Will a second year of war in Ukraine go any better for Putin?

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guests

Max Seddon

Max Seddon is the Bureau Chief in Moscow for the Financial Times and shares the view from Moscow as the war enters a new phase likely hinging on political will from Washington.

Jacqui Heinrich

Jacqui Heinrich is a Fox News White House Correspondent discussing what support remains among Republicans for arming Ukraine one year after the invasion.

Episode Summary

Russian President Vladimir Putin is particularly observant when it comes to anniversaries. This month he marked the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over the Nazis in the battle of Stalingrad. Given he is an enthusiastic student of history - albeit, his own versions of history - watchers of the war in Ukraine have raised the question: what will Putin do when his invasion reaches the ‘one-year’ mark? Max Seddon is the Bureau Chief in Moscow for the Financial Times. He will share the view from Moscow, and as the war enters a new phase. It's one that is likely to increasingly hinge on political will from Washington, where we are joined by Fox News’ White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. She discusses what support remains among Republicans for arming Ukraine, one year from the invasion.

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Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Mcfarlane: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at how singular choices can shape our world. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. We're coming up to the one year anniversary of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which he launched on February 24th last year. He may have intended it to be a military operation lasting just a matter of days, but he and much of the rest of the world vastly underestimated the ferocity of the Ukrainian people, their desire to defend their homeland, and indeed, the resolve of their leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In recent weeks, the Ukrainian leadership has warned that they believe Moscow is gearing up for a concerted and deadly push this month to coincide with the one year anniversary of the war, a slight mangling of the reality on the ground given that Russian forces actually invaded all the way back in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea by force. Perhaps cognizant of the growing threat of a possible Russian military resurgence, Zelenskyy landed in the British capital of London on a surprise diplomatic blitz to give a historic address to the Houses of Parliament before heading to the palace for an audience with King Charles. It's now emerged he'll be touring European capitals, including Paris, to give a renewed push for advanced weapons, including, most importantly, fighter jets to stave off what the Ukrainians clearly feel is an impending and renewed Russian onslaught. My co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove, is the former chief of Britain's MI6. So when the news broke that Zelenskyy was in the capital, I rang him to hear what he thought. Richard, we woke up yesterday morning to surprise reports that President Zelenskyy was in the air and due to land in London for his first trip to The UK since the invasion of his country on February 24. I mean, clearly it was a very tightly controlled trip. The broadcasters only getting a heads up. It was even happening very, very early in the morning. So one imagines that this was something that involved a lot of security and risk planning. Zelenskyy talked about the British and Ukrainian friendship and The UK's very strong support from day one of the invasion. He name checked the former prime minister Boris, who was also there in Westminster Hall for his historic speech, and Zelenskyy also gave thanks to current prime minister Rishi Sunak, and he announced that he was off to see King Charles. Richard, Zelenskyy made a historic address to both houses of parliament last March in 2022, but it was done via video link. And then we saw later in the year in December, last year, another surprise visit to Washington DC, with Zelenskyy taking the floor in congress to address both houses of The US there. Was it inevitable that he was going to make a similar trip to here in London, given that The UK has been among Ukraine's biggest supporters during this conflict?

Dearlove: You know, I think the symbolism is potent, and in a way, could almost say the visit is overdue. The planning and the security, of course there would be no indication ahead of time, but we're just coming up, you know, to the anniversary of the invasion. The UK has been the most important of his European allies and supporters and I think this was almost to be anticipated or expected even if we didn't know the precise details. So I think as an act of, you know, symbolism really, it's all about the symbolism much more than the content, and in a way here's Zelenskyy saying to The UK, you've taken the lead in Europe, you've been my most important ally, your support is precious. And of course he uses this moment of political theater almost to put in a massively powerful emotional plea for the next kit they require, having got the tanks they now want the airplanes. It's extraordinary watching an event or hearing an event like this, because I was listening to it rather than actually seeing it live because I'm in a place where that wouldn't be possible. You know, his theater training, his ability to dramatize the delivery, the timing, the intonation, this sort of thick Ukrainian accent which actually is very attractive in the way that he makes his deliveries. And my goodness me, he sounds very Churchillian in his rather gruff paused delivery. It's impressive stuff, it's very impressive stuff, and of course it must leave Putin absolutely quaking because, you know, Putin as a public figure has a minus charisma, whereas Zelenskyy has almost infinite reserves of it.

