EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — One week from today, the incoming Trump administration will take the reins, and it is already preparing to act when it comes to the Russian war against Ukraine. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for special envoy to Ukraine, former U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, has suggested that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia can be reached 100 days from Trump’s inauguration on January 20. That's longer than Trump’s previous claim that he could end the war in 24 hours, but it's an ambitious pledge nonetheless. Gen. Kellogg says this timeline will help ensure “this solution is solid, it’s sustainable and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage.” Experts say an agreement may include Ukraine ceding control of Russian-occupied territory for the time being.
For its part, the Biden administration is using its final days to, as it has said, surge as much aid to Ukraine as it can. The administration announced its final tranche of security assistance last week, which includes $500 million worth of air defense missiles, munitions, and F-16 equipment.
The Cipher Brief spoke with Ambassador Michael Carpenter, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council, about these developments, tapping his deep experience and knowledge of Ukraine, Russia and Europe. “I'm very reluctant or hesitant to foresee a situation where we are able to achieve a ceasefire in a hundred days time,” he said. “There's this magical thinking that is going on… that suggests that perhaps in spite of this sort of maniacal drive to subjugate Ukraine, that at the end of the day the Russians can simply live with some variety of compromise that results in a ceasefire and some diminished set of aims on their end. I don't think that's realistic.”
Ambassador Carpenter spoke with Cipher Brief senior international correspondent Ia Meurmishvili about Ukraine, as well as NATO’s future and Russian influence across Eastern Europe — including in Moldova and Georgia. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full discussion on The Cipher Brief’s YouTube channel.
Meurmishvili: What is your first priority before this administration finishes its term?
Ambassador Carpenter: All of us who work in the Biden administration are going to sprint through the finish these last few days. We have a full agenda of issues that preoccupy our attention in my world, first and foremost, Ukraine. [We just announced] a very strong, perhaps the strongest ever set of sanctions on Russia in the energy sector, to include some of the largest Russian oil companies, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegas. Those are very, very substantial designations, together with just under 200 vessels from Russia's shadow fleet. These are going to send a very powerful signal in terms of diminishing Russian revenues that enable its prosecution of the war against Ukraine, and will shorten Russia's financial runway just as we seek to lengthen Ukraine's runway and give it the strength to be able to defend itself over the coming weeks and months.
We're not resting on our laurels. We are doing everything possible, including surging assistance to Ukraine. You've seen the latest package announced by President Biden - in terms of total assistance, humanitarian, military and otherwise, close to $107 billion.
Meurmishvili: President-elect Trump's nominee for special envoy, Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, said that the goal of the new administration would be to end the war in 100 days. Keeping the sanctions in mind and even some policies that the Biden administration has implemented up until the very last moment, where do you see the situation? How do you see this goal accomplished by the future administration?
Ambassador Carpenter: I have tremendous respect for General Kellogg and wish him the best of success in his new role. Once he is appointed after January 20th, he's going to have a tall order in terms of trying to secure a just and lasting and durable peace between Russia and Ukraine. It is one thing to bring Ukraine to the table, and I think the Ukrainians are ready to sit down and talk about a lasting piece that would protect their sovereignty, independence, and democratic character. The question to me is, does Vladimir Putin have any interest in sitting down at that table and negotiating anything other than what he has consistently demanded since the very beginning of this war, which is the complete capitulation of Ukraine and essentially Russian dominance over the country and the government located in Kyiv? So squaring those two demands or requirements is going to be very difficult. Bringing Ukraine is going to be the easier piece, but getting Russia to engage on something that preserves Ukraine's sovereignty is going to be very, very difficult.
It's going to require leverage. You don't do negotiations without leverage, and that means exacting costs and consequences on Russia to include sanctions, further sanctions, further pressure, especially in the energy and financial sectors. And then in terms of military assistance, it will require additional support for Ukraine. I don't see how this gets done outside of those parameters, but of course, this is a question for the new team.
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Meurmishvili: Let's assume that Russia comes to the negotiating table. Do you think Ukraine is in a strong position at this point to do so?
Ambassador Carpenter: It’s relative. Have we done everything possible to support Ukraine? Yes, we have given every weapons capability, every system, Javelins, HIMARS, howitzers, anti-tank capabilities, Abrams tanks, F-16s, and every manner of capability in between. We have surged almost $70 billion in security assistance to Ukraine over these roughly two and a half years of the war.
But at the end of the day, the situation is still tenuous in many towns and in the front lines in the Donbas. And why is that? It is for a very simple reason. There is a manpower equation that is at the heart of this calculation as to who is gaining ground in this war. Russia simply comes at this war with a lot more bodies, a lot more personnel than Ukraine does. And so that is a factor, a challenge that is very difficult. You can provide all the capabilities you want, but at the end of the day, surmounting that critical roadblock is simply very challenging. So we find ourselves in a situation where Ukraine is strong, but it faces an adversary that despite the colossal casualties that it's suffering is able to eke out some gains in the east, day by day, week by week.
Meurmishvili: And let's assume that there's a ceasefire achieved in 100 days. What does that mean for Ukraine in your view, and what does it mean for Russia?
Ambassador Carpenter: I think a ceasefire would be a tremendous and very significant accomplishment if it were to be reached. I have to say, I'm very reluctant or hesitant to foresee a situation where we are able to achieve a ceasefire in a hundred days' time. Putin's aims here have been to subjugate Ukraine. This system of filtration that has been implemented in the Donbas and in the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, importantly, is a brutal system of pacifying Ukrainians and trying to eradicate their national consciousness. This is not the sort of thing that happens spontaneously. This is a centrally directed effort to erase Ukrainian identity.
