- Can we afford not to succeed in Ukraine?

And in fact, if we don't succeed in Ukraine, what does that mean for the security of NATO writ large?

Same is true for the United States.

Frankly, no one has been wanting to have that discussion, but I think we're getting to a point where it's necessary because failure's not an option.

[soft music] - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are taking a look at what's happening on the battlefield in Ukraine, asking the hard question, "Is Russia now winning this war?"

18 months ago, the battlefield looked very different.

Moscow's troops were decimated.

The Black Sea Naval Fleet was destroyed, and it struggled to bring advanced technology and weapons to the front lines.

But in the past few months, Russia has been able to rearm, regroup, resupply, and is now taking territory in Northeast and Southeast Ukraine at its fastest pace since the beginning of the war.

So, what comes next?

Can Western allies stay committed to Kiev for the long haul, and what happens if Russia actually wins?

Here to help unpack these big questions is Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former U.S.

Ambassador to NATO.

And then we'll take you inside one of Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camps, as a prominent relief organization struggles to find funding amid controversy.

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

- [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 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 - [Narrator 1] And by... 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.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York and... [upbeat music] [soft music] - Is Putin's bet paying off?

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin's strategy came down to a word, "time."

[explosion booms] Russia had time to fight a grinding, bloody battle of attrition, time to wait for war fatigue to settle in among Western allies, time to let global attention fade from the headlines.

And over two years later, that plan seems to be working at least as well as Putin could have hoped.

Political infighting in Washington led to a six-month delay in delivering military aid.

That's an opening that Russia exploited.

And as global attention and diplomatic efforts turned to Gaza and the Middle East, Ukraine started losing the war.

In recent weeks, Moscow's troops have pushed into the Northeast and are closing in on the country's second largest city, Kharkiv.

And that means Kiev is now using precious troops and weapons to defend an area it already clawed back in 2022.

The gap in air defenses has allowed Russia to ramp up attacks on Ukrainian ports and agriculture, threatening global food security.

In a sign of just how alarming the situation is right now, President Zelenskyy canceled all upcoming foreign travel to focus on Russia's offensive.

That's all to say the 61 billion in military aid recently passed by Congress can't come soon enough for the Ukrainians.

Battlefield conditions are so dire that a high-level intelligence briefing apparently convinced Conservative Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to reverse his positions and push for the military package.

- I really do believe the intel and the briefings that we've gotten.

I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed.

I think he might go to the Balkans next.

I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.

To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.

- That's a risk European leaders are increasingly talking about, a Russian win in Ukraine and an emboldened Moscow bringing the specter of war to NATO's backyard.

Poland and the Baltic states would be especially vulnerable to Russian influence and security threats, leading to a dangerous arms race in the region.

For now, the United States military aid will help Ukraine pay for a few months' worth of artillery and air defense, as well as training for Ukrainian troops on advanced weapons systems.

In the meantime, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is working to reassure Ukraine and its allies that the U.S. is committed for the long haul, that funding will continue, that time can be an asset if you look at the big picture.

- We sometimes hear that time is on Putin's side.

In fact, Russia's been losing the battle to control Ukraine's destiny for 20 years, and Putin has it wrong.

Time is on Ukraine's side.

As the war goes on, Russia is going back in time.

- This year's NATO summit in July will be a major test.

NATO leaders are trying to lock in security commitments for Ukraine ahead of the alliance's 75th anniversary.

Problem is, they don't have much time to figure it out.

So, what happens if the U.S. aid dries up completely?

Is Ukraine running out of time?

I'll get into all this and more with my guest this week, former U.S ambassador to NATO and president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Ivo Daalder, who joins us today from Estonia.

Ivo Daalder, welcome back to the show.

- Great to be back.

- You're in Estonia right now.

I'll ask you about Estonia and the Baltics and where the war could go, but I wanna start with Ukraine because, of course, over the last few weeks, I'm hearing increasingly very negative things from U.S. leaders, from NATO leaders, that it is getting harder and harder to constrain the dynamics of how this Russia-Ukraine war is going.

- Yeah, I think that's true.

I think we will look back, when the history of this war is written, back to the last six months as, really, the last six months that may well become the turning point.

It was always the case that the Ukrainians needed more capabilities, they needed more ammunition, they needed more air defense systems in order to defend their capabilities, and they needed more manpower.

