[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, on the Brian Lehrer Show, our climate question of the week. Today's question, can the oil embargo on Russia become an opportunity for a faster permanent transition from fossil fuels? The legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben has a proposal he called heat pumps for democracy. We will talk to Bill McKibben coming up.

Today is the second anniversary of the day New York City School shut down at the start of the pandemic. We'll talk to city council member Jeffrey Dinowitz, among other guests.

Dinowitz who spent 13 years as a special ed teacher before joining Council just last year, he was also a UFT chapter chair at his school. Eric Dinowitz, the latest guest in our every neighborhood series called 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

First, we'll continue our coverage now of President Volodymyr Zelensky's speech to the United States Congress this morning. We have a very special guest, Alexander Vindman, the retired Army lieutenant colonel and Director of European Affairs for the National Security Council and witness in the Trump and Ukraine abuse of power hearings. He is also author of the book Here, Right Matters: An American Story. It's his story.

As some of you know, he was born in Soviet-controlled Ukraine in 1979. As you may not know, if I have his bio right, he grew up in Brighton Beach and went to college at SUNY Binghamton. Colonel Vindman, it's an honor to have you on this of all days after President Zelensky's speech. Welcome to WNYC.

Alexander Vindman: Thanks, Brian. Really looking forward to this conversation. I've been itching to get on a New York program for some time as a New Yorker.

Brian Lehrer: If we knew earlier. Before we get into President Zelensky's speech and the war overall, why don't we establish you as a New Yorker for our local audience? When did you come to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and what was the Soviet-era context of that immigrant community you grew up in there?

Alexander Vindman: Sure. I was born in '75. We came here in '79 when I was just still a toddler fleeing as refugees from the Soviet Union. There was rampant anti-semitism. My mother was dying of cancer and my father had read an article about medical care for the [unintelligible 00:02:37] that extended his life for about eight years. For a multitude of reasons, we came to the US on December 25th, 1979, Merry Christmas. I grew up in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: What do Jews do on Christmas? They emigrate to the United States. Go ahead.

Alexander Vindman: They do, then they eat Chinese food. We actually only lived on Brighton Beach for a relatively short period of time. My grandmother settled there and lived out her days on Brighton Beach, but my dad wanted us to acculturate, assimilate and blend in. We moved about four miles inland into Brooklyn, which, as you know, is a completely different world, to Borough Park. That's where I continued on through my schooling until I went off to university. I think, on that basis, I could legitimately claim I'm a New Yorker.

Brian Lehrer: I think you can legitimately claim you're a New Yorker. You went to Binghamton, right?

Alexander Vindman: I did go to Binghamton. I started out at American. I finished up my undergraduate at Binghamton, commissioned through Cornell. Then after that, I went off into the big world and served out 21.5 years of military service.

Brian Lehrer: You entered the Army in 1999, won a Purple Heart for fighting in the Iraq War. You were wounded by a roadside bomb, if I have my facts right. What inspired you, with the background that you just described, to join the army in the first place?

Alexander Vindman: Well, I think initially, it was a sense of duty, a sense of obligation. We came here as kids and grew up in the US not really knowing anything other than the US. I felt like, as an American, it was my duty to serve. That was supposed to be just a three or four-year stint. In reality, it turned into a lifelong passion of public service. I had other potential career objectives, but every time that I had a decision to make about whether to stay in or move out, the army put some pretty amazing choices in front of me.

I started out as a troop leader, [unintelligible 00:04:52], and then became a foreign area officer, basically, a soldier diplomat, and went off to graduate school at Harvard. I traveled throughout the former Soviet Union, starting in 2009, 2010, picked up additional language, and then I had assignments in Kyiv, Ukraine, Moscow, Russia, the Pentagon, and ultimately the White House. It's a pretty awesome career run.

Brian Lehrer: Alexander Vindman, my guest, the retired lieutenant colonel, and National Security Council leader, who, of course, was a key witness in the first Trump impeachment trial. We'll get into president Zelensky's speech before Congress, which just took place last hour in the larger picture of the war in Ukraine. On any of these things, we can take some phone calls for Colonel Vindman at 2120-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet a question @BrianLehrer.

