Trump edition: America's embrace of Russia and how to end a war
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A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move faster, he's not going to have a country left. Gotta move, gotta move fast, because that war is going in the wrong direction. Right now, all eyes are on Washington, but who's actually watching Europe at the moment? We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. At this point, I spent a lot of time with the president, and not

I'm Venetia Raney and this is Battlelines. It's Friday, 21st February 2025. How do you end a war?

Is there a fair way to do it, particularly if neither side has been militarily defeated? And who gets to decide? These are the questions we'll be trying to answer today with the help of Professor Sir Lawrence Friedman, the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. We'll be discussing Ukraine, Gaza and whether Europe is heading for another big power-hot war. He'll also give a very definitive answer to the age-old cliché that all wars end in negotiations. But first, it's been a busy week. Let's get the view from America.

This week saw the eruption of a very public spat between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Washington took the unprecedented step of starting negotiation talks with Moscow and without Kyiv. Trump even went as far as accusing Zelensky of being a dictator, something that's been roundly refuted by European leaders. So why has he turned against Zelensky? What's behind his embrace of Russia? And crucially, is his view shared by Americans?

To help us make sense of it all, we're joined again by our woman in Washington, Katie O'Neill. Welcome to Battlelines, Katie. Can you start by walking us through this Trump-Zelensky spat? Why is Trump so angry at the Ukrainian leader? I'll take you back to the crux of this row, which is the exclusion of the Ukrainians and Zelensky from these talks, which happened in Riyadh earlier on in the week.

So you had Russian negotiators and US negotiators meeting for the first time in Saudi Arabia to start to get the beginnings of a peace deal together. No Ukrainians were invited to this meeting, which justifiably Zelensky was quite disappointed in. And he went on to suggest that Donald Trump was operating in a sphere of disinformation.

In response to that, Trump says that Zelensky is a dictator without elections. And the White House subsequently said that the US president was responding directly to that remark from Zelensky, suggesting that the US negotiators and Trump were suggesting that Trump and the US negotiators were taking in and digesting and pirating perhaps some Russian disinformation.

That dictator line in particular has really riled up European leaders and the reaction has largely been horror here on this side of the Atlantic. But I'm really interested to hear what's the reaction been like over there? Yeah, so it's sort of what you would expect. The Democrats aren't happy with it, but the Republicans are largely falling into line. Lindsay Graham, who is a Republican ally of the president, they play golf together, was the only member of his party that

sort of very gently suggested that he was at odds with the US president's position. He said that Zelensky was in fact not a dictator. This is sort of rowing in behind him. But apart from that, there has been, as has been the case with everything that Trump has been doing in the past month, very little dissent from his own party. Domestically, it's not playing out as a massive issue, which is

kind of in keeping with this flooding the zone tactic that the administration is carrying out. There is just so much news and so much domestic news that it is getting airtime here, but it's not always at any given moment that the biggest issue dominating headlines by virtue of the span of news that is coming out by the moment, by the hour. Yeah, that's fascinating because it's definitely been the story of the week.

over here. How do Americans more broadly feel about the Ukraine war? I'm looking at some recent YouGov stats that show that most Americans, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, sympathize with Ukraine over Russia, and they like Zelensky more than they like Putin. Is that broadly reflective, or are moods starting to change towards the Ukraine war?

I think the key thing here is distinguishing support for Ukraine and financial support for Ukraine. So I think broadly, the American public and polls bear this out, are in support of Ukraine over Russia. They blame Russia for this war, recent polling suggests.

However, they are increasingly, and particularly in Republican circles, reluctant to spend any more U.S. taxpayers' dollars on defense aid for Ukraine. So that's the key thing. And it's very prescient. Obviously, you've got Elon Musk and his

Department of Government Efficiency looking to reduce spending across the board in federal agencies. And you're seeing a growing number of layoffs by government workers or for government workers. And the bottom line is the bottom line. They're trying to reduce the government's budget majorly. And so defense spending and defensive aid for Ukraine is a natural target.

