Why Trump is angry at Russia: Reality strikes in Ukraine war

Donald Trump lashed out at Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning that he is "playing with fire", because the US has been unable to end the Ukraine war on its own terms.

Donald Trump lashed out at Vladimir Putin, warning that the Russian president is "playing with fire", because the United States has been unable to end the Ukraine war on its own terms.

To discuss in this episode of Geopolitical Economy Hour, host Radhika Desai is joined by political scientist Richard Sakwa, an expert on Russia and Ukraine.

You can find more episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour here.

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RADHIKA DESAI: Hello and welcome to the 48th Geopolitical Economy Hour, the show that explores the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of our time. I'm Radhika Desai, and today I'm joined by Professor Richard Sakwa. Welcome back, Richard.

RICHARD SAKWA: It's great to be back with you.

RADHIKA DESAI: Great. So, Richard, today I feel I want to bring together two things. The first is the book you are just completing. You're completing a new book on Ukraine, which is the latest in a long line of books that you have been writing. Of course, you are a scholar of not only Russia today, but of the Soviet Union in the past. And you've been writing about the Russia-Ukraine situation at least since—sorry—at least since 2015.

And so, since then, I know I can tell our listeners that you have written at least four very important books. The most recent one is, of course, The Culture of the Second Cold War. Before that, you wrote The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War. You also wrote the mighty interesting book Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War. And of course, in 2015, very early in the genesis of the current conflict, you wrote Front line Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, which, of course, I've seen being commented on and referred to very widely.

And your newest book is entitled The Russo-Ukrainian War, and its subtitle is Follies of Empire. Now, I think that, you know, talking to you today, as you are in the throes of finishing the book—you have to finish it in the next couple of months—I thought, what could be more relevant than to have somebody like you comment on what's really going on?

Because if the headlines are anything to go by, Trump’s breezy optimism that he was somehow going to solve the Ukraine conflict—famously in his first day in office—is falling with a big thud on hard realities.

So, most recently, Trump has said that the Russian president is playing with fire. As you can see from this tweet, he says:

What Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of bad things would have already happened in Russia. And I mean really bad. He's playing with fire.

And before that, as many people will know, [Trump] said that [Putin] had “gone absolutely crazy”. He said:

I've always had a good relationship with him, but something has happened to him. He's gone absolutely crazy. He's needlessly killing people. And I'm not just talking about soldiers.

So, essentially, he's clearly not very happy with President Putin. And this, of course, came after Russia had hit Kiev with what was billed as the largest drone and missile attack of the war so far.

And that came on the heels of what—at least we hear—this is not widely reported in the press, but we see at least that the Kiev Independent has reported it, if in a slightly tendentious way. It says that a Russian commander claims that Putin's helicopter was at the epicenter of a Ukrainian drone attack, which, of course, occurred before the most recent and very massive Russian attack.

So this is what's going on. And so what we've seen over the last—well, since Trump took office—he has gone from talking with Putin and leaving the Europeans and Ukrainians out. He’s tried to do economic deals, and also, of course, that has included both Putin and Zelensky in turn.

He has given Zelensky the infamous dressing down in the Oval Office back in February. Then he has shown irritation with President Putin when, in the talks and negotiations that were attempted, Putin simply restated his military goals—his military aims in Ukraine—which, it seems, have remained unchanged, at least since last summer, if not on the whole before that.

So, this situation has Trump threatening to take a pass and abandon the attempt to promote peace, and even claiming now that he's going to leave it to the Pope, etc.

But at the same time—and here's, you know, this is part of this kind of very changeable weather that we are getting used to with Trump—his administration is engaged very heavily, militarily engaged very heavily in Scandinavia. And they are militarizing that region and the Baltics more generally.

So, my question to you, Richard, is: How do you assess what's going on right now? I mean, would you agree, as I'm sort of seeming to surmise—but you're the expert here—that if we read between the lines of the varying stories that Trump likes to tell himself and the rest of us, that we can discern that Trump has run out of role in Ukraine? That essentially the realities on the ground are forcing him out? They are exposing the breezy optimism of the idea that he could easily solve the Ukraine crisis?

RICHARD SAKWA: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right there. So, finally, Trump is hitting the hard rock of the reality of what's going on. And in posing as a mediator, he was negating or rejecting or suppressing his earlier part.

Because I remember, in his first administration, he was the one who started providing the Stinger and other missiles from 2017 onwards—something which even Obama refused to do. But at the same time, even as he was doing that, Trump was always putting himself forward as a friend of Russia, attempting to achieve le rapprochement. He couldn't do it the first time.

Trump won—because of Russiagate. Because of the book, which I explored in the Deception book, the way that Russiagate was a way precisely designed to hobble his ability to modify the U.S. traditional foreign policy stance.

So the big picture—and there are so many other bits to it—but just the big picture at the moment, as far as I can see it, is that what Trump is doing now, and his colleagues, is trying to wrench U.S. foreign policy, with huge pain, away from traditional neoconservative positions.

I mean, a long time ago, he abandoned liberal interventionism and spreading democracy and so on. He did that in the first term, quite explicitly. But the neocon idea that you have to beat up on Iran, you have to beat up on the Houthis in Sa'dah in Yemen and others—he just can't. You know, he's moving away. It's the end of that. Well, I mean, we're at the beginning of the end of the neoconservative dominance in U.S. foreign policy.

