PBS News Hour - Full Show - With a deadlocked front line, the state of Ukraine peace talks and what Putin wants

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

American-led diplomacy restarts as the war in Ukraine rages on and unprecedented attacks plunge Kyiv into cold and darkness. How long can Ukraine hold out? How long can Russia wage war? And why has Trump failed to find a path to peace? Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses that with Michael Kofman, Justin Logan, Angela Stent and Bill Taylor. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Ukraine under fire. American-led diplomacy restartes as the war rages on. And unprecedented attacks plunge Keeve into cold and darkness. Heading toward the full-scale invasion's fifth year, how long can Ukraine hold out? How long can Russia wage war? And why is President Trump failed to find a path to peace? Coming up on Compass Points.

Hello and welcome to Compass Points. It is a bitter winter in Ukraine, and not just because it's been minus seven degrees. The front line is a brutal, bloody deadline. Ukraine says Russia has attacked its energy grid more than 200 times just since the beginning of the year. A new estimate says nearly two million have been killed or wounded in a war that President Trump famously promised to end on day one, and where Russia maintains demands at the negotiating table that Kiev calls impossible. In the coming days, now that the world's largest island, Greenland is no longer in the headlines,

it is Europe's largest war in 80 years that will dominate world leaders' discussion at a key security conference in Munich. So here to help us understand the State of the Peace Talks, what's happening on the battlefield and what Putin wants are four experts. Michael Kaufman is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Justin Logan is the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Angela Stent is the former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. And Bill Taylor served as President George W. Bush and Barack Obama's ambassador to Ukraine before, returning as the topped up diplomat in Kyiv during the first Trump administration. He's now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Thank you very much all of you. Welcome to Compass Points. Really appreciate it. Let's start with the state of the war. Michael Kaufman, you visit Ukraine often, you talk to officers, you talk to leaders. Can Ukraine hold the line and survive this daily bombardment that Russia is throwing at it? It can, and so far it has. I think that we're facing a difficult winter compared to the previous two.

But to be honest, Ukraine ended 2025 and actually a surprisingly decent position in some ways better than 2024. Over the course of 2025, Russian forces had largely been trying to grind their way through the front. Use a lot of dismounted infantry tactics on this broad front attacking Ukrainian positions. And Russia did make incremental gains. It gained more territory in 25 and 24. But not by a significant amount. And it gained it at much greater cost when you look at the casualties the Russian forces paid. The Ukrainian military has its own challenges to deal with with manpower,

with material. But focusing on drill units, they've been able to hold the Russian military to fairly incremental gains. And the way the Russian military is fighting, it's not achieved big operational breakthroughs. I've not been able to change the overall dynamic on the battlefield. All right. So Justin Logan, not being able to change the overall dynamic, but this is what you told one of my colleagues, Ukraine is gradually incrementally losing. Why? They're engaged in a war of attrition a couple hundred kilometers from the Russian Ukraine border. And due to sort of secular facts about the countries, the population, the economic size, etc. That renders Ukraine entirely reliant on foreign support, which we've just seen $90 billion shaken out of Europe. But this is

over the medium term going to go to the detriment of Ukraine. So I think that's, what we're asking ourselves is who can suffer longer with more success. And I think that given the history of wars of attrition with Russia, it's a very sort of dire situation for Ukraine to find itself in. Angela Stant, dire situation. Is that how Vladimir Putin sees it? He does, and he thinks that if he keeps up the bombing, and they've been bombing Ukraine more in the past few months than they had even, you know, in the last year, he thinks he can break the will of the Ukrainian people.

He thinks Russia is still winning, that it can win this war of attrition. So he is ready to go on, you know, prosecuting this war on bombing, as long as he's he has to, and then trying to appease the U.S. administration and make them believe that he's serious about negotiation. We'll certainly get to the U.S. administration in a second, but Bill Taylor, can Putin break the will of Ukraine to keep fighting? Nick, I don't think he can. He's tried for four years, coming up on four years this month.

They don't show signs of breaking. You talk to the people individually. Every time I go, I talk to the soldiers, I talk to civilians, I thought people in the government, out with the government, old friends. Some articles about parties on the NEPRO. On the river, this is, these people are, they know, Nick, that if they lose, there's no Ukraine. They know that they have to win a prevail. Stop the Russians.

