The War in Ukraine, With Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council in Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the war in Ukraine.

With me to discuss where the fighting in Ukraine is headed as winter looms are Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage. Liana is a fellow for Europe in CFR's Europe program. She's the author of Germany's Role in European Russia Policy: A New German Power? Michael is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic in International Studies. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the policy planning staff at the U.S. State Department where he held the Russia Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy.

 Liana and Michael have written a half dozen pieces for Foreign Affairs over the past year on various aspects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Foreign Affairs has bundled these pieces under the heading of The Ukraine Scenarios. Recently, Foreign Affairs published their piece, "Go Slow on Crimea: Why Ukraine Should Not Rush to Retake the Peninsula." Liana and Michael, thank you to you both for coming back on The President's Inbox.

FIX:
Thank you, Jim.

KIMMAGE:
Thank you so much for having us.

LINDSAY:
Michael, I'd like to start with you and ask you to give us an update on the war, as things currently stand. We know that back in September, the Ukrainians launched a surprise offensive in the northeastern portion of the country, that was quite successful, led to the liberation of Kharkiv. Last month, Ukrainian forces retook Kherson in the southeastern portion of the country. Kherson is the only regional capital that Russian forces had taken during the war. So where is the fighting taking place now?

KIMMAGE:
Well, the weather has gotten quite cold, so the pace of fighting on the ground has slowed, but there were a couple of attacks within Russia itself, which I assume are attributable to Ukraine. Even if that may be a little bit murky. I think the winter's going to witness some back and forth, but it's probably not until the spring with the lines will really begin to change again. But I think stalemate would be the wrong word for where we are because the tension is still very high and the missile strikes in both directions. Russia's missile strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure and Ukraine's strikes in various places are going to be ongoing. And on both sides, they have the potential to further destabilize the conflict. So it's a pause of a sorts, but definitely not a stalemate.

LINDSAY:
So let me draw you out on that point about strikes behind Russian lines because for the most part, the fighting has been concentrated on Ukrainian territory, but recently the Ukrainians we believe are responsible for attacks including attacks on a Russian military base, I believe more than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border. Are these significant or are they just merely symbolic in terms of the actual course of fighting?

KIMMAGE:
I don't think that they've changed fundamentally Russia's capacities, but in a war of images, which this war very much is, I think that they are psychologically quite significant. First of all, they're humiliating to Russia, which seems to be struggling to prevent them, and I think it does send a message. One of them was not far from Moscow at all, that Russians need to be on notice. I don't think that Ukraine is going to go after Russian civilians at any point, so that's not the objective. But it is unsettling on the Russian side and just further indication that Russia's going to have a very, very hard time containing this war. But in terms of Russia's capacity to wreak havoc, I don't think that they're going to alter that calculus.

LINDSAY:
Liana, I want to bring it into the conversation now if I may. And I'm curious about one thing at the top, which is who is doing the fighting for Russia right now? Obviously President Putin initiated this partial mobilization that was designed to get fresh conscripts to the front with perhaps very little or no training, but there's also been a lot of talk about mercenaries doing the fighting. Do we have a sense of who's bearing the brunt of it on the Russian side?

FIX:
Well, we have some indications perhaps if we look first on the leadership level there. We had an interesting change in Russia strategy because for the first time we had a general, General Surovikin who had a history of being involved in brutal warfare in Syria, become a prominent figure for the war. And it seems that he has changed some of washer's calculus. So he is in charge of these missile attacks on Ukraine. He is also responsible for fortifying the south so that Ukraine will have difficulties advancing further south of Kherson towards Crimea. And he seems to be the first general that the Russian leadership is willing to present in public. When it comes to the soldiers level, we have those mobilized, the mobics as they are called, but they obviously are used very much as canon fodder in this war. There are several pieces of evidence, several phone calls that have been intercepted, which show that the moral, the training, that those troops get is less than ideal.

