The FRONTLINE Interviews

Daniel Fried

Former U.S. Ambassador to Poland

Daniel Fried served as the U.S. ambassador to Poland from 1997 to 2000 and as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2005 to 2009. He is currently a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Mike Wiser on March 3, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Putin’s Road to War

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Putin’s Centralized Power

That dramatic national Security Council meeting that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] has on television—I don't know if you've seen the footage or read about it.

Not all of it, but I certainly saw him with [Sergei] Naryshkin.

I mean, he—when you see the whole thing, it's one of these things that Putin does.It's choreographed.He walks in by himself, through an ornate door, into the room.He's separated from them.The council is on one side, far from him, and he is at the center, holding court.And they come up, one at a time, to be at the podium, and he interrogates them.When you watch something like that, and even watching Putin, when you see him in a moment like that, with his advisers arrayed like that, what do you take from something like that?

It looked to me a combination of Stalinist and a kind of parody of the czar holding court.It was weird and creepy.What was especially weird and creepy was the way he dressed down the head of his foreign intelligence service, Naryshkin.Naryshkin was sweating.He was stammering.He was being mocked by Putin on television.That's Stalinist.Now, Putin hasn't taken to murdering his close associates, at least not yet, but that was the kind of behavior that you didn't even see in the Soviet period.

The Soviet leaders, after Stalin, were very conscious of the need to avoid having a dictator own them to the extent that he could kill them.But what I got from this televised, weird "czar summons his erring courtiers" was something that was off and bad.Now, I'm not of the view that Putin has gone crazy or that suddenly we're dealing with a madman.I think Putin was signaling to us 15 years ago where he was headed.We didn't want to believe it, because to have believed it, well, we'd have to draw conclusions we didn't want to—we weren't yet ready to draw, I will say.But to answer your question, simply, that was creepy for anybody watching it.And if you knew the political and cultural context, it didn't improve.

What does it say that he does it on television, that he orchestrates this whole thing?What does it say about Putin's power or how he sees himself in Russia?

Well, I don't want to go into his head and start talking about his soul or his psyche.You know: What do I know?But it felt like he is identifying the state with himself.It didn't even feel like Soviet collective leadership.It felt like Stalin, who was in a way identifying himself with some of the czar uniters of the Russian lands, and that's where Putin seems to be headed.The trouble is, that means a lot of wars and a lot of dead people.And I'm not going to make that pretty.It ends up where he is doing things that we expected from Mr. Hitler and Mr. Stalin.And indeed, the parallels to Putin's war against Ukraine recall both Hitler's attack on Poland in September 1939 and Stalin's attack on Finland in December of that same year.

… The other question that comes out of that, that you hit on, is who is making decisions inside.You know, they call it the national Security Council, and he says he's gathering the opinions of his top advisers.

He's gathering nothing.He's gathering nothing.That was an orchestrated demonstration of his power and their lack of power.The physical distance between them—COVID restrictions are one thing, but that felt like he might as well have been on a throne 10 feet above them.That was a demonstration of his power and their powerlessness.These are not stupid people.They're not—they didn't get to where they are by being weak, but he is showing that they are nothing.That takes us back to very bad Russian traditions.The Russians have better traditions, but you wouldn't see them in that.

The Path to War

It's not long after this that he announces what he calls a special military operation that everybody else calls the war in Ukraine.

Call it the war.That's what it is.

And whose war is it?I mean, we talk about countries going to war, and Russia is invading Ukraine.And in one sense, it is.But is it also—is it Putin's war?Is it Russia's war?

It's Putin's war, because it wouldn't have happened without him.I don't think there were many other people in Russia who actually wanted to see a war against Ukraine.They are not, in the Russian psyche, an enemy people.Putin's whole argument is that they are the same people as the Russians, which is also not true.But then, if they are the same people, he's killing his own.What is going on?

