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Czech president Petr Pavel: Ukraine war fatigue weakening NATO unity against Russia
In a GZERO Global Stage discussion at the 79th UN General Assembly, Czechia President Peter Pavel highlighted the evolving dynamics within NATO nearly two years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He acknowledged that initial unity, which surged in response to the shock of the invasion, has waned as war fatigue sets in.
"I had an impression that some representatives of the countries are a little bit tired by always hearing that we need to support Ukraine, and we need to condemn Russian aggression," he said.
President Pavel emphasized that the conflict transcends regional borders, threatening global principles by challenging the UN Security Council's core values. He stressed the need for continued opposition to Russia's aggression, warning that a victory for Russia could embolden similar regimes to pursue military solutions to achieve their aims.
Pavel spoke during GZERO’s Global Stage livestream, “Live from the United Nations: Securing our Digital Future,” an event produced in partnership between the Complex Risk Analytics Fund, or CRAF’d, and GZERO Media’s Global Stage series, sponsored by Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes heads of state, business leaders, and technology experts from around the world for a critical debate about the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world. Click here to watch the full conversation.
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FILE PHOTO: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meets with Chairman of NATO's military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 21, 2024.
NATO backs long-range missiles for Ukraine, US hesitates
Five people were killed Saturday in Russian aerial attacks on the Ukrainian city of Odessa and a farm in the Zaporizhzhia region. On Sunday,Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyreissued his call for stronger international support against escalating Russian aggression – including long-range missiles.
NATO countries were already debating the use of these weapons in Prague this weekend. Admiral Rob Bauer, the Dutch head of NATO’s military command,declared Saturday that the right to self defense “doesn’t stop at the border of your own nation.” Lt. Gen. Karel Řehka, chief of the general staff of the Czech Armed Forces, alsoaffirmed his country’s support, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ukraine has the right to use long-range weapons to prevent Russian attacks that kill civilians and degrade infrastructure.
Washington, however, is concerned about potential escalation. Russian President Vladimir Putinwarned on Thursday that the use of these weapons would “mean that NATO countries – the US, European countries – are at war with Russia.” While the US allows Ukraine to use American-provided weapons in cross-border strikes to counter attacks by Russian forces,it does not permit Kyiv to fire long-range missiles, such as ATACMS, deep into Russian territory. Kyiv would like to begin using such weapons to more effectively target Russian logistics and command-and-control centers, which could make the fight easier for troops in the trenches.
The US is weighing, however, whether to agree to the UK supplying Kiev with its long-range Shadow Storm missiles to Ukraine, which include American-made components. While US President Joe Biden signaled“openness” at his meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, a decision is still pending.Vladimir Putin
Putin issues grave warning to NATO over lifting Ukraine missile restrictions
The US and UK this week signaled that they’re leaning toward giving Kyiv permission to use Western-supplied long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that if the West gives Ukraine the go-ahead, it would mean NATO is “at war” with Russia. He warned that Moscow would take “appropriate” steps in response.
Russia on Friday said it decided to expel six British diplomats, accusing them of spying — a sign of the Kremlin's growing ire over the long-range missile issue. The UK Foreign Office said the allegations were "completely baseless." The move came as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits Washington to meet with President Joe Biden for talks on Ukraine, with the matter of whether to lift restrictions on long-range missiles at the top of their agenda.
Meanwhile, Russian drones and missiles, whether intentionally or not, continue to enter the territory of NATO countries in the region, and there’s an evolving debate over whether to shoot them down. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski recently said that Poland and other countries in the region had a “duty” to down Russian missiles before they enter their airspace. But this could be seen by Moscow as NATO becoming directly involved in the war and risk escalation — particularly if Ukraine also begins hitting Russia with missiles provided by the West.
That said, NATO doesn’t appear particularly eager to take this step. NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoanărecently condemned Russia over a drone that flew into Romania’s airspace, calling it “irresponsible and potentially dangerous.” But Geoana also said the alliance had “no information indicating an intentional attack by Russia against Allies.”
We’ll be watching to see if the US and UK ultimately decide to lift restrictions on long-range missiles in the near future, which Ukraine continues to push for at a pivotal moment in the war.
Is Ukraine ready to end the war?