And we also have the Wagner Group by Prigozhin who are at the moment fighting in Bakhmut, which is a curious case because the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine is a city which doesn't seem to be of high strategic relevance, but we see that apparently there during the day, it's Russian soldiers fighting, during the night, it's Wagner mercenaries fighting. One last thought about the mercenaries: it's interesting that the public profile has been raised. So they have a headquarter now, a very shiny, flashy headquarter. So it's not anymore this kind of shadow mercenary army that it was, it's much more prominent in Russia's war strategy and also in the perception of the German public. And so is also the head of the Wagner Group, Prigozhin who has put out a couple of videos where he presents himself as the one who is able to motivate Russian forces and to bring successes to Putin.

LINDSAY:
Do we know where these mercenaries come from? Are they primarily people who have been fighting in Syria? Are they from Africa, Latin America, Asia?

FIX:
Well, those mercenaries at the beginning were partly from missions in Northern Africa, from Syria, but we've also seen a new effort by Prigozhin the leader to recruit Russian convicts. They have been prominent videos where he tries to motivate Russian convicts to sign up, and he even promises those convicts that they would leave prison forever if they managed to fight in Ukraine to the satisfaction. That's not something which is covered in any legal way by Russian law. Just to pardon someone because he's willing to fight in Ukraine is outside of any rule of law structure that one can still speak of in Russia, but that's what the Wagner Groups are at the moment where they're recruiting the soldiers from.

LINDSAY:
Michael, I want to talk about the piece that you and Liana wrote contemplating a potential Ukrainian attack on Crimea. And I'm curious, are we at the point, given that fighting is continuing in the Donbas, the Ukrainians are not making the kind of progress they had made earlier on. I take it that winter is coming, but are we near the point where the Ukrainians might decide to invade Crimea or is that still something down the road and depends upon actually liberating Donbas first?

KIMMAGE:
Well, there have been statements to the effect that the Ukrainian military would like to do this. I don't know if that means anything is imminent. The river around Kherson is a natural barrier. And it does look like the Russians have dug into a considerable extent around Crimea. It's a very formidable challenge in many ways and could likely be one that the Ukrainian military will put off for quite a while. But that said, Ukrainian military has faced formidable challenges since the beginning of the war, has done remarkable things continuously, the battle of Kyiv, the battle of Chernigov, and then of course, as you've mentioned already Kharkiv and Kherson. And so what's within the capacities of the Ukrainian military, I wouldn't want to underestimate those capacities. And then of course, in terms of missile strikes, Ukraine has just moved a lot closer territorially to Crimea. I think that the way that you could describe it as within range, perhaps a winter attack would have the element of surprise and that a sense it might have considerable appeal.

My guess is it's down the road, but I would think through as Liana and I tried to do in the piece, be thinking through contingencies where this could start quite quickly.

LINDSAY:
Let me just ask a quick question is I'm not really sure that climate... does the Dnieper River freeze over? Were we relevant to be able to cross easily or is this a case of you would even winter have to pursue some sort of amphibious operation?

KIMMAGE:
I don't myself know, perhaps you do Liana, in terms of whether the river freezes. It's very, very wide at many points. I think-

LINDSAY:
I'm looking at it on a map, it looks pretty wide, but...

KIMMAGE:
Kilometer or a mile length. I think the logistics, whether it's frozen or not, are pretty extreme in terms of crossing the river. And there's a lot of exposure that any army would experience in trying to cross. But I don't know if there's a ice element or dynamic in the winter months.

FIX:
I think the greater challenge is probably the lack of bridges, which Ukraine very deliberately has destroyed to make it more difficult for Russia. But now it is obviously a disadvantage to Ukraine that there are no bridges left that Ukraine can easily use and have to do an amphibious landing if they want to continue advancing on the other side of the Dnieper.