Well, what is going on, I think—Putin's narrative is that, under pressure of a malignant West, Russia was forced to retreat and retreat.The fall of the Soviet Union was also the collapse of the Russian Empire.Its borders in Europe went back to those of, sort of, the mid-17th century, maybe worse, but let's say the mid-17th century.Russia without Ukraine is a country.Russia with Ukraine is an empire.

I'm talking Russian history now.OK, the great contest for who—which country would emerge the great power in Europe's East was between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia, with the Ukrainians sort of the—the Ukrainian Cossack proto-state being somewhere in between, trying to play both sides, sometimes allied with Poland, sometimes breaking with them to ally with Russia.And Russia ended up as top dog, OK?They won that contest.But I think Putin fears that, in the breakup of the Soviet Union, that suddenly was now brought into question.

… Now, you asked me to go into history.Here's a little bit more, but not quite so ancient.In the 1990s, the United States did not, in fact, humiliate Russia.The Soviet Union fell apart, and the United States didn't even really want that.You know, we had ambivalent feelings.The Poles, the Baltic countries, the Romanians, they all liberated—the Czechoslovaks—they all liberated themselves.They did it with our help, but they did it.

Now, in the '90s, instead of treating Russia with disdain, instead of imposing reparations on them, as we did on Germany after 1918, we embrace post-Soviet Russia.We invite them into the family of nations.We treat them as an equal, with dignity.What we didn't do is offer them continued dominance over Poland and the Baltic states.Like no, that was Stalin's conquest.We're not going to give you that, but we will give you an honorable place.

That was enough for Yeltsin.That was enough.He didn't love NATO enlargement, but he sure understood why the Poles wanted it, and he wasn't going to make much of a fuss, because in parallel with NATO enlargement, we offered an alliance between NATO and Russia—well, the NATO-Russia relationship, which we called internally an alliance with the alliance. But privately, back in the '90s, a lot of Americans in and out of government said, “You know, what we could be seeing in Russia is Weimar Russia: a period of economic dislocation, confusion, national trauma, and a dictator will emerge or could emerge.”We were worried about that.

So Bill Clinton decides to embrace Boris Yeltsin and show every decency, to put our arms around them and not punish them for the fact that Stalin had killed millions of his own people and enslaved 100 million Europeans for two generations.No, no, we forgive all that in the hopes of avoiding the Weimar-to-Hitler scenario.

Now I'm going back on this, because there is this myth that we were beastly to the Russians.But the fact is, we offered Russia everything except its empire, and I don't think it was really ours to offer.The people of Eastern Europe overthrew communism; they achieved independence.Now, this is the backdrop.You see where I'm headed with this.We were worried about a new Hitler emerging, and the parallels between Putin's war on Ukraine and Hitler's attack on Poland in September of 1939 are striking, down to the fake excuses about Poles beating up people, beating up ethnic Germans or Ukrainians beating up Russians.The parallels are striking.

And this is on Putin.Now I've gone into history, but you—you took me there, after all.And you're right to do so.You're right to do so, because if you're going to understand this, just as we understood the rise of Hitler—and God, I hate making this analogy, but Putin has brought us to this point.But we have to both understand the forces that brought us here without excusing them.To understand what brought Hitler to power doesn't mean we excuse him.And no, I am not saying that Putin is Hitler, OK?He has not yet started a genocide.

But I use the analogy, because anyone who looks at what is happening in Ukraine—the burning cities, the refugees, the tanks advancing—if that doesn't remind you of Hitler's attack on Poland, you're not paying attention.

Thank you.That's very useful, because one of the things we're trying to do in the film is to understand: Where does Putin's grievances come from, not just was Russia wronged or not, but how did he develop, going back to the Cold War and his impressions?

