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Foreign.
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Welcome to Talking feds. One on one deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives. I'm your host, Harry Littman. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have become far longer and far more costly than the men who began them intended. In Ukraine, a new campaign of drone attacks on Russian targets is offset by an ever more brutal Russian bombardment of Kyiv. And in Iran, we're told a ceasefire could be just hours away, though we've learned not to hold our breath for that. Indeed, it's not even clear what a successful endgame would look like for the United States in a war whose purposes have been obscure from the start. To better understand what's happening in the war zones and the diplomatic channels, we welcome back one of the most trenchant observers of the international scene, Anne Applebaum. Anne Applebaum is a journalist and staff writer at the Atlantic where she writes about struggles between democracy and and authoritarianism around the world. She's the author of several books, including the Pulitzer Prize winning Gulag A History. Her most recent is in the New York Times bestseller Autocracy Inc. The Dictators who Want to Run the World. And she has a terrific substack. Open Letters from Ann Applebaum. Welcome back to Talking Feds. ANN Applebaum, thanks for having me. We're talking on Wednesday and during a week of potentially dramatic developments in both Ukraine and Iran. But we've heard that before. I want to start with the Russia Ukraine war. Russia launched a blistering pre dawn attack this morning on Kyiv, killed at least 17 people, wounded many more. It's particularly hard, I think, for us to assess the these bloody episodes in the overall sweep of the war. Was this an especially rough night among many in Ukraine's capital, or was it something even more significant and a potential turning point?
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I don't think it's a potential turning point exactly, but it does show us something important about how the war is changing. The Russians are unable to move forward on the front line. The Ukrainians have successfully blocked them. Ukraine can also now successfully hit both in sort of mid range and long range drones. They can hit Russian bases and they can also hit objects deeper inside Russia like refineries. The one thing that the Russians are still able to do that the Ukrainians cannot block is use ballistic missiles and cruise missiles on their cities. This is something that earlier on in the war the Ukrainians could do something about. They had Patriot missiles. They had ammunition rather for their Patriot batteries. Now they don't. We've run out in the United States, or rather the United States is not giving them any more to Ukraine, despite multiple promises. And as I understand it, some that were meant to have been transferred haven't been sent. So the Russians now know that this is a vulnerability. The Ukrainians can hit drones, they can block any kind of drone barrage, but they cannot block ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles being too fast for drones. And so here's where we are. We're at a point where the Russians are going to begin trying to destroy as much as they can of the city of Kyiv, knowing that the Ukrainians can't block it. And this is now a real test for the United States, but also for Europe as to whether people can find enough ammunition to help them.
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B
Yeah, about 400 Ukrainian civilians died last month in these air attacks, the highest figures since the early days of the invasion. But zeroing back in on Kyiv. My impression, anyway, had been that life in Kyiv had remained relatively normal, and it was sort of a point of pride of the Ukrainian people. The cafes and nightlife of a big European city. Is that no longer the case? Is Kyiv now basically a war zone in a way? It hasn't been.
- [04:36]
A
It's hard for me to say. I was last there about two months ago, and I actually still found Kyiv fairly normal. And there had been a few of these big attacks, but restaurants were still open, coffee shops were open, hotels were running, people were in the street. That was at the. Really the beginning of the summer. I. I don't see that the capital will stop. It's still a very large city. It's a city of more than 2 million people. It was 3 million before the war. I'm not sure what the exact population is now, but it's a large city, and even 20 missile strikes don't destroy it. And so there's a long way to go before Kyiv is dysfunctional. I think more the question is, will the drone factories be able to go on operating? Will electricity and water be able to continue operating? Ukrainians have pretty successfully decentralized a lot of these things, and they are prepared for these kinds of attacks, so maybe it won't be so bad. And there's also, at some point, there's a limit to how many missiles the Russians have and are willing to use, but I don't think it's. As I said, it's a different phase of the war rather than a turning point.
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B
Got it. And doubling back to your mention of Trump and the promised undelivered materiel and what Europe could do, what concrete ask could Zelenskyy proffer that is within the realm of practicality.
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So Zelenskyy has already asked, he's asked many times for Patriot ammunition. He's asked for the right to manufacture Patriot ammunition in Ukraine. This, of course, is something that would be a long term prospect anyway. Trump seemed to agree to it, then seemed to change his mind. He seemed to agree to send some ammunition and then change his mind. It's hard for me to know why he goes back and forth.