LINDSAY:
Well, Michael, let me ask you a question about that because my sense in official Washington, my sense, but when I've talked to European officials that they're not comfortable with the idea of beginning ground operations in Crimea, they are worried that that will be, I can use the phrase, a bridge too far and that will change the course of the war and it will increase the chances of a catastrophic Russian response. How do you react to that talk?

KIMMAGE:
I think that I have a similar impression, but the cardinal point that the United States and the European allies have made vis-à-vis Ukraine is that these are decisions for Ukraine to make, that Ukraine is not going to be dictated to. They're not going to be strategic choices that are made over the heads of the Ukrainians. And it's in the end for Ukraine to decide how to defend itself. And I think that that's a very sincere commitment on the part of Washington.

LINDSAY:
Can I draw you out on that, Michael? Because it seems to me that while U.S. interests are aligned with Ukraine's, they are not necessarily identical. And the United States or Germany or France or Great Britain, EU writ large, could decide that liberating Crimea or seeking to simply raises a prohibitive risk to Europe writ large, maybe even the globe. And given that the United States and European countries are providing weapons, arms as well as financial humanitarian support to Ukraine, they have the wherewithal to shape influence the decisions Ukrainians make.

KIMMAGE:
Well, I think that that's perfectly true, and I think the way that we try to square that circle in the piece is to say that there could be a vigorous conversation between Western capitals and Kyiv about this. And there's a range of options between deferring entirely to Kyiv and dictating to Kyiv what should be done. I think it's very legitimate to communicate priorities or communicate concerns and anxieties and have that be a part of the partnership that's really flourished between Ukraine and the West since the beginning of the war. But the other way in which I think we square that circle in the peace is to argue that it's really in Ukraine's interest to go slow when it comes to Crimea, that there may be other military objectives that are more useful at the moment. Certainly deterring Russia from attacks on Kyiv and the heartlands of the country makes a lot of sense and making advances in the Donbas may be sort of more prudent at the moment militarily. And it's just a way of building on all the successes that Ukraine has had.

I think that there is a way of, in a sense, harmonizing Ukraine's interests with the interest of the West. But you're right, it's not effortless and there's going to be a bit of slippage there, and that's going to require careful diplomacy.

FIX:
And there's certainly an implicit comfort zone among Western countries, which is that the pre-invasion lines, the pre-February lines is something which everyone can agree upon. And if we look at the European map, the imaginary European map in a podcast, we do see divides among Europeans, central and eastern Europeans are much more in favor of Ukraine retaking its entire territory. Germany or France are uncomfortable with that prospect. So one argument that Michael and I made in this piece is also that to keep Western unity, which has been very much the success formula of Ukraine and the West in this war, it would be wise to go slow on Crimea. 

And also the big challenge that Ukraine has is to break up the land bridge to Crimea that Moscow has created, which would mean that Ukraine needs to drive a wedged down to Mariupol to the Sea of Azov, and this would help to separate Russia's troop in the south from the troops in the east. It would also help to prevent logistical lines and supply lines from the east coming into Crimea, especially as the Kerch Bridge is also vulnerable. So before Crimea comes into sight, there are many other objectives that Ukraine can achieve to put further pressure on Russia.

LINDSAY:
I take your point, Liana, perhaps we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves and start talking about the liberation of Crimea. There's other fighting to be done. Let's bring us back to the present and the real question of what is the position that Vladimir Putin finds himself in today? Obviously there have been protests by Russians about the conduct of the war. Interestingly, some of those have been anti-war protests, but some of them have been from ultra nationalists who are convinced that the Kremlin hasn't fought the war either hard enough or smartly enough. And my sense is there's some growing public discontent about the cost of the war. Recently President Putin met with a handpicked selection of mothers of soldiers in Ukraine in which he in essence said, "I feel your pain." Other times he didn't seem all that empathetic. I know at one point he said, let me quote him here, "Some people die of vodka and their lives go unnoticed. But your son really lived and achieved his goal. He didn't die in vain," end quote. Maybe that sounds better in a Russian context, I can't say.