They only started working on the manpower issue a couple of months ago, and that's going very, very slow, much too slow in order to fill the slots that they need to fill to hold the line.

But, you know, you can have as many men, if they don't have any bullets to fire or shells to shoot, it doesn't really matter.

And the United States was the linchpin and remains the linchpin of the armaments that the Ukrainians require.

The rest of the world just doesn't have enough in their stockpiles.

And the Congress refusing to act on the requests that the president first made back in July, that's the last time he made a 13 billion request, and nothing happening until mid-April.

And now, you know, it just takes time to get stuff to the front and get it across the border and to the units in the quantities to make it happening.

And the Russians have decided they're gonna take the advantage of the hole that was created, and they're trying to punch through left and right.

They just have more people, they have more guns, and they, importantly, it looks like they have more and better morale, which makes them willing to do things that otherwise people aren't willing to do.

At the same time, things aren't going well on the Ukrainian side.

Yeah, so this is a very tough period.

- Now, Ivo, the latter point surprises me a little bit.

I understand why Ukrainian morale would be challenging given the lack of support and military capacity in the past months, but of course, the Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland.

The Russians are not.

- Well, it's relative, of course.

Ukrainian morale in that sense is better, but it was down, on the Russian side, it was negative.

The pilots weren't willing to fly because they were afraid of being shot down.

These airplanes are now flying closer to the line.

They're more willing to take risk.

They actually see results.

And, you know, war is about momentum.

If you've got it, then morale is on your side.

Unless we rush more air defenses in to start defending these cities against the ballistic missile attacks, against the drone attacks, the level of destruction has gone up significantly.

But 80% of the power generating capacity inside the Ukraine has now been destroyed.

Yeah, it's a dire situation and it really, I think, means we need to have a debate.

We need to start having a conversation about, how serious is this, and are we going to accept this?

We've been saying for two years we will do everything we can to allow Ukraine to defend itself.

We've also said that it is our strategic interest that Russia not succeed.

Well, it's succeeding.

And so that can't be in our strategic interest, and as a result, what are we gonna do about it?

We have military power, we have capabilities we could send in larger quantities.

We have, you know, troops.

And I'm in the Baltic states right now.

That's what they're talking about.

Maybe we should thinking about relieving some of the forces in the west while deploying training sites over there and doing other things in order for the Ukrainians to continue to fight in the east.

- If the Russians are intent on continuing to bomb, as we've seen destroying power capabilities, but possibly also starting to terrorize to a much greater degree all of the urban centers around Ukraine, the ability of the Ukrainians to stop them, of the West to help the Ukrainians to stop them, does not exist.

Is that an accurate assessment, Ivo?

- Well, it doesn't exist, except it does.

It's a question of how much of the capabilities that the West have, particularly the United States, but other countries too, need to be held back for other reasons.

I mean, one of the reasons we're not shipping as much as we can is because we wanna keep some of it for ourselves in case there's a conflict in China or around Taiwan.

Of course, now in the Middle East, with the active fighting that is going on and the possibility that has now existed for seven months that this war in Gaza might spread, it means that the Patriot systems that we have in large quantities, they're stuck in Iraq, in Syria, protecting small in Jordan and protecting our troops and air bases and naval bases in the Gulf.

All of those capabilities are stuck.

They can't be moved.

The same is true for the Germans who are making a very active effort to try to get more air defense systems from countries around the world.

Now, but if you're a German military planner, you say, "Okay, how likely is it "that I will need some of those forces "in case the war does spread?"

And you don't wanna leave your own forces naked.

However, and I think this is the debate we need to have, can we afford not to succeed in Ukraine?

And, in fact, if we don't succeed in Ukraine, what does that mean for the security of NATO writ large when you will have to deploy all the Patriot systems?

Same is true for the United States.

These are the kinds of strategic decisions that, frankly, no one has been wanting to have that discussion, but I think we're getting to a point where it's necessary because failure's not an option, as they say.

It's not an option for the Ukrainians, but it's not an option for NATO and it's not an option for us.

Failing in Ukraine is a failure of NATO.

It's a failure of the United States that will have huge repercussions for our security in the long run.

That's kinda what's been lost in this debate about whether or not we're gonna send $60 billion to Ukraine.

In the meantime, things have gotten really bad.

