Anna Borshchevskaya
Russia’s Desert Storm: A Conversation on the Russia/Ukraine Situation
Anna Borshchevskaya - Russia’s Desert Storm: A Conversation on the Russia/Ukraine Situation
- Well, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome back to those of you who were with us this morning. And for those of you who are just joining us, we are thrilled to see you today. We are delighted to have Anna Borshchevskaya with us. We’re absolutely delighted to have you and thank you for joining us, Anna. Before I hand over to Anna and to Carly, who will be there will be in conversation on Russia and the Ukraine situation, I’m going to briefly give you a short introduction. Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, focusing on Russia’s policy towards the Middle East. In addition, she’s a contributor to Oxford Analytica and a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. She was previously with the Atlantic Council, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A former analyst for a US military contract in Afghanistan, she has also served as communications director at the American Islamic Congress. Her analysis is published widely in publications such as “Foreign Affairs”, “The Hill”, “The New Criterion”, and “Middle East Quarterly”. She is the author of the 2021 book, “Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence”. Until recently, she conducted translation and analysis for the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office and its flagship publication, “Operational Environment Watch”, and wrote a foreign affairs column for “Forbes”. She’s the author of the February, 2016, Institute monograph, “Russia in the Middle East”. She has a doctorate from Georgetown Mason University. Gosh, so accomplished! Honoured to have you with us, and thank you very much. So now I’m going to hand over to you and to Carly, thanks.
Thank you very much, Wendy. So Anna, we’ve got, we’ve got a lot to try and get through in the next hour. And as I joked earlier, the situation seems to be changing by the minute. So we’ll see how much it’s developed by the time we finish our discussion. So obviously, tensions in this part of the world are not new, you know, particularly between Russia and the Ukraine. But in the last few weeks, things in that part of the world have really heated up. So let’s, if we can, try and start from the beginning, why is Russia so concerned about NATO, and what does that actually have to do with the Ukraine?
Sure. Thank you very much Carly, and thank you Wendy, for this very kind introduction. So, the reason why Russia is so concerned about NATO, there’s a short way and a long way to answer this question. But essentially, this issue goes back to the very end of the Cold War and the type of regime that is currently in charge in the Kremlin. When the US won the Cold War, and we won, I think many in the West, in the free world, essentially moved on, and believed that this was a triumph of freedom. A very difficult battle that took decades, but we won. And, now was the time to move forward. Well, a lot of people in the Russian government, particularly in the security services, who witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union, did not see it that way. They wanted to have another chance of basically play out the Cold War with an alternate ending. And those are the type of people that are in charge right now, but, Vladimir Putin comes from that circle. So the idea that NATO is truly encircling Russia, is ludicrous for a whole host of reasons that I’d be happy to go into. But, you know, but in short, NATO countries that border Russia are less than one 16th percent of its border, for example. And there are many, many, many other reasons why, and in fact, if you go back to Putin’s early years, it’s even possible to find comments where even Putin, believe it or not, says that NATO is not threatening to Russia. But what’s happening now is over time, Putin has committed himself from the beginning to basically upending the US-led global order, the primacy of the United States and world affairs and over time, based on how he perceived Western actions and that’s global, that’s not just in Europe, it’s certainly in the Middle East and in other parts of the world, he has come to perceive that he can get away with it. So it was a long way that brought us here a lot of steps. And if we have, you know, as we talk more, we can talk a little bit about how these discussions were held, it’s clear that Putin is using all elements in his arsenal, coercive elements, while the West still mainly remains committed to diplomacy and mostly sanctions and so forth. And this is also, so fundamentally it’s about expelling the United States from Europe, from European architecture. So this is not, you know, this is about Ukraine, but mostly not about Ukraine. Frankly, just as the Syria intervention that I talk about in my book was not really about Syria, it is something much more bigger. It’s global and it’s incredibly destabilising.
So as you say, it’s got much bigger geopolitical ramifications. But let’s continue on Ukraine itself for a few more minutes. So, you know, Russia has amassed a hundred thousand troops on the border. You know, there are rumours of another training exercise with Belarus, which will allow them to have another 30,000. And as our audience will remember when they annexed Crimea, you know, they used a similar excuse to amass troops on the border with Belarus. So, without having a map to point at, if you can give our audience a little bit of an overview of what it means for Ukraine that they are now, you know, going to be surrounded by that number of troops and what Ukraine could hope to do about it. You know, we’ve all seen these news reports of volunteers signing up to learn to fight with plywood rifles and seemingly 5,000 donated German helmets, which I don’t think is going to get them very far, but what does this physicality actually mean for Ukraine?
