Daniel Sleat
The War in Ukraine
Daniel Sleat - The War in Ukraine
- Hi, everybody and welcome back to Lockdown University. I’m very happy that tonight, we are joined by Daniel Sleat. So Dan is a political researcher and strategist, and has been with Tony Blair for seven years. For five years, he worked as so Tony’s special advisor and then became head of the research unit in the institute’s policy division. The research work covers the renewal of progressive politics or we hope the renewal, support for the executive chairman, as well as geopolitics. Before joining TBI, Dan worked as an advisor to former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw from 2010 to 2015. And previous to that, he worked on David Miliband’s leadership campaign in 2010. He’s a postgraduate from King’s College London in International Relations, having previously done his degree in history and German at King’s. So Dan, thank you very much for joining us tonight. You have the unenviable task of helping our audience understand what’s going on in the Ukraine in an hour or less. So we’re going to take a bit of a whistle stop tour around all the geopolitical issues that we’re facing. But on day 55 of the war, I wanted to start off by asking you to give us a bit of an intro. What do we mean by the war in Ukraine? And how did we get here?
Fine. Okay, thank you very much, Carly. So I thought I’d give a bit of an introduction before we go into the Q&A, a little bit of the background to the conflict to try and make a little bit more sense of it. I think some of the events on the ground themselves only really make sense when we got a little bit of a bigger understanding of how we got to this place. And by bigger understanding, I thought I would start back in the 9th century only very briefly. So the very origin of what we think of today as Ukraine and Russia is long, complex. It came and went through many variations over the last 1,000 or so years. The very beginning started with the first Slavic Nation state called Kievan Rus. The capital was Kiev from around the 9th century before it was taken over by the Mongols in the 13th century. And there were many iterations of this mixture of countries and regions. Lithuania and Poland occupied parts of it, then one or the other. And then from around 1790, Russia has had control of most of what we think of today as Ukraine. The Ukraine borders that we currently know today roughly emerged out of the end of the First World War, the emergence of the Soviet Union negotiations between 1917, 1924. What we see as Ukraine today emerged with the very small exception of Crimea, which was given back to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. Roll forward to 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine emerges in the borders that we know of today. Where we’ve come from 1991 to the present day, there’s many variations of why the conflict has arisen depending on your point of view. The couple I thought I would cover off, first of all, is it the fault of NATO, which is a very common accusation, at least on my side of the Atlantic. The version of NATO that existed in 1997, you can see on the screen in purple. I don’t know why they’ve picked 1997, maybe with the notable year that my boss was elected. I’m not sure why else. Since then, the countries that are now in darker orange have joined NATO. And you can see slowly, NATO’s borders are moving closer and closer to Russia. That might lead you to say actually NATO has encroached on Russia’s territory in their right to worry. Actually, as I’ll go on to say, there’s been a number of versions of Putin that have existed since he became president. The very first early iteration of Putin was actually quite ambivalent towards NATO. A summit in the late 90’s, he was asked whether he had concerns about two particular countries joining NATO and he said, “"No, I don’t. In fact, I’d quite like Russia to join.” So that accusation of NATO expansion being a justification for the crisis in Ukraine, I think is one that’s easier imposed with hindsight rather than in advance. The Three Putins. From my analysis of Putin talking to experts and particularly Tony who knows him relatively well, I think since he became president, we’ve probably seen three versions of Vladimir Putin. The first one when he became president of a very destabilised post-Soviet Russia, the economy was in free fall, very powerful oligarchs, people on the street desperate for improved living standards. That first Putin that took power was pro-West, wanted to collaborate and work closely with Western countries to try and improve the Russian economy. That was the first version of Putin that Tony Blair and others met who they thought they could do business with. That was the version of Putin that said he wasn’t concerned about NATO. In the 2000s, I think we saw Putin emerge that was much more concerned with the idea of a greater to Russia. The high point of that, I would say, was the 2007 Munich Security Council Speech, which many people, including the Munich Security Council President said, is underappreciated. At the time, that speech was very hostile to the West, very hostile to NATO, and said a lot of things about the need for a greater Russia, that the worst thing that had happened was the collapse of the Soviet Union and that Russia was an underappreciated great power on the world stage. The third Putin from people that have been in much closer contact with him, thankfully than I have, is a Putin that has been increasingly detached from many advisors, very, very isolated during COVID. One of the main world leaders that stayed in contact with him throughout that period has been Emmanuel Macron and from people in his team. We know that over COVID period, Putin’s conversations have been very, very strange, circular, historical discussions about obscure elements of Russian history. And if you want a public example of that new version of Putin, I would advise you to have a look at the essay he wrote in July last year about the history of Ukraine, which is very, very strange, doesn’t match up with the version that I understand of Ukrainian history. Very finally, I just quickly say, Ukraine went on a very significant trajectory towards the West since its independence in 1991. In 2004, there was the Orange Revolution when the people were very keen for a pro-West, pro-European Union, President Yushchenko who was elected. And 2007 talks began around joining NATO and EU accession agreement, greater cooperation with the EU. In a disputed election in 2010, Yanukovych who lost in 2004 during the Orange Revolution took power on a stance of wanting Ukraine to be independent in the way that Putin wants Ukraine to be independent. Now, i.e., pro-Russia, he backed away from the EU Association Agreement, and that significantly led to the Maidan Revolution in 2014 with a hundred people killed protests on the streets in favour of a trajectory of pro-West in Ukraine. This led Putin to be increasingly worried about Ukraine’s trajectory of a stable and prowess country on his border, particularly in the context of growing concern within Russia about his government. 