His grievance is that the mighty Soviet Union, co-equal for two generations with the United States, the co-arbiter of the world as they saw it, suddenly collapsed, and he doesn't know why.Well, it collapsed because of its own internal failures.It couldn't reform.It couldn't perform.It had no legitimacy.But he sees that as a failure that was caused by the perfidious West and the weakness of Gorbachev.You know, the parallels to Germany in 1918 are there.I've always hated making these comparisons, but they're apt.The Germans thought they were winning the wars.Arguably they were, until the Americans came in, in force, in 1918.Putin may think the Soviet Union is winning the Cold War.A lot of Americans agreed, up until the middle of the 1980s.

That wasn't true, and some of us knew they were losing.But Putin may not—he may not grasp that it was not really on us.It was the internal failure.And now he thinks the Americans took advantage, right?Remember he said—it was 2005 or '06—that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe for Russia in the 20th century?That was weird then, and people didn't like it.And then at the Munich Security Conference 15 years ago, he gave a speech where he said, basically, “This post-Cold War world is no good.I want none of it.”And people were shocked.

… But we didn't take it seriously enough.We didn't take it seriously enough after he started a war with Georgia.We didn't take him seriously enough when he started extinguishing the remnants of Russian democracy and extending his own term.We didn't take it seriously enough when he invaded Ukraine for the first time.You realize how counterproductive this is.Putin says he wants Ukraine that's friendly and not trying to join NATO.Well, guess what?In 2013, he had a Ukraine whose official policy was neutrality, no NATO membership.There were zero U.S. tanks in Europe.There were zero U.S. ground troops in Poland.And the U.S. was comfortable.Like, this was the Obama administration.They were all into the "reset."They didn't like Putin's authoritarianism at home.They wished he would lay off of Georgia, but fine.

And what happened?Putin got greedy with Ukraine.He insisted not only that they stay neutral, but that they—their pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych—not sign a modest little association agreement with the EU. The EU, not NATO.He refuses to sign it.Demonstrations start.Yanukovych cracks down.Demonstrations grow.Yanukovych starts shooting the demonstrators.The nation is outraged, and he's gone, and Putin blames us. …

…One thing you said was that this had been coming for 15 years.I mean, should we have known?Should it have been obvious that this war was coming, if you knew Vladimir Putin?

Look, I was known as one of the hawks, and I wasn't the only one.But I'm not going to sit here and tell you I foresaw it all.I know this is Washington, but that's ridiculous.I was concerned.A lot of people were concerned.[Former U.S. Secretary of State] Condi Rice had been—she had carried on her shoulders, with her good head, a positive relationship with Vladimir Putin.She gave it all.After Putin invaded Georgia, she gave a speech—look it up—I think October '08, where she said, basically we can't let him both attack the free world and take advantage of it.It's a very good speech.

But the Obama people came in and tried the reset.I understand why they did it.I mean, I know [U.S. Ambassador to Russia] Michael McFaul.He was the architect of the reset.He's both knowledgeable and honorable.He had a case for it.I'm not going to criticize it.I didn't criticize it then.I told him: “I know why you're doing it.You're doing it for the right reasons.I wish you luck.But let me tell you something.You'll fail.You're going to fail for the same reason we did.Putin's terms for the good relationship you want are that we turn a blind eye to his repression at home and oppression abroad, and you're not going to do that.”And Mike McFaul wouldn't do that.And he didn't do that.

He wasn't wrong about the reset.And if we didn't try it, then people like you would say, “Well, if only you had tried, then it would have turned out differently.”I was one of the architects of the Bush outreach to Putin earlier.We certainly had less experience with Putin, and maybe more reason to do it.We failed for the same reason.So what?I'm going to say that Mike McFaul was wrong?No.We both tried honorably and both failed, which leads to suspicion that the problem is—wasn't that we weren't trying, but that Putin's conditions were those no American president, with the possible exception of Donald Trump, could ever accept.Now, to answer your question, because I haven't done so yet, but to answer your question, sure, we should have seen it coming earlier.Sure, we should have taken it more seriously.But I understand why we didn't.I understand why Mike McFaul tried the reset.Then Obama does respond, and responds well, to Putin's first attack against Ukraine.

