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Webinar Transcript: Dr Samuel Ramani on Russia-Ukraine Crisis – The History and The Coming
- By Bilal Hafeez
This is an edited transcript of our webinar episode with Dr Samuel Ramani, a specialist in Russian foreign policy, published on 23 February 2022. He is a tutor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford, and an Associate Fellow at the RUSI. He contributes regularly to media outlets, such as Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Al-Monitor, and think tanks, such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Middle East Institute. While we have tried to make the transcript as accurate as possible, if you do notice any errors, let me know by email.
Bilal Hafeez [00:00:00]
OK, so welcome everyone to this Macro Hive special webinar, we weren’t planning on having a webinar on this topic, but obviously things are changing a lot in the world right now with the latest moves by Russia against Ukraine. So we’ve arranged this impromptu webinar where I’m very pleased to have Dr. Sam Samuel Ramani with us. Sam is an associate fellow at RUSI, which is the world’s oldest think tank on security and defense issues. He’s also an academic at Oxford University and is a specialist on Russia.
Now, before we jump into the subject at hand, I just wanted to provide some markets context for all of these developments. So let me just share my share my screen. I just wanted to give people a sense of what’s been going on in markets around Russia. So if I just pull up a chart here, so this is my Bloomberg screen, and this shows you what’s been happening to the Russian currency, the Russian ruble.
So before the weekend, the Russian ruble was trading around seventy six per US dollar. And after Putin’s speech on Monday, it went up as high as 80, then yesterday stabilised a bit. But today it’s starting to weaken once again. And for context, if you look at a five-year chart, we’re kind of at a higher end of where the ruble has traded against the dollar. It’s almost back to where we saw COVID levels, but it hasn’t necessarily exploded much, much higher than if we look at Russian CDS market, so this is over the past year, CDS so people’s fears of some kind of credit events for Russia has really exploded higher. At the start of this year it was trading around 120 basis points and now it’s over 400. And if we go back further to provide some context back during the 2014 Russia Ukraine conflict, initially CDS got to about 300. We’re beyond that. But towards the end of 2014, where Russian went into a full crisis, which was partly to do with Ukraine, but also partly to do with lower oil prices, it got as high as 600, so we’re kind of on our way there. And markets clearly appear to be nervous.
If you look at Russian stock markets, they fell on Monday during Putin’s speech. But since then, stock markets have bounced a bit, so markets a bit more calmer. And if we look at broader markets outside of Russia, broader global risk appetite, it’s held up relatively well so far despite the EU-US sanctions. But I’m sure that’s just the beginning of a longer story that we’re going to be seeing here.
Now, in terms of just for people who don’t know about Macro Hive and myself. So I’m the founder CEO of Macro Hive. Macro Hive is a independent research research organisation where we provide, you know, research for investors. So this is the site macrohive.com and we provide, you know, research on anything that’s relevant for investors. So we published a piece recently on Russia, of course. You know, we have explainers, describing key concepts in markets, talking about we, we cover crypto as well and then things like inflation as well. So if you just got to macrohive.com, you’ll be able to see all of that type type of research, but back to the subject at hand, and we’re very lucky to have Sam on board.
He’s he’s a real expert on on Russia. You may have seen him on TV in recent days or on Twitter, at least. So the way we’re going to structure this is I’ve got a series of questions I’m going to ask Sam just to give us some context for this conflict and also where we are today. And then we’ll open this up to a Q&A to the audience as well. So people do have questions just post it in the Q&A section or in the chat section and then I’ll try to pick up those questions as we go through. So, Sam, welcome to this webinar. And yeah, perhaps we can start with some history here. So obviously Ukraine and Russia are part of the Soviet Union. We had the fall of the Berlin Wall and then from the early 90s Ukraine was formed. So what’s been the story of Ukraine’s relationship with Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall in the earlier period in the 90s, and also Ukraine’s relationship with NATO over that period of time?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:04:36]
Well, it seemed as if Ukraine forgot most of the 1990s and well into the first half of the 2000s was trying to balance favorable relations with the West, as well as for workable relations with Russia because it acknowledged that it wanted to maintain its own sovereignty, but also saw that its security was inextricably linked to having an unconventional relationship with Russia as economic prosperity was linked to having close relations with the West. That was basically what we saw. And in 1992, Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of Ukraine, got Ukrainian NATO’s operation into motion and Ukraine joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. And then, under Leonid Kuchma, the native Ukraine Commission was established, and relation between Ukraine and Naito began to strengthen, including with a first action plan for membership in 2002.
However, only a plurality of Ukrainians at most, but generally a minority of Ukrainians during this period of time actually supported native membership. So it was that most supported by about one third, give or take, of the population of Ukraine at this period of time. So it really wasn’t actionable. Also, there were severe divisions within Ukraine’s elite community, especially among the oligarchs, some of whom were pivoting Ukraine towards the direction of supporting Russia, particularly those based out of the East, based out of Donbas, and then those in the West were supporting closer integration with Europe and the United States. So those kind of western eastern Ukrainian divides divisions. Among the oligarchs who supported Leonid Kuchma as president from 1984 to 2005 prevented Ukraine from making a very firm and strong commitment towards the West. So there was actually an analogy that was often used that Ukraine during this period of time had something of a pendulum foreign policy. So when one group of oligarchs got more power, Ukraine pivotted towards the West and when those in the East Ukraine pivotted towards Russia. And when both them were competing, Ukrainians would tend to play a delicate dance between the two, making decisions to satisfy both. And that seemed to be the overarching character of relations. So they knew that they need to work with the Russians or at least have favorable relations with Russia to a limited extent to preserve their security, prevent Russia from invading them, engaging in economic warfare. And they also saw their economic future and perhaps even their security features in some extent lay with closer relations with the West.
There were brief periods when this balance got upended, in the early 1990s it was a bit of a crisis of concern about Ukraine’s residual position on nuclear weapons which they maintained nuclear warheads after the fall of the Soviet Union by the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons and joined the NPT, resolved that crisis. A second period where this pendulum for foreign policy of Ukraine unraveled was during the early 2000s, when the Ukrainians, or Leonid Kuchma, was indirectly linked to the gruesome murder of a journalist Gongadze in 2001. And then there were bad movements in Ukraine towards an anti-democratic direction that were concerning to Western powers and also concerns about Ukrainian aid to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. But that was ultimately resolved by Ukraine’s desire to join NATO or at least moving towards NATO membership. But when Ukraine joined towards NATO membership, they also worked at a really decent relationship with Russia where they resolved the issue in the Kerch Strait, in the Black Sea and had an agreement on that. So those are the two periods in the first 15 years where that pendulum foreign policy was almost jeopardised one by antagonising the West and one antagonising Russia. And ultimately, these things were sorted out.
