Are Rumors of an Imminent Russian Attack Warranted? | Yaroslav Trofimov

0:00Demetri Kofinas:What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Yaroslav Trofimov, the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, who has written extensively on the Ukraine war, US-Russia relations, the Middle East, China, and other related topics. By the time this episode is over, you will have an updated understanding of the state of the war that is still raging in Ukraine, including recent speculation around CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow, whether Russia is in a position to expand the conflict through a direct confrontation with NATO, how the war against Iran has altered Russia's calculus, and why US-China relations serve as the critical strategic backdrop for forecasting the fallout for Europe, the US, and Asia's largest economies over the next few years.

1:02Demetri Kofinas:Yeroslav and I begin our conversation by trying to make sense of the war, its origins, its stakes, and the prospects for its near-term conclusion. We assess claims related to the CIA director's recent trip to Moscow, the form that any potential Russian attack on NATO could take, and what the Europeans can do to try and stop it. We also discussed the political turmoil surrounding a recent shakeup in President Zelensky's cabinet, claims of corruption, and whether Western countries can be expected to continue supporting Ukraine in the face of a declining popularity for the war and mounting popular resistance movements being led by Europe's far-right parties.

1:38Demetri Kofinas:In the second hour, we turn to an examination of Western strategic thinking and the widening schism between Washington and Europe's largest capitals. We discuss why Yaroslav believes the West's difficulties begin with a flawed diagnosis of the war based on the comforting assumption that this is a fight over territory in the Donbas rather than a contest over the future of Europe, how the collapse of trust in legacy media is shaping public opinion on the continent, the ideological sympathy many on the right field toward Moscow, the strategic consequences of the breakdown in relations between Washington and much of the rest of the world, the nature and limits of China's support for Russia, how the war against Iran is reshaping the strategic battlefield, and how all of these variables could reshape the international system in the next five years.

2:25Demetri Kofinas:If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q &A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats. You can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io and I or someone from our team will get right back to you.

3:06Demetri Kofinas:And with that, please enjoy this extraordinarily timely an important conversation with my guest, Yaroslav Trofimov.

3:19Demetri Kofinas:Yaroslav Trofimov, welcome to Hidden Forces. Great to be on the show. It's great to have you on. I've been reading your articles in the Wall Street Journal for many years. You are, for those who don't know, the foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. How many years have you been in that position? Well, I actually joined the journal in the 20th century, in 1999. and so it's been a long ride with the journal and this current position that I have, which is the chief foreign affairs correspondent, it's been since I believe 2018. You know, by saying the 20th century as opposed to 1999, it makes you sound much older than you are.

3:54Demetri Kofinas:I like that and older and more experienced. So before we start, Yaroslav, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you. Tell me a little bit about your life and career and you're also Ukrainian. What has it been like to cover this war as someone who comes from this country? Well, you know, I left Ukraine in 1990. And so I left the country when it was still a Soviet Union. And I spent most of my career as a journalist and as a writer covering other people's wars. So, you know, I was based in Baghdad shortly after the US invasion. I used to live in Kabul and for more than five years covering the war in Afghanistan.

4:29And so really, I only came back full time to Ukraine as a correspondent ahead of the Russian invasion, the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. And it was difficult psychologically because no one likes covering a war in a city where one is born, where every memory of a childhood is associated with the streets. But also in a way, it made it easier for me because I could understand the details, the nuances of the languages, of the culture, of how people are reacting, pretty much better than I did in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in other wars that I covered. Now, I think I also took much greater risks in Ukraine because I felt like because of this advantage that I had, I had an extra mission to convey what's going on on the front lines, to convey what is happening to the civilians who were bearing the brunt of the Russian attacks.

5:23and to explain this war to readers around the world in ways that relate to their lives. So I was trying to make it seem as unexotic as possible, to throw the parallels so that everyone, every reader could recognize themselves in a situation in which the Ukrainians found themselves overnight, and Ukrainians most of whom had not experienced war up until that time.

5:46Demetri Kofinas:You know, I had a similar conversation with military analyst Michael Kaufman, because he's from Ukraine. and one of the questions I asked him that I want to ask you is how do you remain objective and do you think objectivity is something that should be pursued in your specific coverage of this war? Well, Mike is a good friend and is a tremendous analyst and I think we have to make a distinction between honesty and objectivity. We have to be honest. We have to report on what we see and despite our biases and our desires and our maybe conscious or unconscious rooting for one on the other side in the war, but we are paid to be honest.

6:28We're paid to call it the way it is. Now, at the same time, we are humans and we are looking at a conflict in which there is a country that invaded and a country that was invaded, a country that is a victim and a country that is a perpetrator. and I think you have to call it that way. If you see a brawl on the street where a big man is attacking an old lady, you cannot be equidistant from both because you see who's in the right and who's in the wrong. So that's, I think, the challenge of balancing your intellectual honesty with an emotional component of your work because clearly in this war and in some other wars to a different extent, there is a right and there is a wrong.

