'If Ukraine were forced to negotiate, Zelensky would not survive a negotiation'
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00:00 Ukraine's air force said it had shot down a Russian spy plane on Friday, if confirmed
00:04 it would be a major win for the country as it marks the second anniversary of Russia's
00:08 full-scale invasion.
00:10 It comes as the prime ministers of Italy, Canada, Belgium, and the president of the
00:15 European Commission arrived in Kiev.
00:17 Their presence meant to display Western solidarity despite a lack of Western aid and ammunition,
00:24 all while Russia is emboldened by fresh gains.
00:27 The war has cost tens of thousands of lives and ravaged Ukraine's economy.
00:33 Here to help us take stock after two years is Samantha de Vandeurne, an associate fellow
00:37 at Chatham House.
00:38 Hello to you, Samantha, as well as our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert.
00:43 Hello to you, Doug.
00:44 I will.
00:45 Samantha, I want to begin with you.
00:46 When this war began, some of the stories we were reading so much about were of Ukrainian
00:51 resilience, inspiration, Western solidarity.
00:55 After two years, are cracks beginning to show?
00:58 Yes, yes, they are.
01:01 I think they are.
01:03 And first of all, Ukrainian resilience, I think, is holding up.
01:10 I mean, yes, people are tired.
01:11 Yes, there are many tired soldiers, but the country is still resilient.
01:16 It's still fighting.
01:18 It is still there.
01:20 And that, I think, is the biggest lesson to take from this, is that when the war started,
01:26 everyone was predicting that Ukraine would fall in days.
01:30 731 days later, the president is still in place.
01:36 Russia has managed to conquer a little bit more territory, but it has also lost some
01:41 of the territory it has conquered.
01:43 However, I think that the West is, as always towards Ukraine, does not really know what
01:49 it wants to do with Ukraine.
01:51 There's been another package of sanctions that was announced last week, really after
01:55 the death of Alexei Navalny, and it felt that it was more about Alexei Navalny, the Russian
02:00 opposition leader.
02:01 And when I read the latest U.S. sanctions, I thought, what?
02:05 They've only now started sanctioning some of these companies that are directly contributing
02:11 to the war effort.
02:13 They're now only now beginning to sanction parts of Rosatom, the nuclear energy industry.
02:19 And why were they dragging their feet?
02:20 They're dragging their feet because there are so many Western financial interests that
02:25 are interlinked with Russia's financial interests.
02:27 It has taken a long time.
02:29 The U.S. still imports a lot of its uranium from Russia for the U.S. nuclear industry.
02:36 When the sanctions began, there were some very prominent oligarchs who were sanctioned,
02:40 yes, but some who were not sanctioned because they were needed for Western business deals.
02:45 So yes, the West has united.
02:48 NATO is more united than ever.
02:50 NATO is actually enlarged.
02:51 You know, Putin should win, you know, recruiter of the year for NATO.
02:56 But the West is still, doesn't really seem to be understanding the scale of the threat
03:02 from Russia.
03:03 It's beginning to wake up.
03:04 In the last few weeks, people seem to have been waking up.
03:07 When Russia has been making it very clear and attacking the West in a form of hybrid
03:14 warfare for nearly two decades, and I'm wondering what it will take for the West to really wake
03:19 up and to really unite and decide what they want to do with Ukraine, whether they really
03:24 want to help Ukraine, whether it's going to be a lot of nice words, visiting Kiev, saying,
03:30 oh, yes, we're here to support you, but still not giving Ukraine the munitions it's been
03:35 asking for for two years.
03:37 And the last thing I'd really like to say is that a lot of Ukrainians, a lot of military
03:43 analysts say if the West had given Ukraine adequate weapons from the very beginning,
03:50 not just this drip feed that's been going on over two years, drip feed with a lot of
03:53 noise and yes, a lot of money has been given.
03:56 A lot of weapons have not been able to be given because the West doesn't have it.
