Shownotes Transcript
Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stuart Center and Europe-Russia-Eurasia program at CSIS. And I'm Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia. And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the Center for Strategic International Studies.
Welcome back to Russian Roulette. I'm Max Bergman, and today I'm joined by my co-host, Maria Snagovaya, and our dear friend and colleague here in the studio, Michael Kimmage. Michael is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and former senior associate non-resident fellow here at CSIS from 2022 to 2025, when he left us to be appointed as the director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center. And he's now on administrative leave and has lots of time to come into the studio and here to talk with us.
I also had the good fortune of being Michael's office mate and colleague from 2014 to 2017 when he was at the policy planning staff at the State Department where he oversaw the Russia-Ukraine portfolio. Michael, thanks so much for coming in. Thanks for being here with us. Wonderful to be back with you both.
Let's jump right into our conversation today. And we're going to leave this sort of broad and open-ended. A lot is happening in the Russia-Ukraine space. The war is continuing. There are negotiations happening over a potential ceasefire. There is also seemingly a bilateral track to these negotiations between the U.S. and Russia.
We are recording on the 100th day of President Trump's term in office. Michael, maybe give us your general take right now on where you think things stand. What's your sort of overview on how the negotiations are proceeding? So back in the early 1970s, you had a
extremely important round of diplomacy between the Soviet Union on the one hand and Europe and the United States on the other. It took two years, and in 1975 you had the signing of what was called the Helsinki Final Act, which finalized the borders of Europe and imposed certain obligations on the Soviet Union to deal with human rights. What one can say with emphasis about the current round of diplomacy since Trump's inauguration in January is that it does not replicate
The pattern set in the early 1970s, which was what you could describe as conventional diplomacy. The mid-levels worked hard for two years, and at the end, the sort of heads of state came and signed the key documents. This doesn't resemble that at all. This is media-driven, personality-driven diplomacy. The tempo is very quick, in part because of President Trump's campaign promises, in part because I think that's his
style. And so the one thing that this diplomacy has achieved is to draw attention to the issue of war termination and that has forced a conversation where, you know, six months ago we were talking more about the war
Many of us, you know, Europe, Ukraine, Russia, the United States are now talking about war termination. And that is a kind of deliverable of this diplomacy. You know, beyond that, it is something of a roller coaster where it's extremely difficult to characterize what the situation is at any one given moment. We had the famous blow up between Ukraine.
President Trump and President Zelensky in the Oval Office where it seemed like the US was going to pull out. And there was a couple of days where the US cut off intelligence and military supply to Ukraine. And then that came back online. And most recently, you have a photograph of President Trump and President Zelensky sitting
tête-à-tête in St. Peter's in Vatican City and seemingly talking constructively about what's going to be done next. So at the moment, Russia's a little bit down, Ukraine is a little bit up, but I wouldn't make any predictions in that regard for next week or the week after because it's just something that goes in cycles. The final point that I would make to cut through what I think is in some ways not helpful detail of which there's a great deal with all of this, the sort of soap opera side and a lot of the particulars don't seem all that meaningful to me,
it feels to me like Ukraine and Russia are now competing to see who can get blamed for the failure of this diplomacy and it's in the interest of Ukraine to have Russia be perceived as the country that's not going to do a ceasefire and not going to play ball and that could work although if you're betting on it you'd probably have to bet on the other outcome is that you know you Russia will succeed in getting Ukraine blamed for negotiations and diplomacy that doesn't
give President Trump the results that he wants, and then conceivably there could be a scaling back of U.S. support to Ukraine. I wouldn't make that prediction with 100% certainty, but if I had to bet on one outcome, I'd sort of bet on that one, just given the White House's messaging to date. And that's, I think, where the negotiations are. They're negotiations that are structured and almost destined, I would say, to fail. And so the truly interesting question is, what would the significance of that failure be? I want to pick up on the point you made about
Trump's sort of flipping diplomacy on its head.
Instead of it being sort of a diplomacy in some ways in, in war termination is always a bit top down, but then the work is being done at lower levels, toiling away. There's actually a great John Oliver skit called world of peace craft and sort of contrast to world of war craft. And it's, is if diplomacy was a video game and it's from like from Russian conference rooms to Pakistani conference rooms, to Saudi conference rooms. And it's like how deathly boring and bleak this is as people sort of
argue over line item four, you know, paragraph two about some sort of very inane provision. But it seems like
What we're sort of trained for is seeing a diplomatic process, particularly when it comes to a ceasefire, war termination, where there's no trust between parties, where you would need to have this very detailed list of, you know, here are the provisions. Here's what you're going to do. Here's what's allowed. Here's what's not allowed. Even if it's just like a ceasefire, still, you would need to have something like that. And we're not seeing any of that from the kind of backslide.
bottom mid-level folks toiling away and it's all sort of top-down part
Part of me thinks that, well, that means it's not going to work. On the other hand, it sort of depends on what you're putting on the table. I don't know. Do you think there's a prospect here, Michael? And Maria, you can jump in as well. For Russia, for Vladimir Putin to see something, okay, maybe we'll just turn the guns off for an extended period. And that will sort of lead to kind of a cessation, at least, of some of the violence. Well, maybe. If cessation of violence is the benchmark, many things are...
