00:00Our international affairs commentator, Doug Hubbard, joins me in the studio.
00:03So, Doug, why is Russia stepping up its missile and drone attacks now amid U.S. efforts to broker a ceasefire deal?
00:11The easy answer, the non-nuanced answer, is because it can.
00:15And what do I mean it? I mean Vladimir Putin.
00:17Look, you're absolutely right. You used the word pounding.
00:19Russia has been pounding away at Ukraine with drones and missiles since the beginning of its full-scale invasion back in February 2022.
00:27The difference now is we have seen a dramatic intensification.
00:34You know, you can liken it to aerial terror because let's be clear and let's not mince words.
00:38The goal of this is to terrorize the Ukrainian population.
00:43That is clearly what the Ukrainians are feeling, that they cannot go out on the street without thinking that there's the possibility that they are going to be either hit by a missile while they're sleeping at night.
00:53A missile is going to strike their residential buildings.
00:56Now, Moscow has consistently, from the beginning of the war, if nothing else, it's been consistent, in vehemently denying that it has any intention of targeting civilian infrastructure.
01:07And yet, time and again, we have incidentally seen Russian missiles and drones hitting, striking, if not targeting, it seems, schools, hospitals, playgrounds where children play, residential buildings, ordinary streets, cafes, restaurants where civilians gather.
01:26So those denials start to seem very hollow.
01:29You ask why it is doing this for a couple of very simple reasons.
01:32One, it is able, it has ramped up its own domestic production of these drones.
01:37So it has factories now churning out domestically the drones.
01:41Yes, Ukraine has also become a master in production of drones in the name of its own self-defense against this war of aggression.
01:47At the same time, Putin has had the wind in his back.
01:51He has had a Donald Trump administration, which, at least until now, let's put Trump's rhetoric aside, has very much been cozying up to Putin.
01:59Putin has felt, if not empowered, at least enabled.
02:02But even putting that aside, Vladimir Putin believes he's winning the war.
02:08He believes that he has the battlefield calculus, if you will, on his side, that he is the one making the gains, that the Ukrainians are the ones who are ultimately going to be on the losing end of this war.
02:17He has absolutely, in his opinion, nothing to lose.
02:20And just adding to that, Vladimir Putin believes that he has righteousness on his side, that he has historical justification on his side, that he is justified in doing what he is doing.
02:29And he also believes that there's actually no one around who is able to stop him in his determination to press on and continue this war.
02:38It's as simple as that.
02:40The math is horrible.
02:41The calculus of this war is horrible.
02:43But at the end of the day, the missiles and the drones continue to rain down on Ukraine because there is absolutely nothing stopping Russia from doing so.
02:53And how do you explain U.S. President Donald Trump's shift in tone vis-Ã -vis Putin?
02:59Is it a political calculation or is this a genuine shift?
03:04You know, it's both.
03:05Because with Donald Trump, you know, if you ask him himself, he might not be able to give you a clear answer to that question.
03:12A lot of it is obviously, and we say this quite a bit, when Donald Trump makes his decisions, he often takes his own people off guard, on guard.
03:19Last week, right, we were talking about the Pentagon reports.
03:22The Pentagon was stopping deliveries of some types of anti-aircraft defense systems and missiles and bombers.
03:28And that caused a lot of headlines and scares.
03:30Donald Trump then, you know, sort of backing away from that right now.
03:35At the end of the day, Donald Trump, he is someone who feels – he hates to feel humiliated.
03:41He hates to lose face.
03:43He hates to look like what he often calls his adversaries and those he criticizes, losers.
03:48He hates the sense that he is being made to look like a fool, having egg on his face because of Vladimir Putin.
03:54Remember, he campaigned on ending this war in 24 hours.
03:58Putin is making him look silly.
04:00The war is not over.
04:01And not only is that, but every time they have a phone call, as Donald Trump has said, Putin seems to say nice things on one hand, all chummy on the phone, very personable, and then goes ahead and does whatever he wants to do.
04:12So Putin is, in a sense, laughing all the way to the battlefield, stringing Donald Trump along.
04:17Donald Trump doesn't like to be strung along.
04:19So in one sense, yeah, when he uses this harder tone, this rhetoric against Putin, it's his own exasperation, his own sense of ego being bruised, his own sense of humiliation.
04:28And it could actually lead to a concrete change in policy, which leads to the bigger question of what sort of change and how much would it have a real impact on the ground at this point?
04:38So speaking of, so could this signal then greater U.S. support for Kiev in the future?
04:45It could signal some more support for Kiev in the future.
04:48Does that mean it will signal enough more support for Kiev to make a difference on the battlefield, where I said that Ukrainian war-weary Ukrainian soldiers are up against a far mightier adversary?
04:59They're outmanned.
05:00They're outgunned.
05:01They have been since the beginning of the war.
05:03Not really.
05:03The U.S. has – is ready – the plan we've heard about in recent days, right, we've reported on, is this idea that the NATO countries would buy weapons that Ukraine needs from the U.S.
05:13So NATO countries would step in, act as intermediaries, buy the weapons from Pentagon stocks or American military manufacturers, and then those countries would give them to Ukraine, donate.
05:24Essentially do what the U.S. had been doing up until the Donald Trump return under the Biden administration.
05:29So buying from the U.S., so Donald Trump would get the money, he'd have a windfall, he'd be able to go back to his base and saying, we're not giving it away anymore, and the European countries would be able to make good on their pledge to stay with Ukraine as long as it takes to continue giving them weapons.
05:44Will it be enough, Jenny?
05:45Probably not.
05:46There are about 94 Patriot interceptor missiles right now in the NATO arsenals.
05:52The U.S. basically owns about two-thirds of those.
05:54Zelensky has already said that the small number of missiles that are ready to come, about 10 Patriot interceptor missiles, it's a nice gesture, it will help, but it's far from what they really need.
06:05Will it make a difference?
06:06Not that much beyond the symbolic gesture.
06:08It might help Ukraine hold out a little bit longer against the Russian aerial and ground attacks.
06:15And I guess another question, Doug, is will anything that the U.S. president says be able to influence Vladimir Putin's behavior?
06:22I will give you a very short answer to that question, no.
06:25I'm not trying to oversimplify the answer to that question.
06:28I say it because Vladimir Putin has explicitly made clear, not because I'm trying to speculate and get into his mind and say what I don't know.
06:35He himself has said he has maximalist goals.
06:38He has his objectives, what he calls resolving the root causes of the war, which is basically shorthand for emasculating Ukraine as a viable sovereign entity and making sure that essentially reverts to its vassal state status as a republic prior to 1991 under the former Soviet Union.
06:55That is essentially what Vladimir Putin is going for.
06:58In Vladimir Putin's mind, he has historical justice on his side and he has the moral high ground as well.
07:05That is in his own mind.
07:06He believes he's in the right here.
07:08He believes he's doing the right thing, even if much of the rest of the world, including Ukraine, its allies and much of the Western community, sees it as the height of imperialistic hubris and a man who is very dangerously astray and is imposing his perverted, his warped world vision on a lot of people with a lot of devastation and destruction as a result.
07:28That's the view of much of the Western world right now.
07:31Doug, very interesting to hear your thoughts as always.