After more than two years of grinding, deadly warfare in Ukraine, with Russia’s invasion lurching through its third year, is it time for Kyiv to consider negotiating with Moscow? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks with Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, about the challenges Ukraine faces, including flagging morale and a struggle to expand military recruiting. Despite recent polls suggesting Ukrainians are more open to a peace deal, Trofimov stresses that Russia’s ultimate goals are clear: total destruction of Ukrainian national identity and culture. The traumatic history of Russian aggression during the Soviet Era looms large in Ukraine’s collective consciousness, and most Ukrainians oppose any compromise unless all internationally recognized territory is returned. Without security guarantees from NATO and Western allies, Trofimov warns that Russia will continue its assault until it controls all of Ukraine. Though Bremmer and Trofimov spoke in July before Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, the overall situation remains unchanged: no clear path to military victory, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and nearly 20% of Ukraine still occupied. And if Donald Trump wins a second term, continued US military support is uncertain. So where does this leave the Ukrainian people? Nowhere good.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Why Ukraine invaded Russia
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. I wanted to talk a little bit about Russia/Ukraine before news in the United States and the Middle East take it off the headlines again.
The surprise, of course, is that the Ukrainians have invaded Russia. This was a substantial, you'd say more than an incursion, a significant amount of territory presently being held. The Russians have had to, as a consequence, announce a "counter-terrorism operation regime" in Kursk, in Bryansk, and Belgorod, not martial law, but still, that has reduced some of the forces that they can deploy in fighting the front lines in Southeast Ukraine. And it's also certainly embarrassed Putin, embarrassed his senior military leadership. This is supposed to be all about defeating the Ukrainians, and now the Russians have lots of citizens that are facing a war on Russian territory. Now, to be clear, the Ukrainians have no territorial claim on any part of Russia, but there is a feeling of turnabout is fair play.
What's going on here? I think there are a few things. First of all, the fact that the Ukrainians can put the Russians under some pressure domestically in a run-up to what everyone expects will eventually be negotiations helps to improve Ukraine's position. And no matter who you talk to, the Europeans, the Democrats in the US, the Republicans in the US, the feeling increasingly is that it is going to be harder for the Ukrainians to continue to fight and defend their territory the way they have for the last two and a half years. And so that means you need to have negotiations in the coming year. Part of that is because the Ukrainians aren't going to have the troops. Part of it is because it's getting harder to raise the money. And that's not just the United States, though there was a fight about that, and certainly it'll get harder next year, especially if Trump/Vance win, but also if Harris/Walz do, but also the Germans just cut back 50% of their expected support for the Ukrainian military in 2025, because they're under fiscal constraints, this is the largest European economy. So either way, there is a clear understanding from all sides that you want to move towards freezing the conflict at a minimum and negotiations and maybe a ceasefire and a longer-term settlement, more ambitiously. Much better from the Ukrainian perspective to do that if they have leverage over Russia too, and they have shown leverage. They can blow up the Black Sea fleet, which was important to Russia's national security, and they can put some areas of Russia, both in terms of missiles and alts and drones, but also in terms of Ukrainian troops at risk.
Now, can the Ukrainians hold Kursk from the Russians? Hard to imagine that. I expect that within the coming weeks they'll be forced out of that territory by the Russians. But clearly, they had the element of surprise. The Russians weren't ready to immediately defend or immediately counterattack against that incursion. So I suspect this is more about the broader negotiations between Russian Ukraine than the idea that there's going to be a territory swap. I don't think you'll get there. I also think there is a little bit of desperation. If you're the Ukrainians, remember, you're running out of troops. So sending more troops into Kursk makes you more vulnerable and weaker on the home front, especially when it's been harder and harder to mobilize those troops. And there's been political opposition to doing that. And I think that's because the Ukrainians understand that they need to make Russia feel insecure sooner rather than later, because it's going to be hard to keep this fighting up for another one, two years or more, irrespective of how the American election goes, but certainly, if it goes against the Ukrainians, that's going to be a problem for them. So this isn't all about that.
Also, we're learning more about Russian response. Let's keep in mind that we've heard from Russian leaders, including former President Medvedev and occasionally even Putin himself, that nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons are on the table, and don't you dare, sort of, allow the Ukrainians to use weapons that could strike into Russia. Don't you dare hit Crimea. Don't you dare hit Russian territory. And every time those ostensible red lines have been broken, the Russian response has been dramatically more restrained than one might have expected from listening to Putin and the Kremlin at face value. That's useful because they've also said similar things about Ukraine in NATO and the West defending Ukraine. And if you're going to get to a negotiated settlement that is acceptable for the Ukrainians, which means that they're going to lose territory, they will be partitioned. They need to have the ability to defend their territory for the long-term in a credible way. And the best way to ensure that is get them into NATO. The best way to ensure that is to get them troops on the ground in territory that the Russians don't occupy.
