Key Reflections
* Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is on a scale that we thought was confined to history in Europe. It was also planned well in advance.
* Vladimir Putin has scores to settle originating from the end of the Cold War, and that mindset cannot be changed. Ukraine is a key feature of that.
* Putin has become paranoid and isolated. He has reduced the number of people advising him because he doesn’t like opposing viewpoints.
* The narrative of NATO threatening Russia has always been a red herring, and the irony is now by occupying Ukraine, Russian troops are physically closer to NATO member nations.
* Hybrid and grey zone threats have aggressively featured in the Russian strategy against Ukraine. This includes cyber threats and false flag operations, as well as tactics to cripple Ukraine’s economy.
* Russia needs to be halted in escalating tensions via economic and diplomatic means as well as sanctions and revoking the visas of the family members of leading Russian officials and oligarchs who live in the West.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
EB: Elisabeth Braw
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Elisabeth Braw, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on defence against emerging national security challenges, such as hybrid and grey zone threats. Concurrently, Elisabeth is a columnist with Foreign Policy magazine. She is also the author of God’s Spies: The Stasi’s Cold War Espionage Campaign Inside the Church.
Elisabeth Braw, thank you for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive.
EB: Thank you for having me.
SG: I wish we were speaking during a more stable and tranquil time globally, discussing scenarios, but on 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine from multiple locations. Via the north towards Kyiv, and the south from Crimea. There were also missile barrages and artillery on the northeast, focusing on Kharkiv, and the east targeting Mariupol.
This is an invasion of a peaceful, sovereign, independent nation on a scale that we thought was confined to history in Europe. Was this invasion inevitable? And could it have perhaps been avoided?
EB: In the short term, it could possibly have been avoided. It happened because Vladimir Putin decided that he would like to attack Ukraine, had he not decided that he would like to attack Ukraine, then clearly we will not be facing this tragedy that we are facing now.
I think in the longer term, we have had three decades, more than three decades of phenomenal peace, prosperity, growth, and frankly, an almost exceptional period in European history, indeed, in global history. I don’t think it could last. Countries are like people, there are always going to be countries, leaders of countries, who will refuse to get along with other leaders, there will be countries that will refuse to get along with other countries. So, this phenomenal stretch of growth and prosperity and peace that we have had was an anomaly.
We have to remember, it’s not just Russia that is behaving in a belligerent fashion, China is doing the same, not yet with an armed invasion of another country, but also refusing to get along, to play according to the rules of the global community. And that is, unfortunately, I think that the way the world always develops, you will have some more peaceful, prosperous periods, but they will be followed by conflict. And we thought, or many people thought, that this time it would be different. No such luck.
SG: No such luck, indeed.
A few days prior to the invasion, Putin told the world effectively that he did not believe that Ukraine should exist as an independent country. He gave what effectively was a 5,000 word rant about Ukraine and Russia and their intertwined histories. Was he effectively warning that there was going to be this invasion that would take place?
EB: Yes, he was warning of an invasion. Even those of us have been paying close attention to him now for years, even those of us who have done that, we didn’t think that he would follow through on those threats. We thought that he would do a bit more of sabre rattling, we thought that he would be menacing, and we thought that he would then pull back from the brink, because simply by being menacing, simply by using tools other than military force, you can actually harm a country a great deal and that is what Russia has done to Ukraine. The Ukrainian economy has been suffering quite badly in recent months, investors have left and that is as a result of those Russians and soldiers being massed at the border. Most of us didn’t think that Putin would then follow through with a traditional military assault, simply because you can do so much with other means.
Clearly, he feels he has scores to settle, and I think he is so isolated that he may be misjudging the situation, he may be getting more paranoid than he already was. So clearly, from his point of view, this is what he needed to do, I think, not just I think, it’s clearly the result of a paranoid understanding of the world. And that’s the mistake most of us made, we thought he would act rationally. But if you have developed a paranoid view of the world, you may not act rationally.