2011 to 2013, there were significant protests within Russia in favour of democracy. So he saw a country emerging on his border, heading towards NATO membership, heading towards closer cooperation with the EU, just as he was struggling at home. His response was to send unmarked troops that he recognised later on into Crimea to occupy in 2014. Over the course of earlier this year, he amassed significant forces on the Ukrainian border. I wrote a piece a few days before the invasion in one of the UK’s newspapers, saying I thought the worst possible outcome for Russia would be a ground invasion and that what he was hoping for was concessions from Kiev that they would give back or give him control of the Donbas region without war. As we’ve seen, Zelenskyy has been very, very resilient, stubborn, and very, very keen to defend Ukrainian rights and including the Donbas region. He didn’t make any concessions. Putin sent in ground forces. What we thought was a 24-hour lightning strike on Kiev to put in place a puppet regime, possibly Yanukovych, to create a satellite state in Ukraine. As we all know, very, very well now, a month and a half later. that failed for various reasons that we can go on to. And the very latest intelligence map from the UK is the one that’s up on the screen now with overnight suggestions that a new offensive has been launched in Eastern Ukraine. I don’t think it quite has been launched, but it may be about to be, and I suggest that’s part of a new strategy of trying to secure those regions on the east of the country as part of Russia. Yeah, that’s where I think we’ve got to. I’ve got some other slides on the institute’s work, but I’ll leave it at that for now if that’s okay, Carly.
So first of all, you can come back, ‘cause you’re someone who said you were going to give a 10-minute intro and you did it all in five. So thank you for that race through. I want to follow up on several parts, and we’ll take the rest of the time to really dig in on a few things. The first part is actually where you ended, which was there was speculation that this would be a 24-hour takeover or he’ll have it in three days. What do you and the institute think accounts for why he struggled so much to make any progress? And what can that help us learn for the weeks ahead?
Yeah, I think three strategic miscalculations. One was how resilient Ukraine would be. As I said, I think he’s been very detached from credible advisors over the last few years, and I think he really thought Ukraine would literally crumble within 24 hours. And if anything, many people would be out on the street to welcome him. That’s not at all what’s happened. So that’s an intelligence failure, first of all, in Russia. The second, I think, was an overcalculation in terms of how effective his arms forces are. I don’t want to bore you necessarily on why that’s the case, but for many years, at least 10 years, the Russian army has been on a trajectory of not tackling corruption, huge overspending on infrastructure in the military, poor training, bad equipment, the high tech equipment that many people discuss actually doesn’t translate to being effective in this type of warfare. So he overestimated the capability of his troops. And finally, I’d say the third, miscalculation was how resilient the West was going to be in support of Ukraine. And I think I would forgive him in thinking that since we didn’t say very much in advance to give him the sense that we would be this determined to defend Ukraine. But in those early days of the conflict, the sanctions regime we put in place has been unprecedented. We’ve sent very significant defensive military capability to Ukraine. So I think, yeah, I would say those three miscalculations in the first day or so have led him to that first initial incorrect strategy.
So let’s talk specifically about the Ukrainian army for a few minutes. What is the size and the scale of the army look like? Obviously, we know once the war started, they didn’t allow men, 18 to 60, to leave, being concerned they would need to conscribe them to join. What was the size of the army and how ready were they for this? And who had been helping them prepare?
Yeah, actually, it’s weird. As opaque as Russia is, we know a little bit more about the size of the Russian armed forces than we do about Ukraine. In terms of our support for Ukraine, there’s more we could have done, but actually in terms of giving defensive military capability, we’ve done quite a lot over the last eight years since the Crimean invasion. So they were relatively well-prepared. That’s been enhanced considerably with the amount of equipment they’ve got since the invasion, surface-to-air missiles. Anti-tank missiles have been very helpful. In terms of the size of the armed forces, I think we probably need to focus on Eastern Ukraine for the time being. The best estimates are that there are 22 Ukrainian brigades in Eastern Ukraine, which are somewhere between 3 and 5,000 each. That’s somewhat of a guess. There’s no good intelligence to say that’s the exact number. We have far more intelligence on Russia’s forces. There are 76 battle groups in Eastern Ukraine of around 1,000 each. And my shorthand for where we are in Eastern Ukraine in terms of manpower and equipment is that Ukraine has a manpower surplus in Eastern Ukraine, but a shortfall of equipment. Russia has a shortfall in manpower, but a material surplus. I think that’s where we are now in the East.
So let’s just talk a bit about the equipment and what the Ukrainian forces do have at their disposal versus what is being thrown at them. There’s been a lot of talk about no fly zones and how Ukrainians aren’t able to implement themselves, but also some notable military successes, be it the downing of the famous Russian ship this week or other surprise wins. So what weapons do they have at their disposal? And how do they stack up?