Well, Ukraine, essentially, you know, without looking at a map, basically imagine Ukraine and Ukraine is a very large country, by the way. Ukraine is essentially surrounded. So the irony here is that the Russian state narrative, is that Russia is surrounded, but in that, in the Russian state narrative, all of this, all of these activities are purely defensive, but in actuality, it’s Ukraine that is surrounded. So on the Russia-Ukraine border, basically, imagine kind of a horseshoe pattern of Russian troops. So that’s the Ukraine east, again, kind of in an arc, so to speak, in a horseshoe. And then to the other side, you have the border with Belarus. Now the issue with Belarus is that Alexander Lukashenko at this stage, owes his political survival to Vladimir Putin. And although in the past, he was not interested in integrating in Belarus, in integrating Belarus with Russia, and certainly the Belarusian people don’t want it either. At this stage, it’s not really a matter of what he wants, it’s a matter of what leverage Putin has over him. And that’s Putin’s pattern. He builds leverage over everyone. So you also, you have cyberattacks that most likely Russia recently conducted against Ukraine. The type of buildup that Russia has set up is very different from the previous ones. It’s much more serious, it is far more indicative of military action. Now of course it has to be convincing that way because the Kremlin, you know, previous buildups that Russia has done over Ukraine, did not appear as serious, did not appear as convincing. But now, you can see that the West is taking Russia seriously and I’m sure that that makes him happy. So now also Putin, well not Putin directly, but senior Russian officials have, did not exclude putting weaponry in Latin America, in Cuba, in Venezuela, so there’s also, now why do I bring it up when with regard to Ukraine? Because it’s again, another kind of coercive tactic and look at how global it is. They’re talking about positioning assets in Latin America close to us. But all of this is ultimately aimed at again, surrounding Ukraine, and testing our resolve. Really what it comes down to is how strong is our resolve.
So when you say the “west”, I want to break it down a little, cause we haven’t seen a uniform response.
Right.
You know, obviously the US is taking certain actions, but first I’d actually like to start with the UK and Europe. You know, I’ve intentionally split those two up, not just because of Brexit, but also because, you know, Boris Johnson is in the Ukraine today and the UK has been clear from early on, that it is going to push back firmly against Russian aggression. There’s been less clear messages sent from the Europeans. You know, the Germans wavered fairly early on, especially with the then head of the navy resigning over comments that seem to endorse Putin’s decision. You know, certain airspace was blocked to the UK in terms of flying to the Ukraine. But, Poland and Holland are themselves going to the Ukraine tomorrow. So, can you give us a bit of a deeper dive into the response in Europe and why different countries are taking different opinions on this?
Sure, sure. And I mean the very point that you make Carly, there are these divisions, is incredibly important in and of itself. So I mean I’ll start with that, if I may. There is no unity in the Western response towards Russia, but Russia presents a united front. And this is one reason why, while you see Russia getting away with as much as it’s gotten away with to date, cause during the Cold War, the west was united against the communist threat, against the Soviet Union. So the UK indeed, as you said, clearly has been committed. Boris Johnson has been committed to supporting Ukraine, Eastern central European countries, especially the Baltic states, as you said in Poland, have been sort of ringing alarm bells from the very beginning because they, given their experience with Russia, they understand exactly what they’re dealing with. If we want to talk about Poland, for example, now granted Poland doesn’t have the best of government, but that said, when it comes to the issue of Russia, I think they have over 300 years of history of Russian invasions. And so when a country like Poland had asked to join NATO, they had very good reasons for it. just as the Baltics states did as well. Germany, of course, as you said, and this is a big problem of course, Germany has been wavering on this issue from the very beginning. The Biden administration has also made a major strategic blunder, in my view, in lifting sanctions against Nord Stream 2, earlier last year, by the way, against, in the face of bipartisan criticism in US Congress. Nord Stream 2 is Russia’s main geopolitical project in Europe. And Putin knows also, that the key to Europe basically goes through Germany in large part. And the fact of the matter is, we are seeing that Germany is wavering on this issue. Now we can have a long conversation about Nord Stream 2, that’s a separate discussion, but we’re also seeing that, whereas other countries are pledging serious military aid, Germany, for example, sent nothing but helmets. And that in and of itself, Is quite a statement. And in fact, I think I saw they may have even been used helmets. You know, on the whole, of course, it’s clear that there are many in the West, certainly in the United States, for sure, who want to, who are committed to preventing another 2014 and so forth. But even within the United States, we have decisions on how to go about this. So there are divisions everywhere and it is because of these divisions, I think, that Putin is ultimately gaining ground.
So you just touched on Biden and what you feel was a mistake. I wanted to ask you to explain a little bit more about the US’ positioning about potential sanctions, but also understand how much do you think Afghanistan and what’s happened there in the last few months is playing into Putin’s decision making and how much he is testing the US.
