Angela Stent on Putin’s War in Ukraine
This week on the podcast, our guest is Angela Stent, a globally recognized authority on U.S.-Russia relations. Angela has held senior roles at Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Brookings Institution, the U.S. State Department, the National Intelligence Council, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others. She is also an award-winning author; some of her books include The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest (2019).
Russia’s war with Ukraine is increasingly becoming an energy war. As Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities improve, it has begun hitting Russian energy infrastructure with growing success, meaningfully reducing Russia’s ability to produce refined products and crude oil. Jackie and Peter explore the complex geopolitics of the conflict with Angela, including Russia’s relationships with Europe, the United States, and China. They also discuss the implications for Canada, including the growing attractiveness of energy from a stable supplier, a point recognized at the recent G7 meeting in France, where Canada was identified as a welcome source of energy to diversify away from supply routed through the Strait of Hormuz.
Jackie and Peter ask Angela: Ukraine has delivered military strikes deep inside Russia this year — does that kind of pressure move Putin toward ending the war? How does Putin view the recent U.S.-Iran conflict, and what are the implications for the Russia-Ukraine war? Beyond Ukraine, is Russia a threat to other European countries? What is a realistic path to ending the war, and what would the best-case scenario look like?
Content referenced on this podcast:
- G7 leaders’ statement on geopolitical issues (June 17, 2026), welcoming the potential of Canada to deliver significant additional capacity to global markets in the coming years
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Episode 331 transcript
Disclosure:
The information and opinions presented in this ARC Energy Ideas podcast are provided for informational purposes only and are subject to the disclaimer link in the show notes.
Announcer:
This is the ARC Energy Ideas podcast, with Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest, exploring trends that influence the energy business.
Jackie Forrest:
Welcome to the ARC Energy Ideas Podcast. I’m Jackie Forrest.
Peter Tertzakian:
And I’m Peter Tertzakian.
Well, the usual timestamp. I’m going to timestamp it as the first day of summer, even though it’s rainy and cool here, but it’s nice that we’ve had the longest day of the year and I’m looking forward to this summer. We’ve got Stampede coming up as well, so we’ll have some commentary just prior to that as well.
But for today, I’m very excited to have a special guest who’s going to talk about Russia, Russia-Ukraine, and what’s going on over there. It’s very timely given the events that are happening as it also pertains to oil production.
But before we get there, we’ve got the Iranian situation, we’ve got the memorandum of understanding, some negotiations going on in Switzerland. The price of oil has fallen back to the mid-70s for WTI. And, apparently, the Strait of Hormuz is open. We see ships going through, although the Iranians said it was closed over the weekend. So it’s hard to discern the exact truth without actually standing on the shores and looking at what’s happening with binoculars.
But what are you sensing is the situation?
Jackie Forrest:
Well, I saw the news this weekend and I’m like, “Ugh, this is just off, on, off on,” but the markets obviously think that the Strait is open because the price of oil actually went down a few dollars even. It was 75 and now I think it’s 73 when I looked. So market obviously thinks the oil is flowing. So let’s hope it is. And we talked about that last week.
Peter Tertzakian:
Right. But the long end of the curve-
Jackie Forrest:
This is necessary.
Peter Tertzakian:
… is still holding at least $10 above from where it was pre-war. So at least the market isn’t thinking that this is going to be over anytime soon. In other words, it’s going to take time to resupply, recharge some of the SPRs, and by the way, the story isn’t over. It’s a 60-day memorandum of understanding and given the topsy-turvy nature of the world we live in today, anything can happen, I think, suffice it to say.
Jackie Forrest:
Mm-hmm.
Peter Tertzakian:
All right.
Jackie Forrest:
Yeah, that’s the only thing we’ve learned in the last three months.
Peter Tertzakian:
Yeah, that’s a big learning, the unpredictability of the world.
And then, we had the G7 meeting in France last week and of course, all eyes seem to be fixated on the tussle between the Italian Prime Minister and whether or not she was going to have a selfie with Donald Trump. That aside, there was some interesting statements made in the final communiqué that really didn’t get any attention.
Jackie Forrest:
No, and we want to highlight them.
There’s statements of G7 leaders, maybe a lot of people in the press didn’t have time to read them because there’s so much going on, but there was a very interesting statement, and we will put a link in the show notes and it was in their statement on geopolitics, and within that it said, “We commit to accelerate diversification of energy supply routes to reduce vulnerability from the Strait of Hormuz. We welcome the potential of Canada to deliver significant additional capacity to global markets in the coming years.” And Canada was the only country-
Peter Tertzakian:
Actually mentioned.
