Lawfare Archive: The Fate of Ukraine

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"Octopus 1-1-5", a 115 Euro-wexel-bonus decision. I'm Sarah Roberts, "Internet Lawfare", who can episode from "Octopus 1-2-1-5" for August 1, 2016. On July 28th, "President Boulevard of New Zealand" is the president Trump at the White House.

The visit comes in the report set the relationship between the two presidents has continued to improve over the past year, and as Ukraine continues to make gains on the battlefield.

“For today's archive, I chose an episode from February 26th, 2025.”

The episode is a live discussion hosted by Lawfare in the Brookings Institution,

about the then-incoming Second Trump administration,

and what it could mean for US Ukraine relations and the war. Guests included Lawfare's Benjamin Wittis, Tyler McBrion, and Anastasia of Apatna, as well as Fiona Hill in Constance's "Stotes of Mueller" of the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe.

It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrion, managing editor of Lawfare. With Brookings Institution's senior fellows Fiona Hill and Constance's "Stotes of Mueller", Lawfare Ukraine fellow Anastasia Lepatna,

and Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittis. "There is no going back for my generation to a comfy relationship with Russia that goes over the head of a country that has been attacked and is attacked every day. I want to make that very clear." Today, we're bringing you a discussion called Trump's return

in the fate of Ukraine. Coorded in front of a live audience at the Brookings Institution on February 24th. "I can't think of a more unpleasant occasion on which to gather here.

This is, as you know, the third anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we are here to talk about a variety of matters related to that and related as well to an immense ongoing change of U.S. policy with respect to the war. We are also here to introduce a project that we have been working at on at Lawfare for the last year or so, which we will talk about

and introduce, which is a project that we've done with our colleagues at Goat Rodio on the history of U.S. Ukrainian relations in the post-Soviet period, vis-à-vis Russia. So if that sounds well-timed to the moment, perhaps it is, we arranged this event when there was one major government change that was affecting Western policy toward Ukraine.

That was the transition from the Biden administration to the Trump administration and the shock therapy maybe that that is applying to the situation. There is now a second one, which is that we did have elections in Germany yesterday, and these produced something of a mixed message with respect to Ukraine policy. And so I wanted to ask Constanza to get us started and give us a sense of what

happened in Germany yesterday, how we should understand it vis-à-vis Ukraine and how we should understand it vis-à-vis the American shift in policy

So thank you very much. It is a distinct pleasure to co-host this with you because

the center on the U.S. in Europe has taken the changes brought on Europe and on the transatlantic relationship by the Russians full-scale invasion extremely seriously. It is literally reconfigured the way we work in every possible way. And I couldn't think of a better thing to do today with a better group of people. So thank you. Well, thank you. As for the German election,

oil processing. But it was, to those of you who occasionally follow the news, it will not have escaped you that the incoming Translute Chancellor of Germany

probably came out has made some newsworthy comments.

Both yesterday and in previous days on Europe's need for nuclear weapons, on what seems to him like the end of Transatlantic relations. And so on. Suffice it to say that this is a Chancellor who, in all fairness, like his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, is deeply committed to Europe and also to the Transatlantic relationship and the friendship with America,

except that he is committed to the old Transatlantic relationship and the America that he

“grew up with. So the current shifts in Washington are, I think, going to make that”

slightly difficult for him. Now, I don't want to joke about what is a deeply serious situation. I have just come back from three weeks in Europe and the real turmoil in the Transatlantic relationship started with JD Vance's device president speech in Munich on Valentine's Day, February 14th. I was in the overflow of the overflow room listening to it because every single participant of the Munich Security Conference wanted to hear it.

And Fiona was there as well. And I think it is fair to say that Europeans were profoundly shocked by it. I have been making the rounds in Europe not just in Germany, but also I'm coming from from Stockholm. And the Swedes who thought they had joined NATO just in time are now finding that they are joining us like the different NATO, then they thought they joined. So there is time or turmoil everywhere and people are processing things everywhere. But

“let me let me give you a capsule version of what I think happened last night in Germany.”

We always knew that the conservators were going to win this election. They pulled at double

the the the polling levels of the governing SPD. The question was how many parties would further him out have to govern with? And that was settled very late last night with a real NATO fighter of a of a counting of votes. BSW, the extreme left party led by the firebrands are about Zarbagnet, missed entry into the parliament, missed the 5% threshold by 13,000 and something votes. It will not surprise you to learn that they are going to go to the courts

over this and demanding a recount which is unusual in Germany. But there we are. I think we're catching up with with other countries. So Ferdigmauze based on that result and unless it is overtone by the courts which I have a hard time seeing because we all use paper ballots. It's slightly more difficult to sort of fake results there. It is Ferdigmauze is going to govern in the Grand Coalition with the social democrats. And I don't think that he will have any compunction

in supporting Ukraine. I think he intends to be a strong player in Europe. My, the reservations I have about that is that last night also saw a doubling of the AFD seats in parliament nearly a doubling of its vote chair with extremely high shares in eastern Germany of up to 37% in total there. Yeah, AFD just for the hard exchange for Germany. No, they're not neo-nazi, that's not precise. Okay. They are good friends with neo-nazi groupings. But they are not,

