- 2 years ago
A top Russian analyst told DW that 2023 has been a "surprisingly good year" for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his war on Ukraine. The level of Western support for Ukraine will determine 2024, Alexander Gabuev told Conflict Zone's Tim Sebastian.
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00:00 The slow, cruel conflict in Ukraine will soon head into its third year, with the pressure
00:05 on Kiev to advance on the battlefield and re-energize support in the West.
00:11 My guest from Berlin is Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
00:17 The bad news is that unfortunately the support for Ukraine in the Western public is going
00:25 down.
00:26 Now Russia's economy has stabilized and Mr. Putin, indicted on war crimes charges, is
00:31 nonetheless finding plenty of friends to talk to and visit.
00:35 So will his newfound confidence tempt him into a bigger war with Ukraine and even a
00:41 fight with NATO?
00:45 Alexander Gabuev, welcome to Conflict Zone.
00:47 Thank you so much for having me.
00:50 A week ago, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned the alliance to expect bad news from
00:56 the war in Ukraine.
00:58 He didn't say what.
01:00 You've been taking a long, hard look at this war.
01:03 Is Ukraine on the way to losing?
01:06 I don't think that Ukraine is on the way to losing now, but next year will definitely
01:10 be crucial.
01:12 And if Ukraine is not in a good position next year, that might shape the trajectory of the
01:17 conflict towards loss of war by Ukraine.
01:21 So what we're seeing at the moment is the ebb and flow that you often see with major
01:26 conflicts.
01:27 That's true.
01:29 And I think that the comparison basis for this conflict could be World War I or the
01:33 lengthy Iraq-Iran war.
01:36 We're now seeing that Ukraine has lost the initiative.
01:39 It's pushing on some direction without major gains.
01:43 Its summer counteroffensive has not yielded in major combat victories.
01:48 And then the Russians are now on advance with terrible losses on their side of both material
01:54 and equipment, but Russians are advancing.
01:57 And what's more, Russians have a lot of money pumped into their military industrial complex
02:04 and into recruiting new soldiers.
02:06 So now the material advantage is gradually on the Russian side and without massive support
02:13 for Ukraine, we might be seeing this conflict on a trajectory for Russia's victory, even
02:20 if Putin doesn't achieve his maximalistic objectives in this conflict.
02:24 Let's talk about the chances of massive support for Ukraine, because last month, NATO foreign
02:29 ministers tried to put the best face on the situation.
02:33 They promised "unwavering support", as they put it, as the Ukrainians bravely defend their
02:39 country.
02:41 The figures tell a different story, don't they?
02:43 Not quite adding up to "unwavering support".
02:47 An EU plan to provide Kiev with 50 billion euros in budget support, that's stuck in committee.
02:53 A 60 billion dollar fund promised by the White House is stuck in Congress.
03:00 This is bad news, isn't it?
03:03 The bad news is that, unfortunately, the support for Ukraine in the Western public is going
03:11 down.
03:12 And then it also became a source for politics-making for domestic purposes in the US, and also
03:21 for intra-European Union conflict between Hungarian leadership and the rest of the Union
03:28 inside the EU.
03:30 We are talking at the moment when President Zelensky is scheduled to arrive in Washington
03:35 DC.
03:36 He's most likely to speak to the leadership of the Senate and the Congress.
03:41 He is about to see President Biden.
03:43 So I think that the amount of support of the US and the timing, whether the Ukrainians
03:49 get the money they need to defend themselves for next year, is up in the air.
03:54 The fact that it's not a guaranteed and very well-scheduled train of support is bad news,
04:02 but I think that it's too early to be desperate.
04:05 But I think that the very warning sign is that it's most likely will be the last massive
04:10 package for the next year, and the question is how wisely the Ukrainians are to defend
04:17 it.
04:18 Later this week, EU leaders meet in Brussels with the possibility of making a historic
04:24 decision to open accession talks with Ukraine.
04:27 Hungary has threatened to block the move.
04:29 You mentioned Hungary a moment ago.
04:32 Either way, decisions there at this meeting could decide the outcome of this war, couldn't
04:39 they?
04:40 Arms supplies to Ukraine have already been drastically affected, haven't they?
