The Daily Signal - Bonus: The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Explained

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Could the conflict between Russia and Ukraine turn into a long-term war in Europe? Is World War III on the horizon? How will America be affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? And what can China��s response to the situation tell us? Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to answer these questions and explain what Russia ultimately hopes to achieve from the invasion. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news organization.) America, and many European nations, likely will face significant challenges because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict Coffey says, because it “doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see how this conflict could spill over, could spiral out of control.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Russia has just invaded Ukraine. This is a daily signal bonus episode, and today I am joined by Luke Coffey, Heritage Foundation Director for the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy. Luke joins the show to discuss the details of this invasion, what you need to know, and the impact that this is going to have on Europe and America. Take a listen. What is happening in Ukraine right now? Here with us to break it all down, is the Heritage Foundation Director for the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy, Luke, thank you so much for being here. Welcome back. Thanks for having me on again.

So this is a rapidly developing situation. President Joe Biden spoke this afternoon about the latest what is happening in Ukraine between Russia and Ukraine. Russia has sent troops into eastern Ukraine. Luke, do we know how many troops have entered Ukraine and then then should we be considering this an invasion? Can we call this an invasion? Well, it's absolutely an invasion. When you have soldiers and troops that enter another country's territory without any, you know, formal permission, I don't know what that could be other than an invasion,

even though for at least the first 24 hours so far, the White House has been unclear on what those troops, Russian troops, are actually doing, whether it's an invasion or not. But right now, I would say, you know, according to open source estimates, there are about 10,000 Russian troops that have entered into eastern Ukraine. Yes, this is, I would say, the second invasion of Ukraine since 2014. 2014 was the first invasion. But I think what we're seeing now is at the tip of the iceberg on what we're going to

see militarily in the coming days. basically what Russia has done is formalize an arrangement that has already been in practice since 2014. I mean, Russia has already controlled this section of eastern Ukraine since 2014. It is well known there were Russian troops there, although Russia never admitted publicly that there were. And now it's stated publicly that, yes, indeed there are Russian troops. They're serving as so-called peacekeepers. Okay. So explain this a little bit further.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, he's recognized the independence of these two regions of eastern Ukraine. So what exactly does that mean? What's going on here? Well, we have to back up just a little bit on this. At the end of 2013, the Ukrainian president at the time, President Yanukovych decided to sign a free trade deal with Europe. Russia didn't like that. and President Yanukovych was very close to the Kremlin. And the Kremlin put pressure on him to change his mind. And he did. And the Ukrainian people didn't like this.

And by the end of 2013 and early 2014, the Ukrainian people started to rise up. And they ousted President Yanukovych. And he fled to Russia, in fact. And his government was replaced. At that time, Russia was very nervous by this. They thought that they had a good conclusion. control over Ukraine. They were surprised that the Ukrainian people would feel so passionately about a trade agreement with the rest of Europe. And Russia decided to act. And what they did was they

invaded and occupied part of Ukraine called the Crimean Peninsula, which equates to about six or seven percent of Ukraine's territory. It's a significant chunk of land. And then they started, the Russian started a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine in two regions, one called Luhansk, and one called Donetsk. And before 2014, there was no separatist movement in this region. And since then, since 2014, what we've seen is this frozen conflict between Ukraine and these Russian-backed separatists and the Russian forces who were in these two regions undercover over the past eight years.

Now, what happened over the weekend was the Russian parliament. It's called the Russian Duma requested to President Putin that he recognizes the independence of these two so-called countries. One is called the People's Republic of Lujansk. The other one is called the People's Republic of Donetsk. And then yesterday, Vladimir Putin agreed to recognize the independence and then moved in peacekeepers. Now, the only, reportedly, the only other countries in the world that have recognized the independence of these two fictitious countries is Syria. And it's also rumored that Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela has also done so. But it is a direct violation of international law.

And these two so-called independent countries are, in fact, internationally. recognize as being part of Ukraine. So that's where we are today. Russia has essentially moved in troops to protect what they see as being two new countries that have requested Russian support. Okay. So as those troops over the weekend moved into Ukraine, was there a firefight? Or because of that back history, was there actually just sort of opened doors and the Russian troops were able to just walk right in and- Well, as I said, Russian troops have been going in and out of this region. for eight years, but there has been an uptick in ceasefire violations and fighting along the front lines between Luhansk and Donetsk.

