Why Peace Remains Out of Reach in Ukraine

MICHEL MARTIN: Thanks, Christiane. Joshua Yaffa, thank you so much for talking with us once again.

 

JOSHUA YAFFA: Thanks for having me.

 

MARTIN: You know, we talked at the beginning of this conflict. The beginning of this kind of all-out, Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Are you surprised we’re having the same conversation four years later?

 

YAFFA: Hard to think back to those early days of the war when I was in, in Kyiv and we spoke. I think I was actually in a subway station 

 

MARTIN: Yeah, you were.

 

YAFFA: Where overnight sheltering with other residents of the city, where actually many residents of Kyiv still go these nights to shelter from Russian air attacks. So there is a kind of sad, tragic, Groundhog Day nature to the conflict and how it feels certainly for the people in Ukraine. 

Really, the dynamics of the war, why the war started, and how the war might end, have stayed remarkably constant. Which essentially is Russia, Vladimir Putin, seek to severely limit, if not negate Ukrainian sovereignty, to limit both politically, certainly militarily or the kind of potential Ukraine has to chart its own course, especially if that means growing closer with the West, either politically above all, militarily through NATO. So that’s something that Putin seeks to not just limit, but essentially take off the table for generations to come. It’s a kind of historical project for him. 

And Ukraine looks to preserve that sovereignty, right? Looks to preserve its sovereign right to chart its own historical path, culturally, politically, militarily, right? The military aspect actually is seen as a way of protecting those other realms. And so what Putin seeks to achieve — his kind of ultimate strategic war aims — are exactly what Ukraine considers anathema and sort of non-starters, something it can’t agree to as it understands for the kind of survival of the nation. And so we’re, we’re at loggerheads, right? We’re at a war that grinds on. Each side, thinking that a bit more time can improve its position, mainly because it will exhaust its opponent. And, and that’s really the kind of the grinding logic of the war of attrition. We’re still stuck in four years later.,

 

MARTIN: So, so one of the reasons we’re speaking now is that we’re in the midst of kind of a flurry of diplomatic moves. The president — President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff — a former golf buddy of his, a fellow real estate developer — and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. They just concluded this, you know, sort of hours long session. NATO is meeting without the United States, interestingly enough. And the Ukrainian president has been kind of back and forth to Europe trying to shore up support there. 

This is, comes after this, this lengthy sort of peace proposal was put on the table, ostensibly crafted by the United States. But it’s emerged that it’s very much, it was very much initially based on Russia’s sort of talking points. So the first thing I wanted to ask you is, does this flurry of diplomacy mean anything to your knowledge in the context of what we’ve seen so far? Does it seem like it is any kind of an inflection point, or is it just another day?

 

YAFFA: There are some new dynamics, right? Despite what we talked about a minute ago, and that the kind of overall — the kinda the logic of the war — has remained constant. Of course, there are dynamics that come up. The most important one is Donald Trump as president of the United States, who has a dramatically different position regarding Russia. And I don’t think we need to sort of go over right, his history of conciliatory statements toward Putin. 

But I think ultimately what’s most important is Trump’s desire to end the war. If President Biden had a desire to end the war in a way that as he and European partners understood it would deliver some kind of both durable and just peace for Ukraine, Trump is interested in ending the war, getting a victory, a diplomatic victory, his Nobel Peace prize like for example was the case with the Gaza deal from last fall, where how the war ended was less important than the fact that it did end. (06:47): And so then it flows from that, that it’s only natural if you’re interested in speed, that you effectively put pressure on the weaker party, and that is Ukraine, right? 

And, Ukraine is the weaker party for a number of reasons. Certainly just by looking at the battlefield dynamics. Russian army —  just objectively, quantitatively — much larger, It’s moving forward. And Ukraine is losing territory At the same time Ukraine is under increasing financial pressure. The Ukraine budget could really be running out of cash effectively. 

And the third point is a political crisis coming, stemming from a corruption scandal in Ukraine that hits really close to Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. People around him, his longtime chief of staff, right hand man, Andriy Yermak, was forced to resign this week under the specter of a corruption allegation. 

So all of that comes together to put Ukraine in a much more difficult and vulnerable position. 

And it’s that position that Russia hopes the Trump administration will effectively exploit, right? (08:31): That the Trump administration will be so interested in a peace deal fast, and kind of really twist Ukraine’s arm. Putin thinks that time will bring him closer to victory. So as far as Putin sees it, either he gets the deal he wants or he doesn’t and keeps fighting. And that will still get him closer to the deal he wants eventually.

 

MARTIN: So what does Putin want? This is one of the things that was interesting about this 28-point peace plan, that was, was evidently — at least based on a kind of a transcript of the leaked phone call that was reported by Bloomberg, where the president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff was overheard speaking to the, his Russian counterpart and coaching him on how to win over President Trump. But one of the things that was interesting about this document is it really kind of laid out Russian objectives in black and white. What, what are they? 

