Does Ukraine have the strength, stamina, and support to win the war against Russia? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sat down with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC, for his perspective on the war, European unity, and whether NATO allies can remain united long enough to see Ukraine through to victory. Despite uncertainty about the 2024 US election, Ukraine’s struggle to recruit new troops, and rogue alliance member Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán meeting with Putin, Sikorski is confident Ukraine will ultimately prevail.
Does Ukraine have the strength, stamina, and support to win the war against Russia? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sat down with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC, for his perspective on the war, European unity, and whether NATO allies can remain united long enough to see Ukraine through to victory. Despite uncertainty about the 2024 US election, Ukraine’s struggle to recruit new troops, and rogue alliance member Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán meeting with Putin, Sikorski is confident Ukraine will ultimately prevail.
Poland is an important part of that defense strategy. The country, which has a 300-mile border with Ukraine, contributes a larger percentage of its GDP to defense spending than any other NATO member, including the US, and has taken in almost a million Ukrainian refugees. Sikorski says that NATO is “back to basics” in its original mission of repelling and defending against an aggressive Russia and that Putin severely misjudged the strength of European and NATO unity in the lead-up to the invasion. Two and a half years into a bloody, brutal war with no end in sight, making sure that unity remains rock solid for as long as Ukraine needs is an urgent priority.
NOTE: This podcast episode has been updated to correct an error in the previous version
Host: Ian Bremmer
Guest: Radek Sikorski
Ian Bremmer:
Hello, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you can find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm coming to you from Washington, DC, where some of America's closest allies convened for the annual NATO Summit. This year marks the 75th anniversary, who says that's old these days, of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's founding, the most successful and enduring security alliance in the modern era. And it comes at a time of deep political uncertainty, both here in the United States and abroad.
With Biden's re-election hopes in free fall, European allies are confronting the prospect of another Trump presidency. And as the war in Ukraine drags on with no end in sight, that means European leaders face supporting a costly and increasingly unpopular conflict against Russia without their most important ally.
Here to talk about all that and more is Radek Sikorski, foreign minister of Poland, one of those 32 NATO member states. Poland has become, in many ways, the beating heart of Europe's and NATO's stand against Russia, taking in almost a million Ukrainian refugees and sending critical weaponry and support to Ukraine's front lines. Europe's sixth-largest economy is also on track to build up the continent's largest land army, and they harbor no illusions that Putin's imperial ambitions will stop at Ukraine's borders. And after eight years of far-right isolationist rule in Poland, Sikorski's centrist pro-European party took the reins of power last fall. We'll get into all that and much more. Let's get to it.
Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, great to have you on the show.
Radek Sikorski:
My pleasure. Good morning.
Ian Bremmer:
Here you are for the 75th anniversary of NATO. Usually, that's considered to be a pretty big celebration this time around. One that has a lot of concerns. What's your mood coming into the summit?
Radek Sikorski:
Well, NATO is back to basics, to its original mission of repelling and resisting an aggressive Russia. It was originally the Soviet Union. Now it's Putin trying to rebuild his empire, but he misjudged us. We are united. We are helping Ukraine, and we are going to prevail again.
Ian Bremmer:
You are friends, so I'm going to be completely open here. "He misjudged us." At the beginning of the war, the NATO response, the American response was, "My God, these guys are going to lose. We've got to get Zelensky out of there." At least in the initial weeks, it sounded like the Ashraf Ghani treatment for Afghanistan. It's true that now NATO has stood up. But is it the case, like, when the invasion started that really Putin misjudged the fact that the Americans and others did not have the resolve?
Radek Sikorski:
First of all, remember that the American government brilliantly used strategic intelligence to deny Russia a plausible casus belli. One provocation, we know you're doing this. Another one, we know you're going to do that.
Ian Bremmer:
And they made it public. They put that information out, absolutely.
Radek Sikorski:
Which was great.
Ian Bremmer:
Which they don't do very often. That's right.
Radek Sikorski:
Intelligence agencies don't like doing that, but that was brilliant. And then, the real issue was we were all unsure whether Ukraine would fight, and then the heroic president came out in front of the building and said, "I need ammo instead of a lift."