We had J.D. Vance speaking at the CPAC conference, the conservative conference, reiterating the sentiment saying that, you know, the objective of the Trump administration is to make sure that American taxpayer money is being spent in America. So I think that that's sort of what it comes down to. It's, you know,

I'm not sure that support for the Ukrainian cause is dwindling in the States, but increasingly support for the taxpayer funding, the defensive operation there is starting to reduce. I guess so much of it comes down to as well, you know, how important you think that Ukraine aid is for national security. And

According to YouGov polling, about four in 10 Americans say that supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia does help U.S. national security. But, you know, in Britain, we have something like two thirds, 65 percent of Britons think that Russia will come back for more of Ukraine or of another European country. That's a much more immediate threat.

When you speak to Americans about national security threats, is Russia the number one bogeyman in their imagination? When you speak to people, China is the territory that might come up a little bit more often in terms of a foreign threat.

Trump is perceived as being softer on Russia than his predecessor, Joe Biden, and that's sort of playing out in his re-establishing channels of communication with Vladimir Putin and with the wider Russian administration. So perhaps that sort of growing relationship building is feeding into the public consciousness already and the level of perceived threat level from Russia.

And you alluded to it a bit earlier, but how much does this break down on party political lines? The thing with this, with Donald Trump's Republican Party, he's got his party in check and they're following his line on almost everything that he's doing.

I think it's fair to say that this is, you know, and it bears out in the polls too, that the Democrats tend to be more supportive, both electorally, you know, elected Democrats and also members of the public that lean Democrat. I've got some Pew research here from February 14th.

Looking at the support among voters, and Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the US is providing too much support to Ukraine. So it's not just Donald Trump's party that tend to share his views on Russia. It seems to be his voters also. And how much should we read to this, what's being described here as cosying up to Russia? Is this a major realignment of US policy towards Russia or...

To what extent are Trump's views shared by his cabinet and will we see sort of policy being enacted on the basis of it?

One of the key things that came out of this Saudi Arabia meeting earlier on in the week was that something that they have agreed to is to begin re-establishing some ties. So there's a suggestion that there is going to be restaffing of the respective embassies in Moscow and in Washington. And we're going to start seeing some talk on geopolitical issues and also economic ties there.

So not only are these talks a huge moment for the war in Ukraine, it's also an incredibly big moment for relations between the US and Russia, which have been incredibly stagnant over the past few years owing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And just finally, as I mentioned, it's been the big story over here, but what's been the big story over in the US this week? What else have people been talking about?

How long have you got? There's so many big stories here. Doge cost-cutting remains a huge area of interest and Elon Musk

And his role in the government, whether or not he's a government employee and how wide his scope is, is something that is playing out a lot in the left wing media. Questions over his role and whether, you know, there's overreach there or...

potential conflicts of interest in the department that he's going into and gutting the budget of and in some instances getting rid of some federal workers there. That remains a big issue. We had Elon and Donald Trump do their first sit-down interview during the week, which is quite thin on news lines but thick with

Brotherly affection. We had Musk saying that he loved the president and the interview was perhaps most insightful for the display between the two men. Interesting. And as you said, CPAC is underway now. Is that still the pinnacle of conservative political thought in America or now that Trump is president, is it kind of a sideshow?

Very much so. I think that CPAC will sort of be a victory lap for Republicans. You know, we've just seen J.D. Vance, I'm talking to you on Thursday, we've just seen J.D. Vance come onto the stage and he's still heralding the win of Donald Trump with him on the ticket last November. Yeah, I do think it's as relevant as ever. We're expecting Donald Trump to appear on Saturday at the conference and speak.

And it's just been announced this morning that Elon Musk is also going to appear in some capacity at some point. So the who's who of the Republican Party are very much going to assemble there. Great. One to keep an eye on and we'll return to it next Friday. Thank you so much for joining us. That's Katie O'Neill, our Deputy Foreign Editor in Washington. Coming up after the break, I talk to Sir Lawrence Friedman about how to end wars and whether they really do or finish up with negotiations. Welcome back.

To zoom out a bit and get a wider view of not just the Ukraine conflict, but other wars around the world and how they end, I'm joined now by Professor Sir Lawrence Friedman, the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London. Welcome to Battlelines, Sir Lawrence. If this week's events are anything to go by, Trump is set to make some sort of deal with Putin that looks like it will be highly favourable to Russia. Is this how you expected the Ukraine war potentially to come to an end? Well, I thought...

