- The Russians are very clear about their goals.

Ukraine should not exist as a country.

Ukrainians should not exist as a nation.

They should become reeducated in Russian.

So, the blueprint is there.

(intriguing music) - Hello, and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, Ukraine at a crossroads, as its war against Russia turns on both sides, tally increasing, losses crippling, losses in blood and treasure, with few battlefield gains to show for it.

What will be the cost of all this suffering?

Young Ukrainians who have grown up under the shadow of Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea, and then its all out assault on Ukraine back in 2022, have come of age in a country at war.

How will that experience shape the future leaders of Ukraine, and more urgently, what is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's plan to win the war, or at least not to lose it entirely?

Is it time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia for a swift end to the fighting?

We know Putin's plan, wait out the clock, and for now, it seems to be working.

Here to talk about all this and more, Wall Street Journal correspondent and author, Yaroslav Trofimov, who was born and raised in Kyiv, and has covered the conflict extensively.

Don't worry, I've also got your Puppet Regime.

- At PNN, we have obtained exclusive secret footage of the Putin-Trump exchange that changed the course of history.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

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- [Announcer 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint, and scale their supply chains, with a portfolio of logistics and real estate, and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Announcer 1] And by- - [Announcer 3] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

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- [Announcer 1] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York.

And ... (upbeat music) - An uncomfortable question.

Is it time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia for an end to the war?

Until recently, such a question would've been insulting to most Ukrainians.

And on this very show, when I suggested that such an outcome might be inevitable to Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski, a strong Ukraine backer himself, he compared me to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Hitler in Munich back in 1938.

- There is never a shortage of pocket Chamberlains.

- No I- - Willing to- - I understand- - To give up other people's land and freedom- - I'm not in a position- - For their own peace of mind.

- Polish foreign minister is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

And the fact is that time and an unlimited tolerance for body count is on Putin's side.

Russia doesn't broadcast how many of its soldiers have been killed, but outside estimates range from between 100 and 150,000 Russian dead so far.

On the Ukrainian side, President Zelensky has confirmed around 30,000 troops have died, and vastly more civilians, but the actual number is likely much higher.

(bombs exploding) (person screaming) (tense music) This summer saw some of the most intense fighting since the war began.

Ukraine has stepped up its drone and missile attacks on Crimean and Russian targets.

Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, making the coming Ukrainian winter an increasingly desperate one for Kyiv.

Roughly two-and-a-half years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it now controls nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which it annexed back 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, morale in Ukraine is slipping.

A Kyiv-based poll from July found a third of Ukrainians would accept some territorial concessions to Russia in return for a quick end to the war.

That's a three-fold increase from only a year ago, though most Ukrainians still oppose giving up any land, according to the survey.

There seems to be a gradual realization among Ukrainians that however unjust, Russia is going to end up occupying at least some of their territory.

That's in part from exhaustion and uneasiness with mobilizing additional men, and extending the deployment of those already in the field.

It's also in part from concern that international support of Ukraine will diminish, because while European support for Ukraine remains strong in most circles, the same may not be true for the United States much longer.

Candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have been critical of continuing to send US aid to Ukraine.

And while a President Kamala Harris would undoubtedly be preferable to Kyiv's interest than Trump, there's no guarantee that Congress would approve another 60 billion or more in support.

So where does that leave the Ukrainian people?

Nowhere good.

But does that mean it's time to negotiate for peace?

Joining me today to tackle this difficult question is a renowned Wall Street Journal reporter who grew up in Kyiv, Yaroslav Trofimov.

Yaroslav Trofimov, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Great to be on the show.

- So talk a little bit about life in Kyiv right now.

We're well over two years into this war.

What is it like on the ground?

- Well, there is one direct effect of the war in Kyiv that hasn't been really felt that much last year, for example, is lack of electricity.

The Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid really eroded much of the capacity, and it shows.

There are blackouts for several hours every day that affects the water services, that affects the refrigeration chain in shops and restaurants.

And the other effect is that the Russian missile attacks on Kyiv have been more successful this year than last year, in part because Ukraine has a shortage of interceptors, the Patriot missiles and other interceptors for the air defenses, and in part because the Russians have become more technically astute, and they have improved the way their cruise missiles and ballistic missiles work, because they've been learning the lessons, technological lessons of the war as well.

And so we've had this horrendous attack on the children's hospital in Kyiv recently, hospital where I was born, that really sort of brought war home to Kyiv, which for a large part of this conflict outside the initial weeks of the, when the Russians were at the gates of Kyiv, kind of felt insulated and safe-ish, if you will.

- Interesting, because I mean, of course we're seeing so many Russian missiles all across the country, I mean even to Lviv, which is right on the Poland border in the West.