Jackie Forrest:
… mentioned.
Peter Tertzakian:
Yeah. It wasn’t just capturing small talk at the coffee break. It was actually mentioned in the communiqué.
Jackie Forrest:
Right. And there’s a whole long list of countries that aren’t in the Strait of Hormuz that could grow their energy, United States, we got places like Argentina and Guyana. I think that we keep talking about the window is open for Canada. We better not miss the window this time. To me, this is a signal that we just need to get these pipelines built, and I think there’ll be lots of people that want to buy our products.
Peter Tertzakian:
Right.
Jackie Forrest:
Yep.
Peter Tertzakian:
And the whole world’s supply chains are repiping, rewiring, retooling, as we know, for all sorts of geopolitical reasons, including the Iranian situation but also because of the Russia-Ukraine situation.
This is a war that has now dragged on over four years, probably going to push five. Doesn’t seem to be much end in sight. And now, with the Ukrainian capabilities increasing, quite dramatically, with the drones and their ability to strike longer distances and their incapacitation of refineries and other types of infrastructure related to the oil export and refining, that actually, in addition, to the whole Strait of Hormuz situation, Russia as the second-largest producer in the world now having domestic problems as well as incapacity to export nearly as much as they could, this is a big story.
And so we’re delighted to talk about this story and much more about Russia and Ukraine with our special guest, someone who is very esteemed. She has held numerous senior roles, including her past and current roles at organizations such as Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institute, The Brooking Institution. Well, the list goes on and on. But importantly, this person is also an award-winning author of some books titled The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century and Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. So we are delighted to invite with us Angela Stent straight from Washington.
Welcome, Angela.
Angela Stent:
Thank you very much. I’m delighted to be on your podcast.
Jackie Forrest:
Yeah. We’re very excited to have you, Angela.
So lots to talk about. Obviously, Russia’s very timely. We saw those pictures on the weekend of the hits to Moscow where you saw plumes of smoke in the air. That’s a big change in landscape for the folks in Russia. We’re going to get to what’s going on there, but I think it would be helpful for you to introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us about your career and maybe specifically some of your time at the U.S. State Department and your position in the National Intelligence Office for Russia and Eurasia.
Angela Stent:
Sure.
So very briefly, I first got interested in the Soviet Union, as it then was, as an undergraduate at Cambridge University. My college gave me a grant and I took a ship from Tilbury outside London to Leningrad. I spent a week in the Soviet Union. I didn’t know a word of Russian and I got hooked on it.
I went back in 1974 as a graduate student and was there during the whole Watergate affair in the United States, which was very interesting. Russians couldn’t understand how anyone could get excited about a leader bugging people’s telephones and undertaking dirty tricks. So that was pretty funny. I took a train then through Poland, Czechoslovakia two weeks before the Soviet invasion in 1968 East Germany. Anyway, I got very interested in the subject.
Most of my career, I was at Georgetown University. I ran The Russian Study Center there for about 20 years but in between that, and of course, in the U.S., it’s much easier than in some countries to leave academia for a while, work in the government, and then come back. So I worked in the Office of Policy Planning in the State Department for the last 18 months of the Clinton administration and the first six months of the George W. Bush administration. I’ve never been a political appointee. I was always hired as an “expert.”
And so that was really at the beginning when Putin came in and we were trying to figure out who was this man? How could the U.S. work with him? The war in Chechnya, the second war had then begun, dealing with that. And then, when the Bush administration came in, some people thought, “Well, it was time to reexamine the relationship with Russia.” And in fact, with my then-boss of policy planning, Richard Haass, who then became for a long time the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, we wrote a memo suggesting how Russia could actually be admitted to NATO.
It sounds rather strange to talk about that now but at that point, we thought, “Well, it’s a different NATO and one could offer them something.” That memo never went anywhere, but it was a way of trying to rethink the relationship.
And then I went back into government as a National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia beginning when the NIC in 2004 was still under the director of the CIA, and then it transitioned to this new bureaucracy, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, now a very controversial part of the U.S. government because of its various heads. Well, first one and our second one under President Trump.
But anyway, that organization, the NIC, National Intelligence Council, coordinates intelligence from the 15 or 16 different intelligence agencies that constitute the U.S. government.