And Trump is shifting it to a more traditional great power politics. Now, that's the epochal shift which he's trying to achieve at this time. Clearly, he has huge difficulties. He had them in his first administration. How on earth did he hope to try to achieve something along those lines while appointing the John Boltons and the others of this world?

The classic—John Bolton has never seen a war that he didn't like. And the neocons dominated. This time, he's been slightly more selective. Not entirely, of course. Tulsi Gabbard—obviously the outstanding figure who repudiates that tradition.

And so Trump is trying to do—in his classically, typically rebarbative, narcissistic, incoherent manner. But the deep insight which he has is the one that should have happened—well, many would argue should have happened—at the end of the Cold War, at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

If you remember, Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was Reagan's representative to the United Nations, at that point she said: why doesn't the United States just become a normal great power? In other words, give up its messianic ambitions, its emphasis on how exceptional it was, and just say, “No, we're just another great power, we're another trading power. And if you try to take advantage of us, we're going to slap you with tariffs,” and do that.

That was already a Trump theme back in the 1980s. So Jeane Kirkpatrick's idea—there's a whole literature on this—to normalize U.S. foreign policy.

Now, we have an individual who is the most abnormal individual at the helm of the United States for many a decade, trying to achieve the paradoxical outcome, which is a normalization of U.S. foreign policy.

But that's what's going on. So a shift from an ideological foreign policy to a great power, transactional, mercantilist—and so on—however inept, incoherent, inconsistent all that is.

RADHIKA DESAI: But do you really believe that Trump is really trying to essentially accept the normalization—of what you're calling normalization?

I remember a book that was written back in the 1970s by Richard Rosecrance, America as an Ordinary Country. And this was written in the ’70s, at a time when the United States was having another encounter with realities, shall we say—with the defeat in the Vietnam War, stagflation, etc., etc., the loss of the dollar’s link to gold having to be broken, Europeans becoming more and more, shall we say, stroppy, and so on. So this was in a different context.

But you're saying that, you know, people like Jeane Kirkpatrick were trying to say we should, you know, become a normal power, etc. But of course, that—well, it doesn't seem to me to be quite so, although I could be wrong.

But here's the thing: Trump still wants to make America great again. Trump still wants to dominate the world. Trump still wants the dollar to be the world's currency—no matter how much he also wants it, you know, to somehow serve his fantastical notions about reindustrializing America and so on.

So, in all of these ways, you know, you might say that I'm not so sure that Trump wants to return the U.S. to some kind of ordinary normalization. Or do you think— I mean, it seems to me that it may very well be that he had this, like I said earlier, kind of breezy notion that he was going to solve the problems.

Because remember, he's out to distinguish himself from the liberal establishment of the United States. So he's always said, you know, “You guys create the war. I'm going to create the peace. I'm the dealmaker. I'm going to show you how to really do peace,” etc.

But he's now realizing that he cannot do that. So in a certain sense, it's not that he's succeeding in what he set out to do in the first place—as you say, quite incoherently, as is his wont. But nevertheless, do you think he even clearly wants the normalization of U.S. foreign policy?

RICHARD SAKWA: Yes, I mean, you're absolutely right. But what we are witnessing is a de-ideologization. He still wants the United States to be the top dog as a great power—but not as a messianic power of the neocon or the liberal vision, which came together, unfortunately, over the last 20 years.

So, he does want to do that. And one of those elements is rapprochement with Russia. And in part, that is part of the calculus—that you do that rapprochement with Moscow, and then you could focus the fire. And it doesn’t necessarily mean war with China.

Because, obviously, all strategic thinkers in Washington consider China as the major peer competitor—if not the enemy— but certainly the major threat. You know, just as Japan was considered in the 1980s, so China today.

So, in a sense, this isn’t an ideological stance; it's a mercantile stance. But he understands—perhaps, you know, amid all of the flim and all of the endless flam—that ultimately, it doesn’t make sense for the United States to alienate the two great other powers in the world today.

So you peel—you try to peel Russia away from China, which is, of course, a losing proposition. But nevertheless, to rapprochement, and on that basis, then perhaps to put an end to a Ukraine war, which, as far as Trump is concerned, is a total distraction from all the far more important things.

Which, as you say, is to reassert the United States’ economic dominance in the way you've outlined, and of course, its military and strategic dominance globally—but as just a top dog amongst a lot of dogs baying in the pack of great power—the great power pack.

RADHIKA DESAI: So, how would you distinguish between Trump's foreign approach Trump is taking and the kind of approach Biden and Obama before him took? And how do you distinguish his approach from the approach that currently the Europeans are taking?

RICHARD SAKWA: It's fascinating that you mention Obama because what Trump is doing—as I've suggested with Jeane Kirkpatrick and so many more—is something which has been the undertow of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. And that is that this Atlantic alliance system, the political West, has outlived its usefulness.

And Obama already was, you know, as the first U.S. president who wasn’t fully European in his outlook—and obviously, I mean just of his personal background—so he wasn’t so vested. Let me put it this way, in the Atlantic alliance system. And, obviously, he was the "pivot to Asia" president under whose watch that policy emerged. So there has been an undertow, and Trump is taking it to its logical conclusion.