So Mike Koffin, let's examine this militarily. Russia's advanced in parts of eastern Ukraine. I read this recently, slower than some of the most brutally slow offensive than World War I. and those are kind of historically slow. But we see China continuing to support Russia's defense industrial base. Can Russia keep going indefinitely? And could any military or economic pressure on Putin get him to change course? So I think the first challenge for Russia is ultimately economic sustainability of the war,

which is that Russian economy is facing a period of stagnation now. Energy prices are low, and Russia faces increasing pressure from sanctions and constraints on shadow fleet of tankers that he uses to end. export its energy. The second one is increasingly the Russian military effort is also reaching a degree of diminishing returns, right? They're taking heavy casualties relative to recruitment. They are bombarding Ukraine heavily, and you see a strong focus on Ukraine's energy infrastructure this winter. This is a particularly cold winter compared to the last two. But if Ukrainian world doesn't break as we get into the spring, what next? The real challenge the Russia has,

from my point of view, isn't just so much sustainability, is that even if it's tactically more successful this year, marginally more successful, it's very hard for them to get from their current military means and abilities to their political goals in this war. There's just been a fundamental mismatch between the military means and Russia's goals. Mismatch, but Angela, I mean, politically, Putin's all in, right? He is all in, but I mean his major goal is still to subjugate Ukraine, control it, and have veto power over its foreign policy choices going forward. And in this war of Trishen, he's nowhere near accomplishing that.

And as Mike has said, I mean, the Ukrainians will hold. hold out, they're fighting back. The vast majority of the population supports continuing this war. Ambassador Taylor, why is it in U.S. interest to keep as much U.S. support to Ukraine as possible, in your opinion? Nick, we want to see the Ukrainians stop the Russians in Ukraine. The Europeans want to see the Ukrainians stop the Russians in Ukraine as a threat to them. I mean, Russia is a clear threat to the Europeans. They understand, and the Europeans are stepping up. You already mentioned the $100 billion loan that the Europeans have recently come up with

and the continued funds. They understand the threat. We do too. It's important for us, if we want to live in a world where big neighbors invade little neighbors, then Russia prevails. But that's not the world we want to live in. Justin, is that you see it?

I think any settlement of this conflict is going to be really bad. I think that the best possible settlement of the conflict is going to be bad, although less so than the worst possible one. We're talking about Ukraine stopping Russia inside Ukraine. I think that's certain. I don't think that Russia is going to take Kiev and install a satrip that will do what it says.

So now we're talking about, you know, Putin is demanding the rest of the Donbos, for example, that it doesn't militarily control today. What level of effort, what amount of cost should the United States be willing to incur to try to ensure that it can't capture the rest of the Donbos? And I think that's, you know, a question looked at from the point of view of how Americans live at home, where it becomes much more tendentious. I don't know how much we should be willing to spend. Well, to that last point, I mean, again, you told a colleague in mind that the U.S. priorities should be getting out of this war. Why is that?

That's exactly right. The United States has spent by the time all of a sudden done north of $100 billion, probably approaching $200 billion in terms of the war thus far. The rebuilding effort, estimates vary, but $750 billion has been bandied about. It's not entirely clear who's going to be paying for this. And it is drawing hugely on fungible resources that the Americans have in the American military. Air defenses, for example, have been drawn down dramatically, both in the Ukraine theater and in the Middle East, to the point that there was an article several months ago that showed that to fulfill existing U.S. defense plans, we have about 25% of the required air defenses to do so.

We're in this realm of resource scarcity that people like us don't like or aren't accustomed to. Are there bigger priorities in Ukraine? There are big priorities in Ukraine that don't demand U.S. soldiers. They don't demand major contributions from the United States. They're not asking for soldiers. They are asking for continued support.