Ian Bremmer:
But the lift was being offered. I'm just saying the initial response was a lift.
Radek Sikorski:
Well, in case they didn't want to fight, but cometh the hour, cometh the man, and Zelensky turned out to be the Churchill of his time.
Ian Bremmer:
So is it fair to say that what Putin misjudged was not NATO, but Putin misjudged Ukraine?
Radek Sikorski:
Both. He thought Ukraine would just cave in, that he would just walk into a victory parade because he believed in his own propaganda that Ukrainians were just a bunch of provincial Russians who were dreaming of being liberated, and how wrong that was. And he also thought that some of EU countries would block joint decision-making, that basically some EU politicians were in his grasp. That was wrong too. And he probably thought we would huff and puff, maybe SWIFT, maybe a few token sanctions. I don't think in his worst dreams he anticipated that we would be spending hundreds of billions of euros and dollars on arms and ammunition, and that two years on, he would still be controlling only 20% of Ukrainian territory.
Ian Bremmer:
This war has been going on for two and a half years now. There is no end in sight. It feels like a stalemate on the front lines right now, but of course it doesn't feel like a stalemate at all in terms of the broader attacks that are happening against the Ukrainian civilian population as well as Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. Talk a little bit about where this war is right now.
Radek Sikorski:
I think Putin burnished his credentials as a war criminal by attacking that oncological hospital for children.
Ian Bremmer:
Just at the beginning of the NATO Summit.
Radek Sikorski:
And I think that was a message for us.
Ian Bremmer:
That was a message. It was clear.
Radek Sikorski:
Just like the killing of Navalny was a message to the Munich Security Conference. He does it deliberately thinking that he will intimidate us. What's actually happening is that he's stiffening our resolve. It's a mixed picture, I agree. Russia is making incremental gains on the ground, but these come at a huge cost in treasure and blood. It's estimated that at least half a million Russian soldiers have now been eliminated from the battlefield.
Ian Bremmer:
Not dead, but casualties, all total numbers.
Radek Sikorski:
Dead and wounded. Plus, he definitely lost the battle of the Black Sea where Ukraine without a navy defeated him at sea and can now export its grain again. And remember, the key component is that the Russian economy is beginning to collapse. He's running out of Soviet-era tank hulks that he could bring back to life, and he is spending his National Reserve Fund. If he continues, in a year or two, Russia will run out of resources.
Ian Bremmer:
So is the appropriate Western response, from your perspective, you hold the line and eventually the Russians will have to cave? Is that really the case?
Radek Sikorski:
Ukraine is heroically defending us before this evil man at a cost to us of less than 1% of our GDP. We can afford this. And it's the cheapest and most effective way to signal to Putin, but also to others, that regaining what you regard as a renegade province is harder than you think.
Ian Bremmer:
Now of course, the Ukrainians are paying a lot more, and not just in terms of GDP, but I mean, it's a much smaller population, 44 million at the beginning of this war, a lot lower now. About almost a million of them are in your country right now, and you've been hosting them. Not personally, but broadly speaking.
Radek Sikorski:
We had 10 people at our house.
Ian Bremmer:
Did you really?
Radek Sikorski:
Yeah.
Ian Bremmer:
I'm not shocked. I mean, again, I know so many Poles that it's part of the community. It's not like they're in refugee camps. So how long can the Ukrainians continue this fight? How long can they continue to mobilize the reserves? I mean, clearly it's getting a lot harder for them now than it was a year ago.
Radek Sikorski:
It is hard. In my judgment, they should have started mobilization a year earlier. It was delayed just like the US package was delayed. But Putin is motivating them to fight because of what he's doing in occupied territories, Russifying everything, deporting people to Siberia-
Ian Bremmer:
Forcing passports, for example.
Radek Sikorski:
Stealing children, mass killings, sort of exploitation, taking over of companies, and so on. It is unbearable to live under Russian occupation. So what else would you do except defend your country?
