The Ukrainians and the Russians are creating the only two modern armed forces in the world. And this is a problem for everybody else, which I don't think everybody else is necessarily recognizing. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, and pretty much everything Ukrainians do, the Russians can do a few months later, but at scale. And that's a problem for NATO and a problem for the US, who is still practicing a pretty archaic form of warfare. And it's not a problem which I think people are recognizing. So, by letting this war continue the way it is, we're basically training up the Russian army on Ukrainian methods, which is not a good thing to be doing.
Professor, where does this podcast find you?
I'm in Toronto. I'm just back from a long trip to Ukraine. Um, but now I'm in Toronto.
Oh, that's nice. I heard that Toronto has an WNBA expansion team. Is that right? Well, I actually just saw um one of the last games of the season. Yeah, they got blown out by the New York Liberty. Uh but yeah, it was fun to watch.
I was at an event this weekend and I met this I met a guy who's a you know a legendary basketball player and his daughter I her name is Kiki Smith is on the team. So
she's a fan favorite. I can assure you of that.
Oh yeah. Didn't expect to talk to you about I'm sure you didn't expect to talk about this. Let's let's bust right into more your your domain. You were just in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, less than a minute from Russia uh by by missile anyways. And since you got home, you've been releasing 10 Kharkiv meditation videos you recorded there at night on cowardice, courage, freedom, and fascism. Why why are you in Ukraine? And can you give us a sense for the atmosphere and the feel on the ground there?
Well, I'm I'm there because it's my job. I mean, I'm a historian of Ukraine. I'm running a big project that involves a couple hundred colleagues, roughly half of whom are Ukrainians. We have um big conferences every year in in Kiev, which works out very well, better than fine. And in general, if you're going to write about a place or talk about a place, you should go there. So I was in Kharkiv staying um as a guest in a kind of writing retreat um which is the apartment of a of a Ukrainian philologist and doing doing my own work and then I was in Kyiv helping to run these big projects. The atmosphere is like you know there's one more thing you have to worry about which is that you'll get killed at the gas station trying to get gas. There's one more thing you have to worry about which is that you'll get killed by a missile strike you know going to the grocery store to an outdoor market. People live their lives trying to adapt to this. Um, and they they do it very well. They do it in a way which I personally find exemplary.
And give us a sense for what it's like? What is the general mood in terms of the war itself? Is it is it a feel of we we've made some progress, need to hang in there, renewed optimism, or is the fatigue setting in or is it a bit of both?
I mean, it's I think after, you know, after going on five years now, or, you know, if you're counting from the the first invasion in 2014, you're looking at 12 plus years. I don't think fatigue is a really relevant concept anymore. I mean, people are people are living their lives and they're doing what they can. And your question, it depends on where you're sitting. If you're at the front, and I was also visiting the front when I was in, but if you're at the front, then things look pretty good. It's pretty it's it seems pretty unlikely that the Russians will achieve any kind of breakthrough at the front whether they mobilize or not. And the fact that the Russia probably has to mobilize now is a bad sign I would say for for Russia. However, if you're in the interior of the country, Russia is systematically destroying the Ukrainian economy. Um it's making people's lives very hard. It's destroying their livelihoods. And I should add that this is our fault if we're Americans because it's American policy to deny Ukraine the missile defense that it needs. So we've kind of artificially created the situation where Russia can destroy the Ukrainian economy. And people do feel that.
So essentially my understanding is Americans stopped funding. They still sell weapons. They just aren't providing any economic support. Is that accurate?
Well, there's there's zero economic support and there's zero direct weapon support. We do allow Europeans to buy our systems and then pass them on to Ukraine. And we do allow I mean we've just allowed um other other countries to license the construction of Patriots which is the anti-missile system. So indirectly indirectly indirectly at some point in the future that might be able to help. Um, but we there's been a drastic change since the Biden administration, which probably didn't do enough, but which was doing, but which was actively helping in terms of financial and military aid.
My understanding is for all the criticism of the EU not having its act together and too much regulation that uh the EU has stepped up here. Is would you agree with that?
Yeah, I mean that's a great point. I'm glad you noticed that. Um, the EU has done more has done more than any individual state, I would say. and and the EU has consistently recognized the threat that Russia poses. It's a good point because like when you talk about bureaucracy the EU with bureaucracy and that's a kind of sort of American propaganda point which we can't get our minds around or through. But when it comes to helping Ukraine, they've been very unbureaucratic and it's been us the the Americans who have been either bureaucratic or we've just shown kind of ill will.