And we are even selling. You know, we're not providing the money for the weapons, we are selling them to the Europeans to provide to the Ukraine. But what Justin's saying is, I mean, his fundamental point is that this is just not a U.S. priority. This is a clear U.S. priority. This is the largest war in Europe since World War II. This is a challenge to the United States, not just our leadership, but also the European structure that we've put together. That makes us stronger. It makes us a lot stronger. We lose that, and we're much weaker. Let's go to U.S. policy. Trump administration has continued to provide Ukraine intelligence

throughout the war, as we've just been talking about, not drawing down its weapons from U.S. stocks, but instead selling them to Europe so they could go to Ukraine. But the priority of this administration has clearly been a negotiated settlement, including in recent days in Abu Dhabi and trilateral talks. The key sticking point remains the map. Let's take a look at the map. The territory in eastern Ukraine, the part of Donbass, Donets, specifically in the gray right next to Donbass, where you see.

Ukraine still holds that territory despite 11 years of Russia trying to seize it. It's about the size of Delaware. The second sticking point is the Zaporizia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest power plant currently occupied by Russia. Ukraine wants it back. The U.S. wants it split. Bill Taylor, do you see any sign that Russia is serious about negotiating? No. No.

We can see that, Nick, you've already described, the bombardment every night. They're not serious about this. What Putin wants, exactly what Angela said earlier. He wants to dominate Ukraine. And if he can use this fake negotiations, his sham negotiations, these pretend negotiations, and look like he's serious, what he's trying to do, then he can continue to grind. He thinks, as Michael has said, he thinks he can wait us out. He thinks he can weight out the Europeans, the Americans.

He thinks he can break the Ukrainians, and he can't. Angela, are these sham negotiators? Yeah, I mean, this is entirely performative. You can go back to Soviet negotiating tactics, post-Soviet. You negotiate. So you have a process. You wear people down. And again, I think Putin wants to humor President Trump

because he doesn't want the Trump administration to take more punitive actions against Russia. But, you know, the Russians are still talking about a 28-point peace plan that was apparently agreed to between the U.S. and Russia. Which then Secretary Rubio claimed was a Russian plan to partially kill it. And we now have, we, the U.S., Europe and Ukraine, a 20-point plan, which the Russians won't even address or they just reject it. And every time Mr. Whitkoff comes out and says, oh, we've made some progress, constructive discussions, the next day, Putin or Lavrov or one of his other, or Ushakov, one of his other colleagues will say, no, no, no, no. our demands are the same, maximum demands, total withdrawal from the parts of the Donbust that Ukraine controls, denartification, whatever that means.

So I, and then this Anchorage formula that they talk about, that apparently they think they agreed to in this Anchorage summit with President Trump, but no American official has officially said that something like that exists. So it's obfuscation as well. There's a conventional wisdom, as we all know, that criticizes President Trump for being too nice to Zelensky and too hard. Sorry, too nice to Putin and too hard on Zelensky. And there was a recent interview he did with Reuters just a couple weeks ago, where he said this. I think he, Putin, is ready to make a deal. I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal.

And asked why negotiations have not resolved the war, Trump responded with one word, Zelensky. That is why he felt that the war has not ended. Justin Logan, in your opinion, has U.S. pressure on Ukraine been fair? Has it been useful? It's clearly been useful. I mean, if you look at the evolution of the Ukrainian position from the time Trump took office to the place we are today, it's fundamentally in a different place. They're negotiating on basically every axis that they're asked to do so.

But I think this entire discussion has been set up well in the sense that you have these two separate tracks of diplomacy. You have U.S. Russian diplomacy happening, and then U.S. diplomacy with Ukraine, with the Europeans there sometimes and not there at other times. Well, all of those parties are interested parties, but the two most interested parties are the ones that are going to need to reconcile with one another. And I think that keeping those tracks somewhat separate is a big part of the problem. But it sounds like you think that the pressure on Zelensky has achieved results and hasn't been a bad thing. I don't even think it's arguable.

You're right to bring up pressure. And Angela has mentioned that Putin knows that Trump has leverage on him. Putin knows that. When Trump was thinking out loud last fall about providing tomahawks to the Ukrainians, Putin got on the phone at Whitkoff's suggestion, by the way, the day before Zelensky was going to be in the Oval Office. And Putin talked Trump out of it. But the message there, Nick, was he was worried.

