States such that it's not being seen as a provocation and undermining Article 5. So that's, that's the second point.

And then the third point is, again, what happens if the troops are attacked? Are we gonna just see them melt away and hightail it out of Ukraine, which obviously would be catastrophic from the standpoint of you know, the credibility of this whole thing? Or do we see a real possibility, or maybe even just ambiguity, about whether the United States would intervene to protect them, somehow, you know, shoot down Russian aircraft, whatever it is, just to give the Russians pause, so that they don't see these French and whatever troops, British troops, Swedish troops as sitting ducks.

And so it's, it's a, it's a couple of different things that I think will have to be surfaced in these negotiations again, hopefully behind closed doors, because litigating all this in public—I mean, it, it really just freaks everyone out. You get a million different statements. The Russians are having a field day seeing us just kind of fall all over ourselves and not really know what we're doing. Let's all, you know, lower the temperature and get this back in diplomatic channels.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright, so, one thing that we have also let it all hang out about is the rare earth minerals which we're, seem much more excited about than Ukrainian lives, and we seem to want to trade the, their rare earth minerals for stuff we've already given them, rather than for any support they might hope for in the future.

I'm curious whether this is as laughable as it seems to me, or whether there is something to be said for the posture of, of the administration here.

Eric Ciaramella: Well, if we rewind to President Zelensky's victory plan last fall–

Benjamin Wittes: Yes, and we discussed that on this very podcast.

Eric Ciaramella: We did.

Benjamin Wittes: And I said, this was embarrassing to include this, and you said, don't be too sure, it's meant to appeal to Trump.

Eric Ciaramella: It was meant to appeal to Trump, and indeed, you know, it was a pretty, pretty amazing diplomatic maneuver by Zelensky and probably Lindsey Graham, who's been talking this up for quite a while, to give Trump something to be interested in about Ukraine so that it's not seen as just a burden and a money pit, which is how Trump seems to perceive it, but rather, you know, an opportunity, an economic opportunity for Americans going forward.

So in theory, this was a Ukrainian idea. Point five of the victory plan was kind of joint exploration of critical minerals, and from the Ukrainian standpoint, it was meant to be joint, and that, you know, both sides would reap the benefits of, of exploring, you know, what's underground in Ukraine.

Now, the way it has materialized in actual fact is very different, I think, than what the Ukrainians expected. So you had Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson, who went to Kyiv and sort of started negotiating this mineral deal on the basis of documents that had been prepared actually by the outgoing administration. I mean, there were technical level talks about this before Trump took office and so you had some experts working on a bare bones sort of agreement, an MOU of some sort, on mineral exploration and so on.

But then the Trump team sort of took it to what I would say was a pretty outrageous extreme, which is okay, forget the jointness; what we want is basically 50 percent of all future revenue, and that will pay for what Trump has said was 300 billion dollars of American weapons—which is nowhere close to what we've provided. I mean, it's max a hundred billion when you look at. The different supplementals and the amount of it that actually went to Ukraine. But again, putting that aside, Trump's numbers are very, very fuzzy here.

But yeah, we're going to get access to your minerals in perpetuity just to repay what we've provided so far. No future kind of guarantees or assurances and also sign this document in the next five minutes. I mean, they were trying to jam the Ukrainians before this Zelensky meeting with J.D. Vance in Munich.

Benjamin Wittes: Again.

Eric Ciaramella: Again. Again. Again. And the Ukrainians understandably balked at that because this is a major, major strategic decision for them that requires a certain amount of consultation with political forces, with the parliament, with the ministries, so on and so forth, and they, they weren't ready to sign it. And I mean, it was basically extortion. And so now you've got this situation where the White House is saying, oh, Zelensky missed his opportunity, you know, the Ukrainians are being greedy.

But I do think there is a way to have economic cooperation and something to do with critical minerals, be part of some sort of negotiation between the United States and Ukraine. The Ukrainians are all for that, and again, if that piques Trump's interest, great.

The way that the administration has gone about doing it is—I mean—it would seem totally foolish, but I think—to be honest—there's a little, something a little bit more sinister behind it in terms of just strong arming the Ukrainians, presenting them with this take it or leave it ultimatum on the future of their country, which I saw one estimate, you know, if you look at the economic toll this would take on future growth and prosperity for Ukrainians, it's a more severe economic punishment than what Germany faced after World War One, in terms of reparations. And this is on Ukraine, the victim of the aggression. Let alone whatever Russia did.

Benjamin Wittes: And our ally.

Eric Ciaramella: And our, and our partner.

Benjamin Wittes: Now, formally, our ally.

Eric Ciaramella: Exactly.

Benjamin Wittes: I would, I would just add one, one thing to that, which is that it brings together a whole bunch of themes of Trump.