There's this magical thinking that is going on, at least in some parts of [Washington] and in some European capitalists as well, that suggests that perhaps in spite of this sort of maniacal drive to subjugate Ukraine, that at the end of the day the Russians can simply live with some variety of compromise that results in a ceasefire and some diminished set of aims on their end. I don't think that's realistic.
The future of NATO
Meurmishvili: President-elect Trump has stated that he would want the NATO allies to increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. How realistic do you think that is? Is it a good idea?
Ambassador Carpenter: I think it's imperative that a lot of European countries spend more on their defense industrial base. They need to invest in capabilities, they need to invest in production so that they have the weapons and the munitions to be able to defend themselves. These last 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall have brought about a peace dividend that is positive, but has left many European countries woefully unprepared for what we're now seeing in Ukraine, which is the largest land war in Europe since World War II. Now, many of those countries are not fighting in this war. They're merely providing support to Ukraine. But even there, we see that they're just simply unable to sustain the levels of support that are needed for this scale and type of conflict. So yes, Europeans need to spend a lot more on defense. There's no doubt about that.
There's no free riding any longer in terms of the U.S. providing the predominant extended deterrence and defense capabilities for the alliance. There's got to be a lot more burden sharing, and we've come a long way under the Biden administration. Remember this administration started with nine allies spending 2% of their GDP on defense. It ends with 23 allies spending that amount. So we've come a long way. We need to go further. I think the President-elect is right in that sense, but it'll be up to allies to decide what the benchmark is and how many of them can actually meet that — 5% seems awfully high given that many struggle to get to 2%. There's 3% and there's 4% that are in between as benchmarks. But ultimately, I think the bottom line here is yes, a lot more needs to be invested in defense, and also in the U.S. where our defense industrial base definitely needs to be energized to sustain the sorts of conflicts in the future that we might potentially see.
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Moldova’s crisis
Meurmishvili: Moldova is fully dependent on Russia for its natural gas. It has an election coming up. There was major Russian involvement in Moldovan previous elections, and the pro-European forces won with a very small margin. Russia has cut off gas or increased tariffs to the country in the winter time, as well as in the pre-election period. Is the administration doing anything to support Moldova directly before the term ends?
Ambassador Carpenter: We are. But let me be very clear that the energy crisis in Moldova is 100% Russia's doing. Russia is trying to point the finger at others, primarily at Ukraine for stopping gas transit of Russian gas. But there is a pipeline, the Trans-Balkan pipeline, that can provide gas to Moldova today if the Russians decided to use it. So this notion that Moldova does not have the gas to be able to provide electricity and heating for its residents because of decisions made outside of Moscow is ludicrous. This is 100% Russia's fault. Russia knows it, but it's trying to abuse the situation in order to be able to pin blame on others, especially in advance of elections later this year.
The United States has committed to working with other international financial institutions like the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) to help support bridge financing, to carry Moldova over through this very difficult winter until it can find sustainable [ways], both reverse flow and other options, to allow for the energy grid to be operational and for citizens to have heat and electricity.
The Georgia crisis
Meurmishvili: Georgia has very dramatically pivoted towards Russia, China, and Iran in the past couple of years. What do you think happened? How was it possible for Georgia to shift so dramatically in the opposite direction?
Ambassador Carpenter: What’s happening in Georgia is a real tragedy. This was a shining beacon of democracy and robust civil society, free speech, just a wonderful country with a very, very educated citizenry, very determined to integrate into Euro-Atlantic institutions. And then that process was derailed by a small group of leaders who have led Georgia away from the aspirations of the vast overwhelming majority of its citizens, knowing that their actions are jeopardizing the future of the country. And that's the real tragedy here.
You’ve seen the United States take strong actions to sanction a number of Georgian individuals — close to a hundred. In terms of our visa policy, we've also used explicit sanctions against some of the key architects of this U-turn away from NATO and the EU towards China, Russia, Iran, and other autocratic powers. And the real architect of this policy has been Bidzina Ivanishvili, who, as honorary chairman of the Georgian Dream Party, has really pulled the strings on a lot of the key decisions that have been made in Tbilisi over the course of the last few months, but also over the course of the last dozen or so years.
What we saw was a gradual widening gap over the years between the rhetoric of the government, which purported to want to integrate with NATO in the EU, and actions that seemed a little bit dissonant with that. And then dramatically within the last six months, we've seen a complete U-turn with legislation to try to criminalize civil society, to try to criminalize LGBTQ relationships, to permit dark money to flow from overseas into Georgia, and then repressions against protestors and the rest of what we've seen over the last 45 days. If it continues on this trajectory, the government is clearly attempting to snuff out the last embers of democracy in Georgia, and that would be a tragedy for everybody in the region and beyond.
Meurmishvili: The Biden administration has imposed sanctions, both financial and travel restrictions. Are there any more sanctions coming up?
Ambassador Carpenter: I can never speak to future sanctions actions — that's U.S. policy. But I also would not exclude that there will be additional sanctions in the very near term. There is a very strong bipartisan push from Congress to implement more sanctions and impose more consequences on the architects of this policy of repression.
Meurmishvili: Were the sanctions coordinated with the transition team, or was it solely a Biden administration decision?
Ambassador Carpenter: We in the United States have a long standing policy of one administration at a time, one president at a time. Each administration takes decisions while it's in office. It provides briefings to the next administration in terms of the challenges and the issues and the various policy dilemmas that will confront the new team when they take office, but we operate on the principle that we will implement policy until January 20th, and then from January 20th onwards, the new team will have the reins in their hands and they will be able to set policy. That said, I will repeat that there is broad bipartisan consensus within the Congress to continue to impose consequences on the Georgian Dream leadership for the repressions against civil society and for taking the country in a direction that is much closer to Russia and China and much further away from NATO and the EU. I hope that policy continues, but it'll be up to the new team to decide.
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