Sure, sure. Well also first with Nord Stream 2, yeah, is again, I think, many people think not just me, that it was a major mistake to lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 because the fact of the matter is, those sanctions that were put in place by the previous administration, by the Trump administration, were actually effective and you can say a lot about Trump himself, his approach to Russia and so forth, all valid criticisms. But the fact of the matter is, those sanctions halted Nord Stream 2. And once those sanctions were lifted, Putin read that there was no other way for Putin to read that as kind of a green sign, green signal. Now the Biden administration in my understanding, probably thought that they needed to do this with Germany. They needed to lift these sanctions because they wanted Germany’s cooperation on China. And here, and again, this is where, I think it’s a failure to think strategically because first, what you saw the Biden administration trying to do last year, is sort of try to put Russia in a box, if you will. You know, Biden said he wanted over the summer, when he went to have a summit with Putin, he said he wanted a quote/unquote, “stable, predictable, relationship” with Russia. And you know the underlying sort of implication there is he wanted to focus more on China, and it’s absolutely correct to focus on China. I think most analysts would agree with it, but you can’t really put Russia in a box either. And a mark of a true global power is one that can focus on several issues at once. And frankly, there’s a whole issue of, you know, splitting Russia from China and so forth. That may be beyond the scope of this conversation, though I’m happy to to to talk about it. But, to get back to your second point, another major blow to American credibility that Putin also read as weakness, was the debacle of Afghanistan, the way the United States handled the withdrawal of Afghanistan.
You know, and here I cannot overstate what a serious blow to American credibility it was globally. Watching, and frankly, you saw even Biden’s approval ratings fall drastically because it was also watching desperate Afghans cling to planes that were taking off and then falling to their deaths were absolutely gut wrenching. And Putin, what you saw Putin doing and the the Kremlin doing is taking full advantage of this. The Kremlin narrative propaganda machine kind of went on full, into full power mode and talked about how you see the United States, you know, they go into all these places, they destabilise them, they bring nothing but chaos and violence, nothing good comes out of America’s presence. That was the narrative that they played to the fullest. And other countries started looking to Russia more again in this context. So this was another major foreign policy blunder, which shows how, the way the United States acts in one place, reverberates everywhere, and these theatres are all connected.
So what are the tools at hand that the US can use? You know, you mentioned diplomacy.
Right.
You know, obviously there’s been a lot of back and forth, Secretary Blinken has, you know, been making a lot of efforts. But what are the other options, whether it’s sanctions, you know, whether it’s more clandestine approaches. What can the US do at this point?
Well, we did finally, we finally seemed to have taken some cautious steps towards more deployments to Poland and other countries in the region. I think this is what was sorely necessary. We should have done this a lot earlier. We should have also sent military aid to Ukraine earlier. Frankly, when it comes to sanctions, and it’s clear that the biggest tool that the Biden administration wanted to use is sanctions, it was the top tool, it’s fine to use, but we could have also done that, you know, we could have enacted those sanctions earlier, preemptively, rather than say we are going to do it if Putin acts. We could also, now that we’re finally sending some deployments, and I don’t have a lot of details on that at this stage, but I mean, I think the way it should go is again, that there should be clear deterrence, and determines requires hard power. And that’s a tough lesson. But I think for too long, the issue here is we thought we could just focus on diplomacy without resorting to hard power. And that’s not going to work. What we could also be doing in addition to that, is propping up also our narrative because the Kremlin has a very clear narrative, a very effective narrative, very effective propaganda machine that resonates because they know how to do it. We also need to go back and relearn some of the lessons from the Cold War when American messaging was effective, especially because we have the truth on our side, and frankly, people living in the Eastern Bloc, you know, even people like my parents, who listened to “Voice of America” and “Radio Liberty”, this was the voice of truth, the voice of America, because we knew that the Soviet government was lying. And so we need also to get our act together kind of more of what we would actually ourselves call a whole of government approach. Because, you know, the irony is, you’re seeing Putin pursue a whole of government approach, even though it’s an American term. But here we we’re not really doing that, we’re taking piecemeal steps and they’re not really without kind of a bigger overarching picture. And if we were to do that, I think we could deter him. But, you know, but I’m just not seeing that playing out just yet.
And you know, obviously the UN is often the vehicle by which these problems get brought to for discussion.
Right.
And you know, Russia’s made several attempts to block this discussion happening at the UN. But as of last night, you know, it finally got an airing. Where are things standing with the UN and what can the UN do, if anything, in terms of themselves applying any kind of pressure?
