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Russia-Ukraine War – A Definitive History Of The War – Serhii Plokhy
217 Plays1 year ago
Ep 027 – Nonfiction. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when considering history, shouldn't have been such a surprise. Harvard Professor of Ukrainian History, Serhii Plokhy, joins me to discuss his new book, "The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History."
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Transcript
Echoes of the Past: 2008 Recession and Political Outcomes
00:00:00
Speaker
We are in a very precarious situation, both in the United States and worldwide, because the recession of 2008 produced politically the same outcomes as the Great Depression of 1929, 1932 produced. A lot of xenophobia, populism, nationalism, eventually resulted in the big war. We have
00:00:28
Speaker
the rise of the populist and nationalist leaders globally, worldwide. So it's a global battle. If one of their guys wins, they all win. So it's a battle for democracy, and it's not just a cliché. I'm not just saying
00:00:51
Speaker
to sound somehow global or alarmist or mobilize support for Ukraine where maybe there is no reason for that. It is a case of clash between autocracy and democracy.
00:01:19
Speaker
Hi, everyone.
Introduction to War Books Podcast and Serhi Plohy
00:01:20
Speaker
This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today, I am extremely excited to have on the show Serhi Plohy for his new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History. Serhi is a professor of Ukrainian history and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.
00:01:47
Speaker
He is a leading authority on the history of the Cold War, and he is the author of Adams and Ashes, A Global History of Nuclear Disasters and Nuclear Folly, A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Serhi, how are you today?
Understanding Russian Aggression Towards Ukraine
00:02:03
Speaker
Well, I'm good. It's a pleasure to be on your show, to be on your program. So I look forward to really great questions and interesting conversation.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, the pleasure is all mine because I am so glad that you wrote this book. And I'm glad because I remember, and I think a lot of other people felt this way too, and you actually write about it a little bit as well.
00:02:29
Speaker
although, of course, you've got much more context. In February of 2022, I remember hearing on the news that Russia was massing troops on the Ukrainian border and they were probably going to invade Ukraine. And I was like, how could that be possible? You know, it seemed like such a surprise, but Putin didn't just wake up one day and was like, I think today I'll invade Ukraine. There's a lot of history behind how this invasion happened and how this war started.
00:02:57
Speaker
And I thought your book did an excellent job of filling in that gap for me. Because really, when you look at the history, maybe it wasn't such a surprise that this war started. So maybe first, in your own words, a question I like to ask everyone on the show, could you just tell the audience, what is your book about? Well, the book is very straightforward.
00:03:23
Speaker
the subject that is in the main title of the book, The Russo-Ukrainian War. And what is a little bit more complex is exactly the issue of where to start that story. And one thing that I'm really stating in the book and try to show as clearly as I can is that the war didn't start on February 24, 2022.
00:03:51
Speaker
Last year, the war started in February of 2014 with the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian special forces and military and Russian Navy.
Historical Context: Soviet Disintegration and its Aftermath
00:04:03
Speaker
And if you look deeper into the history of the triggers for the war preconditions, the context is really the context of the disintegration of first the Soviet Union back in 1991.
00:04:20
Speaker
And even earlier than that, the disintegration of the European empires, including the Russian Empire in the middle of World War I, the Bolsheviks stitched together the Russian Empire using force, but also using new ideology called communism.
00:04:40
Speaker
And it lasted for a while. Then in 1991, it fell apart. We were all relieved that the fall of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, took place without a major conflict. And what we realize now that that major conflict, that major war, was not avoided. It was just postponed. And it is happening right now.
00:05:07
Speaker
between the two largest successor states to the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, Russia and Ukraine.
00:05:16
Speaker
And that's one of the meanings of the subtitle of the book. The subtitle is the return of history. So I bring a lot of history to explain the developments, but there is also another meaning of the return of history. Back in 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an article and then later a book
00:05:42
Speaker
on the victory of democracy, liberal democracy, as a form of government. And in that context, end of history. And it looks like our hopes were a little bit premature. We all were, I certainly shared your
00:06:06
Speaker
your thoughts and your feelings when I listened to the news about Russia massing troops on the waters with Ukraine, that how could it be?
Personal Impact of War on Serhi Plohy's Family
00:06:15
Speaker
That sort of things were happening back in the 20th century and pro-optic rations, the annexation of the territories, the imperial wars, but now history unfortunately is back, including those very, very bad
00:06:36
Speaker
dramatic parts of history of the 20th century. Yeah, and you're so right when it comes to war and history and trying to figure out, you know, where things started, because you can just, you can keep going back. Something that I was surprised to learn that you wrote about with Crimea is that was just a couple days after the Maidan protests that Alice did, the Ukrainian leaders.