“they are not by definition neo-nazi and I think that is an important thing to say. They, the German”

domestic intelligence service have determined them to be in part or in some of the state level organizations fully extremist, right wing extremist. But they have been very careful in avoiding except for some, you know, French figures or, and one or two of their leaders in avoiding actual Nazi language. Also, well, forgive me. I say that because it is one of the, they are doing this very deliberately and strategically. And it is one of the things that makes it difficult

for example to outright ban them, which German law would allow, which I'm sure no doubt the, the vice president of the United States would consider yet another suppression of free speech and

quite constrained by an opposition headed by an extreme right wing party that will be out to

“hand in and that we out will be out to split his party. I think he will try to reach out to Europe,”

he will try to reach out to NATO. But I am going to put out there that ultimately, I think he may

end up being a transitional figure in what is going to be an even, an ever more fragmenting German political landscape, and I'll leave it at that. All right, Fiona, you were also at Munich, give us a sense of your impressions of where the United States is right now with respect to Ukraine and with respect to European interactions on that subject. Well, thanks very much. And I would say it's great to be here today, but I guess for all of us it isn't really, is it? It's quite

a depressing, as you said at the very beginning, anniversary and commemoration especially for Honestyia and others who are from Ukraine itself. And I think before we start to do this analysis, we just want to fully process what Ukrainians have been through during this last three years. And I mean, this is an absolute tragedy for Ukrainians. I mean, it's one of the reasons that Honestyian

“others are here. And we have to always remember the human side of this. And I just wanted to say that”

I listened to Vice President Vance's speech, standing next to Andrea Senyuk, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine who I happened to meet as I went into the overflow room of the overflow room. I would not quite show which overflow room I was in, but there were many. And I did actually try to attempt to intercede on his behalf with people who were guarding the main room to see if you could enter. I tried the old former Prime Minister of Ukraine routine for him, but it didn't work. So he was stuck

standing next to me. And he literally turned to me and said he thought he was going to cry after hearing the speech. And this is obviously a kind of a man who's been through quite a lot, so that will just put that things into perspective. There is a human side to all of this that we must not forget. And I want to in a way, I'm going to answer your question, but I'm going to kind of flip it around a little bit, because it's what has the United States done to itself and the eyes of European

“which was really depressing to, you know, listen to this. Why came to the United States in 1989?”

You know, when there was a complete shift in the Cold War. And I came here with, I guess,

Starry Rosy Eyes, I became a US citizen. I never thought that I would find myself in a position

where I was listening to Europeans and the UK used to be part of Europe, remember, before Prime Brexit. And also, you know, UK and other politicians talk about the United States as an adversary. And that was exactly what started to happen after the Vice President speech. Because suddenly, it was if a switch had been flipped. I was also standing next to a prominent member of the German Green Party who was family were refugees from the former Soviet Union, who was extraordinarily

well known. He said he was sick to his stomach. He never expected that the beacon, you know, kind of a freedom and opportunity that everybody had looked towards from the kind of Cold War onwards

was suddenly, you know, basically, lecturing Europeans about free speech and also openly

siding with as a Constanza has discussed an extreme right-wing party. It was not something that anybody in that whole could have fully processed. Now, the Europeans also know that they have themselves and this is kind of a large, something to blame for at this particular moment in this state of affairs. So, like Constanza, I mean, spending a lot of time going around Europe, two years ago, I lived in Germany for five or six months, just after the so-called

Zeiten vendor appeared when the previous Chancellor Schultz realized that the world had changed rather dramatically after Russia's invasion. And it was also very sobering to see that there was a kind of sense of helplessness and paralysis in Germany over this, which, you know, kind of, that's obviously the response to in some respect. So, those Constanza says a very fractured electorate. I've been spending a lot of time in the United Kingdom, my home birthplace. I still

remain a dual citizen there. I've also just been in Paris, coincidentally at the same time that many of the European leaders showed up for a kind of an emergency meeting in the work of the Vance speech and, like Constanza, Scandinavia and all kinds of, you know, other countries in between. And there's a real feeling that the Europeans really mismanaged and wasted, not just the last several years after the invasion of Ukraine, but, you know, the last decade plus since the

Wales summit where President Obama basically exorted all of them to think about taking their own

That was determinous with the first invasion of Ukraine and the seizing of Crimea. And now the realisation has set in in the kind of ten years that their ten years behind are being really serious about their own defense. So, that was also that moment where it became obvious basically farming out your security to the US was no longer an option. And they've been told that nicely, if quite some time, now that we're told in a rather brutal fashion, not just by

vice-president Vance, but also by new Secretary of Defense, Exeth, that Europe is no longer a priority

for the United States. And we've always thought, well, we're looking at Ukraine, getting back to

“your initial question, as we got into a war of attrition. And some of you will remember this”

from earlier discussions, we've had here at Brookings and all kinds of, you know, writings that various people have had, that the one where that you got a shift in a war of attrition is where the external environment has a merger change. And this has been the merger change, not as many might have hoped as shift in the dynamics inside of Russia, which has been a bit of a solid rock for the last 25 years and remains. So, Putin hasn't really budged in terms of his worldview,

but the shift has been here in the United States. The United States as we all know because we've been living in it, has been in a process of constant change for the last 25 years, going back to 9/11, the interventions and Afghanistan, a version of a rocket, etc. And we have been literally all over the place. And finally, it's the United States that has changed. And in Moscow, the feeling

