Bulwark Takes - Trump Invites Putin To His “Board of Peace” While Kyiv Freezes (w/ Caolan Robertson)

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Tim Miller is joined by journalist Caolan Robertson, reporting from Davos, to explain how Russia is escalating its war by targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, why this winter is becoming a humanitarian catastrophe, and how Moscow’s economy is finally starting to crack under the cost of war.

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Hey, everybody. It's Tim over from the bulwark. I'm here with our old friend, Caitlin Robertson, who I'm just, I kind of feel like his mother here or something. I'm happy. He's in Davos, which feels a little safer than where we're usually talking to him from near a war zone in Ukraine. But I want an update on what's happening both in Ukraine and also in Davos and how they're intersecting. So how you doing, now? I'm really good. Thanks for having me back on again. Yeah, of course, of course. One of the reason I want to have you back on is I just want to admit, even myself, I forget, somebody on the pod. who was just kind of updating me on the latest in Ukraine. And I was like, I realized that I've gotten out of my habit of reading the, you know, the key post and reading my updates. And you come in my feed from time to time, but of actually seeking out news. And it feels like just the conditions for Ukrainians has gotten worse this winter in a way that's maybe not out of maybe out of the eye of a lot of the news because all the other crazy

shit going on. And so I just, I kind of wanted to talk to you about that, like, you know, how are things going? Obviously, it's winter, it's getting cold. Russia's attacking energy sites. Like, what's happening on the ground in Ukraine? Well, I only left a few days ago, but this is the coldest winter in years. It's the coldest winter I've ever seen in Ukraine. The temperature has gone down to minus 20 Celsius, which is absolutely below freezing.

It's the first time the Denepe River is frozen over, probably in decades. People are walking to the other side. And it's the time that Russians have been hitting the city more intensely, specifically with energy and thermal, than they ever have since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. So as of today, from last night's missile attacks, 6,000 buildings, not just houses, but high-rise buildings, are now without water, without power. And if you look at a map of Keeve,

the entire left side of the city that's separated by the river is totally pitch black. I just got off of my partner off the phone. And he was staring out over the skyline, and he was like, I've never seen it where you can just see the outline of buildings. So it's catastrophic. It's becoming, verging on a humanitarian catastrophe.

The mayor of Kiev last week said, if you have the ability to leave Keeve, then he would recommend temporarily doing so, which no politician has said before. And there are these kind of refugee-style tents. They're called Resilient Centers at the base of all these apartment buildings, so these bright orange tents all throughout the city, so that people can get water, people can get warm,

people can charge their devices. And it's starting to look like a full-blown crisis because Russia's decided to put everything into energy, now. And I went and visited a lot of the energy workers a couple of days before I left here. I interviewed them about how they keep things going. And they explained it. It takes sometimes years to rebuild a power station. If you put a missile into a substation, especially a substation that was built, you know, 50 years ago under the Soviet system. Those parts don't exist anymore. It's extremely difficult to rebuild. So it's causing absolute havoc in Ukraine.

This is the absolute worst winter I've ever seen the city. And I think it'll be different. The city that I left a few days ago is not even the same state as the city. it's going to be when I arrived back this weekend. It's that bad. Like, it's a complete disaster. And it's desperation as well. Russia's doing this now because they haven't advanced any of their goals that they did in 2025. They didn't seize the percentage of the Donbass they wanted by 2025.

So they're trying to have it so that the cities aren't inhabitable. So everyone wants to leave so that there's no one left in Ukraine. It's like an absolute brutal, cowardly tactic. Horrifying and like near genocidal. She's a word that, you know, people get really wrapped around. And honestly, like the desire for Ukraine at this point, what they're doing. You know, I saw some of the stories that are being this morning. Like people, you know, they can't even flush their toilet.

People are freezing. Like, they're worried that people are freezing to death. Like, it's kind of hard to get told, you know, numbers there. But, you know, and you talked about the kind of the humanitarian side of this. And obviously some people are dying in the missile attacks themselves. But, like, people are literally going to die in Ukraine just because they don't have access to heat. Yeah. I mean, and Kiev is a huge.

It's larger than the size of New York. It's got 3 million people there. Other cities that are closer to the front line, like Harcive have been without power for longer because they've been hit harder. So they're actually adapted a little bit better. But this is going to lead to countless people dying. I mean, there's so many old people in Cape. There's so many elderly people as well with kids, with babies who stayed there since the beginning, who I have no idea how they're keeping warm at the moment. I mean, there's a lot of creative ways, but now, now the gas is also out, now the hot water's out, it's basically the inside of people's apartments are now the same temperature as outside. It's like minus 15. And the problem is as well in Kiev. The plumbing systems

are very Soviet era and the thermal systems are the same. So it relies on these giant pumping stations getting water into people's apartment building, on mass. And if those stop moving, if the water stops moving, all these pipes converse, they can crack and they can be permanently destroyed. So getting everything back online could take a huge amount of time. And so, yeah, this is definitely the worst, the worst possible period. Yeah, you mentioned that Russia said no progress on the front lines. I mean, what I was reading this morning, as far as like the military strategy from the Ukrainian side, and the defense minister Federov said basically one of their key strategic goals is to try to inflict so many losses on Russia that, like, the war is not sustainable for them.