00:07:03
Speaker
You'd be like, oh, well, maybe that was the start of things. But if you go back further, then there's this whole line, this succession of events that happened that brought us here. I actually want to start, before we dive into the history, I want to start with your afterword. Because you write that this book was a very personal book for you. And the Russo-Ukrainian War has really impacted you personally and impacted your family. Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:07:33
Speaker
Well, I come from Ukraine and I was in touch with my family, part of my family, it is in Ukraine, in the days and weeks leading to the war.
00:07:48
Speaker
The war affected my family in many ways. So my sister was a refugee for a while, then came back, returned. One of my cousins died, was killed in battle near Bakhmut. And what I see now in terms of statistics, up to 80% of Ukrainians today either
00:08:18
Speaker
have a relative or a friend that was killed or was wounded by the war. So from that point of view, it looks like just my case is very typical for Ukrainian generals.
00:08:37
Speaker
Wow, that is, I didn't realize that because that's a massive amount of everybody's got somebody then. Almost everybody's got somebody who has died in this war. Well, let's dive into the history so that we can get to some kind of understanding of where we're at today.
Ukraine's Independence and Russian Conditional Recognition
00:09:00
Speaker
Let's maybe start with the Soviet Union's collapse.
00:09:04
Speaker
because it seemed like a lot of the causes for this war stemmed from that, although you said that it still even goes back further than that. But specifically, I'm interested in the relationship between Ukraine and Russia at the collapse of the Soviet Union and how that evolved. Well, the Soviet Union was dissolved by leaders of three countries. It was Boris Yeltsin of Russia.
00:09:39
Speaker
that happened on December 8, 1991. Important things to keep in mind is that only one week before
00:09:54
Speaker
those three leaders gathered in Belarus and signed agreements, so-called the Belarusian agreements on dissolution of the Soviet Union. One week before that, referendum took place in Ukraine, where more than 90% of Ukrainians who participated in referendum and the turnout was over 80%.
00:10:19
Speaker
So more than 90% of those 80% floated for independence of their country. And that was really a trigger for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The question is why the Soviet Union was dissolved after the Ukrainian referendum when the question on the referendum was not about the future of the Soviet Union. The question was whether
00:10:50
Speaker
people of Ukraine supported the resolution of their parliament for independence of Ukraine. So the idea was okay, whether Ukraine should be independent or not. If it should be independent, it leaves the Soviet Union. But whatever happens to the Soviet Union, it's not the subject that was discussed or voted on in Ukraine. But still the Soviet Union was dissolved because
00:11:16
Speaker
the important role of Ukraine in the Soviet Union. It was the second largest Soviet republic after Russia. And it's also very interesting that Russia, Boris Yeltsin's Russia, was one of the first countries that recognized independence of Ukraine. So that happened before the United States did that and a number of other countries.
00:11:41
Speaker
And, but the, the idea, the Russian idea was, and Yeltsin's idea at that time, was that the recognition of that, of the independence was not unconditional. Russia really recognized Ukrainian independence and independence of other republics on the condition that in one way or another they would stay as part of the Russian sphere of influence.
00:12:10
Speaker
So at the same meeting where the Soviet Union was dissolved, the Commonwealth of Independent States was created. Yeltsin was elected as the head of that association. So the issue of borders between Russia and Ukraine, Yeltsin took the position that the borders can stay as they were if there is some formal association between Russia.
00:12:38
Speaker
There is no form of association, so in other words, if there is no Russian dominance over Ukraine, if Russian, if Ukrainian independence is really for real, then Russia reserved the right to revise borders and do other things. So at the end of the day, Russia and Ukraine, the two largest republics turned out to be the ones whose position was
00:13:10
Speaker
revolution of the Soviet Union. Yeah, that's that's that's the meeting was taking place in Belarus, the Belarus leaders were present there. But they were really junior partners and all that they were hosting the meeting of big guys or two big guys, meaning the presidents of Russia and president of Ukraine. And from that point of view, when you look today at this war,
00:13:39
Speaker
The importance of the events of 1991 is that, to the same degree that Ukraine was crucial for the continuation, long continuation of the Soviet experiment, Ukraine became crucial for any attempts on part of Russia to rebuild Russian control over the post-Soviet space. The difference between Yeltsin on the one hand and Putin on the other is
Putin's Ideologies and Russian Control Efforts
00:14:09
Speaker
that Putin basically continued with the same program that Yeltsin had. But unlike Yeltsin, he was using not just economic or political instruments to keep Russian or establish or reestablish Russian control over the post-Soviet space. But he used the military force. He first did that in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014, and then again in Ukraine in 2022.
00:14:39
Speaker
So Putin's contribution to that, and that's only, if you look at that historically, you can understand that it's not really in rethinking or reconceptualizing things, but actually using different tools to achieve the same goals that Russia had already since 1981 or 1982. Yeah, well, let's talk about Putin at this time. I'm very curious,
00:15:07
Speaker
How did Putin view Ukraine in the 90s and how did his concept of history and Ukrainian history, what is his view on that and how did that change? Yes, the current stage of the war started with Putin publishing an historical essay, I mean the sort of historical essay.
