Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. February 24th marked the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although Ukraine has proved more resilient to Russian offenses than anyone expected, its position now appears more precarious than ever. Joining me to discuss the war on this anniversary is Dr. Evelyn Farkas, executive director of The McCain Institute. She has three decades of national security and foreign policy experience, and from 2012 to 2015, served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Dr. Farkas, Evelyn, welcome to the show.

Evelyn Farkas:

Oh, thank you so much, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So before we get to where we are at this moment and looking forward, what’s our best understanding of the scale of consequence that this war has had on Ukraine, on Russia, the scope of casualties, loss of human life? Could you give us a sense of that after two years?

Evelyn Farkas:

Yeah, I mean, well, the war has been going on since 2014 when I was actually in the Pentagon as a person responsible for US-Russia and then US-Ukraine, basically relations with Eastern European countries that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union. That was when Russia first invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea and started a war in Donbas. But as you rightfully intimate, it was really two years ago when things changed radically. So the other war was on a low simmer for eight years, and the full-frontal invasion was shocking to the world because of the way that Russia fought this war. Russia in effect, took their playbook that they had used against the Chechens and Chechnya, which is part of the Russian Federation and against the Syrian people, a playbook they used with Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad and applied it to Ukraine.

And what was this playbook? It was attacking the civilians. The way to, they thought, bring the government to its knees and to capitulate, to Russia’s demands, was to attack the innocent civilians by bombing them, by torturing them, by raping them, by kidnapping their children. And I think the world looked on with shock because it was happening also in Europe. Europe was the place where this had happened and basically brought about World War II.

At the conclusion of that war, the powers at the time, which were largely European and North American, said we’re going to, and China, decided that we are going to put an end to global wars, and we’re also going to put an end to the horror of Holocaust and concentration camps and the slaughter of World War II. And we essentially created the United Nations and all the rules to protect human rights that accompany the UN order. And what we saw in Russia was in the middle of Europe, something, a horror that we really hadn’t seen since I would argue the Balkan Wars in the nineties, but at such a scope and scale that it really made people think of World War II. And what is at stake here, Preet is the real danger that this could spread and become actually another world war.

Preet Bharara:

Do we have an estimate of how much life has been lost?

Evelyn Farkas:

That is a good question. I haven’t looked up the figures lately. They’re of course in the hundreds of thousands on both sides, Russian and Ukrainian. Most of those lives are military lives, but of course, thousands of innocent civilians have died and every day more are being murdered by the Russian military. But also President Putin in launching this war, he sent a lot of Russians to their deaths, poorly equipped, poorly trained, and essentially used many of them as cannon fodder.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a town or a city called Avdiivka where the Ukrainian forces met with a loss in the last number of days. Is that a turning point? Is that an inflection point? Is that a temporary setback? How do you view that? It’s been getting a lot of attention and people seem to be anxious about it.

Evelyn Farkas:

I don’t think it’s a turning point. I don’t think it’s a huge setback. Of course, it’s tragic for the people of Avdiivka, and there were about 900 who were still there when the town fell, and likely most of them perished or maybe they’re still there trying to get out. So it is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people there. But militarily speaking, it’s not significant except to show the world that there is a price to be paid for lack of proper support for Ukraine. The fact that our Congress has not been able to approve additional funding for Ukraine meant that Ukraine has been suffering from ammunition shortages, which certainly contributed to this loss of this town. So had we been providing sufficient arms to Ukraine, likely they would’ve been able to hold out.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re saying we can actually lay the blame of the Avdiivka loss at the feet of the US Congress?

Evelyn Farkas:

Possibly. I mean, I think we’d have to do a more closer accounting of the equipment, but I am certain it had to have contributed somehow. Again, because they’re rationing ammunition in Ukraine along that line. And of course morale is another problem and morale in the trenches. So on the ground level, but also morale, if you think about the political leadership in Ukraine, they have to deal with the fact that the support that they’re getting from the United States looks weaker and that will impact them in terms of, “Do we hold out and try to just really keep this town or not? Maybe we should be more conservative because we’re still waiting to see whether we’re going to get the next tranche of assistance and weapons from the United States.”

