Lawfare Daily: A Busy Few Weeks in Ukraine

[Introduction]

Anastasiia Lapatina: Unless we see an actual defeat of Russia, unless we see, I don't know, a radical regime change, Ukraine is always going to feel unsafe. And any pause in fighting is only going to benefit Russia because it's going to build up more troops, it's going to find more people, it's going to build more weapons, build new plans, etc.

Benjamin Wittes: I'm Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare, with Anastasiia Lapatina, Kyiv Fellow of the Lawfare Institute, and Eric Ciaramella of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Eric Ciaramella: What the Allied leaders decided at the summit was the problem of Russian military aggression and military threat to Ukraine and Europe is not going to go away anytime soon, so we need to take a much more kind of holistic, comprehensive allied approach to coordinating aid and training for Ukraine.

Benjamin Wittes: Today we're talking about the latest events in the Ukraine conflict. The NATO summit, horrible bombings in Kyiv, Viktor Orbán's peace offensive, and much, much more.

[Main Podcast]

Okay guys, we got a lot of ground to cover here. We've had hospital bombings, a NATO summit, a Viktor Orbán peace mission. We got a lot going on so I'm going to stop the laughter in my voice, and Nastia, I want you to start by telling us about the hospital bombing which is now, almost two weeks ago. What happened? And what do we know about it?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Right so, on July 8th, which is around two weeks from the time that we're recording this, Russia launched a mass missile attack on Kyiv in the morning of July 8th. And one of the places that was hit is the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital and it's a very important hospital. It's one of the most important hospitals in Ukraine because this is this new very, Western, pretty hospital that treats kids with cancer, that treats kids with especially difficult health conditions and it has the best doctors in all of these fields.

So it's the most vulnerable kind of part of the population that you can get. And a Russian missile hit the Okhmatdyt hospital. One child died, unfortunately, and two doctors were killed as well, and we've seen the horrific images of destruction, of the rubble, of, what seemed like the entire city, the entire Kyiv coming after the bombing to clear the rubble and try to help people, and there were all of these kids with various treatments attached to them, trying to evacuate and move. And it was truly horrific, and it shook Kyiv, it shook Ukraine when it happened.

But that's not even probably the worst thing that happened that day, because on that morning, also a civilian apartment building was just completely flattened. It fell like house of cards and 13 people, including four kids, died in that bombing. So this is the same morning, the same attack. Also, a part of a private clinic on the left bank of the city has also been hit by debris.

So a Russian missile was intercepted and debris, as often happens, is also very destructive and damaging, and that killed nine people in a clinic in Kyiv. And also on top of that, two top floors of a business center have been hit by debris as well, and that killed seven people. This is all in one morning.

And two more people also died near a metro station in Kyiv. So that brings the death toll to 33 people, which is staggeringly high for Kyiv. I mean, we've seen much larger attacks in terms of amount of missiles that have been sent. The first thing that comes to my mind, like two days after I give birth to my daughter, Russia launched, I think, more than a hundred sorts of weaponry overall at Kyiv.

It was like 60 or 70 missiles and 30 drones all in one day, but only four people died that day. Whereas now we've seen much less amount of actual missiles, but much higher casualties, unfortunately. And 121 people were injured, including 10 children. So it was a truly a horrific day and this is just Kviv. Keep in mind on that same morning, other cities are also hit and dozens of people are killed in other cities.

So July 8th just was a tragic day. It was terrible. And I think the fact that there have been so many casualties might say something about the state of our air defense right now, because to me, this is truly surprising. I've lived in Kyiv for several years now during the war, and I generally feel safe-ish.

I generally trust our air defense. Things barely get really bad in Kyiv in terms of casualties. But that morning, 33 people, that's a lot. And it's terrible, especially considering that many of those are kids.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. So Eric, whenever an incident like this happens and civilian infrastructure is hit, there's a real instinct to just respond on the assumption that the civilian infrastructure was targeted. And there's a fair, large amount of evidence that Russia targets civilian infrastructure. I don't want to put you in the position of speaking for the Russian Federation, but can you think of any strategic logic for these missile attacks that, is outside the realm of war crimes?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean just to start it's obvious that Russia's strike campaign has qualitatively changed over the course of this year. And Nastia mentioned the kind of, the problematic air defense coverage, which really started to, become an issue in the January, February timeframe.