I think the most significant piece of work we produced then was one of these National Intelligence estimates when we tried to look at what Russia would look like in the future, this is 2005, and I think in retrospect, and this is a lesson I learned from doing that, we really underestimated in 2005 how quickly Russia would come back on the world stage. Of course, it was already then benefiting from high oil prices, but just how much that would enable Putin to come back and for Russia really to impose its will and grow its influence in the post-Soviet space. And so since then, I’ve advised different U.S. governments.
By the way, when I was at the NIC and since then, also worked on various projects with the CSIS, the foreign intelligence services, I always find those people with great insights into Russia. So that’s how I’ve been working in and following these things.
Peter Tertzakian:
Wow. That’s amazing.
So you, like me, although you’re so learned in Eastern Europe and Russia and Soviet Union, are children of the Cold War, I like to say. So I remember those years and then progressing through to the Yeltsin, Gorbachev, fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine being its own country, the Orange Revolution, and then, of course, the war, the 2022 war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or I should call it the special military operation as it was labeled by the Russians. Are you surprised that this is still ongoing four years later?
Angela Stent:
I think at the beginning of the war, we underestimated that the Ukrainian army had become much more competent since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the Russia launching a war in the Donbas in the eastern region of Ukraine. And that’s partly also because the Ukrainians have received training from different NATO countries, from the United States, from Canada, from other NATO allies and so that by the time the Russians invaded, they were much more capable of fighting back than one thought.
And then I think Putin overestimated the strength of the Russian military. He apparently didn’t understand how much this pervasive corruption in Russia had also affected the military, and that you saw at the beginning of the war the shoddy shape of a lot of the equipment the Russians were using and just the money had gone deep into people’s pockets.
I think very few people in February of 2022, when the full-scale invasion began, would have predicted that today, you have a Ukraine that really is an almost number one in the world in electronic warfare and drone production. It’s just leaped ahead using the kind of ingenuity that the Ukrainians had been developing over the decades. They were already very competent in IT, high-tech things like that before the war began.
And I think the other thing is that people always thought about Ukraine as a divided country. The eastern part was always part of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, whatever. The western part was traditionally part of the Austria-Hungarian empire and had always looked westward. But it turns out that even all of those Ukrainians that speak Russian, President Zelenskyy’s first language was Russian, too, they, in fact, the center of national identity and the opposition to Russia has just grown by leaps and bounds. So Putin has now turned nearly all of the Ukrainian nation against Russia.
And I think that’s another thing that has enabled the Ukrainians to endure the terrible effects of this very brutal war and to fight back.
Jackie Forrest:
Well, yeah, and they are fighting back. It’s shocking. We were just looking up at something over 700 kilometers between Kyiv and Moscow, and that these drones are actually reaching such far distances and damaging energy infrastructure and even seeing the smoke that we saw this weekend. Strategically, is this going to put a lot of pressure on Putin towards ending the war, these strikes that are hitting deep, deep within Russia?
Angela Stent:
I think one of the aims of the Ukrainian government has been to bring the war home to the Russians because for the first few years, a lot of Russians, particularly in the big cities, could pretend that the war, the special military operation didn’t exist and it was the Ukrainians that felt the war, of course, all over Ukraine with the Russian bombing both of civilian and military and of course, energy targets.
So now that it’s brought it home to the Russians, you had the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin’s flagship conference every year, the Davos of Russia where you saw the smoke rising in plumes after the Ukrainians hit an oil refinery, a naval installation there. And then in Moscow, as you said, over the weekend all the airports are closed in Moscow. In Crimea, there’s no gasoline at all. They’ve canceled children summer camps, things like that. So the Russians are now feeling the effects of it. But I think we cannot jump to the conclusion that this is making Putin change his mind.
I’m not sure that Putin receives the most accurate information about what’s actually happening in the war because, as in all dictatorships, the people around him are telling him what they think he wants to hear, as they did before the launch of the full-scale invasion, for fear of if they tell him something he doesn’t want to hear what will happen to them.
Peter Tertzakian:
Seems like a little bit of a leftover from the tsar’s days a hundred-and-some years ago. I’ve read books on that recently and it’s just the tsar’s inner circle would only tell him what he wanted to hear.
Angela Stent:
Tell him what he wants to hear.
So we don’t have much of a sign at the moment that he is seriously reconsidering his war goals because of the Ukrainian ability to hit back, including, as you’ve mentioned, on oil refineries, trying to diminish Russia’s ability to earn money from oil experts and therefore, fund the war.