You mentioned Biden—absolutely. Biden was a classic dyed-in-the-wool, as we’ve mentioned before, 50 years deep in U.S. foreign policy. But almost every single major foreign policy decision he made was the wrong one.

And of course, once he came in 2021, he empowered precisely this revanchist idea vis-à-vis Russia—this whole recommitment to an Atlantic alliance system which had really basically reached its sell-by date 30 or 40 years ago.

So, I mean, Biden—really, quite a catastrophic leadership. And I think he'll go down in history as probably one of the worst U.S. presidents ever.

But that takes us to the European Union and the European powers. It’s absolutely fascinating—well, in a most frightening way—to watch this evolution.

First, the European Union, in my representation in the old days, was set up as a peace project—obviously much exaggerated—but nevertheless, it was basically an idea to transcend the logic of war on the European continent.

But today, of course, it’s become the opposite. It has become—from a welfare project—to a warfare project. And we can see all of that. And indeed, it wants to continue the war in Ukraine to the final and conclusive defeat of Russia.

How it could even think of doing this against a nuclear power, I simply cannot understand. Because you can't win, ultimately, against a nuclear power. You have to negotiate. You have to accept certain conditions—which, in this case, would be a neutral, non-aligned, non-NATO Ukraine. And that would, in a sense, defuse it.

The European Union today is—more papist than the Pope. Now, I don’t mean that literally, of course. But it is more Americanized than America itself. So, if Trump is de-Americanizing in a way that we can talk about in a minute, Europe now considers itself the repository—first of all, of a set of values: that liberal internationalism and neocon vision, which is now leaving the United States, but which has found a very solid home in Europe.

And second, it believes that in some peculiar way, it can win this war—which is a sign that it has lost strategic reality. In other words, it has become an ideological project in the worst sense of the term. And by that, I mean reification of a certain set of principles, which no longer vividly reflect actual life and reality.

In other words, they're taking a set of principles to the point of madness. I mean, any observer would say: how are you planning—without the United States—to supply arms? You’ve got almost nothing left. How can you supply a million 155mm shells? Endless talk now, four years, and you still haven’t got to it, etc., etc.

But above all, there’s visceral, violent Russophobia. And of course, that is a legacy of the East European states—Poland and the Baltic republics above all—joined by Romania again today. Because of the way that they were incorporated into the European Union, in which Europeanism itself became an ideology, rather than a reality which was designed to achieve public goods: peace, reconciliation, transcending the logic of conflict.

And in short, the EU is today perpetuating precisely the Cold War—taken to the next level up—which we didn’t even have in the first Cold War vis-à-vis Russia.

You know, for example, we’re in the middle of peace negotiations. Russia says it’s going to prepare a memorandum—as outlined in that telephone call with Trump—about its positions for peace. And Ukraine is, after endless protestations, doing the same. They’re talking about, in the next month or so, they will have a document, and on that basis, continue the negotiations which began in Istanbul.

That’s normal. That’s called diplomacy. And the European Union seems to totally lack that. So what are they doing? Even while this is going on—so Trump’s process is working—I mean, how it’ll end, who knows? But it is actually taking place.

And instead of supporting that, they’re now adopting this 17th package of sanctions. And indeed, sticking spokes in the wheel to sabotage the peace process.

The demand for a 30-day ceasefire without conditions is basically using a ceasefire as an instrument of war. Again—who are these people?

Well, we know who they are: Kaja Kallas, Ursula von der Leyen, Kubilius, and Radosław Sikorski from Poland, and all these others, and Friedrich Merz now in Germany—who is a viscerally Russophobe, whose whole career is based on denying the vision of Ostpolitik—the old vision way back from the late 1960s of transcendence of the logic of the Cold War.

And more than that—a sort of vision of rapprochement between Germany and Russia—the Soviet Union earlier.

RADHIKA DESAI: I mean, you had just added a very interesting point, you know, because I've been—you know, all of us actually have been—trying to puzzle out the rationale behind Europe's manifestly suicidal policies in Ukraine.

I mean, you know, the European Union is—rather than trying to make good relations with Russia so that it can benefit from cheap Russian energy and so on, which Merkel tried to do for a while—they are essentially trying to make an enemy of Russia. This is suicidal economically. It is also suicidal from a security point of view, because the one way you do not make yourself secure is by making an enemy of your most powerful neighbor—which is exactly what they are doing.

But, you know, let me— I also wonder. So the element you've added is that you've pointed out—and I agree with you—that the very terms in which the Eastern European countries were incorporated into the EU and into NATO has essentially meant that, especially now that so many of the Western European countries are themselves in political crisis, they are becoming the tail—the Eastern European tail—that’s wagging the European dog. And so on. So I think there's much to be said for that.

And I think it may also be that you could make the argument that people like Merz, in some limited sense at least, represent some kind of rationale. Because, of course, Germany is up to its neck in Eastern Europe. I mean, you go to Eastern Europe and you see everywhere a German economic presence. And so they want to keep the Eastern Europeans on side. And the easiest way to do it is to essentially tell them the same old story: “Oh, you were oppressed by the Russians, and now we have liberated you, and we are never going to let you go back to that,” and so on.