And if we remember, Russia had held off on, large scale infrastructure attacks through the winter, but then starting in March, started to go very deliberately after the energy grid and took offline something like 90 percent of Ukraine's non-nuclear power generation capacity. So there's definitely been a sustained campaign against the power grid, against the defense industry as well.

I think it's been clear that Russia has been recklessly lobbing missiles into populated areas where there's a very high risk of collateral damage. Russia certainly doesn't have the kind of calculations that like the U.S. military has about warfare in urban areas and aerial attacks and so on and so forth.

They don't particularly care if they lob a missile and then maybe Ukrainian air defense shoots it down and the debris falls on an apartment building or something like that or a missile goes awry. What I think happened in this situation talking to some military analysts and looking sort of at where the missile impacts were that day, there was a concerted strike on a --- possibly defunct, it's unclear --- Ukrainian missile factory that was just maybe less than a kilometer away from the children's hospital. And there were something like five or six missiles that impacted directly on the premises of that factory. And then this one missile hit the children's hospital, you know, that wasn't too far away. And so my best guess is that there was a problem, with the input of coordinates or that the missile was jammed in the air and that this wasn't actually a deliberately selected target on the Russian side. Now, the issue is, of course, none of this should be excused, and any normal country would do an investigation and apologize and all of that, and instead, the Russian propaganda machine went into overdrive. And it's sort of amazing; this terrible hospital strike happened almost 10 years to the day after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, MH17, over eastern Ukraine, which, again, based on all that we know, it seems to have been an error by the Russian backed proxy forces who were using Russian air defense systems at the time and thought they were hitting a Ukrainian military aircraft, they hit a civilian airliner. We have intercepts back then of them saying, “Oh crap, what did we do?” But then the propaganda machine went into overdrive back then and said, “oh, it was a Ukrainian missile,” “oh, there were you know, the plane was filled with corpses and this was all staged.”

Crazy stuff. No apology whatsoever, and it's actually been remarkable to see the Russian spin machine do the same thing. I was looking on some Telegram channels earlier and there's Russian pro-war outlets saying, “Oh, it was all fake blood, and this was staged by the Ukrainians to gain sympathy.”

So there's no apology, no kind of independent investigation that you would expect from any military with any kind of sense of ethics, but all that is to say, I don't think there is a strategic logic that they meant to hit a hospital and they were trying to produce some sort of outcome. The bigger strategic picture is, yes, they're looking to hit Ukraine's electricity, Ukraine's defense industry, logistical hubs, and so on.

And if those things happen to be in populated areas in the center of a major city where there's tons of civilians around, they don't really care.

Benjamin Wittes: So Nastia, does anybody in Kyiv believe that this was an accidental strike on the children's hospital? My assumption when the strike happened was that it was an untentional targeting for purposes of terrorizing the civilian population.

What's the common understanding of what happened among people on the street and in the area?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Ukrainians pretty much have the same reading as you do, especially because I think hours after the attack, this video came out that showed,from some sort of CCTV camera, probably,  that showed the Russian missile that was flying and hitting the hospital. --- It's some sort of camera near the area of the hit. Because people were deliberating whether this was intercepted debris, which, still Russia would be to blame for it, or whether this was a missile hitting directly, and we saw that it was a direct hit. And I mean Ukrainian social media just went wild.

This video and these photos were everywhere. And there was this one post that went viral that had a screenshot that showed this missile flying towards the children's hospital. And I think it the post said something like, look, this is Russia's peace negotiations tool. Kind of highlighting all of these calls for Ukraine to stop the war and stop the massacre and come to some sort of peace in quotation marks with Russia.

So yeah, there is definitely only one reading of the situation. I've, I haven't seen anywhere the assessment that Eric just suggested that there is there was like a military related target in the area and, but I don't think that would change anything though, right? Because it's not like the fact that Russia was trying to hit a military target in Kyiv makes it legitimate.

