The Daily - Russia and the U.S. Face Off Over Ukraine

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

The diplomatic talks in Geneva this week are of a kind not seen in a long time: an effort to defuse the possibility of a major war in Europe.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has amassed military equipment and personnel on the border with Ukraine.President Biden has warned that there will be consequences if Mr. Putin decides to invade, but what can Washington do to impel the Kremlin to back down?Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Russia and the United States expressed some optimism after negotiations in Geneva, but they did not break an impasse over Moscow’s demand that Ukraine never become a member of NATO.Can the West stop Russia from invading Ukraine? Here’s a guide to what’s at stake.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedailyTranscripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Annie Correale, in for Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Russia has put tanks, heavy artillery, and 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, prompting a tense standoff with the United States. Today, as diplomatic talks between the two countries are underway, I spoke with my colleague David Sanger about the American plan to prevent Russia from carrying out an invasion and what Russia is demanding from the U.S. to back down. It's Wednesday, January 12th.

All right, we're rolling over here. Great, Annie. Good to talk to you. Likewise, it's been a very busy week for you, I understand, following what's happening in Geneva. It has been. You know, the return of superpower conflict always ends up keeping New York Times national security reporters pretty busy. Well, let's get into that. So diplomatic talks begin in Geneva this week between the U.S. and Russia. What is it that they're aiming to accomplish? Well, these are negotiations of a kind we haven't really seen in a long time. It's an effort to diffuse the possibility of a major war in Europe. And for President Putin, this is really a chance to restore what was lost when the Soviet Union

collapsed. And that is to say, a sphere of influence in Europe and to stop the sort of westward drift of many of the countries that surround Russia and that were once part of the Soviet Union. For President Biden, it's a challenge to stand up for some of the principles of the post-World War II order that the United States dominated for so long. And first among them is that you don't redraw national boundaries at the point of a gun. Right. But David, why is this coming to a head now? So partly this is a long brewing controversy. President Putin has always believed that Ukraine is really the heart of the old Soviet Union, but also a core part of the Russian identity.

But there are also more immediate reasons. One is that I think he is testing a new American president. He saw the messy American withdrawal from Afghanistan. withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think came to the conclusion that President Biden was not somebody who was in a mood to sustain long conflicts overseas, and that this may well be the right moment to go make his move tactically. And frankly, Annie, he's got a fairly limited window if he wants to invade Ukraine. Why is that? Well, it's because the equipment that he has gathered on the Ukrainian-Russian border includes a lot of heavy tanks, armored personnel carriers, and they can only make it across that border when it is frozen.

Ah. And the land is not completely frozen yet. And when it does freeze in a couple of weeks, it will only stay solidly frozen for a month or two before mud season comes. So if he's going to make a credible move to actually roll forces into Ukraine, he's got a very narrow window of sort of February and March to get that done. Got it. So what do we know about what each side is bringing to the negotiations? What have they said in the lead up? Well, the big lead up to this, Annie, was a call between President Putin and President Biden before Christmas. Biden warned Putin that if he does invade, there would be huge consequences. But, you know, both men knew the truth here, which is that President Biden and NATO are not

about to send troops into Ukraine to defend it against a Russian invasion. Ukraine's not a member of NATO. And the responsibility to defend a country only extends to members. So what our reporting has shown in the weeks since is that the Biden administration and its allies have been readying a range of sanctions to try to make the cost of invading Ukraine so high that Putin will hesitate to go send those troops over the border. So can you walk us through what those sanctions would be? Well, sure, Annie. There are really three different types, And the first and the most familiar, they are the financial sanctions. These sanctions would go after Russia's largest financial institutions. They're really designed on the sanctions that the U.S. and the Europeans put on Iran prior to the 2015 nuclear deal.

