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Adam Entous on U.S.-Ukraine Relations in 2025
01:20:06
Adam Entous of The New York Times shares his in-depth investigation exploring the Trump Administration's policies towards Ukraine in 2025.
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A
Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stewart center and Europe Russia Eurasia Program at csis.
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B
And I'm Maria Snigavaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia.
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A
And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the center for Strategic International Studies.
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C
Foreign.
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A
Happy New year and welcome back to Russian Roulette. We hope you've had a very restful holiday season and now we're ready to dive back in to all things connected to Russian foreign policy, the war in Ukraine and US Russia relations. I know we are to kick things off for 2026. We have an incredible guest today, Adam Entos from the New York Times. Adam is a legendary reporter. He's been at Reuters, the New Yorker, the Washington Post. And before the break, he wrote what really is, I think the first draft of history when it comes to how the Trump administration has engaged Ukraine and the war in Ukraine. It's really an astonishing piece in its depth of reporting. Adam talked to, I think it's roughly 300 conducted roughly over 300 interviews over the course of the year. The piece is titled, quote, the Separation Inside the Unraveling US Ukraine Partnership. The link is in the show notes. If anyone hasn't read it, I really encourage you to read it. Gives a real in depth and insightful understanding of how the Trump administration has been approaching this war. And so without further ado, Adam, welcome to the show. Really excited that you would join us and to discuss the piece.
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C
Well, as you know, as part of my research, I learned I have to be incredibly grateful in every. So thank you. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for, for allowing me. I hope I have the cards. So anyways, that's in that mode. I'm happy to be here.
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A
I think we're going to get to the cards situation with the famous Oval Office meeting. But I want to start by maybe taking a step back and I'm curious about the conversation you might have had with your editor at the Times when you sort of pitched this piece and what sort of prompted you to want to write such a sort of broad, broadly focused what was the instigator of this and what were the kind of conversations about this and how long have you been working on it? Maybe take us a little bit the scenes of the creation of it and then we'll dive in.
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C
Yeah. So a couple years ago I started working on a project that was, you know, kind of looking at sort of the secret relationship between, between the US Intelligence community and the Ukrainian intelligence agencies. And that produced a piece which was basically the story of the CIA and the sbu, the CIA and the. Her. The military and civilian intelligence services, domestic intelligence services. And then, then after that, I, I did a piece called the Partnership, which, which ran last March, which was looking at the, again, kind of the role behind the scenes of the US Military and the CIA in enabling, helping plan Ukrainian operations against the Russians. And that was a, that was a piece that ended shortly after, shortly before the inauguration of Donald Trump with a. With a moment of where Secretary of Defense Austin is bidding farewell to the Ukrainians at his final Ukraine defense contact group meeting in January of last year. And as he's saying goodbye, he's tearing up. This is a bear of a man, somebody who obviously, one could say, didn't do enough to help Ukraine, but obviously did a lot and he certainly cared a lot about Ukraine and it was very important to him. You can definitely criticize. Maybe they didn't do enough or whatever, or maybe they did too much by some accounts. Anyways, bottom line is he really cared. And he was tearing up at the end, saying goodbye, knowing that he was basically handing over the partnership to a very uncertain future. And so the idea was we ended that story in January 2025. And I said to my editors, you know, what if I do sort of a real time following of what happens after that? So kind of fly on the wall as best I could to kind of figure out what was actually happening as it was happening, in addition to trying to reconstruct it after the fact as this was all unfolding. And so that was the idea because the other piece ran kind of, you know, you know, in early, early last year. And so I just thought, you know, this is so important. I mean, you know, and the way we approach, you know, because of the kind of constant flow of news coming out of this administration, it can be very, very hard to focus on anything. And something this consequential just felt like it was deserving, you know, a real attempt to try to get behind the scenes on what was going on. And so it was a natural continuation of the previous piece. So, you know, at the end of the Biden administration, there were all these new authorities that were being given to the Ukrainians, to the Americans, to the military and to the CIA to enable the Ukrainians. They got permission, for example, to fire long range atacms, these are long range missiles into Russia to help defend their pocket in Kursk. And at the same time, I didn't know it at the time, but discovered it as part of the reporting for this piece, they also got permission to enable Ukrainian long range drone strikes targeting basically the defense industrial base of Russia, including energy facilities deep inside Russia, using Ukrainian drones that were domestically manufactured. And so the idea was to kind of go from where Biden had left it and just see, you know, how the Trump team handled it. And so that was the idea that was the impetus for this project.
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A
And maybe let's dive into the piece because, I mean, it starts with a great anecdote or story about holding.155ammunition. So I want to get there and how the administration's approaching aid to Ukraine. But it really starts with the transition, sort of overlaps with, with the end of the Austin visit, where maybe you could describe how Donald Trump and then how the people that were coming into his administration were approaching Ukraine. Trump had, as you note, had said so many times that he was going to end the war on day one. What was the kind of approach of the administration and approach of the Russians? Maybe you could talk about the transition and how that unfolding.
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C
Yeah, so now we have to go back in time a little bit to 2016, 2017. And we all remember what happened to Michael Flynn, who was the national security adviser, first national security adviser to Donald Trump in the first term. There were all of these kind of secret contacts that were taking place between his incoming team and some, you know, either the Russian ambassador or some, some others. And this, I was at the Washington Post at the time and, you know, this, this resulted in or fed into what became what Trump derides as the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, which is basically a fixation on, you know, his kind of, you know, still largely unexplained, you know, affinity for Putin, seeming, you know, deference to him, respect for him. And, and basically the incoming team under Trump wanted to avoid that. They didn't want to be Michael Flynn. They didn't want to have contacts with the Russians during the transition and end up the Washington Post, the New York Times, or others accusing them of doing things, being sneaky behind everybody's back. And so Trump was saying very publicly, he says it dozens and dozens of times, almost identical. He's going to solve this in 24 hours during the transition. Why he says this, I have no idea. Nobody can explain it. But he just says it over and over again. And he clearly believed. And he's, you know, he tells his aides he believes he has this like, special thing with Putin. They bonded over the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. He believes. He also, for some reason thinks that he has this special thing with Zelensky, even though he hates the guy, right? And so anyways, he, you know, everyone around the world is hearing this during the campaign, Trump talking about it, right? And these world leaders who want to really suck up to Trump after he wins the election, want to be useful, want to be perceived by his incoming team as useful to him. And so they're reaching out to Mike Waltz, who's the National Security Advisor designate. They're