I think looking at this situation from Putin's perspective, and Maria, I'm very curious to get your thoughts on this point. I think what Putin can achieve from this is not an end to the war. I don't think he seeks an end to the war because it's not at the moment going to end on his terms. But what Putin could achieve is a breakdown of relations between the U.S. and Ukraine. That's happened in some respects already, but not completely.
But what Putin could really achieve is driving a wedge between Europe and the United States or allowing Trump to drive that wedge himself, if that's what the White House wishes. And so that's, I think, the goal or the aim from the Russian side. It has really not that much to do with the war itself. To add another point here in terms of what you've described, and I'll err on the side of caution. I mean, this is a
very dramatic kind of diplomacy and maybe it's what you need to dislodge the stalemate that was developing on the battlefield and maybe President Trump can pull a rabbit out of a hat. But I'm skeptical about that for a practical reason. In addition to not having empowered mid-level bureaucratic staff to do this, which is the conventional recipe, you see a very, very low level or almost non-existent consultation, level of consultation between the US and Ukraine on the one hand,
and the US and Europe and the other. I don't see how this works without consultation. So the US says that it's willing to recognize Crimea a week ago and Ukraine says no way. And then most European countries, for a very understandable reason, say we're not going to do it either. So does...
the White House not care about Ukraine and Europe at this point? We'll just do it anyway? Do they not consult and not know what's going to be said? Or do they consult and know that they're going to say the exact opposite? That, to me, just bodes very, very ill for any kind of structured, real solution to the conflict. But a cessation of hostilities that Putin might agree to, he wants to get one now for May 9th so he can have a victory parade in Moscow and host Xi Jinping. But beyond that, I just don't see much that's available or likely
Yeah, I mean, just structurally, you now have two special envoys. Wyckoff, that was special envoy for the Middle East, still is, still negotiating with Iran, but now negotiating with Russia. Kellogg, who everyone thought was going to be the special envoy for negotiations, is now just sort of the special envoy for Ukraine. So you don't even really have a singular presence in which Ukrainians or Europeans quite have
have faith in that they are the ones sort of determining or overseeing the negotiations, at least from the U.S. side. Even Marco Rubio, as Secretary of State, you know, how much control does he have over Wyckoff, who is going into the White House all the time? So it's a very fluid process. And I think the lack of consultations, I think, is something at least I'm hearing directly from the Europeans. But Maria, let's bring you in.
Well, I certainly echo everything that Michael has flagged. And the problem with this moment as an analyst and commentator is while we have a lot of hype and things seem to be moving very fast, if you look really at the outcome, not much has really happened.
Putin sticks to his original promises. I will also flag a couple of things that, first of all, in my opinion, the illusion that it was somehow the U.S. or the West that triggered this invasion, I think, should now be gone because we see that the U.S.
were making multiple concessions to Putin, including Crimea recognition, freezing the front line and basically freezing the situation along the current front line. And no NATO membership for Ukraine is unable to achieve much. And Bloomberg just recently reported that, according to multiple leaks, Putin is sticking to his guns, to his maximalist goals in Ukraine. If anything, the attacks on Ukraine continue. They're extremely vicious and they doubled in scale since Trump has become president. So much for
you know, successful negotiations. So I think one very clear takeaway from this is that while many Western perspectives tend to assign a lot of agency on the actions of the West in the way this war has started, NATO expanded, most notably the point that NATO expanded has triggered Putin's
and these invasions, you can see that it's not about the West at all. It's about Putin's goals, very specific goals in Ukraine that he wants to meet. Finally, he actually, he wants to reach, right now feeling quite actually empowered by the ongoing visible tensions within the Western alliance. And accordingly, he's not backing down. So this is one particular issue that is not going away. Second point, in view of the probably,
coming failure to achieve the goals in these negotiations. I think the real focus of our analysis should be shifting to what's next for Ukraine.
And we understand, right, that Ukraine so far, thankfully, is able to sustain similarly the situation, even with the existing lethal aid provisions that are basically the legacy of the Biden administration. But at some point, the situation will become quite difficult, probably not next month, but at some point, probably in the summer. So accordingly, the real question is,
What does it mean for Ukraine if the U.S. administration fails to achieve any progress on the talks? What does it mean the U.S. withdrawal from these negotiations? I want to pivot there. But first, Maria, maybe to pick up on one of the points that you made about Putin's end goals here. Because it strikes me if his end goal is to...
have control of the four oblasts that Russia now partially controls in eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine. Okay. I mean, that would be very hard for the Ukrainians to stomach. But then we're sort of in the realm of where you could maybe see a deal. Because to me, what Ukraine wants is to have a European future where it can more closely align with the European Union, potentially join the European Union, be part of quote unquote Europe.