And the idea is to cause so much pain to the financial sector, to cut it off from being able to deal with European or American banks, get money back from their oil and gas sales. It would so disrupt the Russian economy and plunge its currency into devaluation that it would just cause a lot of pain. And what's the second category of punishment? Well, the second category is technological. You know, the Russians have learned how to sanction-proof their economy to some degree from financial sanctions. So the U.S. and its allies are discussing doing something new to them, which is cutting off the semiconductors, the computer chips, and other microelectronic parts that they need for making jet planes and industrial goods. And the idea here is not just to cut off U.S.-made semiconductors,

but any microelectronics that rely on U.S. patents or U.S. designs or software that relies on U.S. designs, so that sooner or later, at a moment that the supply chain is tight anyway, the Russians would literally run out of components to make many of their industrial goods. But then there's a second piece of this, which is getting together with the Europeans on cutting off technology goods, iPhones, refrigerators, cars, anything that uses those American design components. Uh-huh. And stopping ordinary Russians from being able to get those consumer goods. So the concept is to bring the cost of Vladimir Putin's adventurism back home

and make it clear to Russian consumers that the reason they can't buy that new model of the iPhone is that Putin invaded Ukraine and the world is cracking down on what ordinary Russian consumers can get. And what's the third punishment? Well, the third punishment is a warning to the Russians that if they do invade, we would provide weaponry to Ukrainian insurgents who were fighting a Russian occupying force. Now remember, we already provide military goods, mostly defensive goods, to the Ukrainian formal military. But if the Russians actually roll through the country, the theory is an insurgency will develop and they will need Stinger missiles

that can be used to take down Russian helicopters or airplanes. They will need all kinds of offensive weapons that would make occupying Ukraine a really bloody enterprise for the Russians. It's called the porcupine strategy, that if you turn the country into a porcupine, then it's going to be really painful for you to try to eat it. It's going to make it hard to swallow. Incredibly painful to swallow.

So David, is there any evidence that any or all of these punishments will be sufficient to stop Russia from invading Ukraine? It's a great question, Annie, because there is no evidence about whether this is going to be enough. We don't know whether the sanction proofing that Putin has done for his economy would insulate his banks and enable them to find other ways to profit from oil and gas sales or industrial sales. We don't know if the technology embargoes can actually be made to work because technology is a leaky marketplace and all you need is a few countries or a few suppliers who are willing to violate the terms of that to get the technology in. And, you know, arming an insurgency, we've had decades of experience with that.

And sometimes it works and sometimes it fails. It's a very messy business. So as we head into these negotiations and into this critical time for decision-making, we're uncertain about how well we can affect Putin's calculus. And you know what? Putin's got his own set of demands and his own way of bringing about pain to the West. And that's going to be part of this too.

We'll be right back. Okay, so what are the demands that Putin has laid out? What does his government bring to the table when they show up to these talks? Well, Annie, Putin has had a long-running series of demands against the West, and almost all of them center on one big concern, that modern Russia has been encircled by countries that have a Western orientation. And what he wants to do is restore a big buffer zone around Russia of countries that are either subject to his sphere of influence

or at least are not aligned with the West. And so not surprisingly, Annie, a lot of the Russian demands have to do with NATO and trying to limit its reach in his region. And David, why is Putin so focused on NATO? Why is Putin so focused on NATO? Well, NATO is the organization, the military alliance that was designed to counter and ultimately ham in the old Soviet Union to keep it from expanding through Western Europe. Remember, this is after World War II ended, after the Soviets had gotten the nuclear bomb. And the whole idea of NATO was to contain the Soviet Union. Now, once the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russians believed that they had gotten commitments from American officials not to let NATO expand right to its borders. The U.S. says there was

no such commitment. There were discussions about the future of NATO, but ultimately they signed an agreement in 1997 between President Clinton and President Yeltsin that allowed any country, even countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, to decide for themselves whether they would join an alliance with NATO or not. And since that time, 15 countries have joined NATO. And that's the big part of Putin's worry. So, given that, what are the specific demands that Putin has laid out? Well, Annie, he's got a couple of different demands. Russia is laying out some tough demands for the United States and NATO.

