Fiona Hill on Whether Ukraine Can Win — and What Happens if Russia Loses

The Russia-Ukraine war has changed considerably in recent weeks. Vladimir Putin is no longer talking explicitly about regime change in Ukraine. The Russian military has shifted its focus away from taking Kyiv and toward making territorial gains in Ukraine’s east. The prospect of an outright Ukrainian victory is no longer out of the question. And negotiations between the parties over a possible settlement appear to be making some progress. There’s been a darker turn as well: Over the weekend, images surfaced of atrocities committed by the Russian military against Ukrainian civilians. And Western leaders are considering expanding military aid to Ukraine, initiating war crimes investigations and placing harsher sanctions on Russia in response. Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council under Donald Trump and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Barack Obama and George W. Bush. I had her on the show a few weeks ago to help me make sense of the Russia-Ukraine conflict as it was developing at the time, and it was one of the most illuminating perspectives I’d heard on the topic. So I invited her back to discuss how the situation has changed, where we are now and what the conflict could look like. We discuss why Hill has become pessimistic about the possibility of a peace deal, how the carnage in Bucha could alter the course of the conflict, why Russia has been so much weaker on the battlefield than expected, whether Ukraine can achieve an outright victory, why this war is making Putin more popular in Russia (not less), what else the West could be doing to support Ukraine, why Hill thinks we’re entering a “much darker” phase of the conflict, what role China could play in bringing about a negotiated settlement, what a renewed framework for European security could look like and more. Book Recommendations: The Art of War by Sun Tzu Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ezra Klein?

  I'm Ezra Klein. This is the Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:24Ezra Klein?

  About a month ago, I had Fiona Hill on the show. And I had Fiona Hill on the show because Russia had invaded Ukraine. And no one in the West understands Russia's strategic thinking, Vladimir Putin's strategic ambitions, as well as Hill. She served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She served as senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council under President Trump. She's co-author of the book, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, and author of There's Nothing for You Here. And in that conversation, she gave an incredibly clear description of what it was Putin was trying to achieve then, what it was he thought he knew, what it was he thought he could get away with.

• 1:08Ezra Klein?

  But a lot has changed in a month of war. Ukraine successfully repelled Russia from Kyiv, at least for now. Putin has seen that this is not a country he can quickly overwhelm, decapitate its leadership, and subjugate its population. He and the world have seen that Ukrainians are not Russians and don't want to be. The Russian troops are not being greeted, to say the least, with chocolates and flowers. But that is not to say the war is over by any means. Russia is focusing its efforts on the East and the South. They're trying to carve up the country. Horrific, horrific pictures have emerged of civilian massacres at the hands of Russian forces. There are calls to have Putin tried as a war criminal.

• 1:50Ezra Klein?

  And so I'd asked Hill, over email, if she saw an end in sight. And I'd hoped, I hoped, that she'd tell me she did. But no, she said she'd become more pessimistic about the possibility of a deal, and for that matter, a quick end to this conflict. And so I asked her back on the show to tell me why, to walk me through, from her perspective, given all she knows, to walk me through what's happened and what's changed because of it. As always, my email, [email protected].

• 2:26Ezra Klein?

  Fiona Hill, welcome back to the show.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ezra.

• 2:29Ezra Klein?

  So I want to back up a week or so ago before the images of Russia's atrocities, I think that's the right word, against Ukrainian civilians came to worldwide attention. So Russia had pulled back somewhat from Kiev. There were negotiations ongoing. There was some talk of neutrality on Ukraine's part and somewhat more reasonable demands on Russia's part. They even talked about being open to Ukraine being part of the EU. So a week ago, how would you have described the state of the Russia-Ukraine war?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Well, look, I'll be frank that I was quite skeptical, just personally, thinking back to previous incidences of Russian negotiations and similar sorts of circumstances and was quite cautiously watching all of this, wondering if they were just going to regroup and reassess, which, to be honest, is where it seems to have come out. And it's very clear that things hadn't gone according to the initial plan of the Russian invasion and that there was now an effort to get as much information as they possibly could from the battlefield. Of course, we've been hearing some conflicting stories about this as well, about how much information is actually getting to Vladimir Putin. And they were trying to kind of figure out whether they could still go forward with

• 3:44Speaker 01

  their original goals, which was clearly to subjugate Ukraine in many respects, to be able to seize territory, essentially dismember Ukraine and marginalize Ukraine in international affairs. And I think it's fair to say that we're still seeing them do that.

• 4:01Ezra Klein?

