>> I think a lot of what's driving Putin and Russian foreign policy as a result is this desire to have the sphere of influence but even more than that to have Russian whole again.

Ukraine is really seen as the historical heart of ancient Russia and of modern Russia.

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

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we look at President Joe Biden's biggest foreign policy challenge since he took office.

That's Ukraine.

Russia has amassed roughly 100,000 troops along the border, and they're still expanding.

They've ramped up their cyber attacks on Kyiv, and they've announced joint military exercises in nearby Belarus.

Though the Biden administration has been trying to build, as they call it, a more stable and predictable relationship with Moscow, U.S.-Russia relations right now are on a knife edge.

But will Putin invade or is this just a high-stakes game of political chess?

I'm speaking with Alina Polyakova.

She is president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis.

And she thinks NATO countries need to get on the same page if they're going to stand a chance against Putin.

Then conflicts can get messy here on Earth, but a new global arms race is on the horizon -- in space.

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

>> Hi, y'all, it's your girl Big Ange.

>> 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... >> My guess is he will move in.

He has to do something.

>> That was Joe Biden at a press conference last week, referring to whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would indeed invade Ukraine after months of troop buildup on the border.

Putin has given the West an ultimatum -- end NATO expansion into Eastern Europe or face the consequences.

And if he doesn't get what he wants, he's likely to act, either with some form of military operation in Ukraine or dramatic action elsewhere.

Russia has been amassing troops along the border since at least April, with numbers not seen since 2014.

A string of cyber attacks targeting the Ukrainian government also point to Moscow, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko recently announced joint military drills set to begin in February along the border of two NATO countries, Poland and Lithuania.

Belarusian president is also changing his country's constitution in February, ending neutrality and their non-nuclear status.

Coincidence?

Russian officials are quick to compare such posturing to NATO own military exercises in the region.

For years, Ukraine's close ties with the West and aspirations to one day join NATO have drawn anger from the Kremlin.

It's clear that Putin is after serious concessions from Biden and his Western allies when it comes to transatlantic security.

In a 2005 speech, President Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century and that it had left "tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen beyond the fringes of Russian territory."

This is Putin's world view, and it helps to explain his attitude towards Ukraine.

He went so far as to call Russians and Ukrainians "one people, a single whole" in an article that he wrote back in July 2021.

But that sentiment is not shared in Kyiv, particularly after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula on the Black Sea.

Russia also supported a military incursion led by pro-Russian separatists in the country's Donbas region, a conflict that has led to more than 14,000 deaths.

The Kremlin dismisses any allegations of wrongdoing.

That's kind of standard fare, claiming that Russia is just protecting its borders and its people.

A Putin spokesman even recently told CNN "Ukrainians are blaming everything on Russia, even their bad weather."

And stormy weather is likely ahead for Biden, too, given what could end up being a divided NATO over Putin's actions.

French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that the EU devise its own plan before taking things to other allies, a move that was viewed by many in Brussels as undermining NATO.

Will there be war in Ukraine, or can Biden and his NATO allies work together to stop Putin in his tracks?

I speak to Russia analyst Alina Polyakova.

She is president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Here's our conversation.

Alina Polyakova, thanks so much for joining me today.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Maybe start with an impossible question.

What do you think Putin is thinking right now?

>> Well, I think anybody that tells you that they know what's going on in Putin's likely somewhat demented mind these days doesn't know what's really going on.

You know, I think we can look at the facts on the ground to assess what might be going on in his head, and what we see on the ground is that he's slowly positioning forces to really close a noose around Ukraine from the north and from the east and from the south.

So I think what that signals to me is that he's thinking about an invasion in the very near term.

>> It's clear that Putin is displaying an enormous amount of pressure on the Ukrainians and wants to display to the rest of the world that he should be taken seriously.

Does that equate to you into invasion is likely, or does that equate to you to invasion is something he wants to display, and it's possible?

>> You know, I think a couple of weeks ago, I was very much on the skeptical side that what the Kremlin was really planning, what Putin really wanted was to deploy a huge amount of resources against a country, which, you know, is already very much under Russia's thumbs in many ways -- you know, Russia still occupies Crimea.

It has forces -- Russian military forces -- in Ukraine's east in the Donbas.

So it seemed a little unclear as to why now, why use up all these resources at a relatively tenuous time, it seems, for Russia --- the economic situation isn't great.

Obviously, the pandemic situation is ongoing.

So why?

