Latest / Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger / Ukraine at This Hour

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Ukraine at This Hour · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A, the podcast at Onward and Upward.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jay Nordlinger and our guest today is Yaroslav Trofimov,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of the Wall Street Journal.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have had him on this program before.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is one of the most important and best foreign correspondents in the world.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us have relied on him to understand the Ukraine war.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's the author of several books,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: including Our Enemies Will Vanish,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: His books also include a novel about Ukraine, No Country for Love.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yaroslav Trofimov, thank you so much for joining us again.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to be back on the show.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yaroslav Trofimov, is this a perilous moment for Ukraine?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: An especially perilous moment.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, Ukraine has been in a perilous four and a half years.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't say this is a moment necessarily that is the most dangerous in history
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: of this world, but it's definitely been a difficult moment.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we have also learned a lot of lessons from this latest crisis.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Confrontation between President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: and President Trump, Elon Musk, and part of the MAGA universe.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: The reality is that if you look at the opinion polls,
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: American popular support for Ukraine has only grown in the last several months.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: The vast majority of Americans,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: including the majority of Republicans who identified themselves as MAGA,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Support Ukraine and have negative feelings towards the Russian state
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: of President Putin, President Putin in particular.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the sort of furious back rowing we have seen in this whole affair
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: about dropping star shield starling satellites for Ukraine has shown how that works.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because after trying to punish Ukraine by lowering the speed of the star shield,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Satellite connections that are used by Ukrainian drones.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And after Ukraine complained about it,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: all of a sudden,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: nobody in Washington or nobody in the US wanted to take responsibility.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: We heard Elon Musk saying, it's not me, it's the DOD or the president.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: We heard the president say, it's not us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: We did nothing of the kind.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: We heard the Pentagon say, it's not us.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually, you know, after a lot of...
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Games around this,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: the connection was restored and now it works as it used to,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: which I guess to me shows that despite the temptations that existed in part of
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: the other world to align with Putin's Russia,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: to abandon Ukraine to its own fate,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: it has a political price Especially now with the midterms,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: but also,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: after the midterms,
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: once there is a new Congress and it's a political price that is so high
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: that people are reluctant to pay so far, at least.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yarrow, Garry Kasparov often says, only Trump can save Putin.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at first blush, this seems too, too pat, too simple.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But day after day, week after week, I'm inclined to think it's true.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think of this idea?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: the thing is that we are learning
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: that even President Trump probably cannot save Putin,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: at least in the sense of giving Putin the overwhelming victory that he desires
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: and still thinks he can achieve in Ukraine.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Remember,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: there was this summit in Anchorage,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Alaska in August last year,
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: in which President Trump and President Putin seem to have agreed on this deal Under
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: which Ukraine would surrender,
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: it's part of the Donbass region,
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: it's heavily fortified cities that are crucial for the country's defense,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: like Slovyansk and Kramatorsk,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: in exchange for pretty meaningless security guarantees.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the Ukrainians said no.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And because they were backed by the Europeans,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: the Ukrainians were able to hold the line And they were able to retain almost all
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: of their territory.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: they went on a bunch of counter-offensives since then and seized not huge,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: but significant terrain in Donbas.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the Russians have realized that President Trump has given them a check
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: that they cannot catch.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is a growing realization in Moscow now.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen it in recent comments from one of,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: The most senior aides to President Putin,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Dmitry Ushakov,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: who was saying that we're not realizing that it's the Europeans who hold
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: the cards here.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's because of the European support that Ukraine is in the fight and we cannot win this war.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true because the Europeans have committed more than $100 billion over
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: the last year to funding Ukraine's defense,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: to funding Ukraine's economy and society.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's not paying for this war.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And because the US is not paying for this war,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: and in fact is making money off this war by selling weapons to the Europeans
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: a profit to be given to the Ukrainians,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: the American leverage over Ukraine has greatly diminished.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yaro, a lot of people in the United States and elsewhere want to know,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: is Donald Trump a Russian asset?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's an asset to Russia, which is different from being a Russian asset.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: You never hear him breathe a critical word about Putin, or almost never.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: You never hear Musk breathe a critical word.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: It seems so strange.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And some people wonder legitimately,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: they're not conspiracy theorists, does Putin have something on Trump?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or is Trump hooked in with the Russians financially?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why this kind of fidelity?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is it simply affinity, admiration?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a view of this, Yara?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to base my views on facts and I have zero evidence
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: and no one has produced publicly any evidence that there is any of