The first, and the one that's gotten most of the headlines, is that Ukraine never joined NATO. They include demanding NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet states. Ukraine right now is not a member. In its constitution, it lays out that it wants to become a member. The fact of the matter is that it's not likely to be a member anytime soon. But then there are additional demands. I mean, you look at the list of demands that Russia has already put forward. They include demands that the United States and NATO remove all weapons and troops from any former Soviet states. They include that the United States and NATO do not keep any forces in former Soviet states that have since joined that alliance,

that they don't keep heavy weapons there, and most importantly, that they don't keep nuclear weapons there. So he wants basically a withdrawal of forces back to the lines that existed prior to the 1997 agreement. From which countries would the U.S. have to withdraw to meet that demand? Well, among the concerns that the Russians have are Poland, Romania, both of which have anti-missile systems the U.S. has set up. But the U.S. also has forces that it has put into what used to be parts of East Germany. It rotates forces through the Baltics and other places that the Russians consider to be too close to their borders.

It conducts exercises with many of the military forces in those countries. So NATO's pretty active all through the region. And essentially what Putin is saying is that all has to stop. We have to go back to where we were right after the Soviet Union collapsed. So there are real stakes here. Oh, there are very real stakes. And what it calls for basically is whether the United States and its allies are ready to go revisit and rewrite the central agreements that came together

after the fall of the Soviet Union. And those are the agreements that have kept Europe secure, and that most Europeans, and frankly, most Americans Americans have come to just assume are the way the world is organized. And Putin is using this moment and holding Ukraine hostage to say, no, no, no, we're going to go back and rewrite that. It may be the way the world was organized for the past 25 years, but it's not the way we're willing to have the world organized for the next 25. years, but it's not the way we're willing to have the world organized for the next 25. And I think the question is, is there a diplomatic process here that could relieve this pressure and give Putin a face-saving way to at least get some of his demands?

The issue is, can you actually get that done in a short period of time? And what are the red lines for each country? All right. So with all of that in mind, can you take us into these talks that have been unfolding in Geneva? What do we know about what's happened so far this week? Well, so far, the first set of talks were just between the United States and the Russians. On the U.S. side was Wendy

Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, a very experienced diplomat who did the 2015 Iran negotiations. So she knows what it's like to be up against a hard adversary on the other side of the table. The Russians sent their deputy minister, a man named Ryikov, who's known as a pretty fiery-talking, difficult negotiator in his own right. In their first session in Geneva, they just sort of laid out their grievances and their sets of demands. And when Sherman came out... The United States came to today's extraordinary meeting prepared to hear Russia's security concerns and to share our own. She got on the phone with a good number of us and said, look, there are some things we can talk to

the Russians about, where military exercises are conducted, pulling them back, giving notice of them, maybe even reviving a nuclear treaty called the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that limited the kinds of nuclear weapons that both sides could point at each other from European soil. We came as well with a number of ideas where our two countries could take reciprocal actions that would be in our security interests and improve strategic stability. But she said, we've got some non-starters here.

And one of them is we're not going to let Russia or any country dictate who Ukraine or other members of Europe can ally with. We're not going to let them redraw borders by force. So right out of the gate, the U.S. is saying it's not going to adhere to any of these Russian demands. That's right. And the Russians, for their part, came out and said, the Americans had a good conversation with us. But they have to be ready to commit to a remaking of the agreements we've had over the past 25 years. And we just don't know, as this moves to NATO and some other forums, whether that's a gap that anybody can bridge. anybody can bridge. Now, given how far these two sides appear to be from reaching any sort of agreement, David, how worried should we be that Russia will invade Ukraine, that the U.S.

will then enact these sanctions, and that this could be the beginning of a new dangerous conflict in Europe? How seriously should we be taking the threat? Oh, I think it's a pretty serious threat. And if it wasn't, you wouldn't see this flurry of diplomacy. You wouldn't see these phone calls between President Putin and President Biden. And you wouldn't see this level of American signaling of very severe action. That said, we don't really know what kind of action Vladimir Putin has in mind. Maybe he'd do a full invasion, but he probably isn't ready to go pay the cost that that would entail. But he has other options. What would those be?

Well, one possibility is he could just try to move in and take a bit more territory, maybe take over more of the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, but not try to go toward the major cities or the capital of Kiev. So it could be a chunk of Ukraine, but not a full-scale invasion of the country. Right. Now, another possibility, Annie, is that he could make use of Russia's considerable cyber skills. Remember that in 2015 and again in 2016, Russian hackers took down the electric power grid in different parts of Ukraine. It was a remarkable attack.