But unfortunately, I think the signals we've seen from Russia over the last month and certainly the last several days, I think, are very much pointing in a direction that they have made a decision, a decision, frankly, from a strategic perspective, doesn't make a lot of sense to use those forces and to do something quite aggressive on the military side against Ukraine.

When the U.S. tried to have this very expansive diplomatic conversation with the Russian side, we didn't see much give.

The U.S. came to the table in a series of discussions with their Russian counterparts, with NATO and the OSCE and had some real proposals.

And the Russian interlocutors that Putin sent obviously had no room to negotiate or to even put anything useful on the table.

And then when they went back to give the readout to the man who's going make the decision, what we heard was just much more aggressive tactics, aggressive language, and they basically have walked themselves into a corner.

They made really unrealistic demands, which signals to me they weren't interested in diplomacy in the first place.

These are preliminary discussions and conversations to try to ease tensions.

But again, what we've seen the Russians do following these diplomatic conversations was just to raise tensions.

They haven't moved to de-escalate, which would have been a sign of goodwill.

Let's say, "We have 100,000 or more forces on the border with Ukraine.

Well, stop repositioning more forces.

Stop moving your naval vessels in the Black Sea.

Stop sending more weapons from other parts of Russia and other Russian bases to that part of the world."

And I think the most troubling thing that we saw the Kremlin do since those diplomatic talks took place is move forces into Belarus, which they're now moving towards Ukraine.

And I think it's for that reason that the U.S. has now signaled that they're so concerned about a potential military threat.

So they're asking U.S. personnel, families of U.S. embassy employees to leave Ukraine.

>> When the Russians announced that they had arrested 14 members of the REvil cybercriminal gang and that they had decommissioned that organization, which happened to be on the same day that presumably the Russians engaged in cyber attacks against the Ukrainian government, a number of its institutions, do you think that is coincidence or do you think that reflects some effort by the Russian government to provide an opportunity for diplomacy to work?

>> You know, when that happened, my initial thought was this may be a single de-escalation.

You know, we've been trying to get the Russians to do more to control the cybercriminal groups that are functioning freely inside Russia's borders, primarily to Russia's own advantages most of the time.

And the Russians have, you know, kind of slowed any progress on that.

They've done almost nothing.

And all of a sudden you have this relatively significant development.

But of course, everything that's happened since then has been signaling in the other direction once again that perhaps this was a coincidence.

I mean, maybe at the end of the day, this group got on the Kremlin's nerves and did something that the Kremlin didn't want them to do, and they put the kibosh on it finally.

I usually -- When people see strategy in something that the Kremlin does, I usually see some, you know, circumstantial reasons and coincidence.

And maybe some incompetence here and there.

So I think these were two separate events.

I don't think the cyber, you know, arrests of REvil actually were connected to the conversations that were happening on Ukraine.

>> Let's talk more about where we're heading from all of this.

Talk about how you perceive the European reaction to date, both to what the Russians are up to and also American efforts at coordination.

>> I think the United States has deployed an absolutely Herculean effort on the diplomatic side to always make sure their allies were informed, that there were consultations and coordination happening with European allies within the context of NATO.

So I think the U.S. has actually done a very good job leading on the diplomatic coordination effort here.

I think the other part of your question is really the key here.

You know, why is it that when clearly Russia poses the greatest direct threat to Europe, not to the United States, that we have a situation in which the United States is once again having to take lead?

It's the U.S. is expected to send security assistance and military support.

It's again the United States that has to get, you know, NATO allies, European allies on board.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to talk about European position right now because Germany has been sending very mixed messages between the chancellor and the foreign minister, who seemed to be speaking about two different policies sometimes.

And then we have the Baltic -- >> The foreign minister taking a much harder line from the Green Party than the chancellor, yes.

>> Exactly, and then of course, we have the Baltic states and Poland, which have had very bad experiences back during the Cold War with Soviet occupation raising alarm bells.

And interestingly, the U.K. really taking that side and doing a lot more to raise alarm bells, to provide security assistance.

But there is no European position.

Europe is very divided.

Germany is a key, key issue here, and this new government doesn't seem to have a real strategy or policy in place.

>> NATO has announced that it is sending more forces to Bulgaria, to Romania, to the Baltic states, to the Black Sea that has included countries like France participating in those moves.

And in fact, I think you could argue that NATO has, if anything, gotten stronger and more aligned because of the Russian behavior.

Now, the one thing that would ensure that NATO is as close-knit and as high-morale as possible would be if the Russians engaged in a full invasion against Ukraine.

