DATE: 17:30 – 18:30 Thursday 12th April 2018
VENUE: The Henry Jackson Society, Millbank Tower
SPEAKER: Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Founding President of the American Foreign Policy Council
Dr Andrew Foxall
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Henry Jackson Society, my name is Dr Andrew Foxall and I oversee the Russia and Eurasia programme here, it’s good to see one or two familiar faces in the audience. I’m delighted that we have with us today Herman Pirchner who as many of you will be aware or may know is the founding president of the American Foreign Policy Council. Herman has recently returned from Ukraine and what he intends to talk about today is some of his experiences from a week in Ukraine, and give us an insight into some of the discussions he had with various actors in Ukraine and also offer some provisional analysis on the back of that fieldwork. He is going to speak in the first instance for about 15 – 20 minutes, and that will allow plenty of time for Q&A. So if you’d all please join me in welcoming Herman.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
It’s a real pleasure to be here and I’m especially appreciative that Henry Jackson’s name is kept alive, as a young man as head of a national association of coloured student governments in Washington I had interaction with Scoop Jackson and still keep in touch with surviving staff, though there are less and less of them all the time. But he was a great statesman, and he had always the highest respect of everybody that worked for him which is not always the case with politicians.
We are talking about Ukraine and Russia. Everybody knows they’re at war, we know more than ten thousand dead, tens of thousands of injured, almost two million displaced people, but I think a question that’s not asked too often is why does Russia fight? And why does Ukraine fight? And without understanding those two perspectives, I think it’s very hard to put contemporary events in their proper perspective.
First Russia. In the year 1900, there were only 55 sovereign countries in the world. Now depending on how you count there are 194. Where did all these new countries come from? They came from the collapse of the empires that dominated the world of 1900. Upon their collapse what did those empires all have in common? They had in common that they wanted to re-establish influence in their former territories – without exception. Mostly peaceful, and mostly economic, but I can think of as many as around 40 instances where France used military force to protect economic assets in Africa. So in some sense, as Russia, with its long imperial tradition, and they still have an imperialist mentality among their elite, so it would be no surprise that when they got stronger they would try to influence not just what goes on in Ukraine, but in Georgia and Belarus and other former parts of the Soviet Union. But this alone doesn’t explain why Russia is doing what it’s doing. Even if you want to take as part of the imperialist ideology the need to be a great power and be listened to worldwide. It’s a question of nationalism which is a little bit different.
There’s a man by the name of Dimitri Rogozin. Dimitri Rogozin is now Deputy Prime Minister, he had been ambassador to NATO, I first met him in the 1990s, and if you look at his writing in this period of time he would say things like, and this is pretty close to an exact quote; “it doesn’t matter how unrealistically it seems at the time”, and remember this is when Russia was quite weak, “we must persevere coming out like Germany did after 40 years – united”. So it’s a fixed idea among the nationalists. The problem with this ideology is as we’ll see, it’s an unrequited love. They may want to bring Ukraine back, but Ukraine and the parts of the Soviet Union do not want to come back for their own individual reasons. But nationalism remains a driving force in Russian policy.
And a third thing has to do with the internal situation in Russia. Putin I do not believe is anywhere near as strong as is commonly believed, and for him to have a popular victory as he did with the annexation of Crimea, to have a diversion as he’s had in Syria and Ukraine, takes a certain heat, diverts attention away from his failed economic policies – which is a whole other lecture if you want to go into that.
So these things are driving Russia. What’s driving Ukraine? Now Ukraine for 400 years, Kievan Rus was the largest geographic country in Europe. Then they went a couple hundred years mostly under the Mongols. It was followed by a time under the Poles, almost 200 years. Then they had the Hetman regime of 100 years of independence, taken away by Tsarist and then Soviet rule. You have to understand about Ukraine, during those 1100 years I just covered, of which there were about 500 of independence, the language didn’t disappear and the culture didn’t disappear. This idea that Russia and Ukraine are the same people culturally is not accurate – historically not accurate. Think about the time in Tsarist Russia where successive rulers tried to put Ukrainian troops under the Moscow patriarchy. Tried to eliminate the language. Tried to fully integrate the peoples. It didn’t work. When the Soviets came in they tried more extreme methods. For instance in the ‘20s there was something called a Holodomor which many of you know about. The NKVD, which was the KGB of the time, identified the most anti-Soviet and the most Ukrainian nationalist villages, and Ukraine was rural then as much of the world was, probably 90% lived in the villages. And what did they do? They took the food out and they didn’t let people come in or out, and they starved between two and four million people to death, some people think more. There are memorials in different parts of the world to this; a big one in Kiev, we have one in Washington DC. It’s a matter of historical record, you can argue about the numbers but nobody thinks there weren’t enormous numbers of people starved to death. Fast forward to the 1930s, well you had the purges and you had people sent en mass to the gulags. Much of the Ukrainian intelligentsia was wiped out or killed or sent to the gulags.