It's not, they have no right, legal or ethical, to hit anything in our country. So that wouldn't matter. Even if people were talking about the fact that this was an error, still, there's a very understandable tendency in Ukraine to blame Russia for anything even remotely related to the war, even things that Russia isn't itself doing. Even some sort of consequences of the fact that there is a war in our country, the whole thing is blamed on Russia, rightfully so I think.

Benjamin Wittes: Which is quite understandable.

Anastasiia Lapatina: If there wasn't a war, there would be no missiles, there would be no defunct missiles flying to children's hospitals. That's the assessment from Kyiv.

Benjamin Wittes: All right, so one person who was not morally repulsed by July 8th was Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, who either just before or just after the strike, I'm not sure I remember which visited Moscow and has been on something of a peace campaign, with the word peace in scare quotes. Eric, what's going on with Orbán, who I believe is also the chair of the EU this month or something along those lines? What's he up to?

Anastasiia Lapatina: Ben, you're forgetting Prime Minister Modi, who was also hugging Putin on the day of the attack, I think.

Benjamin Wittes: Yes, that's right. Prime Minister Modi was, although he's since seems to have shut up about it. Whereas Orbán came and visited Kyiv next and I think he just, he wants to meet with, he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He's on a bit of a kick. What's going on here?

Eric Ciaramella: So Hungary on July 1st took over the six month rotating presidency of European Council and Orbán has been trying to use the Hungarian presidency to launch this sort of, yeah, I guess what he's been calling peace initiative.

He got slapped down by pretty much every other fellow European leader and the EU leadership in Brussels. Number one, because he's far exceeding the role of the head of state or government of, the holder of the rotating presidency. There's been reforms to EU institutions, over the past decade that have moved much of those powers to the president of the European Council, who's Charles Michel right now.

And so actually, Michel came out and said, okay, Orbán, this is not your, you're not speaking for the EU, this is not your role here. So there was an institutional kind of tug of war. But then also Orbán was directly going against what EU policy has been, which is there's no negotiation with Russia without the Ukrainians and so on and so forth.

So he really ruffled a lot of feathers. As you mentioned, he, so he first was in Kyiv and he saw Zelensky, and then he went to Moscow and he saw Putin, subsequently came to the NATO summit, interacted with President Biden and other NATO leaders, and then went to Mar-a-Lago and saw Donald Trump. So I read his, he released his full kind of letter to fellow European leaders where he painted the broad contours of what his observations were, kind of just a trip report. It was very thin. It was very thin. It was not an actual peace proposal or anything like that. But the key things that I think were interesting was he said you know, Europe needs its own kind of independent approach on Ukraine and shouldn't be so tied to the policy that's being made in Washington.

Europe has its own interests in potentially re-engaging with Russia, which again, he and maybe the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, are probably the only ones who really think that. He also said, Europe needs to start this dialogue with China because China is really the only power that can bring Russia to the table.

Anastasiia Lapatina: We're forgetting that he also went to Beijing roughly 10 days ago.

Eric Ciaramella: That's right. I forgot about that. Yes. He's been very,

Anastasiia Lapatina: It was really a peace tour.

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, very active. But he also claimed that Trump had some, quote, detailed plan to resolve the war in 24 hours, like he said publicly.

Of course, there's been no information that, I'm deeply skeptical that such a plan actually exists. What was the effect of all of this? I think it was just to annoy fellow European leaders, but there is some kernel of, something going on here, which I think we shouldn't really gloss over, which is that the mood, and I would be very curious to hear Nastia's take on this, the mood in Ukraine is shifting a little bit, and there's been a lot of public opinion polling over the last month or two, including one that Carnegie commissioned about Ukrainians opinions of the war, where there is a little bit more openness to talks --- not to concessions.

We should be very clear about that. Talking with Russia is not the same as conceding and giving into their demands, but there's a little bit more openness to that. There is obviously war fatigue setting in. There's a desire to localize the conflict and get the missile strikes to stop and all of that.