  Do you think in looking at what they have done since that you can divine the outcome of that reassessment?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's clear that they're going to try to secure as much territory as they possibly can in the east and the south and spin this as if that was the plan all along, which was obviously the contingency and the backup plan in any case. You know, if they couldn't take Kiev, they couldn't remove Zelensky, they couldn't completely change the trajectory of the whole country, then there was certainly this great interest that we've seen all the way along. Since 2014, when they annexed Crimea, of taking the territory of the Donbass region, eastern Ukraine, the separatist regions, the whole of the regions, which Putin has and the Russian doomsday have recently recognized as being independent, all of Donetsk and Luhansk. And also this area around the Sea of Azov, extending across the top of Crimea and all the way down across the Black Sea coast to Odessa.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  In 2014, this was the area that they termed Novaya Russia, New Russia, which had been a term used during the Tsarist period of their lands, as it suggests of New Russia, the lands of settlement of Russian speakers, Slavs, Orthodox Christians, entirely that had once been part of the Ottoman Empire. And in 2014, there had been this effort, indeed, to set off these proxy uprisings, try to set up new committees that would be in favor of closer association with Russia, and that fizzled out, it hadn't worked. And it looked very much the case that they've gone back to this again, which many people honestly had been anticipating would be, in fact, the initial thrust of a Russian invasion, not to try to take the whole country,

• 5:35Speaker 01

  but to try to consolidate the eastern part of Donbass under Russian proxy forces, an independent state, and expand the area of territory around Crimea, the Sea of Azov, and going as far as Odessa. And that seems to be what we're seeing now, particularly the intensification of fighting in the east and the south.

• 5:57Ezra Klein?

  On that point of Russia consolidating into the east and the south, I think the impression in the West, certainly the impression if you follow this on social media, is that Ukraine has proven relatively stunning on the battlefield, that Russia has been much weaker than people anticipated, as you gestured towards. America has talked about, has released intelligence saying that Vladimir Putin is not getting good information from his war commanders. I don't know how to assess the veracity of that, but it's an interesting public statement on our part. How do you understand how the war has gone militarily for both sides? Has Russia been as weak as they're often now portrayed in the US? Has Ukraine been as strong? What do you see as the balance of military power and potentiality?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Well, it's actually fairly complex. There's a really good case to be made that the Russian battle plans have not gone as they would have intended. And similarly, that the levels of resistance from Ukraine has been far more than anybody anticipated is certainly on the western side of things. Look, I mean, I was hearing from many very well-informed analysts of the Russian military that this would all be over, probably we're all hearing that, right, forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours a week, you know, maximum. And there are others, Russian military journalists have also pointed out that perhaps the model for this intervention was actually the models of the intervention that the Soviet Army launched against Hungary in nineteen fifty-six and Czechoslovakia in nineteen sixty-eight. And again, what they were probably planning on doing in Poland in the nineteen

• 7:29Speaker 01

  eighties, which they went in in force in a very large mass, you know, pretty much shock and awe approach with tanks and large number of military, tried to minimise the shooting. And then basically put down governments that were trying to go their own way in all of these three countries. And so that that was what they were anticipating that they would do in Ukraine. And that, you know, those of us in the West, myself included, who've described this as a blitzkrieg, so these Russian military analysts are saying were kind of wrong, that they thought that this is much more like the Red Army interventions in the Soviet era against other members of the Soviet Bloc. So this is a mistake still on the part of Moscow, thinking that Ukraine would capitulate and sort of fade away and there wouldn't be the kind of resistance that they obviously encountered. And it would

• 8:12Speaker 01

  be much more like Hungary and Czechoslovakia and it's be over fairly quickly. So there's all kinds of different dimensions to this, but clearly, whatever planning they had there initially, however they thought about this operation from Russian side, it hasn't gone according to plan. Because we see this in the terms of the high casualties, they didn't plan for this, the the strung-out logistical supplies that they've had a lot of lot of problems with. And then it's the Ukrainian response, this guerrilla response, as well as the response of the Ukrainian military that's proved to be much more disciplined. And of course, they've been much better equipped than the Russians would have anticipated because of the weaponry that's been coming in in their support from the West, from European countries and from the United States. So I think, you know, as we watch this unfold,

• 8:56Speaker 01

  there's going to be a lot more assessments. And, you know, as I said, there's there's been quite differences of opinion behind the scenes all the way along. But clearly, we're also been seeing a breakdown in the command and control of the Russian military. The atrocities that we're seeing here. Very much indicative of this, my former colleague from Brookings, who I wrote the book about Mr. Putin with Clifford Gaddy, had written to me pointing out the same thing. I mean, he, something he would have observed during, you know, that period as well, worrying that the military cohesion for the Russians has kind of broken down in the face of battle. And that's why we're seeing this, these horrible acts of violence against the civilian population.

• 9:34Ezra Klein?