 

YAFFA: Well, first, I would caution a little bit of seeing the 28-point Witkoff plan as a kind of pure expression of Russian or Putin priorities. Certainly there was Russian input. We know now about the genesis of that document. But my sources in Moscow, foreign policy circles — I wrote about this in the New Yorker last week — were actually cautious about that Witkoff document, these are kind of potentially some kind of attractive for Russia sounding proposals. But how are they implemented? How can Russia count on them? Politicians come and go. Even Trump as one Moscow source told me, right, is a temporary political phenomenon, right? He could be out of office in three years. And just like U.S. policy shifted so dramatically from Biden to Trump, it could shift again. 

YAFFA: Now to the set of core question, right? What, what Putin wants, and he’s, he’s actually spoken about this quite openly, right?. And what he thinks is that you, Ukraine has essentially become, he calls it a quote, “anti-Russian project,” right? It’s been led astray by the West. That its integration with Western political and certainly military structures like NATO, right, is the kind of ahistorical aberration that’s not Ukraine’s place. And it’s, it’s being kind of led out of Russia’s rightful sphere of influence. And, and, and Russia simply cannot tolerate this quote, “anti-Russian project” on Russian borders. That the idea that there would be foreign military bases, foreign troops stationed in Ukraine with a Ukraine that is culturally and historically rejecting Russia. All of that feels like a kind of security threat, as Putin sees it, that is simply a kind of non-starter, a non-starter for Russia, a non-starter for his own political legacy that he’s trying to ensure, as is right. We’re also dealing with an autocrat who’s been in power for 26 years and counting. And I think that also kinda affects how he sees the world in his own place in Russian history. 

What, this is not about his territory. It’s not about lines on a map. It’s not about, you know, where are the borders drawn? Who controls what city all of those issues are proxies for Putin’s real issue. Which is that Ukraine simply cannot be allowed to be a threat as he defines it.

 

MARTIN: And why is the cost worth it to him? I mean, we’ve been reporting at NPR, we’ve reported that he’s losing as many as 25,000 soldiers a month.. What makes it worth that, that cost in lives?

 

YAFFA: What’s important to remember is that Putin’s initial calculation in launching this invasion was that the war would be quick. The Ukrainian army would crumble. He’d be in Kyiv in three days, right? So we have to understand that Putin has ended up in a protracted war that he never counted on, and either would’ve made different calculations or not launched the invasion if he knew who, you know, who knows. Those are all on the realm of kind of hypotheticals. But he counted on something very different. What he’s ended up in is a war of attrition. And the kind of grim dark logic of a war of attrition is you win by having your opponent lose more. So everything you just said about loss of troops, cost to the economy — it’s relative to how those factors are weighing on Ukraine, right? (14:37): And Ukraine is a smaller country — economically, population. And there are large questions about Ukraine’s ability to continue to field trained, equipped infantry, right? There’s a huge problem with troops going AWOL or deserting in Ukraine, right? So the kind of the manpower question is very real in the Ukrainian army. 

And the financial question. You know, according to some prognosis, Ukraine could be in serious financial deficit — really running out of cash to run the country — by the first quarter of next year. Europe, was Ukraine’s chief financial backer, they can’t seem to get a plan together. They can’t seem to get this money to Ukraine. So getting back to your question, this war is incredibly, incredibly costly for Putin. He would like for it to end. But his calculation is that he can achieve his strategic objectives with time, because things are actually worse for Ukraine. And as Ukraine who will be forced to effectively bend the knee faster than Russia will run out of, whether it’s, you know, troops to fuel the war, money to fuel the war, and so on.

 

MARTIN: Let’s talk about the European position. I mean, one of the arguments from sort of the European side is that if Russia is rewarded or is successful in invading Ukraine, you know, who’s next? You know, could it be Poland? Could it be, you know, Moldova, who’s next? And so the question is, you know, why isn’t there more urgency in Europe around supporting Ukraine, at least giving them the resources to resist? 

 

YAFFA: That’s a great question. One I ask often as a reporter, who lives in Europe — I am based in Berlin, I’m talking to you tonight from Warsaw. And of course the view in Warsaw is very different than the view, let’s say in Budapest, Hungary, right? Where Viktor Orban just recently went to Moscow to meet with Putin. Or in a place like Portugal, Greece, right? Frontline states as they’re called, like Poland, have a, of course different view of this than than states elsewhere in Europe. And that’s part of the problem, right, is kind of, how do you triangulate positions among these states that have different sense of urgency, different sense of priorities. Some are trying to deal with their own domestic situations. There’s little appetite in European populations for taking out, for going further into deficit, right? For provide — for taking out new loans to essentially having new European tax payers for the bill for increased aid to Ukraine. 

But your point, or your question really, is absolutely the correct one. And I don’t have an answer to it, right? You, the Europeans were so upset about the emergence of these 28-points and how it was done by kind of end run around European states. European diplomats didn’t take into account European interest. Well, where is the European peace plan, right? I mean, if — a vacuum will be filled perhaps in ways that you don’t like, right? But I didn’t see European, you know, diplomats out in front of an EU led peace plan. There was an attempt to create one after Witkoff and the 28 points emerged, but that plan was quickly discarded effectively both by Russia and Trump. And it seems like, you know, Europe hasn’t attempted since. 