But that also strikes me as something that is completely intolerable to Putin, and that if Ukraine were to achieve that, even if it were to lose much of the territory of these four oblasts,
Then Ukraine is, I would, at least the way I would define it, has won the war and Russia has lost the war. Basically like Finland in the Soviet-Finnish war, basically. And, you know, there was no real prospects of Ukraine joining the European Union on, you know, February 1st, 2022. That was just like not going to happen. But now I think there is a prospect for it to happen and it should happen. It strikes me that that is Ukraine winning.
So where that leaves sort of a ceasefire peace talk, just, you know, this is where I think a lot of Russian analysts have been deeply skeptical of, you know, Vladimir Putin's intentions. But am I reading this wrong? Is this sort of, you know, finite military objective to just get these oblasts and then he can sort of call it a day? Sure. I mean, I think from the beginning, this has been a war...
that at its most significant and profound for President Putin is about regional order. I very much agree with Maria. It's a Russia-Ukraine war that's front and center, but there is, I think, a matter of regional order that supersedes that, of which Ukraine is just an integral part from Putin's perspective. And in that sense, although Russia has achieved a few things since the inauguration of Trump, concessions, as Maria rightly puts it,
and a kind of White House endorsement of the Russian narrative of the war, where it's a function of NATO expansion and not the fault of Putin. I guess that's an achievement for Putin in the scheme of things or a propaganda victory. But I think Putin is in a horrible mess with this war. And the strategic objectives that were there were probably not really achievable in February 2022 because of the size of Ukraine, the capacity of Ukraine to resist.
And the concerns that this war was bound to elicit from Ukraine's neighbors, most of Ukraine's neighbors in Europe, but if anything, it's gotten worse for Putin over time. He's expended enormous amounts of materiel, lost huge numbers of lives or caused his military to lose all of these lives. He's radicalized the Ukrainian population in a way that will be, I think, there for generations. And as you say, Max, he's opened the door to Ukraine to enter Europe in some way, whether it's EU or some version of a
security commitment on the part of Europe or transatlantic security commitment, I think that that's still imaginable. And so in a sense, by fighting the war, not only is Putin failing to win it, but he's also creating the conditions for his eventual or for Russia's eventual failure with this whole enterprise. And we could, of course, add Sweden and Finland joining the NATO alliance to this story because it's a part of the larger picture. And in a way, I couldn't agree with more with what
Maria said at the beginning, if we make this a story that revolves only around the White House, we get a very distorted picture of what's happening. The White House is important. Trump is important. The U.S. is important. But the bigger story of the war is the story of Russia's failure to control Ukraine. And if we get too far away from that, I think we start to lose our sense of what the war is really about. And we lose our...
important sense of why the war is going so badly for Russia. So this image that I keep hearing that champagne corks are popping in Moscow and have been since the inauguration of President Trump, I think it's silly and I think it's inaccurate. In some ways, I think it's
yet another kind of propaganda venture that the Kremlin is underwriting. You had a recent piece in Foreign Affairs about the Zeitenwende being real this time. It's an excellent piece, but one of the things that Putin may have succeeded in doing is basically rebuilding the German army, which if you're from a Russian security perspective has always been a historical nightmare. Not a great thing to celebrate. Yeah, not a great thing to celebrate.
But, and I think we're seeing a lot of movement on the European defense side, particularly if and when sort of U.S. commitment to Europe declines, that will, I think, creates a certain amount of joy in the Kremlin, a gap in the transatlantic alliance. On the other hand, if the corresponding reaction to that is a European rearmament, which we've already seen with Germany getting rid of the debt break and spending close to a trillion dollars on defense and infrastructure, that's going to be somewhat
transformative, or at least where it could be. Maybe let's break this out into two corresponding questions. First, I think on the Ukraine-Russia talks and where this is headed. And what it seems like to me is that this is
And so the war is likely to continue. And then the second thing that I think we should talk about to sort of shape the conversation is the U.S.-Russia rapprochement that is happening and whether those two can sort of coexist. But first, maybe on Ukraine-Russia.
It seems pretty clear, I think the way we see it, or I think we're generally all in agreement that it's unlikely that these talks yield very much. Michael, I very much agree that this is a bit of a kind of a blame game of who's at fault for the failure of these talks. There's also been warnings this week from the U.S. that it is threatening to walk away from the talks. It's not clear who that's really threatening to, but that if the U.S. were to sort of give up and walk away, there was Marco Rubio canceled the summit that was supposed to happen with the Europeans that were
you know, doing a lot of preparatory work for a, you know, notional European peacekeeping force. But I guess when we think about the U.S. walking away or if the talks fail, if we just get there and assume they fail,
What are sort of the prospects going forward? What are the things that you all are looking out for over the coming, you know, month, six months, years going forward and if these talks fail? And to Michael also, I would add that there's a question that I answered on Max's point. Can Putin really walk away? And what does history teaches us, right, about similar aggressive dictators who started the wars that they cannot win, but they cannot also accept the defeat?
