US helps as long as Ukraine fights - Matthew Bryza

The Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, a war criminal, Shoigu, made several phone calls regarding Ukraine's possible use of dirty nuclear weapons. No one believed him, but we understand the purpose of Shoigu's calls to the main capitals of the Euro-Atlantic community - to demonstrate the seriousness of the Russian Federation's intentions, possibly the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

This is another example of the Russian belief that power comes from being feared. Many of the Russians I dealt with in negotiations throughout my diplomatic career would make that point. But for the first time in my life a talk of using a nuclear weapon has inspired very little fear and it has been derided or rejected as ridiculous and therefore counterproductive. Talking about the so called dirty bomb, I think it is an attempt now to inspire fear among all of us that there could be some sort of radioactive weapon that is used. Even though the rest of the NATO family, the transatlantic community has called Putin’s bluff on his readiness to use nuclear weapons. We recall that he said, “I’m not bluffing”, and of course he was, you don’t say you are not bluffing, unless you are. So Shoigu is just trying to find another way of frightening us all and get us all to put pressure on Ukraine, to negotiate and end the war that Russia has already lost. 

We understand that the meeting of the UN Security Council was held in closed session. I don't know what exactly they were talking about there, but in any case, we understand that Putin is being hit extremely hard and cannot win on the battlefield with conventional weapons. Accordingly, perhaps he will be preparing some hellish scenario. The main task is an adequate response from the Euro-Atlantic community.

That’s a fair analogy and many American analysts have been saying the same thing that we are closer to nuclear war today because of Russia in Ukraine than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. My former colleagues and continuing friends who are in the Biden Administration are very seriously thinking about that threat and how NATO and the US would respond. And that’s essential. We make sure that deterrence is credible, as we have a usable military response should Putin, God forbid, decide so recklessly to use nuclear weapons. My guess is that the response would be an intense conventional attack that will first and foremost eliminate and enaliate any Russian military forces that were all responsible for such an egregious attack. And we may see a very serious US and overall NATO attack on Russian forces in Ukraine. Washington understands that if any country in this case Russia passes this threshold that has never been passed since the US used nuclear weapons on Heroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If any country passes that threshold and doesn’t suffer consequences that it really can’t accept, that country is going to use nuclear weapon again and so will other countries that possess nuclear weapon. There will be an intense response. I am reassured by the rationality and a calm with which this issue is being discussed in Washington.

As far as we understand, Putin wants to keep the occupied territories of Ukraine and then start a big bargain. A similar scenario may begin to be realized in the spring of next year, because before that Putin wants to commit a huge genocidal act against the Ukrainian population. At one time, the Bolsheviks organized the Holodomor in Ukraine, now Putin may try to organize the Coldodomor, as they simply destroy our energy structure.

 Putin’s plan obviously changes. Originally, his plan was to change the government in Kyiv, occupy the city quickly, at low cost, and then reincorporate Ukraine into Russia. All of his blaster about NATO enlargement posing a threat to Russia was just to confuse us and weaken our resolve to resist and to help Ukraine. That plan failed, we know that, thanks to the amazing fighting of Ukrainian people and also to the lack of preparation or the wrong plan. Then he started trying to bomb Ukrainian forces and cities with long range artillery and then the US provided HIMARS, longer range artillery systems that could take out the Russian guns. So he changed that plan at that point. Now he has no other tactics. He can’t win on the battlefield, so all he can do is trying to frighten us with a threat of nuclear attack and then destroy Ukraine and try to inflict as much pain as possible, hoping that eventually the Ukrainian people would give up and say we are too cold, go ahead, occupy us.That will never work.

In the history of aerial bombardment, for example, and the destruction of cities and attempts to destroy the will of a nation, whether it be the German attacks on the United Kingdom, or attacks in Grozny by the Russians. Those sort of attacks on the civilian population only strengthen the resolve of the citizens to fight back, and that is exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine. I pray for my friends, sisters, brothers in Ukraine every day, multiple times. This winter won’t be so horrible, but it is going to be very difficult, and you, Ukrianians, will fight only stronger and harder. So, will Putin ultimately resort to another genocidal Holodomor or Coldomor? I don’t think so, because his goals have been rational all along. His goal is to restore a sense of greatness of Russia, restore a sense of Novaya Rossia, which means incorporating Ukrainian lands into Russia, as a rational plan. If he kills all the people in Ukraine, there is no meaning in reincorporating those lands into Russia. If he tries to bring the whole world down with a nuclear attack, he will be forever remembered, if there is any history as the crazy man who tries to end the entire world. That’s not his goal. I;m not a psychiatrist, neither are you, but it seems he’s behaved in a rational way all the way through  and he is not insane, even though there is a spiritual component to this desire to restore a sense of Novaya Rossia.