04:44 I think that it's not deciding the outcomes of this war, but I think that if we don't
04:50 have a positive decision, massive aid package of support for Ukraine, then the trajectory
04:57 of the conflict is going into a negative direction for Kiev.
05:01 And despite the bravery of Ukrainian defendants and the resilience of Ukraine as a society
05:09 without massive influx of Western material support, the situation will be pretty dire.
05:15 The Kiel Institute for the World Economy said on December 7th, newly committed aid to Ukraine
05:21 reached a new low between August and October this year, an almost 90% drop compared to
05:27 the same period last year.
05:29 The Kremlin must be jumping for joy, isn't it?
05:32 The Kremlin is, and we've seen President Putin gloating around that in his meeting with Russian
05:40 senior military staff.
05:41 He was awarding Heroes of Russia awards a couple of days ago, and he said that Ukraine
05:48 doesn't have its own economy, doesn't have its own defense base, and this is why the
05:53 trajectory of the conflict war is in Russia's favor.
05:58 He might be wrong long-term, but he's unfortunately right right now, and it's everything in the
06:05 hands of Western political leadership to prove Mr. Putin wrong.
06:09 The White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said last week that any shortfall
06:14 in funding would quickly compromise Ukraine's air defense capabilities.
06:20 In your view, how long does Ukraine have to get the weapons it's calling for before its
06:26 troops not only fail to advance but actually begin to retreat?
06:32 There is a discussion inside Ukrainian senior military leadership and the political leadership,
06:37 as well as among friends of Ukraine in the West, what's the best strategy Ukraine should
06:46 follow right now, because Russia is heavily dug in, material advantage is on the Russian
06:52 side.
06:54 Whether it makes sense for Ukraine to try to break through the Russian lines, given
06:58 how exhausted its troops are, or the better approach for now is not to chase counter-offensives
07:05 next year, but dig in, fortify defenses, be able to rotate the troops, do another round
07:13 of mobilization, train more troops, and then come more prepared probably in 2025.
07:20 I think that's a heavily debated issue right now, and depending on the decisions that the
07:26 key of military leadership and political leadership will take, we'll see how they will go about
07:31 this.
07:32 What's happened to all those extravagant promises that Ukraine received over the last
07:39 20 months, which were fulsome and in many ways unique?
07:43 Look at the way the EU morphed almost overnight into an organization that supplies military
07:49 hardware.
07:51 Look at the change of heart in Germany, the much-publicized Zeitung vendor, turning point
07:56 in history that Chancellor Schultz spoke of.
07:59 Was there, in your view, always a timeline attached to the West's largesse?
08:05 Moscow has always believed that, hasn't it?
08:09 Moscow indeed bans on the fact that Western support for Ukraine will evaporate at some
08:15 point, that Moscow has much more at stake given Mr. Putin's obsession over this war
08:21 and given how seemingly united the society is behind this war.
08:26 I think that based on the work done by my colleague, Carnegie Endowment, Andrei Kolesnikov
08:32 and our partner sociologist, Denis Volkov, we see that around 20% are diehard supporters
08:38 for this war on the Russian side, and about 50% are very passive and will go to whatever
08:45 direction there is.
08:46 So on the Russian side, you have economic growth, you have increased military production,
08:52 and you have focus because this war is the organizing principle of Russia's foreign policy
08:57 and domestic politics right now.
08:58 The Russian hope is that the West at some point will pack and leave.
09:03 And again, it's totally up to the Western leadership and to societies to help Ukraine
09:10 to stand in this battle because I think that we have some communication gaps because Western
09:15 leaders have explained to their societies why it's so crucial to support Ukraine.
09:21 And I think that more questions are aroused.
09:23 So there is a need for a new round of explanation why this conflict is so existential for Western
09:30 interests.
09:31 The EU Council President Charles Michel was asked on this program about Europe's commitment
09:36 to Ukraine.
09:37 He said the EU would stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes to secure victory.
09:43 Do you think such promises were made in good faith?
09:47 They are, but at the same time, we don't have a very clear definition of what victory is.
09:53 That's also the achievo.
09:56 We know what a loss is, don't we?
09:58 We certainly know what a loss is.
10:00 We definitely know what the loss is.
10:02 And the loss is when Ukraine doesn't achieve any of its objectives.
10:06 And the cost of this war is borne by both Russia and Ukraine, but costs on the Ukrainian
10:11 side will be much bigger.