To me, where I come from, I haven't traced Putin's behavior towards Ukraine. And I'm currently working on my second book manuscript where I trace a lot of history between Putin and the region. What's the book called, Maria? Time to plug it. Cargers Decide All. It's Stalin's quote about how the elites, the employees is all that matters. And basically, my point is that goes way beyond Putin alone.
We cannot over-focus too much on just his unfortunate personality, given that since literally the first day of post-Soviet Russia, the new imperialist revanchist ambition was very much there, but there was no resources and there was high representation of the pro-Western groups within the Kremlin establishment, which sort of moderated some of these intentions, but they were very much there.
Putin actually started talking about Ukraine basically as he came to power. And he said repeatedly, as many of the authors who I cite report, that we should do something about Ukraine, otherwise we'll lose it. Since the early days, it was way before the 2008-2004, literally as he came to power.
But the point being is that this intention remains there consistently. And unfortunately, the key decision makers in Russia do not seem to be updating their priors towards Ukraine. This was one really shocking thing for me in 2022, that while we anticipated the war
The way it unraveled still signals that despite 2014 and 15 and the resistance that the Kremlin's sort of aggressive intentions faced from the side of the Ukrainian public, there was still this naive belief that they will be welcomed with flowers and bread by Ukrainian citizens.
Citizens allegedly feel liberated by the horrible Nazi rule. So basically, there is no way, no updating of the priors. The prior believes within the Kremlin establishment, no matter what. And like if it didn't happen before, there's unfortunately few reasons to believe it happened now.
Bad news for Ukraine that this intent to occupy co-opt one way or another under false pretexts will continue. And in our other analysis, looking at the social economic indicators, we see that unfortunately, as of now, Putin still has resources to keep going for at least a couple of years. Economically, he registered the economic model, reshuffled
Somewhat, the elite created the new winners of the situation, stakeholders within the society, within the elites. And this model, while it's really inefficient and it happens at the expense of the long-term Russia's modernization and long-term, basically, development, in the short term is successful. And it's successful to the extent that not even at least partial sanctions are lifted.
or some other major challenges that it may face, like for example, will growth slow down, is likely to alter this model. It will be sustainable. Same on the societal side. Unfortunately, we see that the society acquiesces and in fact accepts the new realities. The more Russians lose,
in this war, including their own family members, if anything, that actually makes them more committed to this cause because there's no way all these deaths and losses were in vain. We also see that despite the fact that not even, not the society and not even Russians who are fighting,
the soldiers know what they're fighting for. There's not a single option that gets majority of the answers and it was just another poll published by Verska publication that shows that not a single option as to the real reasons of the war gets more than 20% of support. So they don't know what they're fighting for, but they're fighting for it
whatever it is, for three years in a row. And given the sustainability of this model, this is likely to continue. The only potential problem for Putin that is more imminent is the stocks in reserves. We know that they are being depleted, that this war has been primarily fought for refurbished Soviet era weapons up to 70% deployed on the battlefield. And they're running through the stocks. At least half of the stocks has been already depleted and probably the best part.
So the really picture that emerges from this for Ukraine is not ideal. There is still, you know, resources to keep going on the Russian side. At the same time, these resources are not permanent. They're not forever. They're being exhausted gradually. And the only answer to this aggression is the military. And so we can see that, unfortunately, there is no similarly diplomatic answer as long as current elites remain on hold of power in Russia. So two points, I think. The first one is...
or transatlantic one, and you're asking Max about what to anticipate or maybe what to worry about in the future. And I think that my, if I had to guess, I think President Trump will go in circles on this and we'll just get kind of a muddle and it won't be this and it won't be that and he'll keep his options open and perhaps lose attention without making any
hard and fast decision about what to do about Ukraine. So that would be my prediction. But if it goes in a somewhat more radical direction, and if President Trump would really decide to withdraw U.S. support, including targeting and intelligence, I think that there's a huge problem that crystallizes almost immediately for Europe. And this is the question of deterrence writ large. And it may be that in the minds of the Trump administration, you can
you know sell ukraine short and do that as a way of shoring up nato i think that there would be people in the trump administration who argue that perhaps secretary rupio would would make that claim in internal conversations but i'm not sure that that's how it would work in actuality and so having connected ukraine to european security in the biden years
And then breaking that connection for the U.S., I think a lot of Europeans and Russia would try to be trying to figure out, well, where is the line? What does deterrence mean? How much integrity does NATO have? Let's remember that Vice President Vance said that he could withdraw the Article 5 commitment or the U.S. could withdraw the Article 5 commitment.