I’ll break it into two different parts in the answer. The first section in the offensives that have taken place so far around Kiev and non-Donbas areas of the country. I think what’s been really important for Ukraine is that they’ve denied Russia air supremacy, which they’ve done through a mixture of mobile surface-to-air missiles and handheld surface-to-air missiles. By denying the air supremacy, they’ve been able to make very, very good use of UAVs to try and track where Russian forces are. And that’s then linked to some of the very effective anti-tank missiles that we’ve been supplying them with. That’s meant without Russian air cover, Ukraine’s been able to deploy the UAVs, find out where the tank convoys are and other convoys, and then ambush them. That’s been the, I would say, shorthand for what’s happened so far. It’s going to be slightly different in Eastern Ukraine. The terrain is very different. It’s less conducive to that type of ambush warfare, it’s more open country. An expert I was talking to today said it would be more contact style warfare where the both sides are engaged in more skirmish and battles rather than ambushes because of the nature of the terrain. Russia’s likely to have more air supremacy in Eastern Ukraine, the surface-to-air missile capability that Ukraine has been integrated over time. So we probably see more Russian air activity in Eastern Ukraine. That may not translate as being air supremacists for a mixture of very technical reasons around what type of planes Russia have. They don’t have very many tactical guided missiles. They’re ones that they have to guide themselves, which means they have to fly very low, which means they’re vulnerable to what surface-to-air missiles Ukraine does have. So the advantage that existed for Ukraine early on in the crisis without Russian air supremacy is going to look slightly different in the east of the country. Having said that, those battle, the brigade 22, Ukrainian brigades that Russia’s now facing are the best equipped and best trained part of the Ukrainian military. So that advantage that Ukraine may have lost in the air, they may have in quality of troops and manpower on the ground.
So when you say the best trained, I want to dig in a little deeper, and as a few Brits on this call, maybe we could be a bit biassed as to who’s trained them, but where they being trained? Over the last few years, are other countries sending over? Were people coming? How was the training happening?
Yeah, so importantly, when the West was considering an escalation of the conflict in recent years, it was predicated on a breakdown in the Minsk negotiations, and there would be some heating up of the conflict around the contact line, which is within the Donbas region, where the conflict became cold midway through the Donbas region. That’s where we’ve been focusing energy. The West, NATO, particularly UK armed forces, has been focusing energy on training the Ukrainian armed forces. What they’ve been able to do elsewhere in the country has been redeploying troops and making use of material that we’ve sent and conscripts. What we’ve prepared for better was for there to be some escalation on the contact line in the Donbas region. So from 2014 to now, our preparations of training supply have been focused on that area of Ukraine and those brigades that are based there. So the escalation we estimated or predicted that would happen, which would be Russia crossing the contact line, that’s what we prepared for, that’s what’s now happening with the current offensive.
So you’ve just touched on the Donbas region. And for our audience members who are, I think, frantically, asking to put the map back up, we will share Daniel’s slides with his permission after this so you can enjoy both the map and the many Putins on the little Russian dolls, so don’t worry about that.
I can put the map back up if you want me to.
Sure, put it back up, it’ll help people, but we’ll also share it round. So let’s talk about the Donbas region since you’ve put the map back up. That’s obviously been, as you say, an area where you expected escalation. You hear differing opinions on how welcoming or keen the Donbas region was for the arrival of the Russians. Can you explain to our audience a little bit more about that and why they may have been pleased by the Russian arrival?
Yeah, it’s interestingly the region with the highest number of Russian speakers within Ukraine is in that Donbas region, which is coloured red on the map. It includes what are called the autonomous regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The theory was in Russia’s intelligence at these regions, because of the high number of Russian speakers, there would be particularly welcoming to Russian forces. In fact, I think we found the fiercest resistance weirdly to Russian troops has fallen within that region in Kharkiv, where there’s been ongoing conflicts since the beginning of the invasion in Mariupol where there’s still 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers still fighting. So I think the assumption that this was going to be pro-Russian area is wrong or has been proven wrong. Russian-speaking hasn’t translated as being pro-Russian. There’s long period of history in that part of Ukraine going back to the Cossacks region where they were notionally pro-Russia, but in the end didn’t want to be Russian-controlled. So polling suggests that the most significant concern people have in that region, the Donbas region, is for well-paid jobs and an ability to cope with living stand or rising living costs in that area rather than wanting to be too aligned with Russia. So yeah, that region was assumed to be very pro-Russia and in fact has proven so far to be a little bit more complex than that.
So supposedly, like everyone else in the world, those are the two things most other people are worried about and not necessarily the arrival of the Russians. So before we start to look at the kind of wider geopolitical issues, let’s focus on Russia for a second. There’s been a lot of talks about Putin’s reaction to COVID, his isolation. There’s been a lot of these photos and memes of him, very long tables, not in much proximity to people. In terms of the intelligence you are picking up, how much of this is he’s not getting accurate information about what’s on the ground and how much he’s prepared to go for this fight as long as it may take?