Susie Wiles, the incoming Chief of staff, Marco Rubio, Trump himself, MbS, the Saudi crown prince is doing it. The Hungarian leadership is doing it. All sorts of leaders around the world are reaching out, saying, you know, we can help facilitate your transition contacts with the Russians. And what, you know, Trump had appointed a guy named Keith Kellogg to basically be his envoy for Russia and Ukraine. But, you know, he, he doesn't have any money. He's not flying around on a private plane, you know, making contacts. But there is this other guy named Steve Witkoff who's extremely close to the President. They're really, really close friends and they really, you know, Trump really trusts Steve Witkoff and he has his own plane and he's flying around. He's the Middle east envoy. And, you know, when he's seeing MBS in December in Riyadh, MBS says to him something to the effect of, you know, I hear the President's interested in doing this. I mean, Steve is there to talk about Gaza. He's not there to talk about Russia or Ukraine. But MBS is just like, hey, listen, you know, I want to be helpful here. You know, I got this guy, I got this guy Kirill Dmitriev. We really like him. We think you should work with him. You want, you want me to, you know, introduce you? And, you know, this is sort of come, this is sort of an incidental introduction that takes place. And Steve Witkoff's come, comes back to Washington, comes back to Washington after that trip, and he says to Trump and Susie Wiles and Waltz and Rubio and Radcliffe, hey, there's this guy Kirill Dimitriev. What do you think? You know, it turns out Jared Kushner had worked with him, you know, back in the first Trump administration. And, you know, turns out Amos Hochstein, who was an advisor to President Biden, had also had like a little flirtation with him, you know, back before the full scale invasion that amounted to nothing. And, you know, Rubio says something like, you know, I don't know what to make of this overture, but let, let's, let's give it A shot, you know, and maybe we should, we should test it to see if it's legit. And in one meeting, Rubio suggests that they use Mark Fogel, who was an American teacher living in Russia who was jailed, as a kind of test. If, if Dimitriev can deliver Fogle, then they believe he, he, he truly does have, you know, some wasta, some influence with Putin and then they should, you know, you know, really pursue this back channel. So that's sort of how it begins. And so, you know, what happens is, is Waltz is, doesn't want to have the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, right? And so him and Susie Wiles and Rubio come up with this idea. Maybe Trump, I don't really know how much Trump himself was involved in this decision, but Waltz goes to Jake Sullivan, who was the outgoing national security advisor to Biden, and he says, you know, we want a letter, a written letter that gives us permission during the transition to negotiate with the Russians so we don't have the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax hit us. And you know, John Finer, who's the deputy National Security Advisor, makes the argument to Biden, like, why would we do this? Who knows what Trump is going to do? And Biden is swayed by that argument. The message that they send to the incoming team is like, hey, you guys, do whatever you want to do. We're not going to Logan act. You, we're not going to Michael Flynn, you, you're not going to be arrested or anything like that. Right? But you know, we're not going to write you a blank check saying we endorse whatever you guys are doing because we, we don't know what you're going to do. And so, so that's sort of the beginning of this project that I, that I'm working on, the kind of discovery that there was this attempt by the incoming team. And frankly, I give respect to them for, for going through the front, you know, doing, seeking like an official blessing, if you will, for doing this. I, I think they're, that's admirable, actually. Right. That they, that they did that. I was surprised and I thought that was very normal considering what we were going to experience in the months to follow. Maybe that was actually the high water mark for normal.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And, and, but anyways, Biden wouldn't give the letter and Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dimitriev begin the negotiations sort of behind the scenes without anybody knowing.
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A
One side note, it's sort of interesting as someone who has some PTSD from the whole Mueller, Russia, Russia hoax was that Kirill Dmitriev was actually deployed by the Kremlin the day after the election victory in 20 to come to New York to try to meet with Trump people. And so it's sort of a similar framework, but the Trump administration approached it a different way. What strikes me also is that they didn't really have a strategy or plan for how they were going to end the war, despite the fact claiming it was going to end on day one. And so maybe the next phase of this is the leading up to the meeting, that penultimate meeting that happens in the White House in February between Zelensky and Trump, where the biggest big clash happens. And your reporting on that, I think, is excellent. And maybe you could describe what the administration was thinking there. What was the approach? Because it seems like they came in, didn't really have a clear plan for how to end the war. There's a lot of just different maneuvering. Wyckoff, as you mentioned, is already now a player in this process. Kellogg is being sidelined. How do you explain the Oval Office meeting?
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C
That.
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A
That seemed to be. At the time, the fear was that this was the end of the US Ukraine relationship. Maybe you could unpack that for us.
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C
Yeah. So I think, you know, to really explain what happens there, you kind of have to go back in time a little bit when Senator Graham, Lindsey Graham is on a trip to Ukraine, and for some reason, they brief him that Ukraine has all these minerals. And Graham light bulb goes off in Graham's head, and he's like, give me a map. And later, he's playing golf with Trump and he's looking for some way to convince Trump to support Ukraine, and he shows him the map of all the minerals, knowing that Trump is obsessed with rare earth minerals. And basically Trump blurts out, I want half. Right? And so then Graham and Senator Blumenthal go and talk to Zelensky and basically say, you gotta, like, sell this to Trump. This is your ticket to, like, convince Trump to support Ukraine. Right. And so Zelensky then does that, and then Trump is, like, totally fixated on this. Meanwhile, can I just say, there has not been a proper assessment of minerals inside Ukraine since the end of the Soviet Union. Right. I mean, maybe there are, like, a really a great deal of minerals there, but, like, let's be honest. Honest, nobody really knows but Trump, this became his number one fixation. And it was a sign of respect. It was tied up in. In all these, like, emotional things with him where he already felt like Zelensky just, you know, wasn't giving him the proper respect. And this would be Like a test. Putin delivers Mark Fogle, right? That was he. He kissed the ring, if you will. He showed his respect to Trump by doing that. Right. Zelensky had to sign this minerals deal even though it was unclear what he would be getting for it. Right? And obviously the Ukrainians wanted to know what they would be getting for it, and nobody would tell them. And so you have this like kind of madcap diplomatic farce where all these members of Trump's team are competing to deliver the minerals deal and basically getting nowhere with the Ukrainians. You know, first it's Besinko's. Zelensky's like, he like, literally table drops the document to Zelensky. Zelinsky's like, I've never seen this before. I'm not going to sign it. Right. And, and then, and then, you know, he leaves and he's frustrated, right? And Trump gets angrier, right? And then Vance and Rubio and Kellogg are in Munich a couple days later hoping to get him to sign it. They even have a room that's been set up. It's got a desk, ornate desk. It's got the flags, it even has tape on the floor telling all the dignitaries where they're going to stand. And Zelensky basically is like, no, I'm not going to sign it. And then Kellogg does his thing. Basically. By the time we get to that Oval Office meeting, there's a lot of built up anxiety, a built up frustration on the American side. Trump feels like he's being jerked around by Zelensky, Right? And there's a prep session for Zelensky in, in the Hay Adams Hotel, and it's Senator Graham, Senator Blumenthal, several other senators. Kellogg is there and they're basically telling him how not to screw this up. And he's got this pile of pictures of Ukrainian POWs that look like