Mcfarlane: Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. He really leaned hard into the Churchill comparisons. And in his speech, he talked about in his last trip to The UK, he went on a visit to the Churchill War Rooms, and he said that the guide offered for him to sit in the chair where Churchill gave a lot of his orders and asked him how he felt. And he used that anecdote to pay tribute to the bravery that it must have taken Churchill at that time, and the bravery being shown by Ukrainian troops. It was an incredibly emotionally charged speech, and he had a very receptive audience in Westminster Hall who gave him extremely strong applause during that. I mean, I wanted to ask you also, you mentioned the timing of this visit. We've seen reports recently, including one from the Financial Times this week, referencing an unnamed adviser to the Ukrainian Armed Forces that Kyiv has apparently obtained very solid intelligence of intent by Russia to launch a concerted new attack, likely aiming to capture the entire Donbas region in the East, which is very heavily contested at the moment. The FT going on to report that Moscow is most likely hoping to launch the offensive before Ukraine receives Western tanks and weapons in the latest round of promised aid to Ukraine, and that this attack by the Russians was likely to be spearheaded by elite units. I mean, Richard, that would make a lot of sense to me because something else that we've heard recently is reports. I've heard this quite a few times from a number of media outlets quoting Ukrainian leaders on the battlefield, many of whom have noted that much of Russia's top forces have been absent from the front lines in recent months. And there's been a lot of speculation that maybe these special forces have been resting, refreshing, retraining in preparation for something like a renewed concerted push. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Dearlove: Well, I think in a way, what that's predicting is to be expected. The Russians must be concerned about the increasing sophistication of the armaments being supplied to the Ukrainians. And the logic would be to get an offensive in before the Ukrainians are fully re-equipped, before they're fully trained, before they're fully resupplied. But a report like that I would also treat with caution. The reason being that I think that Ukrainians have become masterly at manipulating the media coverage of the war to an extent. And for example their last offensive, they let everyone believe that they were going to do it in the South, and you know, they did it along a different part of the border, and generally speaking, you know, there was a deception plan. So I mean, I think one's got to think pretty carefully about what the Ukrainians are up to. I would not take a report like that at face value. There's obviously, if the fighting season is coming up, spring, the weather will change, and we'll see developments. I think it's difficult to predict how these play out. I think one crucial thing for the Ukrainians, and in a way Zelenskyy indirectly referred to that, would be as they're armed with more sophisticated longer range artillery and missiles, they can take out Russian logistics behind the lines. And I think one has to bear in mind that war fighting, a huge amount of it is about logistics and resupply. And what we've seen is the Russians hitherto have been pretty bad, if not appallingly bad, at this aspect of warfare.

Mcfarlane: And do we expect it to get better?

Dearlove: I doubt it.

Mcfarlane: Yeah. That's really interesting. That's one area where the Russians are totally on their own. They're not getting any assistance from countries the way the Ukrainians are in training troops in things like battlefield logistics, and some of these areas in which they are weakest. They can buy discounted drones from the Iranians. They can do that sort of stuff, but they really are on their own out here. And it was something that Zelenskyy made reference to time and time and time again. He said quite a few times in his speech that the Ukrainians were fighting a war on behalf of the international community and the rules based international order. And he paid a lot of tribute to the sort of league of friendship led by The United States and allies like The UK in supporting Kyiv respond to this invasion from day one.

