Geopolitical expert reveals hidden forces reshaping global power, from Trump-Zelenskyy tensions to Russia and China’s strategic calculus.
When high-profile global crises unfold, most commentators see only the surface. Sam Ramani sees the underlying currents.
An Oxford-trained scholar and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, Ramani has become a trusted adviser to policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. As CEO of Pangaea Geopolitical Risk and one of the foremost analysts of Russian global strategy, he brings something rare to the conversation: a granular understanding built from years of meticulous research and on-the-ground insights.
In this special WhoWhatWhy podcast, Ramani dissects the recent Oval Office confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not as a media spectacle but as a complex geopolitical moment with profound implications.
Where mainstream analysis offers simplistic narratives, Ramani reveals the intricate power dynamics, economic pressures, and strategic calculations that actually drive international relations.
His analysis goes beyond conventional wisdom. On understanding Russian public opinion, Ramani doesn’t just cite polls but breaks down the nuanced divisions within Russian society — from the small liberal opposition to the nationalist hardliners — understanding each group’s motivations and constraints.
And he sees China not just as an observer, but as a strategic player carefully calibrating its moves in a shifting global landscape.
The podcast offers a masterclass in geopolitical analysis. Ramani examines NATO’s challenges, Ukraine’s precarious position, and the potential scenarios for 2025 with a scholar’s precision and a strategist’s eye.
He traces the economic undercurrents — from Russia’s war economy to the potential for sanctions — that often escape mainstream reporting.
This isn’t punditry. It’s an informed exploration of how global power truly operates, drawing on Ramani’s encyclopedic knowledge of international relations, his understanding of regional dynamics, and his ability to connect seemingly disparate geopolitical threads.
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Full Text Transcript:
(As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to a constraint of resources, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like and hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.)
Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to this special edition of the WhoWhatWhy podcast. I’m your host, Jeff Schechtman. Every so often, history reaches an inflection point, a moment when longstanding assumptions collapse and new realities emerge in their place. We may be living through one of those moments right now. This was on full display in the Oval Office last week when Donald Trump berated Zelenskyy, Ukraine, and Europe. Add to this Trump suggesting that Ukraine bore responsibility for its own war, and once again, praising Vladimir Putin.
What played out was more than just another Trumpian spectacle. It was a window into how drastically American foreign policy and the very idea of Western unity could be reshaped. Meanwhile, in London, European leaders met to coordinate new avenues of support for Ukraine and to reinforce commitments that for decades would’ve been taken as a given in Washington. But now with Trump signaling a shift toward a more transactional zero sum approach to alliances, the question is unavoidable. Can Europe truly stand on its own? And if America pulls back, how will the Kremlin and Beijing seek to exploit the vacuum?
To help us unpack what’s happening beneath the surface, I’m joined by Dr. Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and also the CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk. Ramani is an Oxford trained scholar and trusted advisor to policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s become one of the foremost analysts of Russian global strategy.
Rather than simply replaying the latest viral soundbites from Washington, we’re going to spend some time talking about the degree to which Trump’s stance is emboldening Moscow, and whether Europe’s latest diplomatic moves amount to a real strategic shift. It is my pleasure to welcome Sam Ramani back here to the WhoWhatWhy podcast. Sam, thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. Samuel Ramani: Great to be back here, Jeff.
Jeff: It’s great to have you here. First of all, I want to begin with the events of last week and your reaction as someone that, that studies this, that understands global risk, obviously, what your reaction is to what you saw take place on Friday.
Samuel: Well, I think the spectacle was really something that was quite shocking because you know that Trump has a tendency to often berate world leaders before he meets with them or after he meets with them, but it’s pretty rare that he actually does that in the room with them. I mean, we’ve seen how Trump and Justin Trudeau have jousted so many times in the past, but then when Trudeau went to visit Mar-a-Lago, they try to put a positive spin on the tariff dispute and on America’s free and free risk to Canadian sovereignty and many other issues. So I was just really surprised by the public nature of the spectacle. That’s what really got to me.