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: that so-called compromise,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: the compromising,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: incriminating materials that the Russians may or may not have on President Trump.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: What I do see is that President Trump seems to subscribe to this idea that
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: the world is divided into the strong and the weak,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: and you have to show respect to the strong, and this is day before the weak.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the way he is not criticizing President Putin,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: well, it's the same way he's not criticizing the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, either.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And seems to be unrestrained in his insults against pretty much all
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: the American allies, be it Canada, be it France, be it Denmark, be it Norway.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so in this vision of a two-class system of countries where they're equals
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: and they are servants, hired help, vassals, name it if you want it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to watch Ukraine,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: which doesn't really deserve its own agency,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: to stand up to the guy who should be in charge of that neighborhood.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: where the hostility to Ukraine comes from, because it challenges this paradigm.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's okay for Ukraine to resist Russian attempts on domination, well,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: it's also okay for,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Canada or Denmark,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: To resist ideas that the United States should control all of North America.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is probably a better explanation than any of the conspiracy theories.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Again,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: it's also true that there are people in Trump's orbit who do want to make money
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: with Russia and that's why there is now this decoupling that we're seeing.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Between business opportunities and peace talks.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most significant shift over the last several weeks was that
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: the American political position used to be that we welcome business opportunities
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: with Russia.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's great potential.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's all make a lot of money.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But first, let's settle this inconvenient question and end the war in Ukraine so we can move on.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: To this mutually enriching business.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with the diesel agreement, it's being cast aside.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now the idea is that, okay, this war in Ukraine is unfortunate, but it's gonna go on.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, let's just open this frigate and make money.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the question is, who exactly will be making this money?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are the exact deals?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: What companies will be relieved of sanctions?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people are hoping to become very rich of that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that Trump's negotiators,
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: his envoys, are Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoff, who are money men.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And such figures as the Secretary of State seem to be secondary at best.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Weird, I think.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I think the...
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is weird, but it's not weird.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of the way the U.S.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: government operates nowadays,
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: not just with Russia and Ukraine, but also the Middle East.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have a whole series of very rich personalities who are holding positions
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: of influence and power over the U.S. foreign policy.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this explanation for someone who was close to another case to how the U.S.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: policy on Syria and sort of the new Syrian government was reversed from
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: the traditional sort of MAGA line to embracing the new government in Damascus
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: because of the influence of Tom Barak,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: who is President Trump's special envoy for Syria,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: ambassador in Turkey, but also a very, very rich man, a billionaire.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so what I heard from the inside is that President Trump really thinks that
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: The only people whose opinions he has to pay attention to,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: has to respect, are the people who have made a billion dollars or more.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And anyone else is basically how he felt.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I mean, as far as I know, Secretary Mark Rubik has not made a billion dollars.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can see why,
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: the opinions of Steve Witkow or Jared Kushner can seem more important
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: to this administration.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yarrow, you commented on this recently.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: President Trump keeps telling this story about the beginning of the all-out invasion of Ukraine.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: He keeps telling this story about a Russian general who made a wrong turn.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have this Ukraine war.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, Russia would have taken the whole of Ukraine in a couple of days.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: He tells this story over and over again.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Any idea where it comes from?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm sure this was something that was either relayed in Moscow to his invoice
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: or it was something that was relayed via Tucker Carlson or Kirill Dmitriev.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: This has been the line of one of the branches of the Russian propaganda.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very convenient Russian narrative.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Russia doesn't recognize the fact that it was defeated around Kiev in the spring of 2022.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: It now portrays its retreat from Northern Ukraine as a gesture of goodwill.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I was there, plenty of other people were there.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: We saw the destroyed Russian tank columns on the highways, not in the mud.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: We saw how the Russian army was routed,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: lost hundreds of tanks,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: armored vehicles, and was forced to withdraw because it could not supply itself.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: The logistic lines were cut off And the alternative to withdrawal was surrender
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: and annihilation.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you ask me why is President Trump talking so much about it,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think it goes back to this idea that small countries don't have agency.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you recognize that Ukraine has agency and had the ability to defeat
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: the Russian army in this critical days of 2022,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have to accept the idea,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: well, you know, the Russian victory in a war is not inevitable.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: The Ukrainian defeat is not inevitable.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ukraine does not have to surrender on the conditions that President Trump says are
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: the best ever conditions.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no inevitability to the Ukrainian defeat in a Russian victory.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: we have seen historically very many wars in which,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: smaller countries win against bigger countries,