10:13 I think that right now, part of the discussion that we are having is that how realistic are
10:19 the definitions for victory put out by President Zelensky, which is 1991 borders, including
10:25 Crimea, reparations, so Russia should pay for the damage, and accountability for war
10:33 criminals, including both senior Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin.
10:38 How achievable is that if we are dealing with a nuclear power is questionable.
10:44 And I think that here, the Western leadership has, in a smart way, because there is no other
10:50 way to tell Ukrainians what the definition of victory should be, have pushed this to
10:56 key of leadership itself, to say that, "Oh, Ukrainian leadership should define what victory
11:01 constitutes and we'll be there with them till the end."
11:06 Now I think it's the recalling time for Ukrainian leadership itself to define how realistic
11:12 those goals are and what is the strategy to achieve something which will be un-zero.
11:18 The Ukrainian leadership sticks to the position that it's not going to give up any land.
11:23 On the contrary, it wants the land back.
11:28 That looks increasingly unachievable, doesn't it?
11:31 I don't think that it's feasible to imagine that any Ukrainian leadership will legally
11:38 abandon any territory occupied by Russia, be it Ukraine or be it other four regions
11:45 that have been partially occupied and then annexed by Russia late next year.
11:51 But there could be other ways to frame this issue and to say that war will not necessarily
11:57 be over, unfortunately, even if Ukraine achieves its 1991 borders.
12:03 What prevents Russia from shooting over the 1991 borders?
12:07 It's not that Ukrainians will regain territorial integrity of their countries as recognized
12:13 by the international community and then Vladimir Putin will say, "Oh, sorry, I'm lost.
12:18 You won.
12:19 I'm packing and going home or buying myself a plane ticket to The Hague."
12:22 So what's the realistic way-
12:23 He can't go home.
12:24 I'm sorry to interrupt.
12:26 He can't go home empty-handed, can he, Putin?
12:30 No, he cannot.
12:32 And we can imagine a scenario where he loses the war and stays in power, like Saddam Hussein
12:39 after his debacle in Kuwait.
12:42 But it's unlikely, knowing how much Vladimir Putin bangs on his legacy over annexation
12:49 of Crimea and other parts of Ukraine.
12:51 Mr. Gavrilyev, the Kremlin appears to have stabilized after Yevgeny Prigozhin's infamous
12:57 mutiny and the rather predictable plane crash that he suffered.
13:01 But will there have been murmurings that Putin showed unexpected weakness under pressure?
13:07 Might someone have already decided that all they need to do is give him another push and
13:13 maybe they could clear the path to someone else taking over in the Kremlin?
13:17 Do you think thoughts like that are crystallizing at the moment among Russian leaders?
13:22 No, I think that these hopes are futile.
13:25 I understand why people want to see somebody taking care of the world's Vladimir Putin
13:30 problem, but that's unfortunately not happening.
13:33 To the contrary, Prigozhin's mutiny has only fortified Mr. Putin's grip on power.
13:38 He has eliminated the most dangerous rival that he also self-created and procrastinated
13:44 for the problem to get bigger and bigger.
13:47 But now this problem is fixed.
13:49 Everybody in the elite got the message and everybody's not rallied around Mr. Putin
13:54 willingly, but they understand what price they will pay if they ultimately step up against
14:01 Mr. Putin.
14:03 You yourself wrote in July how the mutiny had exposed what you called the fragility
14:07 of Putin's power system.
14:10 People won't have forgotten that fragility, will they?
14:13 What amounts to a danger for the leader, and Putin was by all accounts in some danger,
14:18 is always an opportunity for opponents, isn't it?
14:21 That's just politics, isn't it?
14:23 It's fragility of the regime for sure, but time and again we see that Mr. Putin is learning
14:29 some lessons and that the system is adaptable.
14:33 Remember how miserable Russia looked at the battlefield at the very beginning of this
14:37 conflict where Ukrainians, grimly being in far less advantageous position, just pushed
14:44 back and smashed a lot of Russians who had material superiority.
14:49 And yet right now we see that Russians are learning the lessons and able to turn the
14:53 tide.
14:55 Something similar has happened to the political system.
14:57 Yes, the mutiny has shown how fragile the system is, but Mr. Putin can fix some of these
15:04 issues.
