Frontline special - General Richard Shirreff
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble, and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.

Hello and welcome to Frontline for Times Radio with me, Kate Chabot. And today we are talking to the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Europe General Sir Richard Shiref. General Shiref spent 37 years in the British Army. He's commanded troops on operations at every level and co-founded the global risk and advisory company, Strategia Worldwide. He's also the author of War with Russia. General Shiref, great to see you on Frontline again. Thank you for the time.

Now, earlier this week, the focus was the talks about the talks between the US and Russia, which excluded Ukraine. That's been eclipsed now by the war of words between President Trump and President Zelensky. Where does this leave Ukraine? Some say Donald Trump has changed sides.

Kate, firstly, thank you for having me back. It's always good to talk to you. Trump is parroting Putin's line. And one has to ask, what on earth has Putin got on Trump for the president of the United States to be, frankly, now in bed with an indicted war criminal who has committed the most appalling atrocities in Ukraine? And he looks to be throwing Ukraine under a bus.

So I think this leaves Ukraine in a very difficult place, unless, and this is the key thing, Europe and Canada step up to the mark, really, with resounding statements of support for Ukraine, which is happening. Indeed, our own prime minister rang President Zelensky yesterday. So that is happening, but it needs to be more than just statements of support. It needs to be a strategy from Europe and Canada

that says, your peace talks are going nowhere. We are going to support you, Ukraine, in defeating Russia. Now, that would be our last. And of course, our prime minister, the British prime minister, is off to Washington next week. It's a trick. You say he has supported Zelensky after President Trump called him a dictator. It's an extremely difficult diplomatic tightrope he has to walk. A very difficult tightrope, but he would make it much easier for himself

our prime minister, if he went having issued a very strong statement that the British government is committed to increasing defence spending to at least 3% of GDP and has now initiated a strategy design process to get us there as quickly as possible. If he goes without anything substantive to offer Trump like that, I fear it'll be a fool's errand.

And it's all about the business deals, isn't it, with Donald Trump, the transactional president. I was just wondering a little bit about your perspective on how much this spat between President Zelensky and Donald Trump at the moment is about the fact that Zelensky rejected that deal on rare earths that Trump was offering, that proposed Ukraine, which Zelensky basically said was no good. It was basically selling out his country and it was all in the US's favour.

It could well be, but it could equally be a bike. And Trump is a man who has a reputation for being vindictive and having a long memory. It could be a bike. Zelensky, Zelensky's part in which Trump believes is there in in. Do you remember the whole saga of his impeachment and.

and allegations of Biden, Biden Jr.'s involvement in Trump. I can't remember the details, but I think it's all it could easily about that be about that as well. There's a lot of form, isn't there? And bad vibe in the history of their relationship.

When he went out, though, Trump and called him a dictator who refuses to hold elections and says that he started the war, he could have stopped it. He's doing a terrible job. I know you say, I wonder what kind of compromise the Russians may have on him for him to go into what Zelensky has described as this kind of disinformation bubble, which obviously irks President Trump.

Is he saying these things, do you think? Is it possible he's also saying them for his political base or even he's trying to shape the negotiations and it's not necessarily what he says, but it's what he does?

Well, if he's trying to shape the negotiations, he's not going the right way about it because he's giving Russia everything that Russia wants. And there's no surprise, as you know, you may have listened to Steve Rosenberg on the radio this morning. They could not be more delighted in Moscow. Every banner headline is absolutely thrilled. And Putin is no doubt rubbing his hands with glee and toasting toasting Trump with with with vodka. You know, I think there's.

We've got to understand where Russia is coming from here. Russia is not going to give up on its intent to destroy Ukraine as a state or give up its intent to reduce the Ukrainian government to a puppet, Ukraine to a client state and annex large chunks of eastern Ukraine and demilitarize it as well.

And everything that Trump says is creating the conditions for that to happen. More than that, he's creating the conditions for Putin to achieve much wider foreign policy objectives in Eastern Europe, too. I suppose at the crux of the matter, though, is what is acceptable in Trump's eyes when he's negotiating, because the point has already been made that when he in his first term went to see Kim Jong Un in North Korea, everybody was up in arms then. But actually nothing came of it.

He could equally just walk away from all of this. Yeah. And, you know, Trump puffs himself up and says he's the master of the deal. I also, a lot of us will remember the deal he did with the Taliban over the head of the Afghan government in 2020, which set the conditions for the complete collapse of the NATO mission in 2021. And the risk here is that Trump is repeating it, going over the head of the Ukrainian government,

He has potentially hold NATO below the waterline by withdrawing the American guarantee of security support to Europe. The statement that Europe has got to go it alone, which is absolutely right, I have to say. Europe should be going it alone and Europe should be setting up to the mark. But the alliance which has kept the peace in Europe and the transatlantic region for 70 odd years, just over 70 years, is now under real jeopardy.

What do you see as the future of NATO at the moment at this stage? Well, it's difficult to see because the Americans have effectively said under have effectively driven a cart, a coach and horses through Article 5. The Article 5 guarantee of an attack on one is an attack on all. If America is not prepared to be a security guarantor for Europe.