SG: It’s interesting that you say that he’s become paranoid and isolated. There’s a belief that during the pandemic, for the last two years, that effectively he cut himself off from physical contact from many people, but that this Ukraine obsession was always there, in the back of his mind. Is it also an issue that he has just been advised very badly, or that people in his inner circle are too scared to advise him?
EB: I think we have all been cut off during the past two years, because we have been forced to work remotely and without regular interaction, not just with our coworkers and colleagues, but also without regular interaction with others. And for a world leader—for the leader of a country—that means fewer opportunities and less interaction with your fellow leaders and that came at exactly the time when there would have needed to be regular interaction between Putin and Western leaders to reassure him in his clearly increasingly paranoid mind that NATO is not an aggressive alliance that Ukraine poses no threat to NATO. COVID removed those opportunities almost completely. And it seems to me made his paranoia even worse.
Then, there is, as you mentioned, the additional thing of his advisors, it seems that he has reduced the number of people, or the number of people advising him have naturally recused themselves, simply because he is somebody who doesn’t like to hear a strong opposing viewpoint he seems to like ‘yes-men’ and so experienced diplomats and other advisors have fallen by the wayside, either removed by him, or neglected, or ignored by him, or realising that their views were no longer of interest. And that’s an extremely dangerous situation if it involves any country, but especially if it involves a country as militarily powerful as Russia.
SG: Absolutely, and it’s worth pointing out that when it comes to this alleged concern that Putin has about NATO, if you look at a map, for example, NATO nations that border Russia, it’s very few. You’ve got the Baltic states and perhaps a sliver of Kaliningrad, which is also connected through borders with some countries in Eastern Europe, but the the landmass physical connection between NATO and Russia is quite insignificant, and the irony is now by occupying Ukraine, effectively, the borders that Russian troops now occupy, potentially has quadrupled in terms of its connections with NATO. So it’s quite clear who is actually the one pushing that aggression towards NATO.
EB: Yes, absolutely. And I think the narrative of NATO threatening Russia has always been a red herring, but clearly a very effective red herring, because the Russian population—the voters of Russia—have not punished Putin or his party for this obsession with NATO, when really one could argue that they should focus much more on domestic Russian issues where reform is desperately needed.
Many of us, including Putin, experienced the Cold War, and he seems to be stuck in this mindset. I’m somebody younger than Putin, but for every single one of us who have any sort of memory of the Cold War, we remember what a standoff it was between the two sides, and how the Soviet Union crumbled without a noise. It was clearly extremely humiliating to the Soviets and especially to the Russians, who then lost many of their fellow Soviet republics because, lo and behold, the fellow Soviet republics were not that keen to be closely involved with Russia anymore. His mind seems to be stuck in that Cold War mentality, when really so much of the rest of the world, including some former Soviet republics, especially the Baltic states, have moved on to a more collaborative world.
But we clearly can’t change his mindset, we thought we could even up until the early 2000s. And well later than that, in his early years as president. That was not the case. George W. Bush thought he could do business with him; many other other leaders thought they could. And most recently, Emmanuel Macron thought he could, just a few days ago. It was not to be.
SG: It was not to be. And Putin, when he declared war on Ukraine, he pledged to oversee what he described as demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine. One point here is that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is himself Jewish. So I do find it strange why Putin uses this term of denazification. It’s clearly a propaganda tool. But do you think that resonates with people in Russia?
EB: It’s so easy to call somebody you don’t like a Nazi, so many people do it. And clearly Putin has discovered too, that if you don’t agree with somebody you just call him a Nazi. And immediately, instantaneously, his or her reputation is damaged.
And I suppose it does work in the sense that it’s easy to portray a country that wants to rid itself of sort of a colonial power almost, it’s easy to describe them as belligerent or as neo-Nazis, when all they want is freedom. And I don’t think I need to remind anybody who listens to your podcast that when the Baltic States, back in the very final years of the 80s, when they—the few brave Baltic activists who dared to talk about independence—when they did make that case, many Westerners—many people in Western Europe—thought they were a little bit odd, they were too nationalistic and as a result, didn’t take them seriously or looked down on them because they were supposed to be happy in the Soviet Union. And now they are happy outside the Soviet Union, they were proven right. But there is this tendency to always look at people who act out of a sort of a nationalist feeling, when in fact all they want is to live in their country in the manner that they decide for themselves.