  When we last spoke, I think it's fair to say the, the conventional wisdom, what was implicit in, in some of what you were saying, was that Russia would win this war. And the question was how many they killed in doing it and what kind of settlement could end it. At least they could win this war if they wanted to. And now there seems to be more of a sense that Ukraine can actually win, that Russia doesn't have the supplies, the logistics, the morale, long-term, the money to sustain a battle like this, and then to ultimately try to subjugate a country like this. Do you think that's true, that that perception has changed, that there's now a view that Ukraine can win? And do you think that it is actually true?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Look, I think it depends on how we define winning, right? I mean, you think about Finland, for example, that won the winter war against the Soviet Union in 1940, when there was an effort very similar to what's happening in Ukraine to reincorporate them back into the Soviet Union, having won their independence already with the collapse of the Russian Empire. And the Finns won in terms of their independence and their freedom, but at great cost, pretty heavy casualties, although they actually wreaked havoc on the Soviet military, on the Red Army, through guerrilla warfare and the kind of resistance that we're sort of seeing now. But they lost a huge sway of their territory in Karelia. And I think there's obviously a case to be made here, which is, you know, as we're looking very closely at what the Russians are attempting to do, if they're going to basically carve

• 10:58Speaker 01

  off the east and the south, you can make a case that the Ukrainians will win their independence and sovereignty, which honestly, they had up until February 24th, with the obviously notable exception of the annexation of Crimea and what was already going on, a hot war in Donbass that had been going on since 2014. But now re-winning it again, as the Finns had to do in the 1940s, but at great cost.

• 11:23Ezra Klein?

  And then one thing that also seems to have become more of a live debate is over whether a settlement agreement that gives Putin some level of victory, something he can take back to Russians, is a good idea. There's one version where he simply occupies the East, and there's another version where there is some kind of deal made around the negotiating table that gives him some of what he wanted. Do you think the politics of a ceasefire and settlement have become harder for Zelensky? And if so, is that a good or a bad thing?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I think they've become harder for everyone, both sides in this, and also for us, right? I mean, the United States and Europe, the West, because of all of the knock-on ramifications of this, this is a massive dislocation. This is like a 9/11 episode in our geopolitical perspectives. I think you and I talked about that the last time as well. I mean, this is one of these huge ruptures in political and security affairs with global implications, not just regional implications. And that makes the stakes of the outcome here so much higher. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it becomes to find some workable solution. I think what we're going to have to do is think about this in phases, that whatever might be resolved now might be temporary. And then goes, we'll have to work on whatever

• 12:38Speaker 01

  we can do to make sure that the Russians can't press whatever advantage they may think that they may have down the line. That's why there's so much discussion about security guarantees, to make sure this doesn't happen again. What kind of formulations can you have for referenda, for example, if there's some decision to cede some territory, which there certainly isn't at this particular point, because the Russians have said, Putin has said, they've not really changed the goalposts in many respects. They're still saying what they wanted right from the very beginning, which is the recognition of the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, but in their full territory. And that would probably be very much a prelude to, let's just say, absorption into Russia as well. I mean, that seems to be part of the plan

• 13:21Speaker 01

  as well. They clearly want to have the dismemberment of Ukraine, and that would affect that. And then they want to have the neutralization of Ukraine effectively, not just neutrality and not becoming A member of NATO, but also diminishing Ukraine's defensive capacity, which of course is not acceptable. If they've talked about demilitarization or capping the size of Ukraine's military, that's some of the ideas that have been thrown out there by the Russians. Now, the Ukrainians under Zelensky have been trying to come out there with different formulations. And we've got to give them the space to be able to figure things out as well. Because as you're just suggesting in the question, the longer this goes on, the more people that die,

• 14:02Speaker 01

  the more that this visceral sense of hatred, which is so obvious, is going to grow against Russia and the Russians. And not a willingness, you know, in some circles to compromise after everything that's been lost, the more difficult it becomes for Zelensky to find a formula. And what we really need is a very large and robust international framework around this as well. When we're talking about the security guarantees, when the Ukrainians are talking about this, you know, they're feeling out what is possible. Some people have been surprised that the Russians out there as well as the Chinese. But really what they're grasping towards is that they need a larger framework. It can't be just, you know, assurances that they've had in the past from a handful of countries, like the Budapest memorandum, which was assurances by the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia,

• 14:47Speaker 01

  that didn't hold back in nineteen ninety four for Ukraine. And in many respects, they're kind of talking about an Article Five type guarantee, not from NATO, because they're saying that they're very willing not to be members of NATO. And frankly, NATO doesn't want to have them as members, but they want to have guarantees that they're not going to be subject to this slaughter again. And they certainly want to have the ability to defend themselves. There's going to be a lot of devils in a lot of details here. This is going to be very difficult to work out.

• 15:16Ezra Klein?

