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00:03What I have to say is a pretty good representation of what the foreign policy elite in Russia
00:08is thinking.
00:09The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path.
00:14And the Israelis are executing a genocide in Gaza.
00:18It's not China's fault that it wants to be powerful.
00:22So if you get into trouble and you dial 911, there's nobody at the other end.
00:28Hi, this is John Mearsheimer.
00:30I would like to speak today in this episode about my recent trip to Russia,
00:37which took place between September 8th and September 12th.
00:42Those were the days that I was in the country, not traveling there.
00:47I started off in Moscow, and I spent a few days in Moscow.
00:52And then the second half of my trip was in St. Petersburg.
00:55And what exactly did I do there?
00:59I gave a series of talks.
01:02I participated in some roundtable discussions.
01:07I interviewed a number of people who I have known over the years.
01:14I had dinner one evening with the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov,
01:19which lasted for well over two hours at his residence.
01:24And I spent a lot of time wandering around during the daytime and in the evening
01:30in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, because I like to walk.
01:35And I wanted to see both of those cities, or at least as much of those cities as I could
01:40see,
01:40by walking around.
01:43Who exactly did I talk to?
01:46I talked to a large number of people who I would describe as being members of the foreign policy elite
01:56inside of Russia.
01:58I talked to a number of people who I know, going back to the days of the Cold War,
02:03when they were Soviet citizens, not Russian citizens.
02:06As I said, I talked to Foreign Minister Lavrov, and I talked to his deputy,
02:12who I have talked to in the past when I went to Russia.
02:16And I think I got a pretty good feel from talking to everyone that I just mentioned,
02:21of sort of how the Russian elite in general is thinking
02:27about the present situation regarding the Ukraine war.
02:31But nevertheless, having said all that, you should understand that what I have to say
02:35is largely anecdotal.
02:37I didn't go in and do a survey of what elite opinion is on a particular issue.
02:43And I certainly didn't talk to large numbers of people in the street.
02:49So this is anecdotal.
02:52But I think what I have to say is a pretty good representation
02:54of what the foreign policy elite in Russia is thinking.
02:58Let me start by talking about what I saw regarding daily life
03:03inside of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
03:07I would say it was remarkably normal
03:11that there were few signs of a war taking place.
03:16Walking around in those two cities is not much different
03:19than walking around in places like New York or places like Chicago.
03:26There were a few signs of the war, however.
03:30I think the most obvious sign was that at a number of what they call petrol stations,
03:36or what we call gas stations, you saw long lines.
03:40In some cases, the lines included maybe 15 or 20 cars.
03:46In one case, I think the line probably included about 40 to 50 cars.
03:52It was not true at every petrol station or gas station,
03:55but it was true at a number of them.
03:58And this is consistent with what we read in the newspapers.
04:03Some other signs of the war that I would note.
04:07First of all, the sanctions have had a significant effect
04:12in the sense that if you go into Russia,
04:15you cannot use your own credit card or an American credit card,
04:22and you can't use American money.
04:24I did not go into Russia realizing that.
04:28So I was effectively penniless when I was in Russia.
04:33If I went to a store or went to a coffee shop,
04:37I had to make sure I went with somebody who could pay for me
04:40because I had no ability to pay.
04:43I couldn't use any of my credit cards.
04:45I couldn't use American dollars.
04:47You could only use Russian credit cards or rubles,
04:51and I didn't have any of them.
04:57Correspondingly, the Russians cannot use American credit cards.
05:03So if you're a Russian and you want to subscribe to the New York Times,
05:07you can't use an American credit card to subscribe
05:10because American credit cards can't be used in Russia.
05:14So you would have to use your Russian credit card.
05:17But the problem is you can't use a Russian credit card in the West.
05:21So any Russian who wants to subscribe to the New York Times
05:26or the Wall Street Journal or some Substack site cannot do it.
05:31through normal channels.
05:34So you see the effect of sanctions there.
05:37One other sign of the effect of sanctions was that there were a number of coffee shops
05:43that you could tell that were once Starbucks coffee shops
05:47that are now star coffee shops
05:50but have an emblem that resembles or a symbol that resembles
05:54the old Starbucks symbol that was once there.
06:00But nevertheless, despite the long lines that I saw at a few gas stations
06:06and despite the problem with credit cards and using dollars,
06:11there were hardly any signs that normal life was not going on
06:18inside of both Moscow and St. Petersburg.