But after 2004, we started noticing a market deterioration in Ukraine’s relationship with Russia for a period of time that was triggered by the Orange Revolution, which propelled Yushchenko to power. The Russians viewed the Orange Revolution as effectively a Western backed coup and on generic support for Yushchenko and for a pro-Western policies. Ukraine took steps towards EU accession, or at least an EU association agreement, as well as close integration with NATO. Yanukovych’s presidency from 2010 to 2014, resulted in the reverse effect as Ukraine distanced itself from some of these ambitions and reoriented its foreign policy towards Russia, including giving Russia a long term base in Crimea and Sebastopol.
Then came the crisis of the EU Association Agreement in 2013, where Ukraine almost agreed to sign that. But then, under pressure from Russia, economic coercion perhaps, and ultimately offer a 15 billion dollar loan. Ukrainians pivoted at the last minute and blocked and that resulted in the Euromaidan revolution, Yanukovich’s fall, the annexation of Crimea. And really, since 2014, we’ve seen Russian-Ukraine basically in a de facto state of war.
Occasionally, you’ve seen tensions at least be moderated in a very pragmatic way, like when Zelensky, for example, negotiated with Putin on hostage releases on selective things when the Minsk agreements resigned as a cease fire. But for the most part, the relationship has remained very, very hostile. The Russians view the Ukrainian government as little more than a Western backed coup regime. And the Ukrainians, view Russia as an existential threat to their security. And that’s culminated in the crisis that we’re seeing today. That’s just an overall overview of Ukraine’s movement from this kind of pendulum bouncing, bouncing back and forth, to a gradual but increasingly sharp movement in the pro-Western direction.
Bilal Hafeez [00:10:30]
And did Russia have problems with Ukraine’s approaches to NATO and the EU in the 1990s and early 2000s? Or has this become more of a recent phenomena?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:10:42]
That’s an interesting question. I mean, I think that the Russians during the 1990s are primarily of the view that Ukrainian NATO membership was something that was a far off long term contingency and something that was not necessarily likely to happen. And they were much more concerned about NATO’s incursions on more immediate prospect countries. You know, NATO’s expansion to East Central Europe. NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Also add the Russian view of NATO. While it was often very suspicious, especially after the Yugoslavian crisis was not always wholly negative. I mean, NATO and Russia did have dialog on numerous issues. You had the the the famous BBC interview in 2001, where Putin basically implied that Russia could join NATO under specific conditions. Of course, those conditions were never realistically able to be met because it would imply that Russia would have special status with NATO almost akin to what like the United States has. So that was not something that would be acceptable to anyone in Europe, but it was a sign of it, in 2002 Putin made a statement basically saying that Ukraine has the sovereign choice and has a right to decide its alignment with NATO.
The Russian position on NATO really sharpened and deteriorated after the Orange Revolution, when they began to equate any movement towards Europe in economic direction with a security alignment and end of Ukrainian neutrality. Even though those two never went hand in hand, the French, the Germans and even the Americans probably weren’t ready to accept Ukraine at that time. And from 2006, you really started seeing the current rhetoric coming up when Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would effectively take drastic action if Ukraine moved towards NATO membership. And that said, that’s been the consistent refrain from the Russians pretty much ever since.
Bilal Hafeez [00:12:24]
So the Orange Revolution was really the key sort of threshold, which once crossed, that really sort of created this antagonism between them.
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:12:32]
The Orange Revolution was the eventual that created this antagonism.
Bilal Hafeez [00:12:40]
And before we talk about 2014 incursions and invasions and so on, before that we had Georgia in 2008. What’s your viewpoint of that? Obviously that was a big conflict. Russia appeared to gain some territory. How how do you view that within this story?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:13:04]
So the Georgian war was triggered really by three major factors. The first factor was the general anti-Western orientation of Russian foreign policy, which really sharpened due to the revolutions that I said that these artificial coups and coming forward that as they viewed them, as well as the crises in Iraq and Kosovo, and then the Munich speech by Vladimir Putin in 2007, which showed that Russia was going to emphatically resist what it saw as U.S. unilateralism.
The second was NATO’s supposed commitment to enlargement to include Georgia and Ukraine, which is codified in the 2008 Bucharest summit.
And the third was leadership transition within Russia, which pitted Dmitry Medvedev to the presidency and Vladimir Putin to the prime ministership and led to Dmitry Medvedev effectively trying to prove himself to the conservative nationalists who are more aligned with Putin and were somewhat skeptical of him because he was seen in some ways, at least early on, as a bit more of a pragmatist, at least towards the West.
So those are three factors that I think motivated and inspired Russia’s involvement. Of course, from the Russian point of view, they would say that it was Georgian provocation and it was Georgia that was posing a threat to Russia’s security and also to the security of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And the Russians had to militarily intervene, at least that was the narrative that they kind of put forward. The war was very brief and lasted in August 2008. For about 12 days in total, and it resulted and culminated in a severe crisis in Georgia-Russia relations, the Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as these kind of independent republics, much like what they just did with the Geskin Luhansk and a fair amount of ethnic cleansing of Georgians in South Ossetia and movements of ethnicities in those areas. That’s really what happened. And by fragmenting and eventually balkanising in Georgia, it became increasingly hard for Georgia to make any kind of a credible case towards joining NATO. And Russia also really showed that it could carry out a highly sophisticated form of warfare, a form of hybrid warfare that included both military forces on the ground and intensive information war, that rallied public opinion onto its side. Or at least created discord in there and cyber attacks all at once.
Bilal Hafeez [00:15:32]
But what was the international response to that? Because that’s similar to now. I mean, Russia effectively took part of Georgia. What was the international reaction around that time?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:15:44]
So it was seen as something somewhat short of an annexation. It wasn’t quite like Crimea, but it was more like Russia carving out spheres of influence and creating a long-term frozen conflict inside Georgia. So it was a bit more severe than what happened in Moldova back in the 1990s, but a bit less severe than what happened in Crimea in 2014, maybe akin to what we saw with the U.S. in Luhansk right now, if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re now also looking at the possibility of a much larger war looming in the future. The international response, though, was quite weak and tepid towards us, at least from the western point of view. Obviously, there were strong statements, George W. Bush said, that Russia violated a sovereign country and these actions are unacceptable in the 21st century. But the United States did not engage in any kind of military retaliation. It did not do more than send humanitary assistance, advice and military planes over. And even more crucially, there weren’t the kind of devastating sanctions that one would have thought or assumed might happen as a result of an action of this kind. I mean, the European response was also a bit more divided. I mean, Germany, for example, was a lot more neutral on it, as was the European Union, and even France was. They both tended to say that Georgia and Russia both had done something wrong here. They both were to blame and should kind of focus on mandating a cease fire. And then there were some, like Italy, who actually outright, due Berlusconi’s close relationship with Putin, perhaps, and Franco Frattini as minister of foreign affairs and, also, cordial relationship with Russia, actually said that we should try to avoid creating an anti-Russian bloc and we should recognise Russia’s legitimate concerns over here. So the Western response was very divided and did not lead to the kind of course of pushback that one would have expected or maybe hoped for in that scenario.
