Can the U.S.-Ukrainian Rift Be Healed?
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You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. Before we go into the show, I have a few things I want to say.

Last week, I criticized President Zelensky of Ukraine on social media for getting into an argument at the White House. A recent episode of this podcast, recorded the day before that ill-fated meeting, ended up being an unintended preview of what happened. As listeners will remember, I noted that Zelensky was only hurting Ukraine by publicly picking fights with Trump, who reacts predictably and often explosively. On social media, many people assumed this was a defense of the Trump administration and its policy on Ukraine.

or as a statement of approval of how the President and Vice President treated Zelensky. I said nothing to indicate that. What I did is focused on what the President of Ukraine chose to do in a very high-stakes meeting with a mercurial US President. As anyone who listens to this show should understand, I want Ukraine to win. When I criticize Ukrainian leadership, as we often do on this show, for example on mobilization policy, it is with the aim of helping them get to a place where they can prevail.

but people could be quite sensitive when Zelensky is the topic of criticism as many of us have experienced before. This moment in the immediate aftermath of the Oval Office meeting was also fresh and raw, and I was direct and unvarnished. I could have worded my posts more gently, and perhaps I should have, but I too was feeling emotional. I was angry that Zelensky faltered on something that was not only predictable, but predicted, as we discuss in this episode, by

by others like me who want to see Russia defeated. The situation on social media in response to my posts became quite toxic. I quickly stopped reading the hundreds and hundreds of mean-spirited comments and unfortunately they included suggestions that I kill myself. Being criticized on social media and even receiving totally unhinged messages is a part of the profession I am in. I accept that. No one should feel sorry for me. I run a media company where we publish opinions and arguments about what's happening in the world in terms of security.

and we live in a very dangerous time in history. As listeners of this show and those who have followed me for years will know, I'm predisposed to be a cynic about the world and about humanity. And unfortunately, both have given me great justification for my cynicism in this century so far. I am here, along with my colleagues, to try to help people understand strategy, defense, and foreign affairs by featuring experienced voices. You will not always agree with these voices. That's a feature, not a bug.

And one of those voices you may not agree with is sometimes going to be mine, at least as long as I run War on the Rocks, which will not be forever. I am not here to be a political actor, and I'm not here to make you feel better about the world. I can only try to help you understand it and think about it. Sometimes that involves voicing hard truths at difficult times. I understand why many Ukrainians and other Europeans might be enraged at the United States right now. As regular listeners will know, and as those who have heard me give talks in various forums can attest,

I have been warning Europe for years that it needs to prepare for a more dangerous era. That time may have arrived.

So, it's not my role to make you feel any better about what's happening, but hopefully through my efforts, and those of my amazing team, and the wonderful people who contribute to War on the Rocks, all of us, by the way, we disagree on all sorts of things, but hopefully through the efforts of those people, you will be better informed and confronted with ideas that even if you do not agree with them, may sharpen your own. If you're interested in that, keep listening, keep reading. If not, there's other outlets that will offer more predictable opinions, and

in line with your preferences, whatever those might be. No hard feelings, truly. So, for those of you who are still listening, on to the show.

Hi, I'm Constanze Stetson-Müller, and I run the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Hi, I'm Melinda Herring. I'm a senior advisor at Rosam for Ukraine. We are one of the largest aid and advocacy organizations in North America focused on Ukraine. I'm also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, and I just got back from Ukraine. I'm Justin Logan, the director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. And I'm Michael Kaufman, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment. Let's

Let's start by talking about what happened. It's been a weird few days for Washington, for Ukraine, for the world, for Europe. What are your impressions of what happened, how that went, and perhaps how it might have been avoided? So Ryan, the word disaster comes to mind. I don't think it could have been worse. And President Zelensky was warned to keep cool and not lose his temper. And he took that advice for probably the first 40 minutes and played along.

But, you know, there's debates and I think they're kind of pointless right now. Did J.D. Vance bait him? Probably. Was it planned in advance? Maybe. But I don't think that matters because Ukraine now no longer has U.S. military assistance and it's been cut off from intel support. And that's a big freaking deal. And that's really where the discussion is now. I'll just say I'll leave the Zelensky lip reading and all the rest of it to, you know, I don't know, social media or what have you. But I do think that at least the initial wave of media commentary is

obfuscated what was important disagreement, right? If you look at how the shouting and all the rest of it came about,

It was Zelensky really pouring cold water on the idea of diplomacy with Russia in the absence of American security guarantees. And he went into the same understandable explanation that he's had about Russia breaking previous agreements and you can't trust these people. And the Trump people have made clear that they want to go full steam ahead with a ceasefire without US security guarantees and without US security guarantees for European peacekeepers under any set of circumstances. So-

I think there was a certain amount of superfluous, silly commentary about the dispute when in fact there was a real underlying conflict. So yes, I'll chime in and say that I think the first issue is, did there really have to be this meeting? Because it was said the conditions by Ukrainian side to sign was a ministerial memorandum. And I think...