Jackie Forrest:
Right. And they’ve been quite resilient in terms of their production of oil. Refined products was down a little bit up until recently, where it looks like now there’s starting to be some real noticeable change this year, and this is the IEA data to May and I think there’s been damage since then, but they’re already down about 400,000 barrels a day this year. Over the whole course of the war, cumulatively refined products and crude oil were down about 700,000. That’s a big acceleration in the rate of change in terms of their ability to produce.
Peter Tertzakian:
Yeah, and the other part of this I’ve read, and Angela, maybe you can also help confirm the state of the sanctions, but some of the parts that are required for these refineries come from the west or there’s Western technology. So their ability to repair under the sanctions is going to be quite limited or they’re going to have to smuggle in the parts or something. What is the state of the sanctions?
Angela Stent:
The sanctions have had some effect. Clearly, the financial sanctions had an effect. The fact that Russia is no longer exporting, or will not be after next year, natural gas and oil to Europe. The Europeans have more or less weaned themselves, not completely, off Russian energy. So that has clearly impacted Russia and its ability to keep exporting oil.
They’ve benefited, of course, in the past few months from the Iran war and the waving of oil sanctions on them and therefore, they’ve been able to earn more money even if they haven’t been able to increase the volumes.
And we don’t know whether those waivers will continue. We thought at the G7, it sounded as if that’s what President Trump said, but you alluded to yourself at the beginning, nobody’s completely sure what the state of the MOU’s been signed, but the state of the situation in the war with Iran is. And in fact, whether the Trump administration will consider it necessary to keep these sanctions on, even though U.S. gas prices have gone down, but they’re certainly suffering from the impact.
I think going forward, we in the west really need to make sure that these oil sanctions are properly enforced and to clamp down even more on the shadow fleet. More of that has been going on, but there’s still a lot of ships that get away with via third or fourth countries getting Russian oil to other countries. So I think if that were more strictly enforced, it would be more effective. And then I think people believe you could have more effective and far-reaching banking sections on Russia that would hit the economy more.
So the Russian economy has been hit by this. It is doing worse despite what Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum recently. Some of his ministers and certainly, the business community was saying, “Things are getting worse.” The word recession came up. Inflation is there. But still the Russians are surviving this and pulling through.
Jackie Forrest:
Well, it certainly helps that the price of oil is up so much from the Iran war.
Well, let’s go to President Zelenskyy. He wrote an open letter to Putin asking for a face-to-face meeting. Putin dismissed this letter as rude. What does this tell us about the chance of a deal? Does Ukraine want to deal or was that just a tactic to anger him?
Angela Stent:
Zelenskyy was certainly trolling Putin beginning with from the president of Ukraine to the president of Russia, since Putin doesn’t believe that Zelenskyy is a legitimate president and certainly doesn’t regard him as his equal. Zelenskyy saying, “You’re an old man, you are too dependent on China. We fought back.” But then saying, “Of course, you and I should meet not in Moscow, as the Russians have said, not in Kyiv, but in Switzerland or in one of the gulf countries, neutral countries.”
I do not believe that Zelenskyy believed that Putin would agree to that. I think he did it partly to signal to the Trump administration that he’s not averse to meeting with Putin, that he’s not against negotiations, and to blame the Russians for the fact that these negotiations aren’t continuing in a pace and that there haven’t been any bilateral meetings. And of course, Putin turned down his request.
Peter Tertzakian:
Yeah. But where is this headed if we play it out, assuming that the ability for Ukraine to impart more damage to refineries over the course of the next few months? We have the situation, as you mentioned, in Crimea where there’s no gasoline sales to the people only for military use at the moment, not sure how they’re getting around literally. In other places across Russia, there’s rationing. So there is a scenario to play out here where the rationing becomes so severe that the people really start to get minimally anxious to, in the worst case, uprisings of some sort. Is that a possibility in this authoritarian state?
Angela Stent:
Yeah. The problem with any public expressions of dissent and opposition to the war is… The country has become so repressive under Putin that if you stand out in the square with a blank sheet of paper, you can get arrested. So the disincentives for public protests are very great.
Now, having said that, you can hear grumbling that more people are asking, “Why is there a gasoline shortage?” Oh, by the way, there’s been this clampdown on the internet in Russia so that Putin in the name of saying, “Well, if the internet isn’t regulated, the Ukrainians will somehow be able to figure out where targets are.” So people can’t do banking, they can’t order groceries, they can’t even order a taxi. Not only people in the cities, but even people in other areas, so their lives are being adversely impacted by that.
I think the only thing that changes Putin’s mind, not that the Kremlin isn’t concerned about opposition, but the reaction to that is just to clamp down.
