♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today we look at Vladimir Putin's military campaign in Ukraine after two months of bloodshed.

Where does the conflict go from here and how much more human tragedy is on the horizon before peace can possibly be realized?

This week, I speak with political scientist and renowned Russia expert -- who knew you could have two of those things?

-- Ivan Krastev.

He writes extensively about the state of play in Ukraine.

Then a look at how the war in Ukraine is playing out in one of America's biggest Russian speaking neighborhoods.

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

>> Do you know who I am, Julius?

>> No.

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

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Putin's aggression against Ukraine will end up costing Russia dearly, economically and strategically.

We will make sure of that.

>> That was Joe Biden speaking at the White House on the day Russia invaded Ukraine two months ago.

Vladimir Putin's strategy in Ukraine hasn't panned out as expected.

Volodymyr Zelensky is still president.

Kyiv has not fallen.

Two more countries, Sweden and Finland, are preparing to join NATO in short order.

The invasion was meant to last 15 days, according to documents allegedly left by invading Russian soldiers and then published by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

And the conflict has indeed cost Russia dearly.

The heavy sanctions regime led by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom has left the Russian economy reeling with a 15% contraction of its economy expected this year.

While pariah status isn't exactly Facebook official for Vladimir Putin, there is a big question hanging over the conflict.

Is a military climbdown even possible if Putin can't sell his special operation, as he calls it, as a win back home?

The Kremlin is shifting its focus towards capturing all of the contested Donbas region, securing a land bridge from there to Crimea, and gaining control of the port city of Kherson.

But strategy from NATO countries could leave Putin without a way to save face.

At a recent Pentagon briefing, the U.S. government said its intention was to defeat Russians in Ukraine and force their troops to withdraw from the country.

That belief has led to more willingness to provide additional support from nearly all NATO allies, including $800 million more in military aid from the Biden administration, heavier and more offensive weapons systems from just about everyone, more NATO training of Ukrainian troops, and expanded intelligence support for Kyiv, all of which could be a trigger for dramatic escalation if Putin feels as though he has no options left but to escalate.

Our guest today is political scientist and author Ivan Krastev.

When talking about Ukraine, he likes to mention an old Russian proverb -- "If you invite a bear to dance, it's not you who decides when the dance is over.

It's the bear."

By the way, I'm pretty sure that bear wasn't invited.

Here's our conversation.

Ivan Krastev, welcome to "GZERO World."

>> Thank you very much for inviting.

>> I want to start with the obvious question because from my perspective, I look at what we've seen over the last couple months and I see the biggest miscalculation made by a major leader on the global stage since the Soviet Union has collapsed.

Do you agree with that?

Do you think that that is true in terms of Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and to the extent that you do, why do you think he made that mistake?

>> I do believe he miscalculated, but his miscalculation cannot be easily explained simply because of a poor intelligence or basically poor performance of the Russian troops on the ground.

In my view, miscalculation goes very much deeper to the way how he sees the world after the end of the Cold War and what is happening there.

And here, there's three things that in my view works very much to explain why he did what he did.

One is he never took the end of the Soviet Union as a nature result of the end of the communism.

For him, the fact that communism was over was not the bad news.

But he could not understand how it is possible that nuclear power can lost its sovereignty and basically lost its state.

So from this point of view, restoring historic Russia was something that was always for him the most important thing to happen.

But to do this, he totally mistook and misunderstood the nature of the Russian state and the Soviet Union before.

So when he said that the Russians and Ukrainians are the same people, he believed it.

And this was a major miscalculation.

Secondly, and in my mind, this is also important for him.

He really believes that the West in such a deep crisis that the West is impossible to react, that the West was going to tolerate, nevertheless that it is not going to like what he did.

But this is the problem of time.

He created the system, which is so much around him.

It's so much a personalized regime that he wants to fix all the problems that Russia is facing in his lifetime.

He mistrusts the world, but also he mistrust his successors.

This is why the idea that time is not on the side, in my view, very much defined the fact that he wanted to do it now.

>> Do you think he understands how badly it is going for him?

And also, do you think he understands how the permanence of the damage that's been done in terms of Russia's relationship with the West, which did hold a lot of importance for Putin and for Russia over the past 30 years?

>> Listen, he understands certain things, and obviously he's angry and obviously he's very unsettled with what's happening on the ground.

But according to him -- and this is now for more than a decade -- he believes that he's in a war with the West.

So for him, the breaking with the West is not the news.

In his own understanding of the world, the West is trying to weaken Russia, the West is trying to weaken him, the West is about regime change nevertheless with what it is saying.