I’d say 80% that he hasn’t had the right information and 20% he’s willing to just brave. Anyway, I was making some notes earlier, that weird essay that he wrote in July last year. He said he was increasingly of opinion that Ukraine could function very successfully without the Donbas region. So in a way, I think we are ending up with a form of the conflict, which is what I would’ve predicted last year anyway, the nature of the conflict originally with invasions over much of the rest of the country was unexpected. And I think that derives from the 80% miscalculation, which is a mixture of how poor the armed forces were. I think that’s a difficult thing to pick up on as an isolated leader when the head of the military want to impress you. And actually, there’s been deep seated corruption since at least 2010 when they got rid of the last defence minister who was trying to tackle it. Very poor equipment has been acquired. We saw that very early on in the invasion with so many trucks having flat tyres 'cause they hadn’t been used in years, that meals, the ration packs being out of date. So I think that part of it, the strength of his own armed forces was a significant miscalculation. And then the intelligence, like we said, that he would be welcomed not just in the Donbas region, which hasn’t happened anyway, but in the rest of the country, that they would be seen as liberators, and it would be easy within 24 hours, that was the estimate, 24 hours to put a puppet regime in place in Kiev. I think that’s all down to an intelligent failure and people being frightened to tell him what’s actually happening. And as an advisor, I can say one of the hardest things to do as an advisor is to give honest advice, as weird as that sounds. And when you’re dealing with someone that detached from reality, that powerful, with an increasingly powerful security state within Russia over the last few years, I think that’s all led to that very significant miscalculation. But you are right to say that he wants to stubborn it out, anyway.
I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I’m going to ask the question. A lot has been made of Putin’s need for a legacy of his kind of desire to reclaim the great Soviet Union of the past and of perhaps his ailing health or a reason for this kind of increasingly surprising push. In terms of those theories, how much stock do you put in them?
They may all be true. I don’t put very much stock in them, though. I think the first few slides that I spoke to, there’s been quite a long route to this. If anyone wants to lay to go back and read the 2007 Munich Security Council speech that he gave, read his essay from last year, some of the comments he made in early 2010 onwards about Ukraine. This has been something building for quite a long time, as we’ve said, based on some miscalculations around views within Ukraine. Some of it I would say is to do with his legacy. The version of the second Putin that I mentioned was increasingly worried about the idea of a greater Russia, that the worst thing that happened in Russian history was the collapse of the USSR, that it was a great power that wasn’t given the recognition it needed on the world stage. I don’t personally don’t think that equates into wanting to control all of these areas, the Baltics, Ukraine. I think in a way, it’s much more for Russia about control. As I said in that article, that’s proven very precedent, precedent I wrote before the invasion, Russia literally doesn’t have the economic or military capability to anywhere near occupy, even Ukraine, that alone other states in the region. So for me, it’s much more about puppet states or control like Belarus than it is invasion elsewhere.
So I’m trying to pack them in. But you’ve just touched on another very interesting point, which is the economic power of Russia and how much it may or may not have the ability to actually run Ukraine. So, obviously, the United Coalition around the world very quickly put sanctions in place and has punished Russia economically. How much of a bite is that having? And is that a way of the Russian people really starting to absorb what’s going on in Ukraine?
Yeah, we’ve written a few papers about this at the institute on sanctions on how we can reduce Europe’s energy dependency on Russia, which is a significant part of Russia’s economy. Oil and gas makeup 60% of their exports. And also on how we communicate with the Russian people because what you and I are discussing now is not the version that they’re going to be hearing within Russia. But having said that, no one can deny the costs and things that they’re experiencing on the street. The Central Bank of Russia’s projection for this year is now a 10% contraction in GDP, which is very, very significant. Any polling in Russia comes with very many caveats. So it’s likely to be under rather than over representative. 25% of Russians say they’ve already felt the consequences of European and Western sanctions on the country. We’re only beginning to start taking the type of action on reducing Europe’s energy dependency on Russia that I would like to see. If we did take that action, that would magnify the impact of sanctions significantly. Personally, there’s other experts that would disagree, but personally I think the scope and scale of the protests within Russia have surprised me. The last time I checked, it was over 2,000 towns and cities across the country with many, many hundreds of people having been arrested so far. That’s more significant than we might appreciate in the context of how iron grip the security state has within Russia over the last few years. So I think it is having impact, it could have more impact if we did more on energy dependency, which I’d like us to, but I don’t think anyone can deny 10% contraction in GDP over the year and 25% are Russians already feeling the cost is going to bite. And if I can say one last thing about how Russians are perceiving the war, Ukraine thinks 20,000 Russian soldiers have already been killed. That’s probably an overestimate. But just out of context, in the Russian 10-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, Russia lost 14,000 soldiers. I think they’ve definitely lost more soldiers than that already in five, six weeks in Ukraine. The amount of people in Russia experiencing either directly or indirectly the loss of a friend, a relative without concrete gains on the ground and with economic impacts on the economy, I think, is going to build up. And again, that’s one of the things I said in my extremely prescient article that this would be a disaster for Putin in the medium term because there was no way out for him.
Careful. I don’t like to ask my guest to have a crystal ball, but if you keep claiming a prescient article, I may predict the date of the end of the war next. So one of the things that I’ve been surprised at in the last 48 hours or so is the lack of clarity kind of creeping out about the Russian warship that sank in the Black Sea, how many were really killed. Today, for the first time I saw, a kind of cry for help from a father who had lost, a chef, basically saying like my son was never supposed to be anywhere near the front lines, kind of thing. How much do you think as these losses increase and as more of this comes out there will be increased pressure from the Russian population, or are things too tightly controlled?
