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Two Rooms · Stay in the Room Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Two rooms.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: The argument about Ukraine has split into two rooms.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Each is sure the other is selling propaganda.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: They agree on more than they admit.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And much of what divides them can be checked.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This month I spent a few days in Slovenia.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the museums of Ljubljana.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at Lake Bled.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: A year ago it was Dubrovnik.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Both were republics of Yugoslavia.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Tito took Yugoslavia down its own communist road after breaking with Stalin in 1948,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Outside the Warsaw Pact.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Both declared independence in 1991, and their exits could hardly have been more different.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Slovenia's war lasted ten days.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Croatia's lasted until 1995, and Dubrovnik was shelled.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: What I took away from both places was not a thesis.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was a question.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whose story is this?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not Moscow's.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not Washington's.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not NATO's.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It belongs to the people who live there.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then I came home to an argument about Ukraine that mostly leaves that question out.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: This project supports Ukraine's right to defend itself, and Europe's security.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It holds every source to the same evidence standard, including its own side.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: In one room sits Sarah Payne,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: the War College historian,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Hodges, who commanded the US Army in Europe, and Zelensky himself.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: In the other sit Jeffrey Sachs,
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: John Mearsheimer, and Yanis Varoufakis, most recently, on Glenn Deason's channel.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are not schools of thought.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And each room's members disagree about plenty.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Each group shares only its answer to one question.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Keep backing Ukraine's fight, or push for a settlement now.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Call them the deterrence camp and the settlement camp.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: The hosts differ.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Deason tends to state the conclusion and invite agreement.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Bartlett, who interviewed Payne and Zelensky, is warm rather than combative.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But he put the other side's case to both.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Both rooms, though, have a word for the other.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Payne says the argument about NATO expansion is a story Moscow made up.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Deason calls the people fact-checking him war propagandists.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It helps to separate the tradition from the messenger.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Deason has a record.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Years as an RT contributor and a seat at Russia's Valdai Club.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Mishima has no such tie, and his case about NATO has been public since at least 2015.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: The realist argument deserves to be met on its merits, whoever is hosting it.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here is what would prove me wrong.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: The most argued over episode of the war is the peace talks in Istanbul in spring 2022.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Each room has a story about why they failed.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: One says Washington and London stopped a deal.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The other says Moscow's terms made any deal impossible.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: If the documents put the decisive weight on either cause,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: that room's account of Istanbul stands.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And mine falls.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Start with the common ground.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Both rooms think the post-war order is ending.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Both think the Iran war was a blunder.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And both think Europe has no seat at the table.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hodges and Sachs say it from opposite ends.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Moscow says the next round of talks will remain trilateral, without EU representatives.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The most useful overlap is narrower.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Inside Ukraine,
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: both rooms predict that Russia will keep taking territory wherever
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: the price looks bearable.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pain puts it down to imperial appetite.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Meersheimer puts it down to fear.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: No promise can be trusted.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So land is security.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Odessa is worth having, if they can, at some reasonable cost.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond Ukraine, the predictions part company.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Payne expects an empire to keep going.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Meersheimer expects a frightened great power to stop once it feels safe.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The explanations point to different levers.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You deter an appetite by making it fail.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You might calm a fear with guarantees.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what the record settles.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: On October 28th,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Mearsheimer said Russia was making significant progress and would roll up Zaporizhia
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: within a couple of months.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The forecast cannot be tested yet.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: The claim about the present can.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: ISW's assessment of October 16th has Russia taking about 100 km2 this year,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: with a net loss of 122 since September 1st.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: As of that date, the map did not show the significant progress Mearsheimer was describing.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: He also says Russia is losing fewer men than Ukraine.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Media's owner and the BBC's Russian service have confirmed nearly 283,000 Russian dead by name.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: UA losses,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: an open-source Ukrainian count,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: lists about 116,000 Ukrainian dead by name and 106,000 missing.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: The named death counts point the other way,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: nearly two and a half times as many Russian deaths identified.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the counts are incomplete.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: The methods differ.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And neither includes the wounded.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot establish which side is suffering the greater total losses.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: He is right about something else.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ukraine is short of soldiers.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: By July 2025,
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: prosecutors had opened about 203,000 criminal cases for unauthorized absence