Dearlove: Yeah. I mean, it's extraordinary what's happening. You know, European security is changing in front of our eyes, and the Ukrainians are making themselves into the most effective army on the European continent. And you know this poses all sorts of questions for the future as to what sort of alliance are the Ukrainians going to be embraced into? You know, what is going to happen to Russia? I mean, I think we already know that Putin's decision to go to war was a total disaster for Russia. And, you know, whatever happens now, he's not really going to be able to significantly improve the consequences of the decision that he took. So I think we're on the cusp of a really important moment, I think, which will dictate in future how we think and how we talk about European security, whether it's NATO, whether the European Commission, whether Brussels is going to ever play any role whatsoever. All these questions are posed. You can't now think about the future of Europe except in the context of this war and the way it's being played out. And I thought what was extraordinary about the speech that he's just given is the sense of history. You know, this was a tactical speech in terms of the demands, the immediate demands the Ukrainians are still making. But he set it in the context of, you know, historical events. And I think this is where Zelenskyy is so clever and where in a way he's following the sort of inspiration of Churchill in understanding the potency of the moment. And gosh, this was a hugely potent moment, not just because it was a speech in parliament, but, I mean, that speech was addressed to a completely European, if not a global audience.

INTERVIEW

Mcfarlane: My co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove, there talking to us from the Western United States this week. We thought we would reach out to two journalists this week to discuss how Putin is likely to handle his war turning one year old, an anniversary he never wanted to mark. I'm delighted to have with us today, two expert journalists joining us, to discuss the upcoming one year anniversary of the Russian invasion into Ukraine. We have Jackie Heinrich, who is White House correspondent for Fox. She's joining us from Washington DC. And from Riga, we have Max Seddon. He is the Russia bureau chief for the Financial Times. Max, I'm gonna start with you and the view from Moscow. Now that we are coming up to the one year anniversary of Putin's three day war. And it's a war that many of us did not see coming, even though the troop buildup on the border really started ramping up in the autumn of 2021. So Max, I wanna talk to you about how that initial justification for launching this invasion has aged since then. We've seen how after blowing a lot of hot air about Finland and Sweden possibly joining NATO, and then after they actually declared that they wanted to join the alliance, Putin said that their membership was actually not really of any concern for Russia. It wasn't something that bothered him. I mean, he did say it was because there are no territorial disputes with them like there is in Ukraine, but that makes it more to do with Ukraine itself. Right? And not NATO so-called expansionism.

Seddon: No. I think you could argue that there's only ever really been one goal in Ukraine, and that has been for Russia, and that's been to destroy the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian nation as they currently exist. If you watch, you know, the pretty bloodthirsty speeches that Putin made almost a year ago when, you know, first his long historical rant and then the actual explanation of the order to begin the invasion, it's very clear that he seems almost kind of personally affronted by its existence. And one thing that he had to drop quite quickly, but it's interesting, if you remember from the early days of the war, including in that first speech, there was an appeal to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, don't risk your lives, trying to prop up the American neo-Nazi regime of Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Lay down your arms and surrender to Russia, and you'll be unharmed. And it shows you just the absolutely delusional, completely disconnected from reality perspective that Putin had because he really did think it was going to be a walk in the park, especially in Eastern and Southern Ukraine where there's never really been any explanation for what this means. I can tell you, we are on a phone call every day with Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, with the Kremlin pool and some foreign reporters. And just recently, he was asked, you know, can you explain, like, what are the goals? Like, this keeps going on. There hasn't been much explanation. You know, the foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, he said that the war had to keep going on because of all the increasingly long range weaponry that Western countries are giving Ukraine. And the longer the weapons, the farther they want to move them away from Russia's borders. So, really, it's sort of everything and nothing. But the one thing that Putin's been very clear about is that he doesn't think that Ukraine's existence in this current form is acceptable to Russia, and he's not going to stop until that is resolved to his liking in some way.

Mcfarlane: You say that the Kremlin, they have struggled to sort of articulate what the goals are to the Russian people. I mean, do they need to bring the Russian people with them? I mean, there are some estimates that the Russians have lost over 150,000 soldiers in the last twelve months of this war. They've lost 1,700 tanks. They have depleted a huge proportion of the stocks of their military hardware, of their weapons, of their missiles. This has come at a huge cost to Putin. Does he need the public with him?