Right. Well, there was a meeting yesterday at the UN Security Council. It ended predictably in what we might call perhaps a stalemate with Russia and the United States presenting to very different views to put it mildly. Unfortunately, you know, the UN was designed precisely for these types of situations. And if anything, we should be for example, to go to your earlier question, we could also be bringing up the idea of putting peacekeepers in Ukraine through the UN charter. The charter provides for that option. The reality also, of course, is that Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council. And there’s no way Russia is going to authorise a mission like that. But it is a conversation worth at least having, looking, judging at the results of yesterday’s meeting, unfortunately, it shows the limits of what the United Nations can do. But, that said, I think it is important to be having these discussions.
So as we continue our geographical tour, now let’s turn to the Middle East and if it has any role here. So, you know, obviously this is not the only issue on the US docket. They are still continuing to try and engage with Iran. And, you know, Russia has at times played a fairly key role there in addition to its role in Syria. So are the Americans factoring their engagement with Iran into their approach at all? And how much is Putin hoping to lean on, on this axis of other countries in his engagement?
Well, I think, you know, to the extent at least that I’m aware of, there are discussions going on about whether or not this situation in Ukraine might impact the Iran negotiations. I think there’s a bigger issue here that began before this Ukrainian crisis. And that is, that when it comes to the Iran deal, Russia’s earlier participation was never a favour to Washington to begin with. Russia always acted in it’s self-interest. They wanted the Iran deal back in 2015 because they wanted to ease, they wanted an easy, you know, sanctions against Iran to increase trade. They certainly wanted to be a part of a key global deal because Russia, because basically, Russia doesn’t want any major international decision to be made without Russia. And in fact, historically, even prior to 2015, Russia had a long history of diluting sanctions against Iran. And it was those tough sanctions back then, years ago, that brought Iran to the negotiating table to begin with. So basically, Russia acted as both a supporter of the deal and also at the same time Iran’s lawyer. And that, it aligns with the broader geopolitical breakdown in the Middle East where Russia certainly has connections with all actors in the region, but it always tilted closer to anti-American ones and that is Iran, Hezbollah and the Assad regime. In this particular case, it’s possible to imagine Russia, and it’s something I speculated on in an earlier article, that maybe Russia could present some kind of a deal where if it portrays itself as being more cooperative in this theatre in exchange for concessions on Ukraine, I can certainly see, still see a scenario like that, certainly in the past, Russia tried to get sanctions lifted for its aggression towards Ukraine after Russia intervened in Syria. So these linkages that Kremlin likes to do, that is a feature of their foreign policy. But, I also think there’s certain limits to this in a sense that, the lying that Russia pursued in the Middle East was also fundamentally one about ending American primacy in world affairs. It’s a very zero sum approach that Russia took to the Middle East, and you see that especially in Syria. And what the Syria intervention meant for the power balance in the Middle East. So, that dynamic was already present. You might see additional linkages that are more of tactical nature, but from a big picture perspective, that picture was already there. That erosion of the US-led global order mattered for Russia, both in the Middle East and Europe.
So another country that, although certainly not in the middle of this, and I would assume would hope to stay out of it, that has relations with both Russia and Ukraine, and significant parts of the population from both those countries, is Israel. You know, they obviously have this close relationship with the US, but have managed, you know, even during the recent engagements with Syria to walk a very fine line around managing to work with Russia when necessary. You know, we’ve seen reports in the last few days of Russia interfering with GPS signals,
Right.
making it very difficult for Israel to track, you know, what’s going on in Syria and in other parts of the world and complaints being ignored when they’ve been made to Russia, you know, as well as, as we say, the large Russian and Ukrainian populations in Israel. So, you know, how do you think Israel positions itself in this, or even manages to continue to walk the fine line between the US and Russia?