- You are now in Estonia, and as the Russians make gains in Ukraine, Estonia certainly feels like a place on the front lines.

What's the mood on this issue in Estonia right now?

- Yeah, I mean, the mood is, you know, it's not like you're walking around downtown in the beautiful Tallinn city and you see people preparing sandbags and for an invasion coming around tomorrow.

The mood in that sense is completely normal.

It's gorgeous weather here.

People sitting outside, they're enjoying themselves.

But you talk to officials in the government, and they are worried.

They're worried because clearly the Russians have now decided that their survival and certainly Putin's survival depends on the permanent mobilization of the country for war.

The economy is moving into a war economy.

It's becoming increasingly dependent, in order to grow, on churning out missiles and airplanes and artillery and bullets and tanks, etc.

rather than cars.

That just means that a lot of this stuff is gonna be sitting around that they will want to use.

And there is this worry.

There's a very big worry that if things don't go well in Ukraine, then that threat just is transported to the border of Estonia, which borders on Russia.

I'm in Tallinn.

You know, I'm a few hundred kilometers away from the Russian border.

These are places that know there is a Russian threat.

They also know, you know, what it means to be part of a Russian empire.

They were incorporated into the Soviet Union for 50 years.

You cannot believe that Vladimir Putin and this Russia is not ultimately going to find a way to try and weaken the West by dividing it, and if necessary, using military force to that end.

And so Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania and Poland, countries on the front line, are saying, "You United States, you Germany, you need to wake up.

"This war that you don't wanna fight, "it's right here, right now being fought in Ukraine."

- U.S. elections coming up real soon.

And former President Trump has said repeatedly, if he wins, the war is over in a day.

The Europeans are very concerned about what that might mean for their security.

How much of a vulnerability do you think there is in this war on the basis of the U.S. elections?

- I think there's a huge vulnerability.

Trump has said that he is gonna end the war in 24 hours.

And the way he is gonna do it, he's gonna tell the Ukrainians, "No more aid."

He's gonna tell Vladimir Putin, "You keep what you have, but don't take anything else."

I think the problem is neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians are gonna listen to him, but the Europeans will listen.

And in Europe, and it's been now pretty clear for the last few months, they feel themselves squeezed between Putin and Trump.

Trump as a country that is no longer willing and able reliably to help Europe and in its own defense in the way it is done for 75 years.

And Putin because it is a war economy that is bent on conquest and using war as a means to divide the West.

And they're increasingly thinking about, how can we, ourselves, 450 million people with a strong economy figuring out how we can stand alone in a world that is beset by an unreliable and uncertain ally in the United States and an increasingly threatened militarily expansionist Russia.

That's the question Europe faces.

It isn't going away with this election.

- So final point, Ivo.

I mean, we've talked a lot about the war, a lot about the implications for different actors.

We haven't talked about negotiations.

Now, that is in part because no negotiations are happening.

No negotiations are likely to happen.

There's no overlap between what the Russians would and the Ukrainians would accept, at least not for the foreseeable future.

But it does seem to be the end of this war is overwhelmingly likely to involve Ukraine losing territory, overwhelmingly likely to lead to some form of partition, however unacceptable that sounds and seems to us as human beings.

And I wonder if you accept that.

- So, I don't.

I think there will be a period in which there is neither fighting nor complete Ukrainian control of all the territory.

And I do think that this war will, that the fighting at some point will stop well short of Ukraine regaining all of the territory that it has lost.

But that doesn't end the war, nor does it end the conflict.

I think the conflict is gonna be there a long time.

In some ways, the conflict has been going on for not just years, but decades and centuries.

As long as Russia believes that its security depends fundamentally on the insecurity of its neighbors, we're gonna have a conflict.

And Russians have believed that for three, four hundred years.

And until they actually realize that their security depends on the security of their neighbors, that if neighbors are secure, they will be secure, until that time, we will have conflict and war.

And I think, therefore, when we talk about this war, we'll end in a negotiation.

What we're talking about is the war will more likely end in a stalemate, in some form of ceasefire and perhaps even an armistice, but not in an end of the war or an end of the conflict per se.

Just think Korea.

Or even better example, Syria and Israel.

They haven't been fighting directly since 19, what, 1975 in the War of Attrition.

And Israel has now annexed the Golan Heights, but there's no peace.