It's completely understandable. What's been interesting is to watch President Zelensky slowly shift his public stance. And, you know he had a couple of interviews, including yesterday with the BBC, when he's been in London where he said, we don't necessarily need to get all the territory back through military means, we can pursue diplomatic means, and this might be a longer-term play.

And that is, distinctly different from “Our objectives remain the 1991 borders, period, end of story, we'll liberate all of our land.” I do think Zelensky and his team have been putting out some trial balloons through different, political scientists in Kyiv and others, but then also Zelensky hinting at this publicly. That maybe there is a desire to explore whether some sort of reasonable, let's call it, ‘interim deal,’ I don't want to call it a settlement because that seems final and includes a lot of political stuff that I think Ukrainians are not prepared to give in on but some sort of maybe ‘localization deal’ that could be reached by the end of the year.

I get the sense that there's openness to that and so Orbán's whole peace mission,  no one is taking that seriously because he's not a credible interlocutor, there is some kind of analytic element behind it where he's trying to push the conversation forward in a way that, again, if it were a different leader who was more responsible and trusted by the Ukrainian side and fellow Europeans, maybe could actually move the conversation forward.

But I don't think Orbán is going to be that person.

Benjamin Wittes: All right, so I want to actually add an additional element to this, which is that Orbán, while not a credible figure in this, does actually represent something, which is he represents well, the Slovakian prime minister, but also the opposition parties in a whole bunch of different European countries.

He's kind of where the AFD is in Germany, and he's kind ofwhere the Le Pen people are, or at least used to be, in France. He's kind of where these non-Italian far right parties, the Italian far-right seems to be part of the NATO consensus or the European consensus on Ukraine, but they seem they're the only ones.

And the other figure that is represented by Orbán in this is, and most importantly, is Donald Trump, which is why I think the Mar a Lago visit is an important element of this tour because he comes out fronting for Trump's probably non-existent 24 hour detailed peace plan. Nastia what do you make of all of this and how should we understand Orbán as a harbinger of things to come, both in Europe and the United States, but also as reflecting possible or trying to open up a little bit of pushing forward a direction that people may be already inclined to think about?

Anastasiia Lapatina: I agree with what you said that Orbán isn't the only individual in the whole entire world who is pushing for these kinds of talks. That there is a whole array of various political parties and governments who actually support the this idea of, we have to stop, in quotation marks, funding this war, and we just have to end it, and we want peace, and so on.

It's very useful for me as a journalist and a Ukrainian to remember that actually not the whole entire world is supporting my country, that there are many non-Western states who have completely different interests and who are leaning in a very different direction, and those, I think, are also the audiences who might be intrigued by what Orbán is doing, because if you don't know the very important, necessary, Ukrainian context of this.

If you don't know what this war is truly about and how ending it with some sort of peace deal may pose additional risks and so on, then if you look at what Orbán is doing, it actually looks great. He goes and visits what looks like every interested party in the conflict. As he says, he has all of these conversations.

He's trying to truly understand what's going on. If you don't know any context and just from the outside, this looks very solid. He looks like the guy who is actually trying to broker something important here. So, I think it's important to keep in mind that there may be other audiences who are not the EU or NATO members who might have a very different understanding of this.

I am getting the sense of people slowly moving into the direction of okay, what are kind of other options. Is there some sort of political, diplomatic solution that can be reached? There are still, I think, the majority of the country is still very united on the fact that any supposed peace deal is ultimately going to be bad for Ukraine because there is a deep, and I would say complete, mistrust of Russia and whatever document they're signing.

Every Ukrainian is constantly going to bring up Chechnya, if you talk to them about this, right? Because Russians signed a deal with Chechnya and then invaded them several years later. So I think this is the biggest fear for Ukrainians that unless we see an actual defeat of Russia, unless we see, I don't know, a radical regime change, Ukraine is always going to feel unsafe and any pause in fighting is only going to benefit Russia because it's going to build up more troops, it's going to find more people, it's going to build more weapons, build new plans, et cetera. We're constantly reminded by politicians and analysts in Kyiv that Russian, no matter what Russia says, their goals haven't changed.