  On that point of the longer it goes on, the harder it becomes for a settlement to be reached, the more hatred there is, the more bodies there are for everyone to account for. I want to come back to the images of these horrific killings of civilians. How do they change the war? How do they change it for Ukraine, for Russia, to some degree even for the West? Or do they? Is this just war?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yes, there's degrees of carnage in every conflict that we can think of and horrors. And the bottom line is that we've said over and over again since the end of World War Two, as we look back at just the unspeakable effect of that war. The Holocaust, the millions of deaths, that we would never do this again and we keep on doing it. And, and really, you know, what we're seeing here is yet another reminder of how badly we've fared in trying to address these kinds of conflicts. And as have all of you, Zelensky is saying, what is the use of the United Nations? Which was actually set up precisely to try to push back against these kinds of conflicts emerging again. The abuses that we saw in war. Remember how that very famous line, never let a good crisis go to waste.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And Zelensky is basically saying, look, here we have another of these crises, these horrors. There's the conflict here and the United Nations is just not living up to the task. We really need to do something here. So there's a huge, a much larger, rather, implication out of what we're seeing here, what we've seen in Butcha and in Irpin and all of the suburbs of Kiev and what we're seeing. But we haven't got the full picture of happening in Mariupol and Malitopol. All of these cities are going to go down in the annals of history, like Aleppo and all of the cities that we're thinking about being destroyed during World War Two, like Stankrad and Nenygrad and even in the Soviet Union, the similar seizures and the massive casualties. And it's really a kind of, basically a wake up call to all of us that we need to do better.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  We need to do something about this. Zelensky is saying this every single day. And that's kind of, you know, the implications is that when we get a grip on this, that we have to really make sure that we're putting in place institutional arrangements and responses that will make it less likely this happens again. We should all be ashamed in watching this unfold.

• 17:32Ezra Klein?

  But you see even in this, the way the desire for settlement and justice end up in tension with each other. I mean, I feel it in me when I look at these pictures. I was thinking, looking at them, about how when we last spoke, you had warned that the West needed to be very careful not to make this about regime change. And since then, as Putin's horrors have become more visible, President Biden ad-libbed that Putin had to go in his big speech. He walked that back. Now he says Putin should be put on trial for war crimes. And it feels at times that those ideas are inconsistent. How do you end up negotiating a settlement with somebody you're also saying should be on trial in The Hague for war crimes? How do you think about that tension?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think about it all the time, as everybody does. And we have a problem in the United States as well that we haven't signed on to a lot of the international mechanisms, the International Criminal Court that people have devised to deal with these things. So we've got these tensions all the time in United States politics because we always fear that they will be used against us and somewhere to score political points by other countries in disputes. So we've made it very difficult for ourselves to resolve those tensions. And one of the challenges that Ukraine has got to do, which is sort of separate from the United States, is to make the case to the rest of the world that all of these comparisons that people make with the world, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, or this country did that, and this did another, that doesn't justify what's happening in Ukraine.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  And that what's happening in Ukraine is a throwback to a much darker time, and it's opening up the door to this happening over and over again in every setting. And yes, in the Arab world, they're complaining that we didn't take enough steps about Syria and Iraq and Yemen and all the other conflicts. But that doesn't then excuse anything that's happening to Ukraine. So I mean, Ukraine itself, Zelensky and the other leadership are going to have to reach out to the rest of the world, including China as well, and to basically be pointing out to them this tension and this injustice that they have to step up as well. It could be only when we get that larger framework and that larger acknowledgement from other countries as well that we'll be able to resolve this in some fashion. But the power, of course, still lies with Putin. And Putin knows all of this. I mean, he's seen this happen in other places.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  He's definitely going to resist it, and he's going to always be playing what-aboutism, or what about what the United States did, making it even more difficult to be able to prosecute this.

• 20:15Ezra Klein?

  You said a moment ago that the power still lies with Putin. And I want to ask a bit about how his power is changing during all this. There have been polls suggesting he's become more popular in Russia. The Levada Center, which is at least usually known for doing independent polling, found that 83% of Russians said they approved of Putin, up from 69% in January. There's been sort of more qualitative reporting suggesting that to be true. Do you find that plausible, that Putin is gaining strength in there, in Russia, in the midst of the war?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yes, entirely plausible. I mean, this is something we've seen many times over, rally around the flag in the time of a crisis. And of course, think about the propaganda in Russia. We've heard that the Russians, at every level, pushing back against the reports of atrocities in the suburbs of Kiev, saying this is all staged, this is, you know, the Ukrainians doing it themselves. This is all done to discredit Russia, the Russians haven't done this. I mean, that's the kind of lies that are being told to the outside world. But internally, people, that's all they're seeing. You know, we've had these reports also of Russian speakers and others being taken out of the Donbass region. Been accusations on the Ukrainian side, rather, that the Russians kidnapped people and are basically shipping them off to Russia.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Because that's part of the whole narrative inside of Russia, that the Ukrainians are the aggressors and that these are refugees from the assault by the Ukrainian military. And they have to be able to show refugees in large numbers coming into Russia. So if everyone's fleeing in the opposite direction to Poland or to Romania, for example, it makes it harder for the Russians to portray the course of events and a lot according to their own narrative. So we're seeing all kinds of suggestive actions here that really, again, underpin the propaganda that basically...