And I think it really digs a hole for Zelenskyy and for Ukraine for several reasons. I mean, first of all, it raises a specter that the Trump administration might actually cut off all military assistance to Ukraine. Even the Biden administration’s $63 billion package, which is still running through, could actually get cut or rolled back. That doesn’t mean an immediate setback for Ukraine on the front lines. I mean, Ukraine still has enough weapons to last until the summer, but it does lead to some hard choices in the months ahead because they’ll now have to decide where to allocate scarce resources.
Do they allocate them primarily towards Donetsk and also Southern Ukraine to prevent a new Russian offensive? The Russians are making it offensive in Sumy, which is right near Kursk, so they need to guard that region. Or do they keep those precious resources in the hopes of fighting off the North Koreans and the Russians in Kursk region? And the Ukrainians may now be very well forced to withdraw their bargaining chip in Kursk, withdraw from that territory, and gradually move equipment and resources into Ukraine proper to be able to sustain their territory. So any uncertainty about arms supplies or cutoff of arms supplies is really, really bad for Ukraine’s bargaining position.
The second thing is Ukraine needs to rely on Europe, and Europe is talking a good line, but they really don’t have the resources or the military infrastructure to live up to the solidarity that they’re pledging. It’s important to remember that North Korea was able to give 1 million and then 3 million artillery shells to Russia in a short period of time. It took better part of a year in 2023-2024 for the Europeans to move 1 million artillery shells to the Ukrainians. So Europe cannot even keep up with North Korea’s war economy, let alone the Russian war economy on top of it. So that’s another serious blow and an obstacle.
And finally, it really creates questions about this rare earth mineral deal because that was supposed to be the guarantor of America’s strategic interest in Ukraine, eventually serving as a gateway to American security guarantees. Now that deal is not only not on the table, but also there’s growing chatter in American policy circles, and this is based on empirics, that its value may not be all that it was cracked to be. I mean, most of these surveys were done 30 or 50 years ago with Soviet geologists pledging trillions of dollars in rare earth metals that may not even be there. And also there’s concern about the cost, maybe $1 billion per mine, 18 years to extract of the minerals that are there.
So I think that Ukraine has also now put the mineral deal on ice, and over time, the value of that mineral deal will degrade and the terms that the Americans will offer to get it because of the uncertainties about supply and about quick profit, will get steeper and steeper. So it’s a really, really bad moment for Ukraine right now.
Jeff: To talk about it from the Russia side, there was a report this morning that there have been ongoing communications which haven’t necessarily been reported between Trump and Putin. Talk a little bit about what you know about that.
Samuel: Well, it does seem as if definitely, there’s a very active channel of dialogue between the United States and Russia. And because Trump likes to settle these sorts of matters leader to leader, strong man to strong man, so to speak, it’s unsurprising that there would be a back channel between Trump and Putin, especially an unreported back channel between Trump and Putin, given the fact that the narrative that Trump is a Trojan horse for Russia is starting to surface yet again.
I mean, we’re seeing from media stories rehashing Luke Harding’s argument that Trump was recruited by the Soviets in 1987, which doesn’t have much substance, but it’s still a thing that they’re throwing at him to people like Chuck Schumer while warning about how the suspension of offensive cyber attacks on Russia as a gift to Putin. Trump is probably wanting to keep these meetings out of the spotlight to deflect criticism from the left and also criticism from some members who dare [unintelligible 00:06:45] within his own party.
So the dialogue is there, and the reason why Trump wants to keep it quiet is also unsurprising too. I think when you turn to the bigger picture here, there is a real push from the United States to normalize relations with Russia. I think it’s based on the misguided post Cold War trope that Russia can somehow be pried away from China, and the Americans in Russia can come together to contain Beijing in the future. And the Russians are entertaining this very fervently because they like the status, they like the recognition, they like the escape from the cold that this is giving them.
So I think what we should expect going forward are more engagements between Trump and Putin, eventually a meeting between Trump and Putin in Riyadh, like we discussed, as well as continued back channels between the Americans and Russians, most likely hosted in the Middle East. We already saw one in Saudi Arabia. We saw a lower profile one happen last week in Turkey, and more of those types of things, and serious discussions, I think also between the US and Russia about what a post-war relationship will look like.
