OPINION — “The reason why I still remain pessimistic is that everything that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin says is he still wants those four territories…Eastern Ukraine. He hasn't achieved that yet. And he wants Ukraine to be at least subjugated to Russia, because he doesn't think that Ukraine's an independent country or independent nation. Ukrainians are just Russians with accents. That's his view. I've heard him talk about it personally. I've been in the room when he talks that way. And maximally he wants to bring it all into Russia. So, tragically, I think the only way he negotiates seriously is when he's stopped on the battlefield and his armies cannot march further west.”
That was Michael McFaul, President Obama’s Ambassador to Russia (2012-to-2014), speaking with Katie Couric August 18, on YouTube. McFaul, a Russian expert, is today a professor at Stanford University and Director of its Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
In the 53-minute conversation, McFaul provided a background to the Ukraine war, shared his views on the relations between Putin and President Trump, and talked about the possible future when it comes to the NATO and European Union nations and the United States.
Early in their conversation, McFaul provided an interesting background to the past and current fighting which has been taking place in eastern Ukraine, adjacent to Russia.
“So there are four regions that most of the fighting has been taking place,” McFaul said, “In each of those four regions [they] are partially occupied by the Russians today.”
Two of the four regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, together form what’s called the Donbas. Russia holds all of Luhansk and 75 percent of Donetsk. The other two regions are Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russia has about 70 percent of the land.
McFaul said, “Two years ago Putin held a big ceremony where he said these new four regions are now part of the Russian Federation in addition to Crimea, which he annexed back in 2014…So five regions of Russia, five states if you will of the Ukrainian country Putin has already, you know, annexed.”
“On paper,” McFaul continued, Putin “had a big ceremony, there's parades, and the Kremlin and they say he had all these fictitious leaders from these places saying you're now part of Russia, right, but de facto on the ground in reality he doesn't control any of those places 100%.”
McFaul explained the “Donbas is rich in minerals. It's the industrial base of the country. So I think it's like eight or nine percent of the [Ukraine] population…but it's more like 15 percent of
the GDP [gross national product] of the entire country. So it would be a tremendous loss to Ukraine. That is true. Also, half parts of it have been occupied de facto by Russian surrogates
since 2014. So another important thing to realize is that once that happened, many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians left that territory. They're living all over the place. I have friends from those regions that are living in Germany, living here in the United States, and living in parts, other parts of Ukraine.”
McFaul tied the Donbas to what happened when Trump met with Putin in Alaska on August 15, saying, “We never really got a good readout from what happened in Alaska, but to the best of our understanding, what Putin asked for in Alaska, pretty audacious. He said, Donbas, that's two of those regions, right? That's up in the northwest corner, northeast corner. He said, Mr. President, convince Zelensky to leave Donbas. Remember Ukrainian soldiers and Ukrainians now hold parts of Donbas as we speak…It's Ukrainian held territory and Putin says you got to convince Zelensky to give me those two regions and in return I will stop fighting in those other two regions that I just mentioned. Right? Kherson and Zaporizhzhia…So that's his deal.”
McFaul went on, “That's his offer. And the Ukrainians, you know, I talked to many Ukrainians afterwards. I mean, this is nonsense from them. The idea that they would give up territory that hasn't even been conquered is just a non-starter. But that's what Putin asked for.”
McFaul also set out what he thought the Ukrainians might settle for, while making clear Zelensky had never said it directly.
“I think,” McFaul said, “the part [of Ukraine] that was occupied since 2014 [Crimea, small sections of the Donbas] is a part that Ukrainian people and President Zelensky could live with giving up. Again, I want to stress, they're not going to recognize it as part of Russia, but they could recognize that they will only seek reunification through peaceful means. That's the language...That means that in reality it would be under Russia, you know, as long as Putin's in power.”
McFaul added, “But they're only going to do that if they have some guarantee from the West that by doing that they get something in return for their security. And so when you hear this phrase ‘land for peace,’ the Ukrainians keep saying, well, yeah, you guys keep asking us for land, but you never say what the peace part is. And that is what the conversation [Trump with Zelensky with European leaders] at the White House today [August 21] is, I think, principally focused on.”
Before talking about the Trump/Putin relationship, McFaul gave some interesting personal background about the Russian President.