If the EU doesn't make certain business decisions about Tesla, I can't quite remember what the details were, but he made that. The Digital Services Act. Right. Made that sort of statement that Article 5 is negotiable. And you've gotten that message from a number of other people in the Trump administration. So what does deterrence look like?
in the event of Ukraine that's not supported by the US and in the event of the US that's not quite clear about how committed it is to European security. And I would worry a lot about Russia testing the lines in that regard. And so that's what I would worry about. Not predict exactly, but worry about. And as to the question of Putin being able to withdraw from Ukraine, it is true that he has a dominance over the Russian media landscape and there are lots of different arguments he could make. And
No doubt there's some face-saving thing that could be done perhaps with Crimea, where Russia would stay in Crimea, but withdraw from the other parts of Ukraine. But I'm really skeptical. I think Putin bet his presidency on the war. And the problem is that if Putin admits even half defeat...
let's say he does kind of retract back to Crimea and try to hold on to that and give up on the rest, not only is Ukraine going to walk into the arms of Europe, it's probably going to run into the arms of Europe and Europe will be delighted to receive Ukraine. And I don't see how in Russia that's not perceived. I'm not just thinking of people who are nationalistic and super pro-Putin. I don't see how that would be perceived in Russia as anything other than a humiliation and kind of a disaster for Russia. It's like Russia would no longer be a
a European power in that scenario. And so what did all these people die for, going back to Maria's question? If that's a hard question to answer now, when Russia can still be imagined as the victor in the war, it's a really hard question to ask if there's some version of defeat that people have to accept. And Putin here, I know we've discussed this in previous conversations in this format, Putin has promised not just, you know, getting through, muddling through, he's promised victory.
And he's done it again with the appearance of Trump. Oh, now finally we have an American president who, as Foreign Minister Lavrov says, thinks as we do, which I don't think is the case. But that's the claim that Putin is making. So we're that much closer to, quote unquote, winning in Ukraine. So those promises make it...
exceptionally difficult, in addition to the obvious factors of Putin's vanity and ego. And as Maria says, you know, an authoritarian ruler who doesn't want to lose a war, all of that is primary. But I think he's boxed in. It's awful to contemplate for what it means for the poor civilians of Ukraine, but he's boxed in. Maybe just a few thoughts. I think
This sort of strikes me of how do we quit Ukraine? It's sort of like, how do you quit a job? Do you quit that job by shaking your boss's hand on the way out and say, you know, I really enjoyed working here, but time for new opportunities? Or do you sort of slash and burn as you go and you steal some office supplies as you're leaving? And I think how we quit really matters because do we quit by basically just telling the Ukrainians like, look,
Talks are going nowhere. We're done. We lose patience. We walk away. We're not going to go to Congress to ask for $50 billion more for Ukraine support. I think everyone accepts that. But do we continue with the military deliveries? Now, this is when Congress passed the supplemental budget for Ukraine last April. The Biden administration worked really hard to spend all that money down right before they left office.
And there's lots of money that was spent in previous years. And all that money is going, a lot of that money is going to U.S. defense contractors to build new systems. Those systems take a while to build. They get built and then they get delivered.
So a lot of that is still happening, especially throughout this year in 2025. And there's going to be a glide path down in U.S. support for Ukraine. But that should then give the Europeans a degree of time to try to figure out how to backfill or maybe the Ukrainians approach us and try to buy weapon systems. Do we still sell stuff to Europe and Ukraine to then support Ukraine? So allow those transfers to happen. So real questions there about Ukraine.
Do we enable deliveries and do we enable the continued arming of Ukraine, even if we're not paying for it? And what happened after the Oval Office meeting is we cut that off. And then we also cut off the intel sharing, which is very crucial for the Ukrainians to know what they're shooting at and know how to target. And then the other issue is sanctions, which we'll turn to in a second. But do we keep that turned on or do we turn that off?
I do think that negotiations have been useful in clarifying for the Ukrainians in one respect, and that there was a division, I think, a real split happening between the Ukrainians and the Biden administration, where I think the Biden administration was coming to the view, a sort of more pessimistic take,
that look, Ukraine, you're not going to quote unquote win the war. You're not going to be able to take back a bunch of territory. And the Ukrainian vision was, well, if we punch them here, if we do the Kursk offensive, that we can maybe throw Russia really off balance and that can have a cascading effect. And Ukrainians were hopeful of winning, right?
Now they've had to shift a focus to just not losing, to entrenching. And the Russians are just keep coming at them, right? Keep coming at them and just dying in waves. Much easier to defend in this war than to try to take territory. And that gives Ukraine, I think, a strategic advantage. They're building a lot of drones. And I think the hopeful case here
is that Russia, in sort of a burst of optimism, continues on with this fruitless offensive that they're doing, makes very little headway. And the Europeans, recognizing that now they are holding the bag for supporting Ukraine, really do step up. And I'm a European, a Euro optimist. And I tend to think that what happens when you really test the European Union, what happens is it does whatever it takes to survive, to quote Mario Draghi.
