Podcast: Is Ukraine's counteroffensive failing?

TRANSCRIPT: Is Ukraine's counteroffensive failing?

Marie Yovanovitch:

Every man, woman, and child is in this fight for Ukraine. They are tired, don't get me wrong, and the constant bombardments of the civilian population is exhausting. But they are committed, they're confident, and they're very courageous, and they're going to keep on going.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of interviews from my weekly show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and a year and a half after Russia's invasion, we are looking at the state of war in Ukraine. Why hasn't Ukraine's long awaited counteroffensive been more effective? Based on my conversations with high ranking officials, things are going more slowly and less successfully the NATO commanders had hoped and expected.

And although it looks like Ukraine's military has recently launched a major thrust towards the south and the Sea of Azov, the tide of war has yet to meaningfully change. Why haven't the Ukrainians managed to do more and to do it faster? If military resolution to the conflict isn't coming anytime soon, could a diplomatic solution be back on the table? To discuss all that and more, I'm joined by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Maria Yovanovitch, thanks so much for joining us today.

Marie Yovanovitch:

Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

So much I want to ask you about. We've been focused on this war, sadly, for close to a year and a half now. You've been back and forth to Ukraine, of course, quite a bit. Tell me what surprises you most on your latest trips.

Marie Yovanovitch:

Yeah, I'm not sure at this point that there are that many surprises, although one of the things that reassures me and maybe does surprise me is how committed and confident the Ukrainians are, not just on the government level, not just the military, but the people of Ukraine. They are tired, don't get me wrong, and the constant bombardments of the civilian population is exhausting and terrifying. But they are committed, they're confident, and they're very courageous, and they're going to keep on going.

I was emailing with one of my former employees who was a political officer, but it turns out he has all sorts of techie skills, and so he is now in the military working in the drone unit. They had recently been attacked and he told me that the local population is just all in. A little boy came up to him after the attack and he said, "I've got this spent bullet for you and you can use it the next time the Russians attack." I think that just is indicative of how every man, woman, and child is in this fight for Ukraine. They will do whatever they need to do, even if it's finding the spent bullets for the next fight.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to get to you on things like ammunition because, of course, that's a big part of the story with the counteroffensive. But most recently, of course, we saw this NATO summit, Vilnius Summit, an enormous amount of support for the Ukrainians, both long-term in terms of the G7 agreement, as well as near term in terms of military support. The most notable piece for me was right at the beginning when President Zelenskyy said it was absurd that he wasn't getting a direct NATO timeline.

It was pretty clear he wasn't going to get one the weeks before from the US and from the Germans, from the Brits, from others. I was surprised to see that. How much of this is just the massive level of strain, intellectual strain, emotional strain, spiritual strain that I mean he's under trying to run this country in wartime? How much of it is just the nature of the political environment, the fragility of institutions given what's going on, and how much of it is maybe he's just pushing too hard, doesn't necessarily get how fast this is moving?

Marie Yovanovitch:

I mean, I think it's probably all of the above. I think that there had been hopes in Ukraine, including on the part of President Zelenskyy and those around him that they would get more of a commitment, whether it's a timeline, whether it's an invitation. Nobody was expecting NATO membership, but I think they were expecting more than they got. Frankly, the US and Germany were a little out of step with the rest of the allies.

One of the key goals for this administration, which I think has done a remarkable job of leading the alliance in supporting Ukraine, in strengthening the alliance and in not further broadening the war, but strengthening the alliance and keeping alliance cohesion is one of the main goals. Going into the Vilnius summit, there was not cohesion. We were a little out of step.

I think that day one of the summit obviously the headline was the unhappiness of the Ukrainians and the deep emotionalism of that statement by Zelenskyy. Day two, I think, showed you the bilaterals, the reassurance to Ukraine by every leader, including our own. I think that went a long way to reassuring the Ukrainians that, in the words of President Biden, NATO is in their future.

The G7 commitments to security guarantees I think was perhaps the strongest part of those couple of days in Vilnius, where granted the devil is going to be in the details and they're going to be seven negotiations for Ukraine to conduct, but the ability to plan long-term with the commitment of weapons and training and so forth I think is going to be huge for Ukraine in terms of being able to create its own planning for the war, but also in terms of the signal to Moscow that we are not getting up here.