00:15:36
Speaker
which was titled on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians. And it was a long historical ex-posé that was supporting the argument, the statement that was in the very first paragraph of the essay. And the statement was that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same people.
00:16:03
Speaker
And what that really meant was that Ukrainians are really Russians, so they don't exist as a separate nation, or at least not supposed to exist. And that is a major departure from the Soviet policies. In the Soviet Union,
00:16:25
Speaker
Russia and Ukraine were at least performer recognized as equal republics. And of course, there was a recognition that Ukraine is a separate nation. Where Putin's really rejection of that model is coming from. It is coming from the Russian imperial writers and thinkers of the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
00:16:51
Speaker
was Russian imperial vision that there were no separate Ukrainian nation. There were maybe separate, quote unquote, tribe, separate group within a big Russian nation. And that idea really comes back to Russia in the 1990s.
00:17:18
Speaker
Exactly at the time when Putin and people of his generation, they got certainly disappointed with the ideas of communism, with the Bolshevik experiment, and were looking for alternative ways of understanding reality around them. And they found them in the writings of the Russian imperial thinkers or the emigres. So some authors that
00:17:48
Speaker
Putin reads like philosopher Ilyin, like the members of the Russian general of the revolutionary Iran Civil War. And they all transmit these ideas, really, that came into existence in the late Russian Empire. For generations of the young Soviet apparatchiks and KGB officers and party,
00:18:18
Speaker
officials. This idea is represented and repackaged by the laureate of the Nobel Prize in literature, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. So Solzhenitsyn is a classic Russian
00:18:36
Speaker
Nationalist who repackaged the Russian imperial ideas in the new context. He was very anti-communist. He wrote Archipelago Gulag. He himself was prisoner of Gulag. So there was no love lost for any sort of the communist experimentation. But the alternative was Russian imperial paradigm. A little bit adjusted to the new realities.
00:19:03
Speaker
And that's what became the foundation for Putin's thinking and thinking of some people around him as well. That's where these ideas are coming from. Solzhenitsyn is one of the favorites of Putin's writers. He certainly visited him before he died.
00:19:27
Speaker
He took special care of all sorts of memorialization of Solzhenitsyn. So in that sense, again, Putin is certainly very much responsible for this war, including through his actions and through his statements and writings.
00:19:58
Speaker
Would you say with that kind of worldview that Putin had, Putin and people like him, would it be fair to say that then ever since he came into power in the late 90s, he has wanted to absorb Ukraine into Russia? And is there any evidence that he had already begun planning as soon as he came into power?
00:20:23
Speaker
What one can see is that he very much stayed loyal to this ideas that I discussed earlier that came into existence in the 1990s around Yeltsin that Russia has in one form or another control and dominate the post-Soviet space. So before Yeltsin,
00:20:53
Speaker
So, sorry, before Putin came to power, there was a Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who was one of the advisors to Gorbachev, then to Yeltsin, and then the head of the Russian intelligence service before becoming prime minister.
00:21:15
Speaker
And he very much came with the idea that the bipolar world of the Cold War fell apart after the end of the Cold War. There is an American world, a unipolar world. Again, that's not Primakov's idea. Many people were writing about that. But Primakov was pushing for the idea that
00:21:44
Speaker
The unipolar world does not last for a long period of time. It's certainly the wrong way to organize international relations. It is not in Russian interests. And what would be in Russian interests is a multi-polar world where there are different poles.
00:22:06
Speaker
Russia understood that it was not the Soviet Union, so there was no return to bipolar world. So the idea that there would be a multipolar world with China and European Union and Russia as one of them for the Poles. But there also came very early realization that without somehow mobilizing resources of the post-Soviet space, it would be very difficult for Russia to become one of the Poles in multipolar world.
00:22:36
Speaker
which again was the sort of a thinking that was there before Putin. And Putin early on in his during his first term as the president was basically continuing in the Yeltsin's
00:23:02
Speaker
way of thinking and looking for the ways of how to do that by using political force and economic force.
Ukrainian Resistance and the Orange Revolution
00:23:13
Speaker
His big hope was that for joining Washington's at that time, Judge W. Bush's War on Terror, that he would get recognition from Washington and NATO
00:23:31
Speaker
for having Soviet Union as his sphere of influence. And that didn't work out. Then when he was almost there to bring Ukraine into the Russian sphere of influence, the Orange Revolution into all four started in Ukraine. A democratic revolution rejecting the sort of elections that Putin wanted to
00:24:02
Speaker
rejecting the candidate that Putin supported. It was Mr. Yanukovych at that time, and elected pro-Western Democratic leader, Mr. Lucienko. So for Putin, that was really a turning point, that West rejected his what he considered to be just claims for the Russian special.