They may not be able to come to an agreement right away on arms control or strategic stability, but they might be able to come to some kind of an agreement on economic cooperation and joint investments and the alleviation of sanctions. So we should expect more discussions on the possibility of a US-Russia economic rebuilding all coinciding with these high-level, clandestine, and publicly facing dialogues.
Jeff: You talked about the military aspect of what Europe might be able to supply or not supply. What do you think Europe can do that these meetings in London, for example, this weekend, that Europe can do on the diplomatic front at this point?
Samuel: Well, Europe can do some things on the diplomatic front. I think they maybe can do more on the diplomatic front than they can actually do in the military front right now. I mean, the first thing I think that they can do is that some European leaders are quite well equipped to be a bridge between Trump and Ukraine, and also a bridge between what is the European chasm, which now supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, and the US position, which seems to not be labeling Russia as the aggressor, and seems to be distancing itself from support for the Ukrainian cause and not believing that it’s important for transatlantic security.
So there’s some European leaders who can serve as a bridge. Obviously, the leader who won’t be serving as that bridge is Friedrich Merz, the new incoming chancellor of Germany, because he’s talking about European independence from the United States, and he seems to be viewing the US under Trump almost in the same bucket as Russia and China. But Keir Starmer in Britain can serve in that role perhaps. Starmer had a very productive meeting with Trump last week. And Britain, for now, has been able to push back against the tariffs and prevent tariffs from coming on them. And Italy, Giorgia Meloni is another leader who could play that bridging role. So that’s one way in which Europe can contribute diplomatically.
Another thing is that Europe can develop a set of ideas to be able to earn itself a seat at the table because the Americans and the Russians seem pretty happy having talks together about peace in the Ukraine that doesn’t include either the Europeans or the Ukrainians. And that’s infuriating to Zelenskyy and infuriating to almost every European leader. So the Europeans have to come up with a set of ideas that can gain traction, that can resonate. And that’s why I think the Starmer plan is accommodating that. It’s on the one hand providing an appealing set of options for Trump if the Russians do not behave in good faith in these negotiations, and the Russians escalate the war by calling for a possible renewal of arms supplies and maximum pressure on Russia and it’s also providing some interim steps.
But if the Russians do engage with the negotiations in better faith than many people assume, and that includes suspending attacks on energy facilities, an aerial cease fire, a sea cease fire. So some elements of the European proposals will probably be picked up by both the American and the Russian side even if they don’t agree with the the majority of it or the crux of it. And any agreement on those proposals could give Europe a seat at the table.
So Europe can play two roles, right, serving as a messenger and a back channel to alleviate this conflict between Washington and Kiev, and to bridge the gap between more hard-line leaders like Merz and the Washington consensus, and also to provide some policy proposals for a peace that could be woven into the US-Russia dialogue and give Europe and Ukraine a seat at the table by proxy.
Jeff: Talk a little bit about the money from sanctions that might be used by the Europeans and funneled to Ukraine.
Samuel: Well, that’s been something that’s been talked about ever since the start of the war, when the $300 billion in assets from the Central Bank, most of which is concentrated in Europe, not the United States, has been up for grabs. And it’s been rumored that they will repurpose it for the Ukrainian cause. We’ve already seen some movements in that direction. The Americans earlier on in the war to seize some of the assets of Konstantin Malofeev, an oligarch who’s tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, who was a major promoter of Ultranationalist media in Russia. He has his Tsargrad channel for anyone who’s interested in following his conspiracy theories further.
Malofeev’s assets were relocated to Ukraine in part, whatever was in the United States, not much. Symbolic, but it happened. Also, there was a movement from the Europeans to move some of the proceeds from those frozen assets and use them as collateral. And that’s something that the G7 largely agreed to, including Japan, to move some of those assets to the Ukrainians. And now there’s a push for the bigger move, which is to take those $300 billion in principle and actually transfer that to Ukraine to buy more western weapons and to strengthen the Ukrainian resistance capacity.
And the Europeans might make that move. I mean, Bill Browder and many other Russia hawks and activists have been really pushing for this. But the Europeans also might not make that move because they’re worried about the precedent that it might set. It might, say, cause chills down the spine of China, and may prevent Chinese investment in Europe right at a time when Britain in particular is trying to court closer ties with China.
