The Current - Trump wages war of words against Zelenskyy

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war with Russia — and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator.” Guest host Peter Armstrong talks to The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov about mounting tensions, and fears of wider war in Europe.

We have an expression in our newsroom on days when the updates won't stop coming. We say, it's like drinking from a fire hose. So if you're one of those people who needs to take a break from the news every now and then, believe me, we get it. But we've got you when it's time to dip a toe back in. Join me, John Northcott. And me, Marcia Young, for the 10 minutes of news you need to start your day. CBC's World Report. Find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current, wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using.

There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. If you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that, appreciate it,

and onto today's show. The relationship between the United States and Ukraine seems to be unraveling at breakneck speed. First, Russia and the US started talks about the war without Ukraine at the table. US President Donald Trump projected confidence, but also frustration at Ukraine. I think I have the power to end this war and I

think it's going very well. But today I heard, Oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. In response, Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky accused Trump of living in a quote, disinformation space controlled by Russia, particularly because of that false claim that it was

Ukraine that started the war. Trump shot back again, calling Zelensky a dictator who has done a terrible job. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He's also written several books, including his new historical novel called No Country for Love. He joins us this morning from Chicago. Yaroslav, good morning.

Great to be on the show. Good morning. President Trump has been saying a lot of things that probably can't be very easy for a lot of people from Ukraine to hear, calling Ukraine's elected leader a dictator. How do you react to that? Well, how do you react to that? Well, you know, how do you react to this?

Uh, obviously Zarensky has been reacting to this and engaged in a tit for tat. He said that Trump is living in this information space after Trump, uh, basically said that the Ukraine had started the war, which began with an unprovoked Russian invasion, uh, almost three years ago. This, the fact is that, uh, Ukraine needs American help. American help is critical for the country's survival. And, uh, so, uh, it will try to find its way out of this crisis and to continue negotiations, you know, Trump's special envoy, general Keith Kellogg

was in Kiev just the other day meeting Zelensky, the U S canceled the press conference that we're supposed to have together. So clearly there is a crisis and, but it's a broader crisis. It's not just about Ukraine. What we're seeing now is that President Trump has upended, you know, decades of American foreign policy and it's a swift U-turn and is really embracing President Vladimir Putin of Russia and the Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine and the world in general.

And while at the same time, dispatching his vice president and JD Vance to Europe, to Munich last week, to tell the Europeans that we don't really share your values, you know, and the way you run your countries is a bigger threat to you than Russia. So that's a huge shift in the geopolitical setup of the world that will have long lasting consequences. And we're seeing it only now, you know, the likely future chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, just today, you know, said that, well, you know what? You know, we don't really believe that the US will come to defend us.

So maybe French and British nuclear weapons could also be shared with us. So, and in some kind of, you know, European nuclear umbrella, and that's a giant departure from traditional German foreign policy. I mean, the sands are clearly shifting underfoot, which raises a whole bunch of questions. And I think court, all of them is the fundamental question of whether Ukraine can consider the

United States its ally right now. Do you think it can? Well, you know, right now it's just words. So, yes, there have been insults heaved at President Zelensky, but American weapons currently are still flowing to Ukraine. American intelligence sharing is continuing. And so that hasn't stopped. Obviously, all of this is weapons packages authorized by Congress previously. There is little appetite, I think, for new funding in the current Congress. But right now, I think for new funding in the current Congress. Uh, uh, but right now, you know, the situation on the ground has not changed yet, but obviously president Trump is pressing for a very quick deal, uh, with Russia on a

ceasefire, a deal that would probably, you know, be very much Russian terms. And that is worrying, uh, not just the Ukrainians, but also the Europeans. You know, the mood in Europe is that, uh. You know, the fear in Europe is that any pause in Ukraine that will allow Russia to rearm, regroup, and to prepare for the next round would inevitably lead to Russia probing Europe itself, probing defenses of countries in the European Union and in NATO, especially as the belief that the US will stand up for Europe is

really shriveling. And, you know, once, once, once that deterrence is gone, it's going to be very hard to restore it. It's been fascinating to listen to Europeans talk about sort of what this shift means and might mean going forward. What is your sense of how the European sort of leadership, you mentioned there's probably a change sense of how the European sort of leadership,

you mentioned there's probably a change coming in Germany, but outside of that, how are European leaders absorbing this new tone? Well, I was in Munich when Vice President JD Vance gave his lecture to the Europeans about how democracies are flawed. And, you know, there was shock. There was clear shock, because yes, people were, you know, there was shock. There was clear shock, because, yes,

people were, you know, they heard what President Trump was saying his first term, they were ready for some sort of crisis in relations, they didn't expect this magnitude. And, well, now they have to act. And some European countries have been acting. Poland, for example, has, you know, spending four and a half percent of its GDP on the military and is building up a powerful military force. Others have not been spending as much. And, you know, now the debate is also, you know, what do you spend it on? I mean, can you afford to spend your money on American weapons if you don't know if America will allow you to use them. If America is going to be on your side. So in Denmark, for example, just after Munich announced a massive increase in funding for defense to be spent on Danish and European