they're starving to death. And they're like, don't show that to Trump. Tell him how grateful you are. Tell him like, how great. Just stress your. How grateful you are. And then, like, Zelensky goes into the meeting and he ignores all this advice. You know, they told him also, like, don't get drawn into that. Reporters are going to try to, with their questions, are going to try to, like, pitch you against Trump and Vance. You know, don't take the bait was basically one of the other messages. And he sort of takes the bait. And, you know, this is literally one of those things where, you know, some people can watch that and see a completely different thing happen. And then if you talk to The Trump guys, they see something completely different than what I personally saw. But anyways, they regardless, they see this, like, disrespect and, and, and basically, like, what happens is, is they kick the Ukrainians after that very publicized scene to, I think the Roosevelt Room, which is just across the hall really from the Oval Office. And Trump is meeting with his advisors in the, in the Oval Office, and there's still a lunch on the agenda. They're supposed to go to a working lunch. And what happens is, Waltz says, we can't go to the lunch. Initially, Trump says something like, why don't we just have the lunch and we'll work our way through it. As if he's amenable to not pulling the plug, right? Waltz says, no, no, no, you were treated badly. We should call this off. You know, Vance and Hegseth, you know, join, join Waltz in telling, in urging Trump to pull the plug. Trump agrees. They send Rubio and Waltz across the hall to go tell the Ukrainians that it ain't going to happen. And the ambassador, the Ukrainian ambassador has like, tears in her eyes as she's like, leaving. And one of the funnier parts is that then, like, Trump says something, well, we don't want this food to go to waste, so let's go eat the lunch. So they all, then all the aides then go and eat the lunch. As the Ukrainians are heading back to the. Hey, Adams or whatever, Hegseth heads back to the Pentagon and he cranks up the TV in his office and it's the replay, watching the replay of the Oval Office exchange where Vance is and Trump are dressing down Zelensky in this way. And Hegsets, some of the advisors are walking into Hegset's office and they are just ridiculing Zelensky, making fun of how he dresses. They're giddy, almost excited, as if this was a great thing that just happened. Really, they were very excited about this. And that leads us to basically what happens, which is a decision the following Monday to cut off support to Ukraine, which initially the advisors had recommended that Trump do it for just one week. So it would be very symbolic. And Trump himself said, to maximize my leverage, let's keep it open, ended. Let's not tell them when it's going to end. And the goal of that freeze was really to get the Ukrainians in the box, as we would describe in the story, meaning to accept that they're not going to be able to continue to have their long standing maximalist expectations of how this war is going to end that, they're going to have to accept the terms that Trump thinks is more realistic and his teams thinks is more realistic, which is they're not going to be able to retake all their territory, they're not going to be able to get into NATO, things like that. And so that's where that scene sort.
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B
Of takes us to fascinating details. Thank you very much. Adam, your story also offers lots of details about different factions within the Trump administration. I think you already sort of started hinting at the different role played by actors like Keith Kellogg and Marco Rubio. Pizza Hexeth, would you mind telling us a little bit more about how maybe these representatives of various institutions like the Pentagon, the State Department, how they interact and how basically their position towards Ukraine was divided over the last year.
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C
Yeah, so, so you kind of have. Let's start with Kellogg. Keith Kellogg, army former Army General. You know, he, he, he, he cut his teeth, you know, in, during the Cold War, principally in Europe and special operations community. You know, he had this suspicion that when he visited the Russian embassy in the year 2000, when he was on the army staff at the Pentagon, he felt a little prick in his arm and, and later he ended, he had to go to the hospital, Walter Reed and they almost had to amputate his arm. So he, he believed that Putin tried to kill him, you know, and he thought that Putin was a, this is an unverified family lore almost in the Kellog family, but it helps to explain his frame of mind. He very much sees Russia as the bad guy. He sees in the Ukraine context. He sees Putin as a KGB thug and he sees Zelensky as a hero. Right. Somebody who he sort of thinks is almost like Abraham Lincoln, you know, that great of a figure. And then you have somebody like a JD Vance in this administration, right. Who, you know, basically, you know, I don't really know what his real beliefs are when it comes to Putin or when it comes to Ukraine, but he's of the belief that, that the Ukraine was not, should we should not have put all these resources that Biden was pouring into, into the support Ukraine during the war. He wrote an op ed in the New York Times in which he argued that we just don't have the, the shells, the 155s, the other types of munitions that Ukraine would need. That the Russians were so big, Ukraine was relatively small compared to Russia. And so Ukraine was a sinking ship was sort of the way that they saw it. And so it wasn't worth the investment, basically. And Vance basically ceded throughout the administration, including at the Pentagon, people who saw this the same way you had Eldridge Colby who eventually comes into the Pentagon. And there were other like minded people that, that Vance helped get into the position, into key positions at the Pentagon, including as advisors to Hegseth. I think Hegseth, to be honest with you, doesn't really have like a strong belief one way or the other at the beginning of this process. I think he's, you know, just wants to basically do what Trump wants him to do. Right. But you have people that are under him who are very influential at the Pentagon who have very strong beliefs. They, they do believe Ukraine is a lost cause really. They believe that we just don't have enough shells to support Ukraine, that Russia has mobilized its economy in a way to support the war. We didn't do the same thing. We need these munitions, these few munitions that we're producing, these limited quantities to counter China against Taiwan, to, to deal with that. And so, you know, whereas the Biden administration, and again, you can criticize them for not doing enough to support Ukraine, you can criticize them for doing too much to support Ukraine. They, they, there were not enough munitions, the truth is to do all these things that the US Military had to plan around the world. But they, they, they wanted to help Ukraine and so they took the risk of dipping into those stocks of munitions in order to help Ukraine and in some cases really getting to low levels of those stocks. That made many administration officials in the Biden administration uncomfortable. In comes now the advisors to Hegseth, they're looking at the same numbers of munitions we're only producing, I can't remember 40155s a month. And they're like, we don't have enough of them to counter China. And they don't have the same interest in supporting Ukraine as the Biden guys. So they basically make the argument right at the beginning we need to stop, start withholding munitions to the Ukrainians. When Biden left office, he signed presidential drawdown authority. He approved money to buy munitions for Ukraine to give the Ukrainians like a nest egg or a cushion so that they would be able to kind of get through the coming months during the uncertainty of Trump coming to office. And right away, these advance allies who are at the Pentagon start pressing Hegseth to immediately start withholding those critical munitions from Ukraine. And so I see those as sort of the main camps. There's the ones who want to continue to support Ukraine. They think it's important, they think it's worth taking the risk when it comes to munitions. And then you have those who think it's not worth taking those risks. But I also want to like, acknowledge that the people that want to withhold the munitions, they're not wrong. We have a munitions problem. We don't have enough of them. So there is. These are legitimate issues that they're raising when it comes to munitions. These are difficult balancing acts that policymakers have to make. The Biden guys took risks to help Ukraine because they thought it was so important. The Trump guys, particularly in the Vance camp, just didn't think it was important and they weren't willing to take those risks. And really Ukraine pays the price for that.
