Is Ukraine running out of time? Former US ambassador Ivo Daalder sizes up the Russia-Ukraine war

Transcript

Listen: Could the last six months be the most pivotal months of the entire Russia/Ukraine war? Over two years into the conflict, Russia is closer to victory in Ukraine than ever before, according to former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder. He joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast from Tallinn, Estonia, mere miles from the Russian border.

How much is this battlefield mismatch due to a delay in US support? A big part of it, says Daalder. “Congress refusing to act on the requests that the president first made back in July…and nothing happening until mid-April” was a major blow to Ukraine’s defenses, Daalder says. “And now it just takes time to get stuff to the Front and get it across the border and to the units in the quantities to make it happen.”

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TRANSCRIPT: Is Ukraine running out of time? Former US ambassador Ivo Daalder sizes up the Russia-Ukraine war

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, we are asking this question: is Ukraine losing the war? A year and a half ago, Russia was in bad shape. Moscow was struggling to resupply troops on the front lines, its naval fleet in the Black Sea decimated. Battlefield Commanders were abandoning offensive positions. Troop casualty estimates as high as half a million, but a disappointing Ukrainian counteroffensive and a six-month delay in critical US military aid gave Moscow the opportunity to rearm and regroup.

In recent weeks, Russian troops have taken territory in the northeast and southeast at a faster clip than at any point during the war, and are closing in on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. In a sign of just how badly the situation is deteriorating, Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, abruptly canceled all international trips in mid-May to focus on the Russian offensive. What comes next? Is this the beginning of the end? What happens if US Congress stalls on additional aid, or worse, fails to pass another package altogether?

My guest, President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, joins me today from Estonia. Let's get to it. Ivo Daalder, welcome back to the show.

Ivo Daalder:

Great to be back.

Ian Bremmer:

Ukraine, you're in Estonia right now. That is not far from the front as we know, but I want to start. I'll ask you about Estonia and the Baltics, and where the war could go, but I want to start with Ukraine. Of course, over the last few weeks, I'm hearing increasingly very negative things from US leaders, from NATO leaders, that it is getting harder and harder to constrain the dynamics of how this Russia-Ukraine war is going.

Ivo Daalder:

Yeah, I think that's true. I think we will look back when the history of this war is written, back to the last six months is really the last six months that may well become the turning point. It was always the case that the Ukrainians needed more capabilities, they needed more ammunition, they needed more air defense systems in order to defend their capabilities, and they needed more manpower.

They only started working on the manpower issue a couple of months ago, and that's going very, very slow, much too slow in order to fill the slots that they need to fill to hold the line. You can have as many men, if they don't have any bullets to fire or shells to shoot, it doesn't really matter. The United States was the linchpin and remains the linchpin of the armaments that the Ukrainians require. The rest of the world just doesn't have enough in their stockpiles.

The Congress refusing to act on the request that the president first made back in July, that's the last time he made a $13 billion request, and nothing happening until mid-April. Now, it's just taken, it just takes time to get stuff through the front, and get it across the border, and to the units in the quantities to make it happening. The Russians have decided they're going to take the advantage of the hole that was created, and they're trying to punch through left and right.

They just have more people, they have more guns, and they, importantly, it looks like they have more and better morale, which makes them willing to do things that otherwise people aren't willing to do. At the same time, things aren't going well on the Ukrainian side. Yeah, this is a very tough period.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, Ivo, the latter point surprises me a little bit. I understand why Ukrainian morale would be challenging, given the lack of support and military capacity in the past months. Of course, the Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland. The Russians are not. The Russians are being sent in.

They've had massive levels of casualties. Their leadership has been uneven to be understated about it, and they're fighting for a purpose for a war that most of them have no idea why they're there. Why do you think morale is high?

Ivo Daalder:

Well, it's relative, of course. Ukrainian morale in that sense is better, but it was down on the Russian side, it was negative. For many people, it still is negative. By the way, the British Ministry of Defense estimates about 900 Russians are being killed each day. That's 30,000 a month. Those are large numbers when you think about it. It's particularly pilots and the more organized military that is there. The pilots weren't willing to fly because they were afraid of being shot down. They didn't know why they would be shot down.

Now, there's less air defense, so they're less likely to be shot down. These glide bombs that we have been hearing about, these are just old World War II bombs with some modern kit that gives them wings to fly about 40 kilometers. These airplanes are now flying closer to the line. They're more willing to take risk. They actually see results, and war is about momentum. If you got it, then morale is on your side. Then the amount of territory that has been gained just in the last couple of weeks, it's about a hundred square kilometers within a week or 10 days.

