CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING – On Friday, as Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed more than a dozen world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, for a Victory Day parade in Moscow and a collective stand against the West, a global gathering in Kyiv heard a very different message: a high-level assessment and critique of Putin — from leaders who have observed him from different vantage points. At the Kyiv Security Forum, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and former CIA Director and top American commander General David Petraeus spoke about Putin's past, his current ambitions, his relationship with the "axis of authoritarians," and how best to counter all these elements, in this fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Gen. Petraeus, a Cipher Brief expert, said that while Putin has engaged in the U.S.-led peace negotiations, his aim remains a reconstitution of the Soviet sphere of influence. "He has not changed his overall objectives," Gen. Petraeus said. "He might be satisfied for a period of time with getting all four of the provinces [in Ukraine] plus Crimea, but that's not the desired end state." He added that Putin's broader ambitions are "hugely important if you're thinking about a ceasefire and how enduring that ceasefire would be."
Former Prime Minister Yatsenyuk urged the Trump administration to employ a hard line in talks with the Kremlin. Putin "cares about very strong actions," he said. "If you guys deploy your military boots on the ground, that's the language he understands. If you send more military, more ammo, more missiles to Ukraine, that's the language he understands. If you impose secondary sanctions and go after him, that's the language he understands. And only after this can we bring him to the negotiating table."
The two were interviewed by another Cipher Brief expert, former deputy director of the ODNI Beth Sanner, at the closing afternoon of the forum, which brought past and present military, intelligence, and political leaders to Kyiv for high-level conversations about the state of the war. The comments below have been edited for length and clarity.
Sanner: We talk a lot about Russia as a revanchist state and an imperialist power. What does that really mean? Why is that a threat?
Gen. Petraeus: I think it's very important. The insight into what animates Vladimir Putin is not trivial. The fact that he is not satisfied with the status quo, that he is a revanchist, he wants to get back what he thinks is his – it’s a grievance-filled vision of history that he has, and it doesn't square with reality, but it's what animates him. And it was revealed when he was asked the question, what was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century? He could have chosen World War II, World War I, the Great Depression, any number of other catastrophes, and instead his response was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That gives you a pretty keen insight into how he thinks and what it is that animates that thinking, which then translates into making war on Ukraine. It translated into making war on Georgia. It translated into other adventures that he has embarked on.
But he has not surrendered the objectives that he held for Ukraine. He has not changed his overall objectives. He might be satisfied for a period of time with getting all four of the provinces [in Ukraine] plus Crimea, but that's not the desired end state.
And that's hugely important if you're thinking about a ceasefire and how enduring that ceasefire would be. Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] rightly says that this should be a durable ceasefire, a just ceasefire. I'm not sure how that translates into what is being put forward [by the U.S.], but those qualities are critically important. How can something be enduring if the aggressor – in this case Putin and Russia – is not yet satisfied?
And if he were ever to succeed in Ukraine, Moldova would be next right away, and then probably Lithuania. We should actually listen to what it is that he says, which we didn't do sufficiently in the past, especially when it came to his discussion of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And what he's been trying to do is put it back together, in various different forms.
The strides that Ukraine has made since then are absolutely breathtaking, and we do not want to see Ukraine back under the boot of someone in Moscow, given how its development was so halted in the past. Now you see a vibrant country, and this is actually Putin's worst nightmare – to see a vibrant democracy cherishing freedoms of speech and press and an equally vibrant free market economy.
Yatsenyuk: Putin actually mirrors the feelings of an overwhelming majority of the Russian people. And that's the reason why I always say, look, the Russian nation has to bear the brunt and to bear the responsibility. Everything that Putin did, his regime did, and actually the Russian military and Russian people did as well. It's not just Putin who is fighting against Ukrainians and killing Ukrainians. These are so-called ordinary Russians.
I can share with you my experience, my reading of Putin, as I had a number of meetings face-to-face with the war criminal – though at that time, he wasn't a war criminal yet. Some folks say that look, he's an idiot, he's crazy. But he isn't an idiot, and he isn't crazy. He's determined. He's obsessed. He's a bully. I remember the first time I met him in Novo Ogaryovo – that's his residence. And first, he conducts a sniff test. If you lean back, he's going to attack you. If you start to fight against him, or at least you show signs of resilience, this is the very point that you are in his scope of attention. The reason why I'm telling you this is that it’s how he reads European leaders, it’s how he reads the actions of every single president or head of government of the free world.