Collectively, this region is called the Donbos. So you might hear this term Donbass, and when people say Donbos, they're referring to this part of Eastern Ukraine, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk. So along the front lines in the Donbos, there has been an uptick in fighting, mainly artillery. There's been some false flag operations over the past week or so where Russia has orchestrated these attacks inside Luhansk and Donasque, whether it's the, you know, shelling of a gas pipeline or the attempted assassination of one of the leaders of Donasque. But opens as a way to try to justify military intervention, like they're blaming the Ukrainians for. for these actions. But in this day and age,

with all the internet, the geolocating and the internet sleuths that are out there, many of these false flags, these alleged attacks, have been debunked. Okay.

Using metadata or geolocating or, you know, the tools like this. So that's, so they, they didn't sort of march in under fire like you would see on a Hollywood movie

in terms of an invasion, but they have, definitely moved in into territory that is internationally recognized as being Ukrainian. Now, the big problem for Ukraine and the big question mark is how much further is Russia going to go? They have recognized these two entities as independent countries, Luhansk and Donetsk, but they've done so using the existing provincial borders inside Ukraine. So, Lujansk is a province in Ukraine and Donetsk is a province in Ukraine, but the separatists don't control each province in full.

It would be like, take Virginia, for example, it would be like separatists controlling northern Virginia down to, let's say, Richmond, and then the rest of Virginia is, you know, controlled by the government. That's what's happening in Lujansk and Don't ask. Part of the province is controlled by the separatists, but most of it is controlled. by the government, the Ukrainian government. So would Russia take the steps to push the Ukrainian authorities out beyond the borders of the provinces, that remains to be seen? And what is the response that we are seeing from the international community right now? Because we

know that the U.S., Germany, Great Britain, they've all said if Russia invades Ukraine, we're going to lay heavy sanctions on Russia. So what's the latest on the sanctions situation? How of any of these countries, including the U.S., put sanctions on Russia because of its actions in Ukraine? Well, it's been a mixed bag so far. I would say the toughest response has actually come from Germany, where the chancellor announced that Germany was going to stop with the certification process of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Now, this was a pipeline that was designed to deliver natural gas directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, and not bypassing any other any of the other countries in Eastern Europe.

And this was very unpopular in Central and Eastern Europe for a number of reasons, mainly because they felt like it gave Russia too much control over Europe's energy market and also gave Germany too much control on accessing the European energy market. When Biden came into office, he lifted the sanctions that Trump had in place

regarding Nord Stream 2 and decided to green. light the project as a way to try to improve relations with Germany. But it looks like that Germany has now decided that because of Russia's actions, as part of the response, they're stopping the certification process of Nord Stream 2 and that pipeline as of right now will not be used. From the United Kingdom, we've seen a fairly robust response, but I was slightly disappointed. I felt like they could have gone further. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today that five Russian banks and three Russian oligarchs

will be added to international economic sanctions. But the problem is there are many more Russian banks that are bigger and more influential that should be sanctioned, in my opinion. And these three Russian oligarchs have already been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. And I think Boris Johnson, when he gave a speech today in the House of Commons, realized that he wasn't in line with the mood of the House of Commons that people were expecting more. So I wouldn't be surprised in the next few days we see more sanctions coming from the UK. And then for the United States, as of the time that we're recording this podcast, we've only heard about very limited sanctions coming from the White House last night. President Biden signed an executive order, basically preventing Americans from doing business in either one of these occupied regions of Luhansk or Don't Ask.

So I'm not sure what Americans were doing business there or how much business was being done. I can't imagine there was any at all. And if there was any, it was probably very insignificant. But this has been the lacklustre response so far. Now, of course, the President of the United States will be speaking later and perhaps. perhaps he'll announce more about at the time of us talking today, the response has been pretty weak from the White House. Yeah, obviously this is developing rapidly.