Bilal Hafeez [00:17:35]
So now we move to 2014, this is the beginning of the escalation of Russia-Ukraine. Russia captured Crimea, it supported the separatists in the Donbas region. What are some of the things that you took away from that period?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:17:59]
Let me go back to 2014, what happened I would say is that the Russians after Euromaidan, after the revolution occurred, were basically kind of stuck and confused as to what to do because it was clear that the Russians had lost leverage over Ukraine. Ukraine was going to inexorably move towards economic integration with the European Union. NATO expansion was always a figment of the imagination or something that Putin would use a securitised threat to rally them around. But the point is there was not really much of a risk of Ukraine really reorienting its policy towards Russia, really being subordinated towards Russia, like the way the Russians would want to see it. This is what happened, the Russians basically fomented a lot of narratives about the new government in Ukraine, accusing them of being ultra-nationalist, accusing them of being a fascist and neo-Nazi launching the coup, accusing them of committing a borderline genocide against ethnic Russians and also viewing the Ukrainian regime as something of a rogue regime that pose an imminent threat to Russia’s national security. And Russia bombarded the airwaves with this domestically and fomented domestic support for this, basically for a mission that would almost save Ukraine from itself, like 15 percent or 10 percent of the Ukrainian population, represented by the Poroshenko’s and the Yulia Tymoshenko and a few revolutionary figures of Euromaidan, and hijacked the Ukrainian state and turned it into a rogue pro-American puppet state that was going to attack Russia. And that narrative was very compelling.
Bilal Hafeez [00:19:41]
It was compelling for the Russians within Ukraine?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:19:44]
For the Russians inside Russia and also, to some extent, some Russians inside Ukraine. Yeah, but mostly the Russian’s inside of Russia.
Bilal Hafeez [00:19:51]
So they were saving Ukraine from this Agression?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:19:54]
Yes, that kind of an almost messianic complex for Russia kind of like saving its little brother from itself. That’s kind of like what happened, which which does speak to the heart of the Russian narrative that Ukraine is this artificial country. It’s somehow less than a truly independent nation state. Ukraine is not just international issue for Russia, it’s also a domestic issue which we saw in Putin’s speech just a couple of days ago. So that’s an enduring feature of Russian discourse. The actual decision to annex Crimea, which happened after Yanukovych fled, after negotiations broke down, was made by a small number of people within Russia. It was made mostly by the Russian security establishment figures like Nikolai Patrushev. Sergei Lavrov and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs played a negligible role in the decision, but was mainly delegated to communicate the decision once it was made.
Bilal Hafeez [00:20:45]
If you just step back a moment. So, as an outsider, it seems like Putin controls everything. But from what you’re saying there, there’s there’s other power players?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:20:58]
There’s certainly certain responsibilities and certain decisions are made often by a smaller group of people. And in Syria, there was a lot more expansive consultations. This was done by a very small group of people in a very short period of time. That’s what all my research and people who were there at the time, as well as the ex-American officials familiar with it, have have informed me. So this is kind of what I want to convey to you. And the ideological influences would have been Sergei Glazyev, who was a supporter of Eurasianism and Surkov who was the founder of Sovereign Democracy, and a lot of these kind of ideological strands of Putinism, if you will. If Putinism is something that exists. So those figures inspired a quick fire intervention in Crimea.
Bilal Hafeez [00:21:44]
On Crimea, what was the benefit of capturing Crimea, was there any strategic importance because of the Black Sea and so on? What was what was the benefit to Russia for Crimea?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:21:55]
Well, Crimea had several significant cities from the Russian point of view. The first was obviously the historical significance of it because it had been handed over to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev, which the Russians nationalists used to be an accident of history. It was an integral part of the Russian Empire, which they had fought with Turkey. So from a status point of view, reclaiming Crimea, that notion is something that was very powerful and resonant nationalists within Russia. So that was one big thing. But from a strategic standpoint, absolutely. It was about ensuring that they have a long term military presence in the Black Sea. And, also, Sevastopol as a port would not be handed over to Western control or the Ukrainians with a pro-Western government wouldn’t ask the Russians to leave and abrogate the lease. So in order to prevent at least from being abrogated, they decided the most effective way to secure their foothold in the Black Sea was to annex the peninsula entirely. And also you had ethnic Russians there. So there was another third dimension.
Bilal Hafeez [00:22:50]
Then the Donbass region, was that just because there’s Russians there, that’s the Russian side of Ukraine. Why target that region?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:22:57]
So the narratives that I was talking about were very, very prevailing within the elite establishment and also at the Russian public opinion with regards to the desire to protect ethnic Russians, as well as the imminent threat that these revolutionaries, this kind of fascist in Ukraine posed to Russians there.
So what the Russians did was they tried to carve out a sphere of land or sphere of influence which they called Novorossiya. Novorossiya has got mixed definitions, but it could extend as far as Kharkiv and Odessa and all the way to the end of Donbass. That’s a pretty large chunk of Ukrainian territory. For the maximalists, the goal would have been to occupy all that territory and then pushed all the way to Kiev and change the regime and get pro-Western regime. What ultimately happened was something less than that, they managed to quite easily find separatist militias that they could mobilise inside Donetsk and Luhansk and most ethnic Russians to pull those regions away from Ukraine into their orbit. But as they started moving further, it became harder and harder and they faced more resistance even from ethnic Russians who took up arms on the Ukrainian side, which is something that they may not have considered.
So Russia’s military advance is stalled, and they faced a decision to make. Would they want to put in a massive amount of troops like we’re seeing right now and basically officially declare war? And that would come with the great reward from the Russian point of view or from Putin’s point of view, if it was successful but also high risk of failure if it was seen to be losing a lot of casualties or not really achieving the objectives that they said. Or would they rather settle for a piecemeal acquisition of some territory and keep the intervention under the radar and deniable to their own population, saying that it was just little green man and pro-Russian separatists and not actual Russian troops that were carrying all of us out? And the Russians ultimately chose the more risk-averse approach and kept it deniable and stuck with just Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, and didn’t end up pushing all the way.
Bilal Hafeez [00:24:54]
And why was that? Why did they make that calculation in that direction at that time?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:25:05]
Putin already achieved what he wanted to do from a domestic standpoint. When he liberated Crimea and returned to Russia because his approval rating shot up to 89 percent right after that and remained consistently about 80 percent for the next couple of years. So he managed to really build a foundation of legitimacy for his regime that was durable, even as the Russian economy was already going through a malaise, was already going through difficulties that got worse with sanctions, but it was already going through those problems anyway.
From a domestic standpoint, Putin got another source of legitimacy and a legacy defining accomplishment at a relatively low cost. And second, Russia wanted to basically intervene in Ukraine with high-reward and low-cost when the rewards were more uncertain and the cost seemed to be higher, they pulled off. And moreover, the sanctions against Russia are quite intense, but they weren’t crippling. I mean, it had Russia pushed for more annexation of territory. It’s very possible they wouldn’t have been any of these talks on Nord Stream 2 or divesting from Russian energy would have began long before. Maybe there could have been movements towards cutting Russia out of the financial system like they’re doing now in sovereign debt and maybe more with swift. So those things could have those discussions that we’re having right now could have happened in 2014, 2015. At that time, I don’t think Putin viewed the risk of that as worth it.