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A
Indeed, one of the constraints that the Biden administration had but didn't want to talk about was the lack of supplies that oftentimes when we're talking about ATACMs. And why didn't they provide more ATACMs or attack them sooner? Well, there weren't that many ATACMs, and a lot of that applied to other equipment as well. The thing that surprised me really from this article when it comes to the munitions is the sort of glee that comes across at certain points within folks in the Pentagon from the Trump crowd about withholding munitions. And so part of the reaction to the Oval Office meeting is this sort of empowerment of, look how Zelensky got belittled. And that the way I saw it is perceived of this administration is that, okay, it doesn't really care about Ukraine, definitely does not care about Europe, wants to focus on Asia. And so they're going to do that. There's going to be a lot of effects on Europe, but they're not, they're going to be reluctant to legitimately hurt European security. But if you're withholding 155 shells in the opening of your piece, I think it's very clear that the Russians are bombarding Ukrainian, the Ukrainian front lines. And suddenly an order comes down, I think in the summer of last year to hold back 155. And you could say, okay, our production of 155 isn't enough. Well, it's expanded a lot because of the funding for Ukraine. Are we really using these shells for fighting China? I mean, Taiwan could use them, yes. But there's an argument that like 155 give as many to Ukraine as possible. But maybe you could talk about the withholding of, of the equipment. What was sort of the key motivators? Because some of this does not purely seem about just stockpiles, but about sending a message to The Ukrainians, that we're not going to back you anymore. You're kind of on your own. And you also talk about how the Ukrainians constantly are coming to the administration saying, just be clear with us, what is the plan here? What are you trying to do? We just need to know, know what we're going to have and what we're not going to have. In this sort of turning on, turning off is deeply problematic for our war planning. Maybe you could unpack that a bit.
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C
Yeah, so, so I think one needs to look, it's actually, they start doing this before. So basically on, on March 11, this is. There's a key meeting that the Ukrainians have in Jeddah where, you know, after which Trump decides to turn back on aid, right? This is that, this is like, you know, less than two weeks after that Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, after which he imposes the aid freeze. So what happens is, is Trump says to, you know, Hegseth is told, turn it back on, right? Turn everything back on. But Hegseth is advised by his advisors that, you know, okay, turn everything back on. But we, there's one exception. The One exception was US produced 155 artillery shells. So that's, that's a decision that's taken in March. And so those shells are beginning. They're basically going into this storage facility in Germany from the far west of Germany, near the French border, and it's basically just piling up in these warehouses, right? These shells that have been earmarked for Ukraine, now, they're not being used for anything, right? They're just sitting there. So that on some spreadsheet somewhere at the Pentagon, it has us accumulating these shells. That's basically what's going on with those shells, right? And General Cavoli, who is the head of European Command at the time, he, he's, he doesn't need those shells, right? He, he wants to support Ukraine. He'd been an architect of the partnership after the 2022 large scale invasion. And a lot of those, I mean, if you've talked to these folks at European Command, these military officers, they love Ukraine. I mean, if you see the cubicles, they're decorated with Ukrainian flags. Some of these guys have like tattoos, right? Pro Ukrainian tattoos on their arms. They wear the hats, you know, they wear the patches. They really, they really went in for Ukraine, right? And here they are now suddenly sitting on shells that they're not using that they know the Ukrainians desperately need in the east to try to hold Pokrosk, which was a town that the Russians were pouring all these resources to taking. So this is like killing them inside. You know, these officers knowing that the thing that they really believe in that, that the current policy is basically trying to undercut that. Right. And the goal is to, to remind the Ukrainians they can't count on us anymore. I think, I think really the message was to the Europeans, even more than the Ukrainians, to tell the Ukrainian, the Europeans, there's a, there was a, a cover to a magazine, national lampoon in like 1973. And it had like a beautiful cute dog on the COVID And then there's a gun pointed to the head of the dog and the, the, what it says underneath is like, if you don't buy the magazine, we're going to shoot the dog. And Ukraine is kind of like the dog, right? And we're basically saying to the Europeans, you love the dog. You say you love Ukraine. It's important to you. Well, either you put up or shut up. Right. Because we are walking. So they really believed that by doing this they were going to force the Europeans to step up. That if they didn't do it, if they didn't do the cold turkey thing, that they wouldn't do it. They would just talk and talk and talk, but wouldn't actually do it. And you know, in their defense, a little bit, maybe they're not wrong about that. Right. And I think that it has had the effect, the shock of this or the early posture had the effect of actually getting the Europeans to step up in a way that they hadn't previously. Right. And we may see the benefits of that this coming this year with production of these shells being increasing in Europe and in Ukraine. Right. That said, there was a meanness to it, there was a callousness to it, there was a lack of empathy, a lack of sympathy. And to me, that was really brought home by that meeting between Hegseth and Umarov, who is the Defense Minister of Ukraine at the time. Hegseth, the Defense Secretary goes to Brussels, to NATO headquarters and the Ukrainians want to have a private meeting, a sit down meeting, a proper meeting. And they're sending message after message saying, you know, please, we just want a private meeting. And Hexef is rejecting these overtures for this meeting and instead they sort of have a standing meeting, a brief standing meeting in, in an anteroom, in, in the NATO headquarters. And Umarov really to his credit, he says to Hegseth, I, I realize that your politics is changing. I realize that your strategic objectives may be changing. That, you know, compared to the Biden administration. Right. That we, we may not be as important to you as we were to the previous guys. Right. All I, all I need from you is honesty. Like, can you please be honest with me? Biden, when he left, approved all of these packages of arms and paid for them. These are 155s, these are patriot interceptors, these are high Mars rockets, you name it, right. Tank shell, anti tank, all these systems, they're all like supposed to arrive. And Umarov says to him, listen, I've got frontline units that are waiting for those systems to arrive. If those munitions don't arrive today, they're going to die tomorrow. So just be honest with me. Please be honest with me. He kept on saying, just be honest with me. And Hegseth, for reasons I don't really understand, but I have my suspicions that he was afraid of maybe getting ahead of. At that exact moment you had Scott Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, was in Kiev trying to get Zelensky to sign the minerals deal. And so maybe he didn't want to step on that. You had a phone call that Trump was having that same day with Putin, the first phone call. Maybe he didn't want to step on that. Anyways, for whatever reason, Hegseth declined to, you know, kind of address these questions as part of the fact checking for this project, for the story. He just basically doesn't answer anything to Umarov's question. He doesn't say, you can count. We're going to deliver the old. We're going to deliver the stuff that Biden promised. He doesn't say, we're not going to deliver it. He just nods and it's again, kind of callous, showing a lack of empathy. These people are really suffering. Lots of people are dying. They're counting on us. Are we going to do it or not? He just wouldn't say. And to me, that was along with that scene after the Oval Office, that meeting in Hegseth's office, watching the replay of the Oval Office clash with Zelensky, that meeting with Umarov like says the same thing to me. It just, you know, the emp empathy is just not there. Right. This is, there's almost like a gleefulness in, like, in like being tough and performing. Really? Yeah. I mean, if I were the Ukrainians, my takeaway would be like, I can't count on these guys. They're not reliable partners. I need to come up with plan B. And maybe that was not a bad thing to do, that message. Right. Because they had to come up with a plan B. And they did, to the Ukrainian great credit, with all this uncertainty over the shells and all the rest, and maybe Russian incompetence on top of that, they were able to largely slow the Russians down. And despite all this chaos and constant switching of the American position during this.