06:20If you went into restaurants, you looked around in department stores or drug stores,
06:27and you walked around on the streets, everything looked remarkably normal.
06:32Just one final point on this.
06:34Before the war started on February 22nd, excuse me, February 24th of 2022,
06:40it was possible to fly from the United States or from Europe into Russia.
06:46That's no longer the case.
06:48So I had to fly from Chicago to Istanbul and then from Istanbul into Russia
06:54because you cannot fly directly from any place in the West to inside Russia.
07:01Let me talk a little bit about the economy.
07:03As I'm sure almost everybody knows, when the war started,
07:09our goal was to bring the Russian economy to its knees to do egregious damage to the Russian economy.
07:21It was widely believed that that would help us, in effect, win the war against Russia.
07:27You see no signs that the Russian economy is in trouble.
07:33This is not to argue that everything is hunky-dory with the Russian economy,
07:38but it did not seem to me that there was any evidence that the Russian economy was struggling.
07:46And there was nobody that I talked to who talked about economic problems
07:52or dangers ahead regarding the Russian economy.
07:57There may be lurking problems there that people are concerned about,
08:00and they just didn't tell me.
08:02But all I would say is that the whole time I was there,
08:05I saw no signs that the Russian economy is in trouble.
08:08In fact, it looked like the Russian economy is doing quite well.
08:12And again, nobody in the time I was there said that the Russians were concerned about where their economy was
08:22headed.
08:24Now, I would note that the situation in Russia is fundamentally different than the situation in Ukraine.
08:34There were just many times when I was observing what was going on in Russia,
08:39I thought to myself, how does this compare to what's going on in Ukraine?
08:45And it's quite clear that the Ukrainians are in a very different situation.
08:51And in fact, one of the days that I was in Russia,
08:55a headline appeared in the New York Times that said that the Russians,
08:59excuse me, that the Ukrainians desperately needed $27 billion more in economic and military aid.
09:10They were, in effect, running out of money.
09:13And what this points up is that the Ukrainian economy has basically been wrecked,
09:21and Ukraine is in need of great support from the West to survive.
09:32The Ukrainians could not fight the war without massive amounts of economic assistance from the West.
09:40The situation is fundamentally different in Russia.
09:43Russia is not depending on assistance from anyone.
09:46And as I said, I do not believe the Russian economy is in desperate straits.
09:51There is no evidence of that.
09:53It seems to be humming along relatively well.
09:56And again, that situation contrasts with the situation in Ukraine.
10:01And furthermore, I had no sense that there were food shortages
10:04or that people were suffering in any meaningful way inside of Russia,
10:09whereas there's no question that that is the case inside of Ukraine,
10:14especially in recent months with the shutdown of the Black Sea ports in Ukraine.
10:20So there's a fundamental difference here between the two.
10:24One final point on that has to do with weaponry.
10:29It's quite clear that not only is the Russian economy in quite good shape,
10:34but the Russians are producing massive amounts of weaponry.
10:38People talked about that quite often.
10:41The number of weapons that are coming off the assembly lines is quite impressive.
10:46And again, the exact opposite is the case in Ukraine.
10:50Ukraine is desperate for weapons from the West.
10:53You hear the Ukrainians constantly talking about the need for Patriot missiles,
10:59the so-called Pac-3 missiles,
11:01to help them deal with the Russian onslaught of missiles and drones.
11:05But the West is in no position to give Ukraine the weaponry it needs
11:12to deal with those aerial attacks from Russia.
11:16But on the Russian side, again, there's no shortage of weaponry,
11:21both defensive missiles and offensive missiles.
11:24So the contrast between Russia and Ukraine is quite stark.
11:30And I think the Ukrainians are in real trouble.
11:35And as I say, when you talk about the economy,
11:37I think in the Russian case, things are in pretty good shape.
11:43Now, let's talk a little bit about the political situation inside of Russia.
11:50It has long been argued in the West that Putin is in political trouble
11:57and that he may be toppled.
11:59And of course, the belief in the West is that if Putin is toppled,
12:04he will be replaced by a more reasonable person.
12:08And by that, most people in the West believe that his replacement would be
12:14someone who was willing to negotiate an end to the war with the West.
12:20That person would be more dovish or softer than Putin,
12:24who is widely seen in the West, is highly aggressive.
12:30Now, I pushed people very hard on this particular issue.