And they're trying to have 50,000 soldiers eliminated a month, you know, using drugs. and other AI technology. Is that plausible? Are they getting the support they need? Do they have the military capacity for that? Like, what's the thinking on the Ukrainian side? Well, the thinking on the Ukrainian side is an acknowledgement that there isn't enough manpower,

Ukraine versus Russia, to physically fight on the front line the way that Russia's been doing it. So there's massive investment in technology and AI and using robots, basically, grand robots and drones to storm positions to save human lives. And the technology is advancing in a really, really, really high rate. The numbers are still pretty hard to figure out exactly what it is. But if you look at the actual physical distance that's being gained in 2025 and that's still

being gained right now in Ukraine, it's still a very, very, very, very minimal amount. And the only way that it's working, and there was a town called Kupians, that I was filming in last March in a drone dugout, that Putin very victoriously claimed to have taken a couple of months ago, was taken back by Ukraine, was liberated by Ukraine. at the same time that Russia sees Vakrosk. And that showed that the Russians don't have the same backup, ready, mobilized people, ready to go. They've got a larger population, but not ready to go.

So the only way they can make any advancements in places like Pekrosk is by moving people from different parts of the front line and making new holes. So it's still a very complicated thing. If you look at Ukraine on a bigger map, it still kind of looks like a stalemate. It still looks like everything's frozen, just like the ground. But the technology is still advanced.

Technology is advancing on both sides, though, in a lot of ways as well. Oh, is that right? Yeah, the Russians were pretty rubbish at the beginning, but they're getting a lot better now. They're realizing that they have to invest a massive amount in this. But they're also investing a huge amount in manufacturing these Shahid drones. The goal is to be able to fire a thousand a night into Ukraine. And they're mass-producing these with the help of North Koreans. And they're doing it really, really, really far in the east of Russia as well, outside of the range of long-range strikes in Ukraine.

So, yeah, I mean, Russians are investing way more heavily in stuff to... throw at Ukraine from the sky. So it's going to be this, but this year is going to be pretty definitive as well. Russia has become quite economically frustrated. This is the first year that's starting 2026 in decline. Moscow have experienced blackouts on New Year's Eve. This hasn't happened since the full-scale invasion. Bread prices are up. Labor, labor costs are down. Everything is, and the shadow fleet's being hit. So everything to do with Russia's economy is now taking a massive hit. And that's probably going to be the thing that ends the war is the economy in Russia. Not so much the technology or the manpower.

It's going to be how long they can physically afford to keep paying soldiers and making weapons. And if Ukraine continues that campaign, completely destroying their oil refineries and destroying the check. You don't think it's going to be Putin's commitment to peace that is going to end the war? I mean, Trump wants to put him on the board of peace in Gaza. And obviously, Trump is just waiting any day now for Putin to deal. I'm sure that's what Trump is going to say when he arrives here.

Actually, this is the first, it sounds silly saying that, but this is the first Davos since 2014, where the Russians are sending representatives, they're sending one of their favorite envoys, to speak to Trump, because Trump is still listening to Putin's peace promises, to his fake peace promises. And now that Trump has thrown NATO completely out of the water, wants to start invading European countries, he started his own peace outlet. I mean, what would you describe it as, basically a witness protection program for war criminals, It's like Putin and Orban, everybody who's been invited to the Hague, like, this is what we're dealing with now.

So, I mean, yeah, everyone else on the planet with a brain cell has stopped listening to the word peace and Putin in the same sentence, except for Donald Trump. All right. So talk about you're there in Davos. Talk about kind of, I'm interested both in your view on what people are saying about, like, whether, you know, the needed support for Ukraine and what's going to be happening from European leaders. also, you know, the interplay between Trump's menacing of Greenland and whether that has any impact on, you know, the Ukraine negotiations or the support. Well, this is basically the defining part of Davos. This is probably the most important and significant Davos ever. This could be the end of NATO as it exists.