- [38:13]
A
Period, I want to sort of follow up because what ends up happening is sort of this bizarre, I think only in the Trump administration where Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host, sort of becomes a key interlocutor of getting aid turned back on. And so there is this sort of pro Ukrainian element within the administration. And you know, your point about the whiplash that people must feel inside the career officials, Cavoli and others, they are also in the administration as career folks trying to sort of push for support for Ukraine to be turned back on. And it seems like the CIA has continued the intelligence sharing and cooperation that is largely sort of under the radar, but is still very critically important. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that other aspect of pushing back against the kind of restrainer prioritizers in the Pentagon wanting to kind of withhold, withhold aid. So aid gets turned back on. Maybe you could explain how, how, how the Ukrainians are then approaching this.
- [39:14]
C
Yeah. So when, so there's an in there as this kind of roller coaster is going on, the Ukrainians, you know, are reaching out to any ally that they can. Now they reach out to Cavoli. And Cavoli is completely the general in charge of European Command, who, who is, you know, the principal advisor on these matters or should be to Hegseth, and can't talk to him because Hegseth hates him. Right. And so there's no communication between Hegseth and Cavoli except for one meeting and one phone call, right. During. In one of which Hegseth threatens to, you know, basically says, like, don't talk to anybody anymore, like, dresses him down. And so, so basically the, the. And Kellogg, as you already mentioned, was already sidelined. Was already being sidelined. So all the voices in the administration, the normal kind of overt voices, if you will, on the overt side of the ledger, are all sidelined, marginalized, you know, silenced. They have no voice in this process now. And so they don't really have a voice. But then the Ukrainians are resourceful. They have contacts. Andre Yermak, who at the time was the top advisor to Zelensky, he met all. He's a smart guy, and he met some of these folks at Fox News and knew that Trump really focused on Fox News. And so he got to know Brian Kilmeade, a Fox commentator. He got to, you know, they got to know the importance of somebody like Jack Keane, another for a former general who's a contributor to Fox and know it, you know, figured they figured out that he had, like, this tie to Trump. And so when Cavoli and Kellogg basically had very limited influence, they would tickle this telephone tree that included a lot of these Fox guys who still had these good relationships with Trump. And they would call him at night when he was in his residence. You know, this is between 6 o' clock at night and 2 o' clock in the morning. And Trump's phone would ring, and these guys would call him and say, hey, why did Hegseth do this? Or, you know, what's with those 155s? You. We disagree with the information you're getting and that Hecset's getting about the shortages. We have enough 155 to do what we need to do to deter China and also to help Ukraine hold Pokrovsk. Right. And so they would be making the case, and Trump often would listen to the last person he talked to, and after that, would tell Hecseth or tell his advisors at the White House to call Hecseth and tell him to change policy. And Hegseth would immediately do that. I mean, Hegseth would do whatever Trump was telling him to do. He's not resisting what Trump is telling him to do. And so that was part of what was going on. Another part that was going on was at the CIA, which is really fascinating. Now, the CIA has a partnership that goes back many years, very intense partnership with the military intelligence in Ukraine and with the sbu, the domestic intel service. And those relationships took off in 2014. They really got much bigger in 2015, 2016, during Trump's first term in office, those relationships really expanded rapidly. I have no idea of Trump, how aware Trump was of all that when he was in his first term. But when, you know, when. When Pompeo was the CIA director and Gina Haspel was the CIA director, those relationships really blossomed. They expanded. They started under Obama, but they grow under Trump. And under Biden, those relationships also grew. Now, these relationships were valuable to the CIA in part because in places like Russia, the CIA really struggled to recruit Russian sources. In fact, anytime a CIA guy left the embassy or, you know, they'd have an FSB tail on them. Right? It was very hard to do these recruitments. But the Ukrainians inside of Russia, they're like Russians, basically. Right? And there was a great line in the first piece I did in the series where a Ukrainian intel chief explains that for. For a Russian to give information to the CIA, that's treason, but to give it to a Ukrainian who he went to college with or the academy with or whatever, that's what's just a conversation between friends. Right? And so the CIA realized it had a great thing with the Ukrainians. They. They could do stuff the CIA struggled to do, especially in the realm of human. Human source development. And so this was a valuable relationship for the CIA. And you had had a series of CIA directors that all understood this, and it was. They appreciated it. Right. And I think even Trump in his first term also appreciated it. Fast forward now to the second term. And, you know, Hegseth was doing his thing, withholding all these munitions, creating a climate of fear at the Pentagon. And people were afraid to say Ukraine in meetings because they thought they'd be fired. Right. It was like one. One official compared it to, like, Pol Pot. You know, it was. It was almost like this McCarthyistic. You know, nobody was allowed to say anything that was pro Ukraine because it was seen as sort of getting ahead of Trump, getting ahead of Hegsets. And so they were afraid to say anything positive. Well, at the agency, it was different. You know, the people that worked with the Ukrainians had proven over and over again the value of this partnership. And Radcliffe, the CIA director, he was a defender of these. You know, where Hegseth, you know, saw a report from the defense attache saying that they had 84 military officers inside of Ukraine of a cap of 133. Hegseth circles 84 and says no more and cuts our military presence in Ukraine by 35%. Meanwhile, the CIA has officers running around Ukraine, you know, meeting with commanders, in some cases not too far from the front lines, both gathering intelligence and also giving them advice, sharing intel with them. Right. Ratcliffe doesn't gut the presence it's maintained. And the oversight committees to the CIA, they don't cut the budget for supporting CIA programs inside of Ukraine. In fact, they increased it in 2025. Again, I don't want to give Trump or Ratcliffe credit for that. They weren't in office. This was something that was done by the intel committees and the. And the appropriations committees in order to support those programs. So the CIA stuff was continuing. And there was an appreciation that the Vance camp, you know, munitions were scarce resource. The US Provided munitions. But there was another kind of munition that the Ukrainians built Domestically, these were these long range drones. The CIA and the Biden administration spent a lot of resources helping the Ukrainians build up this capability. These drones, like in early days in 2022 were not that great, but over time they got pretty great. I mean, great is maybe too strong of a word, but they got better and better, right? And, but here was. The Ukrainians had a problem with this. They had great human source networks inside of Russia that were, as we saw with spider's web and different operations that they conduct. They have a wonderful human source network. What they don't have is satellites in space, right. Which we have, and