12:36And people would talk about it.
12:39But I do want to emphasize that I think there are limits to what people would say.
12:44I think most people are reluctant to be too critical of Putin for obvious reasons.
12:53So I'm aware that people were not completely frank on this particular issue.
13:02Nevertheless, I saw no evidence of the belief that Putin was in trouble politically
13:15and that he was likely to be toppled because of dissatisfaction with his leadership.
13:27Now, it may be the case that behind the scenes, forces are at play that are going to bring Putin
13:36down
13:36at some point in time for one reason or another.
13:39But all I would say is I did not see a hint of that argument.
13:46Now, there's no question that there has been dissatisfaction for Putin for a few years now.
13:54You want to remember, the war has been going on for more than four years.
13:58We're now into the fifth year of the war.
14:00And I would say over the past two, maybe three years, there has been dissatisfaction with Putin.
14:06But the dissatisfaction has to do with the fact that many people believe,
14:12and they will say this to you, that he has not been waging the war vigorously enough,
14:18that he has not been tough enough in attacking Ukraine, both on the battlefield and with the air war.
14:30Now, it's important to emphasize that that situation has been rectified.
14:37Since about June, the Russians have greatly ramped up their attacks on Ukraine,
14:45and it is unequivocally clear that they are going to increase the intensity of the attacks on Ukraine moving forward.
14:55So that dissatisfaction with Putin that once existed,
15:00because many people felt he was not waging the war with sufficient vigor, has gone away.
15:07So the dissatisfaction is, in effect, gone away.
15:13Now, all of this tells you that if Putin were to be replaced,
15:21let's assume that Putin had a heart attack and could not continue being the Russian president,
15:26and somebody came into office to replace him,
15:31that person would be at least as hawkish as him, if not more hawkish.
15:37Even if Putin had been replaced a year or two ago,
15:41the person who replaced him would not have been more interested in accommodating the West.
15:48There's no evidence that the widespread belief in the West
15:51that Putin's replacement would have been something of a pussycat was correct.
15:56If anything, Putin's replacement would have been a hardliner.
16:01But the point I'm making to you now is that Putin has become a hardliner
16:05when it comes to the whole question of how to wage this war.
16:09And the Russians are waging the war very vigorously.
16:14One other point about the politics that's worth making,
16:18it's very clear from talking to Russians and listening to what they have to say about their country
16:28and what's going on, that they are very nationalistic,
16:34that all sorts of people will talk about Russian civilization in a proud way.
16:41They will distinguish Russia from the West.
16:45And it's very clear that a good number of Russians that I talk to do not like the West
16:51because they do not like liberal values.
16:55And the values that they privilege focus more on things like religion,
17:03Christianity in particular, the family, what one would call traditional values.
17:10A lot of emphasis on traditional values among people that I spoke to.
17:15And those people sometimes distinguish the traditional values that they privilege in Russia
17:21from liberal values in the West.
17:24In a funny way, when I talked to a number of Russians about this subject of Russian nationalism,
17:32they sounded a lot like J.D. Vance.
17:35So that's what I would say about the political situation inside of Russia based on my conversations.
17:42Now let me say some words on what I think the course of the war looks like.
17:50I think, as I said, the Russians this past summer decided to escalate in a massive way.
17:57As I've talked about in previous episodes, the Russians have basically turned Ukraine into a landlocked country.
18:08And they have shut down all the Ukrainian Black Sea ports, which is causing massive economic problems inside of Ukraine.
18:18The Russians have also made it clear that they're going to try to totally destroy the energy infrastructure inside of
18:27Ukraine.
18:29And what's important to understand here is that for political reasons, the Russians have no choice but to escalate.
18:42Putin clearly understands, and the Russian elite clearly understands, that it's politically unacceptable to let this war just go on
18:52and on.
18:52And that it's politically unacceptable to let the Ukrainians attack targets inside of Russia with their drones.
19:01And there's no question that that is happening, although I saw virtually no evidence of those Ukrainian drone attacks when
19:09I was in either St. Petersburg or in Moscow,
19:13save for the long lines at the gasoline station.
19:18But other than that, there was no evidence of the air campaign that Ukraine is waging against Russia.
19:27Nevertheless, it's quite clear the Russians consider this to be intolerable.
19:32And they are bent on ending it.
19:35They are bent on ending the war.
19:37And the way they're going to do that is to escalate.