Bilal Hafeez [00:26:28]
And then we had the Minsk agreements which were kind of like a cease fire type arrangement. What were the the main elements of that? Because Putin referred to that saying that’s been violated and so on.
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:26:42]
The Minsk agreement was effectively created in June of 2014. So this was after the annexation of Crimea. And once the situation in Donbass was effectively stabilising into a semi-frozen conflict. So it was not entirely frozen because there was still violence on the ground, but the lines of control were not moving drastically. It was all within a relatively small bat. And what we saw was we saw an initiative in the Normandy format coming through with Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel leading the way, as well as former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma playing hero on the Ukrainian side. Because he, as I said, had been very effective in deftly managing that balance between Russia and the West and signing the Kerch Strait agreement and other things in his presidency. So he was somebody who was a Ukrainian official who was respected by the Russians and they also looped in some signatories from Donetsk and Luhansk including the two leaders, Alexander Zakharchenko, who was later assassinated. And the major criteria were to create a cease fire to allow for overseas monitoring, create a bit of autonomy and decentralisation for Donetsk and Luhansk, not recognising them as independent, of course, I guess decentralising them. And then some vague commitments to prosecuting war criminals, removing prisoner releases and improving human rights and humanitarianism, as well as removing arms and equipment and heavy weaponry. Most of those more nebulous goals were not achieved, and there was never really a true ceasefire that happened there. But the Minsk protocol did allow a semi-frozen conflict to basically cool into a near-frozen conflict by for the next six to seven years.
Bilal Hafeez [00:28:24]
Now, here we are today. What was the run up to this latest episode? In the media, we’ve been focusing on this for the last few weeks because Biden and other Western leaders have been talking about potential invasion. But was there something going months before this? What’s the context for this?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:28:43]
Unlike in Euromaidan, where there was such a clear change of government in Ukraine that caused all this. This crisis in Ukraine had very little to do, if almost anything, to do with Ukraine. It was to do with other problems. In the spring of last year, we had a near escalation that many people thought was going to happen with more than 100,000. Maybe even as much 150,000 troops were mobilised on the Ukrainian border. And we seemed OK. There could be a possibility of a Russian invasion. That ultimately did not happen, the Russians backed off. But there were several things that that happened. First of all, there was a new Russian military buildup on the border, partially aimed at securing a renewed security guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO, as well as they’re trying to redefine the security architecture to remove Western and NATO forces from all countries that were signed after 1997, including Romania and Bulgaria. So the Russians started pushing for this objective and mobilising forces there. And this could be triggered by some of the problems that were occurring inside Russia.
The problems with socioeconomic grievances, pension reform, COVID-19 vulnerabilities in the Duma elections that were coming through with United Russia, some opposition activism with Navalny and some other things, maybe insecurity and socioeconomic grievances at home, were once again encouraging this kind of aggression abroad in Russia. That’s one possibility.
So Russia mobilised forces on the border. Another issue that was a bit of a red line and a bit of a concern from the Ukrainian side was the fact that Ukraine actually used Turkish barakah drones for the first time. And those drones obviously had wreaked havoc on Russian military objectives in Syria and Libya in the past. And that raised alarm bells, that may have been approximate trigger that coincided with it. Also, there were war of words and movements back and forth. Zelensky basically accused Akhmetov and the Russians of leading eastern Ukraine oligarch of launching a coup against his government. So, and the Russians accuse Ukrainians of carrying out genocide in Donbas in December 2021. And those war of words and that kind of incendiary rhetoric fueled a mobilisation that got us to this point.
Bilal Hafeez [00:31:01]
Let’s move more to the here and now. So we had the Putin speech. I watched some of it, but then I kind of got bogged down with the history there. But what was your take on the Putin speech to justify the calling for the independence of the the two republics?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:31:24]
So basically at the Donetsk Luhansk decision and the Putin speech. So the Putin speech, just first of all, just to describe it very briefly, was very much a speech that I think was aimed at the domestic audience. It was very much aimed at basically building a case or at least somewhat compelling case for eventual war with Ukraine. So it covered all the bases. It covered Ukraine as an artificial state. And that was clarified later, they said we recognize all the other fourteen former Soviet republics as legitimate states, but not Ukraine, because Ukraine is a state under foreign occupation, implying that the Euromaidan post-revolutionary government does not have legitimate institutions, is not democratic, it’s just a colony of the United States. It condemned the Euromaidan Revolution, it condemned the performance of Ukrainian policymakers and elites, especially in terms of corruption and governance. Not that Russia does not have the same problems and as bad or worse, but they were trying to show that these people have let Ukraine down, bring back that narrative of saving Ukraine from itself again, a kind of messianic narrative that I was talking about before.
And then there were just a lot of that historical manipulations and gyrations about everything from Vladimir Lenin and this bizarre threat about Ukraine producing nuclear weapons, WMDs and Ukraine getting nukes before Iran and North Korea, which triggers that. It was all aimed at building a case for war, but not really leaving the intentions and the next steps very clear. With respect to the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk that occurred along with it, that was closely linked with these attacks. It was also linked to the narrative that Ukraine is this kind of aggressor that has been violating the Minsk agreement over the course of time, basically pushing into what Putin was almost describing as a slow motion suicide yesterday of the Minsk agreement, and Russia broke the agreement that was already being undermined by the Ukrainians so much that something new needed to replace it. It was already dead. And he just kind of broke the broke the strap and Donetsk and Luhansk. His recognition would also allow for a more durable Russian military presence. Those are going to be states, they can technically invite the Russian military to come into a system, which is what they’re already attempting to do. And it would have allowed the Russians to basically have a major foothold in Ukraine’s territory that could expedite a much larger military campaign if need be.
Bilal Hafeez [00:33:46]
What’s the advantage to Russia of capturing those republics or that part of Ukraine?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:33:53]
Russia doesn’t necessarily want to annex those republics into its union status and take over other responsibilities for like health care and pensions, and things that they have had to do in Crimea. And these countries are basically under a state of under crippling U.S. sanctions under a state of near blockade for most of the rest of the world because it’s not recognised. So there will be a lot of burdens Russia to take on. Russia is bringing in supposedly 700,000 evacuees coming in as vaccinating them and paying them ten thousand rubles each to leave. But a big influx of refugees, even ethnic Russian refugees, is hardly popular in Russia right now. So the endgame here is not occupation, annexation and takeovers. Rather, it’s aimed at further undermining Ukrainian sovereignty and Ukraine’s control over its own territory. Blocking Ukraine for ever joining NATO, at least, is a phantom threat. That’s also there because it’s violating its territorial integrity and giving Russia a foothold on Ukrainian soil, which you could use to escalate, of course they will never frame it escalation, they’ll frame it as Ukraine is trying to send rogue operatives into Russia. Or launch terror attacks in Crimea against Orthodox Christians or Ukraine is going to invade the Donbass. But now they’ve got military positions on all sides. They’ve got military positions in the south, which can cut them through the southern flank up North. They’ve got now thirty thousand troops stationed in Belarus, which could move into Kiev, and they’ve got a base in eastern Ukraine and a naval encirclement in the Black Sea. So all four of those military deployments in tandem, if they ever want to occupy Ukraine, they would be able to attack Ukraine, theoretically from both sides, as well as with cyber attacks and other tools of political interference. And that would basically push the Ukrainian state towards class. That’s something that they could do.