So you've added that element. And that element should also be contrasted—just as earlier you contrasted Biden and Trump. The current European leadership should be contrasted with Merkel, who did, it seemed, try to make a serious effort to make a go of it.

And remember, even at the beginning of the special military operation, it was Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron who were going back and forth between Europe and Russia trying to see if they could make peace. But in the end, of course, it was the Americans—well, Biden and the Biden administration, Boris Johnson, and, of course, I'm sure, with a hefty dose of Eastern European influence—who sabotaged this agreement that might have stopped the war in its early months.

So that element is very good.

But I also—having said that—I also want to share something else with you. Because it seems to me that there was a very interesting story in the Financial Times, which I'm about to share.

And what I want to get out of this is: do you think it's possible—let me rephrase that. Do you think it's possible that the Europeans are biding their time? That they think Trump will not run again, or he will lose the next election, and then you will have a more “normal”—what they would consider a more normal—leadership in the United States? And then everything will be fine, and they can go back to square one. And all they have to do is hold on until then?

So, this is the story that came out in the Financial Times just a couple of days ago, on the 25th of May. And it's a very big, long story, and it’s entitled "Expect No Miracle", which is essentially a quotation from Valerii Zaluzhnyi, which I’ll come to in a minute. And then it says, Ukraine braces for Russia's summer offensive.

And what it contains—apart from the usual Russophobia and so on—these are three things that I wanted to mention.

The first is that they clearly recognize that the Ukrainian army is exhausted, that this exhaustion and frustration are spreading through the ranks, that morale is fraying, and that they even recognize that the problem is flawed planning at the top levels of the Ukrainian military leadership that is sending men in harm’s way.

And then this man is being quoted—Alexander Shirshyn—who is being quoted as saying:

In recent months, it has started to feel like we are being erased, like our lives are being treated as disposable.

He says the problems are systemic, not personal. He urges a sober reassessment of operational capacity and a strategy that matches battlefield reality.

For the FT—which is as Russophobic as you get—to even admit that there are problems on the Ukrainian side is a very interesting thing.

Second point is that they are having difficulties recruiting. So even though they've tried to recruit, they can't really match the Russian figures. And they even say—repeat a story which so far I've only heard in the non-mainstream media—that recruitment officers are nabbing unregistered men off the street and stuffing them into vans, etc.

And finally—this is the bit, the quotation from Zaluzhnyi—he's saying he warned a London audience on Thursday:

Not to expect some kind of miracle that will bring peace to Ukraine.

So basically, it's like: we are digging in for the long haul.

So—sorry to go on for a bit—but you see what I’m asking. And please, comment on that.

RICHARD SAKWA: Yeah, I’ve got three comments. Thank you for that.

The first one is going back to our European leaders. You're absolutely right that Macron and Scholz, just before the war—early 2022 and right at the beginning—made a very deep personal commitment to try to negotiate. And I applaud them for that. I don’t usually applaud them, but I do. Obviously, anybody who’s going to talk and try to achieve peace and diplomacy gets my vote.

But what it showed, though, is that their efforts had absolutely no traction. First of all, they offered Putin nothing. They ignored the two treaties, which he put forward in December: a new security treaty, which picked up where Medvedev had started in 2008 and 2009, and even going back to Gorbachev’s ideas, right at the beginning. But they didn’t engage. So, they talked—but it just showed the powerlessness of what I nowadays call the “legacy powers” in Europe. They’re legacy powers—just like the legacy media. It’s lost its mojo, to use modern language.

And these guys—Macron, Scholz—they were just treading water because ultimately, decisions were taken in Washington. And a decision had been taken. It wasn’t even Biden, of course. It wasn’t even Blinken. We know who it was: Jake Sullivan.

Jake Sullivan—when the history books are written, which I’m starting to do now—is ultimately the éminence grise behind this war. He’s a virulent Russophobe. He was the one who started Russiagate, of course, which stopped it. So, in other words, he really is like the Brzezinski—the Zbigniew Brzezinski—of our days. Really tough.

So that’s the first point: it just shows, in other words, how marginal Europe is—or European leaders are—to the fate of their own continent. And that for me has been a disaster. I’ve been warning about this for 20 years.

I mean, one doesn’t have to call oneself a Gaullist or a Gorbachevian. But simply to say that this vision of Mitterrand—even his Confederation of Europe idea—the idea of the European continent taking responsibility for its own fate, its destiny, on a pan-continental scale from Lisbon to Vladivostok, is the most urgent and most important feature of our politics today—certainly our European, our regional politics.

How we get there, I’ve absolutely no idea. But at least have a sense of it.

As for the European leaders today biding their time—I agree completely. They think that Trump can’t—well, he technically cannot stand again in 2028—and so therefore they consider this a storm that will pass, and business as usual will emerge.

And of course, they’re living in a land of illusion, because we certainly don’t know what will happen in 2028. But Trump this time is actually nurturing possible successors. And obviously, in choosing J.D. Vance, it’s quite clearly a possibility. Who knows? We can’t tell the future.