I feel as if I get two streams of news around the actual situation at the front, who's winning, who's losing or you know this kind of grinding standoff at some you know at some periods it feels like and the traditional media I think has a I don't want to say a bias for Ukraine but I feel when I watch traditional media I think okay Ukraine just asymmetry drones technically advanced Russia is now no longer able to mobilize it It's in deficit in terms of the number of soldiers taken off the field through death or injury and is unable to now raise as many conscripts as they're losing. you see Moscow on fire and then I go online and I go on Tik Tok or threads and I feel I see what doesn't feel more balanced but some news that's a little bit more Russia is is increasing attacks having more impact and uh it would be you could argue Ukraine is obviously has some tremendous victories but winning might be a little bit strong. Can you can you attempt to give us a sense of how over the last 12 months the balance of victory or defeat on the battlefield has shifted?
Yeah, I'm going to answer that. And your question leads me on to another point I want to make as well. Over the last 12 months, we've seen um a a shift in the in late last year and then spring of this year where it really did seem like the Ukrainians could win. Um because all the things you said were true. So the Ukrainians gained more territory than they lost. They're inflicting, you know, a multiple more casualties than they're receiving. Um and until, you know, spring of this year, they were also able to defend themselves pretty well. Uh the change has been the the shortage in missile defense because the shortage in missile defense which I see as an artificial result of the Iran war and US policy but that means that the Russians are able to make the kinds of gains you're talking about when it comes to destroying the Ukrainian economy. That's where they're succeeding now. They're destroying factories. They're destroying mines. They're destroying steel works. That's that's the edge that the Russians have now which they didn't have six months ago. So both things are, so to speak, true. The Ukrainians are mechanizing the front. It's pretty hard to imagine Russia making gains on the front, but at the same time, Russia's able to hurt the Ukrainian economy and therefore Ukrainian society. The point I want to make though is that as as we as we see this ratcheting back and forth of drone and drone defense, the Ukrainians and the Russians are creating the only two modern armed forces in the world. And this is a problem for everybody else, which I don't think everybody else is necessarily recognizing. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, and pretty much everything the Ukrainians do, the Russians can do a few months later, but at scale. And that's a problem for NATO and a problem for the US, um, who is still practicing a pretty archaic form of warfare. And it's not a problem which I think people are recognizing. So, by letting this war continue the way it is, we're basically training up the Russian army on Ukrainian methods, which is not a good thing to be doing.
Professor Snyder, you obviously you I always like to kind of pause the podcast and when I when I hear something I haven't heard that I think is really striking and insightful and I just hadn't contemplated that this war is, you know, we talk about what it's how Ukraine could be this new center of innovation and has just this unbelievable army that's teaching the world about the power of the word asymmetry and is punching so far above its weight class. We've never seen anything like that. But little attention is given to the fact that we're also via this war upskilling Russia, making it a more lethal fighting force. Hadn't hadn't thought of that. So Lincoln said you can't win a war without public support and you can't lose a war with one. And it feels from an outsider standpoint that the Ukrainian army has the support and Zelensky has the support of the Ukrainian people. What's less clear is whether Putin and the fighting force there has the support of the Russian people. Can you speak to that?
So I I think the way the Russians have been trying to run the war is as a consumer war, which is a kind of a concept I think which should be pretty familiar to Americans. It's not we're supposed to win. It's not supposed to touch us. We're supposed to enjoy like the daily media coverage of the victories, but it's not supposed to affect our daily lives. And that was largely true for Russia for the first four four and a half years. It's much less true now as you've noticed because Ukraine is able to hit now with long range drones targets which do affect Russians daily life. That's one thing which has changed. Another thing which has changed is that as and again you've already mentioned this. Russia probably now has to mobilize as opposed to just using contract soldiers. And that probably it's hard to predict but that probably will have some kind of negative social effect for Putin because the people who are going to the front up until now they have signed a contract like they're getting paid by Russian standards a lot of money whereas once you start drafting people then you're in a different dynamic I think a different political dynamic as well. So I think Russia is keen to end this war by spring partly for that reason that I don't think they believe they can count politically on the mobilized soldiers and the families of mobilized soldiers in the same way.