Bilal Hafeez [00:35:36]
Do you think there’s a possibility that they will try to go for a full military invasion of Ukraine and occupy Kiev, for example?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:35:44]
Absolutely it’s a possibility, certainly not something to be ruled out. I mean, there were lots of Russian elites and Russian officials who have viewed that to be the end goal. I mean, even Alexander Labatt, right, who is a very prominent military general, basically said that he was a spokesperson for the conservative nationalists in Russia. He says Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are all one country and they all should be. That view has been ensconced in the Russian leader’s esthablishments since the 1990s. There will be a portion of people who would want to see that happen.
However, there are reasons to believe that that is not necessarily a desirable end game, because occupation of territory where more than 40 million plus of the population is against you is not an easy thing to do, and it’s going to be very complicated. And also, I think there’ll be more mileage and a maximal case scenario of Russia just changing the regime in Kiev to use of the mixture of the hybrid techniques that they use in Georgia, they describe cyber disinformation and military force and then installing a puppet and then leaving. That would probably be more effective than actually occupying the country, but they might occupy more strategically important terrain, if not necessarily population centers like Odessa. But the terrain in between those cities and Donetsk and Luhansk could get occupied and could get annexed by Russia to give them more strategic leverage and more ability to coerce Ukraine economically and militarily. Also, they take go over that terrain. They also take over factories and a good chunk of Ukrainian manufacturing and heavy industry, which also gives them more leverage over Ukraine, not just from gas now, but also from heavy industry and manufacturing. That would be another important death toll. And it was actually an Estonian intelligence report that basically summarises entire contingencies they do. Russia’s end goal is to engage in limited military intervention in Ukraine, which occupies that strategically important terrain and engages in other forms of destabilisation. And that’s something that the Germans as well have endorsed as a plausible theory for what might happen next. Even Baerbock mentioned to the Munich Security Conference.
Bilal Hafeez [00:37:44]
I guess this question of semantics here. But when we say invasion, in your eyes, what does invasion mean? Or from a Western or Ukrainian perspective, what does an invasion mean?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:37:57]
From Ukraine’s perspective, Ukraine’s already been invaded. Russia’s already taken Crimea over, Russia’s already taking over Donetsk and Luhansk de facto, or they’ve made them independent and out of Ukrainian territory. So any violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity from a Ukrainian point of view is an invasion. In the West,a lot of people would think the same, but in terms of actual punishment, we seem to be like we’ve already punish them for Crimea, we now already punish them for Donetsk and Luhansk for these initial round of sanctions, and an invasion would be something that leads to Russia taking over more territory than just what was kind of disputed at Minsk or in Crimea. So de facto that the word invasion means different things and a Russian point of view, they don’t really see it as an invasion. The way the Russians have been framing this and even on the state television and on their political statements, is that NATO’s launching a war of aggression against Russia. NATO’s encircling Russia and Russia is just being defensive and pushing back. So Russia has dismissed this notion of an invasion, because they just don’t view Ukraine as a fully sovereign country. And they also are claiming their actions are defensive or preemptive.
Bilal Hafeez [00:39:03]
In terms of Western sanctions, what’s your view of what’s already been implemented and what would be the next wave? What would trigger the next wave of sanctions?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:39:14]
So the sanctions that have already been implemented initially were very tepid and been quite disappointing to many people in the West. When the U.S. just sanctioned Donesk and Luhansk and Britain just sanctioned three oligarchs who were already sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018. Those were not necessarily very interesting moves. But over the course of the day yesterday, there were some sanctions that I think would have a lot more impact going forward. Britain targeting five major banks and the Americans targeting two major banks including the military bank, that’s significant. There, of course, are others that are left out, that means that there’s more leverage that can be added and more push that can be made. The U.S. has sanctioned Britain now, with sanctions to sovereign debt coming from Russia, sanctions might take longer to enforce than the Americans, at least from what I’ve been reading so far. Russia’s debt levels are, of course, very low. I mean, in terms of sovereign debt now, 12 15 percent of GDP, their foreign exchange reserves have been moving up, so some people are wondering how impactful those are, but those are bigger steps. And also maybe in symbolic but also significant, the asset freezes and travel bans on the Duma members, 351 of them who supported the Donetsk and Luhansk missions are significant. Those are significant moves. The EU is leading the way. Future sanctions that we should watch out for and ones that we should really be paying attention for going forward. One Increased sanctions on oligarch money and money laundering, and in general, just Russians planting their assets in third countries, particularly in the West.
So particularly what Britain does with the assets in London and whether that acts as a movement for the French, something similar with Paris assets and Italian assets in terms of real estate, Greek vacation homes, you know, all these things. But the question is what will happen? And even the UAE is not supportive of Russian involvement in Ukraine, it also is not really going to take a movement away from pushing against Russia because of their common interest in Libya, the common interest in Syria, the UAE’s general multi-polar foreign policy. So that means they’re going to be more dependent on Dubai.
Another thing just in terms of sanctions and what to watch would be something more serious in the energy sphere. Nord Stream two is a project that is something that’s in the future that’s already been canceled on certification. But will there be more immediate sanctions on the purchase of Russian gas right now? Germany saying it can live without that Russian gas, but it’s also closes nuclear power plants. How is that going to square? Italy has said that there’s no way the Europeans are going to be able to sanction all Russian gas at once. And that was interestingly, less than 48 hours after the Italians devised a plan to diversify. So the Italian Economic Ministry talks about diversification, and Draghi says no. Where are we going to be able to cut ourselves off from Russian gas? So is there a bigger movement away from Russian gas? I’m more skeptical of that.
I think it’s more likely that they’ll target the assets of oligarchs and they’ll do best. Also, the hint from Japan, whether the Americans were asking the Japanese to ship LNG to Europe in the event of a war in the event of a crisis, the Japanese were saying, oh, the LNG situation is reasonably secure right now, but they made no commitment even with the sanctions package to do anything of that kind. So that means that the gas issue will still remain open. Question Azerbaijan, Qatar, Turkmenistan. Nobody’s going to be able to fill the void that Russia has for 40 percent of Europe’s gas right now. And finally, these sanctions that we should watch for, our personal sanctions against Vladimir Putin because those would lead to a very potentially unpredictable response from him. He has seen that as basically a severance of relations with Russia if any country decides to do that. I think only Poland and Lithuania have talked about it, but Joe Biden mentioned it as a contingency on the 25th of January. He didn’t mention the speech yesterday, interestingly. So maybe that will come into play later on, those are same sanctions that we should be looking forward to, or at least I’m watching for.