There will be more pressure. It’s very tightly controlled. We wrote a paper on how we penetrate Putin’s digital iron curtain because he’s established quite a significant control, as you probably all know, on the media banning Western outlets. State TV is now the most significant outlet where people consume the most news. So they’re getting a very, very curated version of what’s happening. But like I said, the two things, one, the experience people have on the streets, Western chains leaving the country, people in Moscow no longer being able to use, Apple Pay and Android Pay which I think 60% of the population there were using 10% contraction in GDP, cost of living crisis increasing with dramatic inflation, plus let’s say Ukraine is somewhere near right with casualties, if I had to guess, I’d say somewhere near 17,000 casualties, you multiply that by friends, family, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people that have some type of direct contact with someone that’s died. I think this starts to build up significantly over the year, particularly when you put it into the context as I’ve tried to do, maybe not at totally fairly, but my analogy with the Soviet Afghan war, which was 10 years, 14,000 soldiers, and it was incredibly unpopular and they had to withdraw. We’ve seen more casualties than that in five weeks plus much, much more significant economic impact on Russia. So I really think this will bite. There’s other things we can do to make it bite even more with further action on energy and also more coordinated action on making sure Russians can get a more balanced version of the news than they can at the moment. And there are ways to do that. Even despite all of that, I think Putin’s going to be under rising domestic pressure over this year.
So before we start to zoom out a little bit, there’s obviously been a lot of concern around Russians’ previous usage of chemical weapons and looking at places where they’ve operated in the past and what seems to be indiscriminate targeting of civilian buildings regardless of what signage or anything else there may be up there. Do you see anything that the Ukrainians could be doing in terms of preparing for chemical weapons, helping the world understand the challenges? And what’s your assessment on this, I guess, kind of scorched earth policy that the Russians seem to be following?
Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’ll give a slightly discursive answer to this one. I think one of the poorest elements of the Western response to the whole crisis has been that we underpromised in advance of something happened and overdelivered afterwards. We said very little sanctions before Russia invaded and then massively overdelivered afterwards. Personally, I find some of the world leaders comments on what we are going to do if there’s an escalation in the use of chemical and biological weapons or civilian bombings in a way make it easier for Putin to do that if he wanted to because we rule so much out in advance rather than leaving everything on the table. Personally, I would like much more significant action to be on the table if there was proven use of chemical and biological weapons. Personally, I suspect they aren’t going to do that. There’s history with what happened in Syria to suggest that they might. For the time being, I think there’s a much higher risk of one hand, very significant escalation in Donbas region of conventional warfare and then second, civilian bombing and shelling in other parts of the country to try and demoralise the government and the population. So for the time being, I don’t think they have a particular advantage. Even if they wanted to breach international norms and use them, I don’t think there’s a particular benefit to doing so at the moment anyway.
So now, let’s talk about this kind of unity of world leaders. and the general all pulling in the same directions. There’s obviously been a few that have broken ranks or required some coaxing, but most have been surprised how well the coalition has held together. What do you think accounts for that? What are the pain points that might pull it apart?
Yeah, I think, even I’ve been surprised the unity of the Western response, which I wouldn’t have guessed in the days leading up to the conflict when I wrote my wonderful article, I didn’t see evidence West was going to respond in such a coordinated way. If anything, I would say, we’ve been so badly coordinated over the last 10 years that it led Russia to think that it could undertake this type of action without a severe response. We let Syrian got the Syrian regime breach red lines in Syria, the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Different moments of Western weakness, I think, would lead Russia to think it could undertake something like this without severe consequences and unified response. I think it’s come at a poor time for Russia. We’ve got a more favourable president in the White House, a European Union that’s lost Britain, faced an accidental crisis and has found a new reason to unite around security and values, and has been able to do so in that context of a more favourable president in the White House. So unfortunately, for Putin, or fortunately for us, the timing has been such that Europe has found a new reason to rally around a shared cause. Biden is more engaged in in the world than his predecessor. And NATO, for all the difficulties that it’s faced in recent years, particularly during the Trump administration, some fair criticisms has found a reason to unite as well around a shared objective. So, so far, that’s been extremely welcome. There’s more, I think, particularly the UK and US governments could be doing, particularly on energy. I don’t think I could overemphasise how important that would be taking coordinated action on reducing Europe’s energy dependency on Russia. But so far, I think that’s been very well-coordinated pressure points. I think the obvious one or two obvious ones, I should say, one will be around equipment supply. The Eastern offensive, I think, will look, as I said, somewhat different to what’s happened around Kiev in other parts of the countries. It’s more open terrain, it’s going to be more army to army contact than we’ve seen before. There’s going to be more pressure to supply, tanks, armoured vehicles than we’ve faced before. I know some countries are willing to do that. Others are more concerned that you’re literally sending NATO kit to Ukraine to then blow up Russian tanks and soldiers. That’s an escalation. But the more significant choke point I would say is around what is the only solution to this crisis and that’s a negotiated settlement. I don’t know whether the international community is going to be capable of unity on that point. And that’s probably one of the papers we’re going to be publishing in the next week or two, is how we achieve that unity.
And in terms of the pain points, there’s a lot of talk about Europe’s reliance on Russian energy, but also the food insecurity issues in terms of what Ukraine supplies and those needs. How quickly do you think Europe can separate from that reliance? And how are they going to navigate the food challenges?