So, in other words, the fever that they hope will break is actually a fever which has seized them. And they are the symptom of the fever itself. They’re part of the illness. So it won’t end.

Because what we’re seeing is a decay—which you’ve alluded to—the decay of internal coherence and the attachment to their own normative principles.

And we’ve seen it so outrageously in the Romanian election—the cancellation of the November verdict, Kelemen Hunor. And then of course, the falsehoods which have continued and which are in the British mass media every day at the time of the election—that Russia interfered in that election. When we know—and everyone knows—that those TikTok tweets and so on were put there by the National Liberal Party. In other words, another oppositionist. But working in this country, it’s a common fact.

And yet, the fact that the British media—I don’t know about the U.S. media—just simply ignores that, a well-known fact, ultimately shows the bankruptcy of these people.

And the final thing—to go on to the military situation in Ukraine today. Again, that’s ultimately—you know, I’ve always believed, and we all believe, ultimately, that these issues cannot be resolved on the battlefield and it has to be diplomacy.

But it may be this war shows us that we’re mistaken—that ultimately, the battlefield outcome will be decisive, and it will ultimately settle things.

And what will it settle? It will discredit NATO, of course—for good. It will discredit these European leaders who’ve been vested in a war effort well past the time at which a realistic prospect of achieving those goals—restoring the 1991 borders, Ukraine in NATO, and so on—simply are not realistic.

Moscow said years and years ago they weren’t going to accept it. They launched a dreadful war. We all agree wars are absolutely awful. But to make the point—they said, “We’re not bluffing.” And they weren’t bluffing.

So the idea that European leaders still think they can achieve those goals—I mean, obviously, Zelensky has to. His hardliners—his ultranationalists—who the Maidan Revolution empowered, inspired by, well, husbanded and organized by Biden, Nuland, and others, you know, they’ve empowered forces in Ukraine.

Which is now—again, to use your analogy—the West has become… that Ukrainian tail is wagging the European and Atlantic dog.

So they’ve now caught themselves up in all sorts of contradictions, which is one perhaps reason for the violence of the language—understanding their own futility and their own intellectual and political bankruptcy. So they’re doing it.

And so, yes, a summer offensive—you know, as you’ve been looking at the media here—they’re saying Russian forces are moving so slowly, and so on. Well, we will see. Obviously, drone warfare is changing the nature of warfare. We’ve seen attacks—this weekend’s attacks—it’s been mutual.

Russia did have a big attack on Kiev and other cities. But equally, Ukraine launched several hundred drones towards Moscow—some of them perhaps launched by Ukrainian operatives within Russia.

So, in other words, drone warfare—and very soon we’ll be talking about AI targeting of these drones, with much further distance, much more power, and much more intelligence. So the nature of warfare is going to change.

And ultimately—why should this war ultimately stay there? What’s to stop these drones from one day going to Poland? Going further west? If they can go 2,000 kilometers—who knows?

You know, we really have to wrap this up. And this is what Trump—again, such a flawed vessel—but he makes more sense on certain issues than probably anybody else.

Just shows how awful our times are.

RADHIKA DESAI: I mean, you know, and I want to ask a big question about Russia and a smaller question about Ukraine—but before I do that, two quick points.

So, number one, again coming to this flawed vessel thing and Trump. I mean, I really still don't know. You know, right now he’s been saying these things, like “Putin is crazy,” etc., and I'm not at all sure in which direction he will turn.

Because I remember—even after the dressing down that he and J.D. Vance gave to Zelensky in the White House—when everybody thought this was finished, you know, the United States was no longer going to support Ukraine, etc. But since then, there has been a lot of wavering.

And what's more, I think that if Trump is now acting so—saying such negative things about Russia—it’s not clear to me that he will try to make peace. And if he doesn’t try to make peace, then will he just nonchalantly—without caring about it—continue the war?

Because, at the end of the day, it does make lots of money for his cronies in the military-industrial complex and what have you, even though people may die, etc.

But the more important point is that—you know, the Europeans—I have another little graph, which I can quickly share. You know, the Europeans have been apparently stepping up.

So you can see here a graph going back to the first quarter of 2022, showing the contribution of the United States in the dark blue and Europe in the light blue. And you see here that in the last year of 2024—of course, Biden knew he was leaving office—so he was supplying Ukraine with everything that he could throw in their direction.

But since then, the American contribution—at least according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy—has dwindled to next to nothing. Meanwhile, the Europeans are sort of holding the fort.

But, as you rightly point out, the Europeans’ ability to supply Ukraine is not so great.

Having said that, two other things are going on. One is that, of course, Merz has essentially proclaimed a new industrial policy, which is going to focus on the military-industrial complex—on the expansion of military industries.

And, you know, what do you make of that? That will certainly increase their capacity to produce arms.

But more importantly, I’ve always thought that if the Europeans were going to spend a lot more money on their military, then I think the whole equation within NATO will change. Why should they take orders from Washington?

If they are spending the money—who pays the piper calls the tune. If the Europeans are paying the piper to a much greater extent, then they will definitely demand their share of say in how NATO is run, and what priorities it has, and so on.

So where do you see these things going?

