Frontline special - Dr Vlad Mykhnenko
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Alex Dibble and I executive produce the podcast. The World in 10 is partnered with Frontline, the interview series from Times Radio, available on YouTube, with expert analysis of the world's conflicts. At the weekend, we bring you Frontline interviews in full. Here's one from this week. I hope you find it interesting.

Hello and welcome to Frontline for Times Radio. I'm James Hansen. And today we're talking about the latest on the war in Ukraine. And I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Vlad Mignenko, originally from Ukraine. Vlad is an associate professor of sustainable urban development at the University of Oxford, who specialises in geographical political economy. Vlad, always a pleasure. Welcome to Frontline. I wanted to start by getting your

Your take on the events in Syria over the last 10 days and what it means for Russia and what impact you think it may then have on the war in Ukraine. Thank you, James. Thanks for inviting me again. I've just been recently promoted to full professor, so I'm even more happy to be here. Thanks. I've been rereading 2016-2017 headlines from the Western media when Russia was

when President Putin said that his mission in Syria was accomplished. And the headlines were quite spectacular. One outlet, a big major Western outlet, declared Russia back to being a global superpower. The BBC News coverage was quite impressive.

saying that any tinfoil dictator anywhere in the world will be now using Putin as an ally because obviously he means business, he can protect you against any internal revolt or foreign adversaries. So Russia has stumped its sort of fit in the Middle East. Russia has reestablished its

naval and military air bases in Mediterranean for the first time since the Soviet times. So now they have the whole foothold outside the Black Sea. And this is a major, major development, etc., etc., etc. And in this context, I think the fall of Assad's regime

in Syria has been a huge humiliation. The Russian media and the Russian kind of war bloggers and various social media accounts are totally in disarray. The impact on the morale and the foreign policy standing of the Kremlin has been quite dramatically obvious. And I think this is a huge, huge humiliation for Putin in particular, because he has

put Syria as one of the kind of movements to detract attention of the West from then Ukraine and then Crimea and the Donbas, and also to show that it's got military power to

to deliver the aims that he wanted to achieve. So that's a huge accumulation. $32 billion spent, lots of Russian lives spent, of course, as well, the Russian military equipment lost. So it's a huge blow to the Kremlin.

And it is worth remembering as well that Putin was using Syria for many years effectively as a training ground for Russian soldiers, but also Russian weapons that have ended up being used in Ukraine. Absolutely. And of course, the infamous Wagner so-called private military group trained and effectively was the most effective weapon that they used in Syria as well, and then relocated back to the Donbass and to Ukraine. And of

10,000 Russian soldiers and pilots were trained in Syria. So that was quite an enormous training ground for the weapons. They claimed that in 2016-17, the contracts for Russian weapon sales went up

because apparently international partners saw the effectiveness of the weapons. We know that after 2022, the Russian military-industrial complex has no effective foreign contracts left because the quality of weapons proved to be not very good. But back in 1617, that was a high peak of Putin's imperialism and its achievements.

Do you agree, Vlad, that this is going to make Vladimir Putin even more isolated on the world stage, not only because he's lost a key ally in Bashar al-Assad, but also because if you are one of Russia's other existing allies or indeed a potential ally of Russia, you look at the way that actually ultimately he sold out Bashar al-Assad and didn't back him up, didn't help prop up his regime over the last couple of weeks. It would make you think again about forming any kind of alliance with Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, it was quite interesting and intriguing to watch the footage from the recent meeting between the Russian military alliance member groups, the Organization for the Defensive Cooperation, which includes Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and

and Armenia that was not attending. And you could see the faces of these foreign allies of Putin being extremely gloomy and sour when Putin tried to repeat these grand claims about Reshnik, the RS-26,

ballistic missile that he used against Ukraine. And he had to lecture them again and again on the magical qualities of this missile. And the faces of, say, President of Kazakhstan did not look that impressive. And so I think it's fairly obvious to everyone that they've lost, obviously, any hope

reserves and military power that they could have invested into foreign adventures. And it looks like not a lot of people in Africa now, right? The Central Africa, Mali, all the military genders running those African states who align themselves with Putin and hopefully will hope that he will provide them with military support. Now they probably are reconsidering their strategy. Yeah.

And I think what will be really interesting now is whether Ukraine's allies in the West will use this moment to re-evaluate what their strategy will be for 2025 with Donald Trump returning to the White House, all kinds of speculation about possible peace talks, and whether that actually is the appropriate course of action because you have Vladimir Putin having...

having a significant blow to his prestige and military power in the Middle East. You've got huge issues with the Russian economy. And I mean, the Institute for the Study of War's latest report out today notes how Russia continues to face staggering costs required to maintain its war effort, mounting economic strain, labor shortages, systemic corruption, threatening the sustainability of the Russian defense industrial base. So yes, it is true that Russia continues to make gains on the front line in the East. But if you zoom out,

they have some serious long-term challenges. Absolutely. And a lot of our discussion day to day is about losses and about personnel losses and about how many killed in action and how many tanks lost. And it's all great and important, of course. But I think...