• 22:02Speaker 01

  What Russians are hearing is a very different side of the war. Russia being subjected to aggression by the United States and NATO. Ukrainians are to blame for the cause of this war. It's still a special military operation. The casualties are being inflicted by these aggressive Nazis. You know, they're still the depiction of the Ukrainian forces Nazis. We're seeing that propaganda being reinforced in China and by the Chinese and other countries that are supportive of Russia. And then there's this feeling of crisis, the West being out to get you. The sanctions are all done to punish Russia, to bring Russia to its knees. Putin said that over and over again since 2014. The pain that you're feeling, the average Russian person, is because of what the West is doing to Russia.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  This is not because of anything that Russia and the Kremlin are doing. And so people are rallying around, they're rallying around the flag, they're rallying around Putin because Putin's the symbol of the state. And although this is probably not the same sort of spontaneous upswelling of support that Putin got after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which was immensely popular, it's still completely normal to see people in times of duress and stress to be running around the central figure. And we see it here in the United States as well.

• 23:17Ezra Klein?

  Do you think the sanctions are working on the first dimension to inflict economic pain and pressure on Russia? And then in the second, more important dimension, to push Putin to want an end to this?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Well, they're certainly doing it in the first dimension. And look, we've seen with Iran, for example, when there was a lot of pressure of the sanctions on Iran over its nuclear weapons programme, that Iran wanted to do things to lift the sanctions, but it didn't necessarily want to change its goals about the nuclear programme if we look back, you know, in time over that. So Putin won't change his goals. But, you know, they may want to try to head off more of the sanctions, but they're hoping, I think Putin thinks this again, that he can do that by continued outreach to China, continued outreach to other countries, and continuing to depict this conflict. As again, a special military operation, not just for domestic audiences, but then also for the outside world, those are skeptical about everything.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  As again, a continuation of the Cold War, a proxy war. This is again, like Vietnam and South Korea, this is all a career, the Korean War, rather. This is all a fight between Russia and the United States and NATO. That this is the kind of war that people have seen over and over again, and basically pushing back on this idea of what it actually is, which is a post-colonial land grab by the Russians. So again, that depiction from Putin's perspective, he hopes that will head off more support for the sanctions, because what will really bite is when others start to maybe, you know, not fully participate in the sanctions, but certainly not help the Russians to evade them.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  When other countries decide that they're not going to buy Russian gas and oil as well, like China or other countries, not just purely because of pressure from the United States, but because they're also wanting to bring this war to an end. So really, what this has to do is to blunt the ability of Putin to prosecute the war. There are some sanctions that are very effective, just by the way, which is those that tackle military components. The sanctions against the aviation fleet, where it's very, very difficult for the Russians then to maintain their aircraft, for example. So some sanctions will have a big impact on the ability of the military to continue to develop over time.

• 25:37Ezra Klein?

  Do you see any evidence of China moving that direction? We've talked about China from a few directions so far in this conversation. One is possibly a country that Ukraine should appeal to around the war crimes, a country that could potentially put pressure on Russia by buying less Russian oil and gas, and at the same time, a country that seems to be backing Russian propaganda, from what we can tell in reporting, is censoring their own internet, shaping their own information space to drive the Russian narrative. How do you see where China has not just been, but has moved over the course of this?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, I'm certainly the first to say that I'm engaging in some wishful thinking about the position of China, because when you look at the, you know, the Nineteen Nations Resolutions about the war in Ukraine, there's been actually some pretty considerable support. Hundred and forty-one countries voting in favour of the resolution, far more than voted to condemn the annexation of Crimea back in 2014. But it's also notable that some key countries have stood to one side, either abstained, or some that have voted against it, perhaps not so critical. But countries like China that have sapped this out are obviously instrumental in their support for Russia or in their framing of what the war is for the rest of the international community.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And if we don't get them swayed, then this remains extraordinarily difficult to resolve. So I'm hopeful that that might be possible, but at the same time, I'm being realistic. I'm pretty pessimistic about it. And I think, you know, we have to keep at it in terms of the diplomacy and diplomatic outreach, the Ukrainians in particular, and, you know, other countries that have better relations with China than the United States has. But I think from the perspective of many China scholars, that they're quite sceptical that China will be moved in a direction, because China is not liking what it's seeing in terms of the unity of the West, the bolstering again of solidarity in NATO.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Within the EU, we saw the recent European Union and China meeting that was described by Joseph Borel, the High Representative, as a dialogue of the deaf or a meeting of the deaf, that China's not at all happy by the turn of events and does not want to see the West consolidated and doesn't want to see Russia sidelined as a result of miscalculations in this war.

• 28:02Ezra Klein?