But can you just give us a sense of what sort of pressures Russian leader Putin is feeling, Liana?

FIX:
I mean, the remark that you just quoted obviously appears very cynical. What we see from Putin's recent remarks is that he seems to think that time is on his side. His recent remarks suggested that there's no immediate wave of mobilization, the second wave of mobilization coming, and he also spoke about a war which will still take a long time. He seems to be in a position where he doesn't want the upheaval that another wave of mobilization might cause and prepares the Russian public for a long war, a long drawn out war in Ukraine, which obviously Ukrainians and Zelenskyy don't want. And that seems to suggest that he is perhaps a little bit more in line with public opinion than he has been before because this kind of shock that Russians have experienced after the announcement of mobilization has really been a challenge. And this same kind of shock was there when Russia had to give up its positions in Ukraine around Karkiev and Kherson.

So the strategy at the moment seems to... Well, as we suggest on Crimea on the Russian side, to go slow on further mobilizations to prevent this kind of backlash in Russian domestic opinion.

LINDSAY:
Michael, when we sat down in March to discuss Putin's choices in the war in Ukraine and we went through a variety of options. What is your assessment of how Putin's calculations have and have not changed? What is his endgame? How does he see Russia accomplishing what you take to be the goals he's set for himself?

KIMMAGE:
I think that he probably hasn't accepted fully the reality of the situation, which is that at least in my view, the political goals that he set toward the beginning of the conflict are unrealizable. And in many ways the war that he's fighting is counterproductive for his own interests as he's defined them. It's going to create a Ukrainian polity that is largely unified and largely aligned with the West in some form or fashion, which is in a sense Putin's nightmare, and that's what he's sort of accomplishing on the ground. For his formal objectives and sincere objectives, I think he's in a terrible position and whether he fully sees that or not is anybody's guess. I mean, he's a canny man in some respects, but he also seems to have fallen victim to a very ideological view of the world. On the other hand, exactly as Liana said a moment ago, I think that he believes in a waiting game, he has certain options.

And of course, the crossover to really going after Ukraine's critical infrastructure is a new development in the war. One that we didn't discuss last time, and Putin just affirmed in a video taken in the Kremlin that after the attack on the bridge over the Kerch Strait, it was his right to go after Ukrainian critical infrastructure. So he's almost bragging about that on television, and it is a significant development in the war. It's causing great inconveniences. It's a further burden on the Ukrainian economy and it's just going to make the war more difficult to prosecute, but it's not going to make the war any more winnable. We've used the word cynical, you might almost say nihilistic in this sense, a kind of nihilistic refusal to accept that the war that he has begun is a war that he cannot win.

LINDSAY:
So you don't think, Michael, that Putin's strategy here of inflicting pain on the Ukrainian public, taking out critical infrastructure in the middle of winter, so people lose lights, people lose heat, you don't think that's going to break Ukraine's will to fight?

KIMMAGE:
I do not. I think that if we would use a historical analogy here, we might turn to two examples. The allied bombing of Germany, which has as far as we know, didn't break German support for Hitler. Perhaps it accomplished almost the opposite of strengthening the bond between the German population and the Nazi regime. But then you could also look at North Vietnam and the massive bombing campaigns that were conducted there, which devastated the economy of North Vietnam and civilian infrastructure, but in some ways enhanced the willingness of the North Vietnamese to fight. These are different kinds of wars of course, but I think the dynamic is really quite similar. How in the world is Ukraine going to yield to a antagonist that uses tactics of this kind? It doesn't make any sense on its surface. So the misery is going to be very real, it already is, and that will leave its traumatic effect on Ukrainian society for decades to come, but it's not going to solve any of Putin's fundamental military or political problems.