Sometimes we need to step back and think about strategy generally. I mean, there is this, of course, often quoted and equally misunderstood quote from the Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz, that the war is the continuation of politics by other means. But the point is, it's about politics, right? In a war, specifically military, means are used to achieve a given political game.

political, economic, social political, class political, the political aims are the most important bit. And I'm not sure we have either formulated them originally in 2022 correctly,

or maybe this is time to reformulate them. And in this case, we need to have a reconsideration of the Western strategy towards this particular conflict. Because, you know, in the end of the day, it will be not so much the damage or the defeat inflicted upon the enemy, but the extent to which the political goals are achieved, which were the measurement of success or failure.

And I think in the current sort of pre-President-elect Trump transition period, maybe this is the time that we can discuss what is the current strategy and whether the current strategy is working very well. And I think there is a time and potential for reconsideration of the strategy itself. Well, let's build on that because it seems to me like the strategy of the West from the beginning has been to give Ukraine enough to not lose.

Is this now the moment to be going, actually, we should be giving them what they need to win because Russia actually structurally is in a weaker position than a lot of people realize?

Exactly. And also, James, remember the Western strategy of giving Ukraine enough not to lose was very different from the Ukrainian strategy of recapturing the territories lost, the territories and people lost, right? The 18, at the time, 17% of the territory that was occupied from 2014. So already at the beginning, the two strategies were very different, because obviously the means...

and ends are not aligned. So I think this is the time when we need to align the means and ends, perhaps have a joint strategy between the West and Ukraine. And this is the moment when I think the caution, the worry about escalation needs to be reconsidered because we have seen with the Rechnikov missile strike is that the

Ukraine is quite rational, right? They're not kind of a crazy man with a bomb. They're considering each step very, very carefully. And so I think this is exactly the time when Ukraine needs to be provided with not just the military help and assistance at a higher level, but also some strategic advice, because Ukraine also needs quite a lot of internal military and political reforms that could still happen during the wartime. And I think

U.S. and Western allies could help to reconsider the military strategy as well and help to kind of forge a more effective way of dealing with the Russian invasion.

That's interesting. So you think it's about more than just military aid, for example, because so often when we talk about Western support for Ukraine, it's about whether it's main battle tanks or F-16s or now the attack comes in the storm shadows. And obviously that's incredibly important. But you think it's actually about more than that. It's about logistical and organizational support as well.

I think so, because for many years now, there have been a lot of discussions and debates in the Ukrainian military commentariat sphere about whether the Ukrainian armed forces structure is correct, whether fighting with brigades only is enough, given that you need a higher level of command closer to the ground and the current structures which you have

separate brigades fighting in their little three-kilometer front lines, and then very far away, some sort of a big structure controlling the whole front, but with no effective...

control and no visiting of the highway generals on actual front lines. There is a kind of disconnect between the people on the ground and the high military command center where, you know, 10, 100 kilometers away. And so there was a lot of discussion about divisional structure, maybe armical structure.

And I think the push from NATO and the Western allies saying this is a much more effective way of doing things will be good to support the internal domestic and grassroots level initiatives that currently has been sort of blocked by the, you know, Soviet era generals who are not accustomed to the modern warfare.

I absolutely hear what you say, Vlad, about fears of escalation not really being founded by what we've seen from Russia over the past two and a half years. But just to play devil's advocate, I mean, clearly it is a concern for some of Ukraine's Western allies, notably the Biden White House. And is there not an argument that actually the way we have avoided some

ridiculous overreaction by Vladimir Putin is because Western support for Ukraine has been increased incrementally and hasn't all been unloaded in one batch. And if we suddenly came up with a new grand strategy of cooperation designed to help Ukraine to win decisively, and we sold it in those terms, then Vladimir Putin would feel truly backed into a corner. And that is where you get a serious risk of escalation.

I don't want to overuse sporting analogies, but I feel in a war, the momentum is quite important. And the momentum is also being supported by morale of the troops and forces on the pitch, on the ground. And I think in this particular moment, we have a fairly...

kind of deep in the morale, right? This is the... The war is coming to the third year, the brutal, horrible war. It's winter, you know, it's very difficult to fight. Ukrainian forces have been gradually retreating slowly, but still going backwards. And I think in this moment, we need some kind of a moral morale boost, right? Morale boost, some change of the current momentum. And I think...

some kind of escalation, if you think would be probably pretty good to come at this time because the Ukrainian forces and Ukraine generally needs some kind of boost at the moment because it's quite a low point of its resilience, right? Ukraine has been very resilient in 2022, 2023, but the amount of resources the country has

both psychological, material, financial, et cetera, is now kind of running out. And I think this moment we need a significant boost. And so talking about de-escalation, talking about worries and fears, which of the people who are far away from actually from the war itself, I think is not a good vibe. We need a morale boost. And I think a stronger action, words as well as actions, probably will also be quite useful.