  Specifically on the diplomatic side, are there things or tactics or leverage we should be taking? I think people normally think of that as aimed at Russia, but if you think of it as potentially needing to be aimed at other countries, are there ways that the West can be diplomatically changing the cost benefit for some of the countries now on the sidelines?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, you know, part of it is not just the United States getting out there. Because again, when the Russians push back with the what aboutism or what about the United States and what they've done, I think we need other countries to help make the case. The Swiss, for example, have always been very good at this. And, um, you know, other countries that have not got a record here, the Finns, I mean, they're these smaller countries, but a, you know, a grouping of countries that could help support Ukraine and going out on a broader diplomatic effort. Now, in the middle of a war, this is horrific and horrendous, you know, to having to focus on this, but look, it's exactly what happened to happen in World War Two. We know all the history about how Winston Churchill, you know, had people out there on the road trying to get the United States in, and it wasn't so easy.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  You know, trying to get other countries to support the UK and what was happening in the Western Alliance against Nazi Germany. It wasn't easy then either. And there was a whole constellation of forces, Japan jumping in in support of Germany to press their own agenda. You know, we have to look back at that period of diplomacy, realising it was very hard and that we had to do an awful lot behind the scenes. And who could be your emissary or envoy for this? As I said, it might not necessarily be the United States or United States leadership, but other countries that have got credibility and relationships, both from Europe and elsewhere, the Australians, New Zealand, you know, for example, Canada, you know, how how could we craft together a diplomatic group to help and support Ukraine in this effort of reaching

• 29:50Speaker 01

  out to the rest of the world?

• 29:53Ezra Klein?

  What else should the West be doing to support Ukraine that it isn't, if anything?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Well, obviously, we've heard a lot from the Ukrainians themselves about more support for the military campaign and, you know, coming up with ways in which they can defend themselves better from the assault from the skies with air defence. If we're not going to be able to come in in terms of an exclusion zone, a no-fly zone, there's the longer term, you know, questions of helping deal with all of the Ukrainian refugees. I mean, at this point, the displacement inside of Ukraine, as well as refugees across into Poland and Romania and elsewhere in Europe, is just the phenomenal scale. And, you know, we'll have to keep on assisting and helping and helping to bail out the Ukrainian economy.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  And obviously, the Ukrainians would really like to see an energy embargo. But that's going to really take a lot of public support. Because that gets right into the heart of politics. We're seeing it in France in the French elections with Marine Le Pen and others saying, well, look, why should we be suffering the average French worker from high gasoline prices because of this war in Ukraine and Hungary, where Viktor Orban has just been re-elected against the backdrop of Orban on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, making a new gas deal for cheaper gas and longer-term gas contracts. And of course, Germany has done many things that we didn't think was possible in terms of stopping Nord Stream Two and making

• 31:25Speaker 01

  all kinds of commitments to wean itself off Russian gas and oil and also Russian coal over a period of time. But we know this is going to be extraordinarily difficult. There is going to be one thing that will have a big impact on Russia because most of the state revenues come from the sale of oil and gas and also other raw materials, natural resources. And if we could find ways of moving forward with an energy embargo, again, not all simple, that would really have a big impact. And then it's the stepped-up diplomatic effort to get more on board, to create a bookable international framework

• 32:03Speaker 01

  that Ukraine can find a solution within all of this. And it's a long-term commitment to Ukraine in terms of its security and its reconstruction. Now, we're talking about all of this. But, you know, we have a lot of planning still to do. We have to really step it up because I do think there's a very strong case to be made that, you know, if we don't help Ukraine fend this off, the world is going to be a much darker place ahead. This is going to opening up all of the kinds of things that, you know, we really hope that we'd moved away from after two world wars in the 20th century.

• 32:59Ezra Klein?

  Joe Biden has been very clear about not doing a no-fly zone, but something that President Zelensky has asked for many times is planes. Do you think the EU, the US, should give him planes?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Look, I think there's a lot of things that we can think about doing. We need to do it more quietly because part of the problem of having these big public debates is that that then really gets the attention of the Russians. And one of the reasons that people are hesitating on some of this is because of the public nature of the debate about it. Because that then raises that question about escalation, the sense of bringing in NATO directly into the conflict. I mean, in many respects, we're already part of this with all the refugees and the extension of the conflict in so many different ways with sanctions and economic pressure. And, you know, one of the reasons that the administration is so reluctant is because this plays exactly into Putin's hands.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Because Putin, again, wants to make this war about the United States, NATO, and Russia. He wants this to be a proxy war, even though, you know, he wants to take Ukraine again, and this sort of neo-imperial, post-imperial land grab. He wants it to look to the rest of the world like a war with NATO. And then that would justify him mobilizing his own forces in a different political ways than he has already. It becomes, you know, something more than a special military operation. It's also what he's already starting to say to the Russian public. And you're hearing Russian commentators saying, Russian officials, that this is now taking on existential dimensions for Russia. And so that puts things into a whole different category.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  And we haven't seen the full mobilization in a political manner yet of Russia and the Russian military. This is what everyone's trying to grapple with. And it's very important for us to have full discussions so that people can understand what's happening. I myself have been out and about, you know, talking to people. But sometimes there's a real disadvantage in talking about everything quite so publicly in terms of this, you know, very sensitive military support for Ukraine, because it often exacerbates the situation.

