NATO seriously considers replacing Ukrainian fighter jets with NATO ones - diplomat Matthew Bryza

Today we are joined by Matthew Bryza, former adviser to the United States Secretary of State.

I welcome you, Mr. Ambassador, to the studio of Espreso TV channel.

Putin announces mobilization. By saying that it is a partial mobilization, we understand a long war scenario. What measures do you think Putin can take and, accordingly, what will be the reaction of the world community?

I don’t believe that the war can last that long, because these 300,000 men, who are not fully trained and will not be trained due to the inability of Russia to train them properly. Will that have much of an impact? Ukraine has fought with such courage and skill, and now is finally getting the weapons it needs, that Putin will soon find himself in a situation where he has to admit at least for himself that Russia cannot win. That’s why he is now using escalatory rhetoric about the possible use of nuclear weapons. He wants to frighten us and maybe get us to back down. But he knows militarily he cannot win.

This means Putin realized his loss of the current stage of the war and started further aggression and escalation. The question is about Putin's nuclear deterrence, because he regularly repeats his mantra about Russia’s tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. And Dmitri Medvedev has just threatened again, this time with the use of strategic nuclear weapons.

Yes, it is true, and this is part of Russia’s military doctrine, as we have discussed before, which is escalate the conflict to deescalate, meaning persuade or convince your opponent that you are willing to use a level of violence being so high that it frightens the opponent, and they decide to surrender. That’s what Putin is doing now. He is not a mad man. He knows very well that if he uses nuclear weapons, the risk is that everything is over for him, including his own life, and he cares about nothing more than his own wellbeing. I think this is just escalatorial rhetoric with the intent of intimidating and frightening the rest of us. By the way, I’m not optimistic, because this is a horrible war which needs to end as soon as possible. He wants to keep fighting, that’s true, I just think he can’t for long. It’s really significant that more than 200 soldiers, many from the AZOV battalion, were released. These were soldiers so many observers feared they are going to be tortured and murdered by Putin, and now they are free. Thank God. And maybe there’s a signal he is beginning to position himself to be able to reduce tension at some point soon.

I understand your point, Mr. Ambassador, on the other hand, our mutual acquaintance, General Ben Hodges, said that in response to Putin's escalation of aggression, the Russian Black Sea Fleet may be destroyed. Hysterics broke out in the Kremlin because of this. Putin understands very clear and specific tools of deterrence. And accordingly, what tools could be applied if Putin were to go on an unprecedented unconventional escalation?

General Hodges is the best military analyst I have ever met, because of his experience and great connections. I haven’t talked to him about that comment, so it is clear he has something in mind. As we have discussed previously, there may come a time that, if not the entire NATO Alliance, then individual members may offer Ukraine some more decisive military help, even beyond the US HIMARS. Aircrafts, for example, as we recall Poland was willing to offer some of its fighting aircrafts a few months ago. And some time ago, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Navy said Ukraine was planning to destroy the Black Sea Fleet, no further detail. What else can Putin do? As you’ve mentioned, he could use a battlefield nuclear weapon as a demonstration. But the use of it has very little military utility, because Ukrainian forces are remaining dispersed. They are not concentrating into big groups that can be destroyed by the battlefield nuclear weapons. And if Putin were to take that step, we would see the toughest sanctions by a united world ever imposed on any country, and that would strangle the Russian economy and mark the end of Putin's regime. He could go to that level, but I think first is just going to try to frighten us and then wait out for Europeans and see how much tolerance they have for insufficient natural gas supplies this winter.

How seriously will the President of the USA, Joseph Biden, be ready to get involved in the final battle on the side of Ukraine. We all listened intently to his speech to the UN General Assembly, but we didn't hear about specific tools. He gave general assurances and outlined a general course, but we understand that everything will be decided in complete accordance with the military doctrine of the US. How do you assess now, to what extent Joseph Biden will be ready to apply tough decisions, in particular, it is about supplying us with long-range artillery?

Well, I obviously don’t know sitting here in Istanbul what’s in his head, but I do know that his administration led by him and by Jake Sallivan, the National Security Advisor, have been considering what would be the specific responses were Russia to use a tactical nuclear weapon. Considering everything ranging from very tough sanctions to military intervention and inconceivably use of the battlefield nuclear weapons of NATO zone, being an extreme scenario. By the way I am talking, you can tell that I don’t believe we are barrelling toward a nuclear war. Putin doesn’t want it, he knows that it would be suicidal. I would guess that one of the things considered would definitely be to provide longer range missiles that could strike Russian territory and certainly more territory in Ukraine. There are probably serious considerations within NATO about providing fighter aircrafts to replenish Ukraine’s own fighte jets, as the country's amazing pilots have performed so well. But there is attrition every time you are fighting a war, and weapons need to be replaced.   