Zian Scandale saw this as an opportunity to potentially engage with Trump, figure out what's been going on between US and the Russians, and try to give him his point of view or convince him of his point of view regarding the necessity of security guarantees, and at least the way he saw the peace process unfold. But any engagement like this will be fraught with risk because there wasn't really prior alignment between the United States and Ukraine on either the approach to the ceasefire or security guarantees.

And so if any of this did end up being litigated or vented in public, it could have led to disagreement. The second one, I'll just make this comment. It might seem like kind of an esoteric technical point, but I think a lot of us would have gotten better if Zelensky had had an interpreter in there with him.

And I've noticed in a lot of meetings, I think both us and the Ukrainian delegation would have had benefited from professional interpretation, both to slow things down, cool things down, but also to make sure that people really understand what's being said to them. Because there are times I saw the video, but one thing I learned is everyone could watch the same video, but have different interpretations of what happened. And that's fair. But there are definitely times when I look at interactions and I ask myself, why did this person even react to what happened? Why did they engage? Right?

Because from my point of view, it made no sense. But maybe what they heard in English sounded to them differently, or at least was conveyed to them differently. I don't know. Bottom line is, I think, and I noticed that he had an interpreter on side during the Fox News interview. Later that evening, I thought, man, I really wish that they had brought the interpreter for the state meeting in the room. That might have been a lot better.

Hold on, he had one. He just didn't use it. Well, it's the same thing. Mike's right. So there were a lot of sentences. I think there was a lot of disconnect because if you translate from Russian or Ukrainian what Zelensky was saying, it sounds normal, but it came off across as really aggressive in English. He did rely, a couple points in the video earlier in the meeting, he sort of leaned into his interpreter to ask what someone had said, but a couple things. One,

I find people who watch the last 10 minutes of the video have a very different impression of what happened than people that watch the entire 15 minutes. But before we even talk about that meeting, before that meeting happened, Zelensky met near the White House with a group of

Democratic and Republican senators, they all told him, "Sign the deal and don't get into an argument." And he walks into the room and I'm not here to defend Trump. I don't like his policy on Ukraine. I don't like the way he approaches a lot of diplomatic engagements. But as I said in the last episode, he is not a complicated person. If you disagree with him vociferously in public, he's going to try to get you and he's going to take it very personally and he did. And the meeting, the first 20 minutes of the meeting was great.

Trump was praising the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers, multiple times praised Zelensky after that extremely stupid comment from the journalist about Zelensky not wearing a suit. Trump actually weighed in and said, "I think I really like his outfit." But Zelensky kept correcting him on things, like the amount of European aid versus USAID, which we don't need to litigate here, but he just kept needling and needling. He didn't understand the assignment.

And then Vance made a very unhelpful intervention. But at that point, the meeting was already going off the rails. I was speaking to a friend of mine, not American, but who's met with a lot of presidents and vice presidents. And he says he's never seen an intervention like that by a vice president at a meeting before. It's highly irregular.

Not appropriate, but it was shocking to me that Zelensky let himself be drawn into that. But it's also not the first time, right? People had forgotten that there was a similar blow up with the Biden administration, which is about as pro-Ukrainian as you can get without being actually Ukrainian. And the Biden people were asking him, you should be more grateful. You should sow some gratitude, which to me was the most kind of

personally off-putting aspect of the whole thing. This has come up with Zelensky previously. Zelensky sort of pushing and not taking the hint that it's not the time and the place. And you're quite right that Trump is somewhat more mercurial than Joe Biden. I see those points. I think what happened was deeply unfortunate, right? It was deeply unfortunate on both sides. If you look at the way, just from a US perspective, the way we came off, the way we looked, and it ended up in an argument and folks essentially berating and lecturing Zelensky too. But

especially given that Ukraine is fundamentally the weaker party in the conversation. And so it looked like then a bit of a gang up. And I could tell how people, if they saw the last 10 minutes, thought that this was a planned ambush. I'm very sympathetic to some extent to the Ukrainian position, but I will tell you that this is not five-dimensional chess on the Trump side, and nor would I even believe it if you tried to sell me the story.

