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Czech president Petr Pavel: Ukraine war fatigue weakening NATO unity against Russia
In a GZERO Global Stage discussion at the 79th UN General Assembly, Czechia President Peter Pavel highlighted the evolving dynamics within NATO nearly two years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He acknowledged that initial unity, which surged in response to the shock of the invasion, has waned as war fatigue sets in.
"I had an impression that some representatives of the countries are a little bit tired by always hearing that we need to support Ukraine, and we need to condemn Russian aggression," he said.
President Pavel emphasized that the conflict transcends regional borders, threatening global principles by challenging the UN Security Council's core values. He stressed the need for continued opposition to Russia's aggression, warning that a victory for Russia could embolden similar regimes to pursue military solutions to achieve their aims.
Pavel spoke during GZERO’s Global Stage livestream, “Live from the United Nations: Securing our Digital Future,” an event produced in partnership between the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, or CRAF’d, and GZERO Media’s Global Stage series, sponsored by Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes heads of state, business leaders, and technology experts from around the world for a critical debate about the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world. Click here to watch the full conversation.
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Is it time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia? Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov explains Kyiv's perspective
Listen: Ukraine is at a crossroads. It's been more than two years of brutal, deadly conflict. Despite some shifts to the front lines, neither side has a clear path to military victory, and support for the war effort is flagging amongst Ukrainians. Is it time for President Zelensky to think about negotiating an end to the war? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits with Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and author of "Our Enemies Will Vanish," about the challenges Ukraine faces, including waning morale and difficulties in military recruitment. Although recent polls indicate that Ukrainians are more receptive to peace talks, Trofimov warns that Russia’s endgame remains unchanged—total erasure of Ukrainian national identity. With the painful history of Soviet-Era aggression still fresh in the national memory, most Ukrainians are resolute that they won’t accept compromise unless it means the return of all internationally recognized land. Trofimov cautions that the absence of security guarantees by NATO and Western allies means Russia's assault on Ukraine is far from over.
Though Bremmer and Trofimov spoke in July before Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, the larger picture remains bleak: no clear path to ending the war, hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and nearly 20% of Ukraine still under occupation. And if Donald Trump wins a second term, continued US military support is uncertain. So, is it time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia for a swift end to the war? If not, what will be the cost of all this suffering?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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Why Ukraine invaded Russia
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. I wanted to talk a little bit about Russia/Ukraine before news in the United States and the Middle East take it off the headlines again.
The surprise, of course, is that the Ukrainians have invaded Russia. This was a substantial, you'd say more than an incursion, a significant amount of territory presently being held. The Russians have had to, as a consequence, announce a "counter-terrorism operation regime" in Kursk, in Bryansk, and Belgorod, not martial law, but still, that has reduced some of the forces that they can deploy in fighting the front lines in Southeast Ukraine. And it's also certainly embarrassed Putin, embarrassed his senior military leadership. This is supposed to be all about defeating the Ukrainians, and now the Russians have lots of citizens that are facing a war on Russian territory. Now, to be clear, the Ukrainians have no territorial claim on any part of Russia, but there is a feeling of turnabout is fair play.
What's going on here? I think there are a few things. First of all, the fact that the Ukrainians can put the Russians under some pressure domestically in a run-up to what everyone expects will eventually be negotiations helps to improve Ukraine's position. And no matter who you talk to, the Europeans, the Democrats in the US, the Republicans in the US, the feeling increasingly is that it is going to be harder for the Ukrainians to continue to fight and defend their territory the way they have for the last two and a half years. And so that means you need to have negotiations in the coming year. Part of that is because the Ukrainians aren't going to have the troops. Part of it is because it's getting harder to raise the money. And that's not just the United States, though there was a fight about that, and certainly it'll get harder next year, especially if Trump/Vance win, but also if Harris/Walz do, but also the Germans just cut back 50% of their expected support for the Ukrainian military in 2025, because they're under fiscal constraints, this is the largest European economy. So either way, there is a clear understanding from all sides that you want to move towards freezing the conflict at a minimum and negotiations and maybe a ceasefire and a longer-term settlement, more ambitiously. Much better from the Ukrainian perspective to do that if they have leverage over Russia too, and they have shown leverage. They can blow up the Black Sea fleet, which was important to Russia's national security, and they can put some areas of Russia, both in terms of missiles and alts and drones, but also in terms of Ukrainian troops at risk.