And that Europe can step up here, maybe not fully, maybe not replace a lot of what the U.S. is doing, but enough to make it so that any Russian offensives are fruitless and that Ukraine can hold on. And then the hope would be that they wear the Russians out and then perhaps...
That leads to changes inside of Russia. Maybe Ukraine can go on the counteroffensive, or maybe it just holds the line enough that this war basically comes to an end. So I think the way I see it is how we kind of leave really matters because it will determine how much of a gap is created. But I'm now somewhat optimistic that the Ukrainians can hold on even if we begin to turn off support. But maybe that's a potential segue to the U.S.-Russia conflict.
negotiations that seem to be happening on somewhat parallel tracks. There's stuff happening in Saudi Arabia between with Ukraine and the administration, Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Waltz were meeting with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia over the ceasefire. But really, it seems like the track that is getting the most headway is just Witkoff, the special envoy talking with the Russians. There's a lot of talk
it seems like about economic deals. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund had his sanctions pause so he could come and visit Washington and talk with the administration, I guess, about sanctions relief. And there's talk about a big economic deal with Russia.
Michael, maybe how do you see this playing out? Maria, maybe then your take on what is there to be gained economically? Is there anything to be gained? And what would sanctions alleviation potentially mean for Russia? Well, I try to understand the White House in its terms. And the best I can do in this regard is that
for President Trump there are countries that matter and there are countries that don't really matter and I think by that calculus Russia is certainly a country that matters nuclear weapons you know maybe not one of the world's biggest economies but a big player in a number of arenas and Ukraine is one of those countries that doesn't really matter and so if Ukraine doesn't matter and Russia does then it makes more sense to do business with Russia in the broadest sense of what it might mean to
to do business. And obviously, in terms of personal relations, I think it just goes more easily for Trump with Putin than it does with
So that's what the best I can do to understand maybe the underlying reason for this. There might be a whole array of benefits that come from a normalization of relations with Russia. But to switch from the White House perspective to my own perspective, I don't see where any of this really goes. You know, let's imagine that there is a lifting of sanctions and a normalization on the business front. If you're ExxonMobil, do you want to go to Russia and make a big investment if the Democrats could come back in a few years?
and unwind that is russia a very attractive business environment when you have americans being held hostage for political purposes okay maybe not under trump but that was happening recently is there rule of law and are you going to get the return on your investment or is the russian government going to gobble it up i mean i don't think that you know american businesses are going to rush are going to rush back in so it's hard for me to see where the gain is in that respect and i think also the trump administration in my view has not updated
its analysis of Russia to accommodate the realities of the present moment. And so the Trump administration is never going to have a great relationship with
Iran are never going to have a great relationship with North Korea. Those two countries are pillars of the Russian war effort. So tensions with those countries are not going to make it easier to deal with Russia. It's going to make it in some ways harder. And the China factor, I don't know, that deserves a podcast of its own. It could go many different ways. It's complicated. But I don't think that US-China, given that there's a trade war in the works, is going to make it easier for the US to normalize relations with Russia. So the problem
problem of Russia, such as it is, is not just an individual Russia problem. It's a global problem. And there's a whole array of global relationships, I think, that are going to prevent Trump from moving toward a real normalization with Russia, not to mention Republicans on Capitol Hill, who I think are not going to follow the White House in this issue, as they did not in Trump's first term, and are kind of waiting at the moment to see what happens, but could
continue sanctions on Russia and could create a couple of roadblocks for Trump to normalize relations with Russia. So Trump really also has to contend with his own domestic political environment, which on this issue, not on all issues, there's a lot of, you know, bowing down to Trump at the moment. But on this issue, I think there would be friction.
Yeah, certainly echo Michael's points. In Trump's defense somewhat, it wouldn't be the first U.S. president or the second first U.S. president to try... Or the third or the fourth, yeah. To try the reset with Russia. In fact, we've seen this pattern one way or another pretty much under every single one in the last 30 years. And so the irony of this situation is that it would tip the situation despite the attempted detente, reset,
at the start always end up in the worst place by the end of this presidential term. I don't see a lot of reasons to see why this time the situation will be different for the reasons that Michael has described. The only point I'd make is that seemingly, if you try to make sense of a lot of things that the new administration of the United States has tried to do in the first 100 days,
you see the one particular issue there is China, right? It seems to be that China is this one factor that tends to make sense account of all this diverse array of policies in the sense that even tariffs, even effort to take or impose the divination of neighboring states, I think all have to do with the perception of growing national security threat that China represents and trying to tackle it. And I think when we think of the effort to normalize relationship with China,
Beyond Trump's own inclination that Michael has described, we see also the understanding of the threat that the alliance of China and Russia represent. Because Russia has resources, China needs those resources, and China is a national security threat to the United States. In fact, in certain weapons categories, it does surpass the United States. It's a few, not a lot, but there are reasons to be concerned.