And I don't think that this was a planned ambush, although I don't know what Vance may have intended. Perhaps he intended to be intentionally provocative. I do think that the Ukrainian side faces, to some extent, the fundamental challenge, which is if they feel like the United States is very quickly, before their eyes, aligning with Russia or is engagement taking place with Russia,

I think it very much places them on the defensive across these interactions. And to some extent, they have to ask themselves, if there is a visible alignment between US and Russia, and the Russia-Ukraine war appears to be only one part of a much larger package deal that the Russians are pitching. And the administration looks increasingly inclined to pursue this deal. And if Ukrainians begin to see themselves as they are just one piece of a larger puzzle that's being played out between Ukraine

the White House and the Russians, then they must also increasingly wonder, you know, what are their options? To what extent would concessions really matter? Are they just going to get cornered at the end of the day on this one way or another? I think this is something that's worth raising. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think this is a really important point that Liana made in our last episode.

Trump sees this as a part of U.S.-Russian relations, and this is just sort of a subchapter of this. I would have no problem with Zelensky having brought up all of that in the private meeting, because what they were supposed to do was that press conference. I don't know why Trump does these in press conferences, but press conference, lunch, deal signing. And everything Trump did afterwards indicated that he actually really did want to sign the deal. So I don't personally give the ambush thing a lot of credence. I will just add a point to that, which is that I think what is material here is the fact that Zelensky...

no doubt following some strenuous advice from European capitals, issued that public apology and said that he would sign the deal, which is what the Trump administration had been saying all the time was the security guarantee. And after that comes the announcement of the cutoff of military aid and of the partial or total, that's under dispute, cutoff of intelligence. I think that that is another massive element of momentum

to explain what's been happening in the past 24 hours in Europe. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz came out and said that that cutoff will remain in place until peace talks are actually scheduled.

I would not have advised the administration to do that. But I think that they are unwilling to let Zelensky try to put them in a public box again. I don't think this is the right way to handle that, but I think that's what they're being motivated by. It's regrettable, of course. I'm sure that's true. Nonetheless, I think that has registered in Europe. Mike, you actually had a nice thread on what this cutoff actually is and is not. So I think...

We don't fully know what the intelligence cutoff is, and it's being discussed right now. But my understanding is that we have first a suspension of material assistance for Ukraine, things handled by security assistance group Ukraine. In Europe, what is this? So we're likely going to suspend any shipments that were already programmed and pre-planned, that were drawn down or on their way to Ukraine. I think that the immediate effect, of course, will be that Ukrainian forces will have to go and ration

partly on artillery ammunition. It'll be more significant in terms of long-range precision strike, GMLRS for HIMARS systems, and air defense, because Ukraine, when it comes to advanced air defense Patriot batteries, is heavily dependent on the interceptors that we produce and send.

I think that the immediate effect won't be catastrophic, meaning it's not going to lead to a sudden collapse. In fact, in 2025, the Ukrainian military is actually a lot less dependent on us for day-to-day battlefield needs. Most of what inflicts casualties in this war now is mines, strike drones.

and to a much lesser extent, artillery fire. And so if you look at this equation, Ukraine makes a lot of what it needs. In terms of artillery fire as a dependence, we shipped quite a bit to Ukraine before January 20th. I won't get into those details, but they were, I think, plussed up. And Europe makes more artillery ammunition now. Either way, it's not deterministic. The bigger issue will come to some extent, maybe two or three months down the line. And I hate to give estimates, but it's a fair one.

They'll have to start rashing now, but I think they're going to have real issues in precision strike beyond kind of this immediate tactical depth. They're going to have a big issue with that either way because they both have been cut of further provision of munitions. And also now, from what we heard, have been cut of intelligence support of different kind that enables those strikes. On air defense, that's a situation that is going to have greater impact maybe three months down the line, something like that.