And it might also lead to concerns from some of the Gulf monarchies. There was a Bloomberg report that I also heard be reiterated by some of my sources in Moscow before it, that Saudi Arabia was really angry about the prospect of the confiscation because they feared that there was another Khashoggi incident, that they might see their assets taken away too. So I think the Europeans are going to continue just using the proceeds of this for now, and they’re not going to actually move the principle because they’re worried about the reactions from countries like China or Saudi Arabia.
But I think it’s definitely something that they might keep on the cards or they might escalate towards if the US actually does cut off all aid and there is no sign of a peace settlement, and Russia is just going to win the war, and there’s no other option, they might decide to take that plunge.
Jeff: Where does NATO fit into all of this right now?
Samuel: Well, NATO right now is in a period of severe crisis. One of the things that we found really interesting back in 2022 was the notion that NATO actually came together. It actually coalesced for the most part around Ukraine. There were obviously a few members who were more recalcitrant, like Hungary, which didn’t supply arms to Ukraine, and Slovakia, which now claims it doesn’t supply arms to Ukraine, but has defense companies on the ground that do work with the Ukrainian military. But for the most part, the alliance was cohesive.
NATO actually was able to expand during the war by bringing in Sweden and Finland over the objections of Turkey and Hungary over the course of time. And now, all that solidarity, all that cohesion, all that strength seems to have frittered away and given a way to weakness because there’s this fundamental divide between the United States and Europe on how to proceed.
I mean, I think in the long run, it’s still possible that NATO could end up stronger from this moment because European countries will just be able to spend more on defense. For example, Britain will be looking at to going from 2.5% to 3% of GDP. Germany might eventually be compelled to lift the debt brake, which restricts its deficit spending, to spend more on the military. The Polls are already taking their defense spending up to 5%. So it’s possible that NATO in the end could emerge stronger from this rift because European countries are spending a lot more on defense, but that’s a long-term thing.
Right now, the cohesion and the solidarity has been severely tested, and it does appear as if the Russians and the Chinese are achieving their long-term goal, which is to separate the transatlantic alliance and pit the US against Europe.
Jeff: Does all of this represent some broader shift away from the decades old idea of collective security and mutual alliances that we’re now looking at everybody for themselves?
Samuel: Well, I think that’s certainly played a part. I mean, I think that’s certainly now the guiding doctrine of American foreign policy, right? It seems to be transactionalism and America first, means just looking out for the narrow interest of the United States, and not really looking after your allies. It seems to be questioning the very notion of alliances and lasting partnership. So yes, I think that this is a very significant change that we’ve seen coming from this.
But this crisis is not just a US-European one. There’s also a crisis within Europe for alliances too. I mean, France and Germany have fundamentally different visions on the collective security system inside Europe and NATO from things ranging from the French nuclear umbrella to the Sky Shield defense system, to where to invest. And also, when you look at the polling numbers, you see only maybe 15% or 20% of people in Britain or France or Germany, especially those who are under the age of 50, would be willing to volunteer as troops or see their country’s troops deployed in the event of a Russian invasion of, let’s say, Germany.
Not that many people in Britain or France will want conscription at home and send troops on behalf of their allies. So there’s a crisis of alliances, not just in the US and Europe, but there’s also a crisis at a popular level within the European Union and within European countries of NATO. So it’s a problem that extends well beyond Trump, even if Trump is the leading poster child of that phenomenon.
Jeff: And what underlies Putin’s attitude at this point and the potential of Russian, and further Russian aggression?
Samuel: Well, I think that Vladimir Putin is viewing the latest developments obviously with a lot of confidence and with a lot of strength. I mean, the Russian media was replete with celebrations after the Oval Office meeting against Zelenskyy. You even the Russian foreign ministry spoke, so did Maria Zakharova, quip they were surprised that Vance and Trump didn’t start hitting Zelenskyy in some kind of an old 1990s Russian style parliamentary brawl.
And we saw a lot of confidence now to even reject the European conference out of hand. I mean, the Russian response to the London summit was that it was just leading to more war, and it wasn’t really a peace summit. So the Russians are feeling pretty strong and emboldened by their position, but can they actually convert that confidence and that strength of character into military success?