We could separate more quickly than I think a lot of people anticipate. We wrote a report on called “Cutting the Cord”. Our conclusions on how we would reduce that dependency mirrored very closely the International Energy Association’s conclusions that came out at similar time. We think we could reduce Europe’s dependency by 30% within a year without a huge impact on European citizens, which is a lot more significantly still. If I can be honest, it’s the signal that we’re planning to do it in the context of every difficulty Putin’s facing, the idea that the European Union, Britain, the US and partners would come out with a very, very clear compact to end energy dependency, I think, would be very, very significant concern for him. 60% of Russia’s exports are oil and gas. There’s different things in Europe that we can do. We can accelerate renewables, we can delay turning off coal and gas plants. We can make longer use of nuclear and bring other nuclear plants online sooner. There’s things that we can do without huge impact on European consumers that would make a significant difference within a year. And I think that’s probably of all the areas, if we could say, where could the West be doing more, that is the one where I think we could be doing more. I hate to use so definitive, but it really would be a game changer, I think, if we came out with a roadmap that we were going to stick to to reduce dependency by something like 30% within a year.
So I now want to step back a little from Russia and Ukraine direct and look at some of the wider effects. So in the last few weeks, a lot has been talked about in regards to Sweden and Finland, and they’re now interested in engaging with NATO. I used to spend a lot of time in Finland, and it’s certainly a change over recent years. And there is an expectation that, that it’ll happen according to the finished prime minister, a decision in the next few weeks. How do you assess that? Does this actually mean all of this is backfired on Putin, he’s now really got NATO on his doorstep, or actually is that kind of a distraction?
That’s very feasible. I think that they would join, it seems quite concrete, the opinion in the country. The vote looks like it’s quite secure. It’d be difficult for NATO to say no. That’s definitely a backfire for Putin on his strategy. It was one of the things I foresaw in the article that he would end up uniting more people against him than he anticipated in advance. One thing I would say, which is probably more controversial is I don’t see… To have one precursor is, like I said earlier, I don’t anticipate. Well, I literally don’t see that Russia could take wider military action than this. So personally, as Finland or Sweden, I wouldn’t be concerned. I know that’s easy for me to say not living there, but in those countries, the idea that Russia’s lost 20,000 troops potentially just to control that little bit in red of Ukraine that’s up on the screen now, the idea that they would be able to expand beyond that and go into Scandinavia or the Baltic states, I think, is at the moment, quite far-fetched. The more radical point, I think, if we zoom out and try and transcend NATO membership a little bit, for me, an ambition would be, that if we are negotiating with Russia and trying to communicate with the Russian people, one of the messages should be that if the Russian state post-Putin changes in the right direction, I would say there should be a home for Russia within an organisation like NATO. In which case, you nullify some of the reasons, Russia’s so concerned anyway, and it would nullify some of the reasons why someone like Finland or Sweden would need to join. So longer term, I think we need to give very, very careful thought to how we communicate with the Russian people, that we aren’t a natural ally of Russia. We haven’t always been a national natural ally. And there are roots longer term to try to transcend some of these old style cold war security blocks, which are very, very helpful now. They’re saving lives now, but they are in a way playing into the narrative that Putin wants to share domestically.
Well, I will tell you, as someone who went to Moldova and Romania about two and a half weeks ago and stall on the border, it is quite easy in the UK to say we’re not that worried. But if I was standing on the Moldovan border right now with no army and a heavy reliance on Russia for energy and a lot of other things, I would feel fairly nervous.
Yes, Moldova’s a very interesting case. They’re the one, I think, is at most risk if we don’t stand by them and some of the guarantees around EU process, NATO membership, that could be very difficult, but yeah.
So having stood on that border, and to be honest, as a Jewish person standing in that part of the world on the border watching, this huge influx of refugees who really have nothing, but what they could carry in their hands after a very long walk, it was an incredibly difficult place to be in stand. Now, in terms of the unity of the West to pushing back on Russia, but if I may, the kind of quickly forgotten strap line of never again, what is it that you think really would shift the West to a massive response? And looking at the UK for a second and their policies on refugees. And today, I don’t know if you heard the LBC interview about the UK government only approving a member of a family, often a child, under the assumption that the parents wouldn’t leave them and come is very distressing. So let’s talk about the humanitarian cost for a minute. What is it that has to happen to help the West really understand the tragedies happening on the border?