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“I can tell you Putin is an effective interlocutor,” McFaul said, “He is an effective speaker. He will go on and on about Russian history. He'll spin it in his own way. And if you don't know, you know, what happened in the 15th century, and even I don't, you know, so most presidents don't, it's hard to follow. In one meeting with Obama, he [Putin] went on for 58 minutes in the beginning of the meeting before President Obama even had the chance to speak. So that's the way he rolls. I just fear that Trump accepted his, you know, perverse notion of history.”
I saw an example of this side of Putin four years ago, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when a friend suggested I read a 10-page essay published by the Russian President on July 12, 2021, entitled, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. It can still be accessed on Putin’s website.
Putin began it by writing, “During the recent Direct Line [a TV question-and-answer session with Putin] when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe. I therefore feel it necessary to explain my position in detail and share my assessments of today's situation.”
Putin continues to push that idea, as he did on August 16 in his joint press conference with Trump in Alaska, when he described Ukrainians as “a brotherly people, no matter how strange it may sound in today’s circumstances. We share the same roots, and the current situation is tragic and deeply painful to us. Therefore, our country is sincerely interested in ending this.”
At one point in their conversation, Couric asked McFaul, “Do you think that Donald Trump is being played by Putin?”
McFaul answered: “Honestly, I think he [Putin] thinks of Trump as being just a really weak leader and with a little bit of praise and a little bit of, you know, repeating things that are false
that Trump wants to hear, he can win him over…So in Alaska, Putin said, ‘I would have never invaded Ukraine had you been president.’ And that's exactly what Trump wanted to hear.”
McFaul went on, “And then behind closed doors, as we learned later in his conversation with Sean Hannity, Putin went on and on about how the 2020 elections was stolen because of mail-in ballots, because of mail-in voting, right?”
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I studied the Fox Hannity August 15 interview where Trump spoke of “one of the most interesting things” Putin had told him, which was, “Your [the U.S. 2020] election was rigged because of mail-in voting.” Trump then continued. “He [Putin] said mail-in voting, every election. He [Putin] said, no country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”
McFaul’s response to Trump’s description to Hannity of that portion of his exchange with Putin reflected what other Americans commentators have said.
“I just listened to the President [Trump] talk about that [Putin’s view of the 2020 election],” McFaul said, “and I just can't believe that he [Trump] would be so gullible. Honestly, I guess I should get used to it by now. But what an absurd thing for him [Putin] to claim…How does Putin know that that happened [in the 2020 election]? And no credible American organization, no investigative journalists have uncovered that. But somehow mysteriously the president of Russia knows that it was stolen because there was mail-in voting. And yet the President [Trump] just repeated that and that's how Putin has won him over.”
Three days later, on August 18, Trump messaged on Truth Social: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS…We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.”
In fact, as reported by Politifact, a Sweden-based organization, Supporting Democracy Worldwide, in an October 2024 report found that at least 20 countries other than the U.S. allow some form of mail-in voting, including Austria, Australia, Japan, India, Canada, Ireland, Greece, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Towards the end of the interview, McFaul said there were two major things he hoped for.
“One,” he said was “the security guarantee that we've been talking about where European soldiers are deployed on Ukrainian territory to help keep the peace. Peacekeepers, you
know, tripwire. I don't really like that word tripwire, but where they're there to just keep that border, right?... And you go up to the border and you see all the soldiers there and you see the barbed wire that keeps the peace.”
The second thing McFaul hoped for involved “about $300 billion dollars of Russian central bank assets and other Russian assets that are in our banks. They were correctly, brilliantly frozen by the G7…back in 2022,” after Putin invaded Ukraine.
McFaul said, “The next move, those assets have to be given to Ukraine. Americans don't want to pay for reconstruction. Europeans don't want to pay for it. That's money is sitting right there.” It would be used, McFaul said, as “part of a sweetener” for Zelensky because “he's got to have something else to give the Ukrainian people” to keep fighting against the Russians.
McFaul’s closing point is worth remembering.
Referring to the NATO allies at the White House with Zelensky, McFaul said it should “remind everybody that Moscow, neither the Soviets or the Russians, have never attacked a NATO
country. So NATO expansion has helped to keep the peace especially in places like the Baltic states. But also NATO has never attacked the Soviet Union or Russia. And so we shouldn't buy into this argument that it's a threat to Russia. It's not a threat to Russia…We have to think about NATO as an alliance that preserves the peace rather than causes conflict.”
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