00:24:29
Speaker
special rights in the post-Soviet space that NATO continued expansion, including the Baltic states during NATO, that his attempts to build this Russian bloc were undermined by democratic
00:24:52
Speaker
movements and public public immunization. He believed that the United States was behind that, both in terms of encouraging Ukrainians to rebel, but more than that, introducing this awful, awful political model of democracy, right, which which undermined not only his efforts outside of Russia, but also undermined his attempts to create more authoritarian regime in Russia itself.
00:25:23
Speaker
So he considered promotional democracy to be an unfriendly move, really an attempt to personally undermine him. So the American ambassador in Moscow, Mike McCall, is being pushed out. There is a personal
00:25:49
Speaker
Clinton because he believes that she was the one who encouraged protests and supported protests in Russia in 2011, 2012. So that's where the really not goal, goal didn't change.
00:26:10
Speaker
But that's where change came in terms of the selection of the tools and rhetoric and level of hostility that was there, not only vis-a-vis Ukraine, but also vis-a-vis the West. And the current war, it's war in Ukraine, but if you look at Putin's rhetoric, it was explained by him, legitimized by him on two levels.
00:26:39
Speaker
One level was fighting against the West, and another level was the argument that Ukrainians don't exist as a nation. So that one was imperial argument. This war on the West was really continuation of the multipolar world, thinking that that started before Putin, that started in the 1990s.
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, let's talk about Ukraine's leadership and I'm very interested in, so up until 2014, the Maidan protests. Is it fair to say that leadership in Ukraine was pretty friendly towards Putin and what Putin's policies and then
00:27:27
Speaker
Can you just talk about how things changed after 2014 and how dramatic that was, that change between Putin and Ukrainian leadership? Ukrainian leadership in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, they were products of the Soviet realities. The president of Ukraine was the former party official.
00:27:58
Speaker
like in Russia, of course Yeltsin was. So there was a lot in common between the rulers in Russia and in Ukraine in the 1990s. So they were drinking bodies, there were ostentions, and there were politics involved, but they came from the same
00:28:18
Speaker
They were cut from the same clothes and that's also helped to keep this relationship in particular without military conflict, I would say. And Ukrainian leadership also lacked really experience of being a leader of independent state or independent country.
00:28:45
Speaker
They were looking up to Moscow, looking for the models of political instruments and political models as well. And we're trying to do the same thing as Yeltsin was doing. And what Yeltsin was doing through most of the 1990s is consolidating his power and building authoritarian state.
00:29:11
Speaker
after he gave an order to fire at the Russian parliament in 1993, a railroad constitution, the Russia went with every single year was moving further and further down the road of authoritarianism. And the Ukrainian elites were actually trying to emulate what Russia was doing.
Leadership and Defiance: Zelensky's Role
00:29:33
Speaker
But they encountered a very different mentality of their own people.
00:29:42
Speaker
Ukrainians didn't accept that. Thereabouts, there was the Orange Revolution of 2004 over stalling elections, rigged elections. In Russia, never modernization of that level happened. At that time, president of Ukraine, Kuchma allegedly told Putin, who was pushing him toward using military force against the protesters, he told him Ukraine is not Russia.
00:30:12
Speaker
and published later book with that title. So the Ukrainian elites who really very much wanted to continue in the following Russian elites really encountered the people who wouldn't accept that sort of policies from the government.
00:30:34
Speaker
Ukraine for a number of historical reasons turned out to be much more pluralistic and much more pro-democratic than Russia. And really attempts on the part of Putin to support pro-Russian, which means much more authoritarian candidates, failed.
00:31:00
Speaker
Russian invasion in Ukraine, the annexation of the Crimea starts after the Revolution of Dignity and after the candidate for the, and actually at that time already president of Ukraine backed by Russia, Mr. Yanukovych had to flee Kiev, left Kiev, right? So that was the end of big hopes and long
00:31:30
Speaker
one story of trying to install an Ukraine pro-Russian candidate that automatically would be anti-Western and automatically would be pro-authoritarian. So that's the relationship between the Ukrainian people.
00:31:51
Speaker
the Ukrainian elite in the 90s and the beginning of the 2000s and Russia. So again and again, there was this rejection of pro-authoritarian tendencies coming from the top of the government. I'll just give you one example. The Revolution of Dignity, it started as
00:32:20
Speaker
in 2013 as a so-called European Revolution. Russia forced Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union that he promised his people that he would do it. And the people came to the main square in Kiev called Maidan to protest against that.
00:32:50
Speaker
And there was protests going on for some period of time, not very massive. And then at some point in late November of 2013, the government decided to use police to disperse students who occupied Maidan, occupied the square, who actually built their camp there.