Ian Bremmer:

And intelligence and cybersecurity support and all the rest. I mean, it was a very comprehensive and long-term statement. I agree with you completely, Maria. That was the big takeaway from the summit. Ultimately, they seemed to come out of the summit extraordinarily cohesive.

Marie Yovanovitch:

If you think about where NATO was before the war, if you think about the prognostication that was going on about how we would or would not support Ukraine and where we are right now, I think it's remarkable. Not only has NATO gotten a new lease of life, but the support for Ukraine is, as I said, remarkable. The thing is, I think now the summit was a success by many measures, and now we look forward to the next summit, which is going to be in Washington, DC for the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO. There's an opportunity again to reach out to Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer:

I don't want to make a presumption. It sounds to me like you're saying you believe that Ukraine should be welcomed in the nearer term as a full member.

Marie Yovanovitch:

I do. I do. That wasn't where I was five years ago. It probably wasn't even where I was two years ago. But I think Ukraine has earned its place in NATO. I think it's not just Ukraine that needs NATO. I think we need Ukraine. Ukraine is shoring up our eastern borders.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you respond to Biden's concerns that membership cannot occur as long as an act of war is going on?

Marie Yovanovitch:

Yeah, I think that's definitely a concern. I think that the Secretary General Rasmussen has come up with a possible creative way to address that. I think we need to be thinking more about how can we bring in such a good partner, a country that would be a great ally. Usually you can find solutions if you want to find a solution, and I think this is one where we should be finding that solution.

Ian Bremmer:

On the counter offensive, been going on for almost a couple of months now, very little Ukrainian territory retaken, also nowhere close to the full number of troops that the Ukrainians have available to them and trained used in the counteroffensive so far. Russians don't seem to be falling apart at all, despite what we saw with the Prigozhin-Wagner debacle internally holding onto the defenses. Where do you come out? How do you think the Ukrainians are doing? How do you expect them to do realistically over the next couple of months?

Marie Yovanovitch:

The Ukrainians are doing what the British call, they have a catchy little phrase of stretch, starve and strike in terms of the three steps of the campaign. The stretching part of it is what we're seeing now, which is the probing to find the weak spots in Russian defenses. The starving part is hitting bridges, hitting munitions dumps, hitting railroad tracks, all of that so that supplies can't get through to the Russians. There is some good effects going on there.

The striking part is once they've made a decision as to where the Russians are weakest, then they will bring in the NATO trained and equipped troops hopefully to come in and strike the Russians where they are weakest. I think what we've seen over the last six, seven weeks is the Ukrainians first went in pretty with larger units. And as we saw, they lost a lot of equipment and they lost some men as well, sadly.

I think now what they're doing is going in with smaller units, striking quickly, doing as much damage as they can to the Russians, and then pulling back. The strategy is active attrition. It's not to gain territory at this point. I think that will come later when they are ready to strike. We still have a number of months, October, maybe even November, depending on the weather, of active fighting season, and I think the Ukrainians are going to take advantage of that.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, one of the big challenges has been getting them suitable ammunition to be able to continue that fight. The big debate recently has been about cluster munitions. Now, you had mentioned that the Americans and the Germans were out of step with the allies in terms of NATO accession and the timeline. They've also been out of step with the allies in terms of the cluster munitions. Most allies do not want those weapons going to the Ukrainians. The Americans chose to provide them. What do you think the right decision is here and why?

Marie Yovanovitch:

I think it was a very difficult decision, first of all, because again, I think the Biden administration wants to keep the allies together and focused and united. Clearly this was a point of difference. But I think that we're also at a place where the Ukrainians don't have enough ammunition. We don't have enough ammunition to provide. We, the collective coalition, don't have enough ammunition to provide. What do you do?

The answer came up, cluster munitions, which is not a great answer, but it is the answer that was found. I understand that people are critical of this decision because it's not one I would've wanted to make myself, but it's wartime. We live in shades of gray, right? Sometimes there's a clear right and a wrong. Other times there aren't. Ukrainians are fighting and dying. In my opinion, we need to provide them what we can so that they can prevail.

Ian Bremmer:

Right now it still looks like endless war. How should we think about a negotiations process? How might we think about a ceasefire process?

