What's Next for Putin's War
The Bill Press Pod
BP Pods
4.7 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2022
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Twenty-six days into Putin's War in Ukraine, can anything be done to stop the carnage and stop Putin? What are the likely next steps, diplomatically and militarily? What are the risks of a wider war, of a nuclear war? To provide some context, Bill has arranged to talk again with the two experts on foreign affairs who gave us their first assessment of the situation in Ukraine three weeks ago. A lot has changed. . Steven Pifer was our Ambassador to Ukraine in the last two years of the Clinton Administration and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine in the first four years of the George W. Bush Administration. He is currently a Fellow at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution. Joining him is Joe Cirincione, a Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He previously served for over 12 years as the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear nonproliferation and conflict resolution. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Today Bill featured the work of the World Central Kitchen run by Chef Jose Andres. They have served millions of meals in disaster areas and war zones, including over a million meals in and around Ukraine. You can support their work by visiting the World Central Kitchen website at WCK.org.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello friends and welcome back to the Bill Press 5. Good to have you with us. |
| 0:11.0 | So it's now week four of the war in Ukraine. |
| 0:15.0 | Because of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, the war has already lasted longer than anyone, including |
| 0:22.6 | Vladimir Putin, expected. |
| 0:25.5 | Because of the incarnate evil of Putin, the wars also become more brutal and violent than |
| 0:31.7 | expected with mounting attacks on purely civilian targets, like apartment buildings, hospitals, theaters, schools, and maternity wards even. |
| 0:41.4 | But still today, nobody knows how long the war will last or how it will end. |
| 0:47.8 | So for an update on the war so far and a look ahead, we turn today to two foreign policy experts we first talked to in the |
| 0:56.5 | first week of the war, Steve Pfeiffer, who served as America's ambassador to Ukraine under President |
| 1:03.6 | Bill Clinton and Joe Sirencioni, former president of the Plowshares Fund. Ambassador Steve Pfe |
| 1:10.7 | Joe Sirincioni, welcome back to the |
| 1:13.2 | Bill Press 5 and thank you for joining us again. Our pleasure. Happy to be here. So, Mr. Ambassador, |
| 1:21.0 | the last time we talked was day six of the war in Ukraine. As we speak recording it is day 26 are you surprised that the war has |
| 1:32.6 | dragged on this long and has become yet even more violent um well more importantly is |
| 1:40.0 | has the kremlin been surprised and i think that they have been caught very short. They, on the one |
| 1:45.7 | hand, way underestimated the determination, the tenacity, the courage of the Ukrainians in resisting |
| 1:51.7 | their invasion. And that's a surprise. I mean, Russia and Ukraine, they're right next door. They should |
| 1:57.6 | have understood that. Had you asked anybody who knows Ukraine in the |
| 2:02.3 | Washington think tank community, they would have said the Ukrainians will fight and they will |
| 2:06.5 | fight hard. And the Kremlin also overestimated the capabilities of its military force. They made, |
| 2:15.1 | or appeared that they wanted to make a quick grab for Kiev that they thought they |
| 2:18.8 | could bag it in the first couple of days using relatively small units. |
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