There's areas where Europeans can step in, but there's clear-cut areas where they really can't, and that's one of them. So it will, I think, accelerate the degradation on the Ukrainian side of the war effort. The big picture is this. Ukraine either buys or makes 55% of its kit now, 20% of it comes from the U.S., and

and 25% comes from Europe. And 20% might not sound like a big number, but that 20% is the most lethal. The American contribution is the most lethal. So the three areas that there's no European equivalent are the Patriots, and Mike just discussed that, the HIMARS, which are less effective now but still important, and then our surveillance. So that's why this cutoff is such a big deal. And on the Patriots, it's worth saying, yes, Ukraine has other air defense systems,

But the Patriots are the only ones that can take down the Russian ballistic missiles. Much of the European military funding for Ukraine has also been for the purchase of American weapons. Constance, we'd love to hear from you about how Europe responded first in the immediate aftermath of this, and how you think Starmer, Macron did the incoming government in Germany. The date to look at is tomorrow's European Council.

What's happened in the past 48 hours looks to me extraordinary. And I will just say, at the risk of this dating me, that my experience watching European and German defense policy goes back to the time right after the fall of the war. I visited a German brigade in Somalia in '93, and I was on German transport planes going into Kigali.

after the end of the genocide in July, August 94. So I cover 30 years, literally. And I've never seen anything like what I'm seeing, what I've seen in the last 48 hours. Even Matthew Karnichnik, formerly of Politica, now the editor of Euractiv, is saying he's seen nothing like it, and he's known not to be a fan. So let me explain what I mean by that.

Ursula von der Leyen has actually gave a really important speech on this at the Munich Security Conference at the very opening, which was then completely overshadowed by the Vance speech. But she has put meat on the sort of foreshadowing that she made in that speech.

In a letter today that I have here, that has gone to all the heads of state, and that was widely distributed, and that suggests an across-the-board sort of loosening up of debt restrictions, fiscal rules, regulations for what the European Investment Bank can invest in, and also for the mobilization of private capital. I've been calling this—and calling for—

a sort of fiscal big bang for Europe. And I think that's what we're going to see happening tomorrow. We've already used sea change, so we can't really use that again. How is this different from what we've seen before? You know, I try to avoid, I just try to avoid that kind of cliche. And I realize a big ban is a cliche as well. But this is, let me perhaps add something to that before Mike jumps in. Macron just gave a long speech today, which my French colleague was referencing in a WhatsApp group. He is basically

basically saying the danger lies in the East. It's never talked so seriously about the Russian threat and has said we're opening the French nuclear deterrent to the rest of Europe. I personally tend to think that that's a bit of a distraction. I think that we need to take care of conventional deficiencies. Be that as it may, the French are slaughtering a sacred cow in public.

Second, or if you will, third sacred cow after the EU and the French is the Germans saying we will mobilize 1 trillion, 1 trillion euros, that's about 1 trillion dollars, for defense and infrastructure. The infrastructure part is not immaterial because Germany is the logistic hubs for all NATO troops moving from west to east and north to south.

So if we do something about our decrepit rail system and our roads, that means doing something for NATO. And finally, you've seen that the UK is doing as much as it can to improve its relationship with the European Union. And I will end on a note that I found between astonishing and entertaining, which is the Irish offering troops.

for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. I am only semi-joking here because that ties into something that I've been paying a lot of attention to, which is debates about defense and security in Europe's countries that are either neutral or not members of the EU or NATO. I can talk a little more about that should you be interested, but I've been kind of waiting for the Irish to drop into place.

And that happened today as well. I do think it's an important signal because their scene is so unserious about defense. So for them to come out and say something like this for them is quite a big deal. They have legitimately stayed in the windshadow of the UK. And they were always safe in the space between the US and the UK. I think it was a completely rational national security policy. But if the Irish are thinking about this kind of thing, and I can tell you a great deal about what's happening in Switzerland,

I talked to the Icelanders in Munich. There is movement everywhere, and especially on Europe's periphery that now feels very vulnerable. I think it's interesting, just to stick with you for one more minute, it's interesting that you identify Munich as the starting point for a lot of this momentum rather than the reaction to the Zelensky meeting. Yes, I think Munich was genuinely important because the Vance speech, I think the two key speeches there were Vance and Zelensky.

Zelenskyy, at some point I stopped counting standing ovations. And the people who were in Munich all know a fair amount about Ukrainian domestic politics, about the ins and outs of Zelenskyy's popularity, of the opposition, and all that. Most of us have been watching this space very carefully for a decade now, right? Few people in Europe are ignorant of Ukrainian domestic issues anymore. Nonetheless, he was being given every single signal of support.

by an extremely large group of very influential people. The Vance speech was, I think, again, I would want to avoid relitigating this, but it was shocking to a lot of Europeans because it appeared to evince such cavalier contempt for European security and, of course, because of the explicit endorsement for the AFD. That, for the Germans in particular, and especially for German conservatives, was, I think, a breaking point

in the relationship. And if you look at the German media coverage, especially in the conservative press, which has been astonishing about this, then you can really see that something snapped in that moment. Justin, I know you and I have often called for Europe to do more for its own defense. Now it seems to... Can I say rightly so? And so have I.