“is the United States has converged with Russia and with Russian views. And that's what shifted”

the entire dynamic. And so that's actually where we are now with Ukraine. The United States has shifted and Europe has realized that if it wants to be serious about its own security, and also

about a long-term settlement of Ukraine, which is essential to European security, then they need to

change as well. And that's going to be the big question as we look ahead. We have President Macron, a France coming into town today, he may already be here. He's not joining us as I learned for our Russian security. Yeah, I'll be great to hear from him. I'm sure I'm sure you'll be here to see from him. And we've got Prime Minister Stormer of the UK coming in on Thursday. And you know, the writing is very much on the wall for everybody that Ukraine's future is also the future

of European security, and the fins in the Swedes who did join NATO also joined precisely because

“they're realized that you need to have a new look of European security in the fins. Let's just,”

you know, remind ourselves, are actually already to go. They are probably, you know, one of the best equipped most battle ready at all times. Miller, she's because they had the Ukraine experience back in the beginning of World War II when they were invaded, also by the Soviet Union and

had to fight them off all on their own. And they've never, you know, basically lost that

dynamic in that important. So I think, but it's a really consequential time today where every chicken has come home to rest. Yes, I want to pick up on something you said at the beginning, which is that we have to not forget the personal tragedy and experience of Ukrainians in this conversation. And so Nostya, I want to ask you to tell us two stories. The first is, what were the circumstances in which you learned about the American change in policy? You literally

were on your way from Kiev to here to do this event and to launch this podcast when all of a sudden the United States switched sides. So first of all, I want you to just tell us about that experience. And then secondly, in the back, although she may not, oh, she may be here, is your one-year-old daughter. And I want you to tell us the circumstances of all this birth. It will be relevant to promise. The details are amazing. They're not being important. Well, I mean, the gruesome miss of it all,

but thank you and thank you for your engine all of this. It's amazing to have an opportunity to speak about it all. So yes, when Trump, I don't think Trump decided to flip a switch when a bunch of Ukrainians realized who he actually is. That's more like it. I was somewhere between the three trains and two planes and the four-day long travel from Ukraine to here. And I couldn't help but think that like my whole life, I've had an image of the US as this kind of standard of

tiny. I was 12 or 13. And that's sort of like, since then, I have conscious memory of my life

“and what's right and what are my values? 2014. Yes. And since then, I've always known that like,”

this is who we are as Ukrainians. We align ourselves with the West. We look to the US for guidance. We look to Europe for guidance. This is what's right and what's on the East is very, very wrong

and we never look there. And so I'd always joke that like, we don't mind American meddling,

you know, when some of my more leftist leaning friends, you know, what accused the US of new colonialism or something when it comes to Ukraine, I'd be like, we actually love it. Like, please comment, clean everything up, like get rid of corruption, like get involved. And many people who joke about this, because, you know, the alternative for us has always been Russia, right, because the geography really messed us up. We're really stuck in there in between two sides.

And so this whole image of the US is this brometer of what's good and that it really shattered for me in the last week. And I keep hearing people say that there is no going back that this damage that Trump has done is kind of irreversible and you will explain to me later whether that's true, you know, better than I do. But that's just like really depressing because now I feel like, you know, the US has sort of gone and doing whatever it is that it's doing. Europe isn't really doing

anything and as one friend of mine put it, it would be nice if Europe was a thing, like they would be helpful. So that's certainly how Ukrainians view it, because Ukrainians and we'll get to that have had better experiences with the US over history and with Europe as well. And so we now really feel like we're once again just like left in our own and it's really not a position that anyone should be in and we now don't even have a standard like institutionalist more of values and liberty.

We're now being accused of being in a dictatorship which is laughable, right? And so there is this

just like prevailing feeling of disappointment that everything I've always thought of as writing

good connected to the US, like it's all shattering kind of in front of my eyes and it affects the entire country. So that's just really depressing. So the despite your story about how it's birthed. So my daughter, she's sleeping, thank God. She's very much cooperating with this event and I'm grateful for it. She was born on December 31st in 2023 and you know that's already crazy enough the whole thing is crazy enough. What's even crazy is that the next day after that Russian launched

“one of its biggest ever aerial attacks against Ukraine. I think it was January 1st or January 2nd.”