19:40So the politics of the conflict leave the Russians no choice but to escalate.
19:46And escalate they will.
19:48Now, when you talk about what this all leads to,
19:52the Russians will make it clear that they intend to win the war.
19:57And they're actually quite confident about that.
20:00I was a bit taken aback by how sure of themselves the Russian elites were that they were going to
20:06win the war.
20:07And I think that's due in part, again, based on my conversations,
20:11to the fact that the Russians believe the Ukrainians are in deep trouble
20:16and that Russia can ramp up the pressure on Ukraine
20:21and basically bring this war to an end.
20:25Now, let me talk a little bit about what escalation means here.
20:31I think the Russians see themselves as putting great pressure on Ukraine up on the front lines,
20:38on what we like to call the battlefield.
20:40And there's a clear understanding that there are significant cracks in the frontline forces on the Ukrainian side
20:52and that the Russians are making significant progress, but the progress is slow.
20:58And everybody will tell you, unsurprisingly, that that's because of the drones.
21:04There's no question that the drones have changed the nature of what's happening on the battlefield
21:14in quite profound ways.
21:16A number of Ukrainians said to me that if there were no drones,
21:20this war would have ended two, maybe three years ago.
21:23I think that's correct.
21:25I think it would have ended more like one or two years ago if there were no drones.
21:31Drones have allowed the Ukrainians to hold off the Russians on the battlefield.
21:38So when the Russians talk now about escalating and finishing off the Ukrainians,
21:44the emphasis is not so much on the battlefield itself,
21:48the battlefield defined in rather narrow terms,
21:51in rather narrow terms, talking about what's happening up on the front lines.
21:56I think the Russians believe that they will deliver the coup de grace
22:00by basically wrecking Ukraine in terms of its economic and military infrastructure
22:10behind the front lines.
22:12I think that the Russians believe that cutting off Ukraine from its black seaports,
22:18destroying its energy infrastructure,
22:21destroying all sorts of military infrastructure in rear areas to include things like bridges,
22:28railroad lines, locomotives, gas stations, and so forth and so on,
22:34will do so much damage to the Ukrainian economy and to the support system behind the Ukraine frontline forces
22:45that those frontline forces will just collapse and Russia will win the war.
22:53So what I'm trying to say here is that what's happening up on the battlefield, narrowly defined,
23:00does matter for sure to the Russians.
23:02But I think at this point in time,
23:04the Russians tend to believe that the strategic bombing campaign is their real ace in the hole.
23:11And now that they have decided since the summer of this year to really ramp up that campaign,
23:17they think they can bring the Ukrainians to their knees.
23:21And just one final point about this to tie it back to the discussion of the economy.
23:26The fact that the Russians have this ability to produce vast amounts of weaponry,
23:34vast amounts of ballistic missiles and drones and aircraft and so forth and so on,
23:41is what I think gives them confidence that they can wreck the Ukrainian economy
23:48and they can wreck that military support system behind the front lines as well.
23:55My final point here, and I said this before, but I think it's important to emphasize,
24:00is that almost everybody I talk to is very confident that Russia is going to win this war.
24:07Let me switch gears now and talk about how the Russians think about their adversaries.
24:14I think with regard to the Ukrainians,
24:18I did not have the sense that there was any deep hatred inside of Russia towards the Ukrainians.
24:27And the reason is that many Russians who I talked to emphasize that they had relatives who lived in Ukraine.
24:39There are huge numbers of Russians who have both what one might call a Ukrainian heritage and a Russian heritage.
24:50And lots of Russians that I talked to viewed Ukrainians as blood brothers and blood sisters.
24:58This is not to say that they don't understand that there's a war taking place between Ukraine and Russia.
25:04And there's obviously a huge amount of animosity that comes with that on the Russian side.
25:10But I do think that on the Russian side, anyway, that animosity was somewhat qualified by the fact that Russians
25:18and Ukrainians,
25:20ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians, have been intermingled or have intermingled over time.
25:27And therefore, there are lots of people who have both Russian and Ukrainian heritage.
25:33And that, I think, ameliorates the level of animosity.
25:38And by the way, many people, I'm sure, remember the famous article that Vladimir Putin wrote on July 12th, 2021.
25:50This is about six months before the war broke out.
25:54Putin wrote this famous article where he emphasized that Ukrainians and Russians were part of one large family.
26:05And he did not see a clear distinction between Russians on one hand and Ukrainians on the other hand.