Marie Yovanovitch:

When both sides are ready to actually negotiate and negotiate in good faith. The facts on the ground are going to determine a lot of that process, whether it's a ceasefire, whether it's something more long-lasting, what the actual borderlines would be, and so forth. I think a lot of people are spending a lot of time thinking about various scenarios and that's all good, but I think it's hard to definitively say this is what it's going to look like.

I would also say the Ukrainians have a lot of experience in negotiating with the Russians, and the Russians don't always, as you know, negotiate in good faith. In fact, more often than not, they don't. Specifically in 2014, 2015 with the Minsk agreements where the international community, France and Germany, really held Ukrainian feet to the fire to stop the blood flow and everything else and the Russians, they signed, but they never did anything that was in that agreement, including honoring the ceasefire.

I think Ukrainians are justifiably concerned that they're going to be caught in that same nightmare again, where there's an agreement where the international community keeps on looking at Ukraine to do its part, but too hard to make Russia do its part. We don't pressure the Russians. How do we get out of that kind of a dynamic? I think we need to think very carefully about that.

If we get into that kind of dynamic again, I think it's going to be the same kind of scenario all over again as what we saw before, where Russia regroups, re-arms, and re-attacks Ukraine, but maybe other parts of Europe as well.

Ian Bremmer:

If the G7 is truly committed to providing the kind of training and equipment and intelligence for Ukraine, I mean, essentially NATO is fighting this war in Ukraine with the Ukrainians. They're not providing soldiers directly in the fight. But aside from that, I mean, whether it's hitting the Kerch Bridge or whether it's taking out Russian supply chains and the rest, I mean, the Americans are leading the way for Ukraine.

If that's the case, as long as we know that's the case, why would we be so concerned about the Russians taking another bite at this apple? I ask in part because a big part of the reason why the Russians invaded a year ago February is precisely because none of that support existed for Ukraine.

Marie Yovanovitch:

There's another question, which you haven't asked me, which is what is going on in Russia? And I don't have a great answer for that either.

Ian Bremmer:

I'll get there. I'll get there. That's okay.

Marie Yovanovitch:

But that also obviously plays a part into what do future negotiations look like, because is the opposite member Putin or is it somebody else? We've already heard from Zelenskyy that he's not going to negotiate with Putin. That may or may not come out to pass, but I think that will make a huge difference. And if it's Putin, I think he's got a track record and he's told us what he wants to do. I think he's probably still committed to that vision of a greater Russia, the Russian Empire. He wants that for his place in history.

I don't think he's given up, and I don't think he gets good information even today in terms of what is going on out there. If you haven't given up, if you're not getting good intel, you keep on going with your original plan. I mean, he still believes, I think, that the West is weak, that we will avert our gaze to the next bright and shiny object, and we will forget about Ukraine and Russia and that's when he's going to strike again. I think that's his game plan.

Ian Bremmer:

To talk about the Russians for a second, of course, there have been some people talking to the Russians and to this regime. We saw that the outgoing head of the Council on Foreign Relations and someone that we've had on this show, certainly Richard Haas has led a delegation, done some Track Two Diplomacy with the Russians, and also spoke with Foreign Minister Lavrov. How do you respond? How do you think about high level policy connected Americans engaging with this Russian government at this time?

Marie Yovanovitch:

While communication with adversaries, whether it's China, whether it's Russia, whether it's another country, is always an important thing, it's also important to make sure you're in sync with your own government when you're doing that, number one. And number two, in this case, having discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine is not part of what the US government says is its policy.

I would just say that if you're not at the table in those kinds of discussions, you're on the menu. The Ukrainian people understand that and they're quite concerned about what this would mean. I'm sure they went into this hoping to create a very positive dynamic and options and various other things. I'm not sure that's where it's coming out.

Ian Bremmer:

Talking about being on the menu, let's move to Putin's chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin. You knew I was going there. I mean, you did not know he was going to Moscow. Neither did I. That was a bit of a surprise. He now is in Belarus, as best as we can tell, along with a bunch of his troops. His media company's been shut down, but he still has access to a lot of his cash. To what extent do you think that all of this, the outcome of that unprecedented move against Putin, is that an opportunity for the West? Is it a danger for the West? How does it change the way we think about this conflict and Russia?

Marie Yovanovitch:

First of all, we need to understand that whether it's an American expert talking about it, or frankly, even a Russian expert, Russian sources I'm reading, they're speculating too as to what is really going on and what is Putin's game plan and so forth. I think there's more speculation than hard facts is the first thing. The other thing that I would know is it's not done. There are probably a number of different phases of the Prigozhin rebellion, and we're not at the end of it yet.