It could come to end in a variety of ways. The least likely was a decisive victory by one side, at least after the first six months. I think things were very fluid then. But since then, as both sides have found ways to block the other from making rapid progress, it was never likely to end simply with a military breakthrough. It could sort of peter out. That's still a possibility. Just exhaustion.

So it's always likely that at some point there would be a negotiation. There would be one last year at some point. The difficulty is that the war hasn't ended. We still don't know what form any deal will take, if there is a deal at all. I think the Russians are sort of quite excited at the moment that they may get a lot more of what they want. But if you avoid getting too distracted by Trump, which is obviously difficult, then

What the American negotiators have said doesn't suggest this is going to be quick or easy at all. And I can't see how it could be because the positions of Ukraine and Russia are incompatible. And Zelensky, in the end, has still got to agree a deal. And Zelensky is not without bargaining position. And some suggestions are...

in a lot of the discussion of this issue, that the Ukrainians are completely on the back foot. I just don't think that's the case. Obviously, if the Americans completely turn against them, then that's a real difficulty, but we're not there yet. So I don't know yet how this war will end. I think something will come out soon.

of all of this, but I'm by no means sure. Therefore, the question becomes who gets the blame if it fails? And that's why I think the latest spat between Trump and Zelensky is potentially damaging.

But Trump's mind moves on very quickly. So also be careful not reading too much into it. We know that unfair settlements from war can sometimes lay the groundwork for future wars. Obviously, World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, imposition of massive German reparations is a very famous example.

I'm wondering if Trump and Putin do go ahead and make a deal over Zelensky's head that forces Ukraine to give up territory that has been taken by Russia since the full-scale invasion or since 2014, for that matter. What consequences do you think we could see further down the line looking to history, for examples? So it's a good question and a difficult one. I mean, the best guide to a future war is that there's been a past war.

Most ceasefires are negotiated with a view to what happens if the ceasefire is broken. And there certainly won't be any exception on both sides, which is why I don't think Putin will be very excited about the idea of Western troops in Ukraine. And obviously, Zelensky wants serious guarantees against repetition of past Russian behavior, which is to ignore promises that they've made to Ukraine. That's just a starting point.

The territorial issue is possibly less important than the guarantees issue, although that depends how it's worked out. In a sense, I think many Ukrainians realize in current circumstances it's going to be very difficult to liberate a lot of their occupied territory. Now, a ceasefire makes that a little bit easier than a full peace deal because, as with Crimea, you don't have to accept...

that the annexation is legal or permanent. You just have to accept it's reality of the moment.

Second problem is if you look at what Putin actually wants, he wants more territory. He wants the administrative boundaries of the four oblasts in addition to Crimea that he's claimed for Russia. And he hasn't got them yet in some way away from taking them. I think historians looking back at last year will see this is the biggest failure of the Russian military offensive when they had a lot going for them. They were unable to

to push Ukraine back as far as they thought they were. And of course, Ukraine has got a chunk, a lot trivial, of Kursk. So the territorial settlement in these circumstances is quite difficult. I'm sure Zelensky's got absolutely no intention of conceding more through negotiations to Putin.

So that's one issue. The next issue is obviously the security guarantees. And then you've got not just security guarantees, but Putin also wants the disarmament of Ukraine. He wants limits on their armed forces. Again, there's no way that's going to be accepted. And of course, the more it's accepted, the more Western powers have to guarantee Ukraine's security in the future because they wouldn't be able to defend themselves.