26:13What I'm saying here is that in my conversations with Russia, Russians during my recent trip,
26:20there were lots of people who basically were making the same argument that Putin made in that famous July 12th,
26:282021 article that he wrote.
26:33So I would just say that when it comes to Russian views of the Ukrainian people and the country of
26:40Ukraine,
26:41the animosity is somewhat qualified.
26:44And I don't want to overstate the case here because I understand that a war is taking place.
26:48Now, putting the Ukrainians aside and focusing on the Europeans, the Europeans are the ultimate bad guys for the Russians.
26:57You see that very clearly with everyone you talk to.
27:00And this is certainly true in the dinner that I had with Foreign Minister Lavrov.
27:06The Europeans are seen as being bent on destroying Russia, knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers.
27:15And I think the Russians believe that the Europeans want to use Ukraine to achieve that goal.
27:22The Russians believe that the Europeans themselves don't want to do the fighting,
27:26but they want the Ukrainians to do the fighting and dying, all for the purposes of wrecking Russia as a
27:33great power.
27:34To take this a step further, it's very clear that the Europeans view the British and the Germans as the
27:45ultimate bad guys.
27:46They believe that Britain has long been the driving force behind European policy.
27:53And now the Germans, under Chancellor Maher's, have become a huge problem.
28:00You want to remember that the Second World War is emblazoned in the brains of almost everyone in the Russian
28:12elite.
28:14And the Second World War involves the events on the Eastern Front between June 22nd, 1941 and May 8th, 1945.
28:27And the Russians are well aware of the enormous damage, the death and destruction that the Germans inflicted on Russia.
28:39So Germany is a very special threat to Russia because of what's happened, because of what happened in World War
28:51II.
28:51So when Chancellor Maher begins to talk about the Russians as the font of all evil,
28:58and he begins to emphasize that something has to be done to bring the Russians to their knees,
29:06this resonates in all sorts of ways, negative ways, with the Russians.
29:12So what I'm saying to you is, from a Russian point of view, it's the Europeans who are the real
29:18devils in this story.
29:21And it is the British and the Germans among the European countries who the Russians loathe the most.
29:30Then we get to the Americans.
29:32I think that there's no question that the Russians understand that the Americans started out to wreck Russia as a
29:47great power,
29:48to knock Russia off the list of great powers.
29:52That was true in the Biden administration.
29:54But I think that most Russians I talk to do believe that President Trump was interested in trying to work
30:02out a deal with the Russians
30:05to not only end the war in Ukraine, but to improve relations between Russia on one hand and the United
30:11States on the other hand.
30:13I think the Russians understood that Trump, to put it in general terms, he had good intentions.
30:22He was not Joe Biden.
30:24But I think that the Russians came to believe that Trump was incapable of reaching an agreement,
30:33that Trump and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are basically incompetent.
30:40There's no way that they can settle this war.
30:45And what happened at Anchorage is just evidence of this.
30:51So let me talk a little bit about Anchorage.
30:53And remember here, what I'm trying to do is explain to you why the Russians have come to think that
31:01the Americans are basically stumble bumps.
31:05And here we're talking about the Americans under President Trump.
31:10The Anchorage meeting in August of 2025, remember, President Trump comes into the White House in January of 2025,
31:18and he begins to go to work to try and settle the war in Ukraine.
31:24He had promised, as I'm sure everybody remembers, that he was going to settle it even before he got in
31:31the White House, if he could.
31:34And once he got back in the White House, he would settle it very quickly.
31:38So he went to work to do that, President Trump, shortly after moving back into the White House.
31:44And over the course of the summer of 2025, he sent Steve Witkoff to Moscow, and Witkoff met with Putin.
31:56And it turns out that they basically worked out a compromise settlement.
32:02And then President Trump and President Putin met at Anchorage in mid-August of 2025 for the purposes of shaking
32:15hands
32:16and agreeing between themselves that the deal that Witkoff and Putin had worked out was satisfactory to both sides.
32:28And it's important to emphasize that this was a compromise deal.
32:32The Russians actually made a number of compromises that I did not think they would make.
32:40And at the time, this is in mid-August 2025, I didn't believe the stories that Putin had agreed to
32:49the deal
32:49that had been worked out between the two sides.
32:53It just didn't make sense to me that Putin would be willing to make such compromises.