They still won't calm down and stop until Ukraine gives up on some of its strategic goals, like joining NATO, joining EU. So basically this is why I'm actually planning to work on a piece about exactly this, because this issue of peace talks or possible ending to this war in Ukraine is kind of this impossible question.

There are no good choices. At the moment, there are no good options, and it's really tough, especially considering the fact that Russia keeps terrorizing the civilian population.

Benjamin Wittes: Six months ago, a year ago, particularly before the counter offensive and the failure of the counter offensive, the conversation we're now having was unthinkable.

If you said, is there some de-escalation possible? Is there some diplomatic approach? The answer was no, absolutely not. And you agree with Eric that there's some softening of that.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yes. I think there, there is, because I think there is a growing frustration with the Ukrainian government to be completely honest, and it's terrible, it's a terrible thing to see because this kind of lack of unity is usually the worst thing that happens in any conflict, is when your own group starts falling apart.

And I think this is partially what's happening to our society, especially in light of mobilization issues, the issues with mobilization bill, the fact that, there are still corruption scandals going on and, people are really getting frustrated that the war, that after the failure of the counteroffensive, there are no, there is no positivity in regards to what's happening in the front line.

Everything is just grim, but we still have to keep pushing because, as I said, we really don't have any good options. Like any option that we choose here is going to be bad. If we keep fighting until the last man, we depend on the West to win with that strategy. So in our ideal world, what Ukraine is ultimately pushing for, is that we want to defeat Russia militarily because this is the only way how we can be safe in the future.

We actually need, like Russia actually has to be defeated. The only way we can do that is if we have enough men and enough weaponry. And as lessons from the counteroffensive also have shown, and this entire war, what it has shown is that the West can't, unfortunately, supply us with enough weapons for this ultimate defeat that we're looking for. And now we're also having a manpower issue. So it's quite grim. It's what, it's quite grim. And then signing any piece or any document with Russia is also going to lead to more darkness. So I don't even I, the, my, that's my only emotional kind of response, unfortunately.

Benjamin Wittes: All right. So we're going to come back to the inadequacy of aid. But let's come to Washington first, as did all of NATO and a whole bunch of Ukrainians, including the president. Eric, what comes out of this NATO summit? I heard a great deal of grumbling from non-governmental participants about how stage managed the whole thing was and how fake the panels were.

What did you make of the NATO summit and what should I make of the NATO summit other than it was a traffic nightmare for D.C.?

Eric Ciaramella: Definitely a traffic nightmare. I think the overall context for this summit was about something that has nothing to do with NATO, which is domestic U.S. politics.

And the summit happening in the wake of President Biden's disastrous debate performance and the kind of growing realization that there's a good chance that Donald Trump is going to become president again. And, Europeans and grappling with what it might look like for the United States, not necessarily to withdraw from NATO, but to substantially curtail participation in and leadership of the alliance, which has depended on Washington since it was founded.

So a lot of kind of existential angst that was casting a really dark shadow over the whole, what was supposed to be a very joyous celebration of 75 years of the most successful military alliance in history. Of course, the other issue that was not, expressly on, the agenda in so far as it's not part of NATO is Ukraine, of course.

And those sort of, events and deliverables obviously were many weeks and months in the making, and there was this back and forth in particular about the language related to Ukraine's potential or eventual membership in NATO. The communiqué this time had the new word irreversible in it, which was, Ukraine's irreversible path to Euro-Atlantic integration.

There was not as much, I would say, expectation setting this time that Ukraine would receive an invitation. If we rewind to last year's Vilnius Summit, there was a great expectation built up that it was possible, and of course it didn't happen at the Vilnius Summit. And then there was a lot of anger and angry tweets and emotions and all of that.

This time it was more carefully managed diplomatically that the expectations were basically met, that there was a little bit of a change in the language, but then also these other sort of concrete deliverables that were related to NATO's role in kind of coordinating aid to Ukraine, shifting a little bit from this ad hoc U.S. led process that I'm sure we'll get into a little bit more later, but some people colloquially called it Trump-proofing because it would shift a lot of the burden from the Pentagon to NATO and institutionalize it a little bit. I would call it really, you know, just the standard process of moving from an emergency to something that's a long term strategy.