SG: Absolutely, and the Baltic nations are becoming a key member of not just NATO but of the European Union as well. And they’ve thrived as you said.
British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, he spoke about and warned about a tidal wave of violence. Are we looking at the dismemberment of Ukraine? If we track back to the fact that we first had the annexation of Crimea, then the instigation of nefarious actors in the Donbass region, primarily in Luhansk and Donetsk, is this the carving up of Ukraine, and will that be an ongoing protracted process?
EB: Ukraine has already been carved up through those two breakaway republics declaring themselves independent, so Ukraine has already lost its territorial integrity. Unfortunately, the loss of those two breakaway republics is the best-case scenario at the moment. So, what we are looking at as we speak is Russian aggression against the rest of Ukraine. And let’s hope that it doesn’t succeed. The Ukrainians are, as far as we can tell, putting up an extremely brave and skilled fight against the Russians. So the Russians, the Russian troops, already involved and those likely to be added are facing more assistance than Putin seems to have calculated would be the case.
And that raises the hopes that Russia will conclude at some point, hopefully, very soon, that it’s not worth losing more blood and treasure on this foolish enterprise and will as a result withdraw. I don’t think that would be the case. Putin clearly has scores to settle, and he doesn’t hesitate to risk his own citizens’ lives to harm Ukraine. But I think the important thing to remember is that Ukraine has already lost parts of its territory and now risks losing even more parts of it.
SG: One aspect that you’ve written about and spoken about is these notions of hybrid and grey zone threats. This is very relevant and important when it comes to the role of Vladimir Putin and what has now unfolded in Ukraine. Could you talk a little bit more about what hybrid and grey zone threats mean? And then also explain the context of how that has been implemented in the Russian strategy upon Ukraine?
EB: Yes, a hybrid—just like a hybrid car—hybrid warfare is a combination of two different means of aggression, so kinetic and non-kinetic, or above the threshold of armed violence and below the threshold of armed violence. Grey zone aggression, or grey zone warfare—I say grey zone aggression—is the aggression that takes place exclusively below the threshold of armed violence, and that’s where we have seen so much innovation in recent years. There has been an explosion of activity in this area simply because there’s so much you can do as the aggressor country and so much you can achieve. And the cost is so low because you don’t, in most cases, you don’t risk any lives, and in most cases, it’s also cheap financially speaking. You can engage in cyber aggression, that’s a long-standing form of grey zone aggression. So is disinformation.
But more recently that the area that has been booming is corporate coercion, as conducted mostly by China. Then there are additional means you can use, for example, the weaponisation of migrants, but the point is that it’s very easy to innovate in this area. You just need to find a tool that’s available, and then you use it. And it’s very hard for the targeted country to respond, because it’s not military violence, but it’s also not nothing. So how do you respond?
SG: It’s very interesting what you’re saying, because we’ve seen this hybrid and grey zone dynamic being implemented with full force against Ukraine. We saw the cyber threats where Ukrainian servers were taken offline, and that was done on multiple occasions. We also saw several false flag operations taking place where it was alleged that the Ukrainians were firing into the areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. And effectively, they were then proved to be actually untrue, and that this was disinformation from the Russian side. There were a lot of efforts to try and dispel and unveil the hybrid and grey zone threats in the hope that that would curtail or reduce the potential of a Russian invasion. But sadly, it seems that maybe Putin got frustrated with the fact that the psychological operation strategy wasn’t working, so he didn’t care so much anymore, and decided that the full-scale invasion was going to take place regardless.
EB: He seems to have been impatient. Earlier this month, in fact, on 15 February, the global insurance body that classifies water, bodies of water in the world according to the risk of sailing through them, elevated the Russian and Ukrainian parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to its highest risk category, which means that shipping companies face much bigger obstacles, enormous obstacles, if they want to sail into those parts of the Black Sea, the Russian and Ukrainian parts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, to deliver cargo or pick up cargo. And as we all know, Ukraine has no other ports. Russia has other ports; Ukraine does not.