So at the time that you know we were still at the hospital. We haven't checked out and left home yet. At 5 a.m. at some point there is this massive attack. I mean it's like almost a hundred drones or something. I may be exaggerating but it was really big. At that point it was called one of the biggest

attacks in years and so it was just incredible right because you and I mean we were fine. We were all

taken to this underground shelter with dozens of very pregnant women and I was only like very thankful that I've already you know got her out. So I don't have to go through that experience in a bunker. So you know that was helpful but I just think to remember the feeling that me and people around me other moms with like one-year-old babies we weren't scared because we've been at this for years at that point and we've lived there since the very beginning. We were just very annoyed. There was

this frustration that like we really shouldn't be dealing with this as pet like in any circumstance but especially right now and I really didn't spot fear in people's eyes. It was more of like okay like one is this going to be over like can we just go and like have a life and you know and take

“care of our babies and and I think it's so tragic that those were the emotions that we're feeling”

because that means that like we're all not all I can speak for all but a lot of us are pretty much numb at this point because we we see this gruesomeness in this tragedy every single day and at some point unfortunately even though I'd prefer that we kept feeling you know the strongest empathy and the strongest sense of laws at some point something in your body on a biological level just adapt and that just becomes a part of your life and you end up being an interviews with the

rainy and drones flying around you and you're not going anywhere because God bless America and air defense you know and and you know you'll be fine most likely and you just keep on living with it and people tell you you know stay safe and you don't even know what that means anymore because

is insane to me because I remember having a conversation with a friend in April early April 2022

so just around the month since the close to invasion started after the close to kill invasion started and I was in Lviv at the time a city in eastern Ukraine and I wanted one to time with my friends to come stay with me and they fully seriously told me that they don't want to live creative because they want to be there for victory day and so my friends didn't come because they were they had this distinct feeling that they were on the precipice of this historic moment right

they were ready to march through the shatek with their in their vishvankas and flags and celebrated but now it's three years later and I'm you know sitting here and we're going to talk about how our biggest ally is turning into something of an enemy and so you know that's I guess is where we're at so I just want to say if that sounds dramatic Nostia is actually understating it I woke up

“that morning to a set of texts from her which I think I still have this was January 1, 2024”

and the first one said the good news is I have a beautiful baby girl the bad news is I'm in a

bomb shelter under the under the hospital with a whole bunch of laboring moms and you don't know it's a thing because in one hand it's a hospital no one targets hospital but then you're like no that's it they're Russians they actually might because there was a good hospital a maternity hospital at one point and so all right well I don't mean to be glib but the good news is we got a rip-waring podcast out of it so Tyler you're going to set this one up yeah I mean you

smooth men thank you you got you got to you got to take lines where they present themselves so Tyler tell us a little bit of the story of escalation and how this project had its genesis and where it came from give us a little bit of the the sort of institutional history of the project we're releasing today yes thanks Ben and thanks everyone honor to be up here with with this panel I think the past three weeks especially have been a bit of a proof of concept for escalation

to say the least this podcast started I mean I guess three years ago you could say with with the full scale invasion and and about a year in maybe I had had joined Laugh Fair as managing editor the biggest story in foreign policy and the world at the time and in many ways still is Russia's invasion of Ukraine so it it just seemed like on the one hand an obvious choice to to think about how we could tell the history of the US and Ukraine and and how to explain

what we were seeing I certainly know Russia expert I know Ukraine expert so it's it's not surprising that I was surprised at the full scale invasion but it was I got the sense that even people who have been watching this closely we're also surprised so we wanted to answer that question around that time I

believe Nostia was had been doing amazing reporting for the key independent and Ben was hosting a show

called live from Ukraine and and Nostia had joined one of those those episodes and what was really

“important I think of that show was to get a sense of what it was like for Ukrainians in Ukraine”

at the time I think this conflict of especially is has been the victim of a lot of misinformation and revisionism and so a podcast that really lays out the history of the US Ukraine relationship we felt was was so important to to set the record straight and I'll just say one more thing that that working with Nostia over the past year I think you got a good sense of how it was a really healthy dose of perspective every time I was maybe feeling tired and trying to finish up an

editor something and it was quite humbling then to to have someone on the other end of Zoom who is eight years younger than I am has an infant is under bombardment is in in an area shelter and I I think that's also what we're trying to do with this podcast is is really drive home what it this experience is like and and what the stakes are one of the key voices

“perhaps the key voice in the first episode is Fiona who tells this incredible story that I think most”

Americans have if they ever knew of and I certainly did at one point because I lived through it but I completely forgotten about it which is how redicent the United States administration was about the idea of Ukrainian independence to begin with and one of the themes that we've been exploring

for the idea of an independent Ukraine as they later imagine themselves to have been and a lot of these episodes seem to involve European cities that begin with be you but this one actually involved the president going to give and making a speech not quite against Ukrainian independence but almost against you I'd say it was against I'll just just say certainly not for let's and so Fiona

take us back you have this incredible line in the first episode where you say you know I graduated

from my master's program and then the field that I was in went out of existence a few months ago later but tell us the story of President Bush and his speech to the Ukrainian Parliament you know I'm catching the eye here of an old colleague of mine Masha McGraw live who will remember all of this very well we worked together at the Rage of Foundation you know back in the early 1990s it kind of kicked off thinking about this new transformed landscape after the collapse of the Soviet

Union but yes I did a masses and Soviet studies which soon became history I did a PhD in history after was thinking I needed to rapidly read too after I got my degree in the June of 1991 at the same time as Edward Shevad Nadza the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union was getting an honorary degree at the same ceremony and was looking very perplexed you know I was sitting on the on the stage and he was soon to be the first president of an independent Georgia so

this is taking us back you know long time to 1991 because by the end of that year the Soviet Union had it hadn't really collapsed actually and that's actually something that's also very important