That’s where it proves a lot more difficult because the Russians are still having to bring in a second tranche of North Korean forces to prevail in Kursk. Those North Korean forces may well have learned more about drone technology because the Russians have been spreading Geran-2 technologies to them, which Geran-2 were the versions of Iranian drones. They may have learned a little bit more about moving in smaller units and having more tactical adaptations, but they’ll still suffer for heavy casualties. And the Russians also will suffer heavy casualties there.
The Russians are still grinding in Donetsk. They’re making incremental gains village by village, inch by inch, but they can’t even take over fully the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, which is what they need to be able to advance in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and any hopes of the Russians taking over Kharkiv or making some kind of gains in the Zaporizhzhia zone to the front line do not appear to be realistic.
The Russians are trying to attack Sumy, as I mentioned earlier. And Putin bragged of this brand new offensive, which the Ukrainians denied, but they’re still a long way from being able to actually make a breakthrough in that region, which they took earlier in the war, and they lost, to be able to cut off the Ukrainians logistically from Kursk. So right now I see the Russians having a lot of confidence, but it’s not really bearing out on the battlefield because Russians cannot really make anything more than very incremental gains at immense casualties.
And also, it’s important to keep in mind that Russia’s resources are not infinite. This narrative that Russia is defacto winning the war and Ukraine is losing, I think is misleading. I mean, neither side is winning. That’s really the point I want to make. The Russians are not only losing unsustainable large numbers of casualties without a full general mobilization, which is going to be highly unpopular, but the Russian war economy is also weaker than we assume.
It withstood the sanctions better than we thought in 2022 and 2023, but already we’re starting to see a potential decline in growth to the 1%, 1.5% range, instead of the 2% to 3% range. We’re seeing inflation continue to soar in the high double digits in the major cities on consumer goods, even though interest rates are at 21%. I mean, this is not a sustainable economy, and the Russian war economy could have serious cracks or even see serious signs of strain if the Europeans intensify sanctions on oil and on other forms of revenue like the shadow fleet over the coming year.
So Putin has got a lot of reasons to celebrate, but the picture is not rosy for him at all. It’s actually quite murky because of the losses of Russian lives, their inability to make major gains in the battlefield, and the ticking time bomb that is the Russian war economy.
Jeff: And what about Russian public opinion at this point?
Samuel: Well, Russian public opinion has basically had a polarization. And that polarization seems to have endured throughout the war. I don’t really see that much changing over here. The Russian public is really divided between three sectors. There’s a very small portion of the population, maybe 5% or 10% of the population, that’s absolutely aghast by this war and maybe willing to resist it through passive means like emigration and carving up a new life elsewhere or through occasional protests.
But the thing is that percentage has gotten smaller and smaller because of the death of Navalny, basically the exodus of almost every single liberal opposition member or the arrest of every single liberal opposition member that exists. And the costs of protesting are deemed to be just too high relative to the possibility of overthrowing the regime. But there is a small percentage of people in that bucket. Many of them are some of the most talented people in Russia. Many of them are people who would provide human capital and would be able to develop Russia’s cutting-edge technologies in the IT sphere, for example, who now are living in Turkey or Dubai or Serbia or Armenia or Georgia or some other country because they can’t feel comfortable at home anymore.
There’s a slightly bigger portion of the population, I would say maybe 10% to 15% of the population, mostly people who are over the age of 50 who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union as well as some young partisans who are fervently supportive of this war and will not tolerate anything other than all-out victory and will view any kind of deal that Russia strikes with the United States as some kind of a stab in the back or some kind of betrayal of the Russian nationhood, or as a sign that Russia will have failed.
That group has gone also underground, partially because of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the incarceration of Igor Girkin, and the silencing of some of those pro-war telegram channels who have been so critical of the Russian war machine and performance. But that block of opposition is stronger, has more support, and is more vital than the liberal opposition group, and still remains the biggest long-term thorn and Putin’s side. Because many of these people are fighting on the front lines, they’re highly armed and they’re highly radicalized.
And the majority of the Russian population remains largely inert. The people in the big cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are still not suffering the kind of casualties and impact of the war that they’re seeing elsewhere. Many people in Russia are volunteering to join, and the casualties are being borne out the hardest amongst the most disenfranchised, also in the far-flung regions of the country.