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B
Maybe he has one person to know,
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I think, really, I mean, it's the same with every issue that we're going to discuss today. It's very hard to follow how his brain works because it's not logical. But it's clearly something that the Russians know. And this is now the thing they've identified. They've zeroed in on this weakness. And unfortunately, the Patriot interceptors are the one thing the US has that other people don't have. And although there is some other kinds of anti missile defense available in Europe and some of it I think will make its way to Ukraine, this is the thing that works the best, so I'm told. And so we'll see whether, whether the US is able to change its mind and save lives.
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And ostensibly Trump has said they're helping Ukraine get the right to build these, but obviously he, his inconstancy makes that good for maybe a half hour. Let's turn for a second to Ukraine's own war making. And their air campaign is now going far deeper into Russia than in the past, destroying oil refineries and now hitting the warehouses regularly of Russia's Amazon equivalent, which is a regular feature of everyday Russian life, as Amazon is in this country. You had sort of described the previous deal that Putin had offered to the Russian people. Support the war in Ukraine, and it won't, you won't have to worry about it in your daily life, et cetera. How successful are these attacks enforcing ordinary Russians to actually think about and potentially oppose the conflict?
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So in that sense, the attacks are successful. So the attacks, as you say, are hitting ordinary consumers, a lot of small businesses. There have been fuel shortages all over Russia. Russia's ability to export fuel has dropped pretty dramatically. Something like a third of their refinery capacity at one point, I saw statistics about a week ago, has been lost. The attacks are repetitive and continuous and they're every day. I mean, just as the Russian strikes on Kyiv are frequent, the Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, oil and gas infrastructure, as well as military objects, and now these warehouses also continues. The question in Russia is How is it? You clearly have dissatisfaction, and you can see it in different ways. You can see it on social media, even though it's very constrained. You can see it in the military bloggers. The question in Russia is what is the mechanism by which dissatisfaction translates into political change? That's the piece that, for me, is still missing. So in a democracy, democratic leaders have to respond to what people feel. In a dictatorship, they don't. And in Putin's dictatorship, which is now much closer to anything, that much closer to the Soviet Union than anything in the 1990s or 2000s was, it's very hard to see how this makes a difference. I mean, it's clear that Putin does want to continue the war. It's clear that he doesn't want a ceasefire. He's been offered a ceasefire multiple times. The Ukrainians have said they would accept a ceasefire. Nevertheless, the Russians are continuing. Once again, the United States has helped create the climate in which Putin feels that continuing is possible through a negotiation process whereby we sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who went to Moscow to negotiate deals with Russian companies, rather than merely to focus on ending the war. The Russians had this feeling that they had, if not a friend in Washington, then at least somebody who wouldn't stop them. And so I'm afraid it's now the second way in which the United States is facilitating the continuation of the conflict, one by not offering Ukraine missile defense. And the second way is by having really flubbed negotiations quite badly. We'll see. I mean, Europe is now, for the moment, is very solid. The European money and weapons are what's keeping Ukraine going. That, plus Ukraine's really extraordinary ability to generate new technologies and new ways of using drones, which already makes the Ukrainian army way ahead of ours, for example. But the US Remains an ambiguous, opaque, or ambivalent player here. The United States has not clearly intervened to stop the war or to give Ukraine the support it would need to convince Russia to stop the war.
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B
One more sort of nuts and bolts on the ground question. We've always thought of Russia, and I mean dating back to the 19th century, as having essentially infinite numbers of potential soldiers on the ground and Putin and being completely indifferent to their sort of widespread slaughter. Now, there is rumors in Russia that another mass mobilization may be coming up. I don't want to ask you to speculate about whether it's true, but I'm just curious about what that would entail, again, for Russia's morale, for Ukraine's battlefield prospects. We think of it as infinite, but it can't be truly infinite.
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A
No, it's not truly infinite. There's a lot of evidence the Russians are already using. It's not clear whether it's correct to call them mercenaries or forced laborers from Africa. There are various schemes that they convince people from Africa and Latin America and elsewhere to fly to Russia and then they draft them into the army. And there have been numerous examples from Kenya and other places of people coming just describing how that works. So they're clearly short of soldiers and they would like to have more. They're bringing North Koreans too, again, I should say. And it's clear that Putin has been trying to avoid a mass mobilization. So as I said, despite the fact that there's no direct link between public sentiment and the regime, he clearly has wanted to avoid bringing lots of people into the army. I mean, there could be other non political reasons for this too. That Russian economy is short of laborers. In order to keep the war machine going, they need people to work in the factories as well as to go to the front line. And they may be running short of people. I mean, it's a very large country, but you need people with certain kind of training to do those jobs and they're not finding them. So, yeah, it's one of the barriers that Russia's running up against. It's kind of economic barrier, labor barrier, popular sentiment barrier. Those things are all there. It's just a question of how fast they kick in and if and when someone around Putin can convince him or behave in some other way to persuade him to stop the war.
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B
Hey, I wanted to shift to Iran, but I wanted to ask you first. I read reports that were fascinating that Ukraine and Iran nearly ended up at war with each other. Could you talk about the extent to which the war in Ukraine and the war in the Gulf are actually becoming intertwined?
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So they've always been intertwined in a certain sense because it's actually the same coalition of powers fighting together in both places. So in Ukraine, the Russians have had from the beginning, they had Iranian drones, which they've now improved on and manufactured themselves and may be sending back to Iran. They've had spare parts and financial help from China, which Iran also has, and they've had weapons and people from North Korea. I'm not aware of North Koreans in Iran yet, although I wouldn't be surprised. So you have this coalition of autocracies working together in both places. The Iranians clearly have some kind of help from Russia. They have some kind of help from China. That's how they're able to continue the war. So in that sense, they're connected, and the same people are fighting or aiding one another in both of them. And you also see similar kinds of technology being used in both of them. So the drone technology that's come to characterize the Ukraine, Russia war, we're now seeing it appear in the Gulf. And on the other side, it's not quite the same symmetry, because the U.S. i mean, I suppose you could describe the U.S. as being in a coalition with other democracies, but the US War in Iran is more of an American project than anything else. From the beginning, Trump said he didn't want allies. Later on, he changed his mind. But there hasn't been a lot of enthusiasm for joining his war in Iran. But you see, for example, the Gulf states and have been in talks with the Ukrainians about importing their drone operators or drone interceptors. There have been discussions of how Ukrainian technology can be used in the Gulf to defend against these Russian Iranian drones, these Shahid drones, which were, as I said, first invented in Iran and then sent to Russia and then sent back again. So there are connections between the wars already because you have the group of dictatorships working together in both fields, defending the same kinds of regimes.
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B
It sort of sounds like the old axis of evil of a generation or more ago remains very operative.
- [16:19]
A
So I wrote a book called Autocracy, Inc. And it described. It wasn't quite the axis of evil. It was a slightly different way of way. These. These regimes are connected. It's not by a single ideology. It's more by common interests. But we see that still functioning in both conflicts.
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Okay, so let's move more directly into Iran. Let me start with a basic kind of stupid question. America is the strongest military might in the history of the world. Iran is a sanctioned regional power. Why does it seem like they keep getting the upper hand in this war? And that Trump, every potential end game winds up with them in a stronger position than when Trump launched the conflict.
- [17:10]
A
Because the United States hasn't learned the lesson of multiple wars going back a century, which is that in an asymmetric battle, so sometimes the smaller power has advantages that you don't expect. And I don't want to draw an exact analogy to the war in Ukraine, because there are many differences in all kinds of ways between who's fighting and the way they're fighting and so on and the nature of the regimes in both places. But it is nevertheless really striking that the ambition and the arrogance with which Russia went to war in Ukraine, this idea that this is a country we're going to wipe off the map in three days and we're going to conquer the rest of it in six weeks does have its echo in the US Thinking that it could, with a couple of strikes, end a very profoundly fanatical and dedicated regime that had planned for exactly this circumstance, apparently over many years. And you also see a similar issue. I mean, just as the Russians don't want to have mass mobilization, neither does the United States really want to send thousands of troops into Iran. Nobody would support that in the United States. It wouldn't be popular. We don't know whether it would be successful, and there would be mass casualties and so on. So you have a strange situation where clearly the US Is the stronger power economically and militarily in every other way. But the tools that it has to strike at Iran, just like, just like in Vietnam or just like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, at least at the moment, don't seem sufficient to change the regime in such a way that it willingly ends the war or that it gives up what's now a new piece of the puzzle. I mean, it's not new for everybody, but it's new in the fact that they're finally using it, which is their control over the Strait of Hormuz and therefore of international oil shipping. So you have a similar thing where you have in asymmetric wars, the larger power, given the nature of modern technology, doesn't necessarily defeat the smaller power unless it's willing to go all in. And right now, the US Isn't willing to. I mean, of course, that could change, and we know that Trump has canvassed people about changing it. Certainly there are people in the White House and the Pentagon who've contemplated an invasion of Iran. Whether that was a serious project or not, I couldn't tell you.
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B
Yeah. And what an escalation that would be. Let's go.
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A
Let's go.
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You mentioned the Strait of Hormuz, and everything does seem to be focused, at least from Iran's point of view, on giving them real control over the Strait. What do you make of the. I could say rumored deal, but it's really deals. But if they emerge with real control over the Strait, how big a victory does it represent for Iran?
- [20:12]
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That would be a pretty major victory because it would be something the Iranians had a source of pressure, plus maybe a source of financing that they didn't have before the war. And so it would be something they've gained from the war here. I will be very honest with you. I don't know what the stage of the negotiations is between the US And Iran, because I don't believe anything the US Says. I don't believe anything that comes out of the White House. And I don't know whether I'm supposed to believe what the Iranian regime, which is famously dishonest and deceptive as well, whether they're saying too. So I don't feel that I have been given a clear picture of what the true state of negotiations are or is. I was trying to describe this to somebody the other day. It's not that I don't care or don't pay attention to the war, and it's that I feel that I'm being given false information the whole time. And so I have suspended judgment. I can't tell you what's really going on. I mean, clearly there is some negotiation to do with lifting the Iranian control over the strait in exchange for the US Lifting sanctions on Iran. Clearly, the Trump administration doesn't want that to look too much like the Obama deal with Iran, which was actually better than the current setup. And that kind of goes back and forth and round and round. And periodically an announcement is made that we're coming close to a deal, and then the stock market goes up, and then somebody says, actually it's not going to be a deal, and then the stock market goes down again. And so I feel like until we have reached some new plateau, I don't have a definitive analysis that I can offer you.
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I just want to say this is a cross cutting theme in my world. In particular, it's really remarkable the degree to which we're either kept in the dark or in certain instances, simply misinformed. I think you know about the dismissal of the case involving the Reflecting Pool just yesterday that people came out, lied about it, and we now learn about a supposed tussle between the Interior Department and Jeanine Perot. But really it's so endemic, and you're in this position that you think is the position of people in authoritarian societies not to know what's going on. Having accepted by now, oh, it's just a fact that your government lies to you. I mean, we have situations where we're no better than Pravda, it seems, and it's such a kind of crippling aspect to democratic rule of law, all the attempts to restrict the press by the Department of Defense. I just wanted to note this is a thematic issue of the Trump administration.
- [23:07]
A
No, absolutely. I mean, and I don't know how much of the reporting about the war is true. I don't know whether the casualty figures are true. You know, once they kicked all the real reporters out of the Pentagon, we haven't had good reporting from inside the Department of Defense. There aren't American reporters embedded with the Pentagon in Iran the way they were in previous wars. And so we're really in the dark. And I think it's important to say that rather than to make false predictions or false analysis based on a complete absence of information.
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B
Yeah, I'll just say I feel your pain. There are all kinds of aspects where you're sort of stumbling in the dark and you can indulge the most cynical assumptions. That usually doesn't take you too far wrong. Okay, let's say there's some kind of deal. Even we are talking about rogue actors arguing, maybe even on both sides, but certainly with Iran. Why would we think they wouldn't go back on it once they have proven they can impose costs on the US That Trump just isn't willing to pay? And can they keep launching new attacks, including on other players in the Middle east, to get more and more leverage? And I'll just add to it a note about the American political scene, which is they can see very clearly that the war is instrumental in the plunge in Trump's approval rating. They're sophisticated enough to act on that basis. Why should we think there's any deal, even if Iran actually signs onto it?
- [24:48]
A
I mean, you answered your question, by the way you asked it. There is no assurance.
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B
Rhetorical question.