LINDSAY:
Well, Liana, that raises the flip side of Putin's strategy, which is to break the will of the West, to fracture the West so that the West ceases to provide Ukraine with the materiel and economic support it needs to continue the war. There has been a lot of hand wringing over the last six months or so about the ability of the West to remain united in the face of Russian aggression. You've already alluded to some of the divisions that exist in Europe. Do you see the West fracturing?

FIX:
I'm very optimistic on this question. Putin's strategy is through these missile attacks to make Europe afraid of further refugee flows coming into Europe, and also to show Europe that reconstruction of Ukraine will be expensive. And it's true, I mean the costs are going up. The initial assessment was $350 billion, the reconstruction of Ukraine would cost. Now the estimates go between $500 and $600 billion by the World Bank. So obviously these are costs that are being raised, but we do not see a real change in Europe's position. And I speak for Europe here at the moment. We have new data that has just come out, which suggests that Europeans are catching up on U.S. support for Ukraine. There will be a big 18 billion Euro microfinancial assistance package for Ukraine next year after a period of slow contributions to Ukraine in the summer and early autumn. European countries are stepping up, Germany is stepping up, France is stepping up.

And we also see in public opinion that on average 50% of the population in Europe does support weapon deliveries to Ukraine and they also support economic sanctions. There's some outliers, Greece, Hungary, Italy, for example. But the picture looks good in general. And I think on the U.S. side, the midterm elections have heard certainly increased the optimism that there will be no fundamental change in U.S. position if the $37 billion package Ukraine support is going through Congress, then the United States also has a firm basis to continue supporting Ukraine. I think at the moment I'm quite optimistic when it comes to the winter and also on the energy question for Europe. We will have to ask this question again next year when we're heading towards the summer next year and the war perhaps whisks to enter into its second and third year.

LINDSAY:
Okay. Liana, I have to ask you about your native country Germany. Olaf Scholz has a piece in Foreign Affairs talking about a global Zeitenwende, this great pivot. But I've seen a lot of suggestions that while the Scholz government said all the right things back in the spring about taking military preparation seriously, about standing shoulder to shoulder with its NATO colleagues that the Germans have been, let's say, not delivering as much indeed as they have in word. Is that a fair assessment or is it missing something?

FIX:
Perhaps two points on that. The first is it was quite unfortunate that the day when the Foreign Affairs piece was published was also the day when the spokesperson of Olaf Scholz announced that Olaf Scholz will not, and the government will not be able to meet the 2 percent this year and might only be able to meet it in 2025.

LINDSAY:
This is referring to the pledge that all NATO countries made back in 2014 to devote at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense spending?

FIX:
Absolutely. And Germany has been lagging behind for a long time, has now committed a hundred billion to the German army, but obviously that's not good communications that you have to take back this pledge. Certainly if we look at the newest figures that have come out, Germany is contributing a major part to Ukraine and we have three more IRIS-T defense systems that will arrive in Ukraine. Germany is shouldering major parts of the financial contributions for Ukraine. So I do think it's unfair to say that Germany is not fulfilling its promises at all, but there is a lack of urgency. It is too slow what is happening. And Zeitenwende has also escaped the imagination by far. Zeitenwende was a response to the immediate outbreak of the war. When Olaf Scholz gave the speech, he thought that Ukraine will be occupied by Russia. It was three days after the war. So it was very much about European security.

Now, especially also in this town, in Russia, Zeitenwende is a shorthand for this big geopolitical transformation of Germany, which obviously should also include China policy. And interestingly on China policy, there was really not a lot in this Foreign Affairs piece. I mean, it showed up somewhat towards the end of this piece. And basically Olaf Scholz was saying that we can have the cake and eat it, we can cooperate with China, but at the same time, China should also not have a sphere of influence. It is legitimate to ask whether Germany has really drawn the lessons from its failed Russia policy for China policy.

LINDSAY:
Well, I will note that Chancellor Scholz did make a trip to Beijing, did meet with President Xi. Got a lot of criticism for that precisely because to his critics it appeared that he was in essence sticking to the pre-Ukraine policy of elevating trade and mercantile exchange, commercial exchange over geo strategic, geopolitical concerns. 

