Julia Ioffe: Would Putin Turn to Assassinations?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: But returning now to Putin’s plans to keep trying to inflict pain on the west and stop its defense of Ukraine. Julia Ioffe is a Russian born American journalist who co-founded and is the Washington correspondent for the media company Puck. She joins Walter Isaacson to discuss her recent reporting on the Russian president.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And Julia Ioffe, welcome back to the show.

JULIA IOFFE, FOUNDING PARTNER AND WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Thanks for having me.

ISAACSON: So, at the state of the union message, Biden has the Ukrainian ambassador there and says, we’ll stand with you as long as it takes. But correct me if I’m wrong, I kind of got the feeling it was downplayed a bit. It wasn’t that much of a push there. What’s happening? Is there some feeling that maybe we are tired of this?

IOFFE: Well, I think one year in, especially with the right flank of the Republican Party and maybe the left flank of the Democratic Party skeptical of so much aid at this point. Well over $100 billion of aid going to Ukraine, it’s probably — it was probably best for Biden to say, yes, we are committed to Ukraine. Yes, we are backing Ukraine as long as it takes. And then move on, because frankly, getting the aid in while nobody is really paying attention is probably better for Ukraine.

ISAACSON: You know, 180,000 Russian troops have been killed already in a year. And I think 100,000 Ukrainian ones. And that to me, that’s like five times the number of Americans killed in Vietnam. How can this war be sustained that much longer?

IOFFE: That is the question on everyone’s minds. It is absolutely mind- boggling that we’re hitting — we’re coming up on a year of this war. And the collective death toll for Russia and Ukrainian soldiers, or Ukrainian civilians, the total number is hitting half a million people in a year, in the 21st century. That is absolutely a mind-numbing number. But unfortunately, Putin seems to be following the age-old Russian tradition in which the lives of everybody, but the ruler, do not count and do not matter. And he seems absolutely willing to throw countless bodies at the meat grinder and hoping to win that way by sheer numbers.

ISAACSON: Tell me how this could end in a negotiated way.

IOFFE: It’s hard to see it ending –frankly, at this point, it’s very hard to see it ending in a negotiated way. I don’t think either side is exhausted enough or wanting this to end. Russia does not want to negotiate. Russia thinks it could still win this thing. Ukraine still thinks it could win this thing. So, I think we’re very far away from any kind of even beginning of the negotiation.

ISAACSON: When you say, Russia still thinks it can win this thing, I assume you’re talking about Putin still thinks that. What does win mean? Does he think he can capture all of Ukraine, occupy it again?

IOFFE: I think the goals are fluid. I think right now, Russian troops are making progress in the Donbas. They’re getting close to taking the city of Bakhmut, which has become a city of very important, very big significance for them. It doesn’t really have that much tactical significance or strategic significance. But it has the — acquired this aura of political significance, they’re on the verge of taking that and I think that might give them some, kind of, political momentum. And then I think once they — if they take the Donbas, I think that might give Putin the idea that maybe they can try again for Kharkiv, try again for Kyiv. This is not a man who thinks that he should stop. I think he thinks he has time on his side. And he has numbers on his side. Again —

ISAACSON: Wait. Is that true? Maybe he does have time on his side.

IOFFE: He might or he might not —

ISAACSON: Maybe he does have numbers on his side.

IOFFE: — or he might not. He might also drop-dead tomorrow, you know. And, you know, when Joseph Stalin died, his — the people below him, his successors decided to wrap up the Korean War because they didn’t see much point in continuing their old boss’s war. We have no idea. But I don’t — as long as Putin is in charge, I don’t see this going to a negotiated settlement anytime soon. Putin wants to keep going all the way. He wants Ukraine.

ISAACSON: And if you can’t see a negotiated settlement of all the issues, is there a possibility, though, of having just the ceasefire in place and pushing down the road, maybe, a few years, with the larger issues?