>> Look, we've seen this movie before in some ways, you know.

When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and then launched this hybrid war against Ukraine's east that continues to this day, we really saw NATO united, and we really saw these Russian actions give new life to NATO.

You know, NATO has had trouble since the end of the Cold War really finding its identity again, and certainly that is no longer the case, and in many thanks -- that's in many thanks because of Russian renewed aggression in Europe.

So of course, what's happening now again is Russia is being a very direct military threat.

They're being very escalatory, and that is uniting NATO around a common sense of defense, a common sense of community.

I think that's been a very positive development.

I think I always have to ask myself, you know -- we think the Russians are so great tacticians, maybe even great strategists, and they keep running circles around us and setting the agenda and forcing the United States and NATO to constantly respond to them versus the other way around.

But I have to wonder, you know, what's their real strategy here?

You know?

If they're so worried as they say they are about U.S. troops, NATO troops in places like Poland, in central-eastern Europe more broadly, you know, this isn't helping them.

If anything, it's having the opposite effect where they're going to have a much more assertive NATO posture in NATO member states that are closest to Russia.

And of course, now we've heard the U.S. administration is considering sending potentially 5,000 more U.S. troops to that part of NATO as well.

We could see Russia as committing a serious strategic miscalculation here.

But I also think we may want to acknowledge that they're willing to accept those risks.

You know, because Ukraine is so important to them that they're willing to accept a reality in which they have all the things they say they don't want in central-eastern Europe as long as they get Ukraine.

>> I sort of wonder what is the Russian endgame here?

I understand why they would want to get rid of Zelensky, the Ukrainian President Putin thought he was going to be able to work more effectively with and he can't.

I absolutely see why the Russian government would say, "Let's just get rid of this guy."

But that's very different from "we want to have control over Ukraine."

I don't know how you get from here to there.

>> You know, I think there's a couple of things at play here.

One, Ukraine as a country is an incredibly emotional issue, not just for Putin but for many Russians.

You know, there's a vision of the Russian world that many, certainly in the Kremlin that Russian officials subscribe to, that isn't limited to Russia's political borders.

It goes far beyond that.

It's Belarus.

It's Ukraine.

And really, Ukraine is really seen as the historical heart of ancient Russia and of modern Russia.

And I think Putin, looking at probably his legacy as really the maker of modern Russia at this point after, you know, more than 20 years in power, sees that he cannot leave a legacy in which Russia doesn't regain some of that territorial, imperial vision of itself.

And I think there's a few things at play here that are not, you know, rational in that sense of the word or strategic from a military sense.

I think a lot of what's driving Putin and Russian foreign policy as a result is this desire to have the sphere of influence but even more than that to have Russia whole again.

That is how Russian political analysts and Russian state-controlled television talk about Ukraine -- as a part of Russia.

And I think when we see it from that perspective, the risks they're willing to take in this potential invasion make a little bit more sense in some ways.

And we don't see this as a complete military strategy but really something that Putin sees as part of his legacy and the future of Russia.

>> To the extent that you say that this is not just about national security but is also making Russia whole again, then I wonder if that makes it less of a threat to the United States, to the Europeans, none of whom are considered to be part of the Russian nation for Moscow.

And this isn't China where they've been growing, growing, growing over the last couple of decades and are going to be the largest economy in the world.

I mean, the Russian economy is smaller than the Canadian economy right now.

They got a lot of nukes and they're willing to take some risks.

But I mean, in reality, when former President Obama called them a regional power, I mean, I wish he hadn't said that publicly, but they're kind of a regional power.

I mean, should that thinking at least be part of the discussions that the Americans and the NATO allies are having when they think about how to respond to this Ukraine crisis?

>> What's happening today in Ukraine isn't just about Ukraine, and we cannot assume, let's say, in a terrible hypothetical scenario, you know, we just say, "Okay, we're not going to get involved.

We're not going to expend all of our resources to protect these countries that are not NATO members at the end of the day."

Ukraine is a democracy that wants to be part of Euro-Atlantic institutions, and Belarus is a dictatorship, at least with a regime that doesn't want to be part of Euro-Atlantic institutions.

So there is a difference there.

The Ukrainians want to be part of NATO.

They want to be part of the EU.

This is the path the Ukrainian people want for themselves, and this is what Putin is trying to prevent.

But again, going back to my hypothetical reality, you know, we can't assume that once Russia gets a taste and senses that weakness in the West, which they're sensing right now, that they will stop.

Because then we have the southern caucuses, we have Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.