The things that would change his mind would be, again, a tougher imposition of sanctions where the economic pain is even worse and then more air defenses for Ukraine, which they desperately need. The U.S. Patriot systems aren’t available really now because of the war in Iran. The U.S. was selling these to Europe and the Europeans were then loaning them to Ukraine. So Putin has to believe that he cannot prevail before I think he would show any real willingness to negotiate.
Peter Tertzakian:
The cracks are showing, I guess, is what I’m sensing because even staunch nationalist military bloggers, who have been supportive of the war, are also starting to now question, in their military blogs, about the war, that they’re concerned about what’s going on, not necessarily supportive anymore. So I agree with you that there’s likely to be repression and clampdowns, but this is one big country. I don’t know how they’re going to control it if it starts to get out of control.
Angela Stent:
No, I agree with you, but we saw a few years ago when Mr. Prigozhin and his mutiny, and he had quite a lot of support at that point, at least in the parts of Russia where his soldiers were, and we know what happened to him. And since then, there’s been an even greater clampdown.
But you can’t rule it out. When you study Russia for a long time, you realize that Russia constantly surprises you. So you can say, “This is just going to go on like this for many years but tomorrow it could change.”
Peter Tertzakian:
Yeah, we don’t have any Rasputin in the wings that I can see at that moment, but anyway, well, let’s talk about Europe.
Jackie Forrest:
Yeah, let’s talk about the U.S. Well, you actually mentioned the U.S. Let’s talk about Europe and the U.S. It’s well integrated.
You look at this Iran MOU and I’m wondering if I was President Putin looking at this, would my reaction be, “Well, okay, Washington made a mess and when things got difficult, they got out of there,” so would that embolden him? Or is he thinking, “Oh, no. Now, they’re going to start looking back more at this Ukraine situation,” give them those air defenses that you talked about? Is this good news for him or is he more worried?
Angela Stent:
I think the Russians have now become rather wary about President Trump. They had higher hopes for him when he came in, but they realized that he’s really too unpredictable for them.
They must be concerned about if the waiver on the oil sanctions exist no more and the oil sanctions come back, I think that will adversely affect them. On the other hand, they probably realize this is going to be a very long-drawn-out process with the Iranians. The Iranians, I’m sure, aren’t going to agree to too much in 60 days if you look at the history of what they’ve done.
Trump at the moment and the people around him have walked away from the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. Putin is in some way still hoping that Trump will pressure Zelenskyy to give up those parts of the Donbas region that Russia doesn’t control, although I’m sure that’s not going to happen because Zelenskyy isn’t going to do that and he feels more emboldened now. So I think they will look warily.
I think just as they were really disconcerted when Maduro was removed so quickly by the U.S. and then again, these bloggers to whom you were referring said, “How come we haven’t been able to get rid of Zelenskyy in four years and the U.S. does this in a few hours?” And I think equally the Russians were very concerned when they saw how the U.S. and Israel eliminated the top leadership in Iran, although obviously the Russians have good contacts with the next layer of leadership.
For them, I think there both have been both pluses in this war in terms of the waving of oil sanctions, but I think minuses… And I think they would like to get back to some kind of negotiation with the United States on the Russia-Ukraine war, but only if the United States retains what I would call a pro Russian neutrality and we don’t really see any signs of that changing at the moment.
Jackie Forrest:
Okay. Well, and I guess the other thing that’s quite related to that is the U.S. administration’s approach to Europe and NATO. There’s been so much news over the last week, but that maybe the U.S. is going to reassess the NATO partners. And what does that mean for Russia? Does that think that, “Oh, U.S. is leaving, maybe Russia has the ability to stick around and get the Donbas region if their NATO isn’t going to be such a strong force anymore?”
Angela Stent:
The people in the Kremlin must have just been smiling in the past couple of years, because what the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia have been trying to do for at least eight decades, which is to split the U.S. and Europe and to weaken NATO has been happening in front of their very eyes almost without them lifting a finger, although there’s obviously a lot of cyber interference, social media interference certainly in Europe and to some extent in the United States, but it’s largely what the U.S. administration has done. So on the one hand, I think they welcome that.
On the other hand, they do also worry and they express that, that then you could have a European NATO that would get together in a more concerted way to push back against Russia. I think we’re not there yet.