Seddon: I think absolutely, you know, he does. And that's why I remember in Russia, officially, it's not called a war or an invasion. You can theoretically go to prison for saying that in public in Russia. It's called a special military operation. And part of the reason why it's called that is because, you know, to most people, it sounds like something that's happening off in some far flung locale where you're sending in the super commandos in Syria or Central African Republic or Libya or somewhere like that. It doesn't sound like sort of big total war in which your brothers and your husbands and your sons might be dying. And they were quite successful for the first six months or so of the war in maintaining that fiction with the majority of people. One thing that was really striking being back in Russia in September was the extent to which for, you know, so many people, life was really going on as before. The problem was that even though most people had learned largely to tune the war out, since it's been going so badly for Russia, that has required Putin to raise the stakes. And the most dramatic thing he's done for that is mobilizing Russia's reserves, which is the first time that's been done since the Second World War. And this is a parallel that the Russian propaganda and Putin personally have not been shy in evoking because the way that they have been portraying this conflict is it's some sort of defensive invasion. The US would have used Ukraine to attack Russia somehow if Russia hadn't acted first, one of Putin's mantras about this. And since it's much more difficult now after you've had one wave of mobilization, there are lots of rumors that there may be more or that they may declare a full blown war, which also has various economic consequences that would affect quite a lot of people because they'd be able to seize economic production and engage people in the economic war effort as well.

Mcfarlane: I mean, can you see any of those things happening for the anniversary?

Seddon: Well, it's possible. One thing that appears might finally be happening is Putin didn't make his state of the union address last year, which he's required to do at any point of his choosing in the calendar year by the constitution. And they just basically ignored this, and it looks like it's going to happen a few days before the invasion. Some state media has been giving potential days for the 20th, 21st of February. And this would be the forum where, you know, Putin could do a number of things. He could use it as a way to ramp up the rhetoric and really, you know, try to drag the whole population into the war effort. He could make it more about the supposed social aspects of why they're fighting these parts of four regions of Ukraine, which Russia is attempting, with mixed success, to annex, about all of the money and the assistance that's going to be given to people living there who Russia has now decided are Russians.

Mcfarlane: Max, I heard you recently, talking with your colleague, Gideon Rachman. You mentioned that someone had said to you, Putin's a gambler, and he's gonna stay in the casino. He's already lost. Everyone except him knows that he's already lost. But he's putting everything he has on this losing bet until someone drags him out. I mean, obviously, the Russians have lost so much from this war. The army has been seriously depleted. Their economy is really struggling. They're running out of a lot of supplies. I mean, the Russians can always gain ground. Things can change on the battlefield. But if things continue to do badly, and if, as you point out, that Putin hasn't had a lot of positive things to say regarding the operation, and perhaps that may be one reason why he's postponed a lot of these important press conferences and his State of the Union, how long do you think this can continue to go badly for Putin?

Seddon: I think it can go badly for quite some time because you look at the battlefield at the moment. They suffered a couple of pretty humiliating defeats. Last fall, they were routed in Kharkiv Oblast in Eastern Ukraine, and then Southern Ukraine, they had to withdraw from Kherson, which was the only regional capital they'd captured during the entire invasion. But since then, by bolstering the front lines with all these men, they've called up hundreds of thousands of people. And they have largely managed to ebb the tide a bit. They even captured this town, Soledar. The first town they'd captured in something like six months. They captured in January. And as long as things are in this state or even if they're, you know, just gradually getting worse, I think he's pretty secure because, you know, you are not seeing, despite some, I think, pretty misplaced hopes in the West when the first sanctions came in the beginning of the war that there'd be some sort of elite pushback. This is not happening because Putin still, you know, very much controls the security apparatus, and there really isn't any kind of constituency among, you know, oligarchs, people in the government, to end this war. You know, that said, the vast majority of them would very much like this to end as soon as possible, but they're not really doing anything about it to try to make that happen. It's very rare that even among the most liberal of his confidants who can explain to him, you know, how disastrous this has been for Russia's economy, they're too scared to really tell him that. And even though on the rare occasions when they have, he's not really listening anyway because he's just so consumed by the security environment that he perceives. So I think barring a really utter disaster, which would mean I think you'd have to get to the point where Ukraine would be on Russia's borders and potentially, at least, I think, being in a position to retake Crimea, I think he's going to be absolutely solid there. I mean, there wasn't that much active dissent against the war. What was was quashed pretty effectively.