Mr. Ambassador, of course Putin will lose in the long run. He launched a war in the middle of the Russian Federation, now he will not be able to hide it by means of idiotic formulas of the so-called "military operation" as mobilization has already begun. We are talking about the medium and long-term perspective. And the outcome for Putin may be the same as it was for Mykola Romanov after Russia's entry into WWI. On the other hand, we see how stubbornly he sticks to the fait accompli principle, it is about the declaration of temporarily occupied lands as annexed ones. Of course, he wants to call this a pseudo-referendum, as a response to the annexation or attempts to annex our territories.

The pseudo-referenda is a sign of how desperate he is. He knows he is losing. He would never have wanted to conduct the referenda under the conditions, when Russia does not control even half of Luhansk,  Donetsk, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia. It is very risky to conduct referenda under those circumstances. Of course, the results will be falsified. Nobody in the world except Nikaragua, North Korea and Syria are going to consider recognizing the legitimacy of what is clearly a sham. If you look at the reaction of Ukraine’s top officials, they seem quite unworried. They know that this is a joke and a sign of president Putin’s desperation. Everything is moving toward a clear understanding by Putin that he has lost.

 And my  last point is that this partial mobilization is something to have a tectonic impact, like a huge earthquake in the politics of Russia, because until now young men in St. Petersburg had no sense of war at all, it was somewhere far away. It was only for people from some remote regions of Russia, being more desperate economically, they were signing up to go to war. Now this brings the war home to everyone, and this is a deeply unpopular war among Russians.

It's just that Putin can use extremely terrible tools to attack the civilian population. In particular, it is about the creation of a possible man-made disaster at the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and Putin will try to pretend that nothing happened, at least that it is not his fault. And it is not for nothing that we see this cheap performance of the Russian military. On the other hand, we see how they are meticulously destroying our civil infrastructure in the East of Ukraine, which means that during cold weather, Putin will hit our power and thermal plants to freeze us. Accordingly, will there be any tools in response? What steps can be taken in the European Union and the US?

These are huge humanitarian threats to the people of Ukraine, and the world sees what is going on. Everybody knows. The UN IAEA, Mr. Grossi knows Ukraine is not targeting its own nuclear power plant, as that would be suicidal. Everybody knows that Russia is launching these attacks, and each time Russia conducts this form of a nuclear terror and blackmail, Putin is unveiling how evil this war truly is. If, God forbid, electricity is knocked out in winter, I don’t know what sort of provisions are being thought of by the Ukrainian government, there’s no quick fix to get the power back, other than to rebuild and to reconnect the wires. It all depends on how much damage would be caused. There are power lines and pipelines being blown up everyday somewhere in the world, and they can generally be repaired quite quickly. The problem comes if a hostile military force, Russia, is able to occupy a certain amount of territory for a prolonged period and keep the flow of energy blocked. But I don’t think Russia is in that position, and if it were to conduct that sort of humanitarian blackmail against Ukrainian people, we would see

We understand that Putin has put the Russian Empire in an unprecedented situation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting has ended recently, and we saw that they actually signed the death sentence to the CSTO. Putin was unable or unwilling to protect his ally, Armenia, which is the CSTO member, and it was Xi Jinping who was the main leader to provide guarantees of sovereignty and security in Central Asia. Xi Jinping and Erdogan. What do you think happened at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

There is quite an extended history of the CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization not supporting Russia’s positions in case of Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August, 2008. None of the member states supported the breakup of Georgia’s territorial integrity, even though there was strong pressure from Moscow. As for Armenia, I completely agree, as it has appealed to the CSTO to intervene militarily and the CSTO simply sent a fact-finding mission.

Similarly in July, 2020 when there were clashes along the Azerbaijan border with Armenia. Pashinyan was preparing to request the CSTO intervention, and the CSTO preempted and said we are not going to intervene. 

So the CSTO is not a real organization anymore, it’s not functioning and has no real purpose. 