Bilal Hafeez [00:43:09]
Obviously this is very hard to do, but what’s your base case of what’s going to happen in the next few weeks? In terms of Russia, you know, will they push their military into new territories in terms of what will Russia will do against Ukraine?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:43:27]
This is a very hard thing to predict because as I’ve said before, decisions often have been event driven, they’re often reactive like we saw in Crimea and often made by that small group of individuals. There’s no more Glasnevin circle at the helm. There appears to be a bit more of a divide, at least within the Russian leadership establishment, at least generationally, with the emergence of people like Anton Bino as chief of staff and instead of Sergei Ivanov. So different generational divide and also some people who are more pragmatic in terms of engagement with the West. Public opinion in Russia does not seem to be favoring also a really expensive military intervention or sweeping long term intervention as a lot of casualties or a lot of cost.
If you look at the latest Levada Center survey, they’re more happy about the kind of intervention that we saw in Kazakhstan quick, decisive and restore order very quickly, 67 percent of people approved of it. The Kazakh intervention was viewed as a success, or a model of what Russia can do in terms of power projection going forward. So given those factors, given the fact that there is that generational divide, two of the main ideologues have stepped aside, public opinion doesn’t favor this, and the Kazakh model is more appealing than a long-term occupation model. I think that the Russians are most likely to do broadly what that Estonian or German report is hinting, take over some extra territory in eastern Ukraine, at least temporarily, and keep the mobilisations going in Belarus, Moldova, the Black Sea. Much more cyber attacks, already we’ve seen cyber attacks launched again. They’ve been repeatedly happening. And then dangle the prospect of something much bigger. I dangled the risk that Putin could go crazy and annex the Baltic states and Belarus and Moldova and Ukraine in the hopes of getting the West to either, if not acknowledging, as in the past that’s unrealistic makes some kind of a blinking statement on security guarantees or on Ukraine NATO membership or something, something that Putin can come back and declare victory at home to. So I think that Putin will launch a minor incursion, act like he could be unpredictable and act like he might be able to go much further than this and then test Western resolve. And that’s why I think is the most likely crisis, at least him claiming victory to his domestic audience without really achieving much substantive. And we kind of move back to an uneasy thought as well again.
Bilal Hafeez [00:45:42]
And do you think the West, if there was that additional encroachment on Ukraine territory, would the West then ramp up sanctions or would the West pull back?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:45:50]
Well, the West would ramp up sanctions, but there’s a choice now between what happens here. The West could ramp up sanctions somewhat on the issues that I described. So probably an oligarch assets, less likely on energy because Russia has got the cards there, and probably not on Putin personally, or cutting them out from swift or something like that. So more sanctions on individuals and maybe some of that money in assets like that, that would not close the door to some kind of diplomacy with Russia being revived in the future and for a step back of the crisis.
However, if the West really went all in the EU, Japan, United States, Canada, Britain, everybody just went all in. I was just like, you know, cut Russia out of swift, sanction Russian gas, sanction Vladimir Putin, kick out all these oligarch assets, and basically just cripple as many sectors of the Russian economy as possible. Then you have the risk that Putin will just feel like he has nothing to lose and then he could go for Kiev and then we could see something more apocalyptic happen. So I think that the West will be cautious and cognisant of the fact that you want to punish Russia. But you don’t want to push them into a box, which they feel that they’re under siege. Siege mentality creates patriotism at home to such an extent that Putin feels like he’s got nothing to lose by doing something really drastic.
Bilal Hafeez [00:47:07]
We’ve got a ton of questions coming in now. Do you think that Putin is bringing this to a head as part of his legacy? Do you think he’s kind of thinking of his exit or is he here for the long term? I mean, some other people have questioned his mental well-being that he’s kind of less with it today than he was 10 years ago. Do you have any views on his psychology?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:47:36]
Yeah, that’s very interesting. I think that the rumors of his health have been something that have been recurrent over the years, like him having Parkinson’s or having this mental decline. There really isn’t any evidence of that. Currently, there isn’t any evidence of him really wanting to resign or leave the station. In fact, he’s most likely going to be extending his term well beyond 2024. He’d already the legal groundwork for that to happen, for him to stay in power for more than another decade. So Putin is not thinking about leaving anytime soon. But he is very cognisant, absolutely, of his legacy, and he’s been cognisant of his legacy ever since the day he took office. The first part of his legacy was restoring law and order within Russia, bringing back stability after the Wild West days of the 1990s, the lawlessness of Chechnya and organised crime, and all those things. Bringing the country back towards order, reviving the Russian economy from a depression, thanks mostly to energy and commodities. But reviving it from the ruble crisis and the depression. And third, but most importantly, making sure that Russia is respected internationally again or at least respected in the way that Russians define it. That means having a sphere of influence. That means ensuring that Russia’s got influence over countries like Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia, which is what he’s already trying to do. And if that requires territorial annexation or the balkanisation of these countries or divisions of these countries, he’s very happy to do that as a means to an end. And also asserting Russia as a great power that’s indispensable on the world stage. That includes their involvement in Syria, their resurgence of influence in Africa, their strengthened relationship with China and broadening of partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and even their most recently their return to Latin America. So all those things are there. So that’s what his legacy is in foreign policy terms. It’s really aimed at kind of creating a shared influence and creating a perception of great power status to make Russia feel respected again after the humiliation of the 90s.
Bilal Hafeez [00:49:41]
Do you guys think he goes slowly for Mariupol corridor expansion or does he do it quickly? And then another question is what the probability of opening up the Suwalki corridor through a land connection with Belarus?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:50:07]
The Mariupol line was interesting because that was kind of a land bridge that kind of took through Crimea. It was kind of seen to be like kind of that bellwether swing region as to what was going to happen. There was still violence in and around Debaltseve. And with shelling and violence in that area happening and the fact that the separatists are no longer happy with the amount of territory that they hold me, they might want to push further. That could be certainly important. Yeah, it would be like they want to take a land bridge over there. It’s 300 kilometers long. It would link Crimea to Donbass. But the problem is some of the residents there, at least before Minsk, were generally more skeptical of the idea. They were more on the resistance side. And that was more of the part of land of the separatists in Russia who were unable to take as easily. So it would be a bit of a move by kind of backward eastward to take over that territory while they’re also pushing westward. So it’s interesting to see how they be able to combine that kind of effectively a two front fight, right. It’s a little bit like in some ways analogous to Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan for the Taliban that little resistance area, and it’s very hard for them to take. It’s the same kind of thing in Donbass for the Russians, and that’s what I see is the Mariupol line. If that’s what they the question is referring to how. In regards to the corridor in Belarus.
Bilal Hafeez [00:51:41]
What’s the corridor in Belarus? What’s its importance?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:51:56]
We’re not talking about the new one, we’re talking about the Poland, Lithuania one.