having access to our intel that tells them, where are the Russian air defenses? Where are the electronic warfare jammers? You know, our satellites can pick up all that stuff, right. And we can tell the Ukrainians, okay, initially we do this inside of Rush, inside of Ukraine, in the occupied areas of Ukraine. Eventually we, we, the CIA can expand it in 2022 to Crimea. Right. And that's like the first baby step in this direction. Later, at the end of the very end, tail end of the Biden administration, really September 2024, Biden authorizes the CIA to begin to help them enable strikes in Russia using our intelligence, but using their weapon system. Right. And the first target was, was a ammunition depot, huge Russian ammunition depot in an area called Toropets. And what the Americans do is they tell them, you're going to have to, this is how many drones you're going to need for this operation. You're going to need to have, I'm making this number up, 300 decoy drones. And you're going to need to have 30 real drones. You need the 300 decoys to basically get shot down on the way in order to clear a path through all these air defenses for the 30 real ones. And they have to do these long, incredibly long paths to dodge all these air defenses. They're like flying like crazy distances off. If the actual journey is only 400 kilometers, they're traveling for 1400 kilometers to avoid being detected, to avoid the radar, to avoid the interceptors and all these things that could shoot them down. And the CIA enables this first one in September 2024 on Tora Pets, and it's a success. And you know, the, it's such a huge, mammoth, huge explosion. Right. And that was sort of the. Okay, that really worked. Right. And this is where they're not expending our precious munitions like the atacms. They're using their own munitions and they're. And they're succeeding Biden gives permission to expand that before he leaves office to include the defense industrial base in Russia. So this would include these heavily defended factories that, that manufacture what's known as energetics, which is the stuff that goes into making explosives that go on to cruise missiles, into Shahid drones, into ballistic missiles. But those, those facilities are very heavily defended. Like the Russians know how strategically important they are, and so they put their S3 hundreds, S4 hundreds. They really defend them very well with electronic warfare capabilities. And the Russians have gotten very good at defense. They've gotten really good at defense. Right. Over the, over the course of this conflict, they've really become incredibly skilled at it. But then you have all these oil refineries all over the country, but there's a lot of them concentrated actually close to NATO, NATO countries in kind of the northwest of Russia. And initially during the Biden administration, the very end in January, if you remember January 2025, there's a flurry of attacks on these refineries in the news. Right? We are assisting with that. It's both the military and the CIA is assisting by providing them the intel. The issue was, is, as you probably know, the Ukrainian intelligence services, they're like herding cats. They all have their own agenda, they all working off their own target lists. You know, they're all competing with each other. And so these strikes were not really effective. They were hitting these giant, you know, containers that contain the fuel as it was being refined or pumped out of the ground. They would be put into these containers, these giant containers. And when the, when the drones would hit them, it would make this giant amazing explosion. But it would take only like a, you know, a couple days for the Russians to like take that pipe and put it into another container. It really didn't affect anything. Right? And what happens is, is the, the, the CIA guys, they know in the, in the era of J.D. vance being concerned about munitions, there's no way that they're going to convince the Trump administration to give more ATACMs, long range munitions, you know, Tomahawks, you know, whatever, to the Ukrainians. Our own stocks are too low and it's very escalatory and they would see it as very escalatory. So what they, what they did was they had a meeting in June and they, the CIA and the military guys, and they basically were like, okay, Trump doesn't want to impose sanctions. He's reluctant to impose sanctions on the energy sector, tighten the sanctions on the energy sector in, in Russia. And he's kind of thinks that if he pulls the trigger on that, Putin's going to walk from the negotiations. So what they do is they give. They come up with a plan to kind of supercharge the Ukrainian campaign against oil refineries. They say, okay, cats, now we're all going to focus on, you know, just the oil refineries. And in fact, we're just going to focus on these dozen oil refineries because they're the. The most important ones. And instead of hitting those giant tanks, instead, they realized that there were these fields that had these pipes, these couplers that if you hit the couplers, they were joining these pipes together. They're incredibly difficult to replace. And they would take the refineries down for weeks or months at a time. And so they start to do this. Now, again, the authorities predate Trump. He doesn't deserve credit for this, right? This is a Biden decision, belatedly taken at the very end. Now, Radcliffe has, like, a pretty frequent tee time with Trump. They're on the golf course relatively frequently on Sundays. And this is an opportunity for Radcliffe to sort of talk to Trump about some of the stuff they're doing, explain stuff. And in one. In one meeting that Ratcliffe has with Trump, he sort of touts the effect of this campaign, you know, and Trump expresses support. Again, he didn't greenlight this thing. It was already greenlit before he came in. And people like Waltz and Ratcliffe and, you know, all the people on the National Security Council knew that the CIA and the military were doing this even before they took office, and they allowed it to sort of happen under the waterline. And now in the second half of the Trump, second half of the year of 2025, this program gets bigger, more effective. And Trump is seeing the advantage of this partnership that we have between the CIA and its counterparts. You know, Trump doesn't have to impose those sanctions. I mean, he does eventually, but there's pressure that's being applied. It's not pressure that is public. It's pressure that Putin probably understands. Right? And as we get closer to kind of the fall time frame, these strikes are really beginning to kind of bleed the Russian economy by 1. According to one intel estimate, the strikes on these oil refineries was costing the Russian economy $75 million a day. That's $750 million in 10 days. This is not an insignificant cost. And eventually, Trump does impose the additional sanctions on Russia in October of this year anyways. So inside the administration, Trump is full of contradictions, right? He says one thing, one day, he does something else. The next day. But behind the scenes, pressure is also being applied that is not as well understood because it's being done through the CIA.
- [55:18]
B
Fascinating account. Thank you very much, Adam. And that is when it comes to the behind the scene now on the front line, in front of us over the last, the second half of the year, we have seen a lot of efforts, attempted effort to negotiate a peace deal. So perhaps you can provide some general assessment of how successful this effort has been to date, to what extent all the pressure applied to Ukraine delivered. And most importantly, we haven't really discussed the Russian side of the story, right, with the Russia, there was the Alaska summit and other efforts to both pressure and court Putin. To what extent do you think is delivered? And ultimately have we gotten closer to some sort of peace deal by now as a result of all this repeated, attempted and very intense effort by the administration?