Now who is running Russia today? It’s the modern day KGB. It’s a one-party state made up of intelligence services. Who’s running Ukraine today? Well it’s the sons and daughters and grandsons of those who suffered especially under Soviet rule. And they grew up hearing these stories, so in their own mind they say “well we’re not going to let this happen again, we’re going to be our own boss”. That’s one of the reasons why you had people that came into Donbas with no training and no equipment, taking unbelievable casualties, but they would fight especially at the beginning simply because they weren’t going to give it up to Russia. There’s no war if somebody surrenders and doesn’t fight. The war is only because Ukraine resisted the Russian aggression.
There’s another factor at play which is especially important among the young, and among those that have children and grandchildren. At the time of independence Ukraine and Poland lived per capita exactly the same; now per capita income in Poland is literally three and a half times better. There are a million Ukrainians working inside Poland, and others are scattered throughout different European countries. Now what does that mean? That means people inside Ukraine understand there’s another way of life. Another way to organise both economic and political systems. And what do they want? They want to live better. They want to live according to Western standards. And if you go even into the east part of the country – I’ve been going to Ukraine since 1990 and have many old friends there, not a small number of which are ethnically Russian and Russian speaking – but by talking in Kharkiv, this is the second largest city in Ukraine, it’s Russian speaking, and when I talk to people there who have stayed within the city, stayed in the Oblasts, stayed with Kiev, they say “look, do I want my children and grandchildren to live like Poland or Western Europe, or do I want them to live like we’ve been living or Russian?”. They’ve made their choices. Also, they’ve noted that in occupied Donbas the security services have used the name NKVD which was the name of the security services which did the starvation in Holodomor. They see what is going on in that area with security services and their alliance with mafia figures, and they say “we don’t want to bring that to our own Oblast”.
So these are the forces that propel both sides to be fighting. So what’s my bottom line and where do I think this is going to go? I think in the final analysis – let me take a different formulation. You often hear that Ukraine is more important to Russia than it is to Europe or the United States, I believe this is a wrong formulation. Ukraine is more important to Ukrainians than it is to Russians. You have a critical mass of Ukrainians that are willing to die and to risk, I’m not sure about that on the Russian side. The Russians I know are not so anxious to send their children, and the young men are not so willing en mass to volunteer. So they rely on an officer corps that volunteers are sent from the Russian army and they rely on mercenaries. That’s not very reliable over the long run. And Putin is not bothered or been able to tell his own people the frank news about what he’s doing in Donbas, and I think that reflects the internal political situation in Russia, it’s probably not so popular. And it certainly would not be popular if Russia pushed forward and started occupying more of Ukraine and you started having body bags come back. The Ukrainian armed forces now are maybe not the best equipped but they’re the second largest in Europe, and they’re willing to take on the Russians in a way that I think is probably not acceptable to Russia. But the fight is going on with intensity in other ways beyond the couple casualties that continue to happen each week. The major Russian efforts to destabilise Ukraine, to put pressure on Ukrainian oligarchs that may own newspapers and TV stations to have them give coverage that might be less unfavourable or even favourable to Russia. So the struggle continues and I think everybody is looking forward to the Presidential elections of next year to see who will come into power. Have the reformers done enough, have they had some real reforms to satisfy the population, to keep the momentum going and keep them in power. Or will somebody who is seen to be more friendly to Russia like Timoshenko come to power. That’s the big unknown, and when you travel in the different ministries around Kiev today, everybody is focused on what alliances will be made. Who will get in the second round of voting and will we be able to keep, will the reformers be able to keep or even increase the critical mass necessary to move forward with further reforms which are viewed as necessary to keep political stability, and to bridge the generation gap where younger people that are less Sovietised in their thinking come to power and may have different thoughts on rule of law and dealing with corruption.