7:17Demetri Kofinas:The apportionment of blame has been a hot topic of discussion in America since the onset of the war. And the two camps in the dialogue within Western countries have fallen on the side of either Russia was acting in its defense against NATO enlargement, European Union encroachment, et cetera, or Russia was morally wrong in invading Ukraine as the aggressor state. I don't think anyone really blames Ukraine so much beyond simply maybe arguing that they were a pawn in America's larger strategic game. Is it useful, do you think, to, is it a useful exercise to try and apportion blame for the state of US-Russia relations and for who actually is responsible for the war that we find ourselves in, do you think?

8:06Well, I think it's very useful. It's also useful to consider that it's not just But the US and Russia, it's also about Ukraine, which has agency, much greater agency, as we have learned in the last four and a half years in this war than many people imagined when the conflicts broke out. I think, again, we're going back to the fact that, you know, this was an invasion of a country that had done nothing to threaten its much bigger neighbor. And this was an invasion couched in ideological language and explained by President Putin before the conflict began. And if you remember, he published in the summer of 2021 this lengthy historical work called On the Historical Unity of the Russians and the Ukrainians, of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, in which he argued that there is no such thing as an independent, sovereign Ukrainian nation or culture, and that we are all the same, and therefore Ukraine can only exist in the shadow of Russia.

9:01And, you know, it's always tempting to excuse things and to bring in geopolitical reasons, NATO, European Union expansion, maybe. But the core of the argument in Russia is that Ukraine should not exist because Ukraine is Russia. And everything else is garnished to the side of that.

9:24Demetri Kofinas:So what about the state of US-Russia relations? Do you think it was inevitable that the two largest and most militarily powerful nations on earth would return to a state of mutual antagonism? And I just want to caveat when I say the two most militarily powerful nations, I mean, at the end of the Cold War, one could argue now that China is more powerful militarily than Russia, but that's sort of besides the point. My real question has to do with inevitability. Was it inevitable, do you think? I mean, it is about the course of Russian political development and Russian statehood. At some point, Russia had a fork in the road in the early 2000s, in the early years of President Putin, where it could decide either to build itself as a democratic European power, a big power, but still the one that respected the commitments it had made to recognize the borders of its neighbors and their independence or to rebuild the empire.

10:26And President Putin famously said at the time that he considered the collapse of the Soviet Union to be the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, bigger than the Holocaust. And so he set out to rebuild this lost glory of the empire. He keeps comparing himself to Peter the Great, the Russian emperor who built St. Petersburg, his hometown, and then conquered vast lands around what is now Russia. And so I don't think there was anything inevitable about this. There was a different path available to Russia, but it chose not to undertake it. Now, we could also talk about the hubris of American empire and the forever wars of the early 20th century.

11:06But I think at the end of the day, this denies Russia the agency that it has. It was the choice of the Russian people and the Russian government under President Putin to invade first Georgia in 2008, and then to go after Ukraine in 2014, and then with a full-scale invasion of 2022.

11:24Demetri Kofinas:I've heard you say that to the West, to the Washington consensus really, that negotiations and dialogue are seen as a reward for countries that are behaving well, and that this has generated a lot of resentment in countries like China and Russia over the years. Had Washington's tone and its tendency to moralize, especially in the administrations preceding Trump, put countries like Russia and China on the defensive and serve to further alienate them from the West? And can we apportion some of the blame for the state of relations to this, what has been perceived by China and Russia as hypocrisy and grandstanding on the part of Washington?

12:10Well, you know, all the big powers are hypocritical. It's not like Russia and China are not hypocritical. I think that comes up with the territory. I think the fundamental problem is that Russia, because it's led by people who grew up in the Soviet times, still thinks of itself as a great power, the global power, not unlike the Soviet Union and equal to the United States, but just doesn't have neither the economy nor the global cloud, nor frankly the military to be comparable. And I think the invasion of Ukraine was part of this effort to restore this might that is long gone and probably can never come back, the demographic, the economy decline of the Russian Federation today.

12:52Now, yes, of course, you know, the West was triumphalist after the end of the Cold War. And, you know, if you recall all these proclamations about how history has ended. and a lot of this talk about democracy and human rights, sometimes it was, you know, honest and sometimes it was not. Sometimes it was to cover up geopolitical interests and, you know, interests of national security, whatever. But I don't think we can take away the fact that it was Russia that made the decisions. And, you know, it's not a child that can be offended by them moralizing. It made the decisions based on very hard calculations, some of which proved to be wrong with the invasion of Ukraine.

13:31And the calculation was that the West is weak. It is our moment. And we, with enough strength, will be able to achieve our results through the old-fashioned conquest.