03:59 A lot of weapons were not given because there was this fear of escalation.
04:05 And now red lines have been crossed.
04:07 It's not a red line, it's a kind of a red snake that sort of, you know, wriggles around
04:11 and changes according to what we feel.
04:15 But if the weapons had been given in the very beginning, this war might be over by now.
04:20 Yeah, Doug, Samantha mentioned those sanctions.
04:23 How has Russia's economy fared in the face of those sanctions?
04:27 Relatively speaking, it is in fine fettle, not just despite the sanctions, Putin and
04:31 his allies might argue because of, thanks to those sanctions.
04:35 We've seen it in the past, this pattern, you know, sort of perpetuating itself, right?
04:38 You impose sanctions and Russia has an amazing resilience and ability to build your cottage
04:42 industry.
04:43 So the sanctions have in a way paradoxically spurred Russian domestic production.
04:48 Now here's the bad news, the bad news, at least from a Western perspective, Europe,
04:52 US, Russia's economy and its overall growth last year, outpaced growth in both the US
04:56 and Europe was about three, three and a half, 3.6%.
05:00 That's pretty solid growth.
05:02 A lot of that, most of that was, was thanks to ramped up spending, huge investment on
05:08 the military.
05:09 You know, we were arguing here in Europe about spending 2% of GDP on, on European militaries
05:15 in order to bring it up to NATO standards.
05:17 Russia has spent about a third, one third of its budget, I'm not misspeaking here,
05:21 on its military last year.
05:23 And that's only been rising.
05:24 As far as the effect on ordinary Russians, sure, they don't have their Western shops
05:28 to go to anymore.
05:29 Sure, they're not traveling to Europe as much.
05:32 It's much harder to get the visas, all of that.
05:34 But however, in terms of ordinary life, about two thirds of Russians, according to the latest
05:38 polls, say that they are economically the same or even better off than they were before
05:43 the full scale invasion two years ago, unemployment is down.
05:46 Russia and Putin is practically gloating trade with India, China, Brazil, largely helping
05:53 Putin a lot to do what we would say is an end run around sanctions, and to really keep
05:58 the economy churning how long they could keep it up.
06:00 Who knows?
06:01 Yes.
06:02 Now they're okay.
06:03 Samantha, you want to know, I'd really like to react to that.
06:04 Yes, the Russian GDP is growing.
06:07 That is military spending.
06:08 If the war stops tomorrow, the GDP will collapse.
06:11 That is really, this is a fake growth.
06:13 It's an economy built on the war.
06:14 Secondly, I don't actually believe opinion polls in Russia today.
06:17 You can't trust any of them.
06:19 Thirdly, you look at what's happening to Russian's civilian infrastructure, heating systems collapsing,
06:25 planes not being able to be maintained because they can't get the components from the West.
06:29 Bullet production was down by 80% at the end of 2022.
06:34 The statistics were so dramatic that Putin forbade Rostat, the Russian statistical agency,
06:40 from publishing figures on civilian industry because the figures are actually so catastrophic.
06:46 This is a war of attrition and size matters.
06:50 Russia is bigger than Ukraine.
06:52 Size matters.
06:53 Russia's bigger.
06:54 Russia has more resources.
06:55 Russia's not a democracy, so who cares if civilian planes fall out of the sky?
06:58 People are not going to complain about that.
07:00 And Russia has more people.
07:02 So yes, that is a really serious problem that the West and Ukraine has to look at right
07:08 in the face without any illusions.
07:10 I want to ask you the question about Ukrainian politics down the road.
07:14 Zelensky's term ends in May.
07:16 There's martial law in Ukraine that allows for the elections to sort of be postponed.
07:23 What is the situation with domestic politics in Ukraine and are you concerned what will
07:28 come in May?
07:29 Well, first of all, the Ukrainian constitution actually forbids elections to take place during
07:35 martial law and during wartime, so that is not necessarily illegal from a Ukrainian point
07:40 of view.