 But the key issue here will be President Joseph Biden's willingness to enter world history, just as President Woodrow Wilson entered, who voiced 14 points and the whole world followed the demands. And now we see a turning point in the history of the world and the question of how ready President Joseph Biden will be now to speak hard and clearly, because we were surprised when we read the letter from the American senators, which was later renounced. But still, we understand that America is currently going through midterm elections, and there is not much time left, and we see many rather strange statements from American politicians.

Biden has been extremely strong in supporting Ukraine and will remain strong. 40 bln USD in military assistance to Ukraine so far has enabled Ukrainian soldiers to fight so fantastically and successfully on a battlefield. Joe Biden believes in that. We recall that under president Obama then vice-president, Biden, had the lead in formulating the US response to the previous Russian invasion of Ukraine. The question is what happens with the midterm elections coming up? Peter McCarthy has decided to politically fight president Biden in the Democratic party on every possible front, including economy, accusations that 

democrats don’t want to fight crime. He is attacking the Biden Administration for spending too much money in Ukraine and not enough on American people. That’s a cheap political ploy, McCarthy knows better, but it is an issue in the upcoming elections.

Similarly there are some democrats being the far left, t is not Nancy Pelosi, not mainstream democrats, who have formulated the letter to which you refer a month ago, in fact back in June, before Ukraine has been fighting so successfully on a battlefield with its counter offensives near Kharkiv and near Kherson. 

The good news is as soon as that letter was released, it was condemned by the leadership of the Democratic party and withdrawn. 

American politics right now are all in favor of continuing to provide that deep strong support for Ukraine. But these are also signs that the support will not last forever. It will last at this very high lever as long as Ukraine continues to be successful on the battlefield. And therefore, it is showing that Ukraine is putting to use all of this assistance in a way that it is going to help it win victory. There will come a time for negotiations. Ukraine rightfully is not ready for that time, because it is regaining its own territories on the battlefield. Earlier when Ukraine was ready to negotiate last March, Putin wanted to try to steal more Ukrainian territory and he lost. So now he wants to negotiate. What really matters here is not US politics, it’s the victory lying ahead for Ukraine’s Armed Forces and all of Ukrainian society, all of its volunteers, who are contributing to this war in a millions of ways. I can well assure that the US support will continue.  

Yes, but on the other hand, we understand that Putin is not in vain raising the stakes, threatening a thermonuclear catastrophe. One of the goals is American public opinion, and we understand that the situation in the USA may change somewhat after the elections.

 I totally agree. Putin wants to negotiate now just to stop the fighting that he is losing, but then he will just prepare to continue the fighting after the rest of the world stops paying attention. I think that’s goal, it’s not a real negotiation that he seeks that could resolve the conflict, he just wants to pause the battle that he is losing, and he wants time to regroup. 

Going back to your question, I think there will be more HIMARS, and Biden Administration has already said that. And it was, as we said before, that those HIMARS forced Russia to change its tactics and to stop simply hitting Ukrainian forces and cities with artillery. They can’t do that anymore now. They are using drones and missiles, including certain air missiles like S-300 that were repurposed to strike ground targets, because Russia is running out of precision-guided missiles and can’t build new ones, because of the sanctions. 

What is really important now is that the US does what it said it finally is going to do, which is help Ukraine with its air defenses. And now provide the whole new series of air missile systems that will help shoot Russian missiles and drones in the sky. By the way, Ukraine has been doing quite a great job in that, destroying about half of the Russian missiles that have been coming after Ukrainian targets, civilian targets, which are war crimes, causing tremendous damage. If we turn to the American public all of this brutality of Putin, he is shown all day on US tv programs, there is very strong support still in both political parties - Democrats, Republicans and independent US voters to continue supporting Ukraine at this level. 