And I don’t know if we’ve gone to 20 but maybe now we’ll go to questions and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
Dr Andrew Foxall
Thank you, thank you very much indeed. As Herman suggested we now have 40-45 minutes also for questions. In posing a question obviously just raise your hand and perhaps say who you are and if you represent a particular organisation. If I may I’ll use the chair’s privilege to ask the first question.
If one accepts the argument that you put forward to begin with, that in a sense Russian action is motivated by these three factors of imperialism, nationalism, and internal politics/internal stability, which I would I think that’s a fair assessment of the situation, that leads to a conclusion that one of the ways, perhaps the only way in the context of economic stagnation that Putin is able to generate domestic legitimacy is through foreign policy achievements. And they may well be the annexation of Crimea, it may well be intervention is Syria, it could be the earlier involvement in Estonia and Georgia, or it could be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics or this football world cup. But how does Putin continue to generate this domestic legitimacy? Is it the case that he needs another high profile foreign policy achievement, or do you think that such is the reality of the situation now that he can stabilise somewhat?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Well I think the big danger with Russia is that they believe their own propaganda, and act in a way that I think you could argue is inconsistent with Western interests, but also with Russian interests writ large. Take the case of Donbas. What happened to begin Russian movements in Donbas and Crimea? There were five (consulates???) that were put together under Yanukovych, and each one of them had a covert operation. I had met a couple years before Russia went into Crimea the Chief Consulate, he was a man you would expect to be an ambassador of a large country or maybe a deputy minister somewhere and he’s in little Crimea – well why was he there? He’s drawing contingency plans that could be put into effect when the circumstances presented themselves. The law that was used to annex Crimea was passed when? 2001 (If anybody wants I have a copy of that in both Russian and English). From Crimea he was given a story that you could do something and he believed it. But then he believed what the people that were working in Donbas told him. They were taking all this money from Surkov who was managing operations there, and he probably told them look you can not only get Donbas but all of Novorossiya because people love you and there won’t be any resistance. So he believed the propaganda, he went in there, and now I think it’s understood that he stubbed his toe, that there’s been a miscalculation. So he’s trying plan B which is internal destabilisation; hoping to make Ukraine enough of a failed state that another opportunity will present itself. But at some point if that is not working, say you get a very strong new presence in Ukraine, he’s going to need some other diversion. And it’s an open question where that will be. I believe he’s on a track where there will be more internal repression inside of Russia, as there has been for the last some years, but I think that will also be matched with aggressive activity in other parts of the world, if it’s Syria or headline grabbing assassination or attempted assassination of spies here. By the way you have to ask yourself, why did he now have to send such a loud message in Britain? There’s rumours there’s discontent – credible rumours – among many of the elite. He wanted to send them a message: you may grumble in your home but if you begin to do anything we know how to deal with you.
[Question] John Wilkin
The West is looking for a way to check Putin’s ambitions, would one way of doing that be to provide good military hardware to Ukraine?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Yes, I think so. The American government will be sending Javelin which are anti-tank missiles, and the higher costs are raised for further military adventure, I think the less likely you’re going to see a new offensive from Russia. I think the costs have to be raised more broadly across the board as sanctions are beginning to do, because his attack is not just against Ukraine, but it’s broader against Western society and values. Interfering with the elections, breaking of treaties, supporting the use of poison gas, so I think former minister of Russia Kozarev (1996, now in exile and anti-Putin) has said that; “Putin is a guy whose appetite is increased by the eating”. And I think we have to make the cost of eating more such that he is more willing to come to the table. I think he has at the moment no respect for the West. He thinks that we have no stomach to pay a price, and it’s simply by suffering more he’ll be able to prevail because the West will accommodate and give Russia what it wants, and until he’s disabused of that I believe the aggression continues.