So these are why I'm hesitant to say that we're close to a deal. If you look at what Trump has said, but more importantly, what many of his aides like Marco Rubio and Mike Walsh have said, they want to start with a ceasefire. That's not what Putin has asked for. Putin has asked for a full peace deal to be followed by a ceasefire. He doesn't want issues left in the open because if you actually look at what Putin gains by this,

Sure, he's got 20% of Ukraine's territory. That's a bitter loss for Ukraine and immensely painful for the people who live there. But it's a wreck. He's wrecked it. A very interesting piece in Foreign Affairs recently about Ukraine

the economy is at a complete standstill in the occupied territories. People have left, there's no investment, there's a massive cleanup operation, a massive reconstructive operation. So Putin ends up with that and still has to police it against partisan warfare and still has to man over a thousand kilometers of border in defense. That's why I think

I mean, the tendency to underestimate the problem, some of the proposals that are on the table, those were booted. If you zoom out a bit, and as a historian, rather than as a journalist, you have, I hope, the luxury to do that a little bit and try and think about the significance of weeks like this. Simon Sharma, for example, this week posted that the photo of Rubio sitting opposite Lavrov and Riyad will forever be fixed in the historical album of infamous capitulations.

Does it feel like this is one of those weeks that will sit in history books and that we'll reflect on for decades to come? I think it's too easy and too quick to say that. Again, I always make a point of reading what people actually say rather than how it looks. And Rubio said it's going to take a long time. It's difficult.

They've also said that Ukraine should remain a sovereign state and so on. You know, this isn't the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or something like that. You know, the association with Munich, I think, was unfortunate because it leads to too easy headlines. You know, it may end up as a day of infamy, but I think that underestimates the challenge that actually the American negotiators face, even if they wanted to completely sell out. Look, at some point, if somebody was going to be talking to the Russians,

And it was almost inevitably from the Russian perspective, going to have to be the Americans. And, you know, Schultz and Macron and so on have had similar comments made when they've tried to talk to Putin. I don't think we should get overexcited about the fact that they're talking. It was a bit too jovial for my taste, but there you are. You've really got to look at the positions and at the practicalities.

And the fact is that the Ukrainians will, if there's going to be a deal, have to accept something that's very difficult for them in terms of territory. And they're not necessarily going to feel very happy with the security arrangements that follow. But that's still going to be possibly not enough for the Russians. You know, one of the things people are also missing is the broader demands that Lavrov was making about

which the Russians have talked about all the way through and when this, after the Trump-Putin phone call again, which is, you know, the root causes, the whole European security structure. Now, if I was going to really worry, I'd say, well, some of the things Trump has said about NATO in the past, and which co-president Musk seems to be saying overnight,

are worrying. I mean, do you have complete abandonment of NATO? But, you know, again, if you look at American politics, and you're about to start on a big trade wars as well, there's only so much disruption that you can manage at any time. And there's no support for that in the US. Paris is possibly a different matter.

I think we need to stay cool on this without minimizing the dangers or, you know, objecting to some of the things that are being said. And I think when Trump spouts a load of nonsense about blaming Ukraine for the war, talking about Zelensky as an illegitimate president, I mean, these are Russian talking points. But Trump says he's not particularly because he believes them, but because of the effect he thinks they'll have at the time.

You know, we're still waiting to see the plan for Gaza. We're still waiting to see how Greenland's going to be bought. We're still waiting to see how Canada's going to be incorporated into the United States. He doesn't talk about those things much anymore. Not that he may combat them, but I think, you know, this is a very unusual administration, to say the least. I think it's hopeless that you have to spend all your time walking on eggshells when you get close to him and that

Political leaders can't say directly what they think. I don't know, does Trump any good because he is just spoken to by his courtiers. But there are realities in international politics and in the domestic politics of countries like Ukraine that are still going to be important and which Trump can't bend to his will.

nor Putin for that matter. There's an oft-repeated cliche that all wars end with negotiations. Do they? No, not at all. Lots of wars just pitter out. Some end with total capitulation. I mean, there wasn't a negotiation to end the Pacific War. There were concessions made afterwards, but these were American concessions, so there wasn't a negotiation to end the European War in 1945.

And then you can have lots of negotiations and even peace treaties that don't make any difference. My favorite statistic is always Sudan, which since independence in '56 has had 46 peace treaties to deal with their civil wars. So it's not true that all wars end with a negotiation.