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:52:05]
Well, that would definitely be relevant. Yeah, because there are forces inside Belarus and obviously nuclear capable missiles and a lot of equipment coming through from in terms of Iskander. If Russia wanted to attack Ukraine from the West, that would obviously be a thing. But we have a feeling at least there’s a Western intelligence and then we’re more likely to attack from the east. Belarus is more likely to have beaten intervention once the invasion is already underway and or they may attack from the south, which from Moldova, which I was a bit more skeptical of. But some Western intelligence was saying that that’s a possibility. The very fact that the embassy and the personnel have moved from Kiev to Lviv suggests that they’re less worried about an attack from Suwalki because that would hit them right in there. Actually then leaving them in Kiev. But Zelensky has left the door open to say if Russia attacks Ukraine there’s no difference in terms of security being in Kiev and Lviv they can attack from multiple directions. Anything can happen. So we can’t rule anything out at this point. I think that the Mariupol corridor probably be more significant in the early stages of the war than the Sawulki corridor.
Bilal Hafeez [00:53:06]
What’s the effect of this on the JCPOA (Iran) negotiations?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:53:18]
OK, so let’s get back to the Iran and nuclear negotiations. And I would say that the Russians obviously are an important player in those negotiations. However, they have been kind of taking the rhetoric or at least the support for what the Iranians have been saying with regards to a man’s right to self-defense with regards to the fact that the Iranians have effectively, we’re in the right. I mean, they’ve just have been engaged in uranium enrichment, which may go beyond the treaties, but their ballistic missile program and the nuclear programs are mostly for self-defense and mostly peaceful. And it was the US who abrogated the treaty.
So the Russians have also been expressing optimism with the Iranians on the progress of negotiations with regards to unilateral sanctions being removed and things like that, even when the West is saying that no progress is being made. Russian and Iranian rhetoric has pretty much been in lockstep with each other throughout this. So what will this do to that? Obviously, the Russians and the West need cooperate and engage in dialog on the JCPOA and any movement towards a major diplomatic crisis or suspension of talks between Blinken and Lavrov like we saw this week. And more intensified conflict, probably slows down the progress of the negotiations because it means that the Russians cannot engage with the Americans and Europeans in such a normalised fashion. But the Russians do not want a do a real major conflict between the Americans and the Iranians because the Russians are not going to really be able to come to the aid of the Iranians at this point. The Russians benefit more from looking like the adults in the room when there’s a brinksmanship scenario. So when the Americans and the Iranians are on the brink of crashing, like after Soleimani and the Saudis and the Israelis and everybody there, Russia can play its relations with all sides and kind of frame itself like a negotiator or as like somebody who’s acting more mature and constructive. Russia seems to prefer that kind of role. And also the Russians do not want an unbreakable Iranian conduct to develop a nuclear bomb or use of, let’s say, missiles to attack Israel and Saudi assets that would upset the oil price agreements of OPEC+ and also make it harder for Russia to balance between all these countries. So the Russians will probably continue to back the Iranian position, but also discourage them, or at least whisper to them not to be too extreme in terms of violations, if there’s a delay in the text, and the JCPOA talks could slow down after there’s already been some promise and some movement towards a breakthrough because of this crisis, at least in the short term.
Bilal Hafeez [00:55:49]
What’s your take on Turkey and Russia?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:55:59]
So the relationship between Turkey and Ukraine is quite interesting. Obviously, it’s been a long term strategic relationship that Erdogan has been trying to hone as part of his strategy of reasserting Turkey as a Black Sea power and also giving Turkey history of influence in Greater Eurasia as part of Turkey strategy being more than a regional power but somewhat less than a great power, but something that kind of lies in that continuum. And Turkey’s closer relations with Central Asian countries is obviously a part of that notion of pan-Turkism, Turkey’s assertiveness in Afghanistan, Turkey’s ties to Georgia and backing militarily of Azerbaijan, and now dialog with Armenia.
You’re seeing Turkey trying to project power in the Caucasus, project power in Central Asia. All this Eurasian area, as well as now the the Black Sea, to combine with their profile in the Middle East and rising profile in Africa. That’s kind of an interesting sphere. That’s a series of influence that Turkey’s trying to carve out. So Turkey has a long term strategic interest in maintaining close ties to Ukraine. Erdogan and Yanukovich really laid the groundwork for the current partnership, which now consists of a free trade agreement and now consists of trade targets moving up from seven billion to $10 billion, it consists of Turkey’s supplying drones to Ukraine, as I mentioned before. And also Turkey locally training Ukrainians into locally producing their drones and their military equipment as well. So you see a lot of things happening here from the Turkish side.
Bilal Hafeez [00:57:26]
Can NATO take many cards out of Putin’s hands by declaring there is no intention for Ukraine to join NATO? And what do you make of China’s position, would NATO’s response to Russia allow China to gauge future moves on Taiwan?
Dr Samuel Ramani [00:57:54]
And also one last thing is I don’t think that you have Turkey backs Ukraine out with drones or with military support. I don’t think it’s going to lead to a major disruption of the Russia Turkey relationship more broadly because they also have to deal with negotiations in Syria, Libya and other areas. So it will be a checked area of confliction.
Now, China is viewing this crisis, obviously, with the aim of kind of capitalising on Russia’s perceived isolation ffrom the West. So we saw the raft of gas agreements that were signed during the start of the Beijing Olympics. We’ve seen China condemn NATO expansion and back Russian narratives on that, which is a recurring theme with the Chinese, they have now endorsed Russian narrative of a couple revolutions as well. Crucially, China has not backed Russia’s claims to either Crimea or Donetsk and Luhansk. Even though Russia has been backed China’s claims to Hong Kong and Taiwan. So it’s a bit of an asymmetry in terms of their diplomatic relationship. And I think this is more of a way of kind of showing solidarity with Russia against the West, rather than China really coming to Russia’s aid in the event of a larger Russia Western systemic conflicts, important to keep in mind the China views Ukraine is a vector within its Belt and Road. China actually increased its imports of Ukrainian agricultural products, especially corn, by more than 200 percent after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and agricultural ties are still there. China is investing in Ukrainian industry. China does not have any real interest or desire to see Ukraine become completely destabilised. The economy collapse or a war ransack its investments there. The China will be acting as a voice of moderation on Russia, even if publicly it decries sanctions against Russia and decries NATO expansion in very similar terms to the way the Russians are doing. With respect to Taiwan. I think that that threat is grossly overplayed at this point. I mean, there’s not the same kind of domestic pressures within China that Russia has to carry this thing out. And China has a lot more to lose in terms of not only provoking conflict with the United States, it could go nuclear, but also in terms of the isolation that it could get from the West. And China is pretty happy with its existing arrangement, where it can kind of provoke Taiwan into not moving too far away from it. And invading it I don’t see it having any kind of real strategic benefit for China right now. The risks are too high. I think that that comparison is really overplayed, and even the Taiwanese acknowledge. The Taiwanese say they’re watching the situation in Ukraine very closely, but they see no unusual maneuvers from the Chinese in the Chinese air defense zone. That’s important to keep in mind.