13:44Demetri Kofinas:So let's bring it back to the present. Why should people who are not directly impacted by the war in Ukraine, and here I mean citizens of countries that are not in any serious danger of ever being attacked or occupied by Russia, why should these people care about what's happening in Ukraine? Well, again, this is a question that implies that there are countries that are not under threat in the long term. I think, first of all, we have to look at the fact that the range of modern weapons has changed dramatically. And there are no safe areas anywhere in Europe, for example, from Russian attacks, be it conventional or nuclear for that matter.

14:21People in Europe definitely understand in most countries. I mean, obviously, it depends where in Europe, but very much so in Northern and Eastern Europe, but also in France and the UK. that Ukraine is only the first step. Ukraine to Vladimir Putin was an obstacle. He planned to conquer it in a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. And then his real goal was to redraw what he calls the European security architecture. And that meant a restoration of a great deal of Russian control over decision-making, over the economies, over the military strategies on the European continent. And that was the Russian offer that was put out in the meeting with the U.S.

15:03government in 2021 before the full-scale war began. At the same time, we are seeing that Russia is increasingly aligned. Well, it has a formal alliance now with North Korea. So there is a railway from Pyongyang all the way to the Ukrainian border that has ferrets, soldiers, and missiles and troops. It is collaborating very closely with Iran. And obviously, all these three countries are extremely dependent on Chinese economic and technological support. And the fear among many Western military commanders is that in case of China getting involved into a hot conflict with the U.S. or its allies in the Pacific, it will make sure that the others in this axis of autocracies will simultaneously engage in military activities to stretch.

15:49and they keep the ability of the Western democracies to defend themselves. So I think we're talking about a global alliance in Eurasia of which Russia is part. And the goal of that alliance is to redraw them out of the world and redraw the rules under which the world operates. And on top of these rules has been the preeminence of the United States in setting up the rules of the international system in the last 81 years since the end of the Second World War.

16:16Demetri Kofinas:So CIA director John Ratcliffe recently made a secretive unannounced trip to Moscow, which appears to have been leaked to CBS News, which broke the story. The Wall Street Journal subsequently published the story arguing that Ratcliffe had been sent by Trump to warn Putin against launching a limited assault on a NATO country. There are those like our recent guest, Carlo Mazala, who wrote If Russia Wins, that are concerned that Putin could try to test Article 5 with a limited incursion or attack on an allied country in the next few years, something that was recently reaffirmed by reporting in the Wall Street Journal about US intelligence revising their own forecasts about attacks, ranging from a cyber attack to small-scale land incursion.

17:08Demetri Kofinas:How much credibility do you assign to these explanations put forward by the Wall Street Journal and others about the reasons behind the director's trip? Well, I don't have any personal intelligence on what went in the room between the CIA director and his Russian counterparts, head of the FSB, the SVR intelligence services. But it's clear that But this visit came against the backdrop of mounting fears in Europe about Russia choosing to escalate the conflict because it's stuck on the battlefield in Ukraine and needs a way of forcing Europe to cut its support for Ukraine that's vital for Ukrainians' ability to continue resisting the Russian military operations.

17:52And yes, there are very, very serious fears that I hear personally from top military officials in Europe, top security officials, about either the possibility of Russia testing Article 5 of NATO and trying for incursion in the Baltic states or somewhere else, or launching hybrid or not so hybrid attacks by drones, by missiles on targets in Europe that are involved in the Ukrainian war effort. and there is a sense that there is growing desperation in Moscow because Moscow is kind of stuck in this war of attrition and needs a way out of it and this escalation could be a way out of it. Now, I think there is also this understanding after so many times that President Trump had said that he doesn't care about Europe, that Europe is a bunch of freeloaders that didn't help with the war in Iran and so I think it would have made a lot of sense for Director Radcliffe to go to Moscow and to convey to the Russians that basically, look, you may have heard all those things on television, but make no mistake, if you invade Lithuania or Estonia or Finland, the US will be there.

18:59And to dissuade them from misreading American politics and American determination. Do we know if he briefed Putin directly or if he briefed his briefers? Well, we don't have any confirmation that he met with President Putin. Probably didn't. I don't know if he maybe have had some exchanges on the phone. But he had met the director of the external intelligence service of Russia and the director of the domestic internal intelligence service of Russia, both of whom are quite close to President Putin. If you remember the last time that a CIA director visited Moscow in late 2021, it was Director Bill Burns.

19:38With a very similar warning, do not invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin also chose not to meet him. So he spoke with Putin at the time, but only via telephone on sort of a classified internal line on which they could discuss sensitive issues.