Biden people come in.They're experienced and smart.They knew the history.[Secretary of State] Tony Blinken?[Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs] Victoria Nuland?They know what's up.These are serious people.They tried not a reset, but to park the U.S.-Russia relationship in what they called a stable and predictable place.Why?Not because they're naive, but because there was a judgment that maybe China is the more profound strategic challenge, and if we can have a stable and predictable relationship with Russia, we can concentrate on China without a major upheaval.

Were they wrong?Yeah.But was it worth a try?Arguably.… You know, it's easy for me to go back and say, “Yeah, here are the 10 things we did wrong.”I get that.But administrations tried to do something that was good, which is the best possible relationship with Russia while holding consistent to Americans' values, interests and overall strategy, and that failed.And then it is fair to say, well, given the destruction in Ukraine, didn't we screw it up?That's not a comfortable question.

But the reason I'm explaining the successive administrations' Russia policies the way I do is because they didn't set out to screw up, and they weren't dumb.I'm referring to myself, too.You know, we didn't set out to screw up.We understood what we were dealing with.But we were trying to reach the best and avoid the worst.The onus, therefore, is on Putin, though we will have to go back and ask ourselves what we could have done to avoid where we are, with Putin killing civilians in Ukrainian cities.

I have explained the policy, and I want to take greater time to think about the alternatives and inadequacies.But even if we do that, the fault is still Putin's.There is a difference between the aggressor who starts wars and the democracies who fail to prevent them.

Interference in the U.S. Election

… In 2015, he's looking towards the United States—2015-2016, he's looking towards the West.He makes a decision to interfere in the American election.And who is Putin at that moment, who would make a seemingly risky decision like that?

I have to speculate, but he may have felt that if we were not going to give him a free hand in Ukraine, if we were going to sanction him—and those Obama sanctions weren't like the ones the Biden administration and Europe have put on, but they were significant; they hit his economy—and he may have figured, all right, if they're going to do that, I'm going to get back at them.They are messing around in my politics.Huh, right?

You know, we believe in free elections.We believe in democracy.We believe in accountable government.But he looks at this as, "They're trying to overthrow me, and I'm going to get back at them."Now, there is a school of thought in American foreign policy that says, "Hey, whatever anybody does in their own country is their business; we shouldn't interfere."

You try it.When dictators assassinate their opponents or put them in jail for long periods of time, it's hard for Americans to remain indifferent, because for a long time, our values and our interests go together.Don't take my word for it.Read the last portion of the speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass, where he talks about the values of freedom in the world sweeping the globe, which will then put an end to tyranny and oppression and slavery.

Interesting.People read that speech; they don't read that final portion.I did.Knocked me on my heels.That's the American way, properly understood, in my view.Now, Putin goes after our elections because he thinks everything's an op.It's all an operation.It's all a plot.This is the KGB world, that human beings have no agency.They are sheep; they are fools.And behind every movement is, you know, the hand of a foreign power or an intelligence service.Very Stalinist, actually.

And that is maybe what he thought.And he also may have read American politics: the divisions internally; you know, the social divisions; the racial divisions; the gap between rich and poor that had been growing; the tensions in the United States; the fatigue over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a generation of more or less stagnant—stagnant standards of living, particularly among working-class folks, while the rich got super rich.So he sees all this, and he's not a stupid man.He has an enormous capacity for detail and information, which he can absorb.

And he may think that democracy in the United States was rotten, decrepit.He's not the first person to think so.Some Americans think so.Hitler certainly thought so.The Japanese thought so before Pearl Harbor.There is a precedent for this.And he may have thought, well, I'll show them, and they're weak anyway.They have no discipline.I can bribe them.I can intimidate them.God knows there are a lot of Europeans and some Americans seemingly ready for the fast buck that Putin can provide.And that's part of us.It's not the whole of us, fortunately.