[Question] Michael Skaggs
Sir I’m Michael Skaggs I’m with the US embassy here in London, before I was in the US embassy in Ukraine (2014-2016). So having been on the ground there I have to say to credit what you said I agree with your comments tonight entirely. My question is, Putin’s goal in Ukraine broadly speaking is to exhaust it and bring it back into his sphere of influence, the near term being the Presidential elections. In the event that the election doesn’t go his way, which to me seems pretty likely, but in any case the election doesn’t go his way what’s his next move in Ukraine?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
You know, Putin is like a guy playing chess; pressure, pressure, pressure and he looks for opportunity. And if the opportunity becomes more favourable in Belarus that may be where he goes instead of Ukraine. I think the cost of him going militarily further in Ukraine is maybe too high to pay. Public opinion in Russia counts some. But what really counts is a few hundred people around Putin. And to the extent that they’re finding their lifestyles interrupted – they can’t freely spend their hard stolen money – they may say “look it, make the peace in Donbas, go play somewhere else”. That’s the best option for Ukraine. Will it happen? We’ll see.
[Question]
I’ll jump in there if you make that point. This argument that you’ve sort of just alluded to that a way to get at Putin is to target the elite, the oligarchs. Speaking here in London that’s an argument we’ve heard pretty consistently over the past four years. It’s an argument that I’ve made myself to basically anybody who would listen in government and elsewhere. Do you think that that’s reasonable? Do you think that the elite do exert that much pressure on Putin, exert enough pressure so that he might alter his behaviour?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Well the question is who among the elite sticks their head up first, because it’s dangerous to be first. I think there’s discontent, I think it’s impossible to judge from the outside where the tipping point is. But I think Putin himself understands that discontent among the elite is dangerous for any dictator, which is what he is. So does that mean being somewhat pragmatic he would adjust and cuts a deal in Donbas? Maybe. But to not pressure invites more aggression because it’s a green light for bad behaviour.
[Question] Oleksander Pukhliak (Embassy of Ukraine)
Sir, many thanks for your presentation, if I may I have two questions. I would like to discuss the modern situation. Do you see any implications due to possible escalation in Syria for settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine? And second one about energy. Because as we all know for Russia energy is quite serious leverage in Europe and other Western countries, can you see any kind of opportunities for the West to be more united? We know that Germany took this issue on the pull of Nord Stream 2, so do you see any kind of US role in possible sanctioning or banning of Nord Stream 2?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
First the question of Syria. Anybody that’s been around big decisions know that people finally decide this way or that way for very different reasons. Like making a law, you can come to the same bottom line but for different reasons. One of the reasons for the deliberate bombing of civilian areas in Syria and the creation of refugees I believe was to put pressure on Europe. So Russia could come and say look, you have a problem with the refugees, we hold the solution but you have to give us something in Ukraine. I think that was one of the reasons and it made influence in some areas but it was a long way from being decisive.
On the question of Nord Stream, you should be aware that under the Obama administration roadblocks were put to prevent the US from maximising the export of natural gas. We now have an export terminal and four more being built. We will be in a position to replace whatever gas European countries chose not to buy from Russia with American gas, and that’s coming relatively soon. So I think if I were a European country I would say well maybe some Russian gas but why should we take everything from Russia? So that’s coming. I think we should also take note of the recent statement by Merkel; she would not permit Nord Stream to go forward until the question of the pipeline through Ukraine is settled. In other words, at this point she’s not willing to sell out Ukraine and the transport of gas through Ukraine. So we’ll have to see where that goes, is that a negotiating position or will she take a harder line on that? And I think that policy may be in formation. The early statements by the new German foreign minister are certainly less Russia friendly than that of her predecessor. On the other hand in Germany you have a very big lobby. The former chancellor works for Gazprom, and a lot of money has been spent around German politicians. I’m not saying any of it is necessarily legal, but one way or another a lot of people are getting paid or stand to make money. So that’s the tension now in Germany. I think the whole question of Nord Stream is going to be looked at very carefully by the new national security team in Washington. I think John Bolton the new national security advisor and the new Secretary of State Pompeo are known to have rather negative views of Russian behaviour and they certainly will be looking at Nord Stream.
[Question]
Russia has played a lot of its military might, and admittedly this is a country which always has, Tsarist days, and the Soviet’s May Day celebrations. What’s your opinion on how good the military actually is? With respect to, you said you think the Ukrainians could probably hold their own against a measured assault from Russia.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
I’m not a military person so I will bow to our friend from the American embassy to correct what misstatements I make. But my sense is that Russia would have the capability to go in, but what about the occupation? What happens if you have 100,000 troops bogged down whose parents don’t want them, who don’t want to be there, and you start to see sabotage and assassination, and body bags go back. That to my mind may be decisive. If you have served in Ukraine you can imagine this in ways I can’t.