Michael, I'm wondering if you share Liana's optimism about solidarity in the West, particularly the commitment here in the United States to backing Ukraine. It is true that a number of Republicans and Democrats elected back in November support more aid for Ukraine. But my sense there's a concern around this town that there's a small group in the Republican Party, particularly in the House, Tea Party members to some extent, who are dead set against sending more aid to Ukraine. And given how narrow the margin is in the House of Representatives, they'll be able to block or gum up the works when it comes to providing additional support for Ukraine. How do you assess that?

KIMMAGE:
I mean, I think that it will be a different environment when the new Congress takes shape in the coming year, and it won't be quite as conducive to getting things done as it has been for the last ten months. I don't foresee huge difficulties in that regard because I think that there are a lot of Republicans for the White House to work with. And it is also I think, important to measure Trump's political fortunes against this problem because obviously Trump is not a great fan of Ukraine and has this alternative viewpoint. But to the degree that that's weakening, and I think it is weakening to a degree, it's also something that's going to help the Biden administration to stay the course. But I wouldn't want to be too sanguine. I share Liana's optimism, but of the two of us, I'm always the more pessimistic ones, so let me be true to character.

LINDSAY:
I'm trying to really play on the divisions between the two of you, so...

KIMMAGE:
Right. Well, you incited my pessimism. What I have in mind with pessimism... well, not pessimism, but I think the challenge, the longer term challenge is not economic or military support for Ukraine. I think that that's going to be forthcoming for a long time and every time there's this inkling of Ukraine fatigue, I think Putin does something to just keep that support going, so there too, Putin is his own enemy. But I think on the diplomatic front it's going to be tricky because we really have not settled on an end game and there are lots of divergences, even-

LINDSAY:
Can I ask you just a second, Michael, when you say end game, what do you mean by that term?

KIMMAGE:
Well, the terms on which we would accept an end to the war, how we foresee realistic possibilities when it comes to an end to the war. How long this is going to be going? Where we might be willing to compromise, if we're willing to compromise. It's all the series of unanswered questions, and there are nuanced differences between Paris and Berlin, nuanced differences between Berlin and Washington, but then of course they're the countries of eastern and central Europe, which have a much higher level of internal existential anxiety about this crisis. And a very different sense when you get the message there that Russia has to be rendered incapable of waging such a war again, which is not the view necessarily in Washington or-

LINDSAY:
Well, that gets you back to your point you made earlier, Michael, which is that Washington is reluctant, has said so publicly, to impose outcomes on Kyiv. It is in essence, at least rhetorically in public, taking its lead from Ukraine rather than telling Ukraine, "This is where we're willing to go and no further." I'm not sure what's being said privately, but obviously this is a delicate diplomatic dance for the Biden administration, and I imagine for all of the other countries we're talking about. The Ukrainians want to be able to go as far as they can without going too far and alienating the very countries that are making it possible for them to fight this war against Russia.

KIMMAGE:
I mean, I think that there are two dynamics that work with the Biden administration here. One is that they don't want to give Putin anything to work with, so they're not going to publicly, I think, go out in any way and express differences with Kyiv, and that's a perfectly sensible strategy. I think that the other dynamic at work, which is a bit more worrisome is that the Biden administration just doesn't know. They don't know what the answer to the question is, where is it going to end? Will Ukraine be a part of the European Union? Will it one day be a part of NATO? Is that the solution to the problem? Is this going to be a kind of Korea type conflict that could last for years or decades where there'll be two sides and a uneasy back and forth? I mean, I'm sure that there are preferences in the White House, but I think they just don't know where this ends up and that's difficult.