So the only thing that they’re suffering from this war, if they are suffering anything, is economic hardship from rising prices. And that has only partially begun to kick in because it was a big increase in disposable income in the first two years of the war, that’s just now leveling off. So I don’t think that the majority of the Russian public is really clamoring for an end to this war or clamoring to put pressure on Putin. They’re mostly inert and they’re mostly happy to let things play out at this stage. And it would only take a collapse of the Russian war economy for there to be a bigger agitation against Putin.
Jeff: You talked earlier about the way Zelenskyy was boxed in. What’s his next move and does he survive this?
Samuel: Zelenskyy’s next move is basically, I think, to go back to the drawing board with the United States because he cannot really rely exclusively on Europe even if he wants to right now. He needs American arms, he needs American equipment, and he needs that rare earth mineral deal. So that might mean dropping some of the rhetoric about NATO expansion and softening some of the rhetoric on security guarantees. It might mean swallowing and making compromises that he may not otherwise be. And also eventually even though Zelenskyy says he won’t accept a ceasefire, be more open to some kind of a ceasefire proposal.
I think that there’s two strands of public opinion playing against Zelenskyy right now. There’s one strand who will view any kind of deal with Russia or deal with Trump as some kind of a betrayal. And those nationalists will come out to vote against him in droves in the next election. And there’s another group of the population which is tired of the war and believes it to be unwinnable and wants some kind of a stabilization before the situation gets much worse.
It was pretty interesting to see his former spokeswoman, Iuliia Mendel, who was a very strong supporter of the Ukrainian cause coming out this weekend, basically talking about maybe Zelenskyy has got to patch things up before the situation gets much worse. So there are divisions inside Ukraine. It remains to be seeing which of those camps Zelenskyy tries to mollify first. Does he risk inflaming the nationalists to appease the pragmatists, or does he stick with the nationalist base and potentially inflame the pragmatists and make the pragmatists a majority?
I think Zelenskyy is going to dance between those two camps until he’s forced with a moment of decision. I think the moment of decision will push him in a more pragmatic direction rather than a more obstinate direction simply because Ukraine doesn’t have that many cards, and Trump is maybe very blunt and crude to say that to his face, but Ukraine doesn’t have very many cards without US assistance.
Jeff: And what role does China play in all of this if any?
Samuel: China is watching what’s happening with a lot of anticipation because China obviously wanted to have a role in the peacekeeping process and it never really was able to get recognition from it beyond some countries in the global south because the Americans viewed it as a non-starter. They viewed China as enabler of Russian aggression, and China’s the leading violator of sanctions. And the Russians also were frustrated with the Chinese peace plan because it calls for temporary ceasefire and a freezing of front line conditions as they are.
And it didn’t allow for the Russians to claim the entirety of the Voronezh regions. And it was seen to be inadequate for Russia also. So China presented a peace plan in 2023 that really satisfied neither the West nor Russia and only got a small amount of adherence inside the global south from countries like Brazil and countries like India and countries like Indonesia, which are also trying to advance their own similar kind of peace plans.
Now, China will probably be refreshed that the American positions seems to be aligning with the peace plan [unintelligible 00:26:30] China [unintelligible 00:26:31], so they’ll be happy about that. Chinese companies will also be easing their concerns about secondary sanctions coming from the United States as it appears as if sanctions are on a trajectory of being loosened rather than being tightened. So they still have to watch out for European and British sanctions, but those sanctions are not deemed to have enough teeth without American ones.
So Chinese port operators might become more brazen in supporting the family of dual-use goods to Russia. China might even become a little bit more indignant about abetting some Russia-North Korean cooperation up to a point, though they don’t want North Korea to get too dependent on Russia that they dilute their dependency on China or to become too aggressive because of it.
So the Chinese might be willing to take more risks now and may be willing to be more confident, but they’ll also be watching with a degree of trepidation about the longer-term US-Russia relationship because if the US and Russia do have some kind of an economic thaw, you might start seeing the Chinese not having preferential partnership status all the time. Russia, for example, is starting to impose some low-level tariffs on Chinese trucks, for example, claiming quality control issues with copper and wiring. Will that be a potential move towards protectionism and a move towards regaining Western, Japanese, Korean cars and trucks instead of overly relying on Chinese ones?