IOFFE: Well, that’s what we had, basically, in 2014, 2015 with the various Minsk agreements. But what it gave us was February 24th, 2022. So, we had a, kind of, little war that stretched on. A frozen conflict that took 13,000 lives in eight years. But it was manageable. The world saw it as manageable. And I think Ukraine came to basically see it is manageable. But it gave us a much bigger war in the end. It gave Russia the time and the space to accumulate, train forces, and to plan this much bigger war. The worry is that you freeze the conflict in place as it is now, and then that becomes the starting line for the next war which can be much bigger, and even more destructive, and even more deadly. Sometimes you have to solve the problem now in the present instead of kicking the can down the road even more.

ISAACSON: So, if you think this war is just destined to drag on. Does that mean we should be giving a lot more Jaguar tanks, a lot more Abrams tanks, longer-range missiles, airplanes?

IOFFE: I think the fastest way to end this war, frankly, is to give the Ukrainians the weapons they need to win this war. That is the only way to end this war and it is the fastest way to end it, frankly. The worst thing that the west can do is to do what the western powers did in Spain in the late 1930s. They gave the Spanish republic just enough — and frankly, with the Syrian opposition during the Syrian civil war. They gave them just enough not to lose, but not enough to win. Thereby dragging out the fight, taking more lives, making it bloodier, longer, and not preventing the inevitable loss. So, sometimes you just have to go all in and faster.

ISAACSON: And if we go all in and really support Ukraine, and you say there’s a possibility Ukraine could just win this war. Does that mean that they would even retake Crimea, and everything, or could they declare victory by just retaking the Donbas region?

IOFFE: I don’t think that’s a politically viable solution for them right now. I think if you were to ask Ukrainian people if they would accept that, I think the vast majority of them would not accept that, unfortunately. The problem is that Putin himself has made that a non-viable option. Maybe they would have accepted that pre-February 24, 2022. But the absolutely vicious, destructive, brutal war that he has unleashed on them has deeply radicalized the Ukrainian population, understandably. And has made them absolutely unwilling to compromise with the power that is brutalizing and destroying their country, and killing their countrymen and women.

ISAACSON: I understand what you’re saying that the Ukrainians would not accept anything other than an outright victory, including taking Crimea. But is that in the American interest to keep this war going until something like this happens, or is it interest in the west to say, all right, we now need a solution?

IOFFE: I think it’s in America’s interest to get peace. And a lasting peace has to be a just peace, and it has to be a piece where both sides walk away from the table feeling like they don’t need to go to war again. And I don’t think the conditions are there yet on either side to get there. So, imposing, the U.S. could drag the Ukrainians to the negotiating table. I don’t think the Russians will be there. I don’t think the Russians would negotiate in good faith. I think the Russians would use any settlement as time and space to mass more forces and try again for Kyiv. Try again to take over more Ukrainian territory, and I think the Ukrainians know that. But again, the U.S. can’t just wave its wand and make the parties do what it wants.

ISAACSON: President Zelenskyy has become an amazing player on the world stage. And just this week, there were the scenes of him making a surprise trip to England. Do you think that he has become such a force that he will be able to have the British, the Germans, and others keep supplying weapons even if some in the United States want to pull back?

IOFFE: I think so. I think he has become an incredible spokesman for the Ukrainian people. Both inside his country, where he has been able to rally the population and to unite the population. Which is incredible because going into the war, his approval rating was something like 25, 28 percent. He has become an incredible wartime leader and has become a very effective messenger for the Ukrainian people abroad, including here in the U.S. I also don’t see the U.S. fatiguing as quickly as you are suggesting. I think it is still the mainstream position of both the Democratic and Republican parties to support Ukraine. I know the White House — the Biden White House, sees its main ally on this in Congress as Mitch McConnell, who sees a strong support of Ukraine as a very strong signal to China, on Taiwan. He As he — kind of, he sees it as two birds with one — killing two birds with one stone. So, I think — I don’t see aid to Ukraine becoming too much of a problem. It might not be in as big numbers as we saw in the first year, which is natural. But I don’t see it completely going away in the second year of the war.