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: including some of them in the United States.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out Ukraine has cards and Trump says over and over again, no cards.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is it because I think that's kind of the only explanation I can have in my mind.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you are right.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about this very obsessively and insultingly to Ukrainians
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: because it diminishes the valor of the Ukrainian army.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which has achieved one of the most spectacular military victories of
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: the 21st century by defeating a superpower that was trying and failed
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: to take its capital.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I saw that you commented on this recently.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: President Trump said, we've given a lot to Ukraine.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've given nothing to us.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: They've given nothing to us.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: some of us are of the school that says Ukrainians right now are giving a lot to us
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: by being on the front lines and doing the fighting,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: the bleeding, the dying, the sacrificing.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But also you pointed out the presence of Ukrainians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is not very well known.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to start with the very beginning.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the 1990s,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Ukrainians gave up the nuclear arsenal that they inherited from
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: the Soviet Union.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that, the missiles were made in Ukraine actually.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a know-how if there had been political desire to learn how
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: to operate it in exchange for Russian and American promises not to invade and not
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: to exert Economic coercion to sacrifice territorial integrity,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: a commitment to which the US is actually bound until now.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Russia obviously violated it by invading in 2014 and then 2022.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Then Ukraine did send a large amount of soldiers to Iraq.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, more countries like France and Germany refused to.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then because of the deaths,
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I think there were 18 Ukrainian soldiers who were killed in Iraq.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember visiting the Ukrainian military bases in Kutu,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: the headquarters was surrounded by the Mahdi militias during uprising there.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the Ukraine sent a much smaller contingent of soldiers to Afghanistan,
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: but I also,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I remember seeing in Afghanistan a lot of Ukrainian helicopter pilots
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: and other contractors helping the US military effort and some of them were killed.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so Ukraine has been helping the US military campaign
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: out of sense of solidarity
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: with the US.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Ukraine has never asked for American soldiers to come to Ukraine and die.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there is a large number of American volunteers,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: private individuals, Who,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: because of the sense of injustice about what's happening,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: did go to Ukraine and fought bravely and some of them died.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And for this, the Ukrainian nation will be forever thankful.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I mean,
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: the Ukraine has not asked for the U.S.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: military assistance in the form of American soldiers risking their lives.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: The U.N.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: has asked for military assistance in the form of weapons that only the U.S.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: can provide that would help Ukraine save lives of Ukrainians,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know, top of them, you know, air missile interceptors.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of air defensively intercepting missiles.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Yaroslav Trofimov, I'm going to read our audience something that you wrote.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: The changing tone of Chinese discourse about Ukraine is remarkable.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, splitting Europe from the US has long been a PRC strategic objective.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But until Trump, it was impossible without sacrificing Beijing's relationship with Russia.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now we hear about this threesome, the United States, Russia and China.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's talk of a summit to decide the fate of Ukraine.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Smells to some people like another Munich or Yalta.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a relatively minor story,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: but still a story about how the US,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Russia and China are concerting to make Viktor Orban the Secretary General
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: the United Nations.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is to an American like me, This is a creepy triumvirate.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it goes with this idea of great powers might make right the law of the jungle
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: and spheres of influence.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Correct?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is obviously correct.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know to what extent China is on board with all of this.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: if you're sitting in Beijing, you probably don't want the war in Ukraine to end.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to see Russia's history.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because the longer it goes, the more convenient it is to you.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: It binds Russia to you, weakens Russia.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: It makes Russia-US cooperation a lot more difficult.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: it also allows,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: as long as the US is not helping Ukraine,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: it creates a split between the US and Europe that China is also willing to exploit.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Also with Canada, by the way.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also not too convinced about this comparisons to Munich or Yalta.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: When Czechoslovakia was giving to the wolves in Munich, there was no one helping it.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was all alone and it had to accept its fate.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: When Stalin and Roosevelt and Churchill met in Yalta towards the end
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: of World War II, Germany was about to be defeated and
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: The three in the altar were the three winners, and two winners go to spoils.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Russia has not won this war.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have spoils.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And China and the U.S.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: cannot make Russia win this war,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: at least as long as Europe stands by Ukraine's side.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And as we have already seen in Alaska last year,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: there could be an agreement between the U.S.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: and Russia,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: but it doesn't mean anything if the Ukrainians and Europeans don't buy it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have, I think, three more for you here toward the end.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And one has to do with Europe.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've been writing recently about the continent's changing nuclear posture.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: If the American nuclear umbrella is withdrawn, what will happen to Europe?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is afoot there?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: it could be affected by the French presidential election next year, I would think.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know...