Bilal Hafeez [01:00:32]
Do you think NATO would withdraw the ability for Ukraine to join it as a way of de-escalating the situation?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:00:42]
Well, Macron hinted at that, and then the Fins even came back and says we in Finland don’t even want that. So it kind of was an interesting thing like the West would have to basically undo the Bucharest agreement, which basically said that Ukraine is on the verge of joining NATO. And that would be a major concession towards the Russians, not in practical terms, but in symbolic terms, in terms of loss of face. I just don’t see the West really doing that. The most likely scenario in the event of people fearing that Russia could go rogue and go much more expansive in terms of war would be saying, OK, Ukraine may not join for a period of like 10 or 15 years or something, and then we revisit the issue then.
Bilal Hafeez [01:01:25]
Are Russian military capabilities overstated?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:01:35]
The Russian military has obviously proven itself to be very effective in a variety of contexts when it’s using air power, along with a proxy ground force like that we’ve seen in Syria, where they were able to turn the tide of the conflict quite effectively. We’ve seen them also be very effective in these kind of stabilisation missions like we’ve seen in Kazakhstan. But in terms of long term forward offensive operations, the record is more murky whether it’s being done by private military contractors in Libya, in Central African Republic, we’ve seen them fizzle out and large-scale interventions. They did manage to gain considerable amount of territory in Georgia, but also they slowed down in Fishkin Valley and the the slow pace of the Russian movements in Georgia, it necessitated a military reform.
In Ukraine, there is a similar thing that happened in 2014-2015. They were able to start very well, but then kind of slowed down as it became more of an international threat. Of course, one can argue that the Russians were deniable in Ukraine. They were only there for a short time in Georgia, and they were reliant on private contractors in Libya and Syria. If Russia really wanted to put all capabilities to the test put 60 percent of its army into into Ukraine, it’s mobilised. All the forces are mobilised, and use cyber and use other tactics. It might be able to blow Ukraine out of the water. But in terms of what we’ve seen up until now, Russia has never really used all it’s cards, and when it has used some of its cards it’s had a mixed track record.
Bilal Hafeez [01:03:06]
On the cyber front, will attacks continue to be limited to Ukraine?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:03:11] The cyber attacks will probably be more expansive and it could be occurring almost anywhere else. I mean, obviously, Ukraine will be the main target simply because it’s part of their military operations, much like they did with Georgia. But don’t be surprised if we see cyber attacks on Poland, the Baltic states, and we can see them happening with countries like Norway and Britain. So they’re definitely going to be happening all over the place and it’s something that we have to deal with as this crisis gets worse.
Bilal Hafeez [01:03:34]
Who are the powerful people behind Putin, the powerful players we need to look out for?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:03:47]
The current power players are obviously going to be Sergey Shoygu. He’s the defense minister, main figure involved in military planning and movements. He’s pulled over for obviously from the days of 2014, and we’ve seen his status improve, particularly in the context of Middle Eastern policy, where he’s not only calling the shots militarily in Syria, he’s also participating all option in substitution for Lavrov in diplomatic meetings at a very high level. And in terms of planning logistically of these kind of operations with PMCs too, he’s been in the room with Yevgeny Prigozhin in Libya. So he’s both a diplomat, a military planner and a point man for Russia’s more underhanded gray zone military activities. So he’s obviously somebody who’s very important to watch. He’s been under sanction now by the European Union just today. So I think that’s acknowledgment of his influence.
Another person whose influence could also be even understated, but also somebody to watch now, Valery Gerasimov, also incidentally sanctioned by the European Union today, the chief of staff who’s involved in planning it. There’ll be warnings about Western encroachment and about this Ukrainian threat and drumming up these narratives, they’re very influential and can reach Putin’s ear. Those are probably some of the most important figures to watch. Of course, there’ll be statements from Medvedev and Lavrov and others. But at this point in time, I think they’re more conveying the views of these people or the views of the Kremlin, rather than actually shaping the views on the issue of Ukraine.
Bilal Hafeez [01:05:19]
I think we can start to wind down our conversation. I do also want to mention that you have a book as well on Russia coming out soon. Can you just tell us a bit about that book?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:05:29]
So I got a book coming out of Russia’s foreign policy towards Africa. It’s called ‘Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power Or Bellicose Pretender?’. There was a sneak preview of it that was published in Foreign Affairs on Thursday. It’s about 2500 words based on it, and I encourage you all to take a look at it is right on the website. And yeah, basically what that book covers is the history of Russia’s resurgence in Africa since 1991. Bascially, how we got to this point with regards to Russia hosting 43 countries in Sochi and engaging in all these kind of clandestine private military contractor operations across the continent. And just a couple of points that were interesting from it. Number one, Russia’s resurgence in Africa is not just a product of them looking for new markets because of Western isolation. It’s in something that’s happened incrementally over the past 25 to 30 years, really ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are some people who want to recreate their influence there having the late 1990s. They’ve created it. And Putin has borrowed a lot of his ideas from people who would view as political rivals in the past. Evgeny Primakov or even people who claim to disdain like Gorbachev. That’s an interesting theme that I bring into the book is that that continuity and history. And another they bring into the book is quite interesting, two is that Russia and China and Africa may not necessarily have as harmonious relationship in terms of their activities on the continent as they do bilaterally. It’s not, not that much in terms of engagements. I talk about that relationship and Russia’s relationships with other external powers. That’s another interesting finding that I came up with. And the other thing too, is that whereas Russia’s influence in Africa looks very, very like it’s expanded a lot and it’s very diverse in terms of that number of countries that they’re engaged in and their involvement. The economic foundations remain very weak. They’re soft power really is not necessarily improved. And maybe their counterterrorism operations, vaccine diplomacy and other things that they’ve done really have not improved their image anywhere near as much as they would hope. So is it a resurgent great power or is it a bellicose pretender? I think it’s a bit more than just a pretender and a spoiler, but it’s not yet reached the stage of a great power. I used the phrase virtual great power to describe them. It looks like a great power, but it’s got a lot of air pockets in it.
Bilal Hafeez [01:07:39]
Okay, great. I’ll include a link to that in the notes to this webinar as well. Also if people wanted to follow your views on Russia and Ukraine situation. Lots changing every day. What’s the best way for people to follow your views?
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:07:55]
Just to follow my instant take, just follow my Twitter account. Everything’s posted there and as well as my media appearances and my articles, I write about these issues and things like that, and I write for many publications, so Foreign Policy, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, RUSI.
Bilal Hafeez [01:08:13]
Thanks a lot. Super informative, and I’m sure we’ll all be talking about this issue for the weeks to come. So once again, thanks a lot, Sam, and thanks a lot, everyone for attending this webinar.
Dr Samuel Ramani [01:08:24]
Thank you so much. It’s really great to be here and thank you both for the.