Putin was really worried about those tomahawks going to the Ukraine. Same thing, actually, when Trump put the secondary tariffs on the Indians for buying Russian oil. And has now announced since that India will not buy Russian oil. So it was affected, it was affected. But the point is, when he announced it, Putin panicked again. Putin knows that Trump has leverage on him, and he doesn't want Trump to use that leverage. Mike, is there military leverage that can be used that you think should be used here? So I think the challenge we have is, like, material constraints.

At this point, people have provided a lot of what they have left to provide. We've already shifted the entire financial burden for the war to the Europeans. We're basically doing us at their expense. We are still providing intelligence in a great deal to Ukraine on a day-to-day basis. There are more things we could certainly provide. But there aren't the kind of things that would really truly be decisive in this war. I think a bigger shift would be sanctions enforcement, going after the shadow fleet, and going after Russia's ability to economically sustain the war.

We don't have a great deal in terms of magic bullets. We don't produce a lot of things in large numbers as much as people think we might, especially advanced air interceptors and these kind of capabilities the Ukrainians really want. I know they're frustrated with that, but these are our own defense industrial constraints. And so, Angela, to that point, I mean, if there's no military magic bullet, politically, there's no magic bullet to convince Putin there either, right? So it's kind of difficult to get Putin to actually change behavior, right? Oh, it's extremely difficult to get him to do that.

But as Mike said, we could have tougher sanctions. You know, we read that the European Union now is thinking of imposing all sanctions on maritime services, which would really hit the Russians' ability to export a lot of what they're doing. Mike already said that their economy is really suffering from high inflation and from falling revenues, hard currency revenues. So there is more, and we could sanction more of the banks. We haven't done as much as that as we can. So I think that probably is the only way.

And Zelensky, of course, has been asking for more pressure since day one, often achieving that a little bit later than when he asked for it. But he hasn't really been able to convince Trump to put this pressure on. He recently went to Davos, Zelensky, and he was encouraging Europeans, Western Europeans, to step up. But he really said that about Trump, what you see is what you get. Europe looks lost trying to convince the U.S. President to change. But he will not change.

President Trump loves who he is. And he says he loves Europe, but he will not listen to this kind of Europe. President Trump loves who he is. Bill Taylor, you perhaps more than anyone on the planet know how Trump and Zelensky have interacted behind closed doors. shouldn't laugh. But what is Zelensky saying? So Zelensky is saying that the Europeans have to step up more than they have. That they need to prepare themselves for the time when the Americans are not there.

He's probably right. President Trump may not change. He likes who he is. But there's a lot of changing within who he is. But the Europeans need to step up, build up, provide the kind of weapons, provide the defense industrial base that needed. So that's what Zelensky, I think, was saying to the Europeans. That is such a key question, of course, because not only, as we've been talking about, U.S. weapons aren't being drawn down, they're being sold to Europe. Europe knows that it needs to step up, its own defense industrial base. NATO says that, look, Russia could be a threat to all of NATO within the next few years. And it's Mark Ruta, the Secretary General, who's emerged as a kind of Trump whisperer a little bit, keeping Trump in NATO, helping Trump get through a big

Defense industrial percentage increase up to 5%. And the question that is being asked in Europe right now is will the U.S. maintain support in Ukraine and maintain support in NATO. And to that, Mark Ruta came down emphatically just a few days ago and said Europe still needs the United States. If anyone thinks here, again, that the European Union or a Europe as a whole

can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can't. In that scenario, you would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So, hey, good luck. Good luck to you. Mike Kaufman, can Europe do this without U.S. support? Does Europe have a choice? No.

I mean, he's absolutely right. So here's the truth. European militaries evolved to work alongside the U.S. military. By themselves, European militaries don't have the ability to conduct large-scale combat operations in Europe. That's a feature. That's the result of many years of all us. working together in NATO, okay? And it's not going to just get solved

with increased defense spending. There's a lot of things that the United States provides. There's a lot of things that American leadership provides in Europe that will take many years for Europe to try to develop on their own. They're not easily replaceable. Should Europe aspire to do that? Absolutely.

Should Europe take the burden for trying to manage security on their content? I most definitely agree. But Roots right, this is aspirational. This is designed to lead them to make the right choices and the right spending priorities on defense. This is not something that Europe can just do. And people need to understand that Excel spreadsheets don't fight.