00:33:18
Speaker
And once the police does that, the next morning, half of a million of people show in downtown Kiev, 10, maybe 100 times more than showed people at the beginning over the issue of your integration. Because the idea was, no, no, no, you're not allowed to do that. You can't beat up our children.
00:33:48
Speaker
We are here to protect them and we'll stay and you will be gone. And what became known as originally as your revolution acquired in your name, Revolution of Dignity. And that change happened at the moment when a couple of dozen of students, maybe a hundred, a little bit more were beaten up by the police. The people showed up on the street and said, no, that's the red line.
00:34:18
Speaker
And that's very different certainly from what you see in Russia. In Russia, you see US police and people run away. It's different. Well, let's talk about the relationship between Zelensky and Putin. How would you characterize historically their relationship? And how did Putin initially feel when Zelensky was elected?
00:34:47
Speaker
Well, we know that quite well because in the essay that I mentioned that Putin wrote before the start of the war on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, there is closer to the end one paragraph where he writes that the West introduced in Ukraine
00:35:12
Speaker
this awful system, and he has in mind democracy, that people change and parties change, but the attitude stays the same because it's anti-Russian, which means really the commitment to independence. And he says that while the current president was elected on the promise of being peace, and he lied,
00:35:43
Speaker
which is about, it's about lies. So to unpack that paragraph in that article, what that means that Putin really had high hopes for unexperienced former comedian, Mr. Zelensky,
00:36:06
Speaker
coming to power and accepting the sort of relations between Russia and Ukraine that Putin wanted him to accept. And to a degree, things were going exactly in the direction that Putin wanted because Zelensky informally accepted
00:36:32
Speaker
the Russian interpretation of the formula of the Minsk agreements of the peace or armistice agreements between Russia and Ukraine in 2014, 2015. But within a few weeks Zelensky got on his hands another mass revolution in the making.
00:36:59
Speaker
The mass movement that started under the slogan, snow took a preparation. And Zelensky, being a democratically elected leader, changed the course. They met with Putin in December of 2019 in Paris, and to Putin's disappointment, Zelensky said that he was not signing. Sort of documents that Putin wanted to sign.
00:37:28
Speaker
And that certainly was a turning point. And I think that Putin never really understood not only Ukraine, but he never understood the phenomena of Zelensky.
00:37:51
Speaker
And in my opinion, at least, Zelensky's biggest talent certainly was there when he was an actor and comedian. And he continued, brought the talent into the president's office. He has this ability, he has this talent to fill the audience, to know what the people want.
00:38:18
Speaker
He is there really to amplify the attitudes of the people. And we started the discussion. I said that he was really in the key figure articulating Ukrainian disbelief or refusal to believe that a big war could happen.
00:38:46
Speaker
And then one day became also the leader of the resistance. And in both cases, he represented his people. And yeah, so there are good reasons for Mr. Putin to be very unhappy with that awful system on government called democracy. Yeah, well,
00:39:15
Speaker
The world is really rallied around Zelensky and the whole world knows his name. He's always on TV. He's meeting with all sorts of world leaders and well-known people.
00:39:31
Speaker
I wonder, do you think if somebody besides Zelensky were in power, how much do you think him as a person and as a leader has helped Ukraine up to this point? And do you think it would be differently if even somebody else with his same political leanings were in power? Very important. Very important. The right person at the right time in the right place.
00:40:00
Speaker
In Ukraine, Ukrainian people got really very lucky having Zelensky at that moment in the history of the helm. That being said,
00:40:19
Speaker
his biggest strength is still basically being able to channel the feelings, the determination of Ukrainians as a whole. At no point in the war, even in the worst weeks, the first weeks of the war, there were less than
00:40:44
Speaker
70 to 80 percent of Ukrainians who believed, according to the pollen data, in victory. And it was almost surreal in early March to read those numbers. But I would say that probably if we take, let's say, 75 percent, at least 15 percent of those 75 would be Zelensky.
00:41:15
Speaker
But there was 60 that were not Zelensky. And Zelensky took 60 and turned it into 80 and now into 90. So that's my mistake on who Zelensky is and how important he is for this story.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think about that a lot, just like his ability to rally people and rally the world. I mean, I'm in a very small town here in the Eastern Seaboard in the United States, and there are Ukraine flags all over the light poles, and there are Ukraine fundraisers at the community center. And I think a lot, if that all would be happening, if someone else were in power in Ukraine,
00:42:02
Speaker
who maybe didn't have that kind of charisma? Yes, yes, yes, I agree. And I know through rumor mill that many, many politicians in US but also in Europe are a little bit jealous in terms of the messaging of other things that there are all sorts of a lot of stuff
00:42:30
Speaker
A lot of thought goes into how to do this and that. And Zelensky can achieve this one with things that is difficult to achieve otherwise. He also makes some people unhappy that he talks to the people sometimes above the heads of their leaders and gets paid.