You can easily see Russian rhetoric shift and suddenly say, "Well, we're not really talking about just Ukraine and Belarus.

It's about the former Soviet states.

Why not?

You know, that was Soviet territory, the entire East Bloc, Poland, the Baltic states, et cetera."

So we can't assume that if we "give them Ukraine" that that's going to be satisfying for them for the long term.

I don't think it will be.

>> One thing, of course, Alina, we have not spoken about so far is Ukraine.

We've spoken around Ukraine.

We haven't spoken about Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government know virtually no support inside NATO for allowing them to actually join NATO.

A lot of support to provide them with military weapons.

There's been a lot of challenges in terms of that governance itself.

Zelensky's popularity has shrunk down to the 30s at this point despite what you'd think with the common threat that he'd be, you know, sort of seen as more of a wartime president.

That's not the case.

How much do you think the West should be betting on him in terms of his ability to be a useful interlocutor with NATO countries?

>> At the end of the day, we have to bet on Ukraine.

You know, in countries like Ukraine, they're such new democracies.

We can't forget how really new and fragile Ukraine's democracy is.

It hasn't had 200 years to develop.

It's really had about 30.

You know?

It's a country that is still finding out what it means to be a democracy.

And despite Zelensky's inexperience as a political leader, he did win a huge landslide.

So he is the legitimate leader.

He's not popular, but not many leaders are.

Look at Macron's numbers sometimes.

Look at President Biden's numbers these days, right?

I think we have to bet on Ukraine and we have to work with the government that's in place.

Whether that's with Zelensky or another democratically elected president, that should be our goal -- to make sure it is a democracy in this part of the world that's increasingly surrounded by authoritarian states like Belarus and Russia.

>> Alina Polyakova, thanks for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> My pleasure.

♪♪ >> Space -- It's the final frontier.

That's what Captain Kirk said when I was a kid.

But calling space the next frontier might be more accurate.

In December, the United Nations created a working group aimed at preventing an arms race in space.

Consider it kind of overdue, given that international space law hasn't been updated in more than 50 years.

It was the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

We did have that.

It was negotiated during the Cold War, when only two countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, had viable space programs.

The agreement is currently ratified by 111 countries and serves to ban the use of nuclear weapons in space -- seems sensible -- grants all nations the right to freely explore the cosmos and insists that signatories promise to only use the moon for peaceful purposes, whatever that means.

Remember that moment when Neil Armstrong planted the American flag on the surface of the moon in 1969?

Well, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty also bans any country from claiming sovereignty over outer space or any celestial body.

But as commercial space programs take off, including those that launch Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson into the void above, space analysts say more concrete rules and norms are needed to prevent conflict.

Private companies, rather than countries, are playing a lot bigger role in space, and they are looking towards mining natural resources on the moon and even asteroids in hope of out-of-this-world profits.

The idea of turning the moon into a gas station was even floated by former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

Dangerous debris has also been a big issue in space recently after Russia launched a missile to destroy one of its own satellites, sending astronauts on the International Space Station scrambling for cover to avoid getting hit.

The U.S. strongly condemned Russia's actions.

A couple weeks later, one of Elon Musk's satellites had a near miss with a Chinese space station.

But even if the international community is gravitating towards new laws -- see what I did there?

-- enforcement will be a major challenge.

We've seen how well cooperation works or doesn't right here on Earth.

Maybe that Space Force not such a bad idea.

And now to "Puppet Regime."

Last week on the show, Angela Merkel tried retired life -- didn't really work out.

Now she's getting back into the game.

Roll that tape.

>> Hi, y'all, it's your girl, Big Ange.

I have recently been trying out some new post-chancellor professions.

It's going so great, right?

Here is my new clothing line titled Sensible.

Take a look at this cool blue jacket.

Yeah, it's so unique, so considerate, so pragmatic.

So Angela.

Okay, und work it und merk-it und work it und merk-it und work it, merk-it, work it, ja.

Und remember, ladies, the path to your fitness goals is to be a steady und pragmatic crisis manager amid a strong sense of moral purpose!

[ Laughter ] What else, what else, what else?

Okay, so three Syrian refugees walk into a bar, ja.

Und the bartender says, "Do you have ID?"

But what is really funny is that he should have actually been asking them if they would like to apply for asylum as this is a process enshrined in international law.

Ja?

[ Laughs weakly ] >> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, you're into the Russians rollin' tanks all over the place, can't do anything to stop 'em, you know where you want to go.

Check us out at 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...