Right. So, the moment Russia entered the Syrian theatre in 2015, militarily, that is, and Russia took control of the Syrian skies. The campaign that Russia conducted in Syria was primarily an aerial campaign with a naval component and very small contingent of ground, elite ground troops. What this meant for Israel is that Israel became dependent on Russia’s goodwill to conduct its airstrikes against Iran back targets in Syria. And this put Israel in a situation of dependency on Russia, which is also, again, illustrative of that larger dynamic that I talked about earlier about building leverage, be it that I mentioned with Belarus earlier, for example. This is what Putin does. He builds leverage. Very pragmatic, hard-nosed, realpolitik leverage. Israel also, now Israelis will always point out that Russian never stopped them from conducting their airstrikes on the Syrian territory. And that’s certainly accurate, but I think Israelis have also maybe have been a little bit too naive and read a little bit too much into what Russia could do, what this permission really means from an Israeli perspective. And it’s, you know, and it’s understandable of course from an Israeli perspective, it’s better to have Russia next door than Iran. The problem is, both Russia and Iran are really part of the same strategic set. Russia really has no ability nor desire to really push back against Iranian influence in Syria in a meaningful way, beyond, you know, it’s one thing to look at, look away against Israeli airstrikes and so forth, but that’s not meaningful. Now, what does this mean for our current situation with Ukraine? Well, what we’ve seen is, because of this situation of dependence that Israel finds itself in, Israel has not given Ukraine military aid, which is something that there were reports about a few weeks ago earlier, there were discussions that Ukraine might recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in exchange for certain types of military aid. And it seems that this particular deal is no longer going forward. And I think it shows, it highlights again, this feeling of dependency that Israel has because theoretically, if Russia wants to turn off that tap of freedom of action that it gives Israel, it can. But it puts Israel in a difficult situation. Having said that, you know, this is certainly worth the longer discussion about whether or not Israel could still give aid to Ukraine, but Israel also finds itself in a very difficult position.
So to look a little bit more specifically now about some of the responsibilities of NATO, but also some of the treaties and memorandums that have been signed over the last, you know, 25 years or so, if you are in the US media at least, one of the items that keeps coming up is the Budapest memorandum. And, you know, whether that means the US should take action or shouldn’t take action depending on which commentator you are reading and listening to. So can you tell our audience a little bit about what that memorandum means and the kind of history lesson behind it, and whether you think that has any effect on what the US should do at this point?
So it’s an incredibly important memorandum. It’s signed in 1994. This document cites the 1970s Helsinki Accords. And the document essentially says that Russia will recognise Ukraine’s sovereignty and in exchange, Ukraine will give up its nuclear arsenal and ship it to Russia. At the time, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, and it followed through with its obligations to the letter of the law. Ukraine trusted this document and it could have been a nuclear power today, but it’s not. Russia has not held up its side of the bargain in respecting Ukrainian sovereignty. And the reason why, again, if I may highlight it, is so important is because Putin and the Kremlin at large has a fundamentally different view of international affairs. First of all, he doesn’t consider Ukraine a real country. And he said so, as much on the record, right? We’ve seen those quotes. Many commentators have remembered them in recent years. But even the comment that I like actually goes back further a few years ago when Putin said that very few states have true sovereignty. And amongst those few states, he listed United States, Russia, China, India, and perhaps several others. This is a fundamentally different view of world affairs that does not conform to how the post World War II security architecture viewed these fundamental ideas of state sovereignty, nationalism, ethnicity, and so forth. And these fundamentally different worldviews are now coming to a clash.
And, you know, one of the other larger than life countries that you know, is often causing the US some concern is China.
Mm-hm.
Have China made any comments or any positioning in this particular situation?
Well, what I saw just in the last day or so, is that Russia and China had a meeting when they reiterated some of their core tenants of their strategic partnership. And I apologise, I don’t have the details right now in front of me, but I think what this shows is that Russia is not, contrary to all the contradictions and complexities of the Russia-China relationship, they remain committed to their partnership. When it comes to Crimea in particular, in 2014, China took a very nuanced approach. It did not recognise the Crimea annexation, but it also did not criticise it either. It certainly, China is watching this incredibly intently, and I think what the Chinese leadership is thinking is, if depending on how we act in Ukraine, this will serve as an indicator of how China can act vis-a-vis Taiwan. And so for the entire region, Japan of course is also watching for the same reason. Basically what the situation highlights is that, despite having a formal alliance, which is the matrix for a lot of analysts, the discussion on this issue is whether or not China and Russia will have a formal alliance. The better matrix really is whether or not they’re going to continue to have a strategic partnership. And they seem to be again, increasingly headed in that direction.
So now looking ahead, what do you think we see over the next couple of weeks? You know, one of the phrases that’s been thrown around a lot, particularly after the Biden’s Zelensky call was, you know, once the ground freezes, you know, that that’s a point at which to be concerned. Now, my understanding is that’s towards the end of February, but help our audience understand why the weather, the kind of situation on the ground may be partly what’s slowing Putin down, but what does it actually look like? You know, we wake up one morning to the troops having crossed the border, or we wake up one morning to Russian cyberattack bringing down all of the power grid across Ukraine.