He's not playing by the rules, he's playing with the rules. And what he has managed to do, is he managed to impose his rules on a huge part of the universe. He managed to collaborate with another totalitarian regime, which is China. And President Xi today deliberately paid the visit to Krasnaya Ploshchad [Red Square], in order to show to the entire world and send a signal to the Oval Office: President Trump, we [China and Russia] are “friends in steel,” as he said. Or friends in crime – that sounds more truthful. So either Putin will be stopped, or else Putin together with China, Iran, North Korea, and a real “axis of evil” will completely reshape the world, and will impose a new global order. And in this new global order, there will be no place for the leader of the free world, which is the United States of America.
Gen. Petraeus: And they want a different system too. Obviously we have traditionally wanted to make the world safe for democracy and free market economics and so forth. And what they would like to do is make the world safe for their kind of autocracy – or kleptocracy, in the case of Putin.
Experts are gathering at The Cipher Brief’s NatSecEDGE conference June 5-6 in Austin, TX to talk about the future of war. Be a part of the conversation.
Sanner: One of the things that [Russia and China] said in this joint statement is that they were going to cooperate decisively to counter Washington's course of dual containment of Russia and China. How could we interpret that particular line in any way other than doubling down on that relationship – rather than Putin being poised to normalize with the United States?
Gen. Petraeus: What's interesting is the parallels now to the late 1940s and early 1950s. And indeed there's a lot of argument about whether we are in a new Cold War – and normally that's having to do with the U.S. and China. There are strong arguments for that, and then there's some major differences. Obviously when it came to the U.S. and Western relationship with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, there was very little economic exchange and trade, whereas of course with the U.S. and China – at least before the imposition of the 145% tariffs – China's our number three trading partner. They're also the other large economy of the world.
Now this new axis of evil or authoritarians or aggressors or whatever it may be – all four are working together. Iran is a bit more on the ropes right now than it has been for many years, and they're very much on notice when it comes to their nuclear program. North Korea is providing millions of artillery rounds [to Russia]. They're providing soldiers now, whose distinguishing feature is that they will blindly rush into combat. And then of course you have China, which was quite wary initially of being called out for helping Russia, but has very clearly been violating sanctions by providing all kinds of components that enable the Russian war economy to revive in a very substantial fashion.
So those four are working together. And I think it's time to recall how George Kennan contributed to the intellectual discussion that resulted in the very successful strategy of containment, and a substantial faceoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Now there could be, again, the kind of architecture reemerging that facilitates that kind of approach, given the reality that we face today.
I will remind you what we often used to say to each other, that when you're in the CIA, you learn how to deal with the world the way it is, not the way you'd like it to be. And the way it is right now is that all four of these powers are working together to achieve varied nefarious ends.
Sanner: How would you describe this idea that the war is not just about Ukraine, that it is a global issue, to President Trump and the people in the administration who are saying, we've got to forget about Europe, that’s someone else’s problem.
Yatsenyuk: First, there is no way to split the unity between China and Russia. No way. Second, this is not the first US. administration that has tried to reset U.S. policy towards Russia. You remember this funny “reset button” that Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton had? This is a vicious circle. You guys always do the same, with the same result. The time will come when this administration has to realize that there is no way to get along with Putin.
What happens if Ukraine fails? This would definitely trigger a domino effect all over the world, and I can't even imagine the implications, the dreadful implications of this. My gut feeling is that if Putin is successful in conducting his war against Ukraine, his military would probably occupy even some EU member nations.
Ukraine already stopped the imperial ambitions of both Putin and his close allies. Ukraine needs to survive, and we will preserve the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian state, and Ukrainian independence, and the time will come when Ukraine is to restore its territorial integrity. A similar thing happened with Germany, a similar thing happened to the Baltic states, and a similar thing happened in Eastern Europe. There are no longer occupation forces in Eastern Europe. So Ukraine faces the same kind of righteous destiny.