The Europeans, as we know, are now trying to establish their own contacts with the Kremlin and to become much more active mediators and negotiators, because they were left out of these negotiations when it was a bilateral U.S.-Russian negotiation. So far, the Russians have rejected that, but they may have to reassess that in the future. And they’re still hoping that by next year, some of these populist parties, for instance, in France will come to power. And then in Germany, the AfD, the extreme right party will at least win local elections. So they’re still hoping that there will be more elections in Europe that will bring to power pro Russian Europeans, but that’s a greater uncertainty for them.
Peter Tertzakian:
Now we talked about Putin not necessarily listening to his advisors. I guess to what extent are we in the west being fed a selection bias as well, say bias being Ukraine’s getting stronger and Russia’s getting weaker, maybe Russia’s also getting stronger. How would you think about that?
Angela Stent:
I think Ukraine is getting stronger, but I also think there are quite a lot of reports in the media where this is exaggerated because the Russians, as you say, are also getting stronger. Their military is in better shape than it was when the full-scale invasion began. They do face a recruitment, a mobilization problem, but then so do the Ukrainians in a way more acutely.
And we see even with the kind of Shaheds which the Russians have been supplying to Iran, these were the drones that originally Irans applied to Russia at the beginning of the war. The Russians have modernized them and they’re more effective, and the Ukrainians themselves will say they’ll have the next generation of drones and then the Russians will learn from that. So then the Ukrainians have to keep upping the ante and increasingly the lethality of these drones.
Yeah, one shouldn’t exaggerate too much of the Russians are on a back foot, they’re not doing as well as they were before the Ukrainians have been taking territory back, but Russia still has a lot of capabilities.
Jackie Forrest:
And I would note that, again, so much in the last week, but there was a warning from a German army head that warned that Russia could attack a NATO territory by 2029. I was quite surprised to see someone in that type of position saying that and that’s not very long away. What did you think about that? Do you think that’s a possibility?
Angela Stent:
You’ve seen reports both from the Germans and from some other European services, if you like, about the danger of a Russian attack against Europe coming.
Interestingly enough, Alexis Grinkevich, who is the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he put out a statement just in the last couple of weeks saying, as far as the intelligence that he’s seen, Russia has no plans to launch a broader attack on Europe, that it’s really focused on the Ukraine war.
That’s certainly not how the Baltic States and Poland, for instance, feel they really do believe the frontline states, Romania as well, certainly do feel that Russia has brought a gold and that it would then move from attacking Ukraine to launching a broader war. Again, I’ve just come back from Estonia. They certainly believe that. I think there are different estimates of that.
I think to say that a possibility of a Russian-European war within the next five years, it sounds a little exaggerated to me. On the other hand, I just saw today the latest broadside by Sergei Karaganov, who is a Russian advisor to the Kremlin, if you like, who’s become very hawkish, who just put out an interview saying, “We, Russia, will attack Europe in the next year.” So I think some of this from the Russian point of view is just fearmongering, but I think some European countries take this very seriously.
Jackie Forrest:
Well, and maybe Germany, they’re trying to spend money now and to get public support for that. So maybe that’s part of the reasoning for the messaging as well is to help with a social license to spend all the money on defense, which they haven’t done for a long time, right?
Angela Stent:
Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah.
Jackie Forrest:
Well, this is an energy podcast, Angela. We’re not going to put you on the spot too much on energy, but when you think about Europe, it’s set out to reduce its reliance on Russia after 2022, turned towards the Middle East and the United States. But with the war in Iran, they’re starting… The Qatar flows aren’t coming. Americans are using more and more things like energy for geopolitical influence over them and they’re left with really no good options.
So it was really interesting for us here in Canada that we had a state-owned German company sign a long-term offtake agreement with the West Coast LNG terminal. And we also learned recently a letter of intent with another group from Germany. If you’d asked me three, four years ago, would Germans be buying gas off the west coast of Canada? I would say no, that’s so far away for them. They’re not the most obvious customer. And of course, we started with that G7 comment, Canada as a place they want to get their energy from.
Just any thoughts on, do you think this is a couple one-offs here or do you think that there’s a trend where Europe might really be looking to Canada for more energy?
Angela Stent:
Well, I think this is certainly good news for Canada.
I think that that’s quite possible. Again, I was just in Germany and what interested me is if you talk to the people in the government, they will say, “Absolutely, we’re never going to buy Russian gas again. We see what the Russians did.” On the other hand, I’m just talking about Germany now. There are also those in Germany groups and companies who are saying, “Well, maybe when the Ukraine war, if it winds down, let’s go back to thinking about Russian gas because it was economical, it was cheaper.” I don’t think that’s a majority opinion, but I think those debates are still there.