On top of that, air traffic became so risky that airlines, civilian airlines, stopped flying both on their own volition and because insurers felt it was no longer wise to insure flights through Ukrainian airspace. So Russia, simply by being menacing, could have cut off Ukraine from a large chunk of its cargo that it depends on every single day, as does every single country. And by also cutting off…by forcing airlines to cut off that traffic to Ukraine. Of course, less cargo is delivered by air than by sea, so that shipping classification really was very important. And all Putin would have needed to do, if he just wanted to weaken Ukraine, would have been for the shipping ban—de-facto ban—to take effect, and Ukraine would have struggled mightily to get the goods it needs. Now he jumped the gun and invaded instead. But that shipping de-facto ban really highlights what you can do in the grey zone and again, you leave the other countries struggling to respond to it. In the case of Ukraine and the shipping, what can Ukraine do if shipping companies and their insurers conclude—wisely conclude—that certain shipping lanes or bodies of water are too dangerous. There’s nothing Ukraine can do.
SG: It’s very interesting, that dynamic of the grey zone and tying it into the economic crippling of Ukraine. So in terms of—if we stick to the economic dimension for a second—the strategy now seems to be to punish Russia so that it doesn’t go further than it already has done. But what effective measures do you think can be taken to directly impede Vladimir Putin? There’s a lot of talk about banning Russia from the SWIFT international payment system, which would be quite significant. But do you believe that there is more that can be done, or what do you feel would be the steps needed to stop Russia from escalating tensions?
EB: Two weeks ago, I would have said ban them from the Olympics, but Putin was smart enough to wait after the Olympics, and his athletes won a number of medals for Russia. Now that’s too late. And one thing that has happened just in the past few minutes as we speak is that the Champions League final…it has been decided it will be moved from St. Petersburg. And that’s one of the things the international community can do. Yes, sports is not exactly as hard hitting as using military force, but we have to remember that athletes and sports…that’s an important reputational aspect of any country, and Russia in particular puts a great deal of effort into developing and promoting its athletes. So that’s something we can do; we can ban Russian athletes from international competitions, and from playing abroad. That would be a massive hit to a country as athletically ambitious as Russia. Same thing with Russian artists.
Another thing is to highlight the activities Russia conducts in certain countries of the world, including Libya, through its Wagner Group and not just highlight but limit and possibly eliminate…Libya, for example, is a country where the Wagner Group is active, and Russia of course says it’s not in Libya; however, the Wagner Group is in Libya. We could shine a light on that and also through concerted efforts force the Wagner Group to leave Libya. So this is clearly not, again, it’s not as effective as using military force against Russia. But we should remember that that every step along this way is a chink in Putin’s armour.
Then on top of that, I hope the U.K. in particular revokes the visas of the children of the leading officials and oligarchs who are already being sanctioned and who may be sanctioned. They live in the West, enjoy our hospitality—ordinarily, we would not punish children for the sins of the fathers and mothers. But these children benefit from Putin’s rule through their parents. And it’s thanks to that wealth that they are able to live in our countries. We don’t have an obligation to keep posting them. It would put a lot of pressure on Putin if those children and other family members lost their visas, and again, a visa is a country’s gift; it’s not an offensive act to revoke it or to not issue it. But if those visas were revoked, the business and political elite would, I think, put more pressure on Putin, would put serious pressure on Putin to change his ways, simply because they want their family members to keep enjoying the lifestyle we have here in the West.
SG: So these are certainly some of the measures that could be taken. There was something very surreal, Elisabeth, that I noticed on the day that Putin announced his war, in that he ended up hosting Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan, who had this trip scheduled ahead of time and somewhat bizarrely didn’t cancel it, knowing full well that there was all likelihood of a war taking place. The reason why it was so surreal in many ways is that the last time the Kremlin, then under the Soviet Union, launched an invasion and occupation of another country, that was Afghanistan back in December 1979. And at that point, the West had aligned with Pakistan to work together to rid Afghanistan of the Soviets.