15:05 You warned last summer that far from seeking a so-called off-ramp from his war in Ukraine,
15:11 Putin is preparing for an even bigger war.
15:15 Do you still feel that way?
15:17 And if so, how big might this war be?
15:21 That's exactly what we're seeing now.
15:24 Mr. Putin will invest 6% of GDP to defence and to war needs in Ukraine.
15:30 40% of Russian budget next year will go to defence and security.
15:35 That's more than at any given moment since collapse of the Soviet Union.
15:40 He is increasing the troops numbers and his military industry is working on free ships,
15:45 producing materials to defeat Ukraine.
15:48 So I think that for now, the war is contained in Ukraine.
15:52 If he is victorious, I don't believe that he will be able to achieve his maximalistic
15:57 goal to put a friendly government in Kiev.
16:00 But if he's not deterred, I would say that the risk for further challenges, hybrid challenges
16:08 to the Baltic states or to some Eastern Plain countries is unfortunately not entirely zero.
16:16 So when Joe Biden says, if Putin takes Ukraine, he won't stop there.
16:20 And then we'll have something that we don't seek and that we don't have today, American
16:24 troops fighting Russian troops.
16:27 Do you believe that that is a possibility, even a distant one?
16:32 If anybody would say to me two years ago, I would say, oh, get your hat.
16:39 Russia is very serious about NATO Article 5 commitment.
16:43 It's definitely understanding the power symmetry between itself and NATO.
16:48 So no, NATO is not at risk at all.
16:51 Right now, I'm not so sure if he is victorious in Ukraine, if he sees that Ukraine is a broken
16:59 country and he can occupy the land with impunity, and there is a leader like Donald Trump who
17:05 challenges the utility of NATO to American interests, the detention to you and the challenge
17:12 Article 5 will be there.
17:14 I still think that the risk is low for direct confrontation between Russia and the US, but
17:19 the risk is unfortunately going up rapidly.
17:22 But if he were to discover that Article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on, NATO's
17:27 finished, isn't it?
17:29 That's absolutely true.
17:30 And that might be the temptation on the Russian side.
17:33 So many people were wrong about Putin's plans to invade Ukraine because objectively speaking,
17:40 if you are a rational pragmatist, the list of downsides for Russia is just so long.
17:46 It has killed thousands of its people, including its most professional military.
17:51 It's sanctioned, it's isolated from the world, it's becoming junior partner of China, but
17:56 Mr. Putin is not deterred and his grip on authority in Russia is strengthened.
18:02 So what if his course is proven to be a winning course, at least for himself, and he get imposed
18:08 this vision on the Russian elites, the temptation to challenge Article 5 in NATO and chase the
18:15 Americans out of Europe will be growing.
18:18 Mr. Putin is not getting younger, he's not getting any rational.
18:22 So the risks are not zero, unfortunately.
18:25 This might be the itch that he can't stop scratching, you mean, in other words.
18:30 Yeah.
18:31 And this is exactly why getting serious about defense and getting serious about Seidman,
18:38 and all the promises that were made two years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, I think are
18:44 really very necessary to fulfill, not only to support Ukraine, but for Europe's own security.
18:52 Containment is the way to go forward, unfortunately.
18:56 Let's look, if we may, at Putin's friendship with China.
19:00 You wrote last spring that thanks to the war in Ukraine, Russia and China are now closer
19:05 allies than at any time in the two countries' modern history.
19:09 Do you believe that Putin's new best friend, Xi Jinping, would go along with the idea of
19:14 a bigger war?
19:17 I think that Xi Jinping couldn't care less where the border or the contact line between
19:26 Russia and Ukraine is, as long as this war doesn't go nuclear, and he is not blamed to
19:32 support that.
19:34 He respects American red lines, which have been communicated to him, no kinetic military
19:40 direct support, no military material, and by and large, he follows that line.
19:46 If Russia is weakened, isolated, and more aligned and supportive to China, what's the
19:51 bad news for him?
19:52 He only likes this situation.
19:55 What about Putin's other foreign friends?
19:57 Suddenly he's popping up in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, where he was greeted as a very dear
20:03 guest of the kingdom.
20:04 In Moscow, he's been putting out the red carpet for foreign leaders like the president of
20:08 Iran.