And now it seems to be happening. Do you think it was necessary? And this is more of an, at this point, an academic question, but I think an interesting one. Do you think it was necessary for Europe to be left feeling alone and maybe even the subject of disdain by America or at least America's leaders to some extent to, for that to happen? Look,

The substance of contempt for European free-riding or cheap-riding, moaning and wailing about it, is not new in American politics, right? It goes back to Eisenhower, as Pete Hegseth pointed out in Brussels. There are a couple of different things that are new. One is Trump's unique rhetorical style, maybe I'll just say.

And his ability to push buttons in German conservatives, in a variety of different actors across Europe to activate some sort of essential response. The second thing is there's a really big war happening in Europe right now.

And the third thing is, I think that European parties, and I'll defer to others here, are beginning to worry that this might be real this time, right? I mean, I will tell you that I heard Biden administration officials say, we really would like the Europeans to do more, but we're not willing to put an or else at the end of that sentence. And my response was, well, then you really don't care about it that much if there's not an or else. Because

It's perfectly rational, talking about the rational Irish, it's perfectly rational for the Europeans to take an American subsidy for their defense, right? I never got angry at Europeans for taking the free lunch. I got mad at my own policymakers for paying for it. So I think that there's this sort of convergence of European revulsion at Trump's style, a certain amount, and I think I don't want to overstate the amount of actual fear of

of Russia, right? If Russia struggles mightily after a brutal three years in Ukraine to subjugate Ukraine, it's not going to be a European hegemon. It's not going to conquer Germany. It's not going to conquer Poland. But I do think that there is a sense among a broad spectrum of Europeans that this is kind of a real thing and it kind of matters. And then I think the third thing is that belief...

that this might actually be real. It's not just Bob Gates talking about military irrelevance and a dismal, if not dim, future. There might be teeth here, and I think those were probably all of them crucial factors.

Just a quick break from this episode to tell you about the Warcast, which is one of our members-only podcasts, and we use this to cover about three episodes a week, major events happening in the world. The Warcast this week is very focused on European reactions to what's happening in Ukraine and what happened in the meeting that we're discussing in this episode, and specifically what Europe is going to do on defense at the national level and the EU level. So I highly recommend that if you're interested in this issue, you become a War on the Rocks member at warontherocks.com membership.

And now, back to the show.

I think it's legitimate to say that the array of forces at the disposal of the transatlantic alliance or even just at the Europeans is not really matched by Russian military capabilities or prowess. There's three important points here though, if I may, and that's beyond a two fingers but I'm just going to go on. One, the Russians have nuclear weapons and have been dangling their ability and willingness to use them. Important point. Secondly, the Russian brutality. I

I'm a lawyer by training. I used to report from my old newspaper, Die Zeit, about the war crimes tribunals coming out of Rwanda and the Balkans. And this is the first war in Europe that...

has seen the evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity gathered in forensic quality in real time and disseminated to a global audience. In other words, we know what the Russians are doing and how they're doing it. We have the images, we have the audio, we have the video, and by this point several extremely intense documentary movies. I remind you of 20 Days in Mariupol.

So there is no way that any of us in Europe think of this as a faraway country of which we know nothing. We know a great deal. These images are seared into our minds and our consciousness. And my third point is that, of course, the Russians may have lesser capabilities, may not have been able to subdue Ukraine in three years.

But they are committing propaganda, disinformation, and sabotage acts across the European space and including in Germany in ways that European intelligence services, including the famously reluctant German ones, have been much more willing to A, acknowledge and B, attribute in public than they ever have before. That's a...

immense change. And I don't think that this compares, I'm a child of the Cold War, I do not think that this compares to anything that we saw during the Cold War, not least because the Russians are so willing for it to be attributable. This is public political signaling by the Russians, we can do this, and we can harm you, and we will, and we're going to go on doing this. That's been a significant impact on the European mood. Maybe to jump in a little bit on

what the real security environment looks like, not very far from now, but a bit down the line, the implications for Europe, I think myself would make three brief points. First, it's important to remember something a lot of people don't like to bring up, which is without us, the United States and European support, Ukraine would have lost this war much sooner. And so a lot of the effects...