Even if politicians think that they can score points by attacking Biden for providing too much assistance to Ukraine, I don’t think that is going to be a very popular point of view as long as Ukraine continues to do well on a battlefield, and as long as Putin continues to adapt this brutal acts, that are war crimes. What happens after the November midterm elections? Nobody knows what the Republicans are going to win back - one House of our Congress, two Houses, or neither. If the Democrats will hang on to control both Houses of Congress, will we see that the level of the US support continues as it has been, as long as Ukraine continues succeeding on the battlefield. If the Republicans capture either the House or Senate, they probably will try to score political points now and that looking forward to the 2024 Presidential Elections - the next huge event on the US political calendar, trying to make Biden look weak, by claiming that he is caring too much about Ukraine, more about Ukrainian civilians than the US civilians which is a stupid argument. And Biden will fight back. As you said the outcome of that political fight will depend on the American people, and how much support they themselves continue to have for the people of Ukraine.

 How can Beijing behave in the current situation? We understand that Xi Jinping has changed the palace of power in China. It doesn't just mean that he decided to be the new Chinese leader for the rest of his life, maybe he won't turn into Mao Zedong, it doesn't matter. We understand that he broke a certain complex of balances, which was established even by Deng Xiaoping. Of course, the world community will react to this, in particular, it is about the economy and simply the rapid fall of the yuan. In this case, I am most interested in how Beijing will behave in the situation of the Russian-Ukrainian war now that Xi Jinping has been renewed in office, will China finally say its clear word, or will it continue to turn a blind eye to Putin's crimes?

We know from the gathering in Uzbekistan a couple of weeks ago that Xi Jinping as well as Modi in India fail to offer support to Russia for its war in Ukraine, and in fact make clear that they do not approve of what Russia is doing. And were Putin to use nuclear weapon, you would see opposition from China to what Russia is doing. Tension is increasing between Russia and China in Central Asia. China has not stepped in and helped Russia with East-West transit to the Belt and Road initiative, and the rest of the world decides not to use transit and routes across Russia. China neither stepped in nor violated sanctions against Russia. It hasn’t implied sanctions, but it hasn’t violated them. And instead China is directing much of its commerce into and through Central Asia.

Yes, Xi Jinping has really broken the balance in Chinese politics. He has consolidated power as you were suggesting to an unprecedented level since Mao Zedong. He humiliated Hu Jintao, his predecessor as we saw Hu Jintao escorted out of the China party congress. It was a demonstration of great political force and strength by Xi Jinping. He doesn’t need Russia. Russia is a junior partner in whatever partnership Russia and China have formed. They claimed just before Russia’s invasion, it was going to be a partnership with no limits, but clearly there are limits. The most obvious and the one that has already been mentioned is that China has not violated the sanctions that the rest of the world has put on Russia. 

I would like to clarify the role of Iran and the formation of a new axis of evil. We understand that Iran supplies Russia with drones that kill our civilians. Iran has now promised to supply Russia with ballistic missiles of various ranges. Accordingly, how, in your opinion, can Iran play in the current situation, because Putin, strangely enough, does not seek to curtail, nor localize the war, but on the contrary, to internationalize the conflict. And accordingly, we understand that the story about Iran is not only about human rights, it is about the Iranian nuclear program, and as far as I understand, Putin is signaling to the whole world that yes, we have certain secrets that we can thank the Ayatoll

By turning to Iran for drones and possibly ballistic missiles, Putin is showing the world he is desperate. He is running out of these weapons of his own, and he has to turn to a country that is largely a pariah around the world. He is trying to internationalize the conflict, but he is operating more out of tactical necessity and strategic vision in this case. 

Iran has plenty of problems of its own, the whole world is watching the protest movement, largely by women and girls, seems to be destabilizing the situation across all of Iran. The genie seems to be out of the bottle now, and the regime is having great difficulty stopping this protest. Reports I heard today are that just as Iranian experts around the ground are helping Russia to figure out how best to use the Iranian drones, so are Russian security personnel on the ground now in Iran, trying to help Iranian government figure out how to crush the protests. 

I think if Iran continues with this military support for Russia, and especially if it were to provide ballistic missiles to Russia, then we would see not only much tougher sanctions, reimposed by the US, and also Europe. And on top of that, we would see a shift in the debate that’s been going on in Washington since Barack Obama failed to support the Green revolution in Iran a decade ago. In other words, I think we would see support in Washington for actively helping out the protesters and maybe destabilizing Iran. So Iran has a limit as to how far he can push against Ukraine in support of Russia.