Before we close the loop on your bio and get to today's events, I see you're up for a doctorate at Johns Hopkins this year. Do I have that right?

Alexander Vindman: That is correct. I was very much on track. I had already turned in half the project to my committee sometime in late February. I was aware that this was coming. I've been writing about the fact that war between Russia and Ukraine and potentially the wider world was on the horizon and all but sure to happen. Now, I'm frankly having a hard time both working on Ukraine, trying to help the Ukrainian people out as well as advise the US government on policy actions and work on the doctorate. The plan is to defend in may still.

Brian Lehrer: Good. Well, I hope you do. I'm curious, after being bullied and reassigned as an act of vindictiveness by Donald Trump, and then leaving government under those circumstances, continuing to be a lifelong learner, which is great, congratulations on that, why does someone with your high-level real-world experience in world affairs need another academic degree?

Alexander Vindman: It's interesting, things have unfolded so quickly in my departure from the military. Usually, it's a six-month at minimum, usually a year-long process to leave. I was out of military service in days. I think they were eager to dispense with me. I was still in the Trump administration. They were taking fire. The Secretary of Defense was being berated by the president's Chief of Staff.

I saw my career as dead, so I had to scramble to figure out what to do. I had a very kind offer to join Johns Hopkins. That was my, I guess, transitional break. I knew it was something I wanted to do anyway but I thought this would be a good place for me to park and reflect on what I knew as a professional, and pair it with academic pursuits, and figure out what I want to do in the long term.

I'm still actually figuring that out. The program was the right thing to do at the right time.

Brian Lehrer: Soon you'll be Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Vindman. It'll take 10 minutes just to say your title before we get to your name.

Alexander Vindman: I think it's Dr. Lieutenant Colonel. I'm joking.

Brian Lehrer: If you were journalist Alexander Vindman, writing a story about President Zelensky's speech to Congress last hour, what might your lead paragraph be?

Alexander Vindman: Standard fair in terms of the fact that he's highly charismatic. He's evolved into not just the leader of Ukraine, but the leader of the free world. He's speaking to members, to a certain extent, his constituents, around the free world, other leaders, about what's at stake, what's going on in Ukraine, and compelling them as leaders often do to take action. People or folks are reluctant. They see risks. Sometimes they see demons, where demons don't exist. He was just indicating the stakes and calling them to action.

Brian Lehrer: We know Zelensky has been asking for more US help, including a no-fly zone, and US airplanes. The US doesn't want to escalate the war by becoming a direct party or having NATO become a direct party to it. Let me play it for our listeners who weren't listening last hour during the BBC coverage. Here is about 45 seconds of President Zelensky, again, asking the United States to impose a no-fly zone.

President Zelensky: Is this a lot to ask for, to create a no-fly  zone over Ukraine to save people? Is this too much to ask? Humanitarian no-fly zone, something that Russia would not be able to terrorize our free cities. If this is too much to ask, we offer an alternative.

You know what kind of defense systems we need, S-300 and other similar systems. You know how much, depends on the battlefield, on their ability to use aircraft, powerful, strong aviation to protect our people, our freedom, our land. Aircraft that can help Ukraine, help Europe.

Brian Lehrer: President Zelensky virtually addressing Congress last hour through a translator there, obviously. Let's pick apart some of that, Colonel Vindman. First of all, he referred to a humanitarian no-fly zone. That's not a full national no-fly zone. He also said, as an alternative, send planes that Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russia. Is he presenting an either-or choice scenario for the United States there?

Alexander Vindman: He would like an end choice. I've actually talked about this idea of establishing a no-fly zone for our humanitarian corridor. I called it a secured humanitarian corridor. It is something that should not be discounted immediately. It's this notion that for specific points in time, coordinated and cleared with the Russians, and they might not like it but you tell them what is going to happen that you're securing humanitarian corridors for refugees fleeing, for cities during periods of time, and it's not the US that's then the belligerent. The US is laying out the facts and then the Russians have to decide whether they're going to attack.