That's about as much as they would gain in two or three months of fighting. You see movement, you see things moving forward. That makes you feel better. If you're on the other side, you're just running back constantly, that's going to have an impact on morale. Morale matters, because these are drenching fights. These are hard on the people who are there. Yes, you're fighting for your country, but you're really fighting just to live another day. That is hard enough as it is.

I just think it adds up to a dark picture. It doesn't mean the war's going to be over. We still don't think that the Russians have a sufficient number of offensive capabilities to really either break through or make a breakthrough. Can they get close enough to Kharkiv to level it in the way they did Mariupol or Aleppo, sorry, in Syria? Yeah, we may be, in a few months, face another Mariupol, which is a city level.

Ian Bremmer:

Then Kharkiv is a lot bigger. Kharkiv is a lot bigger, in the northeast of the country.

Ivo Daalder:

That's right. It's the second-largest city in Ukraine, and that too has an impact. I do think we are facing-

Ian Bremmer:

Then we'd be talking about millions of additional refugees, right? Just to be clear, right?

Ivo Daalder:

Millions of additional refugees, who can they go to Kyiv? No, because Kyiv is also being attacked from the air. Unless we rush more air defenses in to start defending these cities against the ballistic missile attacks, against the drone attacks, the level of destruction has gone up significantly. 80% of the power generating capacity inside Ukraine has now been destroyed. Yeah, it's a dire situation, and it really, I think, means we need to have a debate. We need to start having a conversation about how serious is this, and are we going to accept this?

We've been saying for two years, "We will do everything we can to allow Ukraine to defend itself." We've also said that it is our strategic interest that Russia not succeed. Well, it's succeeding. That can't be in our strategic interest. As a result, what are we going to do about it? We have military power, we have capabilities we could send in larger quantities. We have troops, and I'm in the Baltic States right now. That's what they're talking about.

Maybe we should thinking about relieving some of the forces in the west while deploying training sites over there and doing other things in order for the Ukrainians to continue to fight in the East.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to get to the question of troops in a second, but first, let's, even assuming you're right, a lot of land has been taken by the Russians in context, a lot of momentum over the past just couple of weeks, both in the northeast of the country, as well as on the front lines in the southeast. Even with the additional troops, even with the additional ammunition and firepower, what I hear is not available and will not be available, because it just doesn't exist and the production capacity doesn't exist, or the air defenses.

In other words, if the Russians are intent on continuing to bomb, as we've seen destroying power capabilities, but possibly also starting to terrorize to a much greater degree, all of the urban centers around Ukraine, the ability of the Ukrainians to stop them, of the West to help the Ukrainians to stop them, does not exist. Is that an accurate assessment, Ivo?

Ivo Daalder:

Well, it doesn't exist, except it does. It's a question of how much of the capabilities that the West have, particularly in the United States, but other countries too, need to be held back for other reasons. One of the reasons we're not shipping as much as we can is because we want to keep some of it for ourselves, in case there's a conflict in China or around Taiwan.

Of course, now in the Middle East, with the active fighting that is going on and the possibility that has now existed for seven months that this war in Gaza might spread, it means that the Patriot systems that we have in large quantities, they're stuck in Iraq, in Syria, protecting small, in Jordan, protecting our troops, and air bases, and naval bases in the Gulf. All of those capabilities are stuck. They can't be moved.

The same is true for the Germans who are making a very active effort to try to get more air defense systems from countries around the world. The Germans have now sent another Patriot system. They have 12, they've sent three, which means there's still nine around now. If you're a German military planner, you say, "Okay, how likely is it that I will need some of those forces in case the war does spread?" You don't want to leave your own forces naked.

However, and I think this is the debate we need to have, can we afford not to succeed in Ukraine? In fact, if we don't succeed in Ukraine, what does that mean for the security of NATO writ large when you will have to deploy all the Patriot systems? Same is true for the United States. Yes, we have forces that are exposed in Iraq, and in Syria, and in other places, but do they need to be there? Do they need to be exposed, if the consequence of that is that ATTACMs, or other Army forces, and missile, and long range rocket capabilities, as well as air defenses, are occupied and can't be used somewhere else?

These are the kinds of strategic decisions, frankly, no one has been wanting to have that discussion, but I think we're getting to a point where it's necessary. Failure's not an option, as they say. It's not an option for the Ukrainians, but it's not an option for NATO, and it's not an option for us. Failing in Ukraine is a failure of NATO. It's a failure of the United States that will have huge repercussions for our security in the long run.