Preet Bharara:

So what’s the outlook for that next tranche?

Evelyn Farkas:

Hard to say. I am optimistic. I really do believe that at the end of the day, the majority of the members of Congress who support Ukraine. And let me be clear, the majority of the House of Representatives, the members do support Ukraine. It’s a fringe right that has in effect taken the policy hostage because of the way the House functions, because of the rules, and because there’s a leader who is ambivalent, I would say, in terms of how much to support Ukraine or whether to support Ukraine. But I think the majority will prevail and they will find a way to pass the legislation. The Senate has already taken action. We already see a package of about $61 billion waiting for Ukraine. So I am cautiously optimistic that the House will do what needs to be done.

Preet Bharara:

Can you explain, since you mentioned it, this fringe on the right, how it came? Because I’ve never understood a good explanation of how it came to be? Given, I remember what the political landscape was like in the seventies and eighties under Reagan when I grew up, how a portion of the right became either open-minded about or welcoming of, or downright cheerleaders for Russia?

Evelyn Farkas:

I mean, it dates back to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I mean, I don’t-

Preet Bharara:

So you think that was a change in 2015, 2016, because in part of the Russia investigation or because of Donald Trump’s welcoming embrace of Putin and his praise for Putin?

Evelyn Farkas:

Because of Donald Trump’s welcoming embrace of Putin. Now, there were other members of Congress, some of whom have since left, who were accepting money from the Russians, who had close relations, were traveling to Moscow. And Dana Rohrabacher is the one I have in mind.

Preet Bharara:

I remember him.

Evelyn Farkas:

Yeah. So there were already these ties between the conservative right and Russia, but Dana Rohrabacher was not the candidate for the president who then became the president. And so what Trump ushered in was an era where it was acceptable to take money from Russians or Russian Americans or Ukrainian Americans friendly with Russia. And I believe there was a lot of money laundered through the political process leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, and that some of that was captured by real time investigative journalists.

And of course, the Mueller Report, you mentioned the Russia investigation because it wasn’t just coincidence that Trump and Russians were showing up in the same place. They were trying to help one another. And so without that, I don’t know that Putin and being pro-Kremlin at this moment in time would’ve been acceptable. And it certainly, as you said, runs counter to traditional Republican foreign policy.

Preet Bharara:

It’s an utter warping of things that I understand the explanation, but I also don’t understand fully.

Evelyn Farkas:

Well, it’s populism, and somebody just asked me that today from the Polish press, and I said there were a lot of changes going on in our society. Demographic changes. The economic divide was getting bigger. There was modernization in industry. There was the rural urban divide. All these things were causing people to feel unsettled and then in steps of populist. So that’s the way that I explain it. But I’m sure there are other ways of looking at it.

Preet Bharara:

But if you have a party, or at least generally speaking, a party who goes out in rhetoric derives social programs in the United States as socialism slash communism, how can they at the same time embrace Vladimir Putin, who’s the exemplar of communism? I sort of don’t understand that, but that’s for another day, I guess. Do you think either Ukraine and or Russia are making decisions about the war and about how they’re approaching the war on the battlefield with an eye on the clock of the American election?

Evelyn Farkas:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, any responsible leader would have to. President Zelenskyy has been really careful to have good relations with as many players in the US and then of course, even internationally as possible. Clearly, he has a good relationship with President Biden. President Biden wants to provide him the assistance. He doesn’t really have a problem there. His problem is more with the right. And in this instance, very recently, he said, “If President Trump wants to go to Ukraine, I’ll take him to the front line.” He says things that demonstrate that he’s not going to close the door on a relationship.

Preet Bharara:

Does he say he’ll take him to the front line and leave him there? Or that might be a threat, actually.

Evelyn Farkas:

Yeah, it might be, but well, who knows what he says behind his closed doors. But he did go through a difficult time with Trump, but by and large managed to keep himself out of the fray, which is interesting because of course, the first impeachment of President Trump was over his blocking congressionally mandated spending directives to provide assistance to Ukraine. But the Ukrainian president cleverly kind of kept his powder dry, if you will. He stayed out of it and let our Congress handle that with the President.