I have a feeling that's a very, very high bar. As bogged down as they are in Ukraine right now, they would be very, very reluctant to take action against NATO, which is a much, much more powerful alliance. Then, on the other hand, you could do something that I've strongly advocated for, for many, many months now, frankly, and certainly, aggressively for weeks, which is the fact that we need to provide the Ukrainians what they need to secure their own no-fly zone.

This conversation about MiG-29s, these are Soviet aircraft that the Ukrainians would like to operate. They could put their pilots and get them functional immediately. It's shocking that the US still takes the same paternalistic, parochial view of, well, we don't think you need those, those don't do you any good, but the President of Ukraine says they do. His military leadership that's fighting on the ground says they do. Why is it that we think it's okay for us to provide our solutions to the problems that they have? This would not be provocative.

Brian Lehrer: Just to be clear on your position here, you're taking President Zelensky's side on this for the moment, not President Biden's?

Alexander Vindman: Oh, absolutely. On the provision of military aid, there's no question. This is the right thing to do.

Brian Lehrer: On the no-fly zones and the planes taking off from US air bases in Germany?

Alexander Vindman: The no-fly zones are a different situation. At this point, I think that's a hard thing to do for this administration and there's no point in advocating for something that this administration has zero appetite in doing. I think there's a way to do it. Like I said, it would be restricted, limited in time, limited in duration, limited in geography. To support specifically refugees flowing out, it could be deconflicted. You have to remember that we had planes flying in Syria the same time that the Russians had planes flying in Syria. We just deconflicted them.

There's a way to do this also but let's set that issue aside because the fact is that the Ukrainians can do this on their own if we provide them the equipment. There's ways to do this. The Pols wanted to provide these systems almost immediately as soon as the war started and the US was the one that arrested the idea of providing this equipment. The Pols were getting frustrated.

Ultimately, they said, "Okay, we'll transfer them over to you. We don't even need your aircraft right now. We'll take whatever you can to backfill these planes later." Then the US decided not to do it because they thought it was too risky. Having sat in the seat of being the director for Russia and being the director for Europe, I have an excellent understanding of what Russia's thresholds are.

Russia's thresholds for war against NATO are not the provision of additional aircraft or additional weapons. That is not what's going to trigger a broader war here because, for Russia, again, they're already bogged down in Ukraine. The provision of additional weapons is not going to trigger them to expand to war to something that's even less easy for them to manage.

Then surface-to-air missiles that they've been asking for. They need those, they need unmanned combat aerial vehicles. These are things that the Turks already are providing, these Bayraktar TB2 aircraft that have been so effective at destroying Russian columns. The ground has been paved already, this is not new terrain, especially with these drones. We should be able to provide those drones to Ukraine to more quickly end this confrontation because right now it looks like it's going to grind down for weeks and months.

Brian Lehrer: Let's pick a phone call for you. Shane, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with retired Lieutenant Colonel, and soon to be Dr. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. Hello, Shane.

Shane: Can you hear me okay?

Brian Lehrer: We can hear you fine.

Shane: Wonderful. Dr. Vindman, just very inspired by your story. I followed you since you became a news item during the Trump administration. My question has to do with the Trump administration. I'm curious, from your perspective, working in the national security apparatus during the Trump administration, how different do you think the response may have been to all of this if we had different leadership in Washington right now? That's it, that's the question.

Alexander Vindman: Sure. A different leadership is somewhat amorphous. If we were to say, a second Trump administration, we would be in a much, much worse situation. I think what we could see is much of the world coalescing around support for Ukraine. Europe leading the charge like it has, frankly, in a lot of ways.

This is something that we've urged the Europeans to do on a consistent basis with regards to efforts to support Ukraine, and they are, but we would have President Trump that would be arresting that, that would be impeding it, that'd be undoing the democratic world's response to Russia and somebody that would be catering to Putin in the midst of the opening stages of a potential World War.

We would be in a catastrophic scenario if this would be a second Trump administration. It's hard to say when Putin would have chosen the strike. I think part of the reason that he took the action he did in these past several weeks is because he's been building up this offensive for the past year. He started building up just weeks after January 6th, seeing the need to strike out now before Ukraine becomes a much much more difficult target.