How do you feel, Vlad, about the return of Donald Trump? I think six months ago, if I was speaking to Ukraine supporters, there was a lot of concern about what a second Trump presidency may mean for Ukraine. I have sensed since his election victory perhaps a bit less pessimism than there once was as to what a Trump administration will do in regards to Ukraine. How do you feel? Well, I think we all agree

None of us know what's going to happen. I do notice, I have noticed recently over the last couple of days that President-elect Trump's commentary on Ukraine has been less and less hostile. His comments about his neighbors have been more hostile, about Canada and Mexico. But comments about Ukraine has been less hostile, comments about Russia has been more hostile. So...

There seems to be some kind of change in the mood, and I'm sure that there are some secret negotiations between the Trump team and the Kremlin team about what's going on. And maybe the hostility is kind of raising the stakes for the potential conversation about the end of the war. I don't know what will happen. But I wonder if this is the moment when the West generally can kind of up the ante a little bit.

and use some of the Russian military strategy to its own advantage because the Russian strategy of course has been kind of the hybrid warfare, right? And usage of various means, not just military means, but political, social, uh, disinformation means, uh, psychological manipulation, uh, cyber attacks, economic exploitation, uh, disinformation, right? Um, intervention, foreign elections, uh,

using the law and abusing the law for its own means. There are a number of tools that the Russian regime used against the West

Even recently in Moldova and Romania, we've seen quite a successful, not as successful as they would wish to, but quite a shockingly good level of hybrid warfare used in the Moldovan European membership referendum in October, which was won only by 0.7%, 10,500 votes. Extremely close versus the opinion polls, they were running 20% difference. And of course, that was searched by

a variety of social media means. We had a Romanian election just earlier this month that was annulled because of this enormous wave of TikTok social media accounts that propagated the candidate that was definitely the Russian favorite candidate. And I wonder whether some of these techniques and methods could be used as well against the Kremlin and Moscow generally.

You also wonder whether this is a time when Volodymyr Zelensky's skill as a politician is going to really come to the fore, because he has been remarkably good at building personal relationships with his Western allies. And his relationship with Trump is complicated, in part going back to the circumstances around Trump's first impeachment.

But he has, since the election, made a real effort, and we saw them at the reopening of Notre Dame over the weekend, you know, speaking to each other. And it does appear like his charm offensive on Trump is bearing some fruit. At the same time, it appears like Trump is sensitive to the accusation that he is some kind of

poodle for Vladimir Putin. And Putin may even be alienating Donald Trump. I mean, the Kremlin was showing naked footage of Melania Trump on Russian state TV around the time of the election. That's not necessarily the best tactic to win over the president-elect.

I agree, absolutely. And also, I presume back in the Wiener is the successful business strategy, success breeds success, right? So I think Ukraine needs to show some success in the field. And Ukrainian European allies also need to step up and show that they are willing and able to support the Ukrainian allies.

activities on the frontline as well. I've noticed that Donald Trump in his interview a couple of days ago said that the US support for Ukraine will probably decrease, but that doesn't really necessarily mean that it will cease, but also it means that the European allies will have to produce and provide more. And that is probably quite a reasonable judgment because

For many decades, Europe hasn't been spending on defence hardly anything. Just on that though, are you not slightly concerned by some of the

tide of maybe you'd call it Ukraine skepticism in some European capitals. I mean, you know, we've obviously got the situation in Germany and elections coming up in the new year, the rise of the AFD who are very skeptical about support for Ukraine, obviously instability in France. And even though president Macron has been very hawkish on Ukraine, actually, if you look at the amount of money in terms of military aid that the France had provided, it pales into insignificant compared to Germany and the UK. Um,

do you not think that actually it is a bit worrying that yes the Europeans need to be doing more but sort of Ukraine's scepticism is on the rise? All you need to reiterate was at this stage here right the war is not entirely a

And one argues not at all about Ukraine. In November 2021, before the full-scale invasion, the Russian state produced two treaty drafts and sent it to the Western capitals.

which meant that the demands for the NATO withdrawal from all the countries that entered NATO in 1997. So, in fact, we will go back to the boundaries before the Cold War boundaries, in which Moscow will have been able to reestablish the sphere of influence over Warsaw, perhaps over Berlin as well. So this is the demand that was already put forward by the Russians

before the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is what they want. This is openly, it's actually, the document still appears on the Russian foreign ministry draft treaties portal. You can still read it. So this is what they want.