Article 5 will be triggered if Trump goes ahead and tries to go to war and take Greenland. it's taken all of the attention away from Ukraine because now all the politicians here and I've been to the bars, the cafes, the restaurants, the houses here, spoken to diplomats, MPs, everybody is talking about Greenland and Trump right now when the capital of Ukraine is without power when the largest country in Europe is still being invaded

and the point of things like Davos is to discuss national security, ideas like security for Europe, to have Europe as the center of policy, of ideas. The point of NATO is so that Europe can be, the most secure it's ever been since World War II. And Trump is basically threatening to destroy all of that. And the only people that benefit from this are the Russians who currently are celebrating on television, who are popping champagne, who.

If you read Russian newspapers today, they've been writing endlessly about how this is great for Russia. It's destroying the European alliance. It's messing everything up. They're celebrating this constantly. And it's going to cause complete chaos. I saw that Markov said, this Kremlin analyst, Sergei Markov, said that Greenland, And like this Greenland conflagration is an ideal solution because I think the EU will be forced to stop its war against Russia if they get into a confrontation with Trump over Greenland.

I don't know. That doesn't feel right to me, though. I don't know. Is that right? Not really. I mean, the main problem with it is it will completely, it will cause a massive risk between Europe and America and it will completely destroy NATO. The Russians have been trying to destroy NATO since it founded since before the Cold War. This has been their number one goal.

everything to do with Ukraine, everything to do with Estonia has all been blamed on NATO expansionism. NATO is Putin's number one enemy, and NATO would be destroyed if Greenland is stormed, and that's why Russians love it so much. There are security implications with it. Yes, apparently Trump is doing this because he wants to protect Greenland from Russia.

Well, if you want to destroy Russia, then what you can do is you can help the Ukrainians do it in the battlefield right now. That's the only way Russia's going to be destroyed. So Trump clearly isn't worried about that, because if he was, then he'd be helping Ukraine and not seizing a sovereign country like Greenland. And it's causing such a rift that there is not a single representative here from the Danish government,

which has never happened at Davos as well. There's a representative from every government, almost every country here, and they've not shown up because this is so humiliating, awful and just tense. So the only person that wins from this is Putin, honestly, even so far as what it's done internally. I've never been to Davos. What's it like there? What's it like on the ground? You're out there in the streets. I mean, it's not really my scene because it's all kind of conferencing and businessy. It's, I mean, it looks nice.

You know, it's kind of like, you know, a quaint Swedish, you know, a quaint snowy alpine town. But everything is just done. Where's your lanyard? Shouldn't you have a lanyard? No, I'm not going to, you have to have different ones for different events. But, I mean, it's okay. But right now, I mean, it's just all about Trump coming in the next 24 hours. I mean, that's literally all everyone is talking about.

So it's kind of like, it's kind of like. it feels like Trump land in a lot of ways. There's not much conversation about policy. Usually it's about like AI, the future of security. It's about like a million different things, ideas. And right now it's like specifically just about this. So it's kind of strange. I didn't think there was any way someone could make Davos sound less appealing than it already was.

But everyone talking about Trump while being at Davos, you've succeeded at making Davos about the least appealing place imaginable to me, I guess, besides being, being where your partner is where he doesn't have heat in the winter. So not idea. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, I've never been to something like this before, but everyone I've spoken to has basically said that this is the most unusual type of event that's happened like this here. It's never been like this.

I mean, it's fascinating. It's lovely, it's right in the heart of Europe. And it really is a reminder of European, Western European superiority in a lot of ways, of great ideas of Europe still being a really powerful continent. You know, this is the entire world here. All these streets are full of, you know, India House. Every single representative is here. There's air defense systems and missile systems all across the mountains.

144 private jets have just landed helicopters everywhere. I mean, it really feels like unbelievable. And that should also be a reminder to people that Europe is still strong. And while it's having its biggest country invaded right now and being dismantled by Trump, that instead of, and actually the most frustrating thing is the response from all the European politicians has been extremely pathetic and weak here. Everyone is talking about how to pander to Trump. The only person that's made any sense here is Gavin Newsroom,

who's somewhere within a five-minute walk of here, who made a clip today saying that it is pathetic that everyone here is on their hands and knees right now, thinking of ways to offer Trump as much gold and compliments as possible. I can't take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders. I mean, handing out crowns and handing out, I mean, this is pathetic.

Nobel prizes they are being given away. I mean, it's just pathetic. The text message that was leaked from the head of NATO to Trump today said how great he was and how amazing he was and how amazing he was on Syria and how amazing he was on messing everything else up and how incredible he is for dismantling NATO. I mean, this is what we're dealing with right now. So it's so, it's so frustrating. But yeah, Gavin Newsroom, I think he's got the guest the best.

He made the most sense of anyone here today. Yeah, Gavin Newsome said he wanted to bring his knee pads. I don't know if that was a heated rivalry reference or what. But anyway, Kalen, thank you, man. Stay safe, as always. Tell your partner, stay safe and keep us posted, okay? I will do. Thank you so much. I will see you.