One is the sort of mercantilist worldview, right? That he, he looks at a region like he's the East India Tea Company or something.  The second is the pattern of extortion toward Zelensky in particular, and Ukraine in general, and then the third is, you know, the sense that everybody's buyable, right, for the right deal.

And you bring these together, and you get in this kind of laughable form, but it's but not laughable if the fate of your country depends on it, right, it's kind of comic from an American point of view, but there's nothing comic about it from a Ukrainian point of view.

And so I, I just, I do think it, it, you know, it brings together these kind of disparate themes of, of, you know, the, the latter theme being the same as the Gaza—instinct to annex Gaza and build hotels, right—that there's some, there's some big deal that involves bulldozers and construction equipment and a lot of laborers that underlies a huge amount of his thinking.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah. Fundamentally for Trump, it's what are you going to do for me? What do I get out of this? And you know, it's, it's the way he described NATO in the first administration, that it was an apartment building, he was the landlord and everyone had to pay rent.

Benjamin Wittes: You gotta pay your dues.

Eric Ciaramella: You gotta pay your dues. And if you're in arrears, then I can kick you out because I own this thing.

And again, forget about values and all of that. I mean, you had a very telling statement from Pete Hegseth where, you know, he was saying, you know, values don't shoot. You know, we still respect them, supposedly, but at the end of the day, this is a tough, tough world.

And so, you know, you just have that whole conversation put to the side and the very Trumpian view as you've laid out, which is about something that he can take to his voters and say, I really put these guys through the ringer and I extracted all these concessions.

And I think it's a power dynamic, you know, where you've got Ukraine in the weaker position and it's clearly ripe for some sort of exploitation by the U.S. side, but again, you don't see that dynamic with Russia, even though Russia was the aggressor here. And I think it's because, you know, Trump doesn't see that he has leverage over Russia to kind of make demands. I mean, he should be talking about the 300 billion dollars in frozen central bank assets and–

Benjamin Wittes: And he has a weird admiration for and looks up to Putin in a way that is, you know, people have all kinds of conspiracy theories about, and I don't want to play in those waters, but is just a reality of the way he looks at the situation.

All right, before we break, I would be remiss if I didn't add that it's kind of been a bad week within Ukraine for domestic politics there, in the spirit of going after your political enemies, weaponizing your power as government. Zelensky took some I thought quite untoward actions with respect to his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, this week, and I'm curious what you make of what's going on at the domestic politics level in Ukraine.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, Zelensky has had this obsession with Poroshenko since defeating him in the 2019 election and has wanted to go after him. In the weeks before the full scale invasion, I mean, there was kind of a real move towards a criminal case against Poroshenko. Then there was this political ceasefire and everyone rallied around the flag.

And Poroshenko has been, you know, kind of promoting himself as loyal opposition, supportive of what Zelensky is doing on the international stage and not wanting to bring politics back into things. But clearly that sort of detente has been fraying and this comes in the broader context of increased discussion in Ukraine about potential post ceasefire elections, including under a lot of pressure from American officials who have been in some respects, parroting Russian talking points that have been calling into question Zelensky's constitutional legitimacy. But saying, you know, Ukraine needs to have an election, you know, the fact that they can't secure part of their country and actually have observers come in and so on, be damned, just have the election.

And there's a real lack of understanding I would say in, in American circles about the, the, the significant challenges to having an election, but this conversation has been picking up steam in Ukraine. And there's a lot of speculation that if a ceasefire is reached at some point this spring or early summer, there could be some sort of election by the end of 2025. And then sort of the gloves come off in terms of real competition and challenges to the way Zelensky has led the war.

And Poroshenko may not at this point be his primary challenger, just based on Poroshenko's pretty low opinion polls, but Poroshenko could bankroll someone. And there had been a conversation—

Benjamin Wittes: He is a gazillionaire from chocolate, I believe. Is that right?

Eric Ciaramella: Chocolate and other things, yeah. But there had been some reporting that he was kind of angling to promote General Zaluzhnyi, who was the, you know, head of the army commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces that Zelensky relieved in early 2024 and is now the ambassador in Britain but is seen as sort of a real potential rival to Zelensky.

So again, I think this is, this is like you said, a very unfortunate turn of events. It shows that Zelensky, for all of his, I would say, outstanding leadership of Ukrainians and performance on the international stage over the past few years is still a rookie politician and a very thin skinned person on the domestic stage who perceives enemies around him and leans towards a more centralized form of decision making that I, then I think a lot of Ukrainians are even comfortable with.