And Ukraine is just the first step in stone towards that achievement of the total rebalancing, reconfiguring, remapping, and also changing the global world order. The Russian state television, Putin himself, talks about multipolarity and how the so-called global south, and Russia now apparently is part of the global south. I'm a geographer, I'm quite...

I'm not sure how that works. But in any case, this kind of inter-Western alliance that he's trying to kind of create is what is rising. And so I think the Western countries need to understand that stakes are not just, you know, whatever percentage of Ukrainian Donbas territory has been taken or retaken. The stakes are much higher than that. And I think the cost of Ukrainian loss and the defeat

It's really unimaginably big and the people think it is. So what do you think, Vlad, when you hear people talk about the terms Ukraine may be prepared to accept in some kind of peace settlement? Even Vladimir Zelensky is now talking about whether NATO membership could be offered to the parts of Ukraine that aren't currently occupied by Russia. When you hear talk like that, what is your reaction?

Well, I think Ukraine has to show that it's willing to negotiate, given that the president-elect Trump's strategy was to bring peace. And of course, peace...

is the opposite of war to some extent, and hence Ukraine has to show its willingness to and be flexible in being willing to discuss terms, potential ceasefire, etc., etc. I also need to stress that, of course, not everything is under control of the Western allies, right? A lot of things are happening on its own. The Kursk offensive of Ukrainian armed forces was an unexpected innovation, and, you know,

What would be the guarantees of the Ukrainian security or of the territory that is under government control if it's not NATO membership? And I'm afraid we only have two potential solutions, NATO membership, Article 5 defense, or some kind of an independent defense.

military deterrent that will be so huge and so scary that the Kremlin would reconsider whether it would reinvade again if there is a ceasefire.

Just remember, Ukraine had 3,500 tactical nuclear warheads just 20 years ago. I kind of guess that the scientific and technological knowledge necessary for the rapid development of nuclear weapons is not lost.

We have already delivery systems, right? We've seen those various types of missiles that you can produce with a range of 600 kilometers, which is just about the range between Ukraine and Moscow. So, you know, the best you also understand is that either some kind of NATO defense umbrella is given to Ukraine,

as a way to assure that the territory that's under government control will be able to develop, reconstruct, rebuild, join the EU and join NATO eventually. Or Ukraine will have to consider some kind of innovative solutions for its defense because, of course,

The situation in which there is a ceasefire and there is no assurances from anyone that the rest of Ukraine will survive is not a plausible course of action. So just finally, Vlad, picking up on your points about the West needing to re-evaluate its strategy with regards to Ukraine. If you were in a room and you had President Zelensky, General Siersky,

Mark Rutter, the new Secretary General of NATO, Donald Trump, the leaders of France, Germany and the UK. And you had to say, look, this is what we need to do. What would you want them to do?

I think we need to exploit the moments of weakness in the Russian regime at the moment and use the hybrid warfare means as necessary, the psychological manipulation using tactics to deepen the social divides in the country. I would say, I mean, the most astonishing as an economic joke of a fact is that we have 66% of Russian oil

It's produced in western and eastern Siberian forests. And that's a place where only 24 million people live. So you have a chunk of Russian territory that produces as much oil as Saudi Arabia, has fewer population, but it's only 40% of Saudi Arabian GDP per capita.

And unlike Saudi Arabia, eastern and western Serbia and the Far East has enormous amount of mineral resources, water, timber, diamonds, gold, silver. Anything you can think of exists there, and at the same time, you have a country that

a part of the country that is not extremely rich. And why is that? It's because, of course, Moscow exploits that resources, takes the resources, kind of internal colonization process, and uses them to live lavishly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. You've got to exploit the deep hatred of the periphery against the core, right? So you can run a TikTok campaign. Yeah, let's go for TikTok campaign in Siberia and say, well, listen, guys, you should be

as rich as Saudi Arabia, but you are not. Why is that? Of course, people will tell me that Russia is 80% mono-ethnic, so Russian. Absolutely true, and nobody says that you'll split Russia and dismember it, and that is not the goal. But the goal, like in the Russian hybrid regime, is to sow discord, is to sow discontent, is to provoke tensions. That is, I mean, I would suggest doing that.

Try to find the weaknesses in the regime and try to crumble it. And then it will become even more willing to negotiate and back off because that's how you negotiate from the point of strength, right? Not from the point of weakness. This is not an escalation. Yeah, this is just a social media campaign and you can always deny it as the Russians deny the intervention in Moldova and Romania.

It's a really interesting point. Vlad, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, James. Thank you.

How can governments play a pivotal role as the world shifts? From decarbonizing the economy to sustainable care systems, bold government strategies are needed now more than ever. Get informed by listening to Government Insights, the new podcast from EY Parthenon. This series explores how government executives can transform their strategies into actions that are future-proof and sustainable.

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