Biden in Poland for Ukraine war anniversary

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Biden in Poland for Ukraine war anniversary’

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, February 20th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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This week, we’re focusing on the war in Ukraine. It’ll be one year since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. And today, we’ll look at Poland’s role in the west’s response. And we’ll find out who’s got the upper hand on the battlefield after 12 months of intense fighting.

John Paul Rathbone
It’s almost like before one of those American football games where both sides are glowering at each other, sort of scrunching against each other at the moment.

Marc Filippino
I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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US President Joe Biden heads to Warsaw this week. It’s his second trip to Poland in less than a year. That really speaks to how important Poland has become as western allies forcefully respond to the war. Here’s the FT’s diplomatic correspondent, Henry Foy.

Henry Foy
Poland’s been the fulcrum, if you like, of both military support for Ukraine. The vast majority of western weapons that have been supplied to Ukraine have gone through into Poland first, been collected there and then shipped across the Polish border. But also diplomatically, Poland has been the sort of diplomatic heart of the push to make Europe take this more seriously. The push to make sure that support for Ukraine is sustained financially, humanitarian and militarily, and also that sanctions pressure continues on Russia. So if America, if you like, is the engine of the western response, Poland is really the voice of it. It’s the megaphone making sure that Nato and EU partners remain as supportive as possible to Kyiv.

Marc Filippino
Henry, the FT just spoke with Poland’s President Andrzej Duda. And in his interview, he urged Nato members to provide Ukraine with postwar security guarantees. Why is he asking this?

Henry Foy
I mean, of course, the wider context of this is that Poland has now for years and years, well in advance of Russia’s war, said Russia is a threat to eastern European countries. We need more security guarantees. We need more military deployment in eastern Europe. What Duda’s saying in his interview with the FT is that big countries in Nato, and really he’s talking about the UK, the US and France, the nuclear-armed members of Nato need to give Ukraine bilateral security guarantees so that Russia knows even if Ukraine isn’t in Nato or the EU any time soon, it can’t do this again.

Marc Filippino
What kind of response might he get? Will Nato say sure, we’re gonna do this or no?

Henry Foy
None of the big western countries are showing their hand. It’s obviously very, very sensitive issue. Nobody wants to go to war with Russia. There’s obviously gonna be no security guarantees offered while this conflict is raging. But it does speak to a much bigger issue, which is what is the European security architecture going to look like when this war ends? What is Ukraine’s role in that gonna be? And what can the west do to support Ukraine going forward? The question of how we prevent this happening again is really at the heart of the postwar debate.

Marc Filippino
Henry Foy is the FT’s European diplomatic correspondent. Thanks, Henry.

Henry Foy
Thank you very much.

Marc Filippino
Tomorrow, we’ll talk more with Henry about how the war has upended Europe’s approach to Russia. For now, we’ll turn to the FT’s Felicia Schwartz for the US response.

Felicia Schwartz
The US position is they’ll support Ukraine as long as it takes. It’s become really one of the if not the primary focus of American foreign policy. It really is an existential threat to the rules-based international order, which sounds like a very wonky term, but is really kind of the rules of the road that the west, led by the US established after world war two. And they see making sure that Russia doesn’t, you know, get away with invading its neighbour as a pretty important goal to upholds the world as it stands, with the US as kind of the leading power.

Marc Filippino
Felicia, it seems like there’s this push and pull of US support. You know, Ukraine asks for a certain type of weapon, whether it be a tank or an aircraft, and then the US and other western countries hesitate, but then, you know, they end up sending it. What’s your take on this?

Felicia Schwartz
I guess I would say on the one hand, the battlefield and the conditions on the battlefield and what the Ukrainians need has changed over time. And I think also another part is that all along the Americans have been really, you know, conscious of escalation. President Biden made it very clear to his national security team, you know, number one goal of the US is not to get into direct conflict with Russia or for, you know, Nato, not to get into direct conflict with Russia. So I think they’re kind of constantly calibrating all the time. You know, I did a piece about some of these, and one of the things I heard from the analysts I spoke to is that whether it’s by design or by accident, the assistance kind of ratchets up little by little. And it kind of creates like an information environment or a situation where it’s not some dramatic escalation. It’s like little by little the US is doing more. And it’s not like there’s some significant moment where there’s some, you know, intense change or system that Russia feels like it has to react to.