Mcfarlane: One thing that I have been struck by in recent weeks and months is what a lot of the Russian commentariat have been saying about how the war has been progressing. And in particular, this very colorful fellow, Vladimir Solovyov, who I'm sure you're very familiar with. His mood has been significantly deteriorating in recent weeks. He aired this long rant recently where he savaged the Russian military leadership for how they've handled the war so far, in particular, so-called red lines following Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territories, and that strike on the Russian military barracks that killed scores of soldiers. And he argued that the West is now fully engaged in this war against Russia, and he asked why Western nations have not yet been targeted. He argued that NATO has got more than three times the amount of conventional arms that Russia has, and so therefore, it's long time that Russia's nuclear warheads were pointed towards European capitals, Berlin, Paris, London, Washington also, and that their nuclear warheads be put on high alert. I mean, all very sort of feisty stuff. I mean, Max, these military bloggers, these hosts, media personalities in Russia, I mean, this guy in particular, he seems to present himself as a kind of Russian Alex Jones. I mean, a lot of them are extremely volcanic and extreme in what they're saying and in their calls for escalation, but how influential are they? What sort of constituency do they represent? And is it one that Putin is sort of heeding? Is he paying attention to what they say at all?

Seddon: I think you've gotta draw a line here between someone like Vladimir Solovyov, who's the absolute number one propagandist on state TV. He may froth at the mouth like Alex Jones, but he's much more like Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. And, you know, he's been doing this for decades. You can go back to the nineties, you can find clips of him speaking very eloquently and passionately in favor of liberal democracy and democratic values. So he's obviously come quite a long way since then. You know, he wasn't wearing his kind of Mao military tunics that he wears all the time now. But the people like that, even if they might have started drinking the Kool-Aid and they start believing what they say, you know, these are very much people who are told to influence public opinion. That is their job. And I think one misperception that a lot of people have in the West, you know, you experience Russian TV through these clips of people doing crazy stuff on Twitter, and you're shocked by that. That's not the way that most Russian people experience propaganda. These shows are on for, you know, eight hours a day now, and, you know, they spent eight years on these shows hyping it up. It's like somewhere halfway between, I don't know, your kind of news talk broadcast and Jerry Springer. It's really there to be background noise because most people are not, you know, still actively engaged in the war. It just sort of, if your grandma, you know, she has it on and can conveniently hear it from the next room while she's in the kitchen frying mushrooms. And there have been studies on it, so even if people don't watch TV, when enough of these, you know, buzzwords like Ukrainian Nazis are repeated enough, a lot of ordinary people will unconsciously start picking them up. This is quite different for the military bloggers who are also, you know, we shouldn't have any real illusion. This isn't also completely officially sanctioned, but these guys, some of whom are, actually, they're sort of your war reporters who are embedded with the Russian army or some of the irregular Russian forces fighting in Eastern Ukraine. This is all completely officially sanctioned, but this is the closest thing from the Russian side you can get to an account of the war. This was, you know, when the war started going badly, a lot of them were talking pretty openly about it. And one thing that Putin likes to do is speak to people, so to speak, on the ground. And he invited these guys for a few meetings, and he started hearing a lot of this criticism, this very far right criticism from the pro-war flank of the military leadership, because these people, they don't want the war to end. They want to win the war. And they've become quite influential. I think the extent to which they've affected Putin personally isn't quite clear because he hasn't done quite a few things that they like, but there are strains of the elite that share this view. And so something that was very interesting in September, around the time that he declared mobilization, when they'd just suffered this absolutely humiliating defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, you had this completely unprecedented and very clearly officially sanctioned criticism of the military leadership for all the failures in the invasion of Ukraine. And there are some figures in the elite. You can talk about, you know, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the guy who runs Wagner, the former mercenary group of paramilitaries that has now become this kind of zombie prisoner army of convicts who are released from prison to go and fight. Ramzan Kadyrov, who also runs an enormous paramilitary force, is basically his own personal praetorian guard in Chechnya. You have the guys who, for the last eight years, were the sort of Russian backed guys in the Donbas in Eastern Ukraine. And they've been pushing for two things, which is changes in the military leadership and for Russia to not give up, to really still try to go all the way, which means, you know, never giving up on the goals, and really, you know, Kyiv, at the end of the day, really has to be the goal.