And I think it's good. It would be good policy regardless of who wins the presidency in November, because, you know what we have now this process that's been run out of Germany it's worked for two and a half years, but it's held together by duct tape and there's no institutional kind of framework behind it.

And so what the allied leaders decided at the summit was the problem of Russian military aggression and the military threat to Ukraine and Europe is not going to go away anytime soon. So we need to take a much more kind of holistic comprehensive Allied approach to coordinating aid and training for Ukraine.

There was also a decision to name a senior civilian representative who will be based in Kyiv on behalf of the alliance and will be able to engage with, everyone from Zelensky down to mayors and governors and military and intelligence and so on and so forth to kind of, again, make sure that there's as much unity as possible on the strategy and the goals and so on.

So I would say it was a mixed bag. There's some like kind of cautious steps forward. Obviously, Ukraine would have wanted something more decisive, whether on membership or, major new assistance packages. It didn't happen, but it's not the end of the story. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Benjamin Wittes: Nastia, what is your perception of the NATO summit? How happy or irritated are the Ukrainian government officials following it?

Anastasiia Lapatina: So Ukraine has a very interesting and very delicate relationship with the West in many ways, because pretty much the survival of our country depends on Western aid. And when we don't get enough of it, we naturally get very mad and the fact that Ukraine is asking for more military aid, this isn't just some sort of on a whim thinking. There are many credible military analysts saying that things like the counter offensive, for example, actually could have gone much better if we had more weapons earlier. So Ukraine has all the rights in the world, I think, in my subjective opinion, to ask for more aid.

But then we can't get too mad either, right? Because again, there is this dependency and there is this relationship that has to be kept. So it's this very delicate kind of dance that Ukrainian officials are playing in terms of managing the emotionality of the tweets after various summits and documents, signings and so on.

And there was a lot of work done before the summit. I've heard that apparently because it was this anniversary of NATO, Ukrainian officials were told that guys, not everything is about you. We just want to have a celebration, we just want to, we just kind of want to celebrate how successful we are and let's like, let's just not make this thing about Ukraine all too much. Rrom the get go, I think Ukraine expected that there weren't going to be any kind of breakthroughs or an invitation. So Ukraine is always hoping for much more than it gets, but it also keeps things realistic, understanding that not everything's going to happen. Definitely the most significant thing that happened is, as Eric mentioned, this wording, the irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time this kind of language has been used. Is it a deal breaker that's going to save a bunch of lives right now on the front line? No. Is it still a very good sign? Yes. Some people are saying that this is also, as Eric said, an attempt to Trump-proof the relationship between NATO and Ukraine, because if you write in this language and you sign it by a bunch of states and all of these various countries are present and agreeing with this language then it's going to be so much harder to destroy this relationship if Trump shows up and decides that he wants Ukraine to concede territory and stop fighting.

So there was that reading in Ukraine. There were a few other important things. Like the fact that NATO said that it's going to launch a mission command specifically dedicated to Ukraine and Wiesbaden in Germany which is going to help to coordinate with all of the military aid stuff, because supposedly this mission command is now going to have information about all of the various security packages that are being sent to Ukraine all the time from various countries.

And supposedly, from the reporting that I've seen, there has, before this, there hasn't been a body that would see all of this information altogether in one place to see what the gaps are, which kind of contributed to some of the gaps that we had. So this mission command is now going to be specifically dedicated to Ukraine, figuring all of that out because one of the issues that Ukraine constantly brings up is that we need more aid and quickly. That the timing of decisions and the slow decision making in Western bureaucracy is one of the complaints that Ukraine often has.

There was also this document that was signed, to be completely sure, I'm not entirely understanding what this even does, but the Ukraine Compact thing, which is when Biden, of course, had his remarkable moment of misspeaking and calling President Zelensky President Putin, which was probably the most fun part of the entire NATO summit, to be honest.