00:42:55
Speaker
So that is quite phenomenal. But again, there is also a bigger story behind that. And that story is that I don't think, I certainly don't remember either personally or through reading relevant literature that
00:43:23
Speaker
There was ever such clarity about the war, moral clarity of who is aggressive, who is victim, probably since World War II.
Moral Clarity of the Russo-Ukrainian War
00:43:38
Speaker
In some books, the World War II called a good war in terms of, if you look at it from perspective of Korea, you look at that from the perspective of Vietnam, Afghanistan.
00:43:53
Speaker
the war for the right cause. You knew where the good guys were, where the bad guys were. You knew what it was happening. And then there was a lot of shades of gray with many other wars. And the Ukrainian war, it's not just the US experience, but also European. There was very little gray. There was very little gray.
00:44:22
Speaker
first case in the 20th century since for the annexation of the territories by a bigger country. And then there is absolutely phenomenal resistance of a smaller nation to a bigger one when no one was giving Ukraine a chance to last for more than two weeks.
00:44:51
Speaker
blitzkrieg. That's what Putin was planning. That's what the American intelligence services were saying. It can be a blitzkrieg within two weeks. And given that the US intelligence services got right Putin's intentions almost to the day of the attack, it was very difficult to
00:45:22
Speaker
coming from the US intelligence services that probably would not last. So all of these things certainly came together and again Zelensky became the face of that and the voice of many of these things.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah, you're so right in the point that you make about the clear good guy and clear bad guy and kind of the ability of that for people to rally.
00:45:55
Speaker
So before we were on, I mentioned that creative writing is my background. I'm working on a novel. It's a World War II novel. And I feel like people ask me a lot, what is the fascination with World War II in literature? Why are people buying so many World War II novels? Why are there so many World War II movies? And I have always thought that it's just for what you were talking about. There's a clear good guy and a clear bad guy for World War II.
00:46:24
Speaker
And that audience is much larger than, say, a Vietnam audience, where really there's a lot of gray area there, or the Iraq war, or other wars that are just so murky. And you're so right with your assessment of this is kind of the first time since World War II that basically the entire world has been like, this is what's going on is wrong.
00:46:55
Speaker
I'm curious your thoughts, switching gears a little bit here to the military situation for the Russo-Ukrainian War. So right now we're here in 2023, summer 2023. How would you describe the current state of the war right now? Well, I think we are at the moment of one problem, the most decisive moments in the war.
00:47:23
Speaker
I would say that there were two moments like that before that. The first one was the really Russian defeat in the battle for cave and withdrawal. So that was really very important. That was a clear signal that whatever happens in the war,
00:47:51
Speaker
most likely Ukraine will stay, Ukraine will survive. The goal was attack on the capital, decapitation, including Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence, the so-called demeritification and really rounding up the leaders of the public opinion, journalists, politicians who
00:48:20
Speaker
take strong foreign independence position and in one way or another get rid of them. And after that, by March, late March of April of 2022, it became clear that Ukraine is there to stay, cave is there to stay.
00:48:43
Speaker
But it was not clear what the territory would be under cave control after that. And the next turning point was in the summer of 2022. By that time, Russians achieved their biggest successes in the south and in the east of the country.
00:49:09
Speaker
captured after a long battle, two important cities in Bonbas. But that turned out to be the last Russian success. And in the fall, two successful Ukrainian counter-offensives, one in the east near Kharkiv and then another pushing the Russians from the south on the right bank of Gipro,
00:49:36
Speaker
Certainly, terms turned the tide and now Ukrainians were on the offensive. That was the situation by the end of 2022. 2023 started with two big questions. First of all, there was a realization that the most important developments of the war will be happening on the battlefield,
00:50:07
Speaker
And on the battlefield, there were two things in preparation. First, the Russian military winter offensive, and then Ukrainian counter-offensive. That was already in early 2023. That's what was discussed.
Challenges in Ukraine's Counteroffensive
00:50:27
Speaker
So by now, we have answer to the first of those questions of what came out of the Russian winter offensive.
00:50:36
Speaker
It completely failed. There was minimal territorial acquisitions and major, major losses for the Russian army. Those losses in particular of the Wagner Group became the basis and foundation for the mutiny or attempted coup d'etat in Russia that we saw the previous week.
00:51:04
Speaker
These are the units that suffered the most. The estimates are that they lost up to 20,000 people, the one with groups alone. And that's really the resolved outcome of this really failed winter offensive. So Ukrainians went on counter-offensive now.