Michael Skaggs
I would say it all goes back to what you said about the cost. If Russia threw, not even everything they have, but a great deal, 10 divisions or whatever at Ukraine, could they go further, could they get to Kiev? Especially if they added air power, ballistic missiles, the whole package, sure they could. There’s no way that little Ukraine could beat Russia. But the cost would be enormous. Reason being the Ukrainian military is much better than it was 5 years ago. Notwithstanding the political cost both at home and abroad. So technically yes, but it would cost them more than I think Putin is willing to pay. And then there’s the matter of occupation, there’s nobody better at partisan warfare than Ukrainians.
[Question]
You’ve mentioned it tangentially but also directly the US’s role in all this, and you touched on the National Security Council and the change that had happened there. The US of course plays a pretty big role in all of this not only with its provision of javelins to Ukraine, but I wonder if you could just talk about how you see the evolution of US policy towards Russia going. Had we been speaking a year and a half ago there was the concern that Putin and Trump wold be the best of friends, it seems that they’re going to be the best of enemies at the moment but how do you see that developing?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Well my sense is that Russian propaganda and disinformation was enormously effective at the beginning, but gradually people in Western societies are beginning to understand the game they play and some of it’s not new. We had an American ambassador and a famous general Bedell Smith that kept time on St James Square with Eisenhower when he was here, he was ambassador to the Soviet Union 1947-50 and he wrote a book about this experience. One of the things he talked about in his book was how Russian’s are always blaming others for what they themselves are doing. So when they make these charges, in the West we think well there’s this side, and this side, and maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, and they confuse the situation enough to have read Western inaction on Crimea where we were hesitant to act, and I think we’re getting by that. It may be that American assistant secretary Victoria Nuland made some statement in Kiev but that kind of pales in comparison with the destabilisation efforts of Russia in Ukraine. So next time you hear the Russian’s accusing somebody very loudly of doing something, take a good look under the magnifying glass, and a very significant part of the time you’ll find they’re doing it much more than the people they’re accusing.
[Question]
And in terms of the US policy towards Russia.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Yes I got off the track a little bit. As we understand what are Russian lies, what are the real facts, what are things that are made up, American policy really is adjusting. There’s overwhelming support for Ukraine, bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, and I think in the executive branch increasingly we’ve heard Russia cry wolf too many times. As you’ve had here, if the most recent attempt at assassinating Skripal had been an isolated incident, well Russian denials probably would have had more credibility. But about the 10th time you have somebody killed, and others with poison gas, you don’t listen to them too much anymore. We understand what they’re doing, and so that’s why I think time is on the side of Ukraine and on the side of those that want a stronger position on Russia. The Russian hand that has been played so very well is now becoming weaker.
[Question] John Berryman (Birkbeck University of London)
When the Ukrainian people voted in 1991 for independence, at that time the Ukraine republic had a higher per capita than Russia, and the expectation was that independence would give the Ukrainian people a road to prosperity. In your presentation you made a great deal of Russia and America’s position, not very much on Ukraine’s. So my question would be: how far has Ukraine failed to fulfil its expectations? Where has the bulk of responsibility got to lie? Putin may be surrounded by oligarchs but he himself I understand is not a classic oligarch, Poroshenko is. You mentioned earlier that Russia likes to blame others for its own makings. I think the European Union, the West has been giving a lot of support to Ukraine for 20+ years and there’s still the refrain that the responsibility or the need must be for the EU and NATO to back up. I’m questioning really whether Ukraine itself has got to address why its reform efforts have been seemingly so poor over more than two decades.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
It’s a very serious argument, and it’s one by the way made by reform factions in Ukraine. They understand that the Ukrainian leadership pre-Maidan squandered lots of opportunities and continued to administer the country in very corrupt soviet ways. And they understand, the reform forces, that there’s a limited amount of time that reform can be bought before the public will be fed up with it. So the argument is serious, but I would point out that since Maidan what the current government, with the major reform of local police forces, they’ve done a great amount to take corruption out of the health system, and other reforms – transparency, with people in public office that have to list their assets online. Those are concrete steps, and it’s thought generally that these will begin gradually to go to more economic progress. I think by the way that it’s important to remember that at the time of the referendum on independence, which was viewed as fair, every province including Crimea voted for independence, so that was a close vote at 52-48 or something like that.