Yeah, I think in the humanitarian response in refugees, it’s upon one of the areas that there hasn’t been enough coordination between European Union and some of its partners. As easy as it might be to think that actually Poland and other countries are close and so they need to bear a greater cost in terms of supporting refugees. The world doesn’t work that way. What happens in Ukraine plays out on streets across the world. It doesn’t make any sense that we overburden a country like Poland and its economy when we have significant trade links with them. It makes a lot more sense to be more generous and spread the refugee load across far more countries in Europe and elsewhere. The UK response has been very, very disappointing. I suppose it’s in keeping with this government’s approach to immigration that we are disappointed by it, but even by their standards, some of the things that have happened so far, some of the cases that you’ve discussed, some of the things that were on LBC earlier, some of the articles recently around how difficult it’s been to access schemes have been really disappointing. And I did an interview with this for US media out there about a week or two ago. And I think the really critical thing that I learned from monitoring the withdrawal from Afghanistan is as easy as it is again to sit here in Peckham in South London, trying to judge the refugee process. What I do know from people that were on the ground in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, it’s so chaotic. The idea that you can come up with all of these complex schemes for people to navigate on the ground is crazy. It needs very, very clear coordination on the ground to help people access the right schemes, and then on that basis, share people around countries much more fairly. We got that wrong, completely wrong in Afghanistan and haven’t learned from that correctly with some of the 5 million people that have had to flee Ukraine. I hope that is corrected. The more that that happens, the more the conflict escalates in the east of the country, that is going to have to be taken more seriously. The people will begin to flee from there into the west of the country and then into neighbouring countries. So I hope that is given more serious thought. As a slight side note, the German government, obviously, many of you will know, was very, very generous with Syrian refugees. There was a very considerable concern within Germany that would come, the detriment of the German economy. That’s now in recent analysis proven to be completely wrong. Many, many Syrian refugees have now been through the university system. A vast majority of those, Syrian refugees at school feel a strong identification with their school and with the country, and they’re contributing later on through skilled jobs. So there’s a benefit not just a humanitarian need, but a benefit to being open to these people when they need to leave. In terms of what would make the West take all of this more seriously, I don’t think there’s been a radical acceptance enough that this can only be solved through a negotiated settlement. Russia can’t control as much of the country as it wants to. Ukraine can’t remove Russia from all of the bits of the country it wants to, so this will come down to a negotiated settlement. Of all the things we know about Putin, of the few things we know about, and one is that he will only respect power. And I think to get a conclusion through a negotiated settlement, that anybody that cares at all about Ukraine would be happy with will only be possible if Russia is significantly on the back foot. That will require further action on energy, which it sounds today from some voices in Europe may be coming, but some more targeted support on energy and more advanced support in terms of maybe offensive military equipment for the troops in Eastern Ukraine. I think those are the two urgent things most needed, and I think they may be coming.
So if I can, I want to try and sneak in kind of three last questions. So we did just touch on what the UK government hasn’t been doing well, but I, for one, as someone who’s born and raised in the UK, spent a lot of time there, have been surprised by the verocity of the sanctions, the engagement against law firms who have been working for a long time with Russian oligarchs and whether it was for more insidious reasons or not, Boris Johnson wandering around Kiev. So in terms of the assessment on that, how do you navigate that piece?
Refugee side, very disappointing, beyond disappointing. I’ll be judicious with my language and leave it at that. The other areas of the response have been, yeah, very encouraging. There were a few days early on with the sanctions response where collectively within the institute and Tony, we were quite concerned that it was amounted to very, very little. That was corrected quite quickly. And genuinely, we have an unprecedented sanctions regime against Russia in place. I think the UK can be proud is probably the wrong word, be encouraged that we were part of that alliance. Weapon supply, I think, we’ve been more forthright in our own capacity as a country to supply material Stinger missiles and other capability that we’ve supplied has been very encouraging. Personally, I know the Defence Minister Ben Wallace, I think he’s excellent, one of the very few very, very good ministers. And I think he’s done a very good job in terms of supply. There’s more we could probably do to encourage others to supply equipment. And I only say that as a very boring point because some of the things that we are supplying are very, very hard to use. A lot of the Ukrainian military is trained on 1980s Soviet’s mobile surface-to-air missile and platforms that are available through countries like Austrian, Czech Republic. We need to encourage them to send them more than we need to be doing things ourself. But broadly, if you take refugees out of it, which is difficult thing to do in other areas, the response has been significant and encouraging. And yeah, I’d be very fair on the government to say that.
So, as is always the case when we talk about big geopolitical issues, there’s three countries you can never ignore on any issue. And often Russia is one and Iran and China are the other two. Especially given the Iranian negotiations going on and of course China’s need for energy and its engagement with Russia around the UN table and everything else, how do you fit them into the picture?
Maybe I’ll start gloomy and end a little bit more optimistic, in case these are the last questions. Gloomy, I’m very, very concerned about Iran. I think one of the lessons for malign actors around the world from the West’s response to Russia’s invasion is that nuclear deterrence is no longer deterrence. Nuclear capability is a carte blanche to do what you want. And if I were a regime like Iran, it would give me even more ambition to try to get hold of such capability ‘cause what’s happened in Ukraine would say to me that I can cross many, many red lines and the west isn’t going to do anything 'cause it’ll be worried that I’ll use them because I can present myself as being crazy enough to use them. So I am concerned about Iran. I think any new version of the JCPOA would be quite a significant mistake if it doesn’t take into account significant parts of Iran’s regional activity within the Middle East. I think it’s the biggest obstacle to progress and peace in the Middle East. So that’s a gloomy picture on Iran, and I don’t think it’s being taken anywhere near seriously enough, including by European governments, UK government to some extent, but also the US administration. Iran is a very malign actor, and I think the lessons they can be concluding from what’s happened in Ukraine are quite gloomy. China, I’m a little bit more optimistic. There’s a wonderful member of my team who’s sitting in on the call, Ruby, who’s a China expert, fluent China speaker, spent time working there. Our analysis of the Russia-China alliance or friendship is that it’s been one of convenience, not ideology that they’ve been forced together for a mixture of reasons of being shunned by the West, having common interests in different parts of the world, and having trade links with each other that they’ve been able to open where they haven’t with other countries that have shunned them. But it’s not one of deep ideology. And they sync on for the Beijing regime is that their economy needs to be growing by a certain amount every year. And I would say, I’m not always glowing about the Biden administration, but Biden, Jake Sullivan, I think, have engaged very effectively with China, warning them about red lines in equipping Russia. And I think out of fear that they would fall victim to sanctions, China’s pulled back. If we act skillfully enough, and what’s the right word, with multi-dimensional approach to China, I think we could lure them away from this alliance of convenience with Russia. I’m more optimistic that the Ukraine crisis, with the right response, could end that access of power in the world. But Iran, more worried.