00:51:31
Speaker
And there were expectations that they would be more successful and that counter offensive would actually perceive faster than it is happening now. What we see is that Ukrainians continue to attack. They make
00:51:59
Speaker
progress in terms of recapturing territory, nothing compared to the counter-offensives of the 2022. But still, they captured more territory than Russians captured here and there, their offensive. And Ukrainian counter-offensive is not over yet. The latest what we heard from the commander of Ukrainian armed forces, General Zaluzhny, was that
00:52:31
Speaker
He needs and hopes for more shells, more munition, and he needs F-16s. The counter offenses that were conducted back in 2022 when there was just one line of defense and Ukrainians would actually cut through it that was around
00:53:00
Speaker
or try to squeeze out the Russian troops by cutting the supply lines, the bridges, because the deeper that tactic can't work today. Russians used the last half of a year to build multi-layer defenses. So to go to get through that defense, defenses you need really air superiority.
00:53:26
Speaker
And Ukraine has today air inferiority. You please correct me, and your viewers and listeners again probably can disagree. But for me, I'm not a military historian. I'm looking at the way how United States conducts its operations. It is all about air superiority. It's all about air superiority.
00:53:56
Speaker
Ukrainians managed so far to fight without that factor. So judging by what we hear from Ukraine, they reached the point where they probably still can fight in that way, but it would be very costly. And long-range missiles and long-range artillery, which is not given to Ukraine for political reasons, the concern is
00:54:25
Speaker
of course, the reaction from Russia. So Ukrainians, if you look in terms of how the war is being fought, they're fighting with one hand. The other hand is tied up. Again, Ukraine and government and Zomensky and people are very, very appreciative of all the assistance that comes.
00:54:55
Speaker
it comes to Ukraine without that assistance it would be difficult if not impossible to continue the fight. But it's also very clear that the two sides fighting this war are not equal in terms of their armaments, equipments, capacities,
00:55:25
Speaker
The Ukraine still continues to be an underdog in that fight. I'm curious how much of a mistake, if you think it is a mistake, how much of a mistake do you think it is that the Ukrainians aren't being supplied with fighter jets and in long range weapons? Well, I certainly think it is a mistake.
00:55:53
Speaker
But I also look at this as basically almost a systematic mistake because we have the repetition of the same story. On the one hand, the United States is the biggest supplier, a military supplier for Ukraine. On the other hand, it takes an enormous amount of time for the US government to decide
00:56:22
Speaker
to do that a lot. The original decision was that let's provide stingers and javelins eventually, so defense weapons that the partisan units could use. So there was mistrust that Ukrainian armed forces could continue for more than a couple of days.
00:56:48
Speaker
And then there were concerns about what the Russian reaction would be. So there is a game in Washington that people continue playing. A game of imagination, they imagine where Putin's red lines could be. They don't want them to cross and don't want to cross right away.
00:57:16
Speaker
And this is a long, long process of really arriving to the idea that, okay, there should be humarses. Okay, then the next step. Well, maybe tanks is not such a bad idea if you think about counter-offensive. And it takes a long time to convince the parts of Washington that somehow tanks are needed for
00:57:46
Speaker
for counter-offensive. And now it looks like there is the next stage. There are people who believe that Ukrainians can be very successful in counter-offensive without jets and then feel disappointed when they don't see the results coming within the next two weeks.
00:58:09
Speaker
So we are basically in the place where we were with chemars, where we were with the tanks, where we were with some other arguments. I think that jets eventually are coming. But it takes time. And in the Ukrainian case, it's about lives.
00:58:35
Speaker
And the more weapons, the sooner the war would end. There was no question about that. And Ukrainians showed the ability to fight. We talked about Zelensky. He is compared sometimes to Winston Churchill. And one of the journalists called him Winston Churchill with his iPhone.
00:59:02
Speaker
And Churchill addressing, it seems to me, the U.S. Congress at some point said early in the war when the U.S. were not involved. It seems to me at that time, Langley's was not there yet. His call was that, give us the tools and we will finish the job.
00:59:23
Speaker
So, it looks like the Americans are in the same situation. It's not Vietnam, it's not Korea, it's not Afghanistan. Ukrainians are not asking for American boots on the ground here or there. It's basically, it's Chechen request. Give us the tools and we'll finish the job.
00:59:47
Speaker
I'm curious, you mentioned the recent attempted coup d'etat from the leader Prigozhin from the Wagner group.
Internal Instability in Russia and Global Implications
00:59:57
Speaker
I'm curious your thoughts as a historian, how important of a moment was that attempted coup in Russia? And what do you think that means for the future of how Russia is able to fight this war?
01:00:13
Speaker
Well, the bad news from the front lines historically serve as triggers in Russia for either political crisis or major political change. The last Crimean War in mid-19th century produces major, major transformational reforms in Russia.