In the end, he gets called on it by the Americans.He sort of jokes about having been involved in it.Some people give him credit for changing the election, and he seems to revel in that.Whether he actually did or not is another question.But he comes out after sanctions; there are some diplomats expelled.But what do you think is his lesson?What does he take from the way that that interference—from everything that comes out of that?Trump is elected.By the time it's over, by 2017, about when you're about to leave, what do you think Putin takes from this experience?

He got away with it.He favored Trump.Trump wins.Now, the Trump administration was filled with capable, honorable people.And you talk to them, and they did their job.You know, maybe people never heard of [Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs] Wess Mitchell.Everybody's heard of [Deputy Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs] Fiona Hill.These are solid people.You know, they're serving the national interest.They did their jobs.But it doesn't matter, because Putin, if he's looking at us, thinks, well, there's Trump.Trump's on Putin's side.Trump really is on Putin's side.He is thinking—just listen to him.He is thinking in ways that the hard right in the United States thought in the late 1930s and the run-up to World War II, when they were sympathetic to Hitler.It was a matter of record.You can look it up.They thought fascism was the wave of the future.There was a lot of that going around.

I mean, the America First Committee, the original America First Committee, wanted to keep America away from European wars, even when Hitler was overrunning Western Europe.Now, if you're Putin and you're looking at Trump, easily flattered, easily manipulated—yeah, he got away with it.

… They have this meeting in Helsinki , and Trump and Putin are standing there next to each other.… What does he take from a moment like that, about what he can do about where he is, about his place?

Well, he takes that the American president is going to let him have a pass and that the American officials who squawk about it are nothing.He's got the American president on his side.I'm not saying that Trump is, you know, Putin's agent or anything like that.I don't know that.But the ideological sympathy is obvious.That's demonstrable to listen to Trump.He likes Putin.He's on Putin's side.And in the United States today, the Trumpistas are on Putin's side.They say so—I mean, explicitly.That's not all Trump supporters; some of them are more Reaganite.I'm not talking about them, but I'm talking about the people who say they're on Putin's side; they're always pro-Trump.

So that is what Putin gets.He sees this.And he is now squeezing Ukraine, hoping for a slow squeeze, and just watching for this, what he considers to be this American puppet government, to fall apart so he can put back his own people.What he doesn't understand is that Ukrainians themselves really do want to be European, by which they mean less corruption, solid rule of law, continued democracy, and therefore a better standard of living.They see it.I mean, they live across the border of Poland.You know, you can like or not like Polish politics, but boy, they were a poor country in 1989, and now they're not a poor country.And they are a democracy, and they're in the EU, and they're in NATO.And the Ukrainians look at that and say: “Wait a minute.Wait a minute.We want that,” right?

And Putin has no idea.He seems to think that Ukrainians want to be part of Russia, unless they're ruled by fascists.That whole denazification thing he's talking about with respect to Ukraine, I know where that comes from.I know where that comes from.That comes from the World War II memory of the Soviet Union fighting Nazis and a faint echo of those Ukrainians who thought that the Germans were a better bet than the Soviets.There weren't a lot of them, but there were some.Huh.There were a lot of Russians who signed up with the Wehrmacht [unified armed forces of Nazi Germany], too, because they thought Germany's a better bet than Stalin.There were a lot of people all in Europe who made that bet.

Now, that's not great, but it doesn't mean that all of Europe, you know, all the European countries, where people signed up to work with the Germans, are necessarily pro-Nazi today, right?You don't have to denazify France because there was the Vichy government, and there was nothing like that, quite, in Ukraine.That's before we get to the fact that President Zelenskyy of Ukraine is Jewish or that the Jewish community supports the Ukrainian government.

But you see what Putin is doing.He's talking about this memory of World War II because that's all he's got. …

Putin’s Escalation

When you're watching, after you're out, and you're watching in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, leading up to this moment, and you're seeing how Putin is acting in Syria, his willingness to poison political opponents in the U.K., does it seem to you like he's ramping up, that he's becoming more willing to take risks, or that there should be more cause for alarm?What are you seeing in those years?