RICHARD SAKWA: You know, the shift in Europe towards what people are now calling military Keynesianism—obviously, Russia's been doing that for a few years. So they say, well actually, that seems to be not such a bad idea. Of course, Russia’s in the thick of a war.

For the Europeans to do it—it’s a sign precisely of their own intellectual and political exhaustion. If this is the best they can do...

But the consequences are potentially huge, because Western Europe has been seized by a war fever. And as you know, all these German and other generals—the Danish one as well, and the Dutch—are saying, “Well, we should prepare for war with Russia within five years.” It's almost unthinkable. With a nuclear power. Again, one is constantly thinking: have these people taken leave of their senses?

But as you say, it's useful for them because it gets them out of an economic black, dark hole. And of course, it pleases the United States to be spending up to 5%. So it's another way of trying to placate the angry god over the water.

But at the same time, there is this endless talk of Europe’s strategic autonomy, which has been in the background for many, many years. But we are witnessing a historic decoupling of the two wings of the Atlantic alliance system.

It has been a shibboleth, an article of faith for over—well, for 80 years, obviously in wartime—but since then, reforged after 1947, the Cold War, and then 1949, the Washington Treaty. But we’re witnessing the end of the political West. It's now decoupling, and it's moving on.

And the dynamics of it—you've suggested a couple of elements to it. One is that if Europe rearms, then it is no longer strategically dependent, militarily, for security from Washington.

Of course, then that raises the ugly head of the nuclear issue. Already Macron, in his typical almost Johnsonian bombastic and blustery manner, said that the discussion can take place about Europeanizing the French nuclear deterrent—which is really frightening. And there’s some talk in Germany about nuclearizing as well.

So that comes back. And of course, Biden—as one of his dreadful legacies—the Trump-proofing of the war, and indeed, to capture and to entail Europe in that war for four years, includes the placing of nuclear—or tactical—intermediate nuclear weapons in Germany from 2026 onwards. One of the major historical events of our time.

If you remember the Euromissile crisis of the 1980s—but this time, almost without a peep. And that is another sign of the way that politics has now been, you know—genuine contestatory politics has declined in the European context.

There’s far more debate and activism, a far more lively public sphere, in the United States than in this almost moribund political life which we have. There are some signs: Stop the War Coalition is active, CND is still working, and many, many organizations—the International Manifesto Group, to mention one—and others, of course.

So it’s not completely dead. But where is that Europe? Where are those great leaders? That huge European nuclear disarmament movement of the early 1980s? Almost nothing now.

The peace movements—yes, they’re there—but much weaker. The churches themselves—do they dare to speak anymore? No. They’ve been intimidated and consumed with identity politics and so much else.

Yeah, so it’s a really tough thing.

As for Trump walking away from the conflict—he may try. But ultimately, the United States… yeah, he may personally be less involved. But on the other hand, he’s still aiming for the accolade of the Nobel Peace Prize. It seems rather bizarre—but there you go.

But even now, even as we're talking, there are those talks with Iran going on at this very time. And, you know, I’m going to say again: this is better than anything we’ve seen for 40 years.

Unfortunately, he’s piling on yet more sanctions—against Cuba, against Venezuela, and so on.

But—yeah—just one other point in all of this is that there's a very good article I saw the other day in UnHerd, the online journal, about just how weak U.S. military power is.

Ostensibly, they’ve got 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. But at most—according to this piece—only four are in working condition.

And they also point out—which didn’t really need to be pointed out—that the United Kingdom has got two, but effectively not, because they don’t have the planes, they don’t have the personnel, and half the time they’re not even working.

And of course, the supplies of these missiles, and the supplies of Patriot air defense systems—they’re planning to spend how many billions on this golden dome protection for the United States?

Again, a fantasy project. And it’s almost like, you know, bread and circuses at the decline of the Roman Empire—the last days when these follies seize the empire in the magnificent sense. They go down in a swirl of turpitude and incompetence.

RADHIKA DESAI: Or, if I may put it in a slightly different way, you can't expect deindustrialized, financialized countries to be able to fight wars. I mean, you know, what are they going to fight with? Easy money creation? Bonds? Asset market inflation? All they've got is bubbles. They've got no capacity to make anything.

But, you know, while you were talking as well, I had this vivid image in my mind of Kaja Kallas sitting with her finger on the nuclear button. And I thought, oh dear—it sent a shudder down my spine. Can you imagine this warmongering person who has absolutely no idea of the consequences of what she’s saying—someone like her actually having their finger on the nuclear button? I mean, it is really, really frightening. But that’s where we are at.

RICHARD SAKWA: Well, just to say that—Liz Truss, remember? She was asked the normal question, “Would you be willing to use it?” Obviously, you fudge the issue. But she said, “Yeah, sure, I’m happy to do it.” At that point, you realize the decline of the Western elites and leadership.

RADHIKA DESAI: The quality of Western political leadership—absolutely—we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

So, brief question about Ukraine, and then a big question about Russia, and then we should wind down because we are coming close to an hour.

But—short question about Ukraine is really: there are so many issues. We just looked at the whole issue of Ukraine’s ability to fight. There are longer-term issues—like the fact that Zelensky’s leadership is being questioned. Zelensky is remaining leader only after imposing a fairly draconian type of banning of opposition parties, and so on.

