- We are beyond the point of no return. Will there be an escape route for Putin? I would argue, no. I mean, it's impossible. The only thing that he understands is power and force, I'm afraid, he's not going to back down. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to GZERO World. I'm Ian Bremmer and on today's show, why Russia's invasion of Ukraine is about much more than just Ukraine. 13 other nations share a border with Russia. Finland's is over 800 miles. Residents of that Northern European nation have no illusions that Putin is done with expansionism if he manages to take over Ukraine. My guest today, former Finnish Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, weighs in on the West's response to Russia so far, as well as Finland's unique role in the region, and how likely his country is to join NATO. Then, we visit two train stations for an on the ground glimpse at the steep human toll this conflict has taken so far. (upbeat music) - The West is at war with Russia. While NATO boots may not be on the ground in Ukraine, NATO bombs certainly are. Weapons, supplies and money are flowing there to combat and kill Russian invaders. Sanctions and economic warfare are decimating the Russian economy and they're undermining Putin's regime. Military pundits may describe this as only indirect fighting, but that isn't how Vladimir Putin sees it. (Putin speaks in Russian) - [Translator] Top officials of leading NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country. Therefore, I'm ordering the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff to put the strategic nuclear forces on special alert. - Not since World War II has Europe witnessed a conflict on this scale, with the potential for a clash of nuclear superpowers. Images of mass graves, grieving mothers and a bombed-out hospital fill the airwaves and the internet. As of this taping, more than three million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries like Poland. That number could climb as high as 10 million in the coming weeks. Putin may be waging a 20th century style war, or more like a 19th century Imperial conquest, but this is 2022, not 1942 and social media, for all its faults, has also greatly humanized the conflict. Ukraine is of course massively outmanned and outgunned by Russia, but its President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian and "Dancing With The Stars" contestant is winning the global PR war and he's rallying the world (mostly) behind him. And even within Russia, where nearly all dissent has been banned, some cracks are beginning to show. Take this remarkable video from last week of an employee at one of Russia's top propaganda stations, holding up a sign on live television that read, 'no war, stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, they're lying to you.' And thousands of other people within Russia have taken to the streets to protest the war, despite risks of beatings and long jail sentences. Moscow-based sociologist, Greg Yudin, who was himself beaten and arrested at a recent protest, explains why. - And the question is, how and when could this battle spread beyond Ukraine's borders? The conflict is already creating supply chain and economic disruptions globally, from the impact on grain exports needed to nourish already food-insecure populations to halts on Russian gas and oil trade, causing pain at the pump. The ripple effects are being felt around the world. But perhaps nowhere as acutely as the region itself, Poland, the Baltics, Maldova, keeping arms open to Ukrainian refugees and eyes open in anticipation of Putin's next moves. And then there's Finland, which shares an 830 mile border with Russia. The nation also has a long and painful history of fending off its neighbor to the East and as Finland now weighs joining NATO and the consequences that could bring, I speak with former Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb. Here's our conversation. Alexander Stubb, Mr. Prime Minister, very good to see you, thanks for joining. - Thank you, my pleasure. - I want to start just with whether you think the West broadly, Europe, the United States, NATO, everyone, is doing as much as they should be doing right now to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. - Well, I definitely think they're doing more than I ever expected us to do. I've never seen an onslaught of sanctions at the magnitude that we're seeing at the moment. You know, four waves of sanctions coming from the European Union. Add to that sanctions from the United States, you look at the turnaround of German foreign security and defense policy. You look at, you know, 500 million Euros worth of armaments being sent by the European Union. So, you know, I never thought I'd see this day, but remember, crisis drives us forward. - When you look at what that all means for the future of Europe, how has Europe changed? And are any of these changes permanent in your view? - I think every change that happens in the European Union is permanent. You know how things go, integration in one area leads to pressure to integrate another one. So, if we take the last three crisis, which has driven change, one was the financial and Euