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- [00:00]
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- [00:06]
Anne Applebaum
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Anne Applebaum
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- [00:28]
John Lal
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- [02:19]
Will K. Back
Hey everybody, this is Tangle Senior Editor Will K Back. I'm here to share my conversation about the war in Ukraine with the Atlantics and Applebaum. This episode is my full, unedited conversation with Anne. I do want to note up front that I also interviewed Richard Sakwa, another expert on this conflict, and I gave a longer, more comprehensive introduction to this interview series at the beginning of that episode. So I would recommend checking both of them out. And if you want to hear a little bit more background about how these conversations came to be, you can go over to the Tangle podcast page and listen to the start of the episode with Richard and then hopefully listen to our full conversation that follows. One additional quick note, if you are a free subscriber, you'll receive a preview of this conversation with Ann Applebaum. But to listen to the full thing, you'll need to become a premium member. All right, here's my conversation with Anne Applebaum. All right, Anne, thanks so much for joining us.
- [03:14]
Anne Applebaum
Thanks for having me.
- [03:16]
Will K. Back
So this week you published a report in the Atlantic about the drones and other military weapons that Ukraine is now producing in significant numbers and which are also doing extensive damage within Russia and along the front lines of the war and allowing Ukraine to continue fighting even as US Support waivers or is somewhat uncertain. One line that stuck out to me is you wrote that some Ukrainians believe they can do enough damage to force Russians to end the war. My question to you would be, what would be the clear signs that this bombing campaign is changing Russia's calculus and are those signs already apparent right now?
- [03:54]
Anne Applebaum
So let me back up a bit because I think it's important that people understand how dramatically different this war is from what most people think it is. It's usually described as a war of attrition and people are dying in large numbers on both sides. And there's some truth to that, but it's also the most high tech war on the planet and it's really like no other war that has ever been. It's a drone war now. Tanks and artillery are useless, are not totally useless, but are not as useful as we thought they were going to be. And the Ukrainians have proven to be really technically competent both at these battlefield drones as well as underwater drones, as well as these long range drones that can hit Russian targets from the air. And in the past few months they've started to have a lot of success, hitting really big oil refineries, other targets in the oil industry, pipelines, objects connected to export, and so on. We know already that it's made a difference because the Russian quantity of Russian oil imports has dropped. It's now at the lowest point that it's been in the war. And we also know that there are fuel shortages all over Russia. We know they're in central Russia, eastern Russia and Crimea. And recently they've been reported in the suburbs of Moscow and St. Petersburg, so much so that the Russian Papers, even the state owned newspapers, feel they have to report them now. And it's very funny. I found an article in Izvestia, which is a Soviet era originally paper, which said, oh, yeah, there's some fuel shortages and it's to do with high levels of tourism or something like that. But I think most Russians probably know what it is. I don't think that there's a specific moment or point or thing that we can say will be the turning point, but there will be. In this war, as in all colonial wars, there will be some moment when the people of the colonial power and the colonial capital conclude that the war is no longer necessary or it's no longer useful to them. It's not working. It's a moment you had in the British occupation of India. It's a moment you had in the French war against Algeria. And when that moment comes, we will know it. I mean, you have already seen just in the last few days, actually, there have been a number of other. I mean, they're described as suicides, but they're really homicides. Very senior Russian political and business figures. And that's an indication that there's dissent. We know from the. We can't really do any polling in Russia, but there are a number of opposition groups who try to gauge the mood of the Internet. And they've been saying for some time that most people want the war to end. So the mood, both in the public and in the elite, is for it to end. And it will just be a question of at what point can. Are the sacrifices the elite are being asked to make too big to sustain?
- [06:51]
Will K. Back
When you say the people of the colonial empire, just to clarify, is that in reference to, like, Russian oligarchs to people within the Kremlin, or are you talking larger scale?
- [07:01]
Anne Applebaum
So Russia is a colonial power. It thinks of itself as the colonial power in the region of Eastern Europe. It has a memory of its empire being larger. Putin himself has said. He once said. Well, he said it more than once, but he said it recently as well. Anywhere where there has ever been a Russian soldier could be Russia again. And so that includes the Baltic states, it includes Poland, it includes Berlin, it includes eastern Germany, where he remembers in his lifetime that he was a Soviet apparatchik, he was in the KGB in eastern Germany. And so what his goal is, he has a number of goals with this war, but one of them is to reestablish the Russian empire. So they think as a colonial power, as a power that deserves to subjugate other countries and Other nationalities. They think Ukraine is theirs because it was part of Russian empires in the past. And formally, the main the reason the legitimation for the war, the reason why they say they're fighting it when they talk to talk to other Russians, is that Ukraine's not a real country. It needs to be made part of Russia again. I mean, I think there's some other reasons as well, but they think very much like in a colonial manner.
- [08:19]
Will K. Back
I want to pivot to the US as well because I know this has been a particularly newsworthy week relative to President Trump's comments about the war. And coming out of the meeting with President Zelensky at the UN he posted on Truth Social about how he believed Ukraine may be able to win the war and not cede any territory that Russia has controls. Right now, I think it's easy to see those comments as a positive development. But I also know that there's lots of reporting and analysis out there which is suggesting that Trump is effectively ceding the ground to wipe his hands of the conflict, puts the blame onto Europe if Ukraine is to fail. And I'm wondering how you see that dynamic and Trump's evolving comments and whether you share those concerns as well.
- [09:04]
Anne Applebaum
So honestly, I have trouble seeing that there's any strategy towards Ukraine at all from the Trump administration. So every time people construct a strategy when there was supposedly a negotiation, gone. I think Vice President Vance said some weeks ago, you know, there were to be, he first saw a territorial exchange. That's how others had been discussing it. That's what Steve Witkoff, among other things, aside from discussing business deals, he seemed to be talking about in Moscow. And Trump, it's almost like he heard something different from President Zelensky, who probably was telling him about the successful strikes on Russian refineries and he just changed his mind and he's bored of it now and he gave up. I don't know that I would interpret it in any deeper way at all. I'm not sure he has thought it through. I mean, it's true that the aid that the US Is giving Ukraine has already, in terms of weaponry, has already diminished and the Ukrainians aren't expecting more. And one of the reasons why they have begun this program of mass drone construction is that they are expecting the US to fade out of the picture. Of course, they hope that the US Will help them. And there has been, by the way, talk of the US Giving them some more long range weapons that will make their campaign against the Russian oil industry go faster. And that would be great and everybody would be happy. But no one is counting on it. In fact, one of the things that's very striking, as I wrote in the article, when I was in last in Kiev, which was a couple of weeks ago, I went into a drone factory and the CEO of the factory of the company took me around and she made a point of saying at almost every stage of the production process that I was able to see. We don't use any American components. You know, we're trying to get away from any American input, of course, Chinese input as well.
- [11:07]
Will K. Back
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [11:13]
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- [11:16]
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- [11:17]
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- [11:52]
Will K. Back
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- [11:54]
Anne Applebaum
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- [12:05]
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- [12:09]
Anne Applebaum
It's just weather.
- [12:10]
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Anne Applebaum
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- [12:30]
Will K. Back
I'm curious what the mood is on the ground when you're there. How, how do the people that you talk to feel about how the war is going and what the prospects are like?
- [12:39]
Anne Applebaum
So you know, I can't claim to speak to all Ukrainians and I have been to the front line in the past, but I didn't. I haven't been recently. I can't tell you what soldiers think. I can only tell you I have a lot of friends whose husbands or brothers or friends are fighting on the, you know, and so I know from them. And I, and I in the last trip I was talking a lot to people who are in the weapons business and in politics and all of those people pretty much say the same thing, namely, we don't have a choice. We're going to keep fighting. We're doing our jobs, we are going to keep our technology at the cutting edge as much as we can, and we're going to continue to win. We're going to continue to try to win the war. I'm sure you could find, if you did the right interviews and you met the right people, you would meet a lot of people in Ukraine who are sick of the war. I think actually everybody's sick of the war. The nighttime bombing campaigns are very exhausting. People get. Your sleep is disturbed. It's very frightening for children. There's going to be a lot of trauma after this war is over. But I don't detect in the political class or in the business class or in the army, I don't detect any desire to stop. And so, although I wouldn't say that there are over the moon and delighted that the war is going to go on for another year or two, and some people talk about two or three, I don't hear them ending the war either. Let me say something, actually, let me clarify that a little bit. They want to end the war and they would accept a ceasefire. And President Zelensky has said he would accept a ceasefire. In other words, he would freeze the conflict on the current lines. So they would accept that. But when I say they want to continue, they don't hear from the Russians any desire to stop. So the Russians have never said that they want to end the war. Putin has never recognized Ukraine as a sovereign state. He's never accepted that Zelenskyy is the legitimate president of Ukraine. So there is a. So when I say they'll keep fighting, that means they don't have. They have to keep fighting because otherwise their country is conquered. And they all have. They know exactly how grim and, and horrific the life in the occupied territories is. And so none of them want that. So they will keep going.
- [15:04]
Will K. Back
Do you share that assessment of Putin?
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Anne Applebaum
For the moment, yes. I mean, you know, I don't know what he thinks deep in his heart, but publicly he has never said that he wants to end the war. The opposite, as I said, he. He keeps saying very aggressive things. His propagandists say aggressive things. They're still talking about fighting a war against NATO. As you know, they've been playing these strange games, sending drones into Poland, sending planes to skirt Estonian airspace. I mean, there's all kinds of games are going on that indicate that they're willing to keep Europe Provoked and annoyed. And I should say, by the way, all of those efforts, if they were intended to scare Europeans, are having exactly the opposite effect. So I hear now, especially in Scandinavia, in the Baltic states, in Poland, UK and interestingly Germany, I hear more people determined to push back against Russia now than I did a year ago.
- [16:05]
Will K. Back
I guess the follow up question I have to that is, that is Putin and Russia in a position where they have taken away the potential off ramps this war. I mean, I've spoken to several analysts about this conflict who have said that Putin would rather use nuclear weapons than concede this war. Is that a fear that you have? Or how do you think this nuclear element factors into the decision making on the Russian side?
- [16:31]
Anne Applebaum
So obviously I, again, I don't have insight into Putin's deepest, you know, his, his heart or his, his, his deepest thoughts. You know, I've been watching the war for, you know, watching it very carefully for three years. And I, and listening to Russia use nuclear rhetoric from the decade. And I have to say it's very hard to see how they could use nuclear weapons in a way that would even help them win the war. Tactical nuclear weapons would backfire because the fallout would kill a lot of Russians. I mean, they could use a nuclear bomb on a Ukrainian city or a European city, but then there would be a catastrophic international reaction. They'd been explicitly warned not to do that by the Chinese and by the Indians, who are their two most important trading partners. It feels to me like a huge bluff. And so I don't, and actually the Ukrainians, who are the most likely people to be the victims of that kind of conflict, also think it's a bluff. And so if they're not afraid, then I don't see why other people should be.
- [17:43]
Will K. Back
You mentioned the recent drone incursions and just this week, Russian aircraft violating the airspace in Estonia being intercepted by NATO pilots. There was an incident near US And Canadian airspace. Clearly some, you know, a building sense of a test or a threat or whatever you may have it. I'm curious, short of nuclear warfare, you know, what are the prospects of this spilling out into a NATO conflict in the near future? I think about something like Turkey shooting down a Russian jet in 2015, and obviously that didn't spiral into anything greater than that. But with the dynamics of today and tensions where they are, if a Russian jet was to, say, be shot down for violating a NATO country's airspace, are we at a place where you could see that spiraling into a greater conflict between these countries?
- [18:35]
Anne Applebaum
It's a Tough question. Because on the one hand, Putin does continue to use this rhetoric. He is playing these strange games. My guess is that he doesn't want an open conflict, a bigger war right now. I mean, this is somebody who's troops are unable to conquer Donbass, which they've been trying to do for 10 years. He doesn't want a bigger war right now. The game he's playing is rather he's trying to separate the US And Europe. He's trying to do a separate deal with Trump. He's trying to break up NATO. I mean, he's trying to use, put pressure on NATO that will somehow intimidate or scare the Europeans. I mean, I think that's mostly what he's doing right now. But could a European country shoot down a Russian plane? Yeah, I think it's possible that could happen. Could the Russians try to retaliate somehow? That's also possible it could happen. Are the Russians thinking long term about some kind of bigger conflict? They certainly say they are. Again, I have to go. This is what they say in public, and they certainly are preparing their population to think like that. So when they talk about this war, they talk about it as a war against NATO. So they already tell the public that the reason why we haven't defeated Ukraine is that it's really a war against NATO, even though of course it's not, you know, it isn't a war against NATO. But so they're building the, you know, the propaganda, the kind of psychological justification for it. Now, that is true, but it's hard for me to see that they would be in a position to fight some kind of, you know, large scale conflict against lots of armies right at this second.
- [20:21]
Will K. Back
We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [20:30]
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- [21:33]
Will K. Back
You've written in the past several times about how the Biden administration was directionally right on this war, but obviously made some mistakes. I'm curious what you see as those mistakes as they relate to the situation today and also maybe how NATO and European Union countries may have mishandled the conflict up to this point just to understand kind of the broader dynamics that have gotten us to here.
- [22:00]
Anne Applebaum
So the Biden administration was right. They understood correctly why the war had been declared. They understood that it was a war. A, that it was a colonial war, as we've discussed. B, that it was also a war designed to demonstrate that Russia doesn't care about any of the old rules, about not violating borders, about keeping the peace in Europe, about the post war. There's a phrase that Europeans use never again, that we'll never have a European war again. And he was demonstrating by his invasion that he was dispensing with all of that and he was declaring himself to be the new military power in Europe. And so the Biden administration understood, correctly that this was a challenge not so much to the U.S. but to an order that the U.S. built after 1945. And they understood that challenge and they were right to arm Ukraine and right to help them win, help them fight back. The mistake that they made, I believe, was to be over cautious. In other words, they were spooked by the nuclear threats. They were spooked by the, particularly in the fall of 2022 when the Ukrainians began to take back a lot of territory that might have been the moment to let them hit longer range targets or to be more aggressive. There have been a couple of moments when Ukrainians had a chance to end the war by taking back their land and the Biden people were over cautious. It's also true that the Ukrainian, their technological capacity, their defense industry didn't exist in the first year of the war. And it's something that has developed over the last couple of years. So there are some ways in which it's changed, but they were also, I mean, the Biden administration was also really thoughtful about sanctions. So it wasn't just you make a lot of noise and you declare sanctions. They were constantly re examining them, changing them. As the Russians began to look for different routes for their in order to get parts and components for their defense industry, they would change the pattern of sanctioning. That's something the Trump administration has dropped completely, so they just don't do it anymore. And so overall, I mean the Biden administration is I'm grateful that they understood the significance of the war and they understood, understood that Ukrainians could be helped. I'm just sorry.
- [24:43]
John Lal
Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. Thank you for listening to this preview episode of our latest Friday piece. To complete this episode and to hear other Friday editions as well as ad free daily podcasts, Please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a podcast membership or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both the podcast and the newsletter. Issac, Ari and Camille will be here with the suspension of the Rules podcast and I will return on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Peace.
- [25:18]
Will K. Back
Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Lal. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lal. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Bailey, Saul Lindsey Knuth. Music for the podcast was produced by John Law. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
- [25:52]
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John Lal
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- [27:14]
Anne Applebaum
Hablas espanol?
- [27:16]
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