So we'll have to see if Europe, the only hope for NATO is if Europe really steps up to the mark in defence terms in a united, comprehensive way. If Europe doesn't do that, the Americans absolutely will have gone. Although I think we're now in a different world, as we were saying before we came on air. I think this is, you know, this week is a different world from last week. Last week was still a world where there was a sense of the Pax Americana movement.

Now the Pax Americana is firmly finished. And so it's a different world. So what for NATO? A coalition of the willing, an alliance of Europe and Canada. But if that is to happen again, Europe and Canada have got not only to sit down and design a strategy to support Ukraine. They've also got to design a strategy on how to replace over time. And it's not going to happen overnight.

all those strategic capabilities with which America underpinned the alliance. And again, this is going to need a fundamental mindset shift across every NATO country. And that is slow in happening.

And to that point about how to support Ukraine, when the fighting does stop, whatever the deal actually happens to be in the end, Britain has already said it's prepared to offer troops or even typhoon jets, it's reported in the event of this deal. Was it naive to speak so early on by Sir Keir Starmer? And what are the options, be it peacekeeping, stabilisation or reassurance?

Well, I guess the first point is that there will be no European peace implementation force or whatever you'd like to call it.

unless the Russians are prepared to accept it. And Lavrov has already said he's not. So therefore, the only way there will be a peace implementation force is if the Russians are forced to accept it. And for that to happen, I go back to my point, Russia will have to be given a bloody nose in Ukraine to such an extent that they recognize they are not ever going to succeed. And effectively, we're talking about the defeat of Russia and Ukraine.

So let's assume that happens. Then you're in the business of putting a peace implementation force and any force that goes in is going to have to have real military muscle because it's got to be configured and be prepared and trained to fight Russia because Russia will probably at some stage come back.

And so you're going to need to do a proper military estimate that says this is the nature of the enemy. This is what the enemy can do. This is what we need in terms of assets to provide surveillance, satellite surveillance, reconnaissance, drones on the front line. And we've got to cover 1,200 kilometers of Ukrainian territory. And then you come up with a series of tasks and allocate troops to tasks.

You don't start from the premise. We've only got a few a few troops. Well, wet finger in the wind, 30,000 might do it and then start like that. That's not going to achieve anything. It's really interesting because also it's been made very clear by the British prime minister that none of this would ever happen anyway without the US as a backstop.

Yeah. And again, Hegseth has said, you're not going to get America as a backstop. And I think I go back to my point, we are in a different world where America is not prepared to be the backstop. And so therefore, Europe has got to be the backstop and Europe's got to be prepared to generate and build the capabilities needed.

And this, of course, might have to happen really quickly. So it's going to be a come as you are party. And, you know, from a British perspective, this is going to require probably the mobilization of the reserve to find the manpower and a real acceleration of military capability, perhaps requiring the mobilization of the economy for a war, to put us on a war footing. Because if

You know, let's just suppose for a second that a force is put in to monitor some sort of ceasefire, that the Russians push back, that effectively we could find ourselves at war with Russia as a consequence. So we've got to be prepared for it and prepared for the worst case.

You said also earlier that none of this is going to happen unless Russia is given a bloody nose. Assuming or let's suggest that there is a cessation of the fighting, but it hasn't been given a bloody nose, then what? Well, if it hasn't been given a bloody nose, there won't be a peace implementation force because it would still require Russian Russian agreement to go in. And therefore there won't be a peace agreement.

Do we have a clear idea of exactly what the US approach is to negotiations? Well, I think, clearly, I'm not privy, but I think you can get a pretty clear idea from the fact that Trump is spouting Putin's line.

And the extraordinary naivety that clearly doesn't understand that Russia is not going to give up on its intent, as I said earlier, to remove Ukraine from the map as a sovereign state and that Russia is not going to waver in any way on its demands. So I think it's an ill-founded and thoroughly naive effort.

It's really interesting. You mentioned earlier about the way that the US has really shown its hand already, that it said that there will be no return to the 2014 borders, no NATO membership, of course, that's been put on the table as well. And after that meeting that happened in Riyadh, interesting that the Secretary of State also talked about, you know, when the

When the fighting stops, we're going to have to talk about lifting sanctions. And that kind of flies. And we have to talk to our European allies about that as well. And that really flies in the face of what the EU is doing right now, ploughing ahead with new sanctions, a 16th round of sanctions, banning Russian aluminium exports, new listings against shadow fleet vessels. Is that Atlantic Ocean getting wider by the day that separates Europe and the US?

I mean, it's very difficult to square. And it goes back to the point, you know, to answer your question, the American approach to negotiations is just give the Russians everything they want. And that's something that Europe cannot accept. What about Turkey's position in all of this? Because President Erdogan has come out supporting Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, along with NATO membership. How influential can it be?

I think Turkey can be really influential and it's good news that President Erdogan has come out with a clear statement supporting Ukrainian sovereignty. Turkey is a key player, it's a key part of NATO and of course Turkey has maintained relations with Russia as well. So I think that's a really important statement.