Now, can the Ukrainians hold Kursk from the Russians? Hard to imagine that. I expect that within the coming weeks they'll be forced out of that territory by the Russians. But clearly, they had the element of surprise. The Russians weren't ready to immediately defend or immediately counterattack against that incursion. So I suspect this is more about the broader negotiations between Russian Ukraine than the idea that there's going to be a territory swap. I don't think you'll get there. I also think there is a little bit of desperation. If you're the Ukrainians, remember, you're running out of troops. So sending more troops into Kursk makes you more vulnerable and weaker on the home front, especially when it's been harder and harder to mobilize those troops. And there's been political opposition to doing that. And I think that's because the Ukrainians understand that they need to make Russia feel insecure sooner rather than later, because it's going to be hard to keep this fighting up for another one, two years or more, irrespective of how the American election goes, but certainly, if it goes against the Ukrainians, that's going to be a problem for them. So this isn't all about that.
Also, we're learning more about Russian response. Let's keep in mind that we've heard from Russian leaders, including former President Medvedev and occasionally even Putin himself, that nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons are on the table, and don't you dare, sort of, allow the Ukrainians to use weapons that could strike into Russia. Don't you dare hit Crimea. Don't you dare hit Russian territory. And every time those ostensible red lines have been broken, the Russian response has been dramatically more restrained than one might have expected from listening to Putin and the Kremlin at face value. That's useful because they've also said similar things about Ukraine in NATO and the West defending Ukraine. And if you're going to get to a negotiated settlement that is acceptable for the Ukrainians, which means that they're going to lose territory, they will be partitioned. They need to have the ability to defend their territory for the long-term in a credible way. And the best way to ensure that is get them into NATO. The best way to ensure that is to get them troops on the ground in territory that the Russians don't occupy.
Now, you can have an alliance, have security guarantees that don't include the entire territory. Japan, for example, has an alliance with the United States. It doesn't include the Northern territories, contested and presently occupied, some of them by Russia. So there's plenty of precedent here. But the point is that few in NATO believe today that Ukraine in NATO, especially the piece of Ukraine that isn't occupied by Russia in NATO, is an existential risk for World War III the way that many of them would've believed that when Russian retaliation and escalation was less known, was less experienced a year ago, certainly two years ago. So, that's interesting.
Final point I want to raise here is that whether Harris or Trump win the election in November, I think we are moving towards a similar outcome. In other words, both of these leaders would like to see an end to the fighting. Both of them would like to see a ceasefire. Both of them would like to see the west move on because they recognize the reality of the fighting on the ground, and in the case of Trump in particular, because he wants to say, "New wars started under Biden/Harris, I end them." The big difference between the two is that Trump is much more likely to make those decisions unilaterally. In other words, tell the Ukrainians and the Russians, "This is the deal, accept it or else," and not necessarily coordinate with NATO allies in advance. Where a Harris administration would be working closely in multilateral fashion with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians to try to get to a similar outcome. In other words, more risk acceptant towards that outcome on the Trump side, more risk averse and more coordinated with allies, harder to get done in some ways, under a Harris administration, but lower likelihood that it really blows up in your face. So how lucky do you feel is the open question, but not as dramatically different as the media would have led you to expect over the course of the past months talking about a potential Trump administration.
So that's a little bit from me on where we are, a very different position in some ways, in the Russia/Ukraine war today, and maybe even, I don't want to call it optimistic, but maybe seeing more of a pathway towards how this fighting can be frozen, if not ended. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy interacts with soldiers during his visit to a military training area to find out about the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the ?Patriot? anti-aircraft missile system, at an undisclosed location, in Germany, June 11, 2024.