Preet Bharara:

And how about Russia? So in Russia’s case, I imagine they’re just holding out for the dream of a Trump second presidency?

Evelyn Farkas:

Yes, that’s absolutely what Putin’s doing. I mean, Putin always, his whole modus operandi has been not strategic necessarily, but just live to fight another day. He does things tactically. If they work great, if they don’t, then he’ll pivot and try something else. He likes to use as little resources as possible to achieve as much. Generally he’s been low risk except that he did a couple big risk things in the last decade. He interfered with our elections and then did this full-frontal invasion.

But I think for now, he will try to husband his resources and wait until Trump comes into power. He’ll do as much as he can to create trouble in the United States. I mean, we see this latest reporting on FBI informant being a Russian agent. I mean, this is obvious. I mean, the Russians have never stopped meddling in our politics since they first started interfering, which of course even predates Trump. But with their accelerated interference with the state sanction, full bore interference in our elections, they never stopped.

Preet Bharara:

What’s your best prediction of what happens if Trump regains the presidency? Is Ukraine lost? Do sanctions get lifted? What happens?

Evelyn Farkas:

That’s a really good question.

Preet Bharara:

Let the record reflect that the guest heavily sighed.

Evelyn Farkas:

Exactly. Well, and I sigh because when President Trump was president previously, we know that he brought people into office. Like one of my board members at the McCain Institute, Mark Esper, who tried very hard to keep the guardrails on and to keep President Trump from doing things like withdrawing the United States from NATO. And he succeeded. There were good people who knew what our national security interest was, who essentially provided a brake on President Trump’s irresponsible impulses and the irresponsible, impulsive way of governing.

And so I’m worried that this next time around we won’t have those types of people. And so it will be a dangerous situation for the United States and for Ukraine. Having said that, the Ukrainian people, they will fight to the last man or a woman. They know they have no option, especially so long as Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin. If another leader were to come to the fore, someone who is more pragmatic, they don’t even have to be pro western or pro Ukrainian, then Ukraine might have some diplomatic options.

But for the moment, Ukraine really doesn’t. Basically they have to rely on their battlefield ability to at least hold off the Russians, if not defeat them. So I think, I don’t worry as much for Ukraine per se, except for the tragedy of ongoing loss of life, because I don’t think Russia’s going to control Ukraine again, ever. But I do worry for the United States and for the world if Donald Trump were to be in office, because it wouldn’t just be Ukraine at stake and Ukraine fighting Russia, but Russia would then turn to Republic of Georgia, take control of that country militarily or through other means, then Moldova, and then Russia would try to destroy NATO by attacking the sovereignty of one of our allies.

So that the ripple effect of Russia prevailing, or at least Ukraine not prevailing against Russia, and having an ongoing war with Russia and the United States not providing sufficient assistance, could lead us to a place where Russia’s challenging NATO and we, the United States, have to defend a NATO ally and then suddenly we’re in a war with Russia. And of course, given the fact that Russia now is allied with Iran and North Korea and politically with China, although not militarily at this point, you can easily see how this could become a global war. So that’s what I would like to prevent by making sure that the Ukrainians defeat Russia and its aggressive foreign policy as fast as possible.

Preet Bharara:

Could you give your most blunt assessment about the efficacy and impact of all the sanctions that we’ve heard about over the last couple of years?

Evelyn Farkas:

Sanctions alone obviously-

Preet Bharara:

You’re sighing again.

Evelyn Farkas:

I know, sorry, have not deterred Vladimir Putin, have not stopped Vladimir Putin, but I do think they’re important. They have increased the price for the elites. They have increased to some extent the price on the Russian people. Although generally speaking, our sanctions have been much more targeted. So our intent was not to hurt the average Russian, but I do think there’s still a cashflow going to Russia, but it’s smaller.