[Question]
I wondered, are there things that you think we should be doing, the West should be doing, to help Ukraine both militarily and to resist Russian destabilisation efforts that we are not doing?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
I think the main thing is to keep the hard line on Ukrainian sovereignty in Donbas. Crimea is a more complicated issue. But some of the plans that have been circulated would not really give Ukraine full sovereignty and we shouldn’t look for an easy out to cut a deal with Russia, or put unnatural pressure on Ukraine that would cause them not to have full sovereignty over that sliver of Luhansk and Donetsk.
[Question]
What makes you feel optimistic about the military outcome of what’s happening now in Donbas, especially if you compare it to what was happening in Georgia and other parts of [inaudible]. Are there any reasons to be optimistic at all?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Yes. First Ukraine is much bigger than Georgia so the military problem is far greater for Russia. Ukraine again has the second largest army in Europe, not counting Turkey but behind Russia. So they have a capability and a willingness to take causalities in a number that is, as our military attaché said, probably will be unacceptable to Russia. They can kill a lot of Russians if they come in, and they’re willing to risk and do that. I’ll tell you a story in the early days of the fighting in Donbas. I was in Kiev, and the Ukrainians were just taking horrible casualties because they had no equipment, they sometimes didn’t have enough [inaudible] for the rifles, and the militias were formed in the following way. To join you had raise a thousand bucks which is a lot of money when you’re, you know a poor retirement pension might be 300 a month. So there were people who would go out to the relatives and get a thousand bucks together, and that went into the kitty to refurbish artillery, and you got a rifle and maybe a half dozen bullets in the beginning. And people with this would go to the front where they’d get chewed up. I tried to talk to people that are not political and whenever I’m travelling, and in those days I had a friend who was not a political person but a head nurse in a facility that was taking the most severely wounded and most of them didn’t make it. And I asked her about the morale of these people that were there they were so badly chewed up. And you know if you’re a political person and I come in you may spin me, but if you’re a young kid of 19 that’s maybe dying, you’re not going to be lying much to the head nurse. So she would ask them “how do you feel about going there given what’s happened?” And almost to the man she told me that they said they were not only proud that they went but if they got well enough they would go back because they just weren’t going to give in. They’re pretty stubborn people too, it’s not just the Russians that can dig in and pay big costs. The Ukrainians are willing and I think as I said before there’s a critical mass of people like that that create a big problem for Russia.
[Question] Ewan Grant (Former law enforcement intelligence analyst)
I have to apologise I’ve come in late, so I apologise if I’m duplicating or if my question is redundant in view of what you’ve said. [I’m a] survivor of serious European Commission mismanagement in Ukraine, where they didn’t listen to people enough. My question is: how well do you think Western opinion forums are understanding the situation in Ukraine? Are they giving it enough strategic thought? Are they vulnerable to Russian disinformation, particularly about the undoubted corruption in Ukraine (though of course look who’s talking)? And are there any significant distinctions between the situation, in relation to both questions, between North America and Europe? I have to say I thought America and Canada were very much better, very much better, than the European situation in early 2014 and to a certain extent since.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
I’ll give you an answer that’s relative to previous times. I don’t think the strategic implications are fully understood by everybody in Washington, and I think Washington now in the aggregate understands Ukraine as the right side to be on and we should be with them. But I think the strategic implications are now being more thought out in terms of what Russian aggression means for international institutions. And that there’s some connection between Russian behaviour in Ukraine, and the use of gas in Syria, and the threatening of the Baltic states, and the bad behaviour on Scandinavian coasts. We’re increasingly seeing that that all comes together along with Russian destabilisation, attempts to destabilise the political systems of Western Europe and the US. I’m less familiar with how things are evolving here in Europe, but my general sense is that there’s more understanding. I agree that Russian propaganda is more effective here because they’ve had influence operations here much longer and much better funded than they have in the US.
[Question]
Russia is often described as a “civilisation state” and to what extent is there Eurasian political philosophy actually guiding thinking in the Kremlin. What could be a counter intuitive or counterproductive political [inaudible]
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
The question is about Eurasian political philosophy. The main proponent of this is Alexander Dugin, who has a fascist mentality, I think that’s the only way you could describe it. But his general idea is to cut off the UK from Western Europe and to sow dissent in Western Europe, and cut off Japan from China and make alliance with China. That’s his general idea. And you can see some influence of that thought of Dugin, who personally is in and out of favour in Russia depending on how things are going. You can speak of Eurasian philosophy if you want to understand the Russian position, read Dugin, and you’ll get a sense of what’s going on.