And I will just say that interestingly enough, in the next few months, there’ll be a big trial opening on the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline, which has now been established was done by Ukrainians. And I guess they’ve managed to get one of them back into Germany and there’s going to be a big trial going on. And then you hear that there are people around President Trump who’ve been talking about possibly reopening Nord Stream. I think that’s highly unlikely. So I think probably in the longer run, this German government will think about alternatives and is thinking about alternative energy supplies and Canada is a reliable supplier.
Jackie Forrest:
Yeah. If we could only get the pipelines to get the gas to Tidewater, though we do have a few small projects today and we’re hoping to grow them. But certainly, it was exciting to see that comment in the G7 geopolitical statement. I don’t think that’s ever happened in my career.
Peter Tertzakian:
No, no. That’s… Well, the idea that Canada can be an alternative supplier of oil and gas to the world because first, for so long, our oil and gas has just flowed to the United States. We’ve been bound continentally and we’ve had no reason to go international, but now not only is there reason to go international, but countries want more from us. So Canada is going global. Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the LNG Train 1 is just the start of what could be a much bigger avenue of commerce for Canada, a very meaningful one.
Jackie Forrest:
Well, let’s switch. We’ve really hit Europe. You’ve also written a lot about the relationship with Russia and China. In fact, your 2019 book, we will put links to your books in the show notes because I’m sure our listeners will want to check out your books, but you wrote a book called Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest. Can you explain who the rest was? Was it China? Were there other countries and just a bit about your thesis?
Angela Stent:
Yes. And this, of course, was also inspired, and this is even before the full-scale invasion, of after 2014 even, various countries tried to isolate Russia more and rethink its relations, whereas Russia then developed a series of much stronger relationships with non-western countries. China clearly is the major ally here.
China stepped in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in the Donbas and the imposition of western sanctions. China finally got its deal on Power of Siberia 1, the natural gas pipeline deal, which they had been prevaricating on. It got a very low price. It got a good deal because Russia was really on the back foot.
And China ever since then has been Russia’s main supporter and certainly since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, without China’s support, Russia wouldn’t have been able to continue this. So China, of course, repeats the Russian narrative. It supplies Russia economically. It’s a very important economic partner, the most important foreign economic partner that Russia has. It’s supplying components for the weapons that Russia uses, even if it doesn’t supply the weapons themselves. And of course, it’s a major purchaser of Russian hydrocarbons.
Now having said that, Putin’s recent visit to China just a few weeks ago showed the contrast here. On the one hand, he got this lavish reception similar to that of President Trump, who was there four days beforehand in Beijing, and praises and memoranda of understanding signed and commitment to a multipolar world. But he didn’t get what he really wanted, which was the Chinese to sign on to Power of Siberia 2 because the Chinese still want a lower price and they want lower volumes because China, of course, presents itself as an increasingly green country. It has diverse supplies now of energy but also less hydrocarbons.
Russia has become more and more dependent on China. Putin realizes, to the extent that Ukraine is an existential issue for him personally and for Russia, without China he wouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing.
I’ve just completed a study with a colleague of mine called The Limits of the No-Limits Partnership between Russia and China. And we see that in so many areas, the Russians are smarting under their understanding about how dependent they are on China and how much China has the upper hand.
On the other hand, they realize there is no alternative for them at the moment. And that’s including if you look at the Arctic where the Chinese have now come in and helped them on these various energy projects that the west were then pulled out of, China wants to become a much more dominant power there much against Russia’s wishes, but there are a whole lot of other areas where that’s true and yet China is the main bulwark there.
So the rest of the rest, there’s the CRINK, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. North Korea, of course, has become much more important since the full scale invasion in terms of supplying ammunition and men to fight the war, but then more generally the global south.
So what’s been noticeable since the full scale invasion of Ukraine is that much of the global south won’t take sides. It regards this as an internal European war. It’s very happy to blame the United States particularly, and NATO in general, for provoking Russia into this war won’t impose sanctions. And many of these global south countries still regard Russia as the heir to the Soviet Union, which they believe supported them in their colonial fights against their colonial masters. And the Russians present themselves as, “We are the leading country against the neocolonialism of the western. We were never a colonial power.”
And I will just say anecdotally, if you try and discuss with different people from different parts of the global south and say, “Actually, Russia is a colonial power too in the way that it has ruled Ukraine and all of the other post-Soviet states,” they reject that.
So the rest is really most of the global south, what the Russians call the global majority, but China is of course Russia’s major partner there. And I think any idea that the Trump administration had at the beginning that if you improve ties to Russia, you can persuade Russia to wean itself away from China. That’s an illusion. That’s not going to happen however much the Russians may resent their junior partner status.