So, the reason why weather, well, why the weather is so important, logistic, the short answer is logistics, right? Excuse me. The simple fact of the matter is, cold weather, frozen ground in this particular region had historically deterred many invasions. But I also think there are limits to this analysis and there are different views that I’ve seen on this issue. I’m not sure if frozen ground is necessarily going to deter Russia. Having said that, I think we’re going to see a lot of tension in recent weeks. I don’t think any, I don’t think Russia is going to be sitting idly by. Putin just today gave a comment, he finally spoke officially about the presented written statement that he received from us on the situation in Ukraine. Now this was not, what Putin gave were some comments after a press conference. It was not really a formal reply. I think one thing to look for is the formal reply that is going to come from the Kremlin, but Putin’s comments show no change in tone. They show determination. He says that the West simply has not taken Russia’s concerns into account. And what this means is, we need to be watching out for additional, the types of movement of troops, the types of weaponry that Russia deploys, additional cyberattacks, any kind of messaging, again, coercive messaging, like the earlier message about Cuba and Venezuela, if Putin decides to stage an attack.
And I don’t think anyone really knows what’s in his head at this stage, but I think, I mean I personally think a limited incursion is very, is quite likely. It would, the way it would look is, it would be very quick rather than have a ground invasion, I think it will be a primarily an aerial one. And that’s what we saw in Syria as well. There’s been a fundamental change in how Russia pursues these military goals. First of all, Russia thinks every conflict is unique, but having said that, you are seeing, we’ve seen a shift in recent years where Russia has studied very closely how we conducted our operations. They’ve drawn a number of lessons from that and they’ve tried to copy it. In fact, the article that I wrote recently was if Russians are to conduct a campaign, it would be similar to how we conducted our campaign in Desert Storm, the campaign called Desert Storm during the Gulf War. In other words, it’ll be low casualties, very targeted, very limited, and very quick, if that were to go in that direction. Also, last thing, watch out for more discussions on recognition in Russia in the Russian Parliament, recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are the quote/unquote, “self proclaimed” regions in Eastern Ukraine. Because I think the way Russia will do it, if they have an operation, they will portray it as a humanitarian mission as again, a defensive one. Cause their signalling is that they don’t want to fight, but they will if they have to because they’ve just been surrounded that’s the narrative. And I guess one last final point, there have been some unconfirmed reports of more citizens in Donetsk and Luhansk, all of a sudden becoming, all of a sudden obtaining Russian passports. That’s exactly what happened in Georgia in 2008 as well. So also watch out for things like, more citizens of eastern citizens of Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine all of a sudden becoming Russian citizens.
So let’s turn our attention a little to Putin himself. You know, I think few places in the world is so much focused on the specific leader and what his personality and persona may mean about the actions of the country. So, you know, much has been written about whether Putin is a great strategist or just an opportunist, and how he may be able to climb down from this, you know, obviously weaknesses is not something he would be prepared to show. So what’s your analysis of Putin and how he’s making these decisions and his inner circle and how does he climb down from this?
Well, so, you know, first, I think the dichotomy of tactician versus strategy, as you said correctly, this has been sort of the dominant theme over the years, that analysts have focused on. Is he a tactician or strategist? I’ve never found it particularly helpful because it’s too black and white. Nobody is really one thing or the other. Also, you know, even if we look, if we think back to even our own lives, we tend to kick ourselves from missing opportunities. So an ability to take advantage of an opportunity is frankly, a skill not to be underestimated because if anything, we often failed over the years to take advantage of opportunities in the West. Having said that, I do think Putin is not devoid of strategic thinking at all. I think it’s simply different from how we understand strategy. Just as we look at issues of security and the entire world order very differently. I think if you look at how, I mean the way I read it, Putin has been committed to very specific goals from the very beginning. He has not strayed from them and he pursued them, he planned for them. You’re seeing plans for any type of operation. These are not sort of reckless, you know, fly by the seat of your pants, kind of last minute operations that have been pulled together. They’ve been pretty thought out. And that does show a commitment to a type of strategic vision, even if we may not necessarily see it that way.
The way and the other part, the second part of your question, the other discussion that you see going on right now is whether or not Putin has backed himself in a corner, whether or not he now has taken things so far in Ukraine, that he has no choice but to act, because if he does, if he doesn’t, then he will look weak. It would look humiliating. I’m not sure he’s reached that point just yet. And he may, it very well may be that he may reach that point. But the reason why I don’t see it yet is again, because of how we’ve handled it, we haven’t really put him in the corner. And because perhaps most importantly, his domestic messaging to the Russian public has been all about being, it’s all about defensive. It’s how, the message is that, it’s the West that is pushing us to war. We don’t want to fight a war, we want peace, but we’ve been surrounded, our demands have been ignored, we have been nothing but patient, and have shown restraint, but aggressive expansionists Americans and Europeans are funding otherwise supporting Nazis, Separatists, what have you, basically creating genocide in Ukraine. And the word that was actually used was genocide. So because, and the Russian public also, again, and this is a tough question, but I think the Russian public over the years has become much more casualty adverse. But I think because of this narrative, because of how he signalled this all as very defensive as the message is we don’t want to fight a war. And because he did get the United States to listen, we are taking him very seriously. I think that pleases him. Depending on, again, this goes back to how these either negotiations will play out, will Putin get some kind of concession on something because if he does, it will not look weak at all. It’ll look like he coerced the West and the West finally ceded to some demands. Again, it’s not the only scenario, but the reason why I say this, is because I don’t think he’s yet backed himself into a corner. We should be trying harder to create that for him. I’m not sure if we’re doing that.