And whatever Trump's eventual position turns out to be, he has signalled, and he mentioned it earlier, his unwillingness to underwrite European security in no uncertain terms. How does Europe now have to rise to that challenge and Ukraine's future security guarantees?

Well, in a sense, we've touched on this. Number one, it's got to realize that it's a loan, that Europe and Canada are a loan, that they cannot rely on America and they're going to have to decouple America.

Number two, they've got to design a strategy to support Ukraine to achieve a bloody nose over Russia. And number three, Europe and Canada have got to come together and do a proper gap analysis of what is required to replace American strategic assets underpinning European security and double down on generating them. Now, this within Europe is going to need a lot

a serious look at European defence industries. You can't go on with a multitude of different companies producing a multitude of different sorts of kit, and depending on the United States. So we've got to look at defence industries. But above all, this is going to require significant amounts of defence spending increases right across the European alliance.

What do you think about the proposal that was made by President Zelensky, which has already been mooted years ago by President Macron, of a European army? I think that is an illusion, frankly. I think, you know, the notion of a European army as a single institution under a sovereign, legally constituted under a sovereign government, as is the British army or the French army or the German army,

It is frankly an illusion. And it would take just try and try and try and generate such a force would be just crazy. So what do you do? You build on what we've done already and you build on well-established procedures for multinational operations under NATO, even if NATO has got a problem with America.

And does that include, for example, a coalition of the willing like the likes of the Joint Expeditionary Force? Absolutely it does. Yes, it absolutely does. And I think this is coming back to your question of what does the future look like? I think increasingly it looks like a coalition of the willing.

We heard from President Scholz of Germany the other day that he was, quote, irritated by discussion of any sort of peacekeeping force. So Germany is getting wobbly already at this stage, you know, until there's a change of government in Germany. This government, I think, you can depend on at all.

So it may well have to be a coalition of the willing with the two principal military powers of Europe, if I can describe them that way, although they're pretty weak, France and Britain, taking the lead together with a raft of other largely northern European and maybe other countries as well.

Do you think, you mentioned earlier about Article 5, and this is the obvious demonstration you think now that the US will not honour it necessarily in terms of the principle that attack on one member, an armed attack on one member is an attack on all and therefore requires defence. What do you think, if that is the case, Russia or our adversaries will be doing in the coming years and months to put that to the test? Well, this will be manna from heaven for Russia, obviously.

What does Putin want? Putin wants to decouple America from European security. He's achieved that, or at least Trump has achieved that. He wants to neutralize NATO. Trump has started that process of neutralizing NATO.

He wants to, as I said, reduce Ukraine, a rump of Ukraine to a client state along the lines of Belarus. And he wants to annex the four eastern provinces of Ukraine and demilitarize Ukraine. Trump has started that.

And moreover, what Putin wants is a new Yalta. The old Yalta divided Europe between Germany, effectively gave Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. That's exactly what he wants. He wants NATO to roll back from its presence in Eastern Europe. Well, that's exactly what Trump has now started.

So what does that mean? That means that Putin will continue, that once he's achieved his aims in Ukraine, he's not going to stop in Ukraine. He's already started in Moldova, Georgia, and already started with an electoral manipulation in Romania.

I think he will turn his attention to the Baltic states, which were annexed by the Soviet Union. They were part of the Tsarist Empire. And Putin, like other Russians, will think of the Baltic states as naturally belonging to Russia. Where does that take us? They are close allies of this country and the rest of the European nations. And therefore, that means that we will almost certainly be in a state of war with Russia over that if they try to have a go at the Baltic states.

So do you subscribe to the theory that we will be at war with Russia within what period of time? I think the events of the last week have made the likelihood of war with Russia within the next three to five years much, much more likely. It's a terrifying thought. I just wanted to ask you... One caveat, if I may, Kate. Go on, yes.

Therefore, and the way to prevent that is strong defence, to spend money on defence, to be prepared for the worst case, because that is the only way we are going to deter Russia. I'm not sure you're going to get that commitment by Keir Starmer before he goes to Washington, but I suppose you've made a good bid there and you can hope.

I just want to ask you finally, if you flip the coin, how dependent do you think Europe is on Ukraine keeping its sovereignty, its independent armed forces and control of its innovations and its defence to ensure its own future security, that it doesn't fall into the hands of the Russians? Really, really important, because if Ukraine were to fall into the hands of the Russians as a client state, it would bring Russia with all the capability

that Ukraine has built in the last three years and the technical expertise right up to the borders of the NATO alliance and make it even more likely, as I said earlier, that prospect of war with Russia. Do you have any reason to be optimistic at the moment, General Sheref? I'm optimistic in the sense that democracies, when they come together, are strong. And if Europe were to really come together

in a time of real existential need, then I think we can do this. But my goodness me, it requires leadership and moral courage from our political leaders and real determination and an education to every man and woman in this country and others of the gravity of the situation. And just one point on your 3%. I would, you know, maybe it's a challenge,

But we've got to keep talking about it. And I'm serious. Look at several, a couple of times leaders recently have resoundingly stated that this has got to go. This has got to be the way ahead and that sacrifices will be needed to achieve it. It's not impossible at all. General Sir Richard Sheriff, it's been great speaking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Kate.