19:53Demetri Kofinas:The reason that I asked you whether he met with Putin or if he met with Naryshkin or whoever else is because, and this strikes at the heart of the question of perception. So one could argue that Putin isn't really in a great position to open another front of this war when he still hasn't been able to close the one he's currently fighting in Ukraine. But that also depends on his perception of how that war is going. And so I suppose there are a few questions here. Let's start with the first one. Do you think he's objectively in a position to open another front of this war? And what do we know about his perception of how that war is going and the condition of the Russian military?

20:35I think absolutely he is in a position to open another limited front. We're not talking about sending tanks and cross the plains of Poland and Germany all the way to Paris. We're talking about an operation probably in the Baltic states, you know, maybe trying to close the Suwalki gap, which is a very narrow strip of land. And the Russian military is totally able to do that, or at least attempt to do that with very limited forces. You know, the fact of the matter is that the Russian military and the Ukrainian military right now are the only two military forces in the world with extensive experience in fighting a modern drone-dominated infantry campaign.

21:14Nobody else can do it. We have seen all these stories about how Ukrainian drone teams, you know, 20 guys with drones were defeating entire NATO battalions. That's great. But the problem is that the Russians have the same capability. So So 20 Russians could also defeat a native infantry battalion that is not trained in modern drone warfare. And the goal of the Russian Federation is very clear. It is to split the U.S. from its European allies and to split European allies from each other. So, you know, I wrote about a war game that was carried out late, late last year, sort of modeling a Russian invasion of Lithuania.

21:52and in that war game in which senior German and other officials participated, it turned out that not even Poland sent troops to help Lithuania, let alone Germany, because the Russians were able to move quickly and to dissuade the Allies from coming in in the absence of a very strong American response, which is one of the calculations being made in Moscow. So I think the risk is real. I think everyone I speak to in European capitals is telling me that the risk has grown. And the window of opportunity for Russia, the most dangerous moment for the West, is probably in the next year, two years, sort of the final period of President Trump's term.

22:31Demetri Kofinas:Do you feel like we are in a window similar to that which preceded the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where no one expected it, they simply didn't think that he would do it, and yet he went ahead and did it? Is that something that resonates with you? it's similar in some ways and others it isn't because back then and there was very clear evidence of troop buildup everybody could see more than a hundred thousand troops ostensibly for war games but still gathering around the borders of ukraine and belarusian in russia we're not seeing that now so we're not seeing any material preparations for invasion of the baltic states and any such conventional invasion is probably not the next step on this collation matter, if you're looking at it from Russia, because other means still remain at Russia's disposal.

23:20Russia is watching the public opinion in Europe. It's watching how people are tired of the war, how scared they are of potential Russian attacks. And if the Russian goal right now is to prevent European nations from funding the Ukrainian economy and the Ukrainian war efforts, providing logistics and military support to the Ukrainian military, then one of the scenarios that is being increasingly discussed by Western security services and militaries is that Russia might try to launch a limited strike on some of these warehouses, be it in Poland or maybe in Romania, perhaps with drones that the trophy Ukrainian drones that had been captured and repurposed, perhaps directly with missiles in a very limited strike and then see what happens, whether there will be a reaction, whether NATO will be split, whether the US will come in to the rescue.

24:09And probe, because it's already doing kinetic things. It's already doing things that could kill people. This armed drone attack on Ukrainian plane in the German airport of Leipzig Halle, you know, that could have killed people. It did not kill people because the drone didn't function properly. But it shows that the risk level of Russia is rising and rising very steadily. And they are probing, probing for the limits of when and how the West will react. And they're so far not encountering any serious reaction unless there was something that Director Ratcliffe told his Russian counterparts when he was in Moscow and wouldn't know about.

24:47Demetri Kofinas:So earlier you mentioned Putin's desire to reset the strategic architecture of Europe. How much would something like we're describing today be motivated by long-term strategic objectives like those versus more immediate tactical objectives to gain leverage in a more imminent negotiation ending the current war? Well, I think it's all connected, right? So President Putin cannot redraw the strategic balance of power in Europe unless he first turns Ukraine to a vassal state one way or another. So a hostile, viable, armed Ukraine with the capability for long-range strikes into the heart of Russia on the way to Siberia, that would be a major obstacle to growing Russian power over Europe.

25:40But again, if Ukraine were to be beaten to submission, then that would serve as a model for the other European countries and that would look very carefully what happened to Ukraine. And perhaps some would say, okay, well, our only choice now is to accommodate Russia because we don't want to be bombed. We don't want our cities to be in a blackout. And we already see this rise of pro-Russian politicians in so many of these countries, you know, in Slovakia. You know, the whole secret behind Viktor Orban's victories until recently was precisely that, the desire to accommodate Russia. Okay, his government eventually lost elections because he just couldn't deliver any prosperity at home.

26:20But I think the sense of fear of Russia, should it win the war in Ukraine, is powering a lot of political movements on the eastern side of Europe.