Weekly Overview Cables - Ukraine war, Trump-Biden debate: signaling and implications.
Ukraine war updates.
1) Frontline once again static.
But for Ukraine making some small gains in Kupyansk and Russians making some gains in Avdiivka.
2) Washington is in talks to transfer eight Patriot batteries from Israel to Ukraine.
According to FT, the US, Israel, and Ukraine are in talks to supply Kyiv with up to eight Patriot air defense systems.
The larger context is that Israel was supposedly on track to retire their Patriots (which are more than three decades old) and implement more advanced systems in any case - so this would have been an incredibly productive use for older Patriot batteries.
(side note: they have yet to be retired due to concerns about a wider war breaking out with Hezbollah)
Here is the proposed mechanism for transfer: Israel avoids direct supply, and transfers them to the US instead - Washington then greenlights their transfer to Ukraine: a repeat of South Korea playbook.
Naturally, if this was to indeed take place, it could dramatically improve Ukraine's ability to counter Russian air strikes.
In addition, this would amount to a monumental shift in Israeli foreign policy towards the war in Ukraine: signaling potential willingness to supply other lethal aid (if that happens, it would most likely once again take place through the US acting as an intermediary and helping to provide some veneer of diplomatic cover for Israel).
3) DPRK to supply Russia with manpower.
Pyongyang announced early last week that it will be sending troops (in the form of a military engineering unit) to support Russian forces on the ground in the Donetsk region.
The troops are expected to arrive on the battlefield as soon as next month.
Details are still hazy, but taking logistics/engineering roles in occupied territories could (if in sufficient numbers) help free Russian manpower to focus on actual combat tasks.
Naturally, Ukraine has a strong incentive to punish these troops especially hard - to deter and prevent other nations sending their own mercenaries (eg. from Central Asia/Syria/Africa etc.)
Trump’s comments and signaling on Ukraine: opportunities and risks emanating from bad incentives.
President Biden didn’t deviate from his long-standing position on Ukraine - reiterating his commitment to support Kyiv and highlighting the importance of NATO (warning that Putin won’t stop with Ukraine if he was to succeed).
But, for obvious reasons (watch the debate if you haven’t) since Thursday’s debate, the likelihood of Trump’s return has increased even further.
(side note: and the economist’s “multi-level regression” mega poll assigned Trump a 2 in 3 chance of winning in November even prior to the debates. For context, a similar mega poll gave Biden a 80% chance in 2020.)
As such, we will need to unpack several important comments made by Trump in this debate.
Not only do these comments reveal Trump’s thoughts and attitudes about the war, but they will likely also cause real-world effects by creating certain incentives for both Ukraine and Russia.
1) Trump’s comments on the cause of Russia’s invasion.
“If we had a real president, a president that was respected by Putin, he would have never he would have never invaded Ukraine..”
Of course the value of this statement is not in its insight - or lack thereof.
Trump is blaming Biden and he would have done so no matter what the actual cause really was.
(side note: the real cause of the invasion was the belief that Putin could get away with cosplaying empire building in the 21st century. Not any security threat, not “NATO expansion” but rather, his desire to cement his legacy as a conqueror and as a modern-day version of Peter The Great - as he himself is frequently fond of comparing himself to.)
But this line of rhetoric matters for what it implies, and mainly, it implies at least two things:
1) That the invasion was not inevitable (contrary to proponents of “NATO expansion” argument) and that a stronger leadership - one that commands respect - could have deterred this act;
2) If invading Ukraine is a sign of disrespect to a US leader, then continuing this invasion and in fact escalating/taking even a bigger chunk of territory is surely also a show of disrespect at the very minimum.
In other words, by tying Putin’s successful invasion to a lack of strong US leadership, Trump has: a) undercut the argument of some of his own supporters like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie-Taylor Greene & Co that blame it on provocations against Russia/”NATO expansion” argument) and, b) staked his reputation on preventing further Russian success - for if Putin gets away with even more territorial conquest, then that is surely a slap in Trump’s face.
And so this specific comment is not necessarily bad news for Ukraine - it could have been much worse: Trump (in line with many of his supporters) could have blamed Biden for unnecessarily provoking the US into this invasion etc.
But neither is it definitely good news: since one way for Trump to avoid the very reputational stain of even further invasion of Ukraine is to try to end this war at all costs: put pressure on Ukraine to concede lands and agree to horrible Russian terms.
There is little indication that Trump would do this but neither can one rule it out completely - after all, he is yet to make a definitive foreign policy speech with a decisive display of his position.
(side note: naturally Trump and his close advisers would argue that the lack of such a policy speech is by design - that he is keeping his cards close to his chest. But even though uncertainty can certainly help in narrow terms/aspects of negotiation, on big things it may create perverse incentives and result in unwelcome outcomes. And this is precisely what his other statements are likely to cause - more on that later below.)
2) Rebuff of Putin’s peace proposal terms.
In response to the question on whether Putin’s terms for ceasefire and peace negotiations (mainly, keeping annexed territories as part of Russia) were acceptable to him, Trump was very clear: ‘‘no they're not acceptable”.
And this is very important: since there could have been a disastrous response to this question.
Trump could have said something along the lines of ‘‘we need to negotiate and look at all terms’’ etc - he could have equivocated, but he did not: he was very clear.
Had he equivocated, had he accepted the possibility that these terms could have been acceptable, then Ukraine would be in real trouble: since equivocation/accepting the possibility of such a scenario would have opened up Pandora’s box and would have legitimized the mere possibility of such an acceptable act.