“to remember that it got picked apart by some of the elites at the top including Boris Yeltsin”

the first president of an independent independent Russia because they did they wanted to get rid of Mikhail Gorbachev because the they needed a reconstitution of reform the revamping of its son's a little familiar about where we're sitting at the moment of the Soviet system and the heads of the republics of Russia Belarus and Ukraine got together to basically dismantle the Soviet Union intending to keep together in some part but before that as this starts to kind of move through the

whole system towards this amazing and really kind of dramatic set of events George H. W. Bush

indeed goes off to Kiev and starts to make an appeal for you know the guys to keep the band together and I mean it's it's very interesting to think back in this next year of course is our 250th anniversary of the U.S. his own independence sloughing off the Mad King George and the United Kingdom and it's quite remarkable think where we've come in 250 years we start to think about what that anniversary is going to look like next year and yet we've had a hard time despite the

fact of being a revolutionary power a power that's fought for its independence of really kind of

“going along with others when they've come to that moment as well and I think that's because in the”

meantime the United States started to become something of an imperial power itself over time after being helped by the French to keep the Brit's you know kind of out of the picture again you know during a whole period of 1812 etcetera you know after that we kind of moved on you know pretty much doing the same thing as other great world powers were doing at the time too expanding out territory etcetera etcetera and so George Edward Bush is feeling very uncomfortable

at the idea of a really kind of what he fears will be and he was quite right in many respects

a chaotic becoming a part of the Soviet Union we've always told ourselves that it in fact it was

almost violence and conflict free and that was not the case of all at all and in fact what we're still in the middle of is the wars of the Soviet succession and so this is kind of like 1812 it's you know kind of the whole uproar all over again because Ukraine had been independent you know for 30 plus years by the time Russia tries to kind of take it back in the fold again

“and some respects remember that George H. W. Bush had been the head of the CIA at one point”

he might not have been far wrong in the thinking that we were heading you know to some kind of you know disastrous outcome down the line if all of this kind of came apart it's an extremely powerful little story that I think represents something larger both in Ukraine's relationship with the United States which is a subject of the podcast but also constancy in Ukraine's relationship with Europe because you have this moment where Ukraine

and that includes particularly European countries who see Ukraine some degree is a transit

situation for Russian national national gas and and I guess you know there's this we clearly see from the Trump administration that this has not changed in the case of the United States we are we are back to thinking of Ukraine as something that you negotiate directly with Moscow about without even having Ukrainians at the table. How's Europe learned the lesson that we clearly have not learned? I knew when I signed up for this that I was going to be at the

“damn European on this panel. No you're the blessing European on that. I think there is a lot”

of fair criticism to lawback Europe and Germany over its behavior in the past 10 years including

the fears of the assaults led coalition of escalation. That said I do think that circumstances have changed completely. The other place I went to before the Munich Security Conference was Brussels I spent three days running around NATO the European External Action Service and the European Commission. Before I get to that I want to perhaps say something slightly more personal because I was a reporter for a long time and my time as a reporter began in the years

after the fall of the war but because I had trained as a lawyer and as a human rights lawyer my paper said human rights stories, human rights stories around other Balkans of Afghanistan so I spent a

lot of time covering war crimes and finally war crimes tribunals and I am angry every time

I read about Russian bombardments of Ukraine. I wake up angry every bloody morning and I go to bed

“angry about this. This is not okay and I think I can tell you that many of my fellow Europeans”

and people in my field feel the same way. A visceral profound anger at Russia. There is no going back for my generation. To a comfy relationship with Russia that goes over the head of a country that has been attacked and is attacked every day. I want to make that very clear. I also want to say I want to say that if we are completely fair some of those air defences that are protecting cave right now are Danish and German. And so and if you look at the numbers we have the

president of the United States currently telling us that we don't do anything for Ukraine financially or with military support I think we all know that we look at the numbers those tell another story. And Sweden just made a major commitment. Yeah and the and the day ends and so on. I mean and and I will say the other thing here that's operating here apart from profound anger right about what is being done to Ukraine and the lies being told about that in Moscow and elsewhere.

The other thing that of course is motivating Europeans is a very real, very visceral fear about the degree of Russian disinformation and sabotage in Europe and in Germany. There was

“especially in amount of meddling in the German election that we have not seen I think since the”

Cold War and maybe not even then. And the intelligence services across Europe but also in Germany even in Germany I should say because they were long, very rich and about this. Have an extremely forthright in calling this out and attributing it immediately and I think the Russians have stopped bothering trying to hide their signatures. The people I met in Brussels were working day and night. We're working day and night to cobble together support for Ukraine. We're working day and night

to cobble together additional money for European defense and we're working day and night and literally I mean one of my meetings started at a quarter of nine in the evening, not in the morning. And let me perhaps end on a point that is easy to I mean it's easy to say that this is all performative but the entire European Commission and its leadership and the leader of the council and 13 heads of state are today and give to mock the anniversary.

That has to turn into policy right that has to turn into money that has to turn into more weapons. But I think it would not be quite fair to say that that's not meaningful right.

conflict of our lifetime and that the future of Europe depends on its resolution in favor of Ukraine.