Now, what it seems is that Russia—in terms of not just its military strategy, but also its diplomatic approach—is working with some countries to see if it can show that it still has a degree of legitimacy. So it’s like Putin not just calculated and war-gamed the military strategy, but he also calculated the diplomatic approach too, because you have these very odd images of Imran Khan actually shaking hands with Putin, which was something that was not accorded to the French president Emmanuel Macron, or the German chancellor Olaf Scholz. So do you think Russia still has allies and friends that will support it, even though it has taken this occupation and invasion of Ukraine?
EB: It does, Sajjan, you know you are the expert on this, but he has—Vladimir Putin—some, I would say, capital of fondness—fondness capital—among leaders of such countries, and that’s what he’s able to use now, that capital. And let’s see how long those leaders stick with him because clearly, it’s not particularly palatable to support a country that invades a smaller neighbour.
SG: No, indeed, absolutely. One last question then, Elisabeth, is where do you think this is going to end? And at what point can we say this is going to reach a conclusion? Do we have to be concerned about the fact that you could see an occupation of other countries take place? Or is Putin seeking to simply end this in Ukraine for the time being?
EB: It seems that he was expecting a swift and decisive victory for Russia. And now in these first hours, as we speak in the first hours that have passed since Russia began this assault, Ukraine has put up a quite impressive resistance, the Ukrainian armed forces and indeed the politicians of the country. So like all wars, this invasion seems to have been based on an assumption of swift victory, humiliation of the other side meaning Ukraine, and then withdrawal. I don’t think Putin will get that. He will see his forces bogged down, just like Soviet forces were bogged down in Afghanistan decades ago, which was of course Russia, so the Soviet Union’s most humiliating and painful experience to date.
As far as the Western side goes, this is really tricky. What we saw at the end of last year and indeed still now the beginning of 2022—for example, Poland’s border with Belarus—is that there are countless moments where the defending side has to decide, do we retaliate? Or do we try to calm the situation? On the Polish border with Belarus, that has meant, that has included a lot of provocation by Belarusian forces—throwing rocks, throwing other…directing other violence against Polish soldiers. And those Polish soldiers have not retaliated, but if even one soldier had reacted improperly or even just made the wrong assessment in that moment, we could have seen a really dangerous escalation.
And the reason I mention that is that the same thing could happen now. Soldiers of course are in a chain of command, but nevertheless, at some point, even a low-ranking commander, a very junior officer on the ground has to decide what needs to be done in that moment, and that’s where we could see that miscalculation and as a result, dangerous escalation. And the longer this war or this conflict drags on, the more such opportunities, such risks there are. And that is a risk for Russia, and it’s clearly a risk for Ukraine. And what it also means is that even if just one NATO soldier in one of the Baltic states or Poland is somehow harmed, let alone killed, it brings NATO into the equation as well. NATO has said it won’t send troops to Ukraine, understandably, because Ukraine is not a NATO member state, but nevertheless, there could be that accidental situation where NATO, NATO’s member states would have to respond.
SG: Absolutely. You provided very important perspective for us on this podcast. Most grateful, Elisabeth, that you’re able to talk about what has transpired and what is a very sad episode in Europe and will be perhaps infamous in history over the passage of time. And certainly, we all think about the Ukrainians and what they’re having to now deal with under this occupation. I can say from my own perspective that having worked with the Ukrainian defence academies as part of the NATO Defence Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP), we had long standing relations with the Ukrainians, and we certainly do hope that they can come out of this without having had their lives destroyed. Because that is unfortunately what this occupation and invasion of Ukraine is designed to do. And I’m most grateful again, Elisabeth, for you joining us.
EB: Thank you. I would have said it’s a pleasure—it’s not a pleasure to discuss this tragedy in Europe. And I think we who are experiencing it now and generations to be born will remember the 24 February 2022. Just like we and subsequent generations will remember September 11th, 2001.
SG: Absolutely, I think that’s a very poignant way to end this discussion that we’ve had. Thank you again Elisabeth, it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you, and yes, under sad times, but I’m most glad that we’ve had that opportunity to discuss this.
EB: Thank you.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.