Mcfarlane: Jackie, I want to ask you because the first year of the war in Ukraine, we've spent a lot of time focusing on the situation on the ground, following in minute detail the twists and turns of the war and how it's played out, the towns that have been taken, the towns that have been liberated, movement of refugees, and just looking at the Ukrainians themselves, how much they have been able to muster of their defense, and with the tools that they had at the start of the war. I wonder if this year now, because particularly as we are at a bit of a stalemate between both sides, if in this new phase of the war, we will start to be focusing a lot more on what the West decides to do next, particularly in terms of resupplying a lot of the Ukrainian military hardware, a lot of which has been spent. I mean, we don't know how many jets that they have left, we don't know how many pilots they have left. They have been asking the international community to ramp up their support, and pretty significantly last year, we had huge budgets passed in December that included hundreds of billions of dollars for the Pentagon and a pretty significant bump from what Biden was initially asking in order to accommodate defense for Ukraine.

Heinrich: Yeah. I think that there will continue to be strong support for Ukraine aid. Not only has congress been willing to pass more than the president has asked for, you know, the president's been criticized by members of congress for not doing enough soon enough. I mean, he's moved beyond self-imposed red lines before on everything from HIMARS to Patriot missiles to M1 Abrams tanks. He just said this week, you know, no F-16s, but everyone in Washington is kind of like, well, so when do we send them the F-16s? Because it just seems that, you know, it's been a matter of getting him to do it soon enough, not really getting him to do it at all. I do think that there's a faction of the Republican Party that wants an accounting of the money that has been spent, and these same people are often saying that this funding really should be going toward our southern border and domestic issues. They're a relatively small faction of their own party in congress. They have numbers, but I don't think that they are, you know, sort of where the weight is centered. You have enough defense hawks in the Republican Party, and you have enough moderates in the Republican Party that are partnering with Democrats, vowing to overcome whatever challenges they have in getting money appropriated because they understand that this is, you know, The US has to lead this effort, as we've seen with so many other initiatives, you know, a flow of weapons and support coming from other countries after The US leads that charge. So, I don't think that they're going to give up on that effort anytime soon. I think that as you see more candidates jump in the race for 2024, there'll probably be more media attention on these voices who say, you know, we've spent all this money on Ukraine and look at the southern border. But I don't think that that's going to change anything. I do think, though, that it's important to keep Ukraine in the news because I think that when people see Ukraine winning and success on the battlefield, it's easier to support huge swaths of money going to this effort. I think when people think that they are wasting money on something that's just going to drag on for years and we're not giving them enough to win the war, things sort of fall apart because it's like, okay, well, why are we pouring all this money into this effort? And so now you see on both sides, you see people who are pushing for us to just give the money and give the weapons that will actually allow this to stop. You know, we've had this whole discussion over sanctions, and I think that this was something that the Biden administration misstepped on. They should have imposed sanctions preemptively. I think saying the mere threat of a sanction would deter Putin. Obviously, that did not happen. And then they have not been so effective in a way that, you know, it's changed our posture at all. I think that we can accept the argument that down the road, things are going to be very difficult for Russia because of these sanctions, but it certainly hasn't changed what we all need to do to support Ukraine in the immediate, in the now.

Mcfarlane: I mean, one voice in The States right now calling for the Americans to give the Ukrainians the tools they need to beat Putin now is our old former prime minister Boris Johnson, who is speaking at the Atlantic Council. He spoke for about half an hour on the importance of backing the Ukrainians, and he said something actually that I thought was quite interesting. He very firmly rebuffed questions about nuclear weapons, and he felt very strongly that Putin is not going to use any nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise. And for the reason that if he were to do so, he would immediately extinguish all the swing voters in the world, as he described it. He would lose China's support in an instant. He would lose India. He would lose a lot of the other countries in the global south that are quite ambiguous currently in the war with Ukraine. And I think it's interesting and topical at the moment, because there has been a bit of a row brewing at the moment on the New START Arms Treaty, which is that treaty between The US and Russia, which works to limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons that each country can use. And the Russians haven't denied that they've been pulling back. The Americans have been claiming that they have refused to allow inspectors into their country in order to inspect their nuclear facilities and storage sites. They've not denied this, but they have claimed that the Americans have made the conditions for the treaty impossible, because they've backed Ukraine in the war. And of course, the big concern about this is if the treaty is not extended, I believe in 2026, what we could end up with is a situation where both US and Russia have no restrictions on their nuclear arsenals, and that may spark a global arms race. I mean, what are the fears in Washington of that right now? Or do you think that's an issue that's sort of parked at the moment?