• 35:06Ezra Klein?

  Do you feel you have a sense of the phase of this conflict we're in? That we are close or far from an endgame? That we are headed towards this being protracted? Or that you can begin to see what will come? Is that something you think can be predicted?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  I don't right now. I mean, if I look back at past patterns, it makes me quite pessimistic. And I look at Chechnya, for example, which was, of course, a conflict within Russia itself. If you look at Syria, I mean, we're still dealing in many respects with the ongoing conflicts. And so if you look at Yemen, where we've only just managed to get some kind of ceasefire in Libya. There's not a lot of optimism that's there. But again, there's a real concerted effort here, both to try to assist the Ukrainians and to have a focus on the diplomatic dimensions of it as well. This didn't go the Russians intended, clearly. And it's got a dynamic all of its own here. There are many different factors that could shift this.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I think there's also some sort of danger in predicting, you know, how long this is going to go on too. Because people start to then hedge on particular actions or they make assessments and then, you know, take action according to those assessments that might actually make the conflict even more protracted. But it's not satisfying for anyone here. Just we are where we are in this phase of it. We don't know how much longer this is going to go on. But we should keep the goal in mind of trying to get this resolved as soon as possible, both through military means and also through diplomatic means. And when I put the stress on the military means, it's very clear that the more that the Russian military action can be blunted, you know, the better all of this is.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Because if they can't prosecute the war in the way that they want to, that it becomes much more difficult to get traction. You know, that might then bring it to a close much quicker. Most wars end up ending when all the combatants have run out of steam, when they've gone to reach a dead end.

• 37:11Ezra Klein?

  One of the things that seems not unlikely to me, and I don't make it as a prediction, but as something I worry a bit about, is not so much an end as a stalemate. Russia, holding some of the East and South, Ukraine having pushed them back from Kiev and views of and ambitions of regime change, the West looking at that and holding sort of economic noose around Russia in a protracted way, Russia being in this war mobilization in a very protracted way, feeling that much more danger, this didn't go well, they have somewhat more territory but are also now facing a united Europe. You've alluded to the darker world. If this doesn't go well, not that it's ever going to go well, we're already in a darker world.

• 37:55Ezra Klein?

  How do you think about the version of this that doesn't really end?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Well, you've just sculpted out there, Ezra. That's the darker world that I was thinking of. And there's also some pretty serious implications for the future. You know, I was thinking the other day, there's all these analogies that are being thrown out there, but you know, when you think of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, I was looking at a picture of Putin, you know, riding on horseback, bare chested, and it made me think, you know, four Putins, the four horsemen starting off with conquest, his effort pestilence, because we're still in the middle of COVID, famine, and then death, you know, all these are related together. But famine becomes a really important angle in all of this as well.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  We've started to talk more, many of us were talking about this in a sense of urgency much earlier on, but we're starting to talk more about the food security implications from all of this. Ukraine's the breadbasket of Europe, and in many respects, you know, kind of Ukraine has become the global breadbasket over time. And every time you have a war in a country in which it interferes with the planting and the agricultural development, you see famine coming in its work, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, and we're heading in this direction now. These attacks on Odessa and on the fuel depots, for example, we have to start thinking about the implications of this. Odessa remains the main port on the Black Sea for the export of grain and other foodstuffs.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  If Odessa's destroyed, along with Mariupol, Molitopol, and all these other ports, where is agricultural production going to be shipped from? And then even more fundamental, How is it going to be grown in the first place? How are the Ukrainians going to be planting the fields in the Black Earth Zone this spring? This is the period. And this isn't happening because it doesn't happen in a wartime. There's landmines all over the place. Think about all of the other countries in the world where we've seen this kind of devastation. And this is happening in one of the most fertile regions of the world. A place along with Russia that is one of the major producers of all kinds of grains. And some countries in the Middle East are completely dependent on Ukraine for their foodstuffs.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  So this aspect of global famine, rising food prices, rising gas prices as a result of all of the disruptions in the energy sector and the potential embargo on Russia. This is really putting us into a kind of period of economic crisis ahead too.

• 40:26Ezra Klein?