Secondly, he does not believe that he's so isolated in the world in the way we believe he is.

And to be honest, in a certain way, he has his own arguments for this, and certainly while he is very unhappy what is happening on the ground, he still believes that he can turn it.

He still believes that what happened in the first one month was just bad luck, that with a better performance on the ground with a stronger military offensive, and this is what we are seeing in Donbas, and in Donbas we are going to see Russian army performing better than it has performing in the last month.

He believes that this is going to change the dynamics.

He has not lost the hope that at the end of the day, the game can turn better for him.

And this is why he is looking around and he sees, okay, the West was unified.

True, but for how long?

So from his point of view, he's in the beginning of a war, not at the end of it.

>> The biggest mistake he made was this notion that Ukraine was going to welcome him, that the Ukrainians were really Russians in disguise because, of course, the implication of this war, first and foremost, is that every Ukrainian imaginable is going to view Russia and Putin as their permanent enemy for generations.

>> Totally, and I do believe here he's at his worst because strangely enough, what is at the heart of his mistake was the experience of Crimea.

During the annexation of Crimea -- >> Which was mostly ethnic Russians, by the way.

>> It was ethnic Russians, but don't forget something critically important.

There was 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers and they didn't fight back.

And this idea that Ukrainian people deeply in their hearts are loyal to Russia, but you have this corrupt, pro-Western colonizing elite, which is working for the West, this was how he was perceiving Ukraine -- as the Western protectorate and people waiting basically for him to come and to liberate them.

And then this totally backfired.

There is a story that for me is very powerful to understand also how much Ukraine has changed for the last seven or eight years.

Because don't forget, 10, 11 years ago, Ukraine was the most Russia-friendly country in the world.

You go on the opinion polls, they liked Putin.

They liked Russia.

This similarity of language, similarity of culture was there.

So Ukraine was not Russia.

>> Before the 2014 invasion.

>> Before 2014 and then came 2014, and President Putin always positioned himself as an expert on humiliation.

He can talk for hours how humiliated Russia is, but he does not have a sensitivity for humiliating somebody else.

And what the Ukrainians experienced in Crimea was not simply the Russia's betrayal, but they were humiliated.

And this is very funny because he's the father of this nation, this anti kind of a Russia.

Ukraine was very much the result of his actions, but he misperceived.

He was still seeing something that existed before.

>> He missed it, even as there was ongoing fighting with thousands of deaths every day, every week over the Donbas, over the occupied territories, and the little green men?

I mean, the Ukrainians were resisting.

He missed all of that?

>> He missed all of this because it didn't fit to his deep conviction that the Russian world is a special civilizational space, that all this Russian-speaking people are Russians.

He also had incredible dismissal about the Ukrainian state, that this is not a state, that they do not exist, that they cannot perform, that it is very dysfunctional.

And part of it is also very much rooted in a very different way the Russians and the Ukrainians experience their states.

Russians, even anti-Russian, anti-Putin Russians, has a respect for the vertical of the state.

The state should be strong, and a strong state means strong leader.

And you basically can disagree who is the good leader, but this is there, and the Ukrainians, it's not by accident that some of the strongest anarchist movements in Europe were very much based in Ukraine.

Makhno was a Ukrainian.

So the idea of state is totally different.

Society is stronger than the state.

They basically prefer kind of a state which is not trying to oppress.

You had this idea of a freedom which is very much against your own state.

From this point of view, I have the feeling that Russians, not only Putin, had been historically misreading Ukraine because they always expecting the Ukraine to view the strengths of the state in the way the Russians did.

This is the most difficult to understand your neighbors.

It's more difficult to understand your relatives because you are so sure that they like you.

And then suddenly they realize that's not the case.

And now he has also a problem because before, Putin never has ever faced a strong but different leader in opposition to him.

For the first time it happened with Navalny, and to see that he basically had to put him in prison.

>> The opposition leader, who's now sitting in jail in Russia, yeah, in a labor camp.

>> And now you have Zelensky.

And you should imagine that from Putin's point of view, the fact that now Zelensky has captured the imagination of the world and he's the rebel leader that everybody is admiring, for him, this is the end of the world because this is a comedian.

This is kind of a TV personality for some Secret Service call now, there is nothing more dismissive than a comedian, and this comedian is not simply capturing the admiration of the world public, but resisting him, fighting him on his own game.

So my view, this is a very transformative period.

And there is a lot of intelligence coming from Russia saying that President Putin is permanently angry.