Sometimes they end with side deals, sometimes they end with fragmentation of countries. There's no set pattern. It's a cliche, which is used to say, well, you might as well get on with the negotiations now. I mean, I think this war will need a negotiated conclusion at some point. Otherwise, it's pretty grim for many generations. But in practice...

you know it's going to be a reflection of the bargaining power of the various parties to a certain extent including the united states but also the europeans you know again i think people are very well aware of the problems of ukraine and mobilization in uh having been on the back foot for for some time but they never pay attention in this to the problems russia the economy which you know was going great guns for a couple of years literally great guns because it was a

war-fueled boom economy is now moving into stagflation. They've got real problems with investments in the civil sector. Note with quite a lot of the discussion in Riyadh was about economic opportunities of U.S.-Russian cooperation. So they've got those issues. And despite all the advantages, they made very little progress. They got slithers of Ukrainian land at enormous cost, cost to the Ukrainians as well, but enormous cost.

Ukraine still has a bit of a curse, and Ukraine is regularly hitting targets in Russia with long-range systems. So I don't think we can assume that Ukraine is wholly on the back foot at the moment. Actually, I mean, in many ways, the military balance in artillery and drones is more in their favor than it was a year ago.

Putin has got decisions to make as well. I think, again, one of the problems, the way this is being presented, is if all the difficult decisions rest with Zelensky. That just seems to be poor negotiating tactics.

Another war I'd be interested to get your views on how it could end is the Israel-Palestine conflict, but currently the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. We're in a sort of tentative ceasefire. All the remaining living hostages are set to be released this weekend, and then no one knows what will happen to the second phase of the ceasefire negotiations. How do you see it playing out realistically? This is very different from Ukraine because there is an end point.

But it's one that the Israelis struggle to accept. The advantages of doing a sub-stack is I can prove what I thought at any given time. Sometimes it was wrong. But my view from the start of this was that the natural solution to this was a Gaza that was run by neither Israel nor Hamas. And Israel really is no disaster on Gaza.

But because war aims were set by Netanyahu in terms of the elimination of Hamas, that at the moment it looks like a defeat for Israel. Because here they are negotiating with Hamas. Look back at why Hamas took the hostages. It was to get a lot of their people out of prison. Look what's happening at the moment. Now, of course, it's come at an enormous, horrible cost to people in Gaza. But Hamas, of course, they've lost a lot of their leaders. But Hamas doesn't feel that they're the losers.

And that's because when there have been opportunities to get the international community engaged, they haven't pushed this because anything would involve a Palestinian entity of some sort, with Palestinian leadership and in the governance. It has to be there, otherwise it's got no legitimacy at all.

And that's what the Saudis and the Emiratis and so on, and the Egyptians and the Jordanians will say. And Netanyahu has resisted all of this because he doesn't want a Palestinian state. Well, at some point, he's going to have to work this out.

And you then got the absurd Trump plan for depopulating Gaza in order to turn it into a real estate dream. As often with Trump, there's a sort of kernel of truth, not in pushing everybody into Egypt and Jordan, which would just destabilize both of those countries, but somehow you need a plan to rebuild. And it's sort of interesting that Trump has not supported Netanyahu as much as people

thought he might in sort of walking away from the current deal. I think it's largely Israeli politics here, but there's an element of, you know, the problem with Trump, or one of the issues with Trump, is he isn't actually in straightforward terms a warmonger. He doesn't particularly like being, wars going on or being part of them. His belief is economic. He's all for trade wars and economic coercion, but he's not really that interested in the use of armed force.

And that's why he's presented the future of Gaza, he's presented the future of everywhere in terms of an economic deal. So Netanyahu's got to work his way through that. So we're waiting for Israeli politics. But the view in Israel is this is not a good outcome in Gaza. Hezbollah, where Israel had limited aims, Israel was claimed to be successful. It broke the link between Hezbollah and Hamas.

And then as a result of that, Assad fell, which I think the Israelis thought that was a mixed blessing. But it weakens the Iranians, who in some ways are amongst one of the more fragile regimes in the area at the moment. And while we're very preoccupied with Ukraine and Gaza, there's a big issue coming up over the next few months with Iran and its nuclear program.