So does his expansion list hopes end with Ukraine? I mean, you know, if there is some kind of incursion in into Ukraine, where does he go next? You know, are there other former USSR countries that are at risk? You know, what does the rest of the map surrounding Russia look like?
Well, it’s a really great question because again, it goes back to this issue that this isn’t really about Ukraine, right? It’s a little bit about Ukraine, but mostly not. And if we make concessions, if we get scared and rush to concessions to avoid a conflict, it will not stop with Ukraine for sure. Certainly, Belarus is the other country that has been on Putin’s mind for years, and as we discussed earlier, at this point, Lukashenko owes Putin. So that’s another country to watch for sure. But really, if you’re talking about, it won’t stop with that country either. It would all have to depend on what kind of concessions are made and where Russia can position troops and so forth. But you’re talking about an incredibly dangerous world if that happens.
And one of the other concerns obviously, is what this may do to energy supplies and the energy market in the region that we haven’t had a chance to touch on. Why is Russia and this part of the world such a concern with regards to energy, and what do you think the other countries are doing to kind of shore themselves up at this point?
Well, Russia remains a key provider of energy to Europe. And it’s a very important, again, geopolitical tool that it has at its disposal. And again, this goes back to Germany, especially in the issue of Nord Stream 2. One could legitimately say that maybe we didn’t do enough to create opportunities, alternative opportunities for Germany, but, I’m not qualified to have a longer discussion on this issue. I haven’t done enough research into that, but I’ve seen that point made. Having said that, it’s clear that at this stage, Germany is missing the beer bigger geopolitical picture and without, and it wants to have Russian energy. If Russian energy, so if Nord Stream 2 goes forward, what’s going to happen is, there will be a pipeline that bypasses Ukraine. Currently, there is a pipeline that goes through Ukraine and the issue is not just economics, it’s not just transit fees, the bigger issue is that, if Russia does not need to worry about hurting its own infrastructure in Ukraine, it makes it that much easier for Russia to go through with an incursion because at this, because they’ll have another alternative pipeline. They’re not going to, you know, if you imagine that the one pipeline they care about is in Ukraine, they would be hurting themselves, but remove Nord Stream 2 removes that concern. And I think this also, you know, this issue speaks to, again, Putin has been able to play on many European, sort of very cynical beliefs that it’s ultimately a very kind of dark world that Putin sees where ultimately, the world is sort of nasty, brutish and dark. And if people want to have energy, then they need to deal with Russia. In the past, certainly Putin has threatened, if not Putin directly, then senior Russian officials have threatened other countries like Moldova, when they wanted them to do their bidding but Rogozin of several years ago, famously said, you know, “I hope you don’t freeze” and this was a veiled threat. So it’s going to be another tool. And Europe, it did not do enough perhaps in diversifying away from Russia.
Let’s return to the topic of cybersecurity, which, you know, has been in the news a lot, especially with the last US election and, you know, with general concerns, the UK issued a warning a few months back, you know, does is one of the concerns in general that, you know, with this heightened tension, even if Russia doesn’t take steps in Ukraine, that they are going to take steps in general to show their reach around the world. And how ready is the world for that kind of engagement?
Well, Russia has already done that. We, I mean think back to even the colonial pipeline attack, right? This is something that Russia routinely does, has been doing over the years already. And there’s no reason to think why it’s not, they’re not going to do it again. What we’re seeing now in Ukraine, what’s especially worrisome is this particular cyberattack that happened in recent weeks, it tends to follow a pattern again in that all of Russian, the steps that Russia takes pre-invasion, are all about building a certain narrative. There’s often a cyberattack element. So particularly when it comes to the situation in Ukraine, a cyberattack, and by the way, the one that happened in Ukraine was not as bad as it could have been because ultimately, no infrastructure suffered any serious damage, but it can. It’s simply another tool that the Kremlin is not afraid to use as it is coercing others into doing what it wants.
And in terms of the public opinion inside Russia on this, obviously, it is difficult to monitor and get a true accurate assessment. But if you are looking at, you know, commenting in parliament or amongst the media, how are the Russian population reading this latest action?
