Putin’s Next Move

TALKING POLITICS

Catherine Carr

News, News & Politics

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David and Helen talk to Shashank Joshi, Defence Editor of the Economist, about what Vladimir Putin hopes to get out of the Ukraine crisis and what anyone can do to stop him. Is some sort of invasion inevitable? Is Russia’s goal to sow dissent or to achieve regime change? What leverage does the rest of world have over Putin and his allies? Plus we explore where the roots of the crisis lie: in 2014, in the end of the Cold War, or even earlier still?

Talking Points:

What does Putin want from Ukraine?

He wants to stop Ukraine’s westward shift, which is about more than NATO.
Ukraine was probably not ever going to join NATO. In that regard, Putin already has what he wants.
What else is he upset about? Britain is building a naval base on the Sea of Azov. Britain and the UK are training Ukrainian troops. Weapons are flowing in, too.
Putin worries about Ukraine becoming a more militarily and economically capable actor.

What would Putin count as a success in the current crisis?

Logistically speaking, Putin could stay there for months. But he has troops from the Eastern military district there, who can’t. And the weather will change after March.
Perhaps the biggest problem is psychological: backing down would look like giving in.
Does Russia want regime change?

Kiev seems less convinced about the imminence of an invasion.

Are they deluded?
They definitely want to avoid panic, especially economic panic.

What is different today from 2014?

Ukraine is in an even worse economic position.
Ukraine is a transit gas state; Putin has been trying to end that for a long time, and he is getting close with the near completion of Nordstream.
Another difference is America’s position in the world.

NATO allies should still feel reasonably secure.

But in middle areas, such as Ukraine, or the countries in central Asia, things are less certain.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Further Learning:

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. Today, Helen and I are joined
0:11.6	by Shashank Joshi who is the defence editor of the Economist and we're talking about Putin,
0:17.2	Ukraine. How we got here and what might happen next.
0:24.4	Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's
0:28.5	Leading Review of Culture and Ideas and the LRB is returning to first principles with
0:34.7	their latest exclusive offer for Talking Politics listeners, get 12 issues of the magazine
0:40.9	for just 12 pounds and they'll also send you one of their surprisingly famous tote bags
0:46.6	acclaimed by the likes of New York magazine and vice. Just use the URL mylb.co.uk-talkingbag
0:57.9	That's mylb.co.uk-talkingbag.
1:04.9	Shashank, I think we're going to try and structure this conversation by starting in the
1:17.6	here and now and then maybe going back a bit because a lot of these problems, conflicts
1:23.6	have very deep historical roots but I suppose the basic question to start with and maybe
1:29.3	it's the hardest question of all to answer but you've been studying this, you've written
1:32.6	quite a lot about it. What does Putin want? Do you think?
1:37.4	David, thanks for having me back on. I think what Putin wants is more than anything else
1:43.4	to stop Ukraine's westward drift which is a much bigger problem than its legal formal
1:50.4	membership of NATO. There are all kinds of other things he wants. Of course he wants to
1:54.9	roll back NATO's memberships to the borders it had in 1997. He wants to halt its further
2:00.3	expansion to other places like Georgia or Bosnia and he wants to stop America deploying medium-range
2:07.6	missiles in Europe. So there's a whole laundry list of things that we can discuss but the
2:12.6	nub of it, the nub of this crisis is Ukraine and what he wants to stop is Ukraine integrating
2:18.9	more and more to the Euro Atlantic community, particularly in defence and security matters
	...

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