20:09 So much for the international isolation that was expected to follow his indictment on war
20:15 crimes charges.
20:16 Is he just flaunting his impunity, or is he busy putting together a new anti-Western axis?
20:24 Three quick points.
20:25 I think that the illusion about the global unity in isolating Russia, it's just an illusion.
20:32 And it's a fantasy.
20:34 It's very easy to cast an obstinate vote or a vote criticizing Russia in the UN General
20:41 Assembly.
20:42 But so many countries in the global South, not only China, but also the largest democracy
20:47 in the world, India, are having a beneficial commercial relationship with Russia, and they're
20:52 not abandoning Vladimir Putin.
20:55 Same goes for countries in the Gulf, including UAE and Saudi Arabia.
21:00 So, receiving Putin with these symbols of prestige and welcome is also a way to show
21:09 to the West that this region has friends, and this is tied to the Western handling of
21:16 Gaza crisis and war between Israel and Hamas.
21:21 And then finally, yes, Mr. Putin is trying to put this coalition together, what he's
21:27 called the global majority.
21:29 I don't think that anybody in the global South is really believing Mr. Putin when he
21:34 says that his brutal war against Ukraine is a rebellion against US hegemony, but so many
21:41 countries are following that narrow, pragmatic interest and blaming the West on double standards.
21:47 They say, "What about Iraq?
21:48 What about Afghanistan?"
21:50 And frankly, there is not that much introspection that will convince these countries that Russia's
21:55 war against Ukraine is entirely different level of violation of international laws.
22:02 To what extent, I mean, you talked a bit about the Russian economy, to what extent have improvements
22:08 in that economy helped to keep the Russian people, if not on side, then at least not
22:15 protesting?
22:16 The people who protested, hundreds of thousands of them have gone, haven't they?
22:19 They've left the country.
22:21 But somehow they seem to have realigned or coalesced around the Kremlin, haven't they?
22:27 Is that the economy?
22:29 We have the estimate of roughly half a million people leaving Russia for good, me included.
22:36 For a country of more than 140 million, that's not too much.
22:41 And these are people who are employable in local markets.
22:45 There are so many people who want to leave Russia but couldn't because of visa restrictions
22:49 and many other policies.
22:52 For the remaining people, it's a mix of violence because protesting has a very top price.
22:59 You see Alexei Navalny, you see so many thousands of brave Russians who have dared to protest
23:05 this war and have been beaten and imprisoned and so on.
23:09 The Russian society is automized and Mr. Putin is building his regime on this level of automization
23:17 and lack of unity.
23:18 But then another element to this is really the economic prosperity because the war has
23:26 made a lot of low middle income families really receiving a lot of money because the government
23:33 is paying people to go to the front lines.
23:36 It's given hefty cash outs for families who were wounded and killed.
23:40 So it is a rational strategy for somebody to go to fight in Ukraine because his families
23:47 will be provided.
23:49 You mentioned briefly the Gaza war.
23:52 It obviously diverts US weapons and ammunition from Ukraine to Israel and it also leaves
23:58 America increasingly isolated diplomatically.
24:02 So it's a clear benefit to Putin, isn't it?
24:06 There's no downside for him in this war.
24:08 It's a clear benefit to Mr. Putin that he hasn't created, there is no credible evidence
24:13 that he was in any way involved in Hamas attack, but he's definitely taken a one-sided, increasingly
24:20 one-sided, for all Hamas stance.
24:23 He is not executing the even balanced Russian foreign policy, not that much sympathy for
24:30 the weak steps of horrible October 7th attacks.
24:34 And yes, the US resources are diverted to Israel.
24:39 70% of US senior policy makers, including President Biden himself and his national security
24:44 team is diverted to the Middle East.
24:47 And then the double standards of the West are something that Mr. Putin has preached
24:53 to the global South and he has fertile ground there.
24:57 So very briefly, does that mean Moscow is ending the year on something of a high, looking
25:02 better than it did a year ago?
25:06 If you look back, 2023 has been a really surprisingly good year for Mr. Putin.
25:12 And it's really in the hands of the Western policy maker to make sure that 2024 is not
25:17 as good for him.
25:18 Alexander Gaboyev, it's been good to have you on Conflict Zone.
25:22 Thank you very much for your time.
25:23 Thank you.
25:24 Thank you so much for having me.
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