What would you like to see America's response be? I would like to see crippling economic sanctions that go from the top down. In the past, we have avoided targeting the most senior people in the Russian political establishment. We've only targeted middle or so ranking oligarchs. We should be sanctioning the foreign minister. We should be sanctioning President Putin himself, their defense minister, and all those senior officials close to them. They all like to educate their children in the West. In some cases, in a few cases, they literally keep their mistresses in the West. And they have children that live in the West. They like to keep their money in the West. They like to keep their money in the West.

to have their real estate portfolio, property portfolios in the West in London and New York and Paris. So we should be going after these assets. We should really be turning the screw on the Russian leadership to make them very uncomfortable. And we should also consider sectorial sanctions. So we should be sanctioning the whole of the banking sector. We should be sanctioning the whole of the oil and gas sector. We should be sanctioning the whole of, let's say, the mining sector. And we can perhaps give certain specific waivers if there's a U.S. interests involved. But otherwise, we should be sanctioning these whole sectors of industry. We have to raise the cost of Russia's aggression to the point where they will think twice about doing it again.

Because right now, Russia is using military force to change the borders in Europe in the 21st century. And this isn't something that has happened since World War II, for that matter. matter. So the price has to be there for Russia to do this sort of thing. And then finally, I would say we need to be arming Ukraine with advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. And we need to tell them that it's okay to fight the Russians. In 2014, when Russia first invaded, the Obama administration told the Ukrainians not to fight, just set back. We'll deal with this through diplomacy. Well, eight years later, clearly this has not happened. And now we are where we're we are today again with Russia. So we should be providing these weapons to our friends in Ukraine,

and we should be telling them it's okay to fight. Well, and literally, as you're talking, we're seeing that there's breaking news being announced on Twitter. The president is speaking right now, and he's saying that there will be new sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. So today, I'm announcing the first tranche of sanctions to impose costs on Russia in response to their actions yesterday. These have been closely coordinated with our allies and partners, and will continue to escalate sanctions if Russia escalates. We're implementing full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and their military bank. We're implementing comprehensive sanctions on Russian sovereign debt. That means we've cut off Russia's government

from Western financing. It can no longer raise money from the West, and and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either. Starting tomorrow and continuing in the days ahead, we'll also impose sanctions on Russia's elites and their family members. I want to talk a little bit about what exactly Russia's end game is here. What are they trying to get out of this ultimately? Ultimately, Russia wants to keep Ukraine out of the Euro-Atlanta community, so that means basically out of the out of the west and wants to keep them aligned with russia a lot of

people uh use nato enlargement as an excuse you know if well if it wasn't for nato adding new members then uh then russia wouldn't feel threatened well firstly when president putin gave his speech last night uh about his decision to recognize the so-called people's republic of louhansk the so-called People's Republic of Donetsk. He didn't mention the word NATO for the first 30 minutes of the speech. This is all about empire building. This is all about spreading Russian influence in a very imperial way, how Russia did during the time of the Tsar.

This isn't about, you know, this isn't like the Soviet times where the Soviet Union was trying to spread an ideology to spread communism. This is different. This is about building an empire. And for Russia and for the Russian political elite, they see themselves as being first and foremost European. And they understand that unless they control Belarus and control Ukraine and have great influence in Eastern Europe, then they're not European. They're merely an Asian country. And they don't like that idea.

So they see as their almost their obligation to control. Ukraine and their right to control Ukraine. But of course, Ukraine is an independent country. And while Ukrainians and the Russians may share many things in common, they, in terms of, you know, in some cases language and religion and they have close economic, where they used to have close economic links and cultural links, and even though they have a shared history, they have a distinct history and they're two distinct countries. And, you know, Russia should be respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine and respecting Ukraine's borders, not continuously trying to violate Ukraine's borders and sovereignty. And this is one of the paradoxes of this whole situation,

is that before Russia took these steps in 2014, there were many in Ukraine who like the idea of having close relations with Russia. You know, they wanted to trade with Europe, because this all started by a free trade deal discussion with Europe in 2013. They wanted to have trade with Europe because they wanted better economic opportunities, but they also didn't mind the idea of having good relations with Russia because of the history and the cultural links. But since 2014, Putin has done everything possible to undo this sentiment and these feelings from your average Ukrainian to the point where they almost detest Russia.

So in the in the in the in the in the in the in the long run Russia wants to absorb Ukraine and keep Ukraine under its sphere of influence look I want to get your reaction to something that um that president Biden has has said just said during his speech Tuesday afternoon to the American people speaking from the white house he said that that this is the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine it is that is that a right characterization? of what exactly is happening here? Is that correct language for the president to be using? Yes. I mean, look, not to split hairs, but this is the second invasion, right? The first invasion was in 2014, but this is certainly the, what we're seeing play out is the, you know, the opening salvos of Russia's newest invasion of Ukraine.