Marc Filippino
Felicia Schwartz is the FT’s US foreign affairs and defence correspondent.

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Western military strategists have for decades focused on terrorism as the key threat. Now, with Russia and Ukraine we’ve got ground battles between two sovereign armies, hearkening back to wars from last century. We’ve been tracking this land war with the FT’s defence and security correspondent, John Paul Rathbone. He’s with us again today. Hi, JP.

John Paul Rathbone
Hi, Marc.

Marc Filippino
So, JP, where are we today? Who has the advantage in the war?

John Paul Rathbone
Essentially you’ve got a stalemate on the frontline, which is not to say it’s not moving. It sort of moves one way, a few kilometres one day and then moves a few kilometres back another day, and there’s fighting all along. The challenge for either side is how to break this gridlock essentially. And on the one hand, Russia still got mass. It’s called up 300,000 reservists. So they’re being thrown into the fight and it still has an advantage of artillery and armour. And on the other hand, you’ve got the Ukrainians who have quality instead of quantity. And that’s a lot to do with the will to resist by its troops and the level of motivation and, of course, the western supplies of ammunition and other weapons. So it’s almost like before one of those American football games where both sides are glowering at each other, and they’re sort of scrunching against each other at the moment.

Marc Filippino
JP, you’ve been covering this war since the start, over the past year. What would you say is the most surprising development?

John Paul Rathbone
I think what has taken a lot of people by surprise is the state of the Russian army and the realisation that it was a Potemkin army in many senses. It looked great on the outside, fantastic on parades, less good in action. And they’ve had a lot of trouble in coordinating between the various arms of the army, and it’s been much less effective than people thought. That’s not to say that you should underestimate the Russian army. It’s sort of like this Tyrannosaurus rex. It may not have a big brain. Again, don’t underestimate the Russians in that aspect either. But basically, it’s just this huge gnashing beast. Extremely dangerous and you’ve got to treat it with extreme caution.

Marc Filippino
So does that mean Russia could win this war at some point?

John Paul Rathbone
I don’t think you can say that Russia will ever win this war. I mean, strategically, it’s lost. That’s not quite the same, though, as saying that Ukraine has won. But the question is, what does the nature of Ukrainian victory come to look like? In some senses, the mere fact that the Kyiv administration is still there, the country is still there, it’s still fighting, that is a success compared to where we were exactly a year ago, where many people expected Kyiv to fall. But between surviving and actually winning and pushing the Russians out of the country, that’s a big gap.

Marc Filippino
JP, I know you do not have a crystal ball, none of us do. But what’s next for the war?

John Paul Rathbone
What does peace look like, is I think, the question you’re asking and what would make that peace lasting? And if the Russians remain on Ukrainian territory and let’s include the Crimea in that as well, you can imagine a frozen conflict akin to the Korean Peninsula. But that doesn’t mean hostilities will cease. There’ll still be the Russian navy in the Black Sea. Russia could still lob missiles into Ukraine. So is that a lasting peace? I don’t think so. And Ukraine would also continue to want to be pushing the Russians back. What happens if the Russians get pushed back all the way to Ukraine’s borders as established in the United Nations in 1991? That’s a clearer line. And Ukraine would sort of reinforce those borders with western help, and then Russia would be behind those borders licking its wounds. But when I say that Russia has lost, it’s lost strategically in the sense that it hasn’t conquered Kyiv. Nato is more united than ever. The west has shown remarkable coherence and cohesion in helping Ukraine. But that’s not to say that Ukraine has won. What does victory look like to Ukraine? This is, it’s the million-dollar question, and a lot will depend on what happens on the battlefield over this coming year.

Marc Filippino
JP Rathbone is the FT’s defence and security correspondent. Thank you, JP.

John Paul Rathbone
Thank you.

Marc Filippino
Tomorrow on the News Briefing, we’ll look at Russia’s second front. Moscow is growing its military and diplomatic influence in Africa.

David Pilling
It wants votes at the UN. It wants resources. It wants to spread its message that it stands up against a western hegemony, as Putin would put it, that it presents an alternative and is somehow on the side of the former colonised powers, the underdogs of this world.

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Marc Filippino
This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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