weapons manufacturers. So there is a new sense of urgency, but it's clearly not enough. Because if you look at the balance of forces now, you know, Ukraine has about a million men and women under arms, you know, fighting a larger and more powerful Russian military and keeping it, it's more or less a standstill for the last year and a half, the front line barely budged. That is more than the entire military's, the entire army's combined of army is combined of the kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and throw in a few other nations. So right now, and that's also much more capable because the Ukrainian military is one of only two militaries in the world today that has this vast experience of combat against

a modern sophisticated near peer force, the other one being the Russian military. And none of the European military knows that. The US military has not fought against a near-peer adversary since World War II probably. And so, Ukraine now serves as the shield of Europe. And if that shield collapses, Europe will be in trouble and European politicians know that. And I think with that in mind, France convened this emergency meeting of some European countries this week, including the UK's British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, who said that Europe

is facing what he called an existential moment. Let's take a listen. This is a once in a generation moment for the collective security of our continent. That all sounds well and good, but how much actual consensus is there in Europe about how to respond to all this? Well, you know, there is certainly more sense of urgency, but you know, it's hard because, you know, if you have to spend more in defense, you have to spend less on your schools and your hospitals and your roads. And for countries on Russia's borders, like Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, that's

very clear choice because they're very survival at stake. If you're in Portugal or in Greece, you kind of far away. And so it's harder to convince your electorates. But there is this movement. But if you remember how it all started in 2022, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, also announced it's called Seitenwende, the change of time in which Germany will finally

start spending on defense and massively build its armed forces. And he said it in the expectation of Ukraine collapsing. But then Ukraine didn't collapse. And so Germany didn't have to spend all this money because it was Ukraine fighting to destroy the Russian military

and the capacities of the Russian armed forces. And so time hasn't been lost. The time that Ukraine has given to the rest of Europe, this breather, has been wasted to a large extent. And if you talk to European military planners, they would tell you that they have the year 2029 on their calendars as the year when they think Russia will be sufficiently strong to actually attack an 82-member country. And it's not that far away. And that also presumes, that planning presumes some sort of continuity in the transatlantic alliance, which is also

not a given anymore. You've written quite a bit about this idea of spheres of influence and how those might be shifting again. How much do you think that idea is driving the American and Russian approaches right now? Well, I mean, it has always been Russia's approach. Putin is a very unabashed 19th century imperialist. You know, he said in public, you know, during the celebrations of the anniversary of the emperor Peter the Great that, you know, he sees himself as his heir, you know,

collecting Russian lands again. And he named it the town of Marba in Estonia, which is a member of NATO and the EU is one of those Russian lands, for example. That has not been American foreign policy for the past 100 years. But now President Trump, for reopening talks in the same language, his officials publicly say that he is restoring the Monroe Doctrine 2.0. He's laying claim on Greenland, on Canada, on the Panama Canal. And you know, with the same sort of Putin language of saying, well, you know, we just need the mineral resources, you know, it's now national interest to have it. That's it, you know, it's the power of the strong. So you have this return to, you know, might makes right approach to foreign affairs that seemed to have been phased

away at least from public language since then of World War II when the creation of United Nations was chartered says, you're not supposed to be invading other countries or threatening to invade other countries. You know, that we're getting reporting about like American intelligence. NBC was reporting earlier this week that there's intelligence from the United States and its close allies showing quite clearly that Russian president Vladimir Putin is not actually interested in negotiating a deal, that he still wants to control all of Ukraine and has designs beyond that. What do you think,

not just of the intelligence, but what it means that we're getting that from American intelligence sources amidst all of this? Well, you don't really need intelligence for that. I mean, Russian officials are saying it publicly on TV every day. They say that, including on American TV, when Vladimir Putin went on Tucker Carlson's show, he said that Ukraine is not a real country,

it shouldn't exist. And the Ukrainian identity was invented Tucker Carlson's show, he said that Ukraine is not a real country, it shouldn't exist. The Ukrainian identity was invented by the Austro-Hungarian general staff in World War I, and Kiev is a Russian city. So you don't really need to have intelligence sources for that. And it's clear from my talking to European defense intelligence officials that that's certain that just looking know, just looking at the amount of military spending with Russia has, it's spending, you know, 40% of its budget on

the military and spending 10% of the GDP on the military. You know, Canada is spending, you know, under 2% just for comparison, well under 2%. And so if you look at that, you know, this is not the kind of military built up you need to trust for the war with Ukraine. You know, it feels like the Americans have a bunch of different aims and different people within parts of the administration have different ideas about how to proceed. That's not the case on the Russian side. You've got Sergey Lavrov and you've got Vladimir Putin with very clear aims and a very clear path, they think, to get there.