So really—where do you think Ukraine is going? Where does it stand now, and what are its prospects?

And then I’ll ask you the bigger questions that really involve Russia itself.

RICHARD SAKWA: If that’s the little question, I’d better be ready for the big one!

So, yeah—where’s it going? All predictions are falsified, of course.

Sure, the morale—as you mentioned earlier—is fraying. And simply, the resources in personnel and materiel are insufficient for Ukraine to continue the war indefinitely. Yet, they’re holding the line. According to some estimates, Ukraine still has some 800,000 men on the front line. Obviously, some of them have been there for—well, I was going to say years now, which is extraordinary—whereas Russia has rotation. Russia’s got about 650,000, and yet, as you say, they’ve got major forces in reserve.

And they’re pushing forward all along the front—they’re pushing forward in Sumy, they’re pushing forward elsewhere. But at the moment, the tactics—because of drones—the advantage lies with the defender. And obviously, also, Ukraine.

RADHIKA DESAI: I’m just sharing this map with you. This was published in the FT. Yes, go ahead, please.

RICHARD SAKWA: Yeah, no, that is useful. So, as you can see, all along, there are little pushes forward. The red shows where they’re moving ahead, and also trying to push away from Kursk and Belgorod oblasts in the north.

So—yeah, where’s it going?

It depends on this summer offensive—the military campaign. Already, the sense is—I think that, you know, reading some of these expert analyses—they're talking about a major offensive this summer, a weakening of Ukrainian positions that people are not really anticipating.

Some people were talking earlier about the analogy to the German advance in March 1918. They went forward, and of course, by the summer they were exhausted, and they collapsed by the autumn. So, a German-type collapse after four years of war—and we're now in the fourth year of war—is not excluded.

But I’m not sure how likely it is, because you have this hardcore Ukrainian nationalist element. They are doing everything—you mentioned earlier—the press-ganging of people being dragged off the street, conscripted into the front line.

But this is a war of attrition. And Russia ultimately has more resources to win such a war. At the moment, territory isn’t the key issue—it’s about weakening the Ukrainian forces.

So, some sort of collapse by the end of the year is not excluded. And that possibility means, of course, that peace would then come through some sort of deal—at the end of the year, or in the first quarter of 2026.

RADHIKA DESAI: With a newly constituted leadership—because it seems to me that at least one of the biggest obstacles to a peace deal at the moment is that the Ukrainians don’t have a credible government with which Russia can conclude a viable deal. A deal that will be kept—an agreement that will be honored. So that’s really fascinating.

RICHARD SAKWA: Just going to interrupt you there, just to say—that also applies, of course, to Zelensky’s allies—the Western European ones. So the only one, again paradoxically, who could guarantee a peace is Donald Trump. But of course, he’s got a term limit.

So if Russia—well, who’s the guarantor? And so, therefore, that’s why we have to have external forces: China, Brazil, South Africa—other respected global leaders—would have to ultimately make it stick.

With Trump, the United States is essential, because that would give it legitimacy. And that would give it force—for the Ukrainians themselves.

RADHIKA DESAI: That is so fascinating. I mean, because the Europeans have done everything possible to discredit themselves as a viable interlocutor for Russia. So absolutely.

So now let’s come to Russia. Basically, it seems to me that, of course, the 17th package of sanctions is not going to hurt Russia one bit. Russia has become pretty sanction-proof. Russia’s alliance with China is going great guns. Putin’s legitimacy at home is very strong—unlike Zelensky’s, or for that matter, even Trump’s, or that of any other Western leader I can think of.

At the same time—what are Russia’s aims? What are the prospects of them achieving those aims?

And before you answer that, I just thought I would share a couple of points with you. Because it seems as though, although Putin is not saying any of these things, elements in the Russian administration—with or without his agreement—are saying two things that I find extremely fascinating.

So, former president Medvedev has published this map in which, basically, he shows that all four western provinces plus Crimea will remain part of—or become part of—Russia, more or less. And then the rest of Ukraine—everything except the blue bit you see at the extreme western end—will become a buffer zone. Whatever that means.

But I think that this kind of super-maximalist claim is being made so that everything Putin does afterwards sounds very reasonable by comparison.

And then there was something really quite interesting—which is that an advisor to the president called Anton Kobyakov has put out that the Soviet Union was dissolved illegally. And he makes—by the way—an argument that is not entirely beyond the realms of credibility.

He basically says that the only entity that could have dissolved the Soviet Union—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—would have been the body that created it. And since the Soviet Union was dissolved by a meeting of the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, that this did not really hold up legally.

So anyway, this is being put about. And of course, if and when this is reported widely in the West, the Western press will have a field day saying, “We told you Putin was trying to recreate the Soviet Union,” etc.

So, you know, given all this background—what do you think President Putin is doing now? What is he trying to achieve? And what are the prospects of success for him?

RICHARD SAKWA: If I can pick up on that final point—or penultimate point—I think it's absolutely fascinating, this debate which has suddenly emerged about the legitimacy and legality of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And I could just add one more item they’re discussing in that context: that Ukraine’s declaration of independence was also illegal.