You cannot just get lots of European forces on paper and cobble them together into the ability to fight Russia on their own without the United States. I've sort of been the dark cloud here today, so let me be a little bit sunny. Ruta was responding to Stubb, the leader of Finland, who had said previously, of course Europe can do this. And Mike's quite right that if we blink our eyes and say, can Europe, if they're in an all-out war with Russia, would it go swimmingly today? The answer is no, but I don't think that's the relevant question here.

The relevant question is, given the industrial base, given the economic size, given the population, is this the manageable problem for Europe to take on? And I basically say, yes, there are all sorts of doctrinal changes that need to happen. They need to get commanders who've had command of larger forces than European militaries have thus far. But these are problems that can and should be solved. And so there's a need for a sense of urgency, not I think Ruta was defending NATO as an institution. I totally agree. I totally agree.

You thought we were going to just... We were supposed to fight it. Because we're not talking about... Mike's of course right. If it's today, no. But if we're talking about what needs to happen, this is what needs to happen. The Europeans need to step up.

This is what Zelensky said. There long talk about a European pillar. Long time. I served in NATO, you know, in the Cold War. We were talking about a European pillar then. Now there's something serious. Mike's right. They can work together.

These pillars can work together. eventually, but for the moment, and in this terrible war of attrition that we're in, it's not going to help. Not going to help Ukraine today. Exactly. Right. You mean, Ukraine still needs American weapons, still needs American intelligence, still needs a network of American satellites to peer over Russia.

Ultimately, Ukraine is so vulnerable if the U.S. pulls that. That's the idea, right? Yeah, that's the idea. And if you look at the different security guarantees that the West has worked out, and at the moment it looks as if there will be, and this was reiterated again, there would be a U.S. backstop were European troops there were if a ceasefire happened. You know, Zelensky has talked about Article 5 type guarantees after the war is over, which the U.S. would guarantee, who knows, whether that will happen.

But for the moment, the U.S. has to remain involved in this. I think Zayansky is trying to imagine a Europe that isn't there right now and won't be for a very long time. The reality is that there's no guarantee that any amount of increased defense spending in Europe, is going to lead to any of them building the kind of capabilities they need to substitute American military power on the continent. There's a good chance against spending on their industry, buy a lot of things to duplicate capabilities they already have or that we have. And it's still not clear what's the common defense planning process in Europe, who's going to replace the United States. One advantage of the United States brings that it's not a European power to begin with, right?

That's been the post-World War II advantage of American military presence and contribution to managing European security. And I know the United States would like to shift that burden as much to Europeans as possible, but a lot of people are simply not realistic about the timelines for it. It's sort of everybody agrees, but they also don't quite understand the process that it would require. Europe would have to get serious about this, not just have a 5% commitment, we'll be on the timelines of a Trump administration. 10%? That they might, well, they can give any number they want. There's no evidence they're going to actually do it. But, and Justin, does that bring us back to your concern that, you know, basically there needs to be a deal, otherwise there's no clear path for Ukraine moving forward.

Yeah, and just to go back to my dark cloud nature, I think the devil really is in the details on this question of security guarantees. We're all talking about security guarantees. Zelensky is, though, it's all in the back. Well, part of the reason this war started in the first place was Putin's fear that the United States was prying Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence.

And if there were Article 5 like security guarantees, the United States has demonstrated under two different presidents that we don't feel like we have an interest in Ukraine worth fighting Russia over. And the Europeans are doing this sort of back and forth, oh, we're going to be a deterrence, a reassurance force, but we're going to be all the way in the West in very small numbers. So I think there's real, the devil's really in the details. Well, and also, as you've said, or if you question whether a U.S. Article 5 like guarantee would be even credible. But Bill Taylor, quickly, last word, because should the U.S. give a security guarantee very quickly?

We just got a couple seconds. Yes, I think they should. And they've said they were going to. And not only that, Nick, they said they're going to submit it to the Congress or the Senate, make it legally binding. I'm hearing that directly, so I think that's a good move. Guys, thank you so much. Really appreciate you all being here. And thank you for joining us.

I'm Nick Schiffran. We'll see you here again next week. I'm Compass Points.