Now, you can have an alliance, have security guarantees that don't include the entire territory. Japan, for example, has an alliance with the United States. It doesn't include the Northern territories, contested and presently occupied, some of them by Russia. So there's plenty of precedent here. But the point is that few in NATO believe today that Ukraine in NATO, especially the piece of Ukraine that isn't occupied by Russia in NATO, is an existential risk for World War III the way that many of them would've believed that when Russian retaliation and escalation was less known, was less experienced a year ago, certainly two years ago. So, that's interesting.
Final point I want to raise here is that whether Harris or Trump win the election in November, I think we are moving towards a similar outcome. In other words, both of these leaders would like to see an end to the fighting. Both of them would like to see a ceasefire. Both of them would like to see the west move on because they recognize the reality of the fighting on the ground, and in the case of Trump in particular, because he wants to say, "New wars started under Biden/Harris, I end them." The big difference between the two is that Trump is much more likely to make those decisions unilaterally. In other words, tell the Ukrainians and the Russians, "This is the deal, accept it or else," and not necessarily coordinate with NATO allies in advance. Where a Harris administration would be working closely in multilateral fashion with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians to try to get to a similar outcome. In other words, more risk acceptant towards that outcome on the Trump side, more risk averse and more coordinated with allies, harder to get done in some ways, under a Harris administration, but lower likelihood that it really blows up in your face. So how lucky do you feel is the open question, but not as dramatically different as the media would have led you to expect over the course of the past months talking about a potential Trump administration.
So that's a little bit from me on where we are, a very different position in some ways, in the Russia/Ukraine war today, and maybe even, I don't want to call it optimistic, but maybe seeing more of a pathway towards how this fighting can be frozen, if not ended. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Joe Biden's next chapter
Joe Biden suddenly has a lot more free time on the calendar. How has he been spending it?
Watch more PUPPET REGIME!
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Israeli Druze mourners gathered for the funeral of the 12 children and teens killed in a Hezbollah rocket strike a day earlier at a soccer field at the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. Majdal Shams, Israel. July 28th 2024.
Can a wider Middle East war be averted?
A deadly rocket strike killed 12 youths playing on a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Saturday. The village is largely inhabited by Druze, a small syncretic ethno-religious group also found in Syria and Lebanon. Hezbollah denies responsibility, and Beirut has called for an international investigation while claiming the incident may have been a “mistake” by either the terror group or Israeli forces, rather than a deliberate attack.
But that’s not the view in Jerusalem or Washington. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs saysHezbollah has “crossed all red lines,” and on Sunday morning the Israeli military responded withretaliatory strikes against Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons depots and infrastructure in the Bekaa Valley.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinkenexpressed support for Israel's right to self-defense, and US National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson affirmed that the attack was conducted by Hezbollah. “It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control.”
At the same time, US and world leaders are cautioning against escalation. The United Nations condemned the attack andurged restraint from both sides, warning that further conflict could “engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief.” As of Sunday, the White House was talking with both the Israeli and Lebanese governments to try and contain the conflict as Israel’s War Cabinet met to consider its further response.
A Turkish surprise. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogansaid he might intervene in Israel, “just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya,” if Israel continued to victimize Palestinians in Gaza. He was speaking at a televised meeting of his party’s supporters in his hometown, and it is not clear what he meant. Turkey is a NATO ally, and war with Israel would deeply complicate the US position in the region.
We’ll be watching whether this latest incident in the Golan Heights becomes the tipping point for what many have feared for months: a greater regional war.
Ian Explains: Why Biden is the focus of the NATO Summit
The White House has a long, storied tradition of hiding the medical issues of the president from the American public. Ronald Reagan’s administration hid signs of his dementia; FDR hid his paralysis for years; Woodrow Wilson spent his last year and a half as president debilitated by a stroke that left him blind in one eye while his wife worked as a “shadow president.”
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer explains why allies worry about the growing concerns around President Biden’s health, fitness for office, and stamina to lead the country for another four years. While there’s no evidence Biden is suffering from a distinct illness like Wilson or FDR, his disastrous debate performance last month made many question his ability to lead the country and the world for a second term.
Trump is now leading Biden in most major polls, but European allies overwhelmingly prefer the old-school, post-WWII institutionalist world order the current administration represents. Trump’s isolationist, “America First” worldview is skeptical of treaties and alliances, which could seriously jeopardize future military assistance to Ukraine, whose fate may very well hinge on the US presidential election.
Watch more on the full episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, in which Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski discusses the future of NATO under a Biden or Donald Trump presidency, Ukraine's chances against Russia, and Viktor Orbán's rogue moves.
Season 7 of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, launches nationwide on public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don''t miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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