But in order to get to this result, we need to undertake very strong actions. I admire all the political slogans, and the diplomatic meetings and summits – that's great. But the thing is that Putin, he doesn't give a s*** about this – sorry to be blunt. He cares about very strong actions. If you guys deploy your military boots on the ground, that's the language he understands. If you send more military, more ammo, more missiles to Ukraine, that's the language he understands. If you impose secondary sanctions and go after him, that's the language he understands. And only after this can we bring him to the negotiating table.
Gen. Petraeus: I want to really underscore the point about the linkage in the world, which is so much more apparent right now. What a country does in one part of the world reverberates in other parts. That is particularly true when you have the kind of linkage that we see between Russia and China most significantly, but also between North Korea and Iran. And if we want China not to act on its own revisionist and revanchist ambitions, they need to see here that Russia cannot be successful, because that sends a very important message.
Deterrence is a function of two elements: the potential adversary’s assessment of your capabilities on the one hand, and your willingness to use them on the other. And if you shrink from using them, they're never going to believe that you'll use them in that particular situation. This whole idea of containment I think should be back into the intellectual forefront.
Sanner: What do we need to do in terms of a strategy? What do we need in order to have that strategy of containment, assuming that the war is most likely to continue?
Gen. Petraeus: There's got to be the same unity of effort that you saw during the Cold War. And unfortunately what we saw in the wake of the Cold War was that in Europe in particular, the peace dividend went way beyond what it should have been.
The irony here is that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine setting out to make Russia great again. And what he's really done is make NATO great again – even two additional countries joining NATO that were historically neutral, Sweden and Finland, with quite capable forces. So Europe now is back. And the good news is that President Trump has galvanized something that no other American president, despite all of the complaints about inadequate European defense spending as a percentage of GDP, has achieved. The [German] chancellor now has the authority to spend as much as 700 billion to a trillion additional euros on defense, which is extraordinary for a country that is of course the third largest economy in the world and obviously the economic leader within the EU. And so we've seen Europe come together – they’re scared, and the French president and the UK prime minister are leading meetings to determine how they could actually even put boots on the ground inside Ukraine, in some kind of reassurance force.
It is key, obviously, that the U.S. commitment is constantly reaffirmed. There are concerns about that. I don't think those are valid concerns. We've heard the Secretary of State and others reaffirm our commitment to NATO and the Article Five collective self-defense agreement and so on. But now as you look at this and as we are talking here about the linkages around the world, how do we link in the other countries that should be part of a global containment effort, against what clearly is a global axis of authoritarians or aggressors?
Yatsenyuk: I want to wrap up on a positive note. First, the good thing is that my president [Volodymyr Zelensky] is getting along, at least for now, with your president [Donald Trump]. That's the good news. And there is the amazing news that the Ukrainian military, with your support and with the support of the free world – we are very grateful to every single nation that contributed to Ukraine’s security and to your own security – that we have severely degraded the Russian military. So it's going to take a lot of time for Putin to reconstruct his military. There are different estimates – from three to five to 10 years, God knows how many – but he's not able to attack NATO today nor tomorrow, nor in a year. That's crystal clear.
His losses are staggering. Around 1 million killed and wounded. His economy is in a dire state. And I believe he's scared of this ceasefire. He managed to put his country on a war footing, and if the war stops, this could create a huge challenge for his rule, for his tenure, and for him personally as the president. So my message is very simple: We need to act urgently. He believes that he can outlast us. No, we can and we will outperform and win against Putin, if we circle the wagons and if we show very strong political will – not just a coalition of the willing, but a coalition of strong political will. We have to deliver and to act as quickly as possible.
Gen. Petraeus: Yesterday you [former Prime Minister Yatsenyuk] captured the situation of Ukraine very vividly and eloquently. You said that Ukraine is bruised but not broken, tired but not exhausted. And I think that's a very accurate depiction. So yes, there's a degree of war wariness here. That wasn't the case obviously in the first year or so. Yes, there has been enormous sacrifice and loss and hardship and damage and destruction, but the determination is still absolutely rock solid. And I think that is the key. That's the foundation on which the eventually successful campaign will be conducted.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