Dr Andrew Foxall
Unless there are any other questions perhaps I’ll jump in with a… Please, this gentleman over here.
[Question]
I was just wondering, what was the situation in Ukraine before it became apparent that between Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pyatt, and the NED, that they’d invested $5 billion in trying to help Ukraine achieve, what they called their “European aspirations”. What was the situation before then?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Economically?
[Question]
No I mean, was it destabilised, or what was happening? It wasn’t in the news before that.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
I think Russian efforts for influence in Ukraine were there from the beginning. It’s only when Russia became stronger that they became more intense. It wasn’t that Western NGOs had free reign and there weren’t other ideological currents coming from Moscow, they were always there. And there were people, career intelligence officers, that might have felt much closer to their own circle – people that they worked with, went to school with – than they felt to Ukrainian society. And you still have some of that, though as much as possible they’ve been purged. NED and other Western institutions try to put forth their idea of a democratic and open society and I think that’s borne fruit among many of the young people. As I travelled throughout Ukraine you can understand that if somebody’s about 30 or 35, that they’re fundamentally different in their political culture than somebody that’s 65. And I think maybe that some of that comes from the exposure to Western Europe and American NGOs, and also because Ukraine’s geography makes it easier to travel to Poland and other places to see what the alternative is. We were active there but probably whatever we spent was dwarfed a lot by what the Russians were spending, even when they were weak.
[Question]
The title for your talk is of course “Russia’s War in Ukraine: Prospects for peace?” I wonder if I could push you on the subtitle, what are as you see it the prospects for peace in the war in Ukraine, in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
The rough outlines of a possible peace are there and known, the question is when Putin is ready to make the deal. If there’s a deal I would expect that it would, I would hope it would give full Ukrainian control of the border. I think it would involve a withdrawal of all equipment, military equipment out of Donbas. I think it would involve international peacekeepers, and I think it would a commitment from international institutions to rebuild the area because neither Russia nor Ukraine have enough money to make it viable again. I think those are the rough outlines, will that be acceptable to Putin or not? Some people thought that after Putin’s re-coronation he might be willing to deal, I’ve seen no evidence of that yet. And the next big known event that might change his mind has to do with the Ukrainian election. If you had a Timoshenko win, it might be very different than anybody else in Putin’s mind in terms of what he’s able to do.
Michael Skaggs
You touched on it just a bit in your last comments there, but what’s your opinion of the proposal authored primarily by the United Kingdom [inaudible] for UN peacekeepers in Ukraine. First the Russians pushed it away, then they sort of said they would consider it, not much has happened on that. What’s your opinion on that? A good thing or a way to codify a frozen conflict?
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Well, I think you don’t talk about anything until full control of the border is really given to the Ukrainians. And then the next question is who are these UN forces? So if there’s control of the border, and we have the proper UN forces, and all the military hardware is out, then I think you can look at that. But those are all big ifs at this point.
Michael Skaggs
A bit more than Minsk.
Herman Pirchner, Jr.
Yeah. One last thing when you talk about a deal with Putin, you talk with him because he has kept some deals inside of Russia. But he breaks a lot of deals and he breaks a lot of treaties gladly. And if a deal was cut I think it’s a major mistake to make that deal without the West knowing, and gaming out how Putin might break it and what they would do immediately if he did so. I think if he does break it an immediate reaction is highly important and it may stave off a further unravelling of the deal. We have to know how we would act and act quickly. The very fact that he would know, as he would eventually, that we’ve gamed this out, would be a deterrent to him breaking the deal because he would know that this could not be done without a big cost.
Dr Andrew Foxall
You allude to an important point there which is that one of President Putin’s less endearing features is that he has a tendency to lie an awful lot. Unless there are any other questions in the room, I will bring the talk to a close. Finishing 6 or 7 minutes earlier than we ordinarily would but that gives everybody a little more time to get home this evening given the weather and the travel conditions as well.
Herman, thank you very much indeed on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society for what you’ve said and on behalf of everyone here, I thought it was most interesting. Thank you very much indeed.