There are some problems that could come from a US-Russia rapprochement even if the Chinese remain the overwhelmingly dominant economic partner for Russia. So the Chinese are seeing a lot of opportunities here, I think, in terms of getting recognition for their peace plan even though Trump will never credit them with it. They may well even get a seat at the table if Russia insists on it. For example, Russia might want China at the table if the Americans ultimately do accede to having Europe and Ukraine at the table.
But there are also some concerns about Russia becoming less strategically dependent on China and having more options because a Russia with more options is less captured by the Chinese agenda going forward. So I think it’s a mixed bag for the Chinese right now.
Jeff: And what does all this look like to you at the end of the year? We get to the end of 2025, what do you see?
Samuel: Well, unless there’s a drastic change in the dynamic which basically sees Russia either recommit to the warpath 100%, refuse to entertain negotiations with the West, and the Americans start listening to some of the views of some members of the Republican party who are more hawkish on Russia like Congressman Joe Wilson, who was a key advocate for the sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili in Georgia, and also the Caesar Act sanctions against Syria and stuck with the cause against Assad, even when it was not popular, and even when people thought that Assad had won.
And also people like Congressman Don Bacon, who also has the ear of Trump sometimes even if he’s not really in the inner circle. And advisors like Fred Fleitz, who have called for Trump to arm Ukraine to the teeth if the Russians don’t entertain the peace talks. So in a scenario where the Russians don’t entertain peace talks at all, they [unintelligible 00:29:43] and they miscalculate how much Trump is willing to give up to them, and Trump fears looking weak, we could see the war dragging on and on for another year or two, but that’s plus one scenario.
The other scenario is that Trump basically stops providing aid to the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians and Europeans scramble to get caught off guard and the Russians basically double down on their war effort, ramp up conscription, get more North Korean troops on the front lines, and then make major territorial gains, forcing a de facto partition of Ukraine along lines that are excruciatingly uncomfortable for them. They’re not likely to reach Kiev or even cross the Dnieper, but they could take over the majority of the Voronezh regions in that scenario. That’s another scenario on the worst case scenario for Ukraine.
Neither of these scenarios are particularly likely, but I think they’re worth fleshing out and developing as possible contingencies. The most likely scenario, the middle ground for me, the baseline would be that we move towards some kind of a ceasefire along current lines. There aren’t NATO-style security guarantees and the Americans might tolerate the Ukrainians not really recognizing de jure Russia’s occupation of the territory, but recognizing it de facto and a ceasefire that takes place through investment.
Basically, the Americans start investing in reconstruction, the Chinese start investing for reconstruction on the Russian side of the line, Middle Eastern countries start pouring in capital, Europeans pour in capital, and everybody’s got so many projects going on that the risk for Russia to blow up the ceasefire would alienate all its partners and its adversaries in one swoop and even damage its own interests, and that might keep Russia at bay for the time being.
That probably seems to be the most realistic scenario, a ceasefire, and a ceasefire that’s guaranteed by investment and also guaranteed by Trump. Trump likes to think of himself as the only person who can guarantee the peace because no war started in Ukraine when he was there, but they started when Obama was there, they started when Biden was there. The Ukrainians don’t buy this because even if Trump is correct and his unpredictability does hold off Putin, he’s going to be gone in the start of 2029 and the Russians might be emboldened again.
So a ceasefire that I think that is guaranteed both by Trump’s bravado and by investment combined with basically de-escalation is what we see as the most realistic outcome for 2025.
Jeff: Sam Ramani, I thank you so very much for spending time with us here on the WhoWhatWhy podcast.
Samuel: Thank you very much, Jeff.
Jeff: Thank you. And thank you for listening and joining us here on the WhoWhatWhy podcast. I hope you join us next week for another WhoWhatWhy podcast. I’m Jeff Schechtman. If you like this podcast, please feel free to share and help others find it by rating and reviewing it on iTunes. You can also support this podcast and all the work we do by going to whowhatwhy.org/donate.