I think he may have bided his time to let Trump do his work and undermine democracy in the United States to show discord between the US and Russia, but there is no question he would ultimately take action with a much much friendlier president in the form of Donald Trump than he has with regards to President Biden.

I might disagree with some of the policy prescriptions on let's say how simplistic this administration has been with regards to assessing risks and really appraising risks in an accurate way that allows them to provide support to President Zelensky, but President Biden has my complete support on the general policy of supporting Ukraine and his strong supportive, democratic values and democratic institutions.

I think that's one of the stories here is that President Biden has shown an immense amount of leadership in bringing the democratic world together around principles and values. That would not have been the case under Trump, by any means.

Brian Lehrer: Beyond that, I saw where you argued that this invasion of Ukraine by Russia is partly the result of some Republicans in Congress's refusal to hold Donald Trump accountable for his attempted extortion, I'll call it that, of President Zelensky to launch a fake investigation of Joe Biden. How quickly people forget the first impeachment process in which you were a witness. How directly do you tie the impeachment and trial of Trump for that to the atrocities by Vladimir Putin that we're seeing today? How does it relate to current members of Congress?

Alexander Vindman: Well, frankly, to me the logic is ironclad. What you had in the Trump impeachment scandal is you had the president undermining this principle of support to Ukraine. You had President Trump turn Ukraine into a radioactive state, where neither  the Democrats or the Republicans really had a great deal of interest in working with Ukraine until now, until this war started, because there was too much baggage associated with it.

You had a situation which all of the support we should have been providing Ukraine since that scandal, since the summer of 2019 was weakened and eroded. Most importantly, frankly, you have a situation which, as Putin starts to build up for this confrontation, this major, major war, he had the deep confidence that he had Donald Trump in his corner and he had Republicans in his corner.

That's obviously misplaced because a lot of Republicans ever are trying to recast themselves as Russia Hawks. In fact, even in the days and hours before, you had Tucker Carlson, who's the spokesman for the Republican party, you had Mike Pompeo, you had Donald Trump, you had all sorts of different actors undermining this notion that Russia would suffer severe consequence.

President Biden is trying to signal that there would be severe sanctions. On the other hand, you had the Republican party arresting the legislation moving through Congress to indicate those sanctions that were going to be real. Putin was acting on a logic that was flawed, but he was acting on a legitimate principle that he had half of the political elites in the United States on his side.

They were there until the American public indicated that they were 100% behind Ukraine. The polling behind this is really amazing. We can't seem to unite around issues in the United States, but the vast majority of the American public is behind the Ukrainian population and their efforts to maintain their freedoms and independence and continue to integrate into the democratic world.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like you think that one of the political outcomes of this war, so far, and of course, the main outcomes have to be focused on all the death and destruction and refugee flight of so many Ukrainians, but politically, that it's brought NATO closer together. It sounds like you're saying you think that this war and the response to it has marginalized the Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Mike Pompeo wing of the Republican party.

Alexander Vindman: I think that's right. This is why you see such a hard pivot to try to recast themselves as Russia Hawks and this absolutely absurd narrative that this would never happen under Trump. There was, probably, no greater a cheerleader for Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump. Consistently. In the hours before, President Trump was talking about how genius Putin was and now he's trying to distance himself and say that this would never have happened.

It's a comical. I think it has marginalized some of the most extreme members of the Republican party. We'll see how this plays out in the 2022 election cycle, but I have a feeling this is one of those things where the large number of Republicans that followed President Trump's lead have blood on their hands. This is going to be something that they're going to have to reckon with on election day.

Brian Lehrer: I guess, from the standpoint of the midterms, we'll see if Ukraine becomes salient to people over things like inflation and crime, which need to be debated in different ways. Just one note history before we play another clip of President Zelensky. Trump ultimately failed in that extortion. Would you say Zelensky held firm then as now and the US gave him the weapons that Trump was trying to hold back anyway, even though Zelensky wouldn't launch that fake investigation of Biden?