I can understand why he's angry.

>> So, look, we all know that the Russians have started their so-called second phase and they intend to take the greater Donbas, which they should have certainly better military capability of doing than going into Kyiv.

But what happens?

Let's assume they get it.

Let's assume they are able to take this additional territory.

They've got their land bridge to Crimea.

But from what I'm hearing you say, Ivan, it's not in any way over then.

In other words, this is not 2014 redux, where they take some more territory and they say, "Okay, done.

Now we can have a cease-fire."

Where do you think Putin wants this to go?

>> It has changed.

He was first when it started -- By the way, when he said that it's a special operation, he believed it was a special operation.

[ Chuckles ] He didn't believe that he's starting a war.

He believed it was going to be special operations, very similar to what happened in places like Crimea or before it, what the Soviet Union had been doing in the Balkans and then basically you're going to unify historic Russia, and suddenly the Ukrainians are fighting back and not simply fighting back, but they're fighting furiously, and from his point of view, fighting without a hope of winning.

And this is why for him, this became a punishment operation.

So in a certain way, if you cannot convert, you should punish.

If you are listening to Russian propaganda, nobody talks about Ukrainians.

Russian public does not believe that Russia is fighting Ukrainians.

They believe that Russia is fighting NATO, fighting West, basically fighting Americans.

And this is also his story.

And this is why this -- >> This was when the Moskva, when the flagship carrier was sunk.

That wasn't the Ukrainians.

That was NATO.

That's what you see in the Russian media.

>> It's -- By the way, too, it was even kind of more absurd because their first idea was that of course it was not sank.

It was some accident, it was a fire, but this was a fire, and then they said, "But we should retaliate."

So the problem -- the inconsistency of the Russian propaganda comes from the fact that you cannot really tell the people, "We are fighting a war with Ukrainians because the Ukrainians should be Russians.

This is why we're there."

And then these Russians are fighting for who?

They're fighting for NATO.

They're fighting for the West.

So my feeling is that you escalate.

There is many things that President Putin can live with.

There is one thing that he cannot live with -- being perceived as weak.

The perception of weakness is the curse for any authoritarian leader.

Authoritarian leaders can be evil, they can be awful, they can do other things.

But the moment when they are perceived as weak, they have a problem.

And this is a difficult war for him because this is going to be destructive for his economy.

So the only way is to make his own war somebody else's war too.

Most of the Russians are buying the narrative that the West is trying to weaken Russia and to destroy Russia and Russia is in self-defense.

But this cannot stay forever.

He destroyed the life of the middle-class Russians, full stop.

These people used to travel.

These people used to have businesses.

These people believed that they are living in the world.

So he nationalized the elites.

He closed the country, but then, like the Soviet Union, he closed the country without the promise that the future belongs to Russia.

And in mind, with this kind of a claustrophobia is something that he's going to face because you are right.

He can get control over Donbas.

This is a totally destroyed area.

Who's going to rebuild it?

>> What do you think happens in Russia when Putin, after all of this has transpired with a permanent break, certainly in the relations with the United States and active hostility and conflict with NATO, what happens to Russia after Putin?

>> Putin basically is preoccupied with demography and Russia's demographic decline.

He was repeating recently several times that if it was not for the revolution, if it was not for the World War II, if it was not for the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there are going to be 500 million Russians in the world.

But now in Russia, there are less than 145 million people.

So this fear of a shrinking population that is populating one of the biggest territories in the world, in my view, this isn't so far to understand where all this anxiety comes from.

This is becoming a problem for Russia itself.

And one of the problem with Putin is that he's not allowing basically Russians to talk openly of how hospitable Russia can look like.

If you see what Europeans are talking about, we want an economy that does not rely at all on Russian gas and oil.

We basically want to make clear that there are not going to be a movement of people.

We want basically reduce the relations.

As a result of it, in a certain way, particularly the West starts to dream about the world without Russia.

And in a certain way, now Russia started to dream about a world without West.

But Russia was much more part of this Western world than anything else.

China is a very reliable and important ally now, but I have not seen many kind of Russians that are culturally attracted by China.

It's simply very far.

I do believe that we also lost the capacity to imagine a different Russia.

I do believe that a different Russia is probably possible, but this is the Putin effect.

While the Soviet leaders wanted their mummified bodies to be put in the mausoleum, I do believe that Putin succeeded to mummify the body of Russia itself.

>> Ivan Krastev.

Powerful words to close our conversation.

Thanks a lot.

I hope you're wrong.