Heinrich: Well, I think Boris Johnson being on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers also, you know, is important and rallying support. I think that the START treaty and all of this with Russia, I mean, how can we take seriously anything that Russia says? I mean, they have also accused NATO and the West of leading this war and being the aggressor in this situation. I don't think that anyone really takes seriously anything that Russia is claiming in terms of allegations. I also think that with the JCPOA and the Iran nuclear deal, The US has stopped pursuing this, because it's just clear that, you know, we cannot take at anyone's word what's being done or not being done. These treaties don't stop actions, really. There has been in a lot of ways sort of a simmering arms race anyway, despite all of these treaties. I mean, we know that it didn't prevent Iran from getting as far as they've gotten, and we know that Russia's going to say whatever they're going to say. And so I think that really it comes down to how can The US maintain a position to defend democracy around the world and also itself and its allies if that moment were ever to come. And I think what we're going to be witnessing more of now is how do we get our manufacturing in a place where we could, if there were a conflict with China, for instance, in the Taiwan Strait, what would happen? Would we have the weaponry to sustain something going on there? I mean, there's been reporting that's been sort of flaring up and circulating on the Hill to suggest that we would not have the necessary supply after just a two week incident. So that's sort of resonating here. And we're looking at, you know, the Pentagon's taking quite seriously how do you maintain stockpiles and how do you replenish what you would need for something in the future?

Mcfarlane: Max, will 2023 be the year that Putin crosses that nuclear threshold as Vladimir Solovyov is calling for? Or, and if he doesn't do that, then what other options does he have?

Seddon: Among the people I talk to in and around the Kremlin, opinion is divided on this. So one former senior official said to me that, you know, Putin's the kind of guy who, he's, you know, facing checkmate and, you know, the only alternative is to drink hemlock or take a cyanide pill, he might, you know, instead of accepting defeat on the board, he might just, you know, throw the board across the room and scatter all the pieces everywhere. And there was a lot more talk about this in Moscow in the fall, around the time that he declared mobilization. He started making veiled nuclear threats in the last couple months. And two things appear to have happened. One is we know that the West did deliver a strong message on the repercussions there'd be for Putin using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. I think also that, you know, he was given a strong message by China and India, especially, who have been quite neutral on the war in a way that's been very beneficial to Russia so far and have helped prop up the economy by buying lots of Russia's oil. We don't know what kind of message that they gave to Russia, but a strong message from them on the inadmissibility of crossing the nuclear threshold that would have been taken very seriously in the Kremlin. Then there's also, if you believe some people, there's the issue that using a tactical nuclear weapon, these so-called suitcase nukes on the battlefield in Ukraine, it doesn't really work because these things are, in terms of the area that they devastate, that's relatively small. And you can do a lot of that with conventional weapons. Indeed, they already have. If you look at Mariupol, a city of almost 500,000 people before the war, now it's completely destroyed. That would have been, according to one expert I spoke to, that you would have needed more than one tactical nuclear weapon to do that. And that was one of the reasons why Ukraine became much bolder in the late spring, early summer about trying to retake all of the lost territory because I felt like that they had already taken so much of the worst that Putin could throw at them. The other issue is that if you're doing this on the battlefield, either if you're doing it in Western Ukraine, there's a huge risk of escalation because, you know, some of the radiation might blow over to Poland, or you were bombing somewhere that you just said was Russia a few months ago. You've decided that all the people living in some of these frontline areas like Zaporizhzhia or Kherson are Russians, and it doesn't really make much sense. And Putin said this in the end of October, beginning of November, that there was no political or military sense in using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. One would hope that the people who say that he really believes that are right.

Mcfarlane: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live. You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.