ISAACSON: But Kevin McCarthy seems to disagree with his fellow Republican, Mitch McConnell. He says, we’re not going to give a blank check. What do you think that means?

IOFFE: I think he is playing to the right wing of his party who has — who held his speakership hostage and now has hang the, sort of, Damocles over him. But still, the — you know, the question is, can these packages get on the House floor for a vote? And if they do, they will have the majority of the votes because it’s still the mainstream of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, and the House as well. It is still the majority of the position to support Ukraine. But I do think it is a completely disingenuous position. The U.S. has not, in any way, been sending Ukraine a blank check. And in fact, a lot of the money, much of the money, that the U.S. has been sending to Ukraine stays in the U.S. It is spent on replacing, for example, replacing what the Pentagon has sent from its own stocks. So, it’s just spent on refilling Pentagon stocks of weapons. It is spent at American manufacturers of weapons, Lockhead, raytheon, et cetera. A lot of these —

ISAACSON: Wait. Are you suggesting that maybe the defense contractors like that are pushing this?

IOFFE: No, I’m just saying I think the argument that we’re just sending, you know, pallets of cash to Ukraine, you know, an unmarked bills is a disingenuous and not fact-based position.

ISAACSON: When we were going into this winter, we thought, this is going to be a brutal test. This is going to be a brutal test for Europe when it comes to the need for Russian energy supplies. It’s going to be a brutal test on the battleground. What did we learn from this winter? Especially when it came to Europe and its dependence on Russian energy supplies.

IOFFE: Well, we learned that Putin massively overplayed his hand. And that this was one of several massive miscalculations that he made going into this war. He thought Ukrainians would greet Russian troops as liberators, and they didn’t. And he also thought that he had a stranglehold of Europe, in terms of energy, and he didn’t. It was amazing to see how quickly Europe pivoted from its heavy dependence on Russian energy. Germany went from importing two thirds of its natural gas from Russia to importing zero percent of its Russian — of its natural gas from Russia in just a matter of months. Europe was able to quickly store up gas, other forms of energy. And the Russian budget is taking a massive hit. It is the Russian federal budget is running at a deficit. And for the first time in a long time, so again, Putin thought that he had all this control over Europe. But as I said from the very beginning, Putin needed Europe just as much as Europe needed him for energy because it was Russia’s biggest, most important energy market. It is one that the Soviet Union and Russia had spent three generations building. All of that infrastructure, all those pipelines go west and not east. And it turns out, you can’t just threaten your clients into buying from you. You, you know — they have to voluntarily come to you and buy from you. And if they don’t, you are going to have a bigger hole in your budget.

ISAACSON: You wrote in one of your essays that the far scarier option that we could face is that of assassinations. That Putin could order the assassination of other world leaders, journalists, and others. Tell me about that. How possible is that as a Putin action?

IOFFE: So, there’s a worry inside the Biden administration that because Putin can’t achieve his goals on the battlefield, and because it’s very clear that since he doesn’t have the military capability to capture Ukraine because his military is so degraded in the fight for Ukraine, that he certainly can’t take NATO on militarily, that he would fight back against the west for its support of Ukraine by other measures. By asymmetrical measures. We’ve seen it, for example, in their alleged attempts to undermine Sweden’s ascension to NATO. And other — you know, we’ve have seen the mail bombs across Spain with the, you know, their mail bombs full of animal eyeballs. But there’s a worry that there might be assassinations across Europe. They’re, apparently, not very difficult to carry out. Although again, Russians — Russian intelligence capabilities across Europe have been severely degraded in the wake of the invasion. Western countries have PNGed or made persona non grata over 400 Russian diplomats who were, basically, intelligence agency — agents operating under diplomatic cover. So, that very much limits their access. But they can still travel into Europe under other guises. And we might — it might be easy to catch them after the fact because they tend to be very sloppy operators as we saw in the Skripal poisoning in 2018, in the U.K. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t try, and that is the concern.

ISAACSON: Julia Ioffe, once again, thank you so much for joining us.

IOFFE: Thank you.