Peter Tertzakian:
So as we move toward the end of the podcast, this is a fascinating discussion, I read somewhere just recently that this Russia-Ukraine war is a major war. It’s the longest lasting major war since World War II. If it goes to 2028, it will be over six years old, which is what World War II was. Yet getting back to the beginning of our discussions, what is the endpoint? If you look at what the Russians have taken, Crimea, the Donbas regions, large portions of it, it’s unlikely they would want to give up those territories, yet the Ukrainian’s demanding them back, fighting for them back. What is your most probable endpoint of how this all ends?
Angela Stent:
I think the best scenario would be a ceasefire along the current line of contact, whatever it is when a ceasefire holds. I’m not sure that there’ll be a peace treaty. I think it will be more like the Korean situation where you’ll have a ceasefire. You will have both sides still heavily armed.
And the only way, I think, from the Ukrainian point of view that this is viable, if Ukraine can deter Russia by itself from reinvading, because obviously Putin hasn’t given up on subjugating the whole of Ukraine and having regime chang there. And I doubt that his successor will. I don’t believe that either European or U.S. security guarantees are going to be very credible for Ukraine, because you always come back to the question if let’s say you have some European or Canadian troops in the western part of Ukraine and the Russians attack again, what are they going to do?
I think you have to have a Ukraine that’s really onto the teeth, the porcupine strategy where it can deter Russia. That means that Ukraine, yes, for the time being has to accept the loss of Crimea and of the 20% of Ukraine that Russia controls. Maybe in the distant future or not so distant future, that might change, but I don’t see that happening.
But it would mean that the Russians would have to accept that they’re not going to conquer all of Ukraine. Ukraine will exist as an independent sovereign country within whatever borders there are, and that it will have the right to choose what kind of foreign policy, foreign economic policies it pursues.
I think the question of NATO membership is off the table for the foreseeable future. E.U. membership in theory, yes, they’ve started the process now. I’m very skeptical about how long that might take and how that might happen unless the E.U. itself reforms itself, including its common agricultural policy.
So it would have to be a Ukraine that can really stand not alone, but it would have western support but be able to deter Russia. But it would also mean that you would have to have a Russian leadership that accepts this, that accepts that all empires end and that the Russian Empire is not going to be the only one in world history that remains in perpetuity. I’m not sure that that’s within the mindset of the current leadership demographic if you like in Russia, but it could be in the future.
Jackie Forrest:
Okay. Well, Angela, this has been a really excellent conversation. I hope there is some resolution because this is going on and on. It’s not a good situation for either side in my view.
I want to bring it back to Canada. And I do think that the lesson in the past four years, whether it be the situation here that you’ve given us so much great information on Ukraine and Russia, what’s going on in Iran, Strait of Hormuz, really all benefits Canada as a reliable partner.
So for our Canadian audience, recognizing that the geopolitical situation is giving Canada an advantage, and let’s hope that we can provide more energy to our allies, because you talked about Germany. Reality is if this war does end, and I hope it does, and the gas is right there on their doorstep, it’s pretty hard not to want to take that if you don’t even have another alternative. So if Canada can provide an alternative, I think Germany would be happy to take that. But the reality is there’s not a lot of other sources of energy for them.
Peter Tertzakian:
No, there isn’t. And other sources of energy are not necessarily stable. And I think if we think about where we’re going forward, the Iranian situation is calming down, or at least we hope it will calm down for the benefit of all.
This situation here in the near term, as we go into the latter half of the year, I think is going to be even more consequential and more reported upon, because the Ukraine-Russia war is now becoming increasingly an energy war as Ukraine strikes the energy facilities, as we discussed earlier, and takes out significant volumes of oil production, both domestically and for export, I think it’s going to become increasingly the story and also the story that drives, as I said, the re-piping of the supply chains around the world, including more potentially from Canada. So it’s going to be the place to watch in the near term.
And this has been a fascinating discussion and the geopolitics therefore of Russia-Ukraine are inextricably linked from the energy story, which resonates globally.
Angela Stent, thank you so much for joining us in this conversation. I’m sure you will be watching this situation very carefully as will we, as we see how it all plays out over the course of the next several weeks, months, and hopefully, not too many years beyond.
Angela Stent:
Thank you, too.
Jackie Forrest:
Thank you, Angela, and thanks to our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on the app that you listen to and tell someone else about us.
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