Alexander Vindman: The history here is complex, and I'll try to break it down to the simplest. Under President Obama's administration, there was a deep apprehension of providing defensive lethal aid to Ukraine. When President Trump came in, he had a series of national security Hawks of sorts that pushed through javelins to Ukraine. President Trump had nothing to do with it. He gets some credit because he was the chief executive, but he had no idea.

The guy knew no more on his last day in office than in the first day in office. Then that was pretty much the limit of what we were providing. There were some unarmed small boats that we were providing. Even things that I was advocating for, like these stingers, these air defense systems, they didn't really make it through, again, because of risk aversion, this deep, deep paralysis around how this could devolve our relationship up with Russia.

It was in the toilet. We were thinking that there was some way to salvage this relationship, that wasn't. It was always going to devolve to the almost a worst-case scenario. Now, because there's war, we finally provided these essential systems to Ukraine, but, in a way, it was too too little too late in that it wasn't there in time to deter Russia, to signal to Russia that the US is going to be supporting Ukraine with a lot more weaponry.

In a different perspective, of course, these systems are, in the middle of a battle, pretty essential. The javelins and their like items coming from other European countries and these stingers and the similar systems that are coming from other European countries have allowed the Ukrainians to grind down the Russian armed forces in a way that nobody had expected.

Mainly, this is the Ukrainian fighting spirit, the asymmetries and moral, the Ukrainians fighting for their homes versus the Russians as aggressors is this is probably going to be the most important thing when historians right about this war. That was the decisive factor that allowed Ukraine to not lose initially and potentially win.

Brian Lehrer: That was on display as well when Zelensky did not launch a fake investigation of Joe Biden?

Alexander Vindman: Absolutely. It's interesting. I think leaders rise to the occasion-- they either rise or fall given the occasion. You could see some of these hallmarks. This is one of the reasons why I was one of the bigger advocates for President Zelensky when he came to office. I could see that some of the characteristics and traits that his earnestness is a desire to help his population progress.

Then he got bogged down in politics. He got bogged down in trying to realize the reforms and then anti-corruption measures. In crisis, he's really risen to the occasion. To be clear, though, we were really, really quite you to a situation in which President Zelensky, the leader of his country, almost gave a interview to Fareed Zakaria in which he announced the investigation.

Now, he would've announced it as a transparent open investigation, but that's all that President Trump was looking for. The reason he was about to do that is because the funds, these $400 million, were about to expire within the coming days. Congress launched investigations on September 11th, 2019. He had a press conference scheduled for September 13th.

He held out pretty much as long as he could. Fortunately, I guess, Congress took action and started to launch an investigation that ultimately led to the impeachment of Donald Trump. We avoided that situation.

Brian Lehrer: He was feeling the heat. All right, we're going to continue in a minute with retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who among many other things was a witness in that Trump impeachment trial. It was also in his real job, the Director for Europe on the National Security Council. We'll take more of your phone calls. We're going to play another clip of President Zelensky from his speech before Congress last hour as well, in which he appears to propose something entirely new.

We'll see if Colonel Vindman thinks it really is. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue in this hour after President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United States Congress virtually, of course, from Ukraine with our special guest Alexander Vindman, the retired army Lieutenant Colonel and Director of European European affairs for the National Security Council and witness in the Trump and Ukraine abuse of power hearings.

He is also author of the book, Here, Right Matters: An American Story, and he was a Ukrainian immigrant to Brooklyn as a small child. Let's take another phone call for you, Colonel Vindman. Here's Lynn in South Orange. You're on WNYC. Hi Lynn.

Lynn: Yes. Hello. Thank you for this program. I'm wondering if the Lieutenant Colonel has any thoughts about whether Brittney Griner, the Olympic basketball gold medalist who's now been in Russian custody for a month has been caught up as a pawn in all this. I'll take my answer offline.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. The WNBA basketball star detained in Russia for alleged possession of hashish oil as she was trying to leave the country. I don't think she's really been heard from in a month or so since she was detained. How do you see that situation, Colonel Vindman? Relevant or not to the war in Ukraine?