Ian Bremmer:
Well, of course there are a lot of reports of young Ukrainian men that are fleeing. There are a lot of reports of they're hiding, and the parents don't want them to get mobilized. And the reason the Ukrainians waited to bring the age from 28 to 26, it's not 21, is because it's so incredibly unpopular. And the polls in Ukraine, not the Polish people, but the polls of opinion are saying that the desire to continue to fight, it's still high, but it's a lot lower than it was a year ago, two years ago, despite everything you just said about the that are being committed every day by the Russians in Ukraine.
Radek Sikorski:
Draft is never popular. You had draft dodgers during the Vietnam War in this country. We are trying to help the Ukrainians by offering to train a brigade or two initially in Poland from Ukrainian volunteers that are in Poland because apparently what Ukrainian young men don't want is they do want to defend their country, but they don't want to go into the fight untrained and unarmed. And the promise is that if we train them up to NATO standard, equip them up to NATO standard, they will then be deployed as a unit to relieve their comrades at the front line, and then they can come back. If all other NATO countries did that, we would have several brigades.
Ian Bremmer:
You talked about how NATO is stronger today than it has been. Certainly there's a lot more money being spent. It's a lot more defense being mobilized. I also just saw a NATO member, you know who I'm going to say, Viktor Orbán just made a trip to Moscow, made a trip to meet with Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Was not pre-cleared with other NATO allies, and what he has been saying feels very different than what you're saying right now about what needs to happen on the ground in Ukraine. How do you deal with a renegade ally like the Hungarians?
Radek Sikorski:
As you said, he had absolutely no authority to do it on the behalf of either NATO or the EU. We have a national presidency, Hungary, is it.
Ian Bremmer:
For six months. Yeah, it rotates.
Radek Sikorski:
But it doesn't apply to foreign affairs. On Foreign Affairs, we have a high representative, which is a permanent post, and we also have the president of the council who represents member states. So Orbán is freelancing on behalf of Hungary, and that's not a new thing. He has been denying Ukraine transit of defense goods, and he has also been vetoing the release of European money for Ukraine. Our prime minister hosting President Zelensky in Warsaw yesterday, we signed our G7 security compact, said that there were politicians in the past who thought maybe even to themselves that they were bringing back peace. But history remembers them as appeasers, and that's not necessarily a good thing to be.
Ian Bremmer:
You see, Orbán is here in Washington, of course, as part of the NATO Summit. Do you feel like his presence, like his membership is significantly undermining or in any way undermining the ability of NATO to act today?
Radek Sikorski:
Hungary is the only country in NATO and the European Union which is unhappy with its borders. Viktor Orbán, who by the way, went to my college, Pembroke, on a Soros scholarship, said a few years ago that Hungary is the only country in Europe that borders on itself. That's what makes it different.
Ian Bremmer:
And you're talking about?
Radek Sikorski:
It's to do with Hungarian history. But the point is that what Putin has broken is the taboo under two bloody world wars that you do not change borders by force. That if you have a problem with your compatriots on the other side of an international line, you apply the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Minorities. You do not send tanks.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, there is an increasing view, and I will say I share it, that ultimately the likelihood that Ukraine will be able to get all of their land back is low. In other words, that some sort of a deal is going to have to be made, and the Ukrainians have to be part of that deal. They have to accept it simply because the force that would have to be applied to get all of that land back, it does not appear to be available. How do you respond? Because that's clearly not NATO's position.
Radek Sikorski:
Well, then you agree with Viktor Orbán.
Ian Bremmer:
I don't. I do not. I don't think it's legitimate.
Radek Sikorski:
There is never a shortage of pocket Chamberlains willing to-
Ian Bremmer:
I understand what you're saying.
Radek Sikorski:
To give up other people's land or freedom for their own peace of mind.
Ian Bremmer:
I'm not in a position to do that or say that, Radek. What I'm saying is I think analytically that there is likely to be some form of partition in reality that is not acceptable.
Radek Sikorski:
But those are judgments that should be left to the Ukrainians just like the Finns in their winter war with the Soviet Union negotiated directly with Stalin.
Ian Bremmer:
At what point do you think it is either appropriate or essential? Do you have any sense of when those forms of negotiations should start?