And you're saying that Kyiv itself, until recently, it felt like it was sort of a protected capital?

- Right.

Because it depends on how you allocate your batteries, and how you allocate your defense resources.

- The batteries, the anti aircraft?

- The anti, yeah.

- The batteries, the Patriot missile systems.

- Well, Patriots, not just Patriots.

There were the IRIS-Ts, there were the French SAMP/Ts.

So there is a whole array of different types of anti-missile assets.

And Kyiv was in this bubble, because this is where the government is, this is where the most strategic installations are, and the interception rates in Kyiv were exceptionally high.

Even the Russian hypersonic ballistic missiles, the Kinzhals, that the Russians had claimed would not be shot down, were actually shot down over Kyiv.

But the fact is that these interceptor missiles are very, very expensive, and Ukraine is just simply running out of them, especially as a result of this month-long freeze in the funding that only ended a few months ago.

- And also, the attacks by the Russians on the critical infrastructure for energy, that has stepped up significantly in the past months now, right?

The weather's nice now, but come wintertime, one expects that's going to be a very serious problem for you.

- Right.

So there were two waves.

There was the first wave that the Russians launched in about October 2022, that went through that winter, when they really, really tried to knock down the entire grid, and they failed.

The Ukrainian grid held, the Ukrainians managed to repair some of it, and then the Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure stopped for more than a year.

Then they resumed again in January 2024, and they learned the lessons.

So they were much more methodical in how they go after it.

And the situation is already bad, because it's hot, so people use air conditioners, and it's going to get much worse in the winter for sure.

- Now, one way that I would think the Ukrainians would feel this much more directly is just how many young Ukrainian men have been sent to the front line, and they're still there, right?

And I mean, there's no end to the deployment.

In fact, they've extended that, right?

At this point.

They brought the age down from 28 to 26, I believe?

- 25.

- 25.

25 now.

And no matter where you are, you're feeling that absence.

How does that affect morale for the Ukrainian people?

How does it affect their views of the future of this war?

- Well, it's not just the young people.

Ukraine, like Russia, has a shortage of young people.

For every 25-five-year-old, there are two 40, 50-year-olds.

And people of all ages are absent, because people of all ages have been sent to the front line by the hundreds of thousands.

It's not also very popular how the selection is being made, because there used to be, and there probably is, a lot of corruption in the draft process, people who are wealthier could pay the way out of the draft.

But again, it isn't popular.

However, what is the alternative?

The alternative is surrender, and surrender is also not popular, and I think Ukrainians really know what happens when the country disappears, and when they are at Moscow's mercy.

Ukraine was one of the deadliest places on Earth back in the 30s and the 40s.

There was an artificial famine that Stalin had orchestrated in Ukraine, killing millions.

There was cannibalism, there was horrible, horrible things happening.

And then there were, example, the war and the Holocaust.

And so that historical memory, this trauma, it's in the family history of everyone, in my family's history.

I wrote a novel about it.

- In your novel, Yaroslav, "No Country for Love", you talked a lot about the extraordinary, frankly, the savage and tragic history that the Ukrainians have felt at the hands of the Russians, as in the period of Soviet Union.

Talk a little bit about the implications of that for how Ukrainians think today.

- Well, the novel is based on my own family's history.

In the 1930s and 1940s, at the time where Ukraine really was the deadliest place on earth.

Millions died in the artificial famine that Stalin had engineered, the cream of Ukraine's intellectual class was destroyed in the labor camps and executed.

Then came the war and the destruction of Kyiv and other cities, the Holocaust.

And then there was an insurgency after the war that also killed untold numbers of people in the Ukrainian countryside, insurgency that only ended in the 1950s.

And that historical memory is carried by everyone in Ukraine.

So everyone has, like me, has grandparents, great grandparents that are the survivors of this meat grinder of history, that is one of the most horrendous episodes of 20th century history.

And in the back of their minds, people know that the alternative to fighting for independent Ukraine, the alternative to continuing to sustain the losses on the battlefield is surrender.

And surrender to Russia would mean the return of all those horrors, would mean the return of all this historical memory.

And Russia is not hiding the intentions.

And so the rehabilitation of the Stalinist time, the worship of the atrocities, the closing of all the museums and the destruction of the monuments of the victims of Stalinism they're seeing in Russia right now, and in the occupied parts of Ukraine, are a reminder that this is the blueprint that many in Russia want to return to.

- So is it the view of the Ukrainian people that the Russians want to wipe them out as a nation?

I mean, the reality is that the front lines have been very stable for a long time.

So I think a lot of non-Ukrainians watching this show wouldn't necessarily accept, at least not immediately, that the alternative to just fighting, fighting, fighting is surrendering your whole country.