In the Trump years, I saw him consolidate his rule and take advantage of America's absence, to try to keep Europe divided and demoralized.And instead of trying to settle in Ukraine when he should have, when he could have, he just maintains his grip.And I also watched the people, the policy level in the Trump administration, trying to do a decent job.OK, I mentioned Wess Mitchell; I mentioned Fiona Hill.The whole country knows Fiona Hill's quality.And they're not the only ones.People are doing their best.

I watched—as the Biden people came in, I saw them respond quickly and strongly to Putin's first threat against Ukraine.He built up the military a bit in the spring of 2021.The Biden people responded promptly and strongly, and he backed off.But then we saw Putin keep pushing: cyberaggression, the rhetoric beginning to ramp up, especially in the fall.Now, the Biden people, to their enormous credit, took a look at Putin's military buildup in Ukraine and drew the right conclusions from it.They did not hesitate.

Whatever you can say about, kind of, the spring and summer period, where they were overoptimistic, once they saw the information, they responded promptly and with determination, so much so that the Europeans and even the Ukrainian government thought they were getting ahead of themselves, but they turned out to be spot-on, right?So I have to give them credit.Now, they didn't prevent the war, and people will say, “Why didn't they prevent the war?”But the onus for the war is ultimately on Putin.He's the aggressor.I'm sure we will find things that we could have done differently, but for each thing we could have done differently or should have done differently, there were probably arguments against it.It's never easy.Nobody sets out to fail, you know, to stop a war, right?We didn't set out to fail in this policy.There were good reasons.

From Putin's perspective, do you think he misunderstands American strength, I mean, or the Biden administration?He's seen Jan. 6 happen.He's seen the withdrawal from Afghanistan.He is about to make this decision that, you know, the U.S. is telling him not to do and that they're going to respond too strongly.Does he sense some moment, you know, whether it's true or not, but in his own perspective, looking out, does he see that some window has opened?

Possibly.He may have overestimated the demoralizing aspects of Jan. 6 and American political culture.He may have overestimated the power of the pro-Trump right.… He almost certainly underestimated the West Europeans.He probably thought he owned them, because he owned so many of the individuals.And he made the mistake that dictators have made about democracy, in general, and the United States, in particular.They look at the sometimes shambolic quality of American politics and our mistakes and our inward focus.All of those things have been in ample evidence.But he may have thought that that was all we are, and that is a mistake that he should not have made. …

… Putin has had advisers who have had different viewpoints.And over the years, it's gotten constrained, and he's gotten a smaller group around him.What do you see about his decision-making process when you see images like that, of him at the end of the table or him on the video screen, not around?What do you take from all of that?

I haven't been to Russia since 2013.They wouldn't let me in, and if they did, I wouldn't go, not now.But when I look at that, I think it looks Stalinist.It looks like somebody's playing czar.And don't take my word for it; read Aristotle: a tyrant as opposed to a king.A king is embedded in law and custom, a proper king.A tyrant is embedded in nothing except himself.So you tell me what you see.

But is he able to—the question now is, is he able to understand what's going on?Is he able to grasp—

I think he's rational.

—reality when he has a relationship like that?

I think he's rational.The notion that he's a madman, I don't believe, because his actions now are consistent with his view outlined 15 years ago, or flow from his view outlined 15 years ago.But he's perfectly capable and seems capable … of serious misjudgments, of not understanding the reality of what the United States would do.I mean, this is catastrophic for the Ukrainians.But look at the results of Putin's decisions.Look at the past, you know—the first 10 days of the war.He lost Germany.He lost Europe.Even the Chinese, the Chinese on whom he was supposed to rely, have started suggesting that their banks are not actually going to risk U.S. sanctions by processing dollars for the Putin regime.