That's kind of what's been lost in this debate about whether or not we're going to send $60 billion to Ukraine. In the meantime, things have gone really bad.

Ian Bremmer:

Ivo, on the one hand, from a personal, from a human, from a values perspective, I agree with everything you just had to say, Analytically, I want to push back. The idea that failure isn't an option, to me, my understanding of what happened in NATO when the Russians invaded back in February, 2022, is that they expected that Ukraine would fall. They expected to fail. They expected that Zelenskyy was going to have to get out of dodge. They offered him a ride out.

If Zelenskyy had been more like Ashraf Ghani as Afghanistan was falling, he would've gotten on a plane, and failure would be what we're talking about right now. Clearly, from the perspective of the leaders of NATO, they've been thinking about failure as a reality, irrespective of whether or not they believed that there would be problems long term that would be harder for them to manage. Short term, failure to me has seemed like it's been an option all the way along. Am I wrong?

Ivo Daalder:

Well, no, you're not wrong, but time does matter. It's one thing to say in February of 2022, "Okay, we're going to lose Ukraine, but now we're going to invest everything we have in defending all, every inch of NATO territory." That would mean that you would have to redeploy significant military capability that we have not yet deployed to Ukraine, let alone to Europe, that is now stuck in the Middle East, or is necessary for looking at Asia.

We would've had a very different military response than we actually did, although that doesn't mean that this military response wasn't significant. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, NATO military spending went up significantly, and particularly in Europe, US redeployments of forces went up significantly, but we would have had to do more if Russia had succeeded in destroying and taking over Kyiv at relatively a short period of time.

Now, however, after two years of investing in Ukraine with the kind of capabilities, we have actually put not just our credibility, but more, our defense on the front lines in Ukraine. We have said, and we actually I think have believed, that Ukraine is not just fighting for them, they're fighting for us. Now, therefore, losing means that it is more likely that you will face a Russia that believes that because NATO was weak in the first instance, it can now challenge NATO in the second instance, which means you will have to do more for defending NATO.

You will have to do more in terms of sending troops to de Baltic States, and deploying the kind of air defense systems that we are now not willing to deploy. I think the question really is do you want to do it when it's too late, or do you want to do it now? Can we be penny wise in order to say, "Yeah, maybe we will send half of our Patriot batteries to help Ukraine now. If Russia does not succeed, it also means that it won't necessarily be a threat to NATO, definitely not in the short term, and perhaps not even in the long term."

Aren't we all better off if in fact, that's how we look at it? I do think that things change over time because of the reality of the war.

Ian Bremmer:

Vladimir Putin has just come back from a trip to China, where he's met with Xi Jinping, these deep friends, not quite allies, but nonetheless, Putin is getting a lot of support, a lot of economic support, a lot of diplomatic cover from Xi Jinping. How much does this matter in Russia's future, the future of the war?

Ivo Daalder:

It's critical. Without China, Russia would be in much, much deeper trouble than it is. The Chinese are providing very significant economic support, the foundation for the rebuild and the war economy that we're seeing the Russians engaged in, and providing the kinds of capabilities they need in order to enhance the production of tanks, of missiles, of everything that they're producing. They couldn't do it without the Chinese. In that sense, it's absolutely critical.

Now, why are the Chinese doing it? We know why the Russians want this. Why are the Chinese doing it? The Chinese aren't a competition with us. They want us to lose in that competition, and Ukraine has yet won more arrow in their quiver that they're trying to shoot to make sure that the United States and the West get weak, are seen as weak by the rest of the world, and Xi Jinping ultimately is seen as the savior of those who can stand up against the United States.

Ian Bremmer:

You are now in Estonia, and as the Russians make gains in Ukraine, Estonia certainly feels like a place on the front lines. Estonia has spent a meaningful piece of their GDP in support of Ukraine, and they also put about double into defense of what the average NATO member does. What's the mood on this issue in Estonia right now? How much panic is there? What are they doing about it? Give us a little sense.

Ivo Daalder:

Yeah, the mood is, it's not like you're walking around downtown in the beautiful Tallinn City, and you see people preparing sandbags and for an invasion coming around tomorrow. The mood in that sense is completely normal. It's gorgeous weather here, people sitting outside, they're enjoying themselves. There are lots of tourists who come here with cruise ships, et cetera. In that sense, you don't have a panic, but you talk to officials in the government, and they are worried.