Why wouldn't the alternative to fighting be, even if you don't trust the Russians, make sure you get weapons support and defense and just hold onto the front lines, but try to end the fighting.

- Yeah, I think it's not the issue of what Ukrainians believe.

It's the issue of what the Russians say.

Vladimir Putin, in his interview with Tucker Carlson, spent half an hour explaining why the Ukrainian nation is artificial, and that Ukraine is Russia, and how the Ukrainian language was reinvented by the Austro-Hungarian general staff in World War I to undermine Russia.

So the discourse in Russia is very clear, that Ukraine should not exist as a country, Ukrainians should not exist as a nation.

They should become reeducated in Russian, and the nationalist elite must be physically annihilated the way Ukrainian writers and poets and painters were all shot in mid-30s.

So the blueprint is there, and it's not a question of Ukrainians thinking what their fate will be under Russian rule.

The Russians are very clear about their goals.

And yes, the front line has been reasonably stable at a huge cost in lives, especially at the time where American weapons were not coming through, but it doesn't mean it will be stable forever.

I mean, the reason it is stable is because Ukrainians are going to the front line and dying.

- So, I guess, given what you're saying, right?

Which is that the alternative is annihilation, and we've seen it historically, then why don't we have 99% of Ukrainians supporting the war?

Because it's not, right?

It was over 90 at the beginning, but now those numbers are going down, I mean, significantly down.

You have a lot of Ukrainians and recent Ukrainian polls saying, "We need to negotiate.

We need to find a way to."

Have they forgotten their history?

What is it?

- Well, I think we fixate on territory, and the issue is not just territory.

It's a very different proposition to say, as Russia wants, let's settle on the current borders plus-minus areas that Russia currently demands.

However, even if you do that and say, "Okay, we accept the partition along these lines," and the next Russian demand is, "And the rest of Ukraine "must be neutral," which means neutered, which means it should not be allowed to receive any weapons from the West, any security guarantees, and such a deal will just lay the ground for the next phase, where Russia takes over the rest of Ukraine.

If on the other hand, the partition deal, a temporary partition deal, presupposes that the rest of Ukraine will be protected by security guarantees from the US and NATO and will be armed with its teeth to resist Russia, should we try to attack the rest of it?

That's a very different deal.

But no one right now at this stage is proposing that, no one in the West.

- Well, the Europeans are certainly proposing that under any circumstances there should be long-term security guarantees for Ukraine, that they should continue to have weapons and training and intelligence and the capacity to defend themselves.

I mean, those commitments that you're hearing from the Europeans and from NATO leadership, and the US is a special case for reasons we can get into, have not just been about today.

They've been long-term commitments.

The West, I think, is saying that.

- Well, you know, none of this is really operational unless it is a formal treaty commitment.

And so nothing short of a formal treaty commitment such as the Article 5 commitment in- - In NATO?

- In NATO, would really deter Russia.

And everybody understands that.

I mean, Ukrainians are, the society's under stress, so it's hard.

Everybody knows people who were killed or maimed.

Everybody lives in conditions of hardship.

And there was an opinion poll recently that kind of encapsulated these things.

There was one question that was asked.

How do you want the war to end?

And the vast majority, 90% said, "We want the return of either all the territories "that we had in 2022, or all the territories "within Ukraine's internationally recognized borders "of 1991, including Crimea and Donbas."

But there was another question, which asked, "Do you think it's morally shameful "to be a draft dodger?

", and only 29% said yes.

Considering the high odds of being killed or maimed if you end up in the front line, a lot of people don't want to do that, and you do have this phenomenon of Ukrainian men trying to escape.

- And this isn't like Vietnam, right?

I mean like everybody understands that this is a just war that the Ukrainians are fighting, and yet, a strong majority of Ukrainians say it's okay to dodge the draft.

- Well, again, at some point, the question of individual survival has to balance against the question of collective survival, and it's human nature for many people to- - Look, I think it's a good thing for people around the world to understand that the Ukrainians are humans.

They're not super humans, they're not like some other breed that is somehow more courageous than everyone else.

They're people, and they deserve rights and principles and safety, but they also deserve our empathy when they can't be super people.

- Right, yeah.

And again, this is the numbers now when, as you said, the front line is relatively stable and there are no Russian tanks at the gates of Kyiv.

If the front line were to be broken and if the Russians were to be advancing in Kyiv a lot of people who are not willing to go and fight now would come out and fight again, as we saw in the very beginning of the war, where everyone came out.

- Now, of course, there's been a lot of talk and a lot of mistrust of what might happen if Trump becomes President of the United States.