Your question about China and Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting is really important. Xi Jinping had not left China ever since Covid, and he chose his first trip to be to the heart of Central Asia, to Uzbekistan. Yes, Russia and China cooperate within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but it is a signal to Putin that Xi Jinping chose Uzbekistan for his first visit abroad. Now we know that Xi Jinping expressed that China is not comfortable with Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the same goes for Narendra Modi. For Putinm, his SCO meeting was a big diplomatic defeat. 

Why is Putin afraid of Erdogan? He is afraid and listens to him. What is the magic of President Erdogan when it comes to relations with Putin?

B: I’m not sure that Putin is afraid of Erdogan, he respects him, and he needs him. He needs him for the flow of ships to the Turkish straits, as we all know for centuries, trying to at least have access to the Turkish straits, if not control them, has been a fundamental objective of Russian foreign policy. Putin realizes that Turkey holds the key to Black Sea security, because of its control of the straits, and because Turkey has NATO’s second largest military. It is Russia’s neighbor, as well as Ukraine’s and Georgia’s one right across the Black Sea. But I also think that Erdogan has figured out how to resist Putin’s and Russia’s aggression without alienating him and without speaking emotionally. And that is part of the history of any Turkish leader, knowing that Turkey has fought more wars against Russia than against any other country going back to the Ottoman centuries. And part of it is that Erdogan in particular is very transactional in his diplomacy, like Donald Trump was. 

President Erdogan is driven not by ideology, but by raw national interests, which is how Putin sees the world as well. Actually Putin respects that and feels he can trust Erdogan, because Erdogan does not seek to weaken Russia, but rather to manage its relationship with Russia and profit wherever possible. As you know, Turkey receives a lot of natural gas, oil, grain and tourists from Russia. So there are mutual political and economic interests in play, even though Erdogan is such a strong supporter of Ukraine in this situation.

Why, in your opinion, is President Xi Jinping so inactive in the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian war? And in general, would he have enough tools to be applied against Putin in order to push him to a negotiation process based on the complete withdrawal of Russian troops?

It may come to that, especially if Russia decides to escalate and use weapons of mass destruction. In that situation, China would get more actively involved, because it is not a revisionist country like Russia. Russia wants to change the map, as we see in Ukraine. China does not, it wants to restore its territorial integrity from its perspective. So China wants stability and escalating war in Ukraine undermines the economic and political stability, which is so important to China. At the same time China wants to resist the US and its allies, push back and reduce their power, so China finds itself in a difficult situation with regard to Ukraine. It doesn’t want this war at all, but it also doesn’t want to strengthen a friend and a future ally of the United States and NATO, meaning Ukraine. But underlying Chinese foreign policy now, of course there is a desire to work with Russia wherever possible to resist the Americans and their allies. Time is what will determine what sort of pressure and tools China may wish to exert against Russia in a way you described, and that depends on whether or not Putin continues to escalate this war. The more Putin escalates, the more active China will be against him.

Mr. Ambassador, how can the situation change after the United States Congress elections and in general, is there a complete consensus among the military and political elites of the US in terms of standing up for Ukraine, and it is not about some verbal formulas, but about someone putting signatures under specific decisions - to put Lend-Lease into action, to provide long-range artillery, and finally to present a very clear concept of forcing Putin to peace, because we often heard some pretty strange things from Jake Sullivan, President Biden's National Security Adviser.

Jake Sallivan seems to be motivated by a desire to make sure that Russia and the US don’t end up in a nuclear war. Therefore, he has continuously talked about helping Ukraine to strengthen its position at the negotiating table for talks that will come later. I think that is a mistake and the rhetoric is beginning to change. We are hearing more and more clarity from the White House about wanting Ukraine to win. It is in the US national interest for Ukraine to win. So there is going to be a bipartisan consensus for supporting Ukraine’s victory in this war, and there is very little political opposition to supporting Ukraine and to providing more than 15 billion USD of military assistance so far. Some people on the far right and far left in American politics say, ‘oh we should focus on our problems domestically, on our economy, we need some help, because we are going to have a recession, with interest rates being raised. The war in Ukraine causes supply chains disruptions and raises energy prices’. There are complaints like that, and some of those people say the US shouldn’t care about the war in Ukraine. But they are in the minority, and you will see, as Ukraine continues fighting so courageously and effectively on a battlefield, the support from the US is only going to grow. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, for your honest analysis on air of Espreso TV channel.

God save America.

And I would like to remind our viewers that we had with us Matthew Bryza, a former adviser to the United States Secretary of State.

Slava Ukraini!

Heroyam Slava!