Episode Notes:

In his first international trip since the invasion of his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington yesterday to meet President Biden and address Congress. Here to discuss the visit is Olga Oliker, the Program Director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group.

[:39] Main takeaway

[1:31] Zelensky's speech

[2:35] Ukrainian attitudes

[4:53] Level of U.S. support

[6:28] Mood in Europe

[8:29] Putin's Force Size Announcement

Episode Transcript: 

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth, and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to the War Cast, the members only podcast for what you need to know now.

In his first international trip, since the invasion of his country, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visited Washington yesterday to meet with the president and to address Congress. Here to discuss the visit is Olga Oliker, the program director for Europe and Central Asia at the International Crisis Group. Thank you so much for joining us on the War Cast.

Olga Oliker: Thank you for having me.

Nicholas Danforth: What have your main takeaways been from Zelenskyy's visit so far?

Olga Oliker: So I don't think that I have huge takeaways. This is some kind of a game changer. The point of this visit is to keep attention on Ukraine at a time when the battlefield dynamics are actually fairly static. And also in preparation for a new Congress being seated to just demonstrate to Americans to the world, to that Congress that there's bipartisan support for Ukraine. You take the opportunity, you announce the package of aid, and all eyes stay on Ukraine without requiring a massive new counter offensive, which doesn't look like it's going to happen in the immediate future or some other major change which nobody can deliver.

Nicholas Danforth: Was there anything in Zelensky’s speech itself that stood out to you?

Olga Oliker: It was a good speech. The man has good speech writers. He does this excellent job when addressing Western audiences of saying, on the one hand, thank you, and on the other hand, do more. And the point of the do more isn't that he expects necessarily to convince the US Congress of, "Oh my God, we haven't given this man everything he wants. Let's start doing that." It sends a signal both back home in Ukraine and audiences all around the world that he is asking for these things. And from a negotiating standpoint, it's a form of anchoring. You keep asking for more, you normalize that ask. So what you're getting isn't quite enough that more could be done. And then the next time you ask that seems even more reasonable and even more reasonable and even more reasonable and then the other parties, they'll give you more and he'll ask for still more. So it's a very rational public negotiating approach.

Nicholas Danforth: And I was going to say right from the outset, it seems like Zelenskyy has always done a very good job of walking that line in his public statements of expressing gratitude, but still pushing for more support. I'm curious behind the scenes, how does his government feel about the amount of aid and support that they've been getting?

Olga Oliker: They could always use more. And when we're talking about aid, we're talking both about military aid and the wide range of humanitarian and economic support. And it is Western assistance that is keeping Ukraine afloat right now. And they do need more of it. This is a country that is being consistently bombarded by Russian missiles, and Iranian drones operated by Russia. The electricity is out for chunks of time throughout the country. There's a joke that goes around Ukraine, which was, what did we use for light before we had candles? And the answer is electricity. So of course, they need more. And the government, the population, everybody recognizes the importance of the precedent going out there and making sure that he does retain that support and they welcome it.

This is one thing where we're opposition parties and so forth are not going to judge Zelensky. And I would also say in general, in the middle of a war, what dissent there is tends to be behind closed doors, and there's a very strong desire to maintain a united front. So again, you're going to get a "Our president is fantastic. Look at him in the middle of a war, he's able to go to the United States, come back with this tremendous aid package. That's exactly what we need." When the next election comes along, are there people who would like to see another president take office in Ukraine? Sure, it's a democratic country in that sense, and it's a contested political space, but they're not going to complain about the way that Zelensky delivers these excellent speeches to a variety of audiences.

Nicholas Danforth: Now, on the US side, is it too early to judge the response? Where do you think attitudes towards support for Ukraine are headed right now?

Olga Oliker: So we are going to see in the new Congress more of an emphasis on oversight of aid. I don't think that's necessarily a terrible thing. It is a way for the Republicans to say that we're holding this government to account and also continue to support Ukraine. So it's a nice way to thread that needle. It also makes sense, this is just an awful lot of stuff. And we know from Afghanistan how difficult it is to maintain good accountability of weapons and assistance.

So trying to get a handle on it is going to make sense, and that is going to be a major issue for this Congress. But opposition to continue to support Ukraine is going to be really fringe. It's going to continue to be really fringe. The support Ukraine, weaken Russia mandate is one of the very few things that has bipartisan the support. So you can always find areas of disagreement and the Republicans will be looking for issues on which they can press on the administration. But overall, there's no reason to think that there's going to be any real wavering and broad support for Ukraine.

Nicholas Danforth: Now you're based in Brussels, tell us a little bit about the mood in Europe right now.

Olga Oliker: The mood in Europe right now is that Brussels is emptying as everybody goes off on vacation. Nobody is left to the city pretty much by the end of December. But here too, the overall unity in supporting Ukraine has been consistent, remains consistent. This has been consistent since 2014 when the war began, right? That for all the discussions, for all the debates, for all the concerns, for all those years of, will the sanctions package be renewed each time it was renewed. And then in February when Russia launched its full scale invasion, just this tremendous outpouring of support, you still see Ukrainian flags all over the place.

So there's no reason to think that anything is shifting, I think your truer concerns about accountability of assistance. And that is going to remain a factor. But the general support is solid. You get debates where you might get a disconnect between what the United States, a lot of EU and NATO member states, not all though and Ukraine is this question of how does the war end? What kind of military assistance and how fast should Ukraine be written that blank check that Republican leaders worry about. There you do have dissent and disagreement. There's dissent and disagreement over policy towards Russia, though again, the narrower space than maybe one might have expected some time back. But the general policy line is largely agreed.

Nicholas Danforth: One final question. Putin just made an announcement about the future of Russian force size. I want to get your thoughts on that.

Olga Oliker: Right. So it's really interesting because what we're talking about is this official Russian force size, right? What they say is the size of their armed forces, and what they're saying is they're raising it to one and a half million from 1.15 million. I honestly don't think Russia has 1.15 million troops now. Even with this mobilization, they say brought in another 300,000 even as it drove at least that many out of the country of people who didn't want to be mobilized. And they ended that mobilization. They said, "We're done, we're good." And now they're saying, "No, we're going for 1.5 million." I don't know how... It's going to be really interesting to watch how this works. There are also a lot of reorganization aspects that they announced.

There's a move in Russia to try to convince the Russian population that this is World War II. They're fighting. And I do see this as part of this general mobilization that we have all hands on deck, we have to do everything possible. But there's also been a lot of frustration with mobilization. People are nervous about what happens when their men are sent to the front lines and not adequately equipped, not adequately trained. People don't want the male members of their families to die for the most part. So it's going to be really interesting to watch how this plays out. What public opinion polling in Russia shows is that Russians are very nervous about talking to pollsters. So it's really hard to understand what people actually think, but this effort to convince the entire population of the Russian Federation that this is World War II all over again, I don't know how well that's actually working or how well that's going to work if they really do try to get more Russians into uniforms.

Nicholas Danforth: Always a pleasure to have you on the War Cast. Thank you again.

Olga Oliker: Always a pleasure talking to you.