There was an assassination attempt against the former president, and President Zelensky of Ukraine reached out and called Trump.

Trump took the call, and the readout of the call in addition to Zelensky saying the right things about, "So sorry, I'm glad you're okay," and everything else, was that they talked about a just and lasting peace, and they were both aligned.

Now, I mean, anyone watching the media over the last year would've been startled by that readout from Zelensky.

Explain.

- Well, I think, first of all, Zelensky has been trying to reach out to former President Trump for a long time.

And honestly, the passage of the supplemental would've been impossible if President Trump had said- - Had opposed it?

- Exactly.

- This was $61 billion dollars from the US to Ukraine.

And Trump basically said, "If the GOP wants "to vote for it, that's okay."

- Well, he said more than that.

He put out the statement on Truth Social that said, his usual rhetoric, that it's a European problem, Europeans should be in the lead.

He said, "The security and the strength of Ukraine "are more important to Europeans, "but they're also important to us."

And this, "This is also important to us," really was the green light that allowed the house to pass the legislation just days later.

And so you had this more nuanced position from former President Trump, and the Ukrainians are hoping that perhaps he would continue the aid, because again, what he has said is I will come up with a peace plan, and if the Russians don't like it, we'll double down on our aid for Ukraine.

And it's unlikely that he will propose anything that the Russians will actually accept, because the Russian aspirations go much further than freezing the conflict lines- - At its present territory.

- At the present territory.

So we'll see.

We'll see.

Obviously, other voices in the party, like JD Vance, have been much more negative on Ukraine.

But we don't yet know if President Trump wins the election, obviously.

- It clearly would be interesting, right?

I mean, to have an American president being willing to smoke the Russians out on that.

Because the fact is that the US hasn't been leaning on Ukraine, to say, "Okay, we need "to start negotiating.

"We need to see where Putin's red lines are, or else."

And clearly that has been Trump's line, because he wants to say he's the guy that ends the war.

And if he ends the war, or is prepared to end the war in a way that is seen, okay, not by the Ukrainians and the Russians, but by everybody else, as a reasonable outcome, that would be something that the Russians would have to at least think twice about.

- Well, I don't know if the Europeans will see a war that ends with the Russians in control of 20% of Ukraine as a reasonable outcome, necessarily.

It depends on whether this is interpreted by the Russians as a reprieve that allows them to keep going, or it comes together with much greater commitment to Ukraine in the future, and bringing Ukraine to the fold of NATO.

And it's not without precedent.

When West Germany joined NATO, it also disputed borders.

And I think Trump's biggest asset is his unpredictability.

The Mad Men theory, from Nixon on, I mean, it does work in international relations.

And that's what the Baltic states and the Poles were always complaining about with the Biden administration, is that it telegraphed its intentions in precise detail to the Russians, and- - Which didn't stop them.

- Which didn't stop them, and allowed them to game the system.

And finally, when all this self-imposed red lines were crossed, it was just too late.

All this equipment that came to Ukraine the second and third year of the war would have turned the tide in the first year.

But by the time it arrived, the Russians had mobilized hundreds and thousands of men, rebuilt the military industries, and changed the tactics, and it was not nearly as efficient as it could have been.

- Yeah, in many ways the West deterred itself.

- Absolutely.

Self-deterrence was the name of the game here, and we are really paying a very expensive price for this in Ukraine and in the West, in terms of lives, in terms of money, in terms of ammunition that has been expended, because more aid in the beginning would've made a much shorter war.

- Yaroslav Trofimov, thanks for joining us.

- Great to be on the show.

(intriguing music) - And now I've got your Puppet Regime.

Roll that tape.

- During his recent X space with Elon Musk, Donald Trump recalled a crucial conversation he said he had during his presidency with Vladimir Putin.

At PNN, we have obtained exclusive secret footage of the Putin-Trump exchange that changed the course of history.

(title whooshes) - And again, I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, "Don't do it.

"You can't do it, Vladimir.

"You do it, it's going to be a bad day.

"You cannot do it."

And I told him things that what I'd do.

(Puppet Trump talking indistinctly) And he said, "No way."

And I said, "Way."

So that's how I convinced him not to try to learn to DJ during the pandemic.

You know, a lot of people tried it, Elon.

- [Puppet Elon] Yeah, yeah.

- Most of these people were not very good.

- [Puppet Elon] Yeah, yeah.

(snickering) Yeah, yeah.

- Elon?

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you've liked what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you come from a coconut tree, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (soft music) - [Announcer 1] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Announcer 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains, with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Announcer 1] And by- - [Announcer 3] Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at cox.careers/news.

- [Announcer 1] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York.

And... (bright music) (bright music)