It's not the second World War in this regard, and there are difficulties that follow from it. But as a historian, I think back to the Cold War, we didn't know how the Cold War ended either, and there were different phases and chapters of the Cold War where it looked like it could go right in the direction of conflict. And there were phases when it looked in the 1970s that detente could win the day, and then everybody was deeply surprised by the actual outcome or end phase of the Cold War. It was much better than I think most had expected in the midst of the conflict. So maybe that's the frame that we need to use when you can't quite state your explicit path, you have to set priorities and keep to those priorities, then just see how the events break.

LINDSAY:
Liana, Michael raises a really important point, and that is the question of how to think about a war that actually could go on for quite some time. Again, as you look at the fighting, there have been periods in which the Ukrainians made rapid progress. Right now, the fighting in the Donbas high intensity, but not a lot of movement. There's a possibility this fighting could go on for quite some time. And have you thought about how we should think about a war that doesn't end quickly? Because again, I think most of us coming to this starting back in February was, "This should end relatively shortly," and it didn't. The Ukrainians held together, they have in essence played David to Russia's Goliath. They have retaken much of what the Russians took in the early spring, not all of it, but there's nothing that requires a war to end quickly. It could drag on. How do we think about that? That's a problem for Europe, I would imagine, to a significant degree.

FIX:
Absolutely. I mean, I think we have an example, and that is very much the war that was waging in eastern Ukraine since 2014. I mean, 2022 is not the start of the war. We had heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine after 2014, and in the end we had sort of a boundary line between the troops, but the war was always simmering. And I think that's also the lessons that Ukrainians take from this period, that they do not want a repetition of this model. They do not want a repetition of a ceasefire, which just continues to simmer and to endanger Ukraine's possibilities to ever enter the European Union or even NATO with such a simmering conflict. But for me, the really crucial line, and I think I'm quite optimistic at the moment, but the crucial year for me, it's really 2024 because for the moment also the Western Alliance is in a good position.

We don't have major big elections coming up. The midterms are behind us. But in 2024, we will have elections in Ukraine, which will be a huge challenge if the war is still continuing. We have "elections," in our so-called elections in Russia, which will pose the question of domestic challenges. We will have elections in the United States. I think at the moment there is still some time ahead that can be used to support Ukraine to make further advances, to support Ukraine with weapon system like Western made battle tanks to break up the land bridge to Crimea and so on. But once we enter into the second half of 2023, then the questions will become more serious about how long can this war go on, and how long can the West support Ukraine? So for me, 2024 will be a crucial year in many ways for Ukraine and for Russia and for the alliance.

KIMMAGE:
I will add for the record that if there were some who thought that the war would be short, that Foreign Affairs had the foresight to publish a piece titled "What If the Word Doesn't End?" And I'm proud to say that Liana and I were the co-author of that piece that was written over the summer. It's one of the scenarios that we've thought hard about.

LINDSAY:
Okay, Dan Kurtz-Phelan, the editor of Foreign Affairs, is delighted that you have made that plug for what we now call the Ukraine scenarios. Can we get a little tease as to what the next entry is going to be?

FIX:
I can try to say something. I think Michael and I have tried in a longer piece for Foreign Affairs, which will come out at the beginning of next year to think about more about Russian domestic scenarios. So about scenarios, what if Russia is defeated, and what are different varieties of Russia defeats that one can think of, and what'll be the domestic implications of varieties of Russian defeat? I think Foreign Affairs would be happy if I encourage everyone to have a look into the next piece of Foreign Affairs.

LINDSAY:
We'll wait until the piece comes out. I don't want to get you in trouble. On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guests had been Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in Michael Kimmage, a professor of history at the Catholic University of America and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies. Liana, Michael, thank you very much for joining me. I learned a lot.

FIX:
Thank you, Jim.

KIMMAGE:
Such a pleasure. Thank you for having us.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox in Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Leave us a review, we love the feedback. You can find the books, articles, and podcasts mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed in The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang. Thank you, Ester. Along with Senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks back to Michelle Kurilla for her excellent research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.