Alexander Vindman: It's relevant to broader bilateral relationship. Thanks for the question, Lynn. Unfortunately, this is not unusual. Russia is notorious for taking hostages. At times, they've taken those hostages to exchange for spies that were engaged in espionage in the United States and looking for swaps. At times, they were looking just to ratchet up pressure. At times, they basically keep ahold of folks that were-- A lot of the several high profile folks that they have in custody, and they keep a hold of them as bargaining chips.

I think this is one of those things that, unfortunately, is going to play out over the course of many more months. From what I understand, she's not being mistreated. She's in the same category as at least one other very prominent businessman that's under a house arrest, as far as I understand, but I could be wrong. I haven't been paying super close attention. We should consider her a hostage because that's what she is. That's what the Russians want her to be.

Brian Lehrer: In what way is she a hostage? If we assume that anybody being caught with hashish, even coming out of a democratic allied country, even if we completely disagree with the drug laws that they would be detained there too.

Alexander Vindman: This is critically important. We often give countries the benefit of the doubt. There is no claim to democracy in Russia right now. It's an authoritarian state. In a lot of ways it's moving to the kind of authoritarianism that very few countries experience like North Korea. There is no free press. There is no rule of law. There's the rule by law, which means that people could get imprisoned. There are very well-established precedence of Russia using trumped-up charges, fabricated evidence to detain folks.

I don't know all the details of this particular case but there should not be a benefit of a doubt. In the cases that I observed while I was in my position in the white house, they were fabricated circumstances to detain folks that the Russians would use, again, as hostages, as bargaining chips to extract a particular outcome. Businessmen, a former Marine, that were there for innocent circumstances, that were then detained and have been basically held prisoner for years now.

Brian Lehrer: Let's play another clip of President Zelensky from his speech before Congress last hour. He proposed a new international organization, it sounded like. I guess the context is, if Ukraine isn't going to join NATO anytime soon or maybe even the EU, which it has formally requested to join, anytime soon, maybe a whole new organization. Here's about a minute of President Zelensky on that.

President Zelensky: The war of the past have prompted our predecessors to create institutions that should protect us from war but they, unfortunately, don't work. We see it, you see it. We need new ones, new institutions, new alliances, and we offer them. We propose to create an association, U24, United for Peace. A union of responsible countries that have the strength and consciousness to stop conflict immediately, provide all the necessary assistance in 24 hours, if necessary, even weapons, if necessary sanctions, humanitarian support, political support, finances, everything you need to keep the peace and quickly save the world to save lives.

Brian Lehrer: U24, he called it. I guess for united to respond in 24 hours. Is he trying to create a new defense Alliance that, if he can't join NATO, he would be part of, but that would involve the United States?

Alexander Vindman: Yes, I think the details are going to be pretty important here but I would say that he couched it as something capable of responding to crisis of various sorts. That could be humanitarian crisis that are unfolding, something to do with climate change. You could perceive how this could be employed in the case of a natural disaster. I think it's also something that potentially could assemble in short order to head off a major international crisis also, is what this sounds like.

It is in fact a new idea. It's nearly impossible to get world leaders to assemble in short order to take some action like this. There's an enormous amount of deliberation. People need time to study the problems. It's too long, frankly, as is. I agree with his sentiment there that we take really too long to deliberate on issues. I think the idea is to be just more agile in responding to disasters as they unfold.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go in about three minutes. We're getting a number of questions along these lines. A listener tweets, "Putin can't afford to lose for obvious reasons. How can we end this?" Other questions like that. Some of them are more aggressive, like, "Why allow the US military-industrial complex to have its way again and keep pressuring to escalate this war? You and the Biden administration will not agree, for the moment at least, on a no-fly zone. The Biden administration says that would involve targeting air defenses inside Russia if we're really going to keep NATO planes safe flying over Ukrainian airspace. They're not going to do that. There's no question who's the aggressor and who's the victims in this war, but is a negotiated settlement possible, in your opinion?"

Alexander Vindman: Just on the no-fly zone, I have to say I'm reluctant to criticize the idea of a no-fly zone. It's not that I support it. I just would like to look at it on the merits. I know that there are ways to do this rather than discount it entirely. I don't think that the way it's couched, it makes a lot of sense to me, that it automatically leads to World War III. I think that there are steps along the way that we're not even doing, which is providing much more sophisticated air defense systems and aircraft.