You've posted on social media that Russia's looking to play Trump for a fool. What do you make of the dynamic between the two sides and the clarity of what each of them might want in this moment? Well, you know, in Russia it's President Putin who decides everything. Foreign Minister Lavrov did not know about his plan to invade Ukraine until the invasion began, pretty much. So, you know, he kept denying it in all sincerity up until, you know, a few hours before

the D-Day. Now, the goals of the Trump administration are, you know, there are several tracks to it. They on one level, you have this genuine fascination that Trump has always had with Putin and, you know, envy, perhaps, of the vast powers that Putin has in his own country. If you talk to strategists in Washington who are perhaps more rational, so the rational argument for all of this is that the US is now facing this axis of autocracies, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, that came together as a result of the war in Ukraine. And so the US doesn't have the strength to deal with all of them at the same time. And so you need to sort of split that bond and pry away one or the other. And so the, you

know, since China is a strategic rival, then it's easier to appease Russia and try to move Russia away from that alliance. Obviously, it's, you know, lots of other people tell you it's a fool's errand because Russia's bond with China is permanent and strategic and they share the world's longest border and they're economically integrated. They have an alignment of ideologies and geopolitical goals. And also President Putin knows that, you know, Trump will most likely be gone in four years time. You know, he cannot serve another term. And the next president in four years time, you know, we cannot serve another term. And the next president in the US could, you know, have a very different Russia policy, whereas nothing will change in Beijing. I'm Dina Temple-Reston, the host of the Click Here podcast from Record of Future News.

Twice a week, we tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. And these days, our digital world is being overrun by hackers. I was just targeted by a nation state. And they range from reflective. It's a crime, bro. And I live with that every day. To ruthless. Do you feel guilty about it? No, not really. Click here from Recorded Future News. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. I want to ask you about your book, No Country for Love.

It tells the history of Ukraine through the story of your grandmother. How does that history inform how people in Ukraine see things right now? Well, you know, Ukraine was probably the deadliest place on earth in the middle of the 20th century. And it had a famine that was orchestrated by Moscow, an artificial famine that killed upwards of 4 million people. And there was the war, the Holocaust, the insurgency after the war. So all in all, about 15 million people died in these tragedies in Ukraine. At the time of the population was barely 30 million.

So the odds of survival were pretty low and to survive in this meat grinder of history, as Ukrainians call it, people had to do lots of unsavory things, you know, moral compromises, they were living in a totalitarian system, well, too squeezed between the Nazi Germany and the totalitarian Soviet Union. And then that memory was banned, because you could not talk honestly about the past in the Soviet regime. But all of us who were born in Ukraine, carrying our genes, this historical trauma and these tales that were told to us by our great parents, great grandparents, sometimes whispering, sometimes in secret, because it was dangerous to do so. They were ashamed to talk about what they had done to survive.

And so my book is based on the real life story of my grandmother, was a Jewish woman from central Ukraine who survived all that. And I think the motivation that the Ukrainians have today in this fight against the Russians is because they remember what happened last time the Russians were around. And this history is very much around today. So the Ukrainian motivation is we will never allow it to happen again, never again. And the Russians say we can repeat.

And it also never happened. And it's just one example, you know, whenever Russian forces enter a Ukrainian town to occupy it, they destroy the monument to the victims of the famine of the 1930s, the Holodomor, because in the Russian official narrative, it never really happened and never really targeted Ukrainians. So there is this war on physical memory now. And the war itself, you know, let's not forget it. It began with a historical essay by President Putin who argued in July 2021 that the Ukrainians are Russians and the Ukraine never existed. And this is an essay that was read to every member of the Russian armed forces before

the invasion began. So my book is trying to restore this Ukrainian history that is so little known in the outside world by design because Russia made sure over the centuries that people could not tell the truth about what really happened in Ukraine. But it's also obviously a novel. So it's a love story, it's a murder mystery, and it's a psychological tale of how a young woman, innocent, full of hopes and optimism is confronted by this crush on reality and how her soul gets crushed in the meantime and all the compromises and terrible moral choices

she has to make to survive herself and to make sure that others around her survive her children, for example. I've only got about a minute left, but the book does this beautiful job of sort of depicting just how normalized war can become. There's a character in the book that says at one point, children are supposed to live better than their parents. With that in mind, and just in closing, how optimistic do people in Ukraine feel right now about the future that their children

will inherit? Well, you know, there's a Ukrainian song from the 1940s and it goes like this, you know, crying has never bought freedom for anyone, but those who fight will gain the world. So you know, it's no point getting depressed. Ukraine was in the worst spot three years ago when everybody thought that it would collapse in three days and there was no real help forthcoming at the time and it didn't collapse and it stood its ground. So, people have no choice, but keep on fighting. What else can they do?

They cannot surrender because they know it's going to be worse. Well, listen, we really appreciate all your reporting on this. Your book is amazing and it's really nice of you to be able to make time to speak with us this morning. Thank you for this. Great to be on the show.

Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, A Novel, is called No Country for Love. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.