- [56:08]
C
So I mean, to, to, to, to give the administration a little bit of credit here, they have been incredibly, you know, tireless, honestly, on this front. You know, I mean, it has been maybe shambolic, but it's, but you gotta, I mean, it's exhausting, right? So I, I, I have to give them credit for stamina. How about that? And not, not having necessarily strategic, you know, intent here. But all right, so let's, in the initial period, they, they very, very quickly get the Ukrainians to agree to drop some of their kind of long stated demands. So Zelensky, you know, in a private meeting in Jeddah in, in March, March 2025, the Ukrainians agree, okay, we're willing to do a ceasefire, we're willing to stop fighting along the current line of contact, right? In the past, as you know, Zelensky would tell his commander in chief, the commander in chief of his armed forces, your mission is to retake all the territory that's been lost, right? In the 2023 counteroffensive. He tells Zaluzhny, your mission is to retake all, including Crimea, right? All of Eastern Ukraine, all the territory that Russia claims, as well as Crimea. And obviously Zaluzhny did not succeed and Syrsky did not succeed in doing that. So very quickly they get the Ukrainians to agree to basically accept the line of contact where this war would stop, at least for the time being, right? And now the issue is, okay, what do we do on the Russian side right now? In the very first meeting that they had with the Russians, the Russian side, Lavrov and Ushakov made it very clear to Trump's team that Putin had his maximalist demands and he wasn't going to move off of those maximalist demands. Whenever they would ask them, well, what does Putin want? What does he need in order to end the war? They would refer to his June 2024 speech to the Ministry of Foreign affairs, which basically says that all of Luhansk Oblast, all of Donetsk Oblast, all of Kherson Oblast, all of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, plus Crimea, have to be in Russian hands for this to end. And then there are all these other demands that are in that speech. And so they basically say that at the beginning. And I really think the first half of the year was basically spent painfully realizing Trump, painfully realizing that he. He thought that he had all this wasta. All this influence with Putin. But in the end, he really didn't. Right? Putin had his demands, and it took the first half of the year for him to realize that he. He's not going to move on his demands. And it was like a war within the war. There was a war within the war by the both sides to basically convince Trump that Putin wanted to convince Trump that Russia was inevitable, that their victory was inevitable, that all these territories that he says he needs are going to be given to Russia. He's going to take it militarily. And so, and frankly, the Russians are very forthright with the Trump team on this. They literally say to them, we have the munitions, we have the soldiers. We can take it. We're going to take it. So you're asking us to stop the war on the line of contact, right? That's what Trump is trying to get. And Trump is like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. We are going to take it by force. Either you force the Ukrainians to give it up, or we're going to take it by force. And so Putin in the first half of the year, is trying to convince Trump, hey, I'm not moving off of my demands. I'm going to take Pokrovsk, I'm going to take Donetsk and prove to Trump that he has to force Zelensky to give up these territories one way or the other, or he's just going to fight and pay the price in terms of lost soldiers, in terms of damage to his economy, in terms of tension in the relationship with Trump. He's willing to pay those prices, that price, because he's going to get all this territory. He's going to take it. And Trump, his. His default position is that's true. Trump sees Russia from a 1980s lens, kind of like Red dawn, you know, Russia from Red Dawn. Where, you know, it's this giant country. It defeated Hitler, it defeated Napoleon. You know, it cannot be defeated. It's huge. Ukraine is relatively small, comparatively, has no chance. And so when Trump sees the Victory Day parade in May in Moscow, he turns to his aides and he says, you know, they look invincible. Right? And the kind of irony of that is, like, the military people who watched that parade were, like, not impressed. It was, like, not as good as, like, the previous parades. But Trump, who doesn't know the details, you know, he's seeing this kind of. He's like, oh, my God, Russia is so powerful. It has all these nukes, it has all these weapons, it has all these people. How can. How can they possibly, you know, not be successful? And then the Ukrainians are fighting their own war to convince Trump that that's not true. And by the way, the CIA and the military, you know, DIA and all these military agencies, I mean, they don't think that Zelensky can win the war and retake all these territories, but they also don't think that you. That Russia can. Right? They. They see it as a stalemate with Russia having, like, growing momentum, but, like, at a painfully slow pace. Right. And they do believe that with enough support to Ukraine, Ukraine can stop the Russian advance and reverse it if we give them the munitions and the. And the intelligence support now. But Trump believes it's impossible. It's hopeless for Ukraine. And when Ukraine carries out Spider's Web, this really innovative operation deep inside Russia to take out some of their strategic bombers, Russian strategic bombers. Yermak, the advisor to Zelensky, he comes to the White House the next day, and his message is, we're not losing. We're winning. We're winning. Right? And so, again, like, they're trying to. And Trump, like, has these moments when he sort of believes this, or maybe he doesn't believe it, but maybe he's, like, sort of. He's sort of convinced, well, maybe the Russians are not 10ft tall. Maybe they do suck. Right? Maybe they are incompetent. But he only believes it for, like, a fleeting second until, you know, Orban or Putin says something to him on a call, and then he's back to his default position. Anyways, bottom line is, is that, you know, in the second half of the year after, you know, basically Putin says, we're going to take Pkrus. And he doesn't really take PKRUs. Right. It's clear he's not advancing very quickly. Right. The intelligence. The intelligence was right, you know, you know, you know, Trump and Vance and his. Everybody was underestimating the resilience of the Ukrainians. They were overestimating the strength and the competence of the Russians. And. And by the time we're in, like, the middle of the year, Trump is desperate to get these talks going again. And, you know, Putin has not moved off of his demands from the. From the June 2024 speech that he gave to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And so they. He sends Witkoff to go see in early August to go see Putin. And in that meeting, Putin moves a bit and he says, you know, listen, you know, I'm not going to agree to the ceasefire thing that you want that Ukraine has already agreed to. But what I'll agree to is. Is I'll agree to. I'll agree to stop. Stop the war, allegedly, if allegedly, you give me all of Donetsk. I already have all of Luhansk and I already have all of Crimea. Now, let's think about this for a second. Kherson Oblast, the part that he needs to get is on the other side of the Dnipro river in order for Russia to cross that river and capture the rest of that oblast. It would be an enormous undertaking, hugely costly for the Russians. That's not. That's not a realistic objective. Capturing the rest of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, again, really, really hard. Look what happened during the 2023 counter offensive. They're basically stuck in Robotna, this little. This little, like, village. The Russians can't get out. They're locked there. And the one place where they have the ability to move and where they've invested so much is in Donetsk. And so, you know, for the Trump guys, this was seen as like, a big concession on Putin's part. But the reality is, is that it really wasn't a big concession. And who knows if they really mean it or not, right? But anyways, this was seized upon as a breakthrough. If we can just get Zelensky to give up the remainder of Donetsk, then this whole thing will end. And basically, the preceding months until today have been basically spent on this one objective, trying to convince Zelensky that he needs to give up the remainder of Donetsk and to sweeten the pot for him were, you know, and again, to Trump's credit, he is offering security guarantees, which, by the way, he was not prepared to offer earlier in the year and in fact, had pressured Zelensky to stop even asking him for. Right. And so, again, to Trump's credit, he is. He's given some ground on security guarantees to try to Sweeten the pot for Zelensky. And they're asking Zelensky to give up this slice of land between the administrative line in Donetsk and the line of contact. And Zelensky, again, extremely understandably, doesn't want to do it. In 2014, when basically Russia sees Crimea, the Obama administration told the Ukrainians, don't fight right, for Crimea. And one or two Ukrainians died in. Soldiers died in. In Crimea during that. And the Ukrainians to this day are so bitter about that being told by Obama not to fight, and they lost Crimea. Now, whether they could have taken it back, I don't know. Maybe it would have been the bloodbath that the bi. That the Obama folks feared. But they felt like Obama gave them bad advice. They listened to that advice. They never got Crimea back. Biden, Obama didn't get it back. Trump didn't get it back. Biden didn't get back. Now, in the decade that passed, the Ukrainians have lost hundreds of thousands of people, both dead and injured, defending that slice of land in Donetsk. They. And now here was Trump telling them, give it up. Not only give up territory that Russia had conquered, but give up territory that they haven't conquered. And that would probably take them between 20 and 30 months to conquer after having lost hundreds of thousands of people to give, basically to give up what they've spent a decade fighting for. Right. In addition to all these dead people. It's just such a monumental request. And the gra. I don't think the Trump people really under. I think they're beginning to understand the gravity of what they're asking. Trump has tweeted repeatedly that Obama was weak for letting Russia take Crimea. And again, Ukraine lost one or two soldiers. Now Trump is saying to Zelensky, give up so much more that. And you've lost hundreds of thousands of people. Who. Who's looking. Who's gonna. What are future politicians, you know, future Donald Trump's gonna say about what Trump is doing here.