And it is becoming more assertive. We have just seen that they recently made this temporary...
to control of an island, a nearby sea and whatnot. So that is one reason that why, again, we probably see this attempt at reverse Nixon. But for the reasons that Michael has discussed, it's unlikely to succeed. Just one number that Russia's trade with China is currently about 70 times larger than its trade with the United States. I think it's a very impressive number that tells you all you need to know on top of the geopolitical alliance and whatnot. I'm going to push back a little bit. I think that the whole...
that what they're trying to do is sort of the reverse Kissinger. And this is, you know, there was folks in the Biden administration that sort of thought this as well at the beginning, engaging with Putin, that they were going to put Russia to the side. I don't think that's the defining motivation of the Trump administration here. I think it is more that Trump,
doesn't want to deal with this war. He has an affinity towards Russia and believes that there's a lot of wealth in Russia. There's a lot of the Russian oligarch class that's invested in a lot of real estate, including his properties in the past. And I think he sees Russia as more powerful and important. And why bother with this democracy thing with Ukraine? And that
What you then have are foreign policy hands trying to then create a rationale for something that is very White House driven, very president driven about wanting to have a better relationship with Putin, something that he's been very consistent about since sort of emerging as a political figure since 2016, 2015. And he's been very consistent about it.
And so because of that, I think we're going forward with trying to do a deal with Russia, an economic deal with Russia, when what Russia produces is fossil fuels. And we produce now fossil fuels. So we're in some ways competitors. And it would be great if we could take Russia's fossil fuels off the market, actually. It would be good for U.S. producers.
I think there's probably some commodities and other things that we could buy. But Michael, your point about U.S. businesses pouring back into Russia if we eliminate sanctions,
There's a great new book out by our former colleague, my former office mate as well in the policy planning staff, Eddie Fishman, who will be on this podcast shortly called Choke Points, where Eddie points out that after the Iran sanctions, that after the JCPOA was negotiated, the Iranians were like, oh, great. Now all the businesses are going to be coming back. The businesses that were once here in Iran and investing are going to be pouring back in. And then no one came because everyone's like, well,
Could disagreement be torn up? There's still some laws on the books that we don't quite know where all the money we're going is invested. Maybe some of it's going to Hezbollah and we could be prosecuted. We had all these fines that happened. We don't want to deal with that. And then plus you have a situation where are the Europeans going to get rid of sanctions? No. I mean, when everyone points to Hungary, like, oh, the Hungarians may stop this.
Sanctions have been in place from the European Union for the last 10 years. And every six months, they have to be rolled over. That gives the Hungarians a sort of hostage-taking opportunity. The EU has also done 16, I think, 16 sanctions packages. And the Hungarians know that if they were to block this, it...
the hammer comes dropping down on them. And what happens is that the Europeans, the EU knows how to work around the Hungarians. And on some things, it's not worth it. If there's a resolution on the South China Sea, okay, the Hungarians block it, fine. But on this, I think the EU would be very firm. And so if you're a US company looking to do business in Russia,
And the EU still has sanctions in place. And if Democrats come back and take Congress, could they do another cats of sanctions as Democrats did in 2017, which had a two-thirds majority, which then Trump signed
because that had a veto-proof majority. So you could have Congress put sanctions back in place that would require some Republicans to participate. But in two years, you don't know where you're going to be. And to make major investments into Russia strikes me as not a great bet. So even if we remove sanctions to have some sort of deal...
And I think the Russians must know this, that economically that may not bring the windfall that they're in fact hoping for. Can I just jump into that, Max? To your first point, is there any of the current moment is that it's much easier to make sense of Putin's motivations than it is to make sense of the motivations of the U.S. administration? I'm just giving them some credit given that they do have these China folks within the coalition that do seem to be leaning in that direction, but there certainly are other influences too.
But certainly, and the spoiler alert, we actually have a forthcoming report precisely devoted to the possibility, the impact of the possible sanctions relief. And the irony of the situation, and perhaps the most shocking discovery for me personally, was that the sanctions lift,
partial as you described, most likely, if any at all, is unlikely to alter the situation because the realities that we find ourselves in, and that is something I think that is actually hard to understand to some members of this administration who came to power with the assumption that the world is like it used to be before 2022. But the world is very different now. And even a partial incremental lift of sanctions
to the extent that's possible, to the executive branch in the United States is unlikely to change this new status quo that unfortunately is pushing us towards formation of these two alternative blocks almost with whatever remains of the Western alliance.