So if I were to I want to put forward a thesis and I'm pretty sure you'll agree at least with part of it or maybe not. But if I look at the biggest hotspots or the biggest risks to the world to world peace to something you turning into what feels like World War II, it's I'll put AI on that list. I don't believe that's true, but according to some very smart people who spent four months at Anthropic, there's a 10% extinction event, which sounds like expected death of 800 million, which I think is worth at least investigating. Two, is this war. You know, Europe is being invaded again. And then, uh, I would argue probably the biggest risk is that China invades Taiwan and the West literally doesn't know what to do, does something and it escalates. and that Ukraine or the probability that China decides to take the risk of a hot war goes down or is it is inversely correlated to success Ukraine's success on the battlefield. You just got to think that the CCP is looking at this war and thinking if this small technically sophisticated army, which the Taiwanese defense forces would be in spades, that maybe we should recalculate recalculate the likelihood of victory here and rethink and not attempt an invasion of Taiwan. So my thesis is that every any any small victory by Ukraine against Russia decreases the likelihood of a CCP attempting a hot war and invasion of of Taiwan. Your thoughts?
Yeah, I agree 100% and that's an argument I've been trying to make from the beginning of the full-scale invasion that anybody who's serious and the Trump people claim to be serious about this, although I don't believe them. Anybody who's serious about preventing a war with China would see Ukraine as the, so to speak, the relatively easy way to do so because funding the Ukrainians, helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves is a lot easier than actually trying to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. And so you've been basically handed by history, if you're the US, you've been handed by history a way to deter such an attack by showing, as you say, exactly, by showing how difficult it is to actually carry out offensive operations in the 21st century against a technologically savvy adversary. We've been given that chance. And I'm afraid that what we've been doing is throwing that chance away in the last year and a half under the Trump people and thereby unduly encouraging the Chinese um and making the scenario that you're talking about more likely. I would add to your point and I'll see if you agree, but I would add to your point that in general helping Ukraine to defend itself against a war of aggression also has the positive global scale effect of protecting the legal order and discouraging invasions in general. But I would also make the point about nuclear weapons that Russia is a nuclear state invading a non-nuclear state and it's using nuclear blackmail pretty much every, you know, few hours. If you allow a nuclear state to win a war against a non-nuclear state um and you give in to nuclear blackmail and you keep saying as the Trump people do say, "Oh no, we're afraid of escalation, etc." Then you're encouraging that scenario and encouraging that scenario, you're encouraging middle powers around the world to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the Russias and the China. And if you if that happens, then you have a much more dangerous world. And you know the somewhat old school threat of nuclear war then comes back onto your list.
Well, you're the historian, but if I remember correctly, Ukraine had nuclear weapons and agreed to give them up, which we all the entire international community sees as a good thing. Fewer nuclear nations, less likelihood of an errant misinterpretation of something that ends up in nuclear war. They gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for safety guarantees from Russia. And the reality is right now they screwed up and that any you know we've created a zeitgeist globally where every nation should have pursued nuclear weapons. I mean this has to me this has just created a series of incentive that are going to make it exceptionally difficult for more control of the spread of nuclear arms. Your thoughts?
No, that's completely right. And what you say, of course, is in line with what the Ukrainians themselves now think. Um the the Budapest memorandum of 1994 um obliged the United States and Great Britain as well as the Russian Federation to defend Ukraine against external threats. And then Russia invaded twice and the United States and Great Britain did something but a minimal a minimal amount to to support Ukraine in that situation. So it's it's the there's and there's a good book about this by the way by my colleague Serhii Plokhy at at Harvard. So yeah, I mean if Ukraine it's very hard if you're in Ukraine not to draw the conclusion that if you'd kept nuclear weapons and developed your own delivery systems which they didn't have. But if you'd done that this invasion would not have happened. That's I mean I'm afraid that's that's in a nutshell the conclusion that other c I mean my point is other countries looking at the situation also as you say are going to draw the same conclusion and if we want to head that off we have to do what we can to make sure that the outcome of this doesn't look like a Russian victory.
I feel as if I'm fairly politically aware of of the situation politically in the US and geopolitics. are more aware than your average bear, so to speak. And it still shocks me when you say we're not supporting Ukraine because it was I think the general populace in the US likely believes we still are. And it seems to me that yet another consequence of the war in Iran, you know, yet another negative consequence is that it to a certain extent the American public has taken its eye off the ball and it's become indifferent and has given Trump an opening just to stop. Why why do you think the Trump administration is so dismissive of Ukraine and the war in Ukraine?