- [69:23]
A
It's almost as if, you know, this, that request or the demand from. From Putin is deliberate. To have the Ukrainians say no and then be able to blame the Ukrainians for walking away. Maybe one final question is if to sort of look ahead, because the piece is really outstanding, looking at sort of where we've gone, how things have evolved over the last year. And I want to ask you to sort of speculate about where things are going now. Let's just assume these are talks to nowhere. And one of the big fears that everyone has. It feels like there's a Little bit of a dance going on between the Ukrainians and the Russians to blame the other for the talks not going anywhere. Let's assume the talks don't go anywhere. How do you think Trump is going to react to the failure of a peace process? Because this, I think, is one of the big kind of questions that is causing Europeans to have endless meetings of this coalition of the willing that is all based on a premise that the Russians are going to agree to European troops on the ground or something. Something like that. And so, I guess, where do you see the Trump administration then going and approaching Ukraine? Assuming that these talks don't really result in anything, do you think they're going to wash their hands of the war, try to engage Russia on the economic deals? How do you see this progressing into 2026?
- [70:47]
C
Yeah. So, yeah, obviously I struggle enough trying to piece together what happened in the past to try to figure out what's going to happen in the future. Mostly try to leave to others. But, you know, honestly, I don't know. I mean, you know, in many ways, what this has been, what it is, is sort of a race to the bottom where, you know, what's going to last longer. The Russian economy and its ability to continue to perpetuate the war by, you know, selling enough oil to fund all of these munitions that they're building and paying all these soldiers that they're hiring to go and fight, or the Ukrainian ability to maintain the lines or at least slow the Russian advance. You know, who's going to run out of. Are the. Are the Russians going to run out of money before the Ukrainians run out of soldiers and munitions, or is it going to be the other way around? I think the verdict is out. We don't know what's going to happen. I think that Trump will be pissed at Putin. And part of the whole strategy of these meetings is to align Ukraine and Europe with Trump, to try to, in part, show, like, there is an agreement on where they are so that when, if Putin, when and if. If Putin decides to say, you know, screw this, you know, we're going to win it on the battlefield, that Trump will again. This is part of the war within the war, right? To influence Trump. And, you know, I do think that, you know, Trump will feel jilted. He will feel like he, like Putin, you know, misled him about his willingness to end the war, because that's really been sort of the underlying issue. It's Trump's instinct versus the actual intelligence. Right? And his instinct tells him, you know, he's Got this magic, you know, relationship with Putin that's somehow going to persuade him to do this. But the intelligence has been remarkably consistent really in saying that Putin has no interest in doing this. And so is Trump going to be providing Ukraine with ATACMs and stuff and, and 155 and Tomahawks and all the rest? I don't know. Is he gonna, you know, there are some things to be a little bit hopeful about. Ukraine has completely failed to address its manpower issues. Like that is like one of the things I don't really get. You know, honestly. I mean, I get it. You know, it's tough to have to tell people that they have to go and fight and you know, they, ingenious in the way they've employed their drones to try to, you know, to try to fill in the gaps in the manpower issues. But eventually is that going to be enough? And, and so, you know, and, and to, again, to the credit of the Ukrainians for developing capabilities to replace or you know, to. They're not as effective as American capabilities in many ways in terms of long range capabilities in particular, but they're getting better and better every day. Right. And I think a lot with our help as well to try to do that. So maybe we get to a place next year where either Putin accepts this in order to basically get some of this economic relief. Since I think Putin is, I don't know, people debate how much real intelligence and good information he receives from his own generals. But I think the evidence is clear and should be clear to him that when his generals launched their campaign on Pokrosk in July of 2024, it's now a year and a half and they have, I mean, Maybe they're taking PKRUs as we speak, but they should. If, if, if it was the US military that did this, the generals would all be court martialed and they would be out of a job and they would have been replaced by now. And I mean, I think Putin's got to realize how pathetic. I mean, they've gone from Adivka in the, in the winter of 2024 to, I mean, if you look at a map between Pokrovsky and Adifka, I mean, it's like, it's like an hour and a half drive. You know, they've really accomplished so little, so remarkably little in that period of time. Given the weakness on the, given the lack of consistent support that we've been providing Ukraine, it's really remarkable. So I, I, so I think, you know, never, never doubt the resourcefulness of the Ukrainians and their ability to some and, and the incompetence of the Russians. I mean they're, they, they are not 10ft tall. They're also not 12 inches tall. They're somewhere in between. And they also have proven themselves to be incredibly resourceful. But you know, maybe what's going to happen next this, this year is. Yeah, I mean I think it's basically the status quo. I don't think necessarily that Trump is going to increase our support in terms of munitions because there is a genuine crisis on munitions. He's not wrong about that. Hickseth is not wrong about that. Vance is not wrong about that. We're sort of maybe coming out of the bathtub if you will, where the munitions are growing because our production lines have increased. At the same time some of the German manufacturing companies are also increasing their ability to produce some of these things including 155 in with production lines inside of Ukraine, inside of Lithuania, other countries. So maybe this year if Ukraine can hold out through the spring right now in a very dangerous period because of the weather where drones are really, really important but it's really hard to fly them because of the over, because of the cloud cover and the, you know, so if the Ukrainians can come emerge from the spring into the spring without having taken huge losses and I see no evidence that they are in Pokrovskin, further into Donetsk, maybe in the spring things will stabilize again and some of these production lines will help stabilize, you know, Ukrainian capabilities in certain areas and some of their long range capabilities in the drone area they have, they're developing cruise missiles that are, you know, not as obviously not as capable as Tomahawks. But you know, they're getting better and better by the day. And so you know, maybe, maybe they'll be able to continue to slow the Russian advance and with the help of the CIA and with the help of the US military in particularly in the provision of intelligence will be able to help them slow this down and then Russian economy will pay the price this coming year. The last assessment that I was briefed on on the Russian economy was basically in September timeframe that they had enough money to fund the current pace tempo of operations for between 12 and 18 months, potentially less if the sanctions were brought into play. The sanctions were brought into play in October. So we're looking, the assessment was 8 to 12 months if the sanctions were really biting. So you know, this, we're, we're sort of reaching the high water mark for the Russian side in 2026 and so maybe there's a, you know, I'm not, I'm not as pessimistic as some about what 2026 could hold for the Ukrainians. But, but I don't know what's going to happen. And as we see, Trump can change his position wildly over the course of hours, if not minutes. And so we'll have to see. I'm working on the next piece about what's going on now, so we'll see what happens.
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A
It definitely creates good drama for journalists and also for podcasters and for think Tankers. So Adam, I think that's a great place to leave it. I want to thank you so much for the tour de force and the excellent piece. It's been great having you on Russian Roulette. And to all our listeners, if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to our show and give us a five star rating. It really helps people find the podcast. Additionally, don't forget to subscribe and check out CSIS's channel on YouTube and be sure to check out our sister podcast, the Euro File, wherever you get your podcasts. And we will see you next time on Russian Roulette.
- [79:32]
C
Foreign.
- [79:36]
B
You've been listening to Russian Roulette. We hope you enjoyed this episode and tune in again soon.
- [79:42]
A
Russian Roulette releases new episodes every two weeks on Thursdays and is available wherever you get your podcasts. So please subscribe and share our episodes.
- [79:50]
B
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