- [24:54]
A
No, no. I mean, this is a, this is a, you know, this is a dishonest, manipulative, authoritarian regime whose leaders believe that they rule by the right of God and that they are, you know, they are instructed by God to do what they do. And so they don't have a lot of self doubt and they're not that interested in negotiating with infidels. So, no, I don't think they can necessarily be trusted once they've figured out that they have leverage over others. That doesn't mean that there isn't some deal they could be offered. Maybe that there could be something that would persuade them, but I wouldn't want to put money on or great hopes on them holding to it indefinitely.
- [25:38]
B
We just have a couple minutes left. And I want to move to a theme that you've sounded again and again, including in your great substack, everybody. Check that out, please. But that's basically kleptocracy and corruption. And you made the basic point. You know, we think of corruption sometimes as a sort of side benefit of leadership in an authoritarian country, just scoop up and help yourself to some money while you're doing these other things. But you've written that modern autocrats don't merely tolerate corruption, they weaponize it. And it really is an actual organizing principle. And I wanted to ask you about that, zeroing in on the latest news, including your substack from last week. So I just wanted to kind of get your sense of, in the overall, little bit of cheating, little bit of self dealing, little bit of enrichment on the one hand, and the spectrum of so much so that it literally constitutes or is a clear indication of an authoritarian government. Where are we in Trump's second term?
- [26:50]
A
So we're pretty far along in the direction of kleptocracy. And by that I mean a state where part of the purpose of government is to enrich the leaders, to enrich whatever it is, the ruling party, the ruling clan, the ruling family. And so political decisions are taken not because they're good for the country, but because they're good for the president's son or his son in laws or his family. And I think we are seeing something like that now in the United States. There is a question in my mind about our relationships, for example, with the Middle Eastern states who have invested in Jared's company or who have bought Donald Trump a $400 million plane. There is a question in my mind about countries across the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, Vietnam, even, where the Trump family has done a hotel deal or a golf course deal or some other kind of deal, and that's changed that country's relationship with the US or with its tariff policy. There's a big question about tariffs. Are tariffs being placed on countries because that's an important part of American economic policy or foreign policy, or are they there in order to benefit financially, some member of the Trump family or some company associated with the Trump family, or some ideologues associated with the regime. And I think if you. Not in every case, but if you look at many of these very closely, you would have to at least ask the question, why is this happening? Is this deal being done for the benefit of Americans or is it being done for the benefit of Donald Trump or his children? There are almost too many examples now to cite deals done to sell chips to the Emirates. Was that a deal that was done for normal reasons or because of an investment in Trump's cryptocurrency business? And so on and so on and so on. The latest example being the Donald Trump's children being involved in drone tech production, you know, is just another example.
- [29:03]
B
Yeah, you know, you can, I think, say, especially given his checkered record, and that's being generous as a, as a person in private business. The presidency has been very, very good to him. Anne Applebaum, always both a pleasure and an education to speak with you. Thank you so much. Hope we'll be able to check in with you again, period, as these two wars and other situations on the international scene continue to bubble along. Thank you so much for your time today and everyone. Again, the substack where you really get Ann's both analysis, but also Sometimes a media takes open letters from Ann Applebaum. Check it out. Thank you for tuning in to One on One, a weekly conversation series from Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts. And please take a moment to rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube, where we are posting full episodes and daily updates on top legal stories. Check us out on substack harry litman.substack.com where we're posting two or three bulletins a week breaking down the various threats to constitutional norms and the rule of law. And Talking Fez has joined forces with the Contrarian. I'm a founding contributor to this new media venture committed to reviving the diversity of opinion that feels increasingly rare in today's news landscape, where legacy media seems to be tacking toward Trump for business reasons rather than editorial ones. Rest assured, we're still the same scrappy independent podcast you've come to know and trust just now, linked up with an ambitious and vital project designed for this pivotal moment in our nation's legal and political discourse. Find out more@Contrarian.com substack.com thanks for tuning in, and don't worry, as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking. Talking Feds is produced by Lou Cregan and Katie Upshaw, associate producer Becca Haveian, sound Engineering by Matt McArdle, Rosie Dawn Griffin, David Lieberman, Hansuma Hadrenathan, Emma Maynard and Hallie Necker are our contributing writers and production assistance by Akshay Turbailu. Our music, as ever, is by the amazing Philip Glass. Talking Feds is a production of Deledo llc. I'm Harry Littman. Talk to you later.