"What has he done?" is the question many Russians are seemingly asking themselves.That is a spectacular misjudgment.He misjudged the Ukrainians as badly as Stalin misjudged the Finns, when he marched in expecting to be greeted as a liberator by the oppressed Finnish masses, and instead his troops got shot to pieces.Eventually they overwhelmed the Finns, but the Finns saved their country.But Stalin's misjudgment was colossal.And the initial incompetence of the Soviet army was staggering.I haven't seen anything like that until the opening of this campaign of Putin's war against Ukraine.

Now, that's an awful lot of serious misjudgments.And it's not as if he's in a delusional or psychotic state.He's acting in accordance with his strategic doctrine that started to be outlined 15 years ago at the Munich Security Conference, of being a revisionist empowered to overturn an unjust settlement.But look what he's done.He got not only the United States but the Europeans to agree to lock down over half the assets of the Russian Central Bank.That's the Foreign Exchange Reserves.Like, that's a sign of serious misjudgment, and it's the kind of thing that, if there was a collective leadership in Russia, as there was in the Soviet Union, at least in theory after Stalin, might be used against him rather successfully.

Putin’s Understanding of Ukrainian Sentiment

It's amazing what you're describing, because he's misunderstanding the Ukrainian people; he's misunderstanding the capabilities of the Russian army, what the response of the West will be, what the consequences of all this is.And I think that the question, and it's hard to know, but is why?Why, after all of these years, all he has—you know, he's certainly had successful operations taking Crimea.He's seemed to be, at least to some people, he seems very savvy and understanding the world and how to manipulate presidents and lots of—he seems like an intelligent man.So why?Why did he not understand the state of play in this situation?

I think we have to take his worldview seriously, not in the sense of validating it or acting according to it, but he may believe all of this stuff quite sincerely.Now, the problem is that his demands are so extreme, no one can meet them.For example, he says he hates the idea of Ukraine being in NATO.Well, when the German chancellor, before the war, goes to Moscow, he says, “It's not on the agenda; it's not going to happen.”Germany, of course, as a matter of record, has blocked any progress on this since 2008, 14 years.So has France.And that's a fact.And if Putin were interested in some kind of understanding, he probably had that.It's a fact.The United States aren't going to sign in blood, but what does that matter?Putin doesn't believe we keep our word anyway.

He had the assurances he needed, if he wanted an off-ramp.It's not what he wants.He wants to crush Ukraine.And he may succeed.But what does he do then, occupy it forever?Ukrainian national consciousness has grown rather than shrunk, and it is growing in opposition to Putin's oppression, both directly, this war, and before it, through Putin's preferred leaders in Ukraine.The Ukrainian nation that he denies exists is crystallizing a modern identity, rooted in democracy and tolerance.Whatever President Zelenskyy's mistakes before the war, failures to transform the country along the lines of his campaign promise, whatever those, he's been a wartime leader of great personal courage and determination.And the image of him, a Jewish president remaining in Kyiv, at risk to his life, to defend his nation and speaking out for his people, that will remain in the legends of Ukrainian patriotism.And Ukrainian political identity will crystallize around that moment.Ukrainian political identity will crystallize around that moment, as well as many others.

Putin doesn't understand that.Putin judges everyone by his own low measure.Who can be bought or bribed or manipulated?And here you have someone who could have gotten away.The Americans offered him a way out, and he said, famously: “I don't need a ride.I need weapons.I need ammunition.”Now, Putin doesn't understand a people defending itself.But they are, and they are doing so, not in Putin's way—a kind of nationalist hysteria of resentment—but because of democracy and their own definition of themselves as a decent people.They'll remember it.

What does Putin risk by launching this war?What does he risk for himself, for his country?What does he put on the line?

Russia is now isolated in the world.Its economy has been dealt a heavy blow by the sanctions.He risks turning Russia into a pariah state.It's already a tyranny.He risks making it poor, and poor like it was under the Soviet Union: miserable, oppressive and oppressing others.He risks turning it into a 20th-century tyranny.And that will not end well for him, because I am not among those who believes that tyranny and aggression is the apotheosis of Russia's soul, the natural and inevitable expression of their political culture.I don't believe that.I believe that Russia is capable of better.So do my Russian democratic dissident friends.

