AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Ukraine is marking its independence day. The country's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave a speech today, reminding his fellow Ukrainians that they were fighting for freedom. But there's little to cheer.
Joining us now to discuss the recent diplomatic push is Yaroslav Trofimov. He's the chief foreign affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He's also the author of "No Country For Love," a novel set in 1930s Ukraine. Welcome to the program.
YAROSLAV TROFIMOV: Great to be on the show.
RASCOE: So let's start with Russia. Like, how will it view this moment?
TROFIMOV: Russia wanted to extinguish Ukraine's independence. That was the primary goal of the invasion 3 1/2 years ago, in February 2022. And look at it now. There are no Ukrainian tanks in Kyiv. There are foreign dignitaries, including the Canadian prime minister, visiting the Ukrainian capital today. And all of Russia's efforts to suborn Ukraine have not been successful. You know, Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers over the past nearly three years, since November 2022, and, for all that effort, managed to advance by less than 1% of Ukrainian territory. So I think Ukrainians have reason to celebrate today that their independence is safeguarded. Maybe not the entire land of Ukraine, but still, 80% of Ukraine is free.
RASCOE: But the war is dragging on. And we heard from Russia's top diplomat on Friday that no meeting is planned between President Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart. What do you think the chances are that there will ever be a meeting between these two men?
TROFIMOV: Well, I think chances are pretty slim right now because President Putin of Russia thinks he can win this war. And he - you know, he operates in a different time frame. He has this messianic vision of being the gatherer of Russian lands. And if you remember, this war began with him writing a historical essay on how the Ukrainians are really Russians and they do not deserve a separate future. So I think his mission in life, as he sees it, is to bring Ukraine back into the fold of Russia and extinguish Ukrainian statehood. And that is the reason why the Ukrainians are resisting so hard today.
You know, I wrote in my novel about the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s and the sort of wholesale elimination of the Ukrainian elites by the Soviet regime at the time, a story that is a story of so many Ukrainian families. Well, the Ukrainians today all have grandmothers or grandfathers like me who went through the same experience, and they know that surrender to Russia is worse than whatever sacrifice they have to make today to keep fighting Russia. And so surrender is not an option.
RASCOE: When you look at how to actually bring this war to a close or what's going to happen next - you know, President Trump is renewing a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there's no progress in making a peace deal. But sanctions have been imposed before. Like, what would it actually take for Putin to change course on Ukraine?
TROFIMOV: Well, you know, there are two wars going on. There is a war on the battlefield, which is a stalemate more or less. Russia is advancing very slowly. And then there is the air war. And Ukraine, for example, has been hitting harder and harder at the Russian oil and gas infrastructure, which is the lifeline for the Russian economy. And that oil and gas revenue is what allows Russia to keep recruiting soldiers for the war. President Trump also has already imposed sanctions on India for buying Russian oil. You know, India buys about, you know, almost 40% of Russian oil exports. So strangling this source of revenue could actually change the cost-benefit analysis in Moscow and create constraints for the Russian war machine.
RASCOE: Well, do you think the U.S. is willing to do that sort of pressure?
TROFIMOV: Well, I mean, there is already a concrete step with India. Now, will President Trump go any further? You know, he changes his mind on this war very regularly, and so far, these threats of making big decisions in two weeks have been repeated and then pulled back. It's clear that the meeting in Alaska was a big victory for President Putin because he succeeded in removing this threat of sanctions and removing also President Trump's demand for an immediate ceasefire.
RASCOE: Do you think it's feasible for Ukraine to keep fighting this war without meaningful American support?
TROFIMOV: There is a European support. Europeans now account for the majority of support for Ukraine, and the Europeans are also going to be buying American weapons that cannot be produced in Ukraine. Is it feasible? I mean, the question is, what is the alternative? If the alternative is a surrender, which is what President Putin is demanding, essentially, because the Russian demands, as voiced by Foreign Minister Lavrov in recent days, are very similar to what they were back when the war began, basically - you know, a Ukraine that is unable to defend itself, a Ukraine that does not have any security guarantees and a Ukraine that surrenders large parts of its territory.
So this surrender is not acceptable to Ukrainians because they know from their bitter history in the past, the history that, you know, my book talks about that, you know, there will be more death and more killing and more destruction if they accept to be under Russian rule again.
RASCOE: Do you see any breakthrough to end this war in the coming weeks? Do you think that's possible?
TROFIMOV: I think it's highly unlikely that there will be any breakthrough in the coming weeks because the Russians still think they can win it. And to the - you know, the - President Putin thinks he can outlast the will of the West. And obviously, now that American support for Ukraine is much reduced compared to it was under President Biden, he thinks he can gain the upper hand in the battlefield, and eventually the frontline will crumble, and Ukraine will collapse. And the Ukrainians, with the help of the Europeans, are doing everything they can to prevent this sort of catastrophic outcome.
RASCOE: That's Yaroslav Trofimov of The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us.
TROFIMOV: Great to be here.
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