There's not even an agreement about who owns what territory.

There's occupation in that sense as far as the international community is concerned of the Golan Heights, and yet there's no fighting direct between the two belligerent parties, but there's no peace.

I think that's the more likely way in which this conflict will evolve.

And there will be a determination for the Ukrainians to get it all back, just as there was for the Estonians who are where I'm at right now, to get their country back, which ultimately, after 50 years, they did.

- They did.

Two different ways of talking about where we're heading.

Ivo Daalder, thanks for joining us today.

- My pleasure as always.

[gentle music] - Ukraine isn't the only population dependent on U.S. aid for survival.

Far from it.

Until recently, the United States was the single biggest supporter of UNRWA, the UN agency that helps millions of Palestinian refugees and camps throughout the Middle East.

But after allegations of terrorism, that funding is at risk of disappearing permanently.

"GZERO" went to Beirut for a look inside one of Lebanon's largest refugee camps.

And what comes next for the thousands of Palestinians that call it home?

Fin DePencier has this report.

- [Teacher] Morning!

- [Students] Good morning, teacher!

- [Teacher] Ah, a beautiful day!

[students speak indistinctly] - [Fin] This is the Ramallah Elementary School located in the Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut, Lebanon.

Shatila doesn't look like what you might think of when you hear the words "refugee camp."

A sort of city within a city, it's one of the largest settlements for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Shatila was built in 1949 to house 3000 people.

Today, 25,000 live here.

[Abir speaks foreign language] Like most residents in Shatila, Amir and her children receive basic services, like healthcare and education, from the UN Relief Workers Agency known as UNRWA.

[Abir speaks foreign language] UNRWA was created in 1949 by the UN General Assembly to provide relief to Palestinians who fled or were expelled from Israel in 1948.

Today, some 5.9 million refugees are eligible for UNRWA services across the Middle East.

- In Lebanon, in the 12 Palestine refugee camps, UNRWA is the sole service provider.

The reason why UNRWA still exists after 75 years is because there is no political solution.

- [Fin] Dorothee Klaus, UNRWA's director in Lebanon, says UNRWA is the only agency that can provide the necessary services to Palestinians in the region.

- It is time to find a solution for Palestine refugees to live in dignity like everybody else.

Until that time, UNRWA will have to continue as a quasi-government for a population that is entirely dependent on this agency.

- [Fin] Like almost everyone in Shatila, Abir has relied on UNRWA her entire life.

[Abir speaks foreign language] But since October 7th, her family's future is less certain.

In January, more than a dozen international donors, including UNRWA's largest donor, the U.S., suspended about $450 million in funding to the agency after Israel alleged UNRWA employees had participated in the Hamas attacks.

- It is so important that the United Nations take this matter seriously, that they investigate it, that there is accountability for anyone who is found to have engaged in wrongdoing, and that they take whatever other measures are appropriate to ensure that this sort of thing cannot happen again.

- [Fin] Following the accusations, UNRWA fired 10 accused employees and suspended four others.

But an independent review released in April found that Israel failed to provide any evidence for its claims.

Many countries have since resumed funding, including Germany, its second biggest donor, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the U.S. - Should UNRWA no longer be able to operate, we would be facing a humanitarian crisis in these camps.

There is nobody to collect the garbage.

There's nobody to operate the water pumps, and people would no longer be able to go to our health centers.

[doctor speaks foreign language] - [Fin] For now, the U.S. plans to divert funding from UNRWA to other agencies, like the World Food Program or USAID.

But those agencies don't have the infrastructure or experience that UNRWA does inside Palestinian refugee camps.

The White House says that it's waiting for an additional UN-led investigation before resuming donations to UNRWA.

But any future funding would need to be approved by Congress, which barred all contributions to the agency until March of 2025.

Until then, millions of refugees relying on UNRWA will be left in limbo.

The agency says it has enough funding to cover its operations until June.

After that, it will have no choice but to start making cuts.

[Abir speaks foreign language] For "GZERO World" in Beirut, Lebanon, I'm Fin DePencier.

[horn honks] [gentle music] - That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, or you hope that the Ukrainians can actually turn this around, you know who to watch.

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

[upbeat bouncy music] [upbeat tune] - [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 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.

- [Narrator 1] And by... 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.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [upbeat music] [cheerful tune]