So, I’m going to try and sneak in two more.
So going back to conspiracy theories and claims and challenges, obviously, pre this, over the last few years, Zelenskyy has been in a difficult position. He’s been viewed around corruption and there’s been lots of questions there to answer. But also there is a lot of reporting going on about the Azov’s Battalion and their far right links, this claim by Putin that he is deifying the country. So in the kind of two to three-minute soundbite, can you reflect a little on those two areas?
Yeah, very interesting. If we’d been speaking a few months ago, we would say that the Zelenskyy presidency had been failure, maybe a little bit harsh, but he hadn’t kept any of the promises that I was rereading this morning from the 2019 election around a lasting piece with Russia, tackling corruption, improved living standards in Ukraine. I don’t think they were as visible as they could have been in recent years, but this has been a new lease of life for Zelenskyy in terms of his reputation within the country and outside the Ukraine. And let’s hope that if the right negotiated settlement is reached, he can play the right role in rebuilding the country. One of the things that, I think, is very possible is some type of new Marshall plan to rebuild Ukraine. Frozen Russian assets can be used to do that. It could be a very, very big period of growth for Ukraine rebuilding if the right response is met. As of battalion, interestingly, they’re one of the last key remnants of the Ukrainian forces in Mariupol. So I think with the 9th of May victory parade coming up for Russia, one of the things, I think, Putin would love to be able to say is they’ve taken complete control of Mariupol and liberated it from the Azov Battalion. I think in recent elections in Ukraine, less than 3%, I think, of the vote went to far right parties. So it’s insignificant. When you compare that with Putin actively deploying Wagner Group conscripts, corporate conscripts in Ukraine, they’re called the Wagner Group for a reason because the head of the Wagner Group. His hero is Wagner, and they actively use Nazi symbols and symbols on their uniforms and as troops. So the idea that this is anything to do with a denazification campaign is as about as far-fetched and insulting as it’s possible to be for the conflict. And I note as well that in Russia’s negotiating position, which initially included five points, one of which was a statement on denazification that’s been dropped in recent rounds of negotiation. I suspect it’s unlikely, but I’d hold out a hope that’s because of the realisation of how stupid a statement that was to begin with.
So I’m interviewing you from Israel, so I’m going to end with a Shimon Peres quote that there is always one for, and he always used to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the tunnel we don’t see. And since you’ve commented on your crystal ball like prescient a few days beforehand, I’m going to really get you to take a position in the last question. So in terms of the months ahead no matter how long this may take, where do you see this negotiated settlement that, as you say, is the really the only way through this shaking out?
Yeah. And hopefully you all take my word for it, that it was a very pressing article. Don’t go back and look at it. Just take my word.
Don’t you worry.
Personally, I can be proven completely wrong by this, in which case I’ll never come back and talk to any of you. But personally, for me, the negotiated settlement, I think we could have sat down together and written within a day of the start of the crisis. It will involve something to do with long-term, giving up of Crimea, and some type of recognition of the Donbas region. I think Ukraine’s suggesting like a 15-year period of negotiation, that’s probably not going to happen. I think somewhere like that red area on the map will go to Russian control. And then the Ukraine state itself will, I think, adopt some type of guaranteed neutrality where the UN, Russia, other countries, Turkey, China are signatories to a document that say that the rest of the country is a protected area. I know there’s been some concern around what type of military that Russia with the Ukraine would be left with Peskov, Putin’s spokesperson, I think, has almost completely dropped that and has just said they can’t have long range military missiles. So I would predict if we were coming back in a month or two months, Russia would’ve secured either on the front or back foot control of something like this area of the map and Crimea and that Kiev had reached some type of position on guaranteed neutrality.
So we may have to have you back on in a month in order for me to see if your predictions were accurate. But we really did pack an awful lot in there. I think we could have gone for a second hour, but it’s late in London. I don’t want to take up your entire evening, but huge thank you. And also, huge thank you to the team at TBI. I have to say, your morning Ukraine briefings give me a very good assessment. And Lauren will share with everybody the slide deck, but also all of the crystal ball like articles that Dan has written, and how you can sign up to the daily Ukraine briefing of TBI. And they also have a quarterly Middle East update coming up in early June, so all of those details. And we are very grateful and appreciative of our partnership with TBI. I’ve yet to find a geopolitical area that I can’t interrogate one of your team on. So thank you for being such a great resource, and we look forward to having you back.
Thank you. Again, if anyone else has got any questions, please feel free to give them my email. I’m happy to follow up and chat with anyone. So yeah, thank you very much, Carly. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you all very much and good night, and we’ll see you back on Lockdown tomorrow.
[Dan] Bye.