They declared independence—if I’m not mistaken—on the 24th or 26th of August, 1991, after the failed putsch in Moscow. But according to Soviet law at the time, it had to be accompanied by a referendum. And there wasn’t one—there was a retrospective one in December, on the 1st of December—but that is something else entirely. So, anyway, let the lawyers battle that one out, but it’s interesting that the debate is taking place.

But again, just to say—you’re absolutely right. Whether Russia is… you know, sanctions are damaging. And of course, there’s a lot of bravado and chutzpah in Moscow: “Bring it on. The last thing we want is to see these sanctions end.” Of course it’s damaging. I mean, for example, the absence of direct flights, and so much more—the technological transfer issues, the financial impediments, and so on.

But your key point is correct, of course. The Russian economy last year grew by 4.2-odd percent; the year before, 3.7%. This year, it’s going to be much lower—deliberately so, because the economy was overheating. And so, they’re trying to calm it down.

Yes, the budget deficit was going to be 0.5%, but because of the fall in average oil prices, they’re now budgeting at $65 a barrel rather than the $70 they were thinking earlier, and so on. So yeah—it’s going to be tough. There’s going to be a budget deficit of 1.7%, which is peanuts compared to the U.S. and the U.K.

And they’ve got resources. So I don’t think we’re looking at an economic collapse. Political stability is there. Putin is still enjoying stratospheric popularity. And yes, it’s difficult in wartime to gauge all of this in a relatively authoritarian system, but nevertheless, I think everybody who’s there knows that it's still up in the top 70s, which is amazing.

So we’re not expecting a regime collapse within Russia today. And those who talk about “decolonizing” Russia, saying the ethnic republics and so on will split—I don’t think so. I think there’s stability.

The alignment with China is holding firm. And obviously, Beijing’s calculation is that if Russia falls, then they’re next. And you know—it’s explicit in Washington. So of course, they think: we should buttress Russia as much as possible, because they'll come after us next.

Which, again, is a folly of the U.S. empire strategy at this moment. They make it explicit: “We have to wrap up the Russian business so we can start on China.” Well—they're not stupid in Beijing. So of course, perhaps they're providing more surreptitious support—dual-use technology, and so on—than we know.

So you're absolutely right in all of that.

And some in Russia are making these super-maximalist demands, and there's quite an interesting debate. And indeed, the feeling amongst these people is that the Ukrainian state has lost its right to exist. Now that is a super-maximalist position, and it’s certainly not a view that I endorse.

Ultimately, at the end of it—and this, for me, is very important—at the end of it, I would like to see a viable Ukrainian state, in which “the other Ukraine”—and it is to that Ukraine that the book we talked about at the beginning is dedicated—can survive.

And what is this “other Ukraine”? It’s the Ukraine I talked about in Front line Ukraine, a good few years back—2015. These are the pluralistic, multi-confessional, tolerant, open-minded, multilingual Ukrainians—the best of Ukraine.

This is the “other Ukraine” which spoke in the May 2014 elections, when they elected Petro Poroshenko as the peace candidate. And even louder in April 2019, when 73% voted for Zelensky—as the peace candidate. Both times they were betrayed.

But that constituency—the “other Ukraine”—not this virulently pro-Western, not this ultra-nationalistic, not this intolerant, neoliberal, neocon Ukraine. That other Ukraine is what we want to see.

We want to see that Ukraine living in harmony with Russia, and of course, working in harmony with everyone else.

That’s what we can do. And that’s where these maximalists, I think, are mistaken. And of course, part of this whole exercise was to try to get a different leadership in Ukraine. But this has to come from within Ukraine itself—and to stop this pernicious Western pulling of Ukraine to the West, which of course empowers the maximalists within Ukraine itself.

RADHIKA DESAI: So, I mean, spatially and politically, yes. Exactly, yes. And so, for Putin, I mean, do you think that he expects that there will be a peace deal anytime soon? Do you think that, you know, obviously, without any trustworthy parties to come to an agreement with, I guess his only option is to try to create realities on the ground?

RICHARD SAKWA: Yes, at the moment, indeed. So, we said there's no military solution. Well, perhaps, I mean, ultimately, there is no military solution, but the military solutions have to be then wrapped in the envelope of diplomacy and.

RADHIKA DESAI: Or let's put it another way: that of course, in the end, there must be diplomacy. But until there can be diplomacy, Putin will try to achieve, try to create the realities on the ground which any diplomacy must take care of.

RICHARD SAKWA: And that's exactly what the European powers are trying to do, of course, in piling in the weapons to Ukraine to enhance their negotiating position when it comes to it.

RADHIKA DESAI: That is also so interesting. They are not giving weapons so Ukraine may win. They are giving weapons so that they have a finger in the pie when there will be an agreement. That is so true, Richard. Thank you so much.

Look, I mean, this has been fantastic. And as our conversation already reveals, this is not ending anytime soon. We will be back again talking about this in the next months to come. But thank you for an absolutely fascinating discussion, Richard.

It's been richer than I thought it would be for whatever. I mean, I guess that's why you're the historian. You know all the deep facts and you can relate what's going on right now to all that happened years ago and sometimes even decades ago and centuries ago. So thank you so much.

RICHARD SAKWA: Thank you very much. It's been a great discussion. I've enjoyed it. Thank you.