>> [ Chuckles ] Thank you so much.

♪♪ >> Brooklyn is home to the Nets.

I love them.

And also more Russian speakers than any other city or county in the United States.

Might even be a little overlap between those circles in the Venn diagram.

Needless to say, the war in Ukraine has been a very big topic of conversation.

"GZERO's" Alex Kliment has this report from the beach.

>> Tens of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union live in and around Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Many of them came here from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, giving the neighborhood its nickname, Little Odessa.

Language is a common thread that holds people together here in America's largest Russian-speaking community.

But since the war in Ukraine began, many here have sought to distance themselves from Russia itself.

They include Bobby Rakhman, who immigrated to the neighborhood with his family in the 1970s.

Bobby runs a grocery store that was until recently called Taste of Russia.

>> When the war started, we felt very uncomfortable with the name Taste of Russia, even though it didn't mean anything political.

But yet it kind of made people feel bad that the name Russia was associated with the store, which was located in the midst of, as we call it, Little Odessa.

>> Just one week after Russia invaded Ukraine, Bobby and his business partner changed the name to International Food.

And not a moment too soon.

Some Russian restaurants and shops in the U.S. have been boycotted or even vandalized since the war broke out two months ago.

Michael Levitis is the host of a popular weekly Russian-language radio show here.

He says that because of the war, people are more specific about their heritage now.

>> People used to say "I'm Russian," even if they're from Ukraine or Uzbekistan because they speak Russian and just easier to tell Americans "I'm Russian."

However now, people are very careful to differentiate themselves from Russians if they're from a different part of former Soviet Union, and they say, "I'm actually a Ukrainian," "I'm a Jew from Ukraine" or "I'm a Jew from Russia."

>> The first big wave of Russian speakers here were Jews fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

But in the years since, they've been joined by people from all across the former Soviet Union seeking better opportunities in America.

And even as the war has challenged people's cultural identities here, many are coming together to support the people of Ukraine by donating food, clothes and money.

>> We feel it's -- it's "us."

It's not "them."

It's not Ukraine.

It's us.

It's part of us.

And everybody is very disturbed what happened there.

>> Lea Kushnirova is a Russian Jew who emigrated to New York from Leningrad, today St Petersburg.

Like most people out here, she hopes the violence in Ukraine will soon come to an end.

>> I believe if you stop any person on Brighton Beach area, they would tell you, "Yes, we stand for Ukraine."

>> For "GZERO World," I'm Alex Kliment.

♪♪ >> And now to your "Puppet Regime."

Looking for support, Volodymyr Zelensky makes a secret trip to the Big Apple.

Of course he does.

Roll that tape.

>> Everybody knows Americans love apple pie and culture war.

but these days they also love Ukraine.

I went to New York City to understand why.

[ Horn honks ] Hey, I'm walking here!

Hello, come talk to me.

Do you recognize who I am?

>> Both: No.

>> Do you know who I am, Julius?

>> No.

>> Uh, uh, uh... >> Uh, uh, uh!

Z-Z-Zel-Zelens.

>> You're Volodymyr Zelensky.

>> You sent a card to Ukraine?

That was you who sent it?

Tell me what you know about Ukraine.

>> There's a war.

>> Yes.

>> That's all I know.

>> Do you have a favorite Ukrainian food?

>> I heard the food is good.

>> Try borscht.

It's a beet soup.

It's delicious.

How do you feel about war in Ukraine?

>> It's awful.

>> I feel like it is unfair, unnecessary and unwarranted.

>> I said from the start it's genocide.

>> Putin is a devil.

He's a devil in disguise.

>> I could not agree more.

Tell me why you think there is so much support from Americans for our struggle.

>> We are brothers, clearly.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Our country was founded off of fighting oppression.

Ukraine is fighting more than oppression.

They're literally fighting for their people.

>> America loves an underdog.

America is usually the overdog, but yes.

>> A dictator doesn't rule the world, and that's what the Russian president, Chinese.

>> I couldn't agree more!

Why do you think people care so much more about Ukraine than, like, I don't know, Syria or Yemen or other places?

>> Everyone's scared of nuclear war.

>> Ah.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that.

Would you, as an American, make like sacrifice to support Ukraine?

>> I would do what I can, sure.

I don't drive as much because of it.

>> Americans seem to really love Ukraine, but as their own elections approach, will it stay this way?

[ Speaks Ukrainian ] >> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see or you just want to know what's the next thing that Putin is going to do, you know who you want to watch.

That's right.

Right here.

Check us out -- gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...