32:59But it was quite clear from talking to the Russians, and especially from talking to Foreign Minister Lavrov,
33:05that the Russians did compromise.
33:07And basically what happened here is that the Russians made some important compromises regarding territory.
33:17And let me explain what I mean by that.
33:19There were four oblasts that the Russians had annexed before President Trump moved back into office in January 2025.
33:31And two of those oblasts are in the Donbass, and the other two are Zaporizhia and Kherson.
33:39And the Russians had annexed the territory in all four of those oblasts.
33:45But the deal that had been worked out in Anchorage was that the Ukrainians would withdraw from the territory in
33:55the Donbass,
33:56the two oblasts in the Donbass.
33:59They would withdraw from that territory, and of course the Russians would take control of the entire Donbass.
34:07But the Russians agreed that the line of conflict in Zaporizhia and the line of conflict in Kherson would remain
34:19in place.
34:20And in effect, the Russians would not demand that they get control of all of Zaporizhia and all of Kherson,
34:27even though they had formally annexed both of those oblasts.
34:32So the Russians were making an important compromise on territory regarding Zaporizhia and Kherson.
34:39And this is what I didn't think they would agree to, but I was wrong.
34:43The Russians made this deal with Trump, and they had every reason to believe that Trump was committed to the
34:51deal,
34:51in large part because it was proposed by Steve Whitcoff.
34:55It's just very important to understand that this compromise was proposed by Whitcoff before the Anchorage meeting,
35:02agreed to by Whitcoff and Trump before Anchorage, and then agreed to at Anchorage by Trump and Putin.
35:13And what happened was Trump was unable after the meeting in Anchorage to get the Ukrainians and the Europeans to
35:26agree to the deal.
35:27Trump had told Putin that he could get the Ukrainians and the Europeans on board.
35:34Putin and Trump both understood, of course, that the two of them agreeing to a compromise deal was a giant
35:41first step in terms of getting a peace settlement.
35:44But you had to get the Europeans and you had to get the Ukrainians on board.
35:48Trump was confident he could do that.
35:50But what happened is, after Anchorage, the Europeans and the Ukrainians and the hardliners in the United States all went
36:00to work on Trump, and Trump backed off.
36:02He walked away, in effect, from Anchorage.
36:07And I would argue, by the way, that it was remarkably foolish of the Ukrainians to walk away from this
36:15deal.
36:15This was hardly a perfect deal for the Ukrainians, because they were going to end up surrendering quite a bit
36:21of territory.
36:22But I think, from Ukraine's point of view, it would have been much better to accept that deal
36:28than to accept the deal that they're going to have to accept when this war finally ends.
36:34They're going to be much worse off when this war finally ends than they would have been had they accepted
36:40the agreement worked out in Anchorage.
36:42But be that as it may, the fact is that the deal never materialized, because Trump could not get the
36:51Ukrainians and the Europeans and the hardliners in the United States to sign on to the arrangement that had been
36:58worked out in Anchorage.
37:00The end result of this is that the Russians have lost all faith in President Trump's ability to negotiate.
37:10I mean, Putin may still meet with Witkoff and Kushner, but he's just going through the motions.
37:14The Russians understand full well that the Americans are not capable of delivering.
37:20And therefore, this war has to be settled militarily.
37:27It has to be settled on the battlefield.
37:31And with the air war, this is the one-two punch that the Russians are relying on to win this
37:40war.
37:42Now, let me close here by talking about what I think the final deal will look like.
37:51I've emphasized for a couple of years now that the Russians would win an ugly victory.
37:57This has been my argument all along.
38:00And I use this rhetoric in my conversations with a number of Russians.
38:05I ask them point after point what the final deal would look like.
38:13What do they think the settlement is going to look like?
38:17How do they think this war is going to end?
38:22I found that virtually nobody would answer that question in a concrete way.
38:30No one would say what the final arrangement will look like.
38:37At some point, we're going to get a frozen conflict.
38:40So what's the frozen conflict look like?
38:43What are the territorial lines?
38:46What are the specifics regarding Ukraine being a neutral state?
38:53And so forth and so on.
38:55And nobody could come up with a concrete answer to that.
39:00I want to be clear here.
39:02The Russians do believe they're going to win this war.
39:04But exactly what winning means is not clear.
39:10Now, it's very important that I emphasize that nobody in Russia ever said to me that they envisioned conquering all
39:20of Ukraine.
39:20I find this hardly surprising.