Radek Sikorski:
I'm of a different view. I think we can win this.
Ian Bremmer:
You think they can take it all back?
Radek Sikorski:
We can win this one. Sure, the Russians have advantage in tanks, but the Ukrainians have advantage in drones. They've been fighting a brilliant drone war using artificial intelligence and picking targets and prioritizing targets and so on. We will be learning from them. I think Putin is at his wits’ end. A country that is sending these Mad Max style vehicles into the fight and allows thousands of its soldiers to be killed every day in these fights for small villages, that's not a recipe for victory.
Ian Bremmer:
So the one conversation that I'm hearing with every leader I'm talking to here in NATO is how the American president is or isn't doing. You are of course very aware of the debates of Biden's ability to continue to lead, to continue to stand as president. Anything you can say to me about, I mean, to the extent that you and your government have had contact with him directly. Do you see him as being able to fully fulfill the roles of American executive right now?
Radek Sikorski:
We had a summit here in Washington, President and Prime Minister, and I was present with President Biden. He was focused, strategic, and actually quite amusing too.
Ian Bremmer:
So Sikorski says Biden does not need to step down.
Radek Sikorski:
Sikorski says, once you start interfering in the internal party political affairs of other countries, you are on a very slippery slope.
Ian Bremmer:
Former President Trump has said that he would end the war immediately if he were to become president. It's a very different perspective, his relationship with Zelensky, his personal orientation towards Putin, than what your government represents or what the present American government represents. What does a Trump presidency potentially mean for how the Ukrainian war needs to be fought for what you're expecting to see from NATO?
Radek Sikorski:
Well, first of all, Poland of course wants to have the best possible relations with the US, whoever is your president. It goes without saying. And actually our president keeps in touch with candidate Trump. I keep in touch with both sides of the aisle. And what they tell me is that there are two schools in the candidate Trump camp, and one of them says that the way to bring a fair peace would be to threaten Putin with escalation. Putin is not a guy who will settle the war out of sympathy for Donald Trump. He responds only to the toughest, hardest cutting edge power.
Ian Bremmer:
And when you say that, what you mean is that either Putin is prepared to accept the peace plan that Trump is nominally prepared to float, or there are going to be much tougher sanctions from the US against Russia than we've seen now.
Radek Sikorski:
More deliveries to Ukraine.
Ian Bremmer:
There'd be more aggressive weapons that would be provided to the Ukrainians.
Radek Sikorski:
Well, Russia is a signatory of the Budapest Memorandum, she guaranteed Ukraine's independence and borders.
Ian Bremmer:
For giving up their nuclear weapons.
Radek Sikorski:
For Ukraine giving up the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. Putin personally signed the border treaty with Ukraine of 2004. If he doesn't respect that treaty, how can you trust him respecting any other treaty? The stablest way to settle this war is for Russia to move back beyond the international border.
Ian Bremmer:
But what I hear you saying is you think it is wholly plausible that if Trump were to become president, which is certainly something that you have to plan for, that actually US policy on Russia-Ukraine could be very favorable and workable for the Ukrainians?
Radek Sikorski:
Who am I to know this? These are internal deliberations inside your one camp of your politics. But we've observed President Trump for years. He was right on some issues. He was right that NATO countries should spend-
Ian Bremmer:
Should spend more.
Radek Sikorski:
2%. And Poland has been spending more 2% for the last 15 years.
Ian Bremmer:
You're spending about 4% now, right?
Radek Sikorski:
And we'll be spending 5% next year. Highest in NATO, including the United States. And we understand that President Trump appreciates that. But when he criticizes Joe Biden for so-called losing Afghanistan, then losing Ukraine would not be a victory, would it?
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah, of course losing Afghanistan was also a deal that was initially cut with the Taliban under the Trump administration, you know that. Talk a little bit about where the cutting edge of NATO decision-making is on Ukraine right now. There are discussions about Ukraine joining NATO, but we don't have a timeframe. We don't have a pathway.