Right, and to my earlier comments, again, over the years, first of all, public opinion polling in Russia shows a mixed picture. The best source for public opinion polling in Russia is the Levada Centre. It’s the one remaining independent pollster. They’ve been labelled a quote/unquote, “foreign agent” in Russia. And again, you’re seeing what these recent polls show is a lot of antipathy towards the West and not a desire to have war by any means, but a belief that it is the West that is driving this aggression, that is pushing Russia towards confrontation. And again, it’s a testament to unfortunately, a massive and effective propaganda machine to the point where you are seeing a lot of information is probably going past people’s heads, but assert, but also they, they’ve been, the people have been conditioned. Maybe that’s the right way to describe it, that a lot of people have simply been conditioned to believe these types of things.
So let, I wanted to ask a question about sanctions, but more wider than just, you know, Putin, his inner-circle, obviously there is a lot of Russians with strong connections to Putin now outside of Russia and what, you know, what’s happened in the past is certain sanctions on on individuals, be they living in London or elsewhere? Do you think that’s another option that the West may consider applying?
Well definitely. It’s clear that that is the, one of the key options, the bigger sanctions option was discussion of excluding Russia from the SWIFT system. But you know, on this particular type of sanctions, I’m not, I’m simply not sure if that’s even going to work because in order to cut Russia off of SWIFT, there has to be European unity. And not everybody in Europe, again, is united on this issue. I believe the Italians have signalled several weeks ago that they would not support it, if I recall correctly. And so, there’s a simple question of, if we want to, even with the tool of sanctions, which again has become overused, you know, which types of sanctions can we realistically impose. Beyond that, what you’re also seeing is that the Kremlin has long been preparing for the effects of sanctions and they caused pain to be sure, the sanctions have caused pain, it’s just that without a broader strategic framework, where sanctions are one of many tools, but not the only tool, sanctions have not changed Putin’s behaviour. We’ve unfortunately have resorted to sanctions as a substitute for policy. And that’s really the main issue where the sanctions can be effective if they’re part of a bigger policy.
Thank you Anna. So with our last kind of, you know, minute or two, and I’m certainly not going to ask you to have a crystal ball, but you know, even if war doesn’t break out in the next few weeks, are we prolonging the inevitable? You know, is this clash with Putin, you know, over this and the kind of the wider geopolitical issues he has with the West inevitable? And if it’s not this moment in Ukraine, it’ll be something else in six or nine months time or do you see this can be, you know, there can be some form of agreement reached that can quieten things for, you know, a year, two years, three years?
Great question. I’m not sure if there’s an easy one because again, as you said, I don’t have a crystal ball. I think Putin is committed. That said, I think Putin is committed to a certain vision and I very much hope that the agreement that we do, if there is some kind of an agreement that’s reached, that it is not one that grants concessions to Russia because that would be an enormous mistake that will only again, invite more Russian attempts. The only way not to have this play out further, is to effectively deter Putin with hard power. If we’re not prepared to do that, then we will have another crisis sooner rather than later.
Anna, thank you very much. This has been truly fascinating. I think we could have done another hour on Russia and Syria, so, I advise people to get a hold of your book and also to read the Desert Storm article from last week, on the Washington Institute’s website, you know, which will give people a bit more context on the comparison. So, thank you very much and thank you for helping us tackle a very complicated part of the world. I’m going to hand back over to Wendy.
Anna, Carly, thank you very much for a very, very interesting and thought provoking presentation. And I can just sum up as the way we started, the Chinese proverb, may we live in interesting times. It’s very, certainly, very challenging times and, yeah, we are just watching this situation very, very carefully. It’s actually very, very dangerous.
[Anna] Yup.
Well thank you Wendy and Carly, and thank you very much. Thank you for this opportunity. It is an incredibly important issue. We’re seeing, again, a discussion of fundamental attempts to reshape the US-led global order and there’s, we haven’t seen events like this in 30 years,
Yeah.
so thank you for the opportunity.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, Russia watching how America’s going to respond.
[Anna] Yeah.
Well, and also thank you very much for the wonderful work that you do at the Washington Institute.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
It’s an incredible, it is an incredible think tank. So for those of our participants who don’t know about the Washington Institute, please Google it and inform yourselves about them. And Anna, and may I ask you maybe bring you back in a couple of weeks?
Happy to-
In advance.
Of course.
I will follow up.
Of course, absolutely, happy to be back.
Thank you very, very much. And Carly, brilliant as ever. Thank you very, very much. Thanks to the two of you. And thank you to Lauren and Judy.
[Anna] Thank you.
For facilitating this presentation. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks everyone for joining us. Take care. Enjoy the rest
Take care.
of your evening, afternoon, bye.
Bye-bye.