“I just like to add something important to what Constancer said here because although it might”

not feel it from the United States and the further obviously you get away from Washington, DC definitely doesn't feel it and over the last three years I've spent a lot of time going all the way around the country talking to audiences about why Ukraine actually is relevant for the United States not just because of Ukrainian Americans but you know because of actually the dependence that America has had on the larger international system that was really rooted in the

transatlantic alliance and how we've actually prospered for it over this time and again we've kind of

forgotten all of us as time has gone on. I mean in the UK they forgot about why Europe was relevant

and you know very blivety voted for Brexit you know for example so it's not unheard of to kind of you know lose the plot over time and forget about where things are but in Europe right now people know that they're under siege from Russia all the time. So as we're sitting here talking and inquest has been going on in London about the death of Dom Sturgis which is not probably household name here but I'm sure that some of you know who she is she is the woman who very

unfortunately was killed by Novichok from the bottle of perfume that the Russian GIU the military intelligence discarded in a charity donation bin that her partner found and brought home and they spread this perfume in each other discovering in fact that it was a deadly weapon's great nerve agent that had just been used to poison a former Russian spy service script on his daughter Eulior in the town of Soulsbury. Now the only reason this was uncovered is because the UK has

a facility near Soulsbury port and down where they you know bit like we have in Frederick Merrill and where they can do testing for nerve agents biological and chemical weapons. So only eight countries knew that this novichok even existed so it was by chance that this you know actually happened there and it was able to to be revealed and this is only one of course of assassinations that have taken place on British soil there was Madagzander Livinenko who was

poisoned by Polonium again a radiological agent so the first dirty bomb that was used on British soil and also spread Polonium all the way around the United Kingdom. There's lots of evidence of

intervention in pretty much every European election of course constant attacks on critical

national infrastructure through cyber attacks. In fact the biggest threat to Europe today is a critical national infrastructure and pipelines and cables under the Baltic Sea the Estonians the Swedes are under threat the threats through freedom and democracy etc and so all of this is real in Europe. So Europeans know that what Ukraine is experienced the destruction of its critical national infrastructure all of the interventions that have been made in Ukraine's politics before

is what they're facing as well. So although again we may be remote here it doesn't feel remote in the US and I would say if you look actually now in polling that I saw last week in the UK for example

“where of course the relationship with the United States is extraordinary important 48% of people”

said in a poll that it was more important to stick by Ukraine than it was to improve the relationship with the United States at this point 48% in terms of favoring sticking by the United States it was in the 20s 20% some of the people said they didn't know because it's a hard you know point to be put but we're seeing really a shift here where people in Europe now see that their situation is on the line so again that rupture that we mentioned before is real and it's a it's a really sobering thought

again as I said before chickens have come home to roots a lot more should have been done many of us been putting this you know on the agenda for Europe for a long time but it is real the security threat in in Europe it's not just imagined it's not just this information and it's now visibly felt. So Tyler I want to ask you I referred earlier to this cycle that began with what came to be called George H. W. Bush's chicken key of speech so named by the columnist William

Sapphire in which you know sort of Ukrainians expect American backing and they don't get it at the level that they expected or that we promise it and this is a we may be going through

“what I think is the sort of fourth and most dramatic cycle of that where we actually side with the”

Russians but all of these episodes have to do with Ukraine's relationship with Russia and one of the

it can't pretty naturally. It's a persona because Tyler is anything but naive but you're the guy who's

like G I didn't know this happened. Yeah I mean it's a couple and any other naive Americans listening or younger listeners chicken key of is used pejoratively which is you may not know because it's a delicious dish and it's a but no I mean you're absolutely right it the history of the US Ukraine since Independence in 1991 has been one of misunderstandings and betrayals and one of our episodes it's called the worst of both worlds because also features feel exactly right there's one of her

prior lives the the New York Times had an editorial I believe over the weekend in which it it condemns what they called a complete 180 in in US foreign policy toward Ukraine and I was thinking that it that's not maybe absolutely true you know it's you mentioned that the US has viewed Ukraine for a long time through through Russian lenses through Russian lens there was a Ukrainian diplomat named Boris Tarsuk who we speak to on the podcast who said the very same thing he says that

the US always looks at Ukraine through Russian glasses and sort of plays by their terms and so

it seems that the the trouble administration is is looking at this history and picking the worst lessons and accelerating them and acting on that I will say though that there is reporting I believe this morning out in Bloomberg that the US may commit to a sovereign Ukraine in the negotiations which is heartening whether or not they listen to the first episode of escalation I'm not sure I can't confirm or deny that but it just seems like that's the obviously the bare minimum can I just point out

we've done that before like that's the Budapest memo right yeah walk us through a couple of those cycles because there are the as I joked earlier they do tend to be named for cities in Europe

that start with BU the the first cycle is the independence of Ukraine itself right that the

“chicken key of speech the second cycle comes only a few years later what happens right so I believe”

referring to the Budapest memorandum which I think maybe a few years ago you ask Americans who even Americans who are very well versing in foreign policy and in US foreign policy history may not it's not a household name what's put it but in Ukraine it very much is and by the way there the only moment of true comedy in in the entire podcast is at the beginning of the second episode where our producer Max who's sitting here in the front row asks a young Ukrainian activist

who's sitting back there Maria Leaton what do you think of the Budapest memo and she exclaims oh my god it's a total fail and you know this is something that is not in the consciousness of the average American but you ask a Ukrainian about the Budapest memo this is fresh in the front of