39:23The Russians would be foolish in the extreme to try to conquer all of Ukraine because the ethnic Ukrainians in
39:30the western half of that country would make any occupation of all of Ukraine a total nightmare.
39:36So the Russians are not conquering or bent on conquering all of Ukraine.
39:42But they are going to take a large slice of territory.
39:45And my sense, talking to people, there were a few people who said this out loud, but not many.
39:50But my sense, talking to people, is that they would prefer to conquer more territory than just the four oblasts
39:58that they've annexed, which I was talking about before.
40:01I think that there are a number of Russians who would like to take Odessa and take Kharkiv and a
40:08handful of other oblasts as well.
40:11The Russians would like to push as far west as possible, in large part because they believe that the remaining
40:22rump state of Ukraine will be hostile to Russia.
40:27So you see what's happening here is that the Russians understand that the Ukrainians are never going to be happy
40:36with the status quo that is set in place after the shooting stops.
40:43The Ukrainians are going to want the Ukrainians are going to want those oblasts that they lost to Russia back.
40:52And they're going to go to great lengths to try to undermine Russian control of the territory that Russia takes
41:01away from Ukraine.
41:02This incentivizes the Russians to take as much territory as possible, as much territory as is militarily feasible to conquer
41:15and politically feasible to occupy.
41:19And again, where those lines are drawn is hard to say at this point in time.
41:23But again, the Russians are incentivized to move as far west as possible.
41:28And they're incentivized to make sure that the rump Ukrainian state that remains is as dysfunctional as possible.
41:38And again, a number of Russians would say that publicly or say that to me out loud.
41:44But it was implicit in the comments of a number of other Russians that I talked to.
41:54So I think that there's no question that the settlement that the Russians envision imposing on Ukraine will be a
42:07harsh settlement for sure.
42:09Now, I want to make two final points.
42:11One has to do with denazification.
42:13The Russians talk a lot about denazification in Ukraine.
42:20And this means eliminating the hardline, right-wing, highly nationalistic Ukrainian elites from positions of power inside the Ukrainian government.
42:35I personally do not see how the Russians can do that.
42:40As I've tried to make clear here, we are going to end up with a Ukrainian rump state.
42:47And it's going to be a dysfunctional rump state.
42:50But I do not believe that the Russians will be in a position where they can determine who runs that
42:57rump state.
42:58And I think once this war is over with, the nationalists will be a powerful political force in Ukraine.
43:08And maybe I should say the ultra-nationalists will be a powerful political force in Ukraine.
43:13And those ultra-nationalists will fit the description of the Russians as Nazis.
43:23But I don't believe the Russians will be able to, and I'm using the Russian rhetoric, denazify Ukraine.
43:30I think the hardline nationalists will remain in power in significant ways inside of Ukraine.
43:39And my final point is that in the West, it's widely believed that not only are the Russians interested in
43:50conquering all of Ukraine, but they're a threat to Eastern Europe.
44:01And that they have a well-tuned army at this point in time that they can use for that purpose.
44:10And all of this is to say that the West, especially the Europeans, are facing a significant threat from Russia.
44:18I have never believed that, and from talking to the Russians on this visit, I see no evidence, none, that
44:30the Russians are interested in conquering any territory in Europe.
44:36As I said before, I saw no evidence, not even a hint, that the Russians were interested in conquering all
44:45of Ukraine.
44:46And as I said, they would be foolish to try to invade territory in Eastern Europe, or countries in Eastern
44:57Europe, which just happened to be members of NATO, which causes all sorts of obvious problems.
45:04So I think the only interesting question on the table now regarding where this war ends up is, number one,
45:13how much territory do the Russians take in Ukraine?
45:16In other words, where do they stop moving westward?
45:19Number two, what is Ukraine's relationship with the West moving forward?
45:26Will Ukraine declare its neutrality, or will it continue to posture about joining NATO?
45:37But regardless of what happens on that front, I think the Russians will be incentivized to do everything they can
45:48to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state and keep it as a dysfunctional rump state.
45:56All of this is to say that this war has been one giant disaster.
46:02And as I have said many times, the decision in early April of 2008 to expand NATO into Ukraine, to
46:11bring Ukraine into the alliance, was one of the greatest strategic blunders of modern times.
46:19That concludes what I have to say about my recent visit to Russia.
46:24Russia, thank you all for listening, and I look forward to our next episode.
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