And it may be, it may be, that when the Russians realize what Putin has done to their country, there will be consequences.But I don't know that. …

The Stakes of Putin’s War

How dangerous is Putin, the nuclear threats that he's been issuing?How dangerous is he at this moment?

I would not dismiss it.I am mindful of the fact that Soviet leaders like Khrushchev used to do this sort of thing all the time around Berlin, Khrushchev to Kennedy.The question is not an abstract one of: Is he serious?Does he mean it?I understand the question.The question is what we do about it.And were I in government, I would be activating the military-to-military channels.I would be avoiding, as the Biden administration I think is, wisely, getting—risking a direct fight with Russian forces, by, for instance, imposing a no-fly zone.

But I would not back away from supplying the Ukrainians with weapons.Now, that's basically what the Biden administration has done.I would avoid doing anything to give the Russian military the impression that we were preparing something against them.I would be unambiguous that we were not and would not.But I would not allow us to be frightened or intimidated into abandoning Ukraine.

It's interesting.The French chief—basically, the head of the French general staff—gave a very interesting answer the other day when asked about the nuclear threats. Very French—that is, tough.“Yes, Russia is a nuclear power.So are we.NATO is a nuclear alliance.”Now, there is—you know, there is nothing like the French for staring right back at you when they're angry, and he clearly was.

We need to find that sweet spot of firmness … without provocation.Easier said than done.But the advantage of President Biden is he's old enough to remember something of this Cold War culture.It's part of his political—his intellectual capital.It will come in handy, I fear.

How does he back out?How does this end? …

Well, I don't know.How does Putin back out?The Biden administration and the West Europeans gave him plenty of off-ramps.Tired of that term, he's not interested in them.Now he wants the maximum objective.But we shall see.There is the scenario of Hitler's war against Poland.There is also the scenario of Stalin's war against Finland.That war ends with Finland losing territory but keeping their country.

Now, I'm not suggesting a parallel.History never matches, right?I think much depends on fortunes in the battlefield.But if the worst happens, and Ukraine is overrun, then we will face a situation of a captive nation—either in whole or in part, if there is a part of western Ukraine that is still free—and we will have to draw conclusions.We will have to support whatever we can of Ukraine that is still free.We will have to support the Ukrainians under occupation.We will have to reach out to the Russian people and let them know what their leader has done.We will have to continue the pressure against Russia, economically, to squeeze them.

Those are some things we can do, and we may be in a long-term situation, a long twilight struggle against a tyranny, and an aggressive tyranny.It doesn't matter that we don't like it or that we consider it utterly impermissible and unacceptable.It doesn't matter what we think is unacceptable.We will have to accept this as reality, but it doesn't mean we have to give in.

There is—one of my rules in foreign affairs is we often overestimate what we can achieve in the short run but underestimate what we can achieve in the long run.The trouble is, in the short run, a lot of people can get hurt.

You talked about the consequences Russia will have, in the geopolitical sense, but I'm curious about the people of Russia.You know, we don't get a sense that there is this patriotic euphoria and support of this action.How firm is the support for Putin from his own people with these recent actions?And what are we seeing right now in Russia?

I can't give a straight answer to the question: Where are the Russian people on Putin's war?I heard about a poll yesterday that 58% of Russians support it.That's high.On the other hand, if I'm a Russian and a pollster asks me what my views are on Putin's war, what do you think the safe answer is?I've never trusted polls in Russia for that reason.The demonstrations against the war have been firm.… Well, not massive, but courageous and impressive.Russian intellectuals, artists, sports figures, they have spoken out against it, as have some Russian—at least one major Russian diplomat.

I don't know.Putin is pretty good in the short run at propaganda.But the word will get out, and the images of the Russian military killing civilians and bombing cities that are familiar to Russians will not go down well with the Russian people, I suspect.But I'm not making predictions.

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