“their mind you have to hear how she said that though for full drama so make sure to listen to”

that so to catch us up to speed in broad strokes after the fall of the Soviet Union a large part of the nuclear arsenal left by the Soviet it's actually was in Ukraine they couldn't really operate it a lot of the command and control was was back in Moscow it was very expensive to maintain but nuclear weapons comes with some degree of security but the the deal that was struck was that Ukraine would give up the nuclear weapons for financial incentives as well as from the American perspective

assurances of of Ukrainian security from the Ukrainian perspective I think there was an understanding that it was more of a guarantee there was a two different translations actually and I think this is emblematic of the relationship the US wanted some sort of ambiguity to give it more room to maneuver but that maneuvering or that that room only left room for Russia to take advantage of the ambiguity

“basically and I'll also just end by saying in learning about this I think it was it was very important”

to for Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons nasty a disagreed and we sort of had this thing come where it was a microcosm of the U.S. Ukraine relationship every time we would argue about an episode in the narrative arc and everything but I think the Budapest memo is is a great example. Yeah so one of the striking things about that story when we talked to diplomats at the very senior levels when we talked to people who were literally in one case my sister's college roommate

who was a 22-year-old diplomat at U.S. at embassy key of at this time is how guilty they feel

how much he regrets it. It's a it's a remarkable I think that I learned from the reporting of this

“which is just how many people have regrets about what we did in that context Fiona there's another”

city in Europe that begins with BU another European capital that where there was an understanding reached that you played a substantial role in a number of years later that also shows up is one of these kind of recurrent cycles of are not being able to kind of form a coherent policy tell us about what happened in book arrest. Yes and I just want to quickly add on the Budapest memorandum I'd mentioned Edward Chevard-Nazi before. Edward Chevard-Nazi when he was president of

Georgia actually told his Ukrainian counterpart see if you can keep one or two of the nuclear weapons when they were giving them up perm around the time of the Budapest memorandum.

I want to be do stick a minute because it's you know kind of because he basically hey he had been of

course the Soviet Foreign Minister and he said he'd seen documents about what would happen if any of the Soviet republics had tried to succeed and he said he might find they might come in handy later which of course if Ukraine had still been a nuclear state and and Belarus had been as well their Belarus has been pretty much swallowed up by Russia. You can probably wouldn't have been invaded and the non-politiferation consequences of all of this are real too because constanza and

others have been noting that in Germany and in many other places now this talking about Europe needing to have a bomb and you know what's the also the message to Japan South Korea

you know other countries who feel threatened and book arrest just so we can get back to this

“point as well becomes important in that context because it's another effort to give Ukraine and”

Georgia at the time you know some kinds of guarantees for their future security. Now book arrest but was actually more about Georgia than it was about Ukraine at the time and this is where you know the reference to a worst of both worlds comes. In Ukraine at the time of the book arrest NATO summit which was in 2008 there wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm for joining NATO at that point so we have to remember Ukrainians you know that the politics in Ukraine have taken all kinds of twist

in terms. The Ukrainians have kind of aware that and this was at the popular level of the population there wasn't a great overwhelming support for going into NATO but it was more of a kind of an elite project thinking around the Ukrainian president but in Georgia there was a full-throated desire at the popular and elite level to become part of NATO and Georgia had been supporting the

“United States and Iraq and Afghanistan and was pushing for a membership action plan to NATO and”

it was thought and I'm still trying to all I'm absolutely the years later trying to piece together who thought this because it seems to have been a whole collection of people from all kinds of different backgrounds that Georgia's case would be strengthened if Ukraine joined in as well and so this was the kind of fateful decision. A letter was written to George W. Bush asking for Bush's support, President Bush being a good text and this is W rather than HW was more enthusiastic about

supporting the feisty countries of Georgia and Ukraine. This was of course after the United States had rolling truly weighted into Iraq and was trying to pursue the freedom agenda. Bush thought that Ukraine and Georgia and their freedom should also be supported. I mean I know this because I did a deep dive for a series of them for the President, these were the kinds of things that he said and he said that if they made an appeal and that on military terms they looked like they had

the way with all to contribute to NATO and Georgia already was and Ukraine at that time as we now know actually still had a sizable and capable army in certainly in terms of being able to as we've seen over these last years keep the Russian somewhat at bay then he would support the membership action plan. Problem is nobody else really supported it elsewhere in Europe. Partly this was to do with Mikhail Sakashvili and perceptions of him and his role.