Radek Sikorski:
I was at the Bucharest NATO Summit in 2008. Ukraine didn't get the membership action plan and is no closer to NATO. In fact, institutionally today, this is a Putin fantasy that he had to invade because Ukraine was joining in NATO. Ukraine was a non-bloc country, a non-aligned country when Putin invaded. Ukraine has deserved, through its heroism, the right to be integrated with the European Union, which is what they've said all along.
Ian Bremmer:
And they have unanimously voted in favor of that.
Radek Sikorski:
Absolutely, and they deserve it, and we're now negotiating the terms of that. And this is what it's about. Does Putin have the right to determine who is a real nation and who isn't? This is kind of European colonial mentality that we have to put an end to.
Ian Bremmer:
But do you think that Ukraine could, on the basis of this 75th anniversary summit, could they become any closer to NATO, or is that not really happening?
Radek Sikorski:
We are actually helping Ukraine to a huge extent, you know, 300 billion between EU and the US. And by the way, the European contribution is bigger.
Ian Bremmer:
Than the US is.
Radek Sikorski:
We are not free riders on this one, and I'd like the American public to understand that.
Ian Bremmer:
Other decisions, there's a lot of negotiation now, talks now about potentially Poland and others helping the Ukrainians to defend directly against Russian missiles. So in other words, aircraft flying in Polish airspace. But if the Russian missiles are coming in, NATO planes would try to shoot them down. That's an act of discussion?
Radek Sikorski:
Well, Russian missiles breach Polish airspace.
Ian Bremmer:
They have a couple of times.
Radek Sikorski:
They turn through Poland and hit targets in Ukraine. Their missiles also lose their bearings and drop on Poland. One of them flew across two-thirds of Poland and landed 10K from my house in Western Poland. So we need to patrol our skies, and that's clearly a threat. And actually, two of our people have already died from these explosions.
Ian Bremmer:
The Ukrainian defense in response to Russian missiles, yeah.
Radek Sikorski:
So we are clearly in our right to shoot down Russian missiles that have entered our airspace, but that's too late because then they can already hit someone. So the discussion is whether we could shoot down Russian missiles when they're clearly approaching Polish NATO airspace. Personally, I think it'll be justified and legal.
Ian Bremmer:
And also, NATO has taken decisions recently allowing the Ukrainians to engage in some strikes into Russian territory against military targets. It's taken a long time to get there. This was also something that NATO wouldn't have even considered, thought it was way beyond the pale six months ago, 12 months ago. Broadly speaking, it kind of feels like this is not strategic decision-making around what is and is not appropriate escalation but is instead, well, let's try this additional new little thing and then just keep doing that bit by bit.
Radek Sikorski:
But it's also because at each of these stages, Putin does something so outrageous, like hitting a children's hospital, like bombarding Kharkiv, like using these huge bombs, that he forces us to show Ukraine another piece of sympathy.
Ian Bremmer:
So I mean, Trump says that we're getting closer to World War III. Do you think we're getting closer to World War III?
Radek Sikorski:
Hybrid warfare is already on, and it's the Russians who are the aggressors. We have these sabotage actions, these incendiary devices being left by GRU-recruited people, including in the United States. We have cyberattacks, we have espionage, we have a huge assault by deliberately imported migrants being forced against the Polish border, which is the border of NATO and the European Union. They are trying a multi-domain confrontation with us. We also need to respond in all these domains.
Ian Bremmer:
So I mean, again, I'm not trying to argue that it's a proxy war, that the Americans, that the Europeans in Russia are fighting equally. But I mean, the reality is we are getting closer to a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Radek Sikorski:
And let's not forget who started it.
Ian Bremmer:
No, absolutely.
Radek Sikorski:
Putin has been at war with us for at least 10 years, and we were in denial.
Ian Bremmer:
Since the 2014 invasion.
Radek Sikorski:
When he started bombing, it's clear that he sent tanks. He started it. We just want to go back to normal peaceful coexistence. And he can finish this war in five minutes by making one phone call to his defense minister. Ukrainians can't do that.
Ian Bremmer:
Ukrainians can't do that. Radek Sikorski, thanks so much for joining today.
Radek Sikorski:
It's a pleasure.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts? Tell your friends.