So yeah, this is this document called Ukraine Compact that was signed by the 23 leaders of the countries that have already signed various bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. And it establishes a platform aimed at coordinating and accelerating the collective effort to meet Ukraine's comprehensive security needs.

So make of it whatever you will. And apart from that, also NATO pledged to transfer more Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. Also, some discussions about F16s aircraft, supposedly where Ukraine is going to be able to deploy them this summer, and Norway announced that it's going to transfer six more F16 jets, so some concrete things like that.

And lastly, also NATO committed to sending at least 40 billion euros to Ukraine over the coming year, if I'm not mistaken, which is like the bare minimum that we'd need to not collapse on the front line. So yeah, that's pretty much what came out of the summit.

Eric Ciaramella: Let me come in just on this Ukraine Compact point that Nastia raised.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Please.

Eric Ciaramella: Yes, because I actually think it has strategic significance and links back to what you were talking about earlier, that Ukrainians could never trust any kind of written deal with Russia because Russia would just violate it like, Chechnya or like the Minsk agreements and would use the time to rearm.

I think the central strategic objective of the Ukraine Compact, which brings together these 20 plus bilateral security agreements that we've talked about on previous episodes, that I've written about for Lawfare. I think the point is to say, okay, we can't deal with the question of Ukraine's membership in NATO right now while the war is ongoing.

We're kicking the can down the road. We're saying that we have the intention politically to bring Ukraine in eventually, but we can't figure that out now. So what we're doing is trying to construct a credible interim security framework such that if there were a ceasefire, there would be enough deterrence and credibility in place for long term Western commitments to Ukraine, that Putin, or whoever the Russian leader is at that point, would know that they couldn't just rearm and attack again, that the West is not going to abandon Ukraine during this time.

I would say that it's, like you said, there's no kind of magic, wording or document that's going to cause the Kremlin to fundamentally say, okay we've lost, or we can't attack Ukraine anymore, take any more territory. But I do think it's like another brick in the wall that's being built slowly over time to show that actually, we do mean this thing when we say, as long as it takes, or whatever, until a just and lasting peace, that there are actual, strong political commitments.  They could be legally binding,  they're not yet, but that could happen in the future. But at least very strong political commitments that there is this collective framework behind Ukraine. And so I do think that's the strategic significance behind it. And it gets to, again, your point Nastia, which is, Ukrainians rightly think that Russia's never going to leave Ukraine alone until it's comprehensively defeated on the battlefield.

But if that can't happen, there is another school of thought that a very strong Western security, call it guarantee, although we have to unpack what that really means, but arrangement, commitment, whatever, obligation could be the way to deter Russia, even if it hasn't been defeated. So I think that's the direction that we're going in.

And like I said, the Ukraine Compact is a, it's a data point, it's a framework, it can be built upon, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It's certainly better than nothing. Yes.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so I want to ask you, Eric, about a matter that Nastia and I were talking about a few days ago, which is the counter model to the Grozny and Chechnya situation, which is the Balkan War, where the Serbs took a whole section of Croatia, which was not coincidentally named the Krajina region, without an U, but forced the Croatians into a very disadvantageous ceasefire, remained in possession of this region of Croatia. And then a few years later, Croatia kind of blitzed into the Krajina and just took it back.

And my question is, why are we all assuming that with a long term Western security commitment, that the renewed fighting when it comes will be on Russia's terms to take the rest of Ukraine in a kind of Grozny or, you know Germans in Czechoslovakia kind of way, rather than at some point Ukraine will be in a position to take back its territory and is permitted under international law to do so whenever it feels like it.

Are we confident that a ceasefire would function to allow Russia to rearm and regroup and restart the conflict rather than Ukraine to do that?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, that's really interesting that you bring that up, because I actually remember when the first Minsk agreement was signed in September 2014, a senior Ukrainian official at the time said that, this was the best that they could hope for now, but in the future, they were aiming for a Croatia model, where Ukraine would build up its military capacity and then take back the territory sometime in the future when the adversary was weakened.