Okay. And I think it's only going to get worse from here. Russia has about 75% of, of its ground forces around Ukraine, about 50% of its aircraft within a single flight distance to Ukraine. And they've also assembled the largest naval flotilla in the Black Sea seen in modern history. Now, you don't do all of this just to kind of consolidate the gains you've had in eastern Ukraine since 2014. You're going to do more with this. And I'm glad that he's actually acknowledged that this is an evasion I'm not sure why he took the White House about 24 hours to come to this conclusion.

I mean, if you ask like a middle schooler, a pop quiz and he say, country X sends us troops to country Y, uninvited, what is that? I mean, it's pretty clear, you know, that what Russia has done is an invasion. The problem is it's not quite an invasion in the sense that we're used to on TV or in movies. And Russia is doing this strategically. They're doing this in a very incremental fashion. So they know that the Western response will also be incremental because there are only so many things we can sanction. There are only so many acts that we can take.

And so with each incremental step that Russia takes and with each incremental step that we take in response, our response almost inevitably looks weak because we try to keep it proportional to Russia's actions. So instead of, you know, Russia going big from the beginning, they do this in a very deliberate incremental process. Okay. I want to look a little bit to the future here.

So NATO Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg said that this situation between Russia and Ukraine is the most dangerous moment in European security for a generation. So does this have? have the potential to destabilize Europe? And could we see other nations aligns themselves with Russia or with Ukraine and this becoming one large long-term war? Are we looking at our World War III situation? Well, that remains to be seen. I do agree with the assessment that this is the greatest security crisis that Europe has faced in a generation. But the reality is nobody knows what's going to happen now. We are in uncharted territory. And when the bullets start flying, when the troops start moving,

anything can happen. And history shows us this. And not even history. I think Mike Tyson once famously said, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. And we have no idea how Russia is going to react if they do meet stiff resistance from Ukraine. You know, we have no idea how Russia will react if they don't meet stiff resistance and they completely roll through the country in no time at all, they might think, maybe we should test our luck in other places. But again, conversely, if Russia receives stiff resistance and they start taking serious amounts of casualties, and then on top of this, a lot of Ukrainian civilians start dying, which actually would be deeply unpopular amongst your average Russian, you know, there could be a

coup by the military in Russia to replace Vladimir Putin. And you might get someone who's even more of a hardliner than Putin in power. And it doesn't take a, you know, a leap of a great leap of imagination to see how this conflict could spill over, could spiral out of control. And it would have a huge economic impact on the global economy. I mean, almost half of the world's GDP is between North America and Europe. We're each other's number one trading partners. We're each other's collectively we are. Collectively, we're each other's number one source of foreign investment.

Collectively, we're responsible for the creation of millions of jobs. jobs on either side of the Atlantic for each other. So when people say, why do you Americans care what happens in Europe? Where we're so intimately linked with our economies to Europe that it would have a knock on effect to the American economy and the American worker. And then you talk about $8, $9, $10 a gallon for gas. And then the average American will immediately start filling the impact of a major breakout and armed conflict across Europe.

Sure. Luke, before we let you go, I want to get your thoughts on China's response. Does China see a foreign policy opportunity here in this current situation? China will be watching events very closely. They will want to see what the United States does to support and help Ukraine in the same way that they will be looking at, in the same way they looked at our response to Afghanistan. Because, of course, they have their eye on Taiwan, and they want to see, you know, they want to try to make their assessment on what a U.S. response to China. his aggression to Taiwan might be. But I will say this. Russia could not do what they're doing today without some sort of at least coordination. And I would almost go as far as saying collaboration with Beijing.

Because Russia's eastern military district, the eastern part of Russia, you know, in Siberia, and the part that borders the Chinese border, the Russian Chinese border, is virtually empty of Russian soldiers, and this is historically unprecedented. All these soldiers are thousands of miles away along the border of Ukraine right now. So the fact that Russia felt comfortable enough to leave its backyard completely wide open to China or any other adversary, especially in the historical context of what are very complicated and at times fraught Chinese-Russian relations, just shows that there is some sort of engagement between Moscow and Beijing on what's happening in Ukraine. Luke, Coffey, Heritage Foundation, Director for Foreign Policy.

Luke, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Be sure to catch our regular episodes released every morning, Monday through Friday. Have a great rest of your day. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than the same. than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia

Allen and Kate Trinco, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.