07:41 But it's true that there are political problems within Ukraine.
07:45 I was last there in December and you could really feel a lot of tension.
07:49 A lot of people don't like Zelensky in spite of the fact that we all adore him in the West.
07:53 But inside Ukraine, he has a lot more ambivalence towards him.
07:58 There's a recognition that he is the commander in chief, that he has brought the country
08:02 together and done a wonderful job in seducing the West.
08:06 But inside, there is a lot of political infighting still.
08:10 A lot of political infighting.
08:11 Some of it is the result of Russian disinformation.
08:15 Some of it is the result of the continuing corruption in Ukraine.
08:18 There's a whole panoply of things.
08:20 Ukraine is a thriving democracy in the ways that people are arguing all the time.
08:24 The problem is, in wartime, it's probably better to not be arguing so much.
08:29 We saw the removal of Valery Zeluzhny, who was the chief of staff of the armed forces,
08:36 replaced by somebody else.
08:38 Now, again, there are various versions as to what this means.
08:41 Some say it's because Zeluzhny was a political threat to Zelensky.
08:45 Other people say, well, he had to be removed because in wartime, people often change chiefs
08:51 of staff.
08:52 It happened in the Second World War in the UK, in France, and so it's not such a big
08:55 deal.
08:58 But there are political tensions within Ukraine.
09:00 And of course, if Ukraine were forced to negotiate at some point, then you could expect those
09:06 tensions to meet.
09:07 Zelensky would not survive a negotiation.
09:10 And the question is, who would be in Zelensky's place?
09:13 Would we have a Russian puppet or would we have someone on the other end of the spectrum
09:17 who could be an extreme nationalist?
09:19 Neither of these options are actually good for Europe.
09:22 Running out of time, Doug.
09:23 Where is Putin's support?
09:24 Look, you're absolutely right.
09:25 The polls, you can't trust them as far as you can throw them.
09:28 Most Russians are disinclined, just putting it mildly, to speak truth to pollsters.
09:32 They don't trust them either.
09:34 So they're very wary.
09:35 Everyone's looking over their back.
09:36 We're back to the Soviet-style period where, you know, neighbors denounce neighbors.
09:40 Schools are all patriotic.
09:41 Even schoolchildren denounce their classmates.
09:43 So the atmosphere is repressive.
09:45 It's not conducive to polls.
09:47 That said, with that giant caveat and asterisk, if you're to believe some of the polls by
09:51 Levada Center, by some of the more respected pollsters in Russia who try to get beyond
09:55 people's reticence to tell the truth, Putin's popularity is seven year high right now, which
10:02 is astounding when you think of it.
10:03 And why is that?
10:04 Because he has, under the filter of state-controlled media, this filter bubble where people are
10:09 not able, unless you're young and have VPNs and access to Internet, able to get out of
10:13 that filter bubble.
10:14 The hundreds million plus Russians who sit in front of their TVs and still watch the
10:18 state-controlled channel every night have been sold the myth, and I will call it a myth,
10:23 that Ukraine poses an existential threat to Russia, even if he's not still using the language
10:29 as frequently, "de-Nazify" Ukraine, Nazis, neo-Nazis running the government.
10:34 Even if that language isn't used as often, it's still very much there, and it's very
10:37 much still sold, in a sense, to a large majority of the Russian public.
10:41 A lot of people don't speak out politically, they become apolitical, apathetic, they just
10:45 want to keep their own lives, not get into the fray at all.
10:48 So the polls are absolutely misleading, but Putin, given that, still remains at an all-time
10:52 high.
10:53 A lot to unpack here.
10:54 I wish we had more time, but I want to thank our guests, Samantha DeBendern from Chatham
10:57 House, Douglas Herbert, our international affairs commentator.
10:59 Thanks to you both.
10:59 to you both.