If you're going to get a deal, you need that by the 7th. Hard to be optimistic at the moment, but there's a very fragile regime with a leader who's ailing and may die any time. So the region has been very unsettled, and Trump unsounds it a bit more. And what may, in the end, decide what happens in Gaza may be far away from Gaza itself. But until Israel decides that it can live in Gaza forever,

with the governance structure which involves Palestinians, then we'll just carry on as we are with greater anarchy within Gaza and opportunities for Hamas to continue to re-establish itself. Looking at the sort of bigger picture, we've seen a lot of ignominious endings to wars for Western powers in recent years. Afghanistan, Iraq, the retreat of multinational forces from the Sahel.

Is the West in decline as a military power to be reckoned with? The problem is the West doesn't get defeated as such. It just decides these are pretty hopeless causes. And I think one of the things that will be weighing on Trump's mind is the backlash against the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It didn't have to happen in that way at that time. I mean, Trump wanted to get out of Afghanistan as much as Biden did.

And you can see why. Iraq is a much more complex story because Americans are still in Iraq. And the Sahel, the French were sort of kicked out. Russian mercenaries went in. It's still a mess. And Al-Qaeda is still gaining ground there. So you have a better understanding of the limits of military power.

And there are questions about whether the West can mobilize itself to take on the sort of challenges we took on last century. And of course, you do have nuclear weapons in the background, which make everybody a bit more cautious. So there are questions. The fact is, in any straight fight, wars are never just straight fights, the West wins.

They defeated the Taliban in 2001. They defeated the Iraqis in 1991 and 2003. The issue isn't sort of military capability per se. It's just getting the politics right, and that's where we've often failed. And it's a warning that hopefully others will take that,

Putin has demonstrated this in spades. The use of military force to resolve disputes in your favor is full of pitfalls and can backfire on you badly. And that was our experience in the end with Iraq. Then was Russian experience in Ukraine, whatever happens, man. That's interesting. So I guess my final question is, there's been so much talk recently of

us potentially entering another period of hot great power wars as we saw the beginning of the 20th century. The fear is that Russia having felt that it succeeded to take chunks out of Ukraine, having effectively annexed Belarus, is laying the groundwork to come back for more European countries and that we are preparing or we should be preparing for another major war in Europe.

Do you think that's likely? And do you think we could win it? The difficulty with a major war between the United States and its allies, assuming they're still with us, and Russia, is not that the West couldn't win that. Even without the Americans, they ought to be able to get themselves in a position to win. It's ridiculous that we think that's even an issue. But we have to do things, obviously, to improve our position. The issue is how far either side will push while you've got

the possibility of nuclear escalation. And that's why we're not fighting side by side with the Ukrainians at the moment, which in other times we might have done, which would have made life a lot simpler probably if the Russians had known from the start that they were likely to be fighting the West. So, I mean, if you talk to people bordering Russia in Northern Europe and so on, they take this threat very seriously. Therefore, I'm disinclined to dismiss it.

I think in practice, the Russian army and people are pretty exhausted by this war. The economy, Putin's got a problem. He's created a war economy. And if you try to turn it back to a more civilian economy, then that's going to be dislocating too. So you can sort of see it. But that's why it's important that Ukraine isn't ending with a clear victory in a subjugated Ukraine.

That's the basic standard against which we have to judge everything. Because if that happens, it was reasonable to fear in February 22, you have Russian forces monitoring the border between Ukraine and Poland or Ukraine and Slovakia or wherever. Then that creates all sorts of possibilities for incidents, fighting. To start, if Russia is stuck trying to defend this very long border,

after using tens and tens of thousands of people to achieve control of the ruined territory, the Russian capitalization is different. Putin, in his head, does believe he's in an existential fight with the West. And I think Putin, in his head, is wondering at the moment whether Trump provides him a way to move out of that sort of existential grand conflict without necessarily having to do very much.

You know, unfortunately for students of these matters at the moment, we spend an awful lot of time trying to work out what's going on in the heads of people like Trump and Putin and even Xi Jinping.

you know, inevitably a lot of it is pure speculation. I mean, in Putin's case, you can actually learn a lot from reading what he says. People don't read what he says sufficiently. In Trump's case, I don't think you learn an awful lot other than what his mood is at the time. But his mood at any particular time is part of the realities of international politics. Thank you so much for joining us on Battlelines. That's all for today's episode of Battlelines. We'll be back again on Monday. Until then, goodbye.

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