They're worried because clearly, the Russians have now decided that their survival, and certainly Putin's survival, depends on the permanent mobilization of the country for war. The economy is moving into a war economy. It's becoming increasingly dependent in order to grow, on churning out missiles, and airplanes, and artillery, and bullets, and tanks, et cetera, rather than cars. That just means that a lot of this stuff is going to be sitting around that they will want to use.

There is this worry. There's a very big worry that if things don't go well in Ukraine, then that threat justice is transported to the border of Estonia, which borders on Russia. I'm in Tallinn. I'm a few kilometers away from the Russian border. These are places that know there is a Russian threat. They also know what it means to be part of a Russian Empire. They were incorporated into the Soviet Union for 50 years. It reminds me of something that Radek Sikorski, a good friend of yours and mine, said when I was lost in Munich.

Polish foreign minister, he said, "15 years ago, we told you the Russians were coming, and you didn't believe us. 10 years ago, we told they were coming, and didn't you believe in us. Five years ago, we told you they were coming and you didn't believe of us. You need to believe us now." That sentiment is very much the sentiment here. You cannot believe that Vladimir Putin and this Russia is not ultimately going to find a way to try and weaken the West by dividing it, and if necessary, using military force to that end.

Estonia, and Latvia, and Lithuania, and Poland, the countries on the front line are saying, "You, the United States, you, Germany, you need to wake up. This war that you don't want to fight, it's right here, right now being fought in Ukraine."

Ian Bremmer:

We have the most important NATO summit in this organization's history coming up in Washington DC in just a couple of months in July. I certainly expect that Zelenskyy will either be there in person or will be dialing in, depending on the nature of the war, but it is going to be a hard summit to hold, given what you and I have just been talking about and how this Ukrainian war is going.

What needs to happen at this summit? What can possibly happen at this summit to try to either turn things around, or try to stabilize the situation at the very least?

Ivo Daalder:

Well, it's interesting, because of course, this is a summit supposedly to celebrate the 75th anniversary of NATO. In fact, NATO officials are still talking about the celebration that they will have. Indeed, NATO has been revived. It's stronger, it's more capable, but Ukraine is going to be the dominant headline. It reminds me of the last time NATO had a summit in Washington. It was the 50th anniversary in 1999, when we were engaged in a war in Kosovo.

Everybody came together, thinking we're going to celebrate the fact that Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary had become members of NATO. In fact, what we did is having a really serious discussion how to make sure that we weren't going to lose a war against Serbia in Kosovo. It led to a discussion and ultimately a decision to start planning for a possible ground invasion of Kosovo.

It was that signal that led the Russians finally to get serious about possibly negotiating an end to the war, which happened. I think that's what we're going to be talking about. I think we're going to see leaders like we saw Tony Blair in 1999, coming from Europe, deeply, deeply concerned about what's happening. We will hear it from Zelenskyy. I hope we'll do it before the summit and do it quietly, with the message that NATO's future depends on how we react now.

The reactions now need to be including the kinds of things we haven't been willing to do. It means that we need to send them the weapons that the Ukrainians need in order to strike the Russians, not just on the front line and behind the tree lines, but deep, to go after the logistical structures in Crimea, the railway, the bridge across the Kerch, and if necessary, strike targets in Russia. The Russians are using every day, missiles, airplanes, ships, and firing drones and missiles at cities throughout Ukraine.

We are telling them, "You can't use our weapons to strike back. That is crazy." We need to be allowing them to fight the war in the way they need to fight it. The Germans should send them with the Taurus missile, which is a long-range missile, which would be capable of taking down the Kerch Bridge, which would make Crimea much more difficult to defend. After all, that's what this is about. It's taking the war back against the Russians.

Then we probably have to have a discussion about, is there more things we can do directly to influence this war? For example, could we deploy our air defense systems around the periphery of Ukraine in order to protect parts of Western Ukraine against the kinds of attacks that we have been seeing, so that the Ukrainians can move their air defense systems more forward to Kharkiv and defend that?

Ian Bremmer:

Now, that's directly fighting, right? That's NATO directly involving itself in the war.

Ivo Daalder:

It is directly shooting down stuff that is being shot by the Russians, but you're also, that missile may in fact not hit Lviv, it may hit Poland, and therefore, you need to defend Poland. Yes, we have to think seriously about what steps we can take to make sure the Ukraine doesn't lose this war, and ultimately, in fact, gets to a situation where Russia will look back and said, "This wasn't worth it," because that is ultimately what this is about.

Ian Bremmer:

What I hear is that this war is not going well, and that the only way that NATO is going to turn it around is if there is a willingness to risk a certain level of greater escalation. That's what I'm hearing from you.