I think you're seeing a purge of Russian generals, Russian generals quitting, publicly criticizing, taking a leaf out of Prigozhin's playbook. We now see that Prigozhin is in Belarus. I'm not sure that that's going to be his final landing spot. He wasn't actually holding up a newspaper with a date on it. I'd like to see him actually being reactive in real time so we know that he's out and free and everything else. I was shocked when the Kremlin put out information that Putin met not only with Prigozhin, but a number of his top leaders five days after the rebellion.

I mean, I thought my head was going to explode. Is this more disinformation? Was this true? What was the point? Where is it going? I think it's hard to draw final conclusions, but I do think that Putin was weakened by this and he's now trying to gather up that strength and figure out what his next steps are. And as with all dictators, it's narrowing your circle, punishing not necessarily the guilty, but punishing the ones you don't trust and trying to staunch the bleeding.

But I think there's going to be an effect not only on Wagner and whether it gets split apart or kept together, but under tighter Putin control, but also on the Russian military itself, which has already had morale and supply problem, I mean, all the problems we all know about, but they are now just going to be exacerbated.

You started the question by asking whether this was an opportunity for the West, and I think that actually the Biden administration handled this exactly right by saying, "This is an internal Russian issue and you all need to sort that out, and we are not playing any part in this." The US government has not had a great track record when it comes to picking new governments in foreign countries, and I think we should stay out of it.

Ian Bremmer:

There was one place that the US did seem to play a role where the director of the CIA Bill Burns gave a speech, a very interesting speech, where he said, this is a unique opportunity for America from an intelligence perspective, this level of internal instability in Russia, and that the Americans were not going to allow it to go to waste. A little bravado, a little putting the Russians on notice. If you were a director of the CIA, would you have made that statement?

Marie Yovanovitch:

It's super interesting to me how the intelligence communities now in the past clothed secrecy, right? You can never penetrate that veil, but now they're putting stuff out there. They're putting intel out about what Russia is doing. They're publicly inviting members of the Russian public to come over to the other side. It's really interesting as a tactic, and it's interesting I think also as a way of trolling the Russians.

Ian Bremmer:

It reminded me of what the Americans did not do in Iran. I mean, you had large numbers of people demonstrating in Iran, and you did not have the Americans say, "This is a great opportunity. We'd love to talk to you. Let's get some intel out of Iran." You had them saying and said, "No, we're no part of this. This is an internal. We're very concerned. We're watching it very carefully."

I mean, that could have been a United Nation statement as opposed to a US statement. I just note, I agree with you that definitely intelligence to embarrass the Russians when there's a national security issue. But on this one, I thought it was a little bit different.

Marie Yovanovitch:

Yeah, you're probably right.

Ian Bremmer:

I'm wondering, I mean, we know that at least for now, the Republican front-runner in the upcoming US elections is Donald Trump, someone who said that he will end this conflict in the first 24 hours. I assume it's because he's also got other things he has to do in the first day. That's why it's going to take so long. But obviously a very different perspective. It's going to press the Russians hard, going to press the Ukrainians harder, sounds like, to give up land and the rest.

You hear that, and you know, of course, what it was like, the Trump policies towards Russia and Ukraine when you were there. I am wondering, does this mean that there is a window, a narrow window for the Americans to do everything they can and that diplomacy and military options need to be considered within that window, or you wouldn't paint it that way?

Marie Yovanovitch:

It's a good question, and I think it depends on your perspective. The Ukrainians are looking at this and they're worried, right? They're worried that the elections are going to create issues for them as the 2016 elections created for them. I think the Ukrainians, of course, being the country under attack, there's no people that more want peace than the Ukrainians. But I think politically now they are very much hoping that the counteroffensive will be effective.

It's not going to be the last deal. It's not going to be a movie kind of an ending here, but hopefully it will get Ukraine on that trajectory towards victory and the upper hand at the negotiating table. I think everybody would like to see that, and I'm sure many in Washington would as well. We'll have to see what happens.

Ian Bremmer:

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, thanks for joining us on GZERO World.

Marie Yovanovitch:

Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course, you did. Why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter? It's called GZERO Daily.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at Prologis.com.