a lot of capabilities that were provided. They were able to hold Russia to where we are now. And even now, after all this, I'm not sure we will get, certainly that will get to a favorable outcome. I'm not sure necessarily we will even end up in an acceptable outcome the way things are going. Second point, Russian reconstitution from a military perspective is not a if, it is a matter of when. And it's now a debate between two fairly short timelines. Is it seven years or 10 years? In defense planning, this is tomorrow. This is actually...

coming right around the corner. And looking at Russian defense industrial, both mobilization, spending, all these things, enumerate them. And Justin, I know folks will often go back and forth, well, yes, Russia struggles with forced employment. Yes, it underperformed significantly, all these things. But how much of that would you really need for a contingency that involves, let's say, Estonia or a small state in the Baltics?

And lastly, with respect to Europeans and European ability to conduct any kind of large-scale combat operation without the United States, they're a long ways away from there. And so a lot of things that we've seen Russians can't do well, Europeans can't do at all, to be very frank.

and have not planned or trained to do without the United States is always seen as a feature of European security. And one thing that I saw in Munich, I was there too, I had just come out of Ukraine, dragged all my gear with me, and showed up late. But what I saw was a shift from the secular trend in US strategy that prioritized China in Indo-Pacific, which had been visible across several administrations, with Europe being the secondary theater of interest to the United States. That was straightforward.

To now a second shift of a real question amongst Europeans, to what extent

Is the United States committed to European security? And to what extent do parts of this administration see themselves politically aligned with right-wing movements in Europe that are seen as a threat by Brussels and by the European Union? And it started to bring up a whole set of sort of other questions. The right-wing movements aren't just seen as a threat by Brussels or the European Union in the sense that these are anti-system parties and movements, right, that want to switch out representative democracy, change

checks and balances, protection of minorities, protection of political pluralism. That threat perception is fairly widely spread. Let's talk about where Ukraine goes next. I thought it was striking, and Justin, you alluded to this very early in the episode,

To some extent, this is a tension of Ukraine is not interested in buying what Washington and even what European capitals are selling from a policy perspective. I mean, he went to meet with Starmer. Starmer was like, you really should sign that deal. And all European leaders pretty much said that publicly. And I know the minerals deal is mostly symbolism for Trump, but it's important symbolism. And I do think he actually wanted it signed. It was originally envisioned to be the first of several agreements.

I don't know if that's going to happen. That's one of the reasons why the White House told Zelensky before, we're not here to talk about security guarantees. That'll come later, maybe. I can understand if you're Ukraine, you might not trust that answer as well. But even after that, then the French and the British present this plan with peacekeepers. Zelensky's asked what he thinks about it, and all he would say is, I'm aware of it.

Then he says, the war is going to last a very, very long time. Trump flips out on him again. Zelensky apologized to Trump. He read the apology letter during his speech to Congress last night. What's next? Where do things... There's a long windup to what happens next. We've cut off some military and intelligence aid, as we've discussed.

What happens next? What I saw in the statement that Zelensky put out that was interesting was he kept emphasizing, he backtracked from his previous statement that the war is going to go on forever. In his most recent statement, he said, no one wants peace more than the Ukrainians. That's one of his favorite statements. He said over and over again, we want to make this happen. We're interested in peace. And that was really important for Trump.

And you see sentiment changing in Ukraine. More and more Ukrainians do want peace, but they understand that a ceasefire is not the same thing as peace. And I think Justin made a great point at the beginning. There was a real debate at the White House. We saw that, you know, they were screaming about it. There's a difference between a ceasefire and real security guarantees. So the question is, what are these security guarantees going to be? We know that Article 5 NATO is off the table. What are the alternatives?

And they're not very good. And they're not very reassuring. NATO Article 5 was also off the table for the Biden administration, even though during confirmation testimonies, they like to say it was on the table. But Mike, I know one of the things that you've been concerned about is this idea of an unstable ceasefire. Describe what that means and why you're worried about it. And let me make two points. First, the fall of millions comes.

The challenge I also saw at the White House is they were literally having a sequencing debate that is meant to be had behind closed doors as to what comes first and the order of it, because the entire approach so far has lacked process, right? It was driven by outcome, the fact that Trump wanted a ceasefire in the first hundred days, but there was no real process behind it, or at least not the one you would expect. We're literally hashing it out on national television with Zelensky saying, I need this first, this one should come first, and Trump saying, no, ceasefire first, and then this follows.