01:00:39
Speaker
Bad news from the Far East during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 become trigger for the revolution of 1905. The Russian losses in World War I serve as a trigger to the two revolutions of 1917. The war in Afghanistan and Russia
01:01:10
Speaker
Soviet at that time, involvement there, is certainly a precursor to the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and eventually disintegration of the Soviet Union. And now we see a failed winter offensive and revolt of the units that actually was really decimated by the fighting.
01:01:37
Speaker
This really, really is taking over a number of major Russian towns with the possibility of split in the military command, the information that we get now that a number of generals are either arrested or interrogated, they're certainly not in the public.
01:02:00
Speaker
And that's certainly an indication, first of all, of the weakness of the regime. To a degree, that regime was actually, was incapable of even crushing this revolt. They made some sort of a strange deal, where in the one-day precaution is called by Putin himself to be a traitor.
01:02:26
Speaker
and another day the criminal investigation against him is closed. That's not, whatever happens with pregersion in the future, this is not a really sign of the strength of the regime. And that also suggests that things like that can continue if the war doesn't go the way how Putin really wants it.
01:02:57
Speaker
So from that point of view, if we have a successful Ukrainian counter offensive to a degree that the defenses were successful early in the year, that can very well produce another political crisis and can end war sooner than we can imagine now. But if there is sort of a stale need, it will continue.
01:03:26
Speaker
It can lead certainly to the sort of solidifying of Putin's power on Russia and maybe rebuilding, recapturing some of the political territory that he certainly lost with this school. So it's essential what happens in the coming
01:03:52
Speaker
weeks and months. And what happens very much depends on the supplies of the ammunition and weapons that we create. Sir, this has been such a fantastic interview.
01:04:09
Speaker
And I've loved the answers that you give me to my questions. My last question for you here is maybe predicting the future a little bit. Historians, I feel like, are often the best predictors of the future. But this is such a strange moment in time. Maybe it's just hard to
01:04:29
Speaker
to do this exercise. But I'm curious, one, what do you think the outcome of the war will be? And, you know, if Russia wins, what will the world look like? And then if Ukraine wins, what will the world look like? Well, if Russia wins, what we see is the victory for the principle of aggression.
01:04:55
Speaker
You can go militarily and take over this territory, that territory and exit. The international war really will mean even less than it means now, than it means today. And that's a major, major, really,
01:05:23
Speaker
blow to the international order as a whole. Russia's victory also means victory of autocratic regimes. And we are in a very precarious situation, both in the United States and worldwide, because the recession of 2008 produced politically the same outcomes as the Great Depression of 1929, 1932 produced.
01:05:53
Speaker
a lot of xenophobia, populism, nationalism, eventually resulted in the big war. We have the rise of the populist and nationalist leaders globally, worldwide. So it's a global battle. If one of their guys wins, they all win. So it's a battle for democracy and it's not just a cliche.
01:06:22
Speaker
I'm not just saying something to sound somehow global or alarmist or mobilize support for Ukraine, where maybe there is no reason for that. It is a case of clash between autocracy and democracy. And it's important who wins in that story. Now, if Ukraine wins
01:06:50
Speaker
That means a major factor toward the restoration of the international order and some semblance of international law. That means also the stop of this anti-democratic and authoritarian wave.
01:07:18
Speaker
that has been in the world since 2008, and certainly Putin was one of the leaders. And still being global in my assessment, but maybe less global than talking about this world fight between autocracy and democracy, we can also project that China's
01:07:48
Speaker
readiness to try luck with military intervention or military occupation of Taiwan probably would be much less there if Ukraine wins and would be much more likely if Russia wins. So there is a lot at stake beyond just Ukraine and independence of Ukraine
01:08:18
Speaker
the future of the post-Soviet space. It's really a global struggle. It's just putting things in the perspective. This is the largest war. It was until recently in Europe, but now I believe it's the largest war in the world since World War II. It turns out the number of troops on the ground
01:08:48
Speaker
the casualties, the sort of destruction, the weaponry that has been used, the resources that have been spent, the refugees. I think that it's a really global struggle also from that point of view. Excellent. Well, thank you so much again for your answers to my questions and for your time.
01:09:16
Speaker
Serhi, if people want to follow you or stay in touch with your work, are you on social media? How can people stay in touch with what you're doing? Yes, first of all, thank you. Thank you for this conversation. I really, really enjoyed the questions, really enjoyed our discussion. Yes, I am present on social media, on the Facebook. I'm not a very good friend.
01:09:45
Speaker
but I'm present, and maybe I'm a little bit better friend on Twitter. So I'm certainly present there, and I keep people updated not just on my word, but also on things about this war that I consider to be important. I try not to make commentary too often,
01:10:17
Speaker
and something where I have an insight and they want to share that. Wonderful. Well, Serhi Plohi, The Russo-Ukrainian War, The Return of History, go buy a copy, go check it out from your library. What a timely book that I hope a lot of people read. And again, Serhi, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.