NATO to pledge $43 billion in Ukraine support
As world leaders descend on Washington today for this year’s NATO summit, one number is top of mind: $43 billion. That’s the amount NATO leaders are expected to pledge in Ukraine support at this week’s gathering.
The one-year, $43 billion pledge is less ambitious than NATO’s initial proposal of a multi-year, $100 billion support package, but it couldn’t come at a more critical time for Ukraine. The country has weathered a wave of Russian missile attacks against its cities in recent days – one hit its largest children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday – killing 36 people and injuring 140 nationwide, adding to the mounting number of civilian casualties since Moscow renewed its air campaign in recent months.
Will more aid be coming? For some leaders at the summit – particularly those engulfed in domestic political turmoil that is limiting their capacity to commit more long-term resources to Ukraine – this is a tougher question. The summit comes on the heels of the far-right’s success in the European Parliamentary elections and France’s snap election – both of which emboldened the Ukraine-skeptic far right – and as President Joe Biden faces pressure to quit the presidential race that he currently looks set to lose to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pledged to end Ukraine support.
Is the US aid to Ukraine too little, too late?
Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder says the last six months of Ukraine's war with Russia may have been a critical juncture. He underscores Ukraine's urgent need for additional capabilities, especially manpower and ammunition, which the US has been slow to supply.
"[The Russians] 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."
Daalder calls for a serious discussion about the West's role in aiding Ukraine and the potential consequences of inaction. To put it simply, Daalder says there's much more that the US could be doing. "We have military power, we have capabilities; we could send in larger quantities. We have troops."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Is Ukraine running out of time? Former US ambassador Ivo Daalder sizes up the Russia-Ukraine war
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.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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Ukraine will define the future of NATO
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
How is the role of NATO evolving now as the 75th anniversary of the organization coming up?
Well, it's going to be Ukraine that's going to be defining the future of NATO. Two issues most immediately: One, if NATO can take on a stronger role for coordinating military aid to Ukraine, that's been done so far by an ad hoc coalition and US support; there’s a proposal on the table for taking that over. The second is, of course, what Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed on the day of the ministerial meeting in Brussels, to set up a very large fund for financing the military support in the years to come. We'll see how these two proposals evolve over the time period up until the Washington summit. And then there's, of course, the big issues of Ukraine membership.
How will the willingness of different countries to give military support be affected by what we've seen in terms of attacks on humanitarian aid in the last ten days?
Obviously, a negative impact, and a vivid debate, not least in the UK, over this decision. But I think most will be dependent upon how Israel will react, whether it will change its way of operating in terms of allowing humanitarian access of a sufficient quantity in and respecting the rights of humanitarian workers and truly respecting military law. Open questions, remains to be seen,- NATO bares its teeth ›
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Europe's energy future: Perspective from Norway's PM Jonas Støre
Listen: In the latest episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer discusses the critical themes of energy security and geopolitical stability in Europe amidst ongoing global challenges with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Støre on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Støre outlines Norway's ambitious plan to transition from oil and gas to renewable energy sources by 2030. This transition is not just a local endeavor but a necessary shift for Europe, aiming to address both the climate crisis and geopolitical tensions by reducing dependency on fossil fuels.
With Europe cutting off nearly all Russian energy imports, Norway has become a key supplier. Støre emphasizes the importance of technological innovation, international cooperation, and the pivotal role of the market economy in facilitating the transition towards green energy. “You cannot make it unless you make the market economy be at the service of the transition,” Jonas Gahr Støre explains. Moreover, he touches upon the broader implications for NATO and the transatlantic alliance, underscoring Europe's need to bolster its energy security and military capabilities to support Ukraine independently, if necessary.
The discussion also explores the broader context of democracy, social media's impact on society, and Norway's innovative approach to enhancing educational and social environments by limiting digital distractions among youth.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.