But the challenge with a ceasefire, at least from a Ukraine point of view, and I'm sure many of us are likely to agree on this, is that Ukrainians understand from past experience, if we go to 2014 and 2015, that getting a piece of paper with the word ceasefire on it doesn't end the war. It simply leads to a rearming period, and it has different consequences for Ukraine than it does for Russia. Right?

US administration gets to say they made a peace deal. Europe may sustain support, may sustain it at the same level, maybe lower level because the emergency of a war, once it disappears, often the urgency disappears as well from your external supporters. But then they understand that what happens after that is Ukraine army is likely to get demobilized. People, if there's no security guarantees, won't see a future. There won't be investment in the country because the threat of another war will always loom there. People might leave the country.

and the Russians come back. Maybe they come back in a year, or who knows, maybe Trump was right in what he said. He felt Putin wouldn't break a deal with him, so he comes back in four years. But the outcome is going to be very similar, and Russia doesn't invade the way they did on February 22nd. They don't make the same mistakes again. They might make different ones. They might make different ones, but I will tell you, the invasion that I saw done, I don't think it's one they're going to repeat with the same assumptions. And so from a Ukrainian point of view, there's fair debate, which may seem a bit...

strange, like here in the West, which is if the war's not going well for you, if you've been slowly losing it, then why not make a deal? And the answer is because the deal doesn't actually solve the problem for you. In some cases, it may be better to fight on. And with the right level of support, your hand, well, it may deteriorate, but it may also get a bit better. Either way, the margin there for you isn't such that you sort of need to accept a bad deal. Especially if you look at the current situation at the front line,

It's not so dire that Ukraine needs a deal in the next couple of months. The front's about to collapse. I was literally just there along most of it. And I will tell you, they actually improved compared to the situation in the fall. So the reason we're rushing to a deal in the first hundred days is not because military realities dictate it, it's because political realities in DC have forced it, and that's where we are.

The challenge for Ukraine is they are in a fundamental dilemma. If they agree to this deal, the US says, great, I got this. But then they face the threat of invasion again. If there's no security guarantee, there's nothing else. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. But

But remember, they've signed more than one ceasefire with Russia now. This war is a continuation war of the initial war that was never settled by a ceasefire agreement. Just to build on Mike's point, the Ukrainians feel like they've lost too much. They can't agree to a bad peace because of Bucha, because of Irpin, because of Izum. You go through the mass atrocities that Constanza mentioned, and people have lost their lives, and the pain is too much. And

And they remember, they remember this history very, very well. It takes about two minutes for people to start talking about the Budapest memorandum and the betrayal of the Americans in 1994. But to go to your sharper question, what's the likely outcome? The most likely outcome is that the fighting continues and that we eventually have a frozen conflict. And we know what happens when there's a frozen conflict. Russia always wins in frozen conflicts because they're better at it than us.

and because they're more patient than we are. Even if the Russians were to make significant gains, or even if the Russians were to defeat the Ukrainians, I think we would see a partisan resistance like we haven't seen since the North Vietnamese, or for that matter, the Taliban in Afghanistan. And we know how those stories end. And so I think that that is not a good prospect, certainly not for regional stability. It's not a good prospect for the Ukrainians. It's not a good prospect for the Russians or for Europe.

There is, however, a significant likelihood of another massive outflow of Ukrainian refugees to Europe with the attendant risk of political instability in Europe. And so one of the questions that has been bubbling around in the back of my head about watching the past four weeks is what exactly the Trump administration's theory of Europe is. And I think that I have options that range from OKC,

okay to disastrous. And I think that those ruminations are also informing European decisions right now. So I think Konstanty just made a really important point about Ukraine and the stability of society. So we know that more than 25% of Ukrainians have PTSD, and the number is probably much higher. And I see all kinds of strains in society. Marriages have broken up. There's 6 million Ukrainians living abroad.