And so, you know, we'll have to see what happens here; they, they levied these sanctions against Poroshenko and his firms, whether there's going to be some sort of real criminal case and he's going to be arrested. I mean, I think it's very unfortunate that, that Zelensky has chosen this time to sort of take the gloves off. I hope that there could be some sort of return to this kind of national unity, because they need it now more than ever.

Benjamin Wittes: And do you have a sense of whether any case against Poroshenko is merited, or what, like, is this, is this an example of the—like, the detente was an example of Zelensky forbearing against a political opponent for reasons of national unity, though action might be appropriate?

Or is it conversely an example of, you know, he was showing an authoritarian streak with respect to a political opponent who, though an oligarch, is, you know, not a criminal and was a political rival and the gloves went on because he needed Poroshenko for national unity purposes, and now he perceives he doesn't, so the authoritarian streak is showing.

I don't, I genuinely don't know which environment we're looking at, and while I agree with you that it's unfortunate either way, it bothers me much more if it's the latter case than the former case.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I, I don't know, to be honest.

You know, the basis of this sort sort of set of sanctions goes back to, as far as I understand it, some deals that the Poroshenko administration had done to keep supplying coal to the rest of Ukraine via the occupied territories in Russia in the sort of 2016 timeframe that involved Viktor Medvedchuk—which might be a name that some of the listeners recognize—who was, you know, very close to Putin, a Ukrainian oligarch, very pro-Russian, who had been designated as one of Poroshenko's envoys to Putin during the Minsk talks. And then later on under Zelensky came under sanctions for his ownership of media outlets and was arrested and then exchanged in a prisoner swap with the Russians, but you know, it was definitely involved in dirty dealings with Medvedchuk.

What Poroshenko was party to and what he was doing on behalf of the state to sort of keep the lights on during a very difficult time when most of the coal resources had come under Russian occupation versus what he may have benefited from personally in some sort of opaque dealings, I don't know, and I think that's, that's sort of the key that this, you know, the key question this turns on.

If there was a reasonable suspicion that, you know, he was, he had profited personally from essentially a dirty economic deal with the Russians, you know, then there's reason there to have some sort of criminal case,

Benjamin Wittes: Right, then it's a, that's a very different picture.

Eric Ciaramella: It is.

Benjamin Wittes: Because then you're talking about sort of the accountability for the history of Ukrainians doing, you know, deals with the Russians that are not in the national interest of Ukraine which is a long and sordid and dirty history.

Conversely, if it's, you know, he beat Poroshenko in an election and he's afraid that he's coming back, which he doesn't seem to be, but—that's a very different picture and you get some of this, is this weaponization of the government or is this accountability for past crimes question?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah. And interestingly, we haven't talked about this much, but Ukraine is trying to open up some of the negotiating chapters for EU accession. And already the EU is starting to come out as part of this accession process and saying, you know, there are some terms of martial law that need to be sort of relaxed over time. There is a recognition that the current centralization of power in the presidential office is not healthy for, you know, or sustainable for a democracy over the long term.

And so Zelensky, I think, is going to come under increasing pressure from partners and friends to rein in some of these tendencies which again, there may be some justification, and it's just extremely poor political timing, or in the more worrying scenario you lay out, there is some sort of authoritarian impulse that needs to be curbed. And because under martial law so many of the checks on his power are temporarily suspended, you know, you do have to get back to some sort of normal political environment at some point.

Benjamin Wittes: Right, and the thing that we don't know about Zelensky, and you never know until after the crisis, right, is whether, you know, Churchillian amassing of power in a crisis—and of course the British didn't have elections during the war either—is a you know, something akin to the Roman dictatorship, which is a temporary office that disbands with the end of the crisis, or whether it is the, the Napoleonic, you know, amassing of power that then never disappears. And Zelensky is a question mark in that regard.

Eric Ciaramella: He is. He is. You know, Ukrainians do still see him though as, as legitimate. And there is no real groundswell of support for elections under present circumstances. I, so I think he hasn't crossed that line yet in the Ukrainian mindset.

Benjamin Wittes: Even Zaluzhnyi—who is, as you say, the obvious kind of alternative whom Zelensky removed as commander in chief of the army, he then sends him to Britain to be the ambassador to Britain and Zaluzhnyi goes, right? And so he's still serving in a Zelensky government. And so I think the, you know, it's not until you have somebody who comes out and says, I'm the opposition and I'm contesting this, that you'll really know the answer to that question.

Eric, we're going to leave it there. I have a feeling we're going to be doing this again soon. Just a reminder to everybody, everything that you know that happened that we didn’t know when we recorded this podcast on Monday doesn’t count. You’re not allowed to say you got it wrong because this happened on Tuesday. We will be back next time. Thanks for joining us.

Eric Ciaramella: Thanks Ben.

Benjamin Wittes: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter using our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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