There's new that Ukraine wasn't fully on board at this particular point and there was a lot of resistance and so what happened though we briefed the President and I and others that this wasn't likely to happen we actually briefed against it because we think that under the idea that if you push for something you can't get it's not a great idea because it just sort of shows up weaknesses and all the kind of like divisions. When President Bush decided to go ahead there was at a

buck or rest as we now know we've heard from Chancellor Merkel's memoirs. It was Chancellor Merkel herself who kind of appigned trying to find some kind of solution to some of her Eastern European

casual aside of one day they might get in to NATO was punched on by many of these Europeans at

“the table who were quite supportive, a handful of them who were supportive of pushing for Ukraine's”

membership action plan as well as judges. That was kind of turned into the text of the buck or rest member at memorandum and why was the worst of both worlds that one day they will get in to NATO was almost really a promise it was a kind of an open door and Putin of course wanted to slam that door and jump everyone's foot and it and bash the door off you know Ukraine and Georgia's face and of course in August of 2008 Russia does invade Georgia at a pre-text over

you know basically exchanges with peacekeepers in South Africa which frankly myself and other colleagues

have been warning for some kind of flashpoint in Georgia for good year before that there was certainly you know tensions building up between Georgia and Russia and Ukraine realizes at that point that it's completely likely exposed in terms of security membership action plan is not article five it doesn't bring you any security at all and the big flaw in all of NATO as far as Russia was concerned was it was backed up by the United States because this point Europe hasn't really been

contributing as we all know you know to the extent in which it was required so all of this comes down to a single point of failure in NATO at this point which is the United States willingness in a to kind of really backstop article five and from then on Putin's trying to test whether the United States is actually willing to in fact defend any of its allies because it knows and finds out pretty quickly certainly not Georgia and later on in 2014 certainly not not Ukraine I just wanted

to point out since Fiona mentioned proliferation right there has been a in my view intellectually brother academic debate debate about nuclear weapons no just in case the Americans for one reason or another decided to pivot to Asia and that academic debate has just gone live with comments by the incoming chancellor before the election saying that we that in response to the speeches by Secretary of Defense Hackseth at NATO and at the NATO Ministerial and Brussels and then by

Vice President Vance in Munich that Europe was going to have to develop its own nuclear deterrent that would mean that the French and the British deterrent which is per se not enough to replace the American deterrent would have to be expanded and Germany would have to somehow join in that. I cannot over-emphasize what kind of a sea change that is in the politics of my country right that used to be an absolute and complete taboo and we are in fact signatories right of the non-proliferation

“treaty but I I think that what we are seeing here are coming out of this White House”

is taking the lid off of many things including of proliferation worldwide right and I do not need to describe to anyone the escalation risk inherent in that right we have similar debates in Asia namely in Japan and in South Korea and I will say that I was at a dinner at NATO before the Munich Security Conference where in Eastern European said we're going to have to get nuclear weapons too that is where we are and that's not a good thing and let me let me end this by saying I

personally feel not only do I think that that is ill-advised but it is it's a clear it is of course a response to the fact that that Russia has successfully employed the threats of nuclear weapons use in this in its invasion of Ukraine and that that has served as a significant deterrent against escalation by both the Biden White House and the shorts transit. So you can understand the the

“political mechanics of this but the truth is that discussing a European nuclear deterrent”

is in many ways a a distraction from a much more urgent issue which is our conventional deterrent deficiencies and the need to to dramatically increase our defense industrial production and defense spending. So there are there I just want to point out that there is a NATO summit in the Hague this summer and there are a lot of extremely urgent questions hanging over that summit and you can see from the calendar of EU emergency summits that is now beginning on March 6th the council then a European

Union summit and in the third week of March I think you will see a ticking up of news out of Brussels

and out of Europe on developing an independent deterrent of whatever kind. I want to ask Nostia

follies and betrayals but you know in the podcasts we actually spend a bit of time on some Ukrainian

follies and Fiona alluded earlier to the politics of Ukraine being a little bit all over the place. So as a Ukrainian who was not born when any of that happened some of it was more recent tell us a little bit about the experience of looking back on Ukrainian history and the course of doing this work. That was actually extremely fascinating for me because as you said a lot of it I haven't

lived through. I was walking into this show with you know being aware of their

“responsibility of you know spreading Ukraine's message and that's why we have an American co-host”

and a Ukrainian co-host you know I had to make sure that Ukraine's history was written right and given justice. So we covered a lot of extremely important topics that are under-reported or that Western audiences don't understand like for example we spend a great deal of talking about language politics because everyone is utterly confused about it so we had to explain it but yeah there were moments where it was very uncomfortable for me and also quite eye-opening that actually it's not just

“evil-American to master all of it and I mean I'm exaggerating of course I always knew”

that's not the case but it was very interesting to see that Americans and Europeans had their great deal of problems but also very often the Ukrainian government has messed up badly again and again and we really made ourselves look unreliable corrupt and often a lot like Russia as well and so it was very important for me to of course be as objective and as truthful as possible you know went to put my Ukrainian head off and my journalist head on and I'm proud of all of the work that

“I've done and I think it's going to be amazing to see each issue that we've covered each summit each”

city each event has these two distinct few points of it and and kind of two roots from the American and Ukrainian one of you so I really hope all of you enjoy it. We are going to leave it there thank you to Constanza Tyler, Nastia and Fiona. The Loffer podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution you can get out of a few versions of this another Loffer podcast by becoming a Loffer material supporter

at our website Loffermedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for other shows including rational security allies the aftermath and escalation our latest Loffer presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. Check out our written work

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