And when I ask Ukrainians what their plans are, their time horizons are about 10 minutes or a day. And they tell me that they will fight with forks. So I think Constanza is right. Even if they don't have weapons, they will continue because this fight is existential. So I'll end on with two issues. One, do we think Zelensky and Trump can

can have a healthy diplomatic relationship. And I would actually encourage people to watch the first 15 minutes of that meeting because it was all smiles and Trump actually said a lot of things that I never would have expected him to say about Ukraine. There's a quote, a lot of people are making Winston Churchill FDR comparisons in recent days. But there's one quote that I found from Churchill from after the war that's very interesting. As he said, no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt because he understood that the survival of Britain

relied so much on what was decided in the Oval Office. And so he really turned on the charm and the obsequiousness, even with someone like FDR, who seems much more mild-mannered, at least in retrospect, than our current president does. One of the things that was very striking to me was how Zelensky just didn't really seem to understand why he was there. He kept getting angry, which

Trump has the predictable reaction. And then he kept saying the wrong things, I think, to get the right reaction out of Washington in the days after that. Do we think Zelensky gets it now? I think the last day or two that I've seen, it looks like there's progress. Here's the challenge. I do think that the Trump administration wants something specific in order to switch military assistance and intelligence back on. I don't think this freeze is necessarily permanent, or at least that's what I'm inclined to believe right now.

Second, I don't think what they want is just a letter or an apology. I think they're looking for some other changes on the Ukrainian side, and I don't know if they're going to be able to get that. I think the challenge on the Ukrainian side is they have to believe that something is really possible with the Trump administration, that the Trump administration hasn't just aligned itself with Russia where concessions are pointless.

And here there is, to some extent, a very productive role to play for Europeans. It's great that Europe has publicly supported Ukraine. And it was great to see all the, you know, the waterfall of Twitter statements and all that. Very meaningful. But in seriousness, it would be also really good if Europe helped work.

between the United States, between Ukraine. And that's what I saw starting to happen, right? With a storm revisit to help smooth some of this out, come up with things like the phased ceasefire plan, right? Or at the very least, and I can tell the vision there is to try to put the ball in Putin's court and to basically show that Putin's the one that doesn't necessarily want a ceasefire or want peace.

But to essentially help Ukrainians, not just support them in whatever they're doing, because I'm very disappointed by what I saw. But on the other hand, certainly not everything Ukraine has done, not everything about their handling of this has been right in the last couple of weeks either. And I think Europe has a very important role to play here between the parties. It may be able to be papered over, but I think the underlying dynamics here remain, right? Yeah.

Trump views Zelensky as a supplicant. He thinks he should behave like a supplicant. Zelensky does not view himself as a supplicant. He views himself as the front line in whatever Biden called it, democracies and autocracies, the global struggle. So it's like cognitive dissonance. Why is this guy treating me like a supplicant? And I'll say on the substance of what I've just described, I think even the discussion here today has suggested

Zelensky kind of is a supplicant, right? He needs the United States more than the United States needs him. And so Trump is his own man, I'll say. But if you don't want to play that game, if you're not going to go along with that dynamic, then it's only a matter of time until you go back to some version of what we saw in the Oval Office.

So my answer is it depends. Zelensky is an actor. He is very capable of manipulating people and manipulating situations. He did not read the room. Like if you want to boil it down to what he did wrong, he didn't read the room and he let go of his temper. Can he do better next time? Yes, absolutely. One thing that's interesting, though, that no one brought up is what Ukrainians think of his performance. Ukrainians are delighted with his performance. They feel like he has real balls and he stood up for them.

And even President Poroshenko, who hates his guts, he said, I cannot say anything negative about him. When I call Ukrainians, they all say we are proud of our president. So I think Zelensky has to go back. You notice also he didn't really apologize in his statement. He got close to saying, I'm sorry, but not really. But the other part of my answer is I think that this issue, how Americans feel about Ukraine, is not settled. I noticed that Rick Grinnell went on Twitter and said,

We have the overwhelming support of Americans. Americans support Trump's Ukraine policy. That's nonsense. We just did some polling and we found that 69% of GOP voters say that Russia is the aggressor. 83% of GOP voters disapprove of Vladimir Putin. So I think this is flat out false and it is incumbent on people to come out

and show their disagreement with the policy and organize. I'll just say at the end of Biden's administration, the policy was underwater 22 points. This is the question, handling of policy in Ukraine. Biden underwater 22 points. Trump is above water by two points. We've already heard a fairly strong suggestion that Zelensky be replaced. Lindsey Graham suggested that he replaced by Zeluzhnyi.

That's my first point. The second point is I'd like to know at what point there will be a public expectation articulated of the Russians. So far, nothing of the kind. And I will end by saying that it seems to me, building on what Melinda just said, that it might turn out that Trump is the unifier of Ukrainians and of Europeans.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Stay safe and stay healthy.