They literally took over the controls of the electric grid, and Ukrainian operators sat there helplessly in front of their screens, watching the cursors move around as one power station after another was switched off. It was pretty terrifying, and he could do that on a broader scale. But would either of the options that you mentioned, whether it's Russia taking over some part of Ukraine or engaging in cyber attacks, would those trigger the penalties, the sanctions that the U.S. has put on the table and that you've outlined for us? You know, it's a really great question, and American officials understandably have been a little bit leery about signaling how they would respond to anything. They want to keep the Russians guessing. But one official said to me about a partial invasion, you know, an invasion is an invasion is an invasion. And he wasn't terribly interested in the question of whether

it was the whole country or a piece of it. I think the cyber action is a lot harder to figure out what the reactions would be in the West. Because one of the things about cyber is it's hard to trace. It's easy for another country to deny that they were behind it. And it could well divide the Europeans who might say, look, we understand why we have to take big risks if Russia invades all of Ukraine. But if they're just turning off parts of the power or interrupting the banking system as they've done before, is that worth risking a much larger confrontation with Moscow?

And I'm sure that some of the European nations would think it probably isn't. And the one thing we know about Putin is that he loves nothing more than taking actions that seem to confuse and divide the Western allies. You know, David, it's clear to me now after this conversation that Vladimir Putin wants Russia to have more influence than it does. But what I wonder is if he hasn't already succeeded. I mean, no matter what happens at these negotiations, hasn't he just seen that once he threatens military action and puts out these demands, however outlandish they might seem, however outlandish they might seem, people do sit up and take notice and will come to the negotiating table. Well, at one level, he already clearly has. This is not the conversation that

President Biden envisioned that he would be conducting a year into his presidency. he would be conducting a year into his presidency. He had called for a stable and predictable relationship with Russia. He's gotten anything but. He wanted to focus the United States on China, a far more complex rising threat, rather than on a disruptive Russia. So the very fact that Vladimir Putin has forced the Americans to conduct these emergency negotiations, yeah, that's a victory. But the other part of this, Annie, is that Putin runs the risk of overplaying his hand.

that if he appears to be too much of a bully, if he presses Ukraine too far, if he invades in a large way, he could well drive the rest of the region more toward the West, that they would be more scared of him and the future and decide they really need to be part of NATO. That Finland and Sweden, places that are not NATO members, might be tempted to try to join up. So he's got to be a little bit careful here too, because while he has all the advantage right now with his troops massing on the border, once he's inside Ukraine, then it becomes as much of a problem for him

as it does for the rest of the world. Thank you, David. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Annie. Great to be with you. Today, members of the NATO alliance will meet with Russia in Brussels. And tomorrow, in Vienna, Ukrainian officials will also be at the table for the first time. Russia says the outcome of those talks will determine whether they will stay on a path of diplomacy. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

Today, I'm making it clear. To protect our democracy, I support changing the Senate rules. Whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights. In a major speech on Tuesday, President Biden endorsed changing the Senate's filibuster rule specifically to pass legislation protecting voting rights. Biden, who as a senator opposed changing the filibuster rule, said that new laws restricting voting passed by Republicans in 19 states since his election had persuaded him that it was now necessary. So I ask every elected official in America,

how do you want to be remembered? But changing the filibuster rule would require all 50 Senate Democrats to support Biden's plan, and two of them have previously expressed strong opposition. In his speech, Biden asked those senators to think of their legacies. History has never been kind to those who've sided with voter suppression over voters' rights.

And the World Health Organization said that more than half of people in Europe could be infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in the next two months. A WHO official, in explaining that possibility, cited the, quote, unprecedented transmissibility of Omicron and warned that the virus could have disastrous effects as it moves from Western Europe to Eastern Europe,

where vaccination rates are lower. vaccination rates are lower. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Muj Zaydi, and Jessica Chung, with help from Lindsay Garrison. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, contains original music by Chelsea Daniel and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Annie Correal. See you tomorrow.