That this didn’t happen probably led to many deep sighs of relief in Kyiv that night.
3) Loudly proclaiming that Ukraine is losing badly.
This specific comment was unnecessary and highly damaging:
“He's got us in such a bad position right now with with Ukraine and Russia because Ukraine's not winning that war he said I will never settle until such time they're running out of people they're running out of soldiers they've lost so many people people it's so sad they've lost so many people..[emphasis added].”
We get it, you want to really drive home the point that Biden is doing badly on Ukraine.
But at what cost?
Now Putin knows exactly what Trump’s view of the situation is.
Although Ukraine has had major setbacks this year, as we have discussed in previous cables, it is not yet clear how the trajectory of the war would evolve into 2025.
Ukraine is now (belatedly) busy fixing its manpower shortages, and once F-16s, further long-range missiles, air defense interceptors, and armored vehicles arrive in the battlefield, it is not at all clear that Russia will maintain a strong momentum.
But when Trump is discounting all that and focusing on the worst-case scenarios, Putin now knows what Trump believes - and this necessarily weakens Trump’s hand in negotiations, and will undoubtedly damage the credibility of any bluffs (eg. expressions of belief that Ukraine can win even without a negotiation/creating a bad no deal option for Putin) aimed at making a (relatively) pro-Ukraine deal an option that is preferable to continuation of the war.
Putin is now incentivized to double-down and throw in the kitchen sink to convince Trump by the end of this year that his earlier beliefs from back in June should not be altered, and that if anything, the situation in December 2024/Jan 2025 is now even worse for Ukraine.
Furthermore, Putin knows what to do: he is incentivized to double-down and throw in the kitchen sink to convince Trump by the end of this year that his earlier beliefs from back in June should not be altered, and that if anything, the situation in December 2024/Jan 2025 is now even worse for Ukraine.
With this one comment, Trump weakened his leverage and created horrible incentives for Russia to pursue.
4) Committing to a specific timeline on the Ukraine - Russia deal.
Trump: “I will have that War settled between Putin and Zelinski as president elect before I take office on January 20th”.
This is a very specific promise, and Trump’s word is now on the line.
And because Putin knows this, his incentive now will be to maximize Russia’s demands - why would he play ball and acquiesce to Trump’s timelines?
(side note: the only reason why Putin would do that is if Russians could see an outcome that would be plausibly much worse than what they are seeing right now - and that would entail threats to max out on militarizing Ukraine. But it is unclear if Trump would be willing to undertake this (correct) strategy.)
On the other hand, Kyiv will now be worried that to keep his word and get this done before taking office, Trump would be willing to impose a really bad deal on Ukraine.
As such, Ukrainian leadership will be incentivized to pursue two paths - both to spoil the possibility of a quick deal:
1) Cause bad blood between Russia and Ukraine by engaging in big, ostentatious attacks that cause reputational damage to Putin.
For example: attacking major factories/airfields deep inside Russia. More significant drone attacks targeting Moscow and even the Kremlin, and acts of sabotage against chief Russian military leaders;
2) Engage in major maneuver operations even if unprepared - resulting in exorbitant costs to the Ukrainian military.
This could then leave Ukraine in an even worse-off place in the battlefield, which could then lead to even further Russian advance - and make it more likely that Europeans must now step in to rescue.
And all if this is in fact escalatory - not at all a trajectory towards a peace deal.
Simultaneously, European allies will now have an incentive to further trump-proof Ukraine.
Indeed, this is already happening, not only is Trump wrong in his assertion that US is outspending Europe (the very opposite is happening) but also (as announced by the Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal) Ukraine will receive $60 billion annually of military assistance over the next four years: this assistance comes from 20 security agreements signed with its partners.
And so all of this means that Ukraine will be harder to push into a suboptimal deal (good for Ukraine, and maybe bad for Trump (depending on how willing he is to push Kyiv into a bad deal at any cost).
(side note: on the other hand however, this can also play into Trump’s hands. It allows him to argue that if Russia doesn’t take the Trump-brokered deal, Putin’s alternative will be much worse, since Europeans will stick with the war for a very long time.)
In conclusion then, by imposing a totally unnecessary and unrealistic timeline for a peace deal, Trump is in fact unleashing very escalatory dynamics - the very opposite of his stated intent.
And all of this could have been averted without having that timeline announced.
But let’s speculate: when Trump fails to achieve his stated goal of a peace deal before his inauguration, he can always pull out a classic Trump card and blame the failure on other things: like the “deep state” interested parties, etc.
It is not hard to imagine Trump saying ‘‘I had this deal done, and these people wanted to ruin it from all sides..”
He could even potentially blame it on Putin’s militaristic generals pushing for maximal gains in the war, and persuading him to abandon the deal (to be clear, no such thing exists - Putin is the biggest war-mongerer of them all).
And this would then allow Putin to ‘‘revisit’’ the deal at a later deal when no such ‘‘nefarious actors’’ block his way.
So in some ways, Trump’s flexibility with the truth can even be an advantage: precisely because he can always rationalize his own (and even Putin’s) failure to come to terms, he may not feel the true urgency to impose a bad deal on Ukraine at any cost: and that may be the ultimate ‘‘plot twist’’ good news for Kyiv..
Since I could not stomach any more, I tuned out of the debate after a while. I do not know if Trump offered any thoughts on how to end the war in Gaza.....