And, and the point about the money, I think, gets to the real crux of the matter, which is European politicians say all the right things about the importance of supporting Ukraine, the strategic interest of making sure Ukraine doesn’t lose this war, that Russian aggression cannot be rewarded. But where, you know, where kind of does the rubber hit the road.

 

MARTIN: You mentioned earlier that we don’t need to go through the litany of conciliatory and even laudatory statements that, you know, President Trump has made about Vladimir Putin over the years. But have we ever figured out why President Trump seems so disposed toward the Russian position, and Vladimir Putin in particular?

 

YAFFA: I’ve never been a fan going back to 2016, ‘17 of, of the more kind of conspiratorial versions of this, right? I don’t think there’s any Russian compromat on Trump. I don’t think he’s afraid of, you know, some tape that may have been made in the Ritz Carlton many years ago that was, you know, discussed almost a decade ago or so. Now I think the answer is rather simple. One is that Putin is a legible, understandable kind of leader for Trump, right? That it’s easier to deal with Putin — strong man, unitary power in his country. Also just the kind of man and the kind of leader that Trump, again, understands, admires, knows how to do business with. 

And in the current context, I mentioned this earlier, what Trump really wants is to be seen as the peacemaker in Ukraine. He just wants the war to be over. He wants to be able to go on Truth Social and say, I did it. I created peace in Ukraine. He wants his Nobel Prize, he wants you know, this aura like he got in Gaza of having ended the war. But if we remember in Gaza, right, it’s, it’s a kind of peace plan with all of these other points to be negotiated later. Is that happening? You know, I’m no expert on the Middle East. I don’t wanna speak to that, but, you know, I think what Trump would like is something similar, which is the headline of peace, and the particulars of it can be dealt with later, or maybe not at all. 

 

MARTIN: You’ve been in and out of Ukraine over the course of these years, and you’ve talked to people there all the time. Clearly they’re war weary. But do you have a sense of how they view the current situation? You, you just pointed out that there’s just been just body blow after body blow, some of them sort of self-inflicted, like this corruption scandal that you just mentioned. What, what is your sense of morale?

 

YAFFA: Right? War weary, I think, is exactly the right way to put it. I mean, Kyiv of right now, which at various points in the war had been more or less relatively spared, at least a kind of semblance of normal life continued and still does continue actually during the day. But, you know regular drone attacks at night, but more importantly for daily life, you know, long stretches of blackout — hours at a time you know, 10 hours or so or more of rolling blackouts across the capital city of Ukraine. So of course, that leads to that, those sort brings the war home and, and it leads to a new sense of exhaustion that even in the capital city. Life is so impacted. 

You know, you ask however many million, you know, tens of millions of Ukrainians about how the war should end, you’ll get as many millions of responses. (25:49): But generally, I think there really is a willingness to end the war knowing that it’s not going to end with a kind of resounding Russian defeat. That Ukraine gets all its territory back and joins NATO. Ukrainians, understand that this, that there’s going to be an ugly deal to end this war. It’s gonna be ugly and it’s gonna be unfair for Ukraine. That the aggressor in some way will be rewarded. I think we’re just objectively on that trajectory. What Ukrainians want above all is that a sense that for the sacrifices, certainly for the lives lost — both huge losses in the military, credible losses that you, myself, other colleagues have documented among civilians — at least Ukraine gains, they’re often talked about as security guarantees. What it really means is the confident hope that this will not happen again in one year, two year, five years, that there is a durable peace.

 

MARTIN: Before we let you go, what are you gonna be keeping your eyes on over these next months? 

 

YAFFA: Well, so Ukraine, to put it simply in my estimation, is ready for compromise, real concessions, not capitulation, right? I think that’s the key distinction. But Ukraine is really ready to make some painful concessions to end this war. Putin, on the other hand, is still insisting on his kind of maximalist goals.The question is, do those shift at all, right? Does Putin continue to insist on it’s all or nothing for me? And he, I think that victory is just around the corner. So I’m gonna keep on pressing, does anything in his calculation change, right? Does he actually soften those maximalist goals? Does he understand that, Okay, I’ll take, you know, seven out of 10 of those points, or perhaps he thinks, Hmm, I’m actually not getting anywhere and advancing them, so I better cut a deal. You know, right now there’s no indication of either of those dynamics happening. 

But again, since Ukraine is willing to make a peace, willing to make a painful piece, actually, it’s really the ball so to speak, is in Putin’s court, right? Does anything change in his calculus, either because of what’s happening on the battlefield or the policies of Western states? For right now, the answer is no. But, you know, wars change in dynamic, unpredictable ways, and it’s possible that the next weeks and months brings a different trajectory. Although, again, keeping in the sad theme of this conversation, I’m rather pessimistic. I wouldn’t expect that, right? But that’s something certainly to keep an eye on that, that could affect the dynamic.

 

MARTIN: Joshua Yaffa, thank you so much for talking with us once again.

YAFFA: Thanks for having me.