Ivo Daalder:

That's right. I think we've seen from the very beginning a balance between the fear of escalation on the one hand, and faith in deterrence on the other hand. That balance has shifted consistently. There are things we weren't willing to do because we were fearing escalation, that we have learned we could do, whether we're sending them HIMARS, or now just recently, ATACMs, or in July, F-16s, longer range weapons, more and more capable of killing hundreds and thousands of Russians, because these are Western weapons that are killing Russians on the battlefield, in the belief that we weren't going to do it because that will be escalatory.

Then we said, "No, actually we can do it because the Russian's response is to escalate in a way that we can deter." I think we need to push that faith in the deterrence a little further. What is it that the Russians can do? They're really going to go to war against Europe or NATO in response? They're going to use nuclear weapons, knowing full well that we would respond significantly, not with nuclear weapons, but with conventional weapons, and that the one thing that the Chinese have told them about this war not to do is to use nuclear weapons?

We need to recalibrate, and recalibration is something that is hard to do. You and I are not sitting in the Oval Office. We don't have to make those decisions. I don't envy anybody making those decisions, but these are the kinds of debates that we need to have.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, on Trump, US elections coming up real soon, and former President Trump has said repeatedly, if he wins, the war is over in a day. The Europeans are very concerned about what that might mean for their security. How much of a vulnerability do you think there is in this war on the basis of the US elections?

Ivo Daalder:

I think there's a huge vulnerability. Trump has said that he's going to end the war in 24 hours, and the way he is going to do it, he's going to tell the Ukrainians, "No more aid." He's going to tell Vladimir Putin, "You keep what you have, but don't take anything else." I think the problem is neither the Ukrainians nor that Russians are going to listen to him, but the Europeans will listen.

In Europe, and it's been now pretty clear for the last few months, they feel themselves squeezed between Putin and Trump. Trump, as a country that is no longer willing and able reliably to help Europe in its own defense, in the way it has done for 75 years, and Putin, because it is a war economy that is bent on conquest, and using wars a means to divide the West.

They're increasingly thinking about how can we ourselves, 450 million people with a strong economy, figuring out how we can stand alone in a world that is beset by an unreliable and uncertain ally in the United States, and increasingly threatened militarily expansionist Russia? That's the question Europe faces. It isn't going away with this election.

Ian Bremmer:

Final point, Ivo. We've talked a lot about the war, a lot about the implications for different actors. We haven't talked about negotiations. Now, that is in part because no negotiations are happening. No negotiations are likely to happen. There's no overlap between what the Russians would and the Ukrainians would accept, at least not for the foreseeable future.

It does seem to me that the end of this war is likely, overwhelmingly likely to end... It does seem to be the end of this war is overwhelmingly likely to involve Ukraine losing territory, overwhelmingly likely to lead to some form of partition, however unacceptable that sounds and seems to us as human beings. I wonder if you accept that.

Ivo Daalder:

I don't. There will be a period in which there is neither fighting nor complete Ukrainian control of all the territory, and I do think that the fighting at some point will stop well short of Ukraine regaining all of the territory that it has lost, but that doesn't end the war, nor does it end the conflict. I think the conflict is going to be there a long time. In some ways, the conflict has been going on for not just years, but decades and centuries.

As long as Russia believes that its security depends fundamentally on the insecurity of its neighbors, we're going to have a conflict. Russians have believed that for three, 400 years, and until they actually realize that their security depends on the security of their neighbors, that if neighbors are secure, they will be secure, until that time, we will have conflict and war.

I think therefore, when we talk about this war will end in a negotiation, what we're talking about will more likely end in a stalemate, in some form of ceasefire, and perhaps even an armistice, but not in an end of the war or an end of the conflict per se. Just think Korea, or even better example, Syria and Israel. They haven't been fighting directly since what, 1975 in the War of Attrition. Israel has now annexed the Golan Heights, but there's no peace. There's not even an agreement about who owns what territory.

There's occupation in that sense as far as the international community is concerned of the Golan Heights, and yet there's no fighting direct between the two belligerent parties, but there's no peace. I think that's the more likely way in which this conflict will evolve, and there will be a determination for the Ukrainians to get it all back, just as there was for the Estonians who are, where I'm at right now, to get their country back, which ultimately after 50 years, they did.

Ian Bremmer:

They did. Two different ways of talking about where we're heading. Ivo Daldur, thanks for joining us today.

Ivo Daalder:

My pleasure, as always.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars? Only five stars, otherwise don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.