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: and 50,000 for desertion since 2022.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Those are proceedings, not people.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: About 17,000 had been charged.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: The prosecutor general no longer publishes the figures, citing national security.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: The deterrence room has its own soft spot.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The hope that economic strain will end the war.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: The strain is real.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Paine describes Putin wrecking his country.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: The central bank held its rate at 14% on October the 23rd.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: The 2026 deficit estimate has doubled to 3.2% of GDP.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the draft budget gives defence and security 44% of federal spending next year.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is not an economy that has stopped paying for its war.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And none of these figures says how long it can keep paying.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Payne herself expects Putin to keep going for as long as he lives.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Deason says the polls show most Ukrainians want a negotiated settlement.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wanting talks and accepting terms are different questions.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: In mid-October,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology tested one specific deal,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: withdrawing Ukrainian troops from the parts of Donbass they still hold,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: in exchange for American and European security guarantees.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: 61% called it completely unacceptable.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: 35% could live with it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Half the sample was offered two statements.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: 78% of that half chose the one saying Russia will not accept a settlement
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: that leaves a sovereign Ukraine with a strong army,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: over the one blaming Kiev for being too uncompromising.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever Ukrainians think about talking, most of them turned this trade down.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So what would Moscow accept?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sachs proposes neutrality and a ceasefire on the current line.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: In June 2024, Putin set out his terms.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ukraine was to withdraw from all the four regions, including the parts Russia does not hold.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: This month, Zelensky offered a 60-day ceasefire, so Ukraine could hold elections.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied, We do not want a ceasefire.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Public positions are opening bids,
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: but on the public record,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: the armistice Sachs proposes is not on Moscow's table, then Istanbul.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sachs says Washington and London stopped a deal, and everyone knows that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Certainty is not evidence.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Spring 2022 produced a framework, not a treaty.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: A neutral Ukraine.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Guarantees in principle.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Crimea set aside.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: The hard part stayed open.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ukraine wanted an army of 250,000.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Russia offered 85,000.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in mid-April,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Moscow asked for a veto over the very guarantees meant to protect Ukraine
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: from Moscow.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The accounts weigh the causes differently.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Reports of the New York Times investigation into the drafts describe the guarantees
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: as the most important sticking point.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: They describe Moscow's demand for a veto over them,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: and they quote a Ukrainian official saying Kiev's team had no interest
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: in continuing.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Samuel Charup and Sergei Rachenko, who reconstructed the talks, declined to rank the causes.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: They point to Western reluctance to underwrite any guarantee,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: to Ukraine's growing confidence once Kiev held.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to talks that tried to settle too much.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Too soon.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: They treat Butcher as secondary, because work on the treaty continued after it.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they call the claim that the West forced Ukraine out baseless.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So neither room's account of Istanbul survives.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: The record does not show Washington and London killing a finished deal.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nor does it establish that Moscow's terms alone made a deal impossible.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: It shows a framework with fundamental questions still unresolved.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Above all, the guarantees meant to protect Ukraine from another Russian attack.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Varoufakis calls Europe's fear of Russia a convenient fiction.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Center for Strategic and International Studies found
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: that Russian sabotage attacks in Europe quadrupled between 2022 and 2023,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: and nearly tripled the year after.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Between April and mid-October this year,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: 17 European public broadcasters mapped hundreds of physical incidents and plots.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: They counted only those publicly linked to Russia by officials or news reports,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: and they called it a very conservative estimate.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: The incidents are documented.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Attribution varies case by case, and Russia denies them all.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But CSIS judges Russian military intelligence responsible for many of them.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: An invasion is a forecast.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: The shadow war is a fact.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Added up, and the evidence goes against several of the settlement room's specific claims.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: On the map.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: On what Ukrainians will trade.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: On Moscow's terms.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And on Istanbul.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is a narrower verdict than declaring a winner.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Room is right about the guarantees in 2022,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: about Europe's absence now, and about Ukraine's manpower.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Evidence can inform a judgment about what Putin wants.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: He cannot establish it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Moscow's own documents point both ways.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Demands to roll NATO back.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Putin's essay insisting Russians and Ukrainians are one people.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nor do the map and the budget settle the deterrence room's central claim.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: That claim is not that Russia is collapsing.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is that letting aggression pay costs more than resisting it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is a judgment about the future, which no figure can make.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Deterrence and settlement are not opposites either.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Any settlement that holds needs something that deters the next war.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And deterrence is meant to end in a settlement.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The real argument is about the conditions,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: what guarantees,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: enforced by whom, and what Ukraine has asked to give up to get them.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And underneath it sits the question I brought home.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Evidence can tell us a great deal about what Ukrainians want,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: what the law says, and what concessions would cost.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: What it cannot do is tell us how much weight a country's own choice should carry
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: against the claims great powers make on it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is the argument worth having.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Have it in one room.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: This piece draws on interviews from the diary of a CEO and Glenn Deason's channel,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: mapping by the Institute for the Study of War.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Casualty Counts of MediaZona and UA Losses.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Polling by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Reports of the New York Times investigation and the work of Samuel Sharap
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: and Sergei Radchenko on the Istanbul talks.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And work by CSIS and the European Broadcasting Union.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Full sources are in the written version on Substack.