I’m hopeful that on Friday when the president announces the new set of sanctions against Russia, they will include sanctions against spent nuclear fuel, because that’s another area where the Russians get over a billion dollars, I believe a year partly from us, partly from the Europeans for our nuclear energy industries. And I think on dual use items like washing machines and other pieces of equipment that Russians will take and take apart literally, cannibalize to get the high value computer chips from them, I think we ought to be able to find a way to also prevent that flow of technology to Russia.

Preet Bharara:

I should note for our audience that we’re recording this conversation on Thursday, February 22nd. So some things may happen between now and when people actually hear this program.

I have a question about what Vladimir Putin’s standing is two years in to this increased conflict in his own country and whether or not the killing of Alexei Navalny last week, and the timing of that suggests that Putin himself thinks his standing is at relatively high point.

Evelyn Farkas:

So his standing is at a very low point. Alexia Navalny said it himself, and his widow repeated his words. I was there at the Munich Security Conference when she did that, and she quoted him as saying, “When and if Putin and the Kremlin kill me, it will mean that he is weak, that they are weak, that we are strong.” Actually, he put it the other way. He said that we are strong, and I think that’s right. Vladimir Putin has been increasingly unpopular in Russia. The full-frontal war has made him even more unpopular. The people who disagreed with his policy most have voted with their feet. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled. The ones who remain are trying to avoid having to fight an unpopular war in Ukraine that you’re not even allowed to call a war in Russia. That’s why we have dissidents like Vladimir Kara-Muza, who was a pallbearer at John McCain’s funeral sitting in a prison in Siberia because he called it a war, not a “special operation”, which is what Putin wants people to call it.

Aside from that, the way we know that he’s still an unpopular inside Russia is very recently the Russians in the context of Russian elections, they’ll be held on March 17th. The Russians pretend they have a competitive election, so they allow certain people to run against the Russian main political party, Putin’s party and against Putin. But they’re not really serious opponents, but they’re kind of fig leaf opponents. Well, one of these guys actually started to develop an explicit anti-war platform, and people realized it. And so people were lining up all over Russia to sign his election petition so he could be on the ballot, and he managed to get 200,000 signatures. So he suddenly was very popular, and this was a huge sign to the Kremlin that the war was not popular and the war is Putin’s war. So that’s a long answer to your question, Preet. But Vladimir Putin was at his low point. Killing Navalny did not make him stronger. It made him more feared perhaps, but it also demonstrates a significant weakness.

Preet Bharara:

What should people be looking for in the coming months to assess which way the war is going?

Evelyn Farkas:

Well, clearly whether the Ukrainians make progress either on the land or on the sea, or in the air militarily, because what isn’t talked about very much is the fact that the Ukrainians have reopened commerce in the Black Sea. So they now have free and relatively safe transit in and out of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, which is new. You might recall in the past, it was something that Turkey was negotiated with Russia just to get grain out. Now the Ukrainians can conduct normal trade.

If they can continue doing that, but even expand the space and threaten Crimea and the Russian waters even more, that would be significant. If they can get longer range artillery, whether it’s from the United States as part of the next package or from the Europeans, then they can also continue to take their advantage in the maritime domain and perhaps also on land.

The F-16s are coming soon. I don’t know that they’re coming in enough numbers to make a huge difference, but if they come and there’s enough of a surprise impact, that’s significant. I think looking inside Russia, I would be very interested to see how many people come out on March 17th at noon, which was the last kind of directive that Navalny issued from his Arctic prison. He said the Russians should demonstrate their protest against Putin by coming to the election polls exactly at noon on the 17th. So if there are a lot of people who show up exactly at noon on March 17th, that will be also interesting. So those are just a few items that I would be looking for. Overall, I think that right now the autocrats feel like they have the initiative and the advantage vis-a-vis the democracies, but I think that can easily change, and I look forward to seeing it change.

Preet Bharara:

Me too. And on that note, thanks again for your work. Thanks for your insight. Thanks for focusing on these issues and explaining them to us. Dr. Evelyn Farkas, thank you.

Evelyn Farkas:

Thank you for having me on, Preet. It’s an honor.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members, get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper, the Technical Director was David Tatasciore. The Deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai, and the cafe team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.