  So to draw out that horrifying scenario, but I don't think an unlikely one. One of the things implicit there is that the invasion of Ukraine has, you can feel it in other places, I mean, certainly in Russia. But you can feel it through higher gas prices, somewhat higher commodity prices. But something I'm hearing you saying is that the longer this goes on, the more profound the disruptions everywhere else will become. Three months is different than six, six months is very different than a year. A year is very different than than two or three. Cutting off Russia, devastating Ukraine, the longer it is, the more the rest of the world is going to shake.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  That's right. Look, it's taken already. And the one thing is if there is, you know, miraculously some breakthrough in the next several weeks, we mustn't forget this. That gets back to, you know, what we were talking before about this sort of failure of our institutions. You know, time and again, we kind of write off conflicts as something regional, something that can be contained. And probably that was the initial thinking of this in Ukraine, right? For many people globally thought, well, you know, we're worried about this is something in Europe. This is Ukraine. It's not like a major global player, but Ukraine's an enormous country. Forty odd million population, the largest country territorially in Europe, except Russia, and one of the most fertile, important countries for several centuries in terms of food production.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  You know, back in nineteen hundred, Odessa was one of the richest, fastest growing cities in Europe, and it was the centre of the whole European grain trade, and it's continued to be that. People have just forgotten about it. And now the larger implications of this conflict are becoming evident, and they will have a knock on effects. I mean, again, this is planting season, and Ukrainian farmers are not out there in their fields, planting the grain that feeds Africa and keeps famine it, babe.

• 42:16Ezra Klein?

  You've alluded a few times in our conversation to the need for a new international security framework, a new European security framework specifically, but I get the sense you think of it as broader than that. Do you want to say a bit about what you're thinking there? The ways you maybe have seen the international order we have now show its weaknesses? And what, if anything, we can say firmly or predictively about what could replace it and be more capable and enforceable?

• 42:46Speaker 01

  In many respects, maybe just the revitalisation and adaptation of some of the existing institutions, because, you know, in many respects, this before we faced this at the end of World War Two. Again, this is another of those defining moments. And the world has become much more complex. I mean, one of the big reasons that this is such a profound conflict, we're, everyone's watching it. We're seeing everything in real time, including the atrocities. And I was just a stander myself, seeing some of the footage from satellites that's been shown in tandem with the evidence from journalists visiting the suburbs of Kiev and being able to see the bodies on the streets in the satellite imagery

• 43:26Speaker 01

  in exactly the same places as the journalists are seeing them as they're driving through the streets. I mean, this is unprecedented, obviously. I mean, we've got a much more wired world, we're much more interconnected. People are seeing things happening in real time. This is having a larger public impact. This isn't just elites, as it was, you know, the Winston Churchill's of the world in World War Two. You can't imagine, you know, something like the Potsdam and Yalta Conferences of World War Two, with just a couple of guys sitting in chairs with their entourages, making decisions about what's going to happen next and how there's going to be the disposition of territory and political influence at the end of all of this.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  We have to find a way of building out our institutions to reflect more of this complex interconnected world that we have. And the Ukrainians are kind of showing us the way of this. They're kind of showing us here that we need to have something more here where more people have agency. This is just kind of elite institutions that are dominated by the major powers. And, you know, I'm grappling with that because I don't really have a full answer. We've started to do that in the adaptation of some of our international institutions. Often when we have the UN, well, in fact, mostly now, when we have the big UN meetings in September, we have think tanks and NGOs and all kinds of others, groups that meet around the margins of this. And we're, you know, we're getting closer.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Sometimes we do this at the G seven and the G twenty and some of the other institutions. But we need to think about how to make this much more robust. It's pretty complicated. But, you know, and again, we need to have some rethinking for our new wired networked world and complex world about how to give more people a voice in how these institutions operate. And again, I said, that's what the Ukrainians are calling for. I mean, that's what Zelensky's been saying. What are you guys here for? If you can't help us in this situation.

• 45:17Ezra Klein?

  Let me end as we always do on books. Last time you were on the show, you gave some great recommendations around Russia. Something I've heard from you as we've been talking tonight is a certain sense of history of how other wars have gone, a sense of what can and cannot be predicted, the way things in a battle change the shape of everything around them. Are there works of military history, works on other wars that you found yourself returning to or thinking through during this era?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I haven't been having much time to pick things up. I mean, I've thought a lot about some of the books that I've read about World War One and World War Two, particularly about how we first blundered into them. Some to the art of war, I actually have been picking that up again because I think we talked earlier about, you know, the need to find a way that Putin can have his golden bridge, some sense of victory. But of course, that was before, you know, we started to see the evidence of what's going on in the ground in this battle. But yes, I think that I probably should be devising myself a reading list of military history and, you know, going back over a period of time, the whole period after the end of World War Two and what we thought we were doing in terms of institutional development.

• 46:26Ezra Klein?

  Fiona Hill, thank you very much.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ezra.

• 46:41Ezra Klein?

  Thank you for listening. If you want to support the show, you can leave a review in whatever podcast app you're listening on, or send the show to a friend, family member, a friend of me. It really does help us. The Ezra Klein Show is a production of New York Times Opinion, and it is made by an amazing team of people. It is produced by Rajesh Karma, Annie Galvin, and Jeff Geld. This episode is fact-checked by Michelle Harris and Roland Hugh. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing and engineering by Jeff Geld. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristina Samulewski, and Kristin Lynn.