Those are completely within the realm of possible. It's not that I disagree with on the no-fly zone, it's just not something I would want to weigh in on without looking at it more closely and having some intelligence, which I don't have access to nowadays.

The thing is that we tend to think about off-ramps, how do we help? This is the verbiage, how do we help find a solution to this? How do we help find an off-ramp? How do we help find a face-saving measure? We don't. That's not our job. Our job is to help Ukraine establish facts on the ground that make it untenable for Vladimir Putin to continue this war. We don't need to come up with conceive of ways to help Putin out and solve his problems for him. He's the one that got himself--

I think this is, frankly, not even a superficial answer. He's the one that got himself in this situation. This will ultimately be decided on the battlefield with Ukrainian forces striking down Russian forces. When we get to a point where Putin can't continue with his military, where his military's been ground down to a sufficient point, that's when he is going to open up to this possibility of diplomatic negotiations. There are already some telltale signs that we are moving in that direction.

Brian Lehrer: One quick follow up and then I know you got to go. That's an--

Alexander Vindman: You have time. [unintelligible 00:39:00] so I can give you. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You can take it?

Alexander Vindman: Yes, sure.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. That's an optimistic scenario that you just painted, I think, because another way to look at what would likely happen is Russia ultimately has the strength to hammer away and seize power in Kyiv, and that's a horrible outcome. Then years of guerrilla war.

Alexander Vindman: That's not true. I'm looking at this from a military perspective and Russia is basically out of-- The estimates that are coming out of our department of defense are not accurate to what's going on in the ground. More significant portions of the Russian military have been ground down. It's not just that they have 90% of their combat power. They probably have some 80% or less. These are the frontline units. These are the most powerful formations that the Russians have, have been ground down significantly. They're losing large amounts of equipment. They've now had four general officers killed, which is an amazing outcome against an adversary that they were supposed to roll over.

The bottom line is actually the way this is likely to play out is that Russia isn't able to acquire any more terrain, they're going to try to hold what they have, and they're going to use aerial bombardments, which is where their biggest advantages are, long-range artillery strikes to just grind down the cities, and that is a terrible outcome. Because we could avoid that. What the Ukrainians need is really some long-range strike capabilities where they go after planes on airfields, where they go after these ballistic missile batteries, these Iskander missiles. That is what brings us much closer to an end than letting this wear on for months, because--

Brian Lehrer: Meaning they need to strike inside Russia?

Alexander Vindman: The Ukrainians have actually. It hasn't gotten a lot of coverage. They have some old antiquated missile systems that are able to reach into Russia. They've went after airfields and they've actually had some minimal effects, they just don't have enough. They need to be able to strike these airbases that these planes are flying out of, and in so doing, end Russia's ability to rain fire down on cities.

We need to remember that the things that seemed impossible three weeks ago are being implemented today. It seems like we're actually moving towards providing more sophisticated air defense systems to Ukraine. This is not something we would've even considered. As time wears on, our options are going to narrow. The things that seemed impossible today will seem like the easy choices that we could make weeks and months down the road.

The sooner this comes to an end, the less risk we actually assume. It's almost counterintuitive. We always buy down the short-term risk. We always think about, what do we do in the next 24 hours? What do we do in the next several days? Instead of trying to look into the future with some calculated understanding of how things are going to unfold when Putin's more cornered, when Putin's used his standard fair of doubling down and incrementally ratcheting up pressure.

We need to bring this to an end by arming Ukraine with the systems that they need before things devolve in a much less constructive way, in a much more dangerous way.

Brian Lehrer: Alexander Vindman the retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Director of European Affairs for the National Security Council, and witness in the Trump and Ukraine abuse of power impeachment hearings, and author of his memoir, Here, Right Matters: An American Story. Colonel Vindman, thank you so much for your time. I hope we can have you back.

Alexander Vindman: Thank you. Looking forward to it.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer in WNYC, much more to come.

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.