I have to say that on the one side and this shaping alternative reality with sanctions or convention and some other opportunities available that is offered by this autocratic axis. I think the main question is who is going to be part of that axis. Is China really going to be like hardcore
part of it or they will be like partly still continue to benefit from the existing order. And ironically also we've seen some of the reports coming from the Russian officials trying to sort of encourage the Russian businesses concerned about sanctions lift that it's not going to be as bad as they imagined because the sanctions the new relatives have created new own beneficiaries as I mentioned before and not everybody
Russia is excited about the possibility of facing fierce competition coming from, for example, Western companies now. So exactly, it's a very new reality that's unlikely to deliver along the lines that I think many in the US administration imagine it. Let's take the conversation down a darker road at the moment. Not that anything we've discussed for the last hour or so has been particularly cheering or bright, but
maybe it's not about sanctions and maybe it's not about business and maybe it's not about real estate or even president trump's personal affinity for putin maybe it's about something else which would take us back to the second inaugural address of president trump maybe we can say with a bit more clarity what president trump's motivations are in this regard in that address which is a blueprint for many of the actions that have been taken
President Trump emphasized the need to expand the territory of the United States. And what followed immediately on the heels of that inaugural address was, what is it, hostilities, tensions between the United States and Denmark over Greenland, and repeated claims up until a few days ago that Canada should be the 51st state of the United States. And we could dismiss this perhaps as political theater. That may be the case. My instinct is that the borders of the U.S. are going to be in 2028 what they are at the present moment. But this is Trump's
willed destruction of the liberal international order. That for great powers such as Russia, perhaps China, the United States, not the EU, I would imagine in this scheme, they write the rules. And so you're accepting, you're sort of acknowledging the annexation of Crimea, perhaps as a negotiating point, but also as an indication of how the rules are going to be for Russia and for the United States. And so in that sense, there is a kind of logic to
to all of this. It's not that one as an American citizen I would endorse. I don't think it's the road that the U.S. should be going down. I would dream of a very different international order, but that is almost staring us in the face at the moment. And it's such a radical proposition in some ways that it's almost hard to accept or to acknowledge. But there it is, you know, to be...
picked apart and read in front of us. To continue on the dark path as we close out, it does strike me that there is a question of do we sort of flip sides, right? We had sort of shifted from being a firm backer of Ukraine to...
The question is, are we sort of a neutral arbiter or are we sort of on Russia's side in some ways in ending this and trying to end this war? We seem to be taking Russia's arguments very carefully on board, putting a lot of pressure on Ukraine. And then what is currently being planned right now at the Pentagon are major troop withdrawals from Europe.
And does that become part of some sort of broader U.S.-Russia conversation about European security? And then when you talk about Greenland and Denmark, I mean, we already have a military base there. It would not...
be out of the realm of now imagination that a little American green men sort of materialize in July at some point. And that would mean the end of the NATO Alliance, because if you try to occupy and take the territory of a NATO member, then you're not really adhering to any Article 5 commitment. And so I think there is this question of, is this a true divorce in the US-NATO, US-European relationship? And does that sort of go hand in hand with US-Russia relations?
And I think, you know, even if you were going to say, okay, well, you know, it could make sense to re-engage Russia. I think as we noted, economically, I just don't see what's really in it for us. Geopolitically, I don't really see what's in it for us. But we could be on that path where looking at spheres of influence and the Europeans with their sort of pesky social democracy and, you know, their rules on tech regulation are things that we just can't abide by. So I think
All of this will really then determine – be really important for Ukraine because then it will determine how Europe views its own security, what level of investment, what level of reorganization it's making, and what level of commitment. And I think in all of those scenarios, actually –
Ukraine may be in an OK position because any sort of divorce in the transatlantic relationship, I think, would necessitate a corresponding reaction on the European level. And they've already sort of hugged Ukraine enough that I don't think they're just letting Ukraine sort of drift in the wind is sort of where I see them going. I worry more at the moment about Europe than I do about Ukraine.
Ukraine and Liana Fix and I have a piece coming out in Foreign Affairs tomorrow that articulates why we're so worried about Europe. I will just add that from the autocratic perspective, the Russian slide into that direction cannot be credible because there's just too many institutions and uncertainties. So
you know, what are the autocrats United to do? They cannot really trust the United States to be credible on that side. And maybe that's good news for Ukraine. Michael, I look forward to reading your picture, your piece with Liana and probably violently disagreeing with it because I'm quite optimistic actually about, about the future of Europe right now. Uh, but there's always, you know, Europe's always very complicated. You can find reasons for hope and for pessimism at the same time. Uh,
Much as the way I think in looking at the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining us on Russian Roulette. Always great to be with you both. As always, thank you to our listeners for tuning in. If you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to our show and to give us a five-star rating. Additionally, be sure to check out our sister podcast, The Europhile, where I will violently disagree with Michael and Liana Fix's piece coming out in Foreign Affairs.
Good for business. Yeah, you can find the Eurofile wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time. You've been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon. Russian Roulette releases new episodes every two weeks on Thursdays and is available wherever you get your podcasts. So please subscribe and share our episodes online. And be sure to check out all the latest analysis by the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at csis.org.