So, but I do think there are some really important differences here. Serbia then was not Russia now. Again, Serbian positions in the Krajina were nothing by comparison to the hundreds of thousands of troops that Russia has deployed on occupied Ukrainian territory, dug in, heavily mined, killer drones overhead.

So the possibility of some lightning offensive, it's hard to imagine how you get there from now. I'm not ruling it out in the future again, if Ukraine is very smart in terms of building up capacity, training, proficiency, and really uses its resources wisely, maybe in two, three years, there is a credible offensive option. but I don't, no one, no military analyst thinks that Ukraine's going to be able to do a lightning offensive in the next six to 12 months, but I think your central question is exactly the question on policymakers minds, which is, does a ceasefire necessarily have to advantage Russia?

And I think what people are saying here in signing these long term security commitments in trying to focus on building up the Ukrainian future force and capabilities and technical capacity and all of that is to say, actually, no, we think that Ukraine could, quote, win the ceasefire and use that time very wisely to build up a credible deterrent capacity such that Russia would realize that it would be a fool's errand to try and attack Ukraine down the line.

So they're not conceding that point, and they're trying to build a structure such that Ukraine could emerge with some advantages through this period.

Benjamin Wittes: All of which brings us finally to the question of the adequacy of the aid that Ukraine has received and is receiving. Nastia, you wrote a piece about how this aid works and how it's being used.

And it starts with the, I think, arresting observation from an American perspective that a lot of the aid so far is not reaching where it's supposed to go. Not because it's being stolen or anything, just because we haven't delivered it yet, and I think a lot of Americans have this perception that we are flooding Ukraine with aid because the numbers in dollar terms are very large, but tell us a little bit about the perception from the Ukrainian side of what this giant 62 billion dollar aid package has actually meant.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So for Ukraine, this isn't a large sum, actually, and in my reporting, I found that there seems to be a big misconception between what we actually need, again, depending on the goal that we're setting here. Is the goal to stop Russia from advancing? Is the goal to actually advance ourselves?

Those are two very different goals and need different amount of aid. If we're talking about 62 billion specifically, you have to keep in mind that for months, Ukraine wasn't receiving military aid. So a big portion of whatever it is that it's being sent right now, it's to patch for the vulnerabilities that we've had for months.

And then also to stockpile at least a little bit, right? Because we literally started running out of all of our stockpiles. So one Ukrainian military analyst told me that the West isn't giving in, specifically the U.S., because the vast majority of actual weapons were received from the U.S. specifically. He said that the U.S. isn't giving us enough to even stop Russia from advancing. In the last several days, we've seen news coming about the fact that Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from several positions in two different areas on the front line, in the South, and in the East. So yeah, this wasn't some sort of breakthrough when the supplemental was signed, partly because this isn’t, just isn't enough in general, and also partly because it took so long before it got signed.

I've also been told that there is a misconception about the numbers that we actually need and one official told me that people in the West announced these pledges, like we're going to deliver a million shells to Ukraine by the end of the year. And it sounds very grand, a million shells, but Russians can go through that in a matter of a month or two.

So in my conversations, I've heard that there is this frustration with like okay, the U.S. makes itself look like this grand kind of foreign aid genius in terms of the amounts, but to Ukraine, it's helping, but it's not helping enough for us to win the war, which is why there's also an overwhelming feeling in Ukraine that the U.S. actually doesn't want us to win. I think most Ukrainians will tell you this if you do some sort of poll. I've had many conversations about this, about the fact that,

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, I’ve had dozens.

Anastasiia Lapatina: …about the fact that U.S. is helping us because they like that we are fighting their archenemy, Russia. And the idea here is to wear down Russia as much as possible instead of us actually winning quickly.

Benjamin Wittes: Yes, I can't tell you how many Ukrainians have asked me plaintively, why doesn't the United States want us to win.

Anastasiia Lapatina: This is what we genuinely believe here in Kyiv. So I think that tells you a lot about the different perceptions in terms of the amounts of aid.

Benjamin Wittes: We are going to leave it there. Nastia, Eric, thank you both for joining us. We'll do it again soon.

Eric Ciaramella: Thanks, Ben.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Thank you.

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