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: There has never been a guarantee of an American nuclear protection for Europe, right?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, throughout history,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: it was always conditional on what the US president decides under the circumstances.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: at the height of the Cold War, the French decided that they will not trust us.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: there was a famous meeting during the Berlin crisis between President Kennedy
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: and President Charles de Gaulle in France.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: In which De Gaulle asked, you know, will you trade New York to save Paris?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Kennedy diplomatically remained silent.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And this silence was,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: enough for France to turbocharge the development
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: of its own independent nuclear weapons that remained sovereign.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what we're seeing now is there are two levels of this.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: There is a tactical and there is the political.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Politically,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: there's growing doubts that the US in fact still has a nuclear umbrella over Europe
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: and that especially over, you know, some parts of Europe like the Baltic States.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a fear that President Putin may construe what's going on in Washington
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: as a license to,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know, try to bite off one or another part of NATO and the European Union.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the French are the only ones who have a fully independent nuclear deterrent
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: that could create some additional doubts in the Kremlin and that the French are now,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: let's say,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: they're not offering nuclear umbrella to the rest of Europe,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: but they are saying that the French nuclear weapon has a European dimension and
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: that It's unthinkable that the French vital interests will not be touched if some of
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: the closest allies of France and Europe are attacked.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, who are they and where exactly are the limits?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's so left deliberately ambiguous.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: But we can see by the number of countries that France has picked as partners
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: of this new forward deterrence policy that was announced by President Macron
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: in March,
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: it does extend to Poland,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: it does extend to Finland, it does not extend to the Baltic states, for example.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what will happen if Marine Le Pen wins the presidency?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: The national rally,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I guess in English,
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: her party has implicitly endorsed this nuclear initiative as long as the decision
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: to deploy nuclear weapons remains solely in French hands.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the status quo now and will not change.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: As long as it's not used as an instrument of European Union integration, which it is not.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not linked to any European Union structures.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And as long as the defense focus is mostly on conventional deterrence,
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: which is also the case now.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it looks like at least on the broad lines, there is an agreement.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: The questions will emerge about the determination of a President Le Pen
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: to actually step up to protect France's allies.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: The same kind of questions we now have about President Trump.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: So time will tell.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: The other dimension is technical because the US has a strategic nuclear arsenal
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: and it has this tactical gravity bombs that are used in the nuclear sharing
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: in Europe in partnership with several European nations.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: That really hold over from the 1960s and that were designed
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: to stop Russian divisions marching through Germany.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: The French don't believe in tactical nuclear weapons.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: The French believe in strategic detergents.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so what they are deploying is something that is able to strike Moscow,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: St. Petersburg or a city in Russia.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the French argument,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: which you can agree with is that they have much more vital interest Yes, got it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yarrow, here's a big question, almost a psychological question, a national question.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: You were born and raised, I believe, in the Soviet Union.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: In Kiev, yes.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've done a lot of reporting, done a lot of thinking.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Will the Russian people collectively ever get to the point of saying,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know, we're sick of Trying to conquer, subjugate other peoples, other nations.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot we could do to improve Russia.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of problems here at home.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's concentrate on those and make our country truly a great country
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: and forget empire and conquest.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that just stupid?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is that just pie in the sky, wishful thinking?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's a pioneer sky.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had this moment in Russian history very briefly,
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: in 1990, 1991, 1992,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Ukraine did not have to fight a war for its independence back then,
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's fighting it now,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: but back then it was gifted to it almost,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know, okay,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: there were protests and movements, but,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: there was no military confrontation with Russia and Russia willingly,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: at least for a short amount of time,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: let go of Ukraine and all the other colonies that Russia has been accumulating
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: for centuries.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Will a special moment come back again?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe in our lifetimes?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Possibly.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Those things happen in Russia on average once, twice a century.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's quite a schedule.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yaroslav Trofimov, thank you so much for joining me, for joining us.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's always a pleasure to hear from you and learn from you.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I read you as often as you write.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, this is a personal question.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it relatively easy to persevere, to wake up in the morning and do your work?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you get discouraged?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, did I get discouraged?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, because I feel like we all have agency.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so no matter how great the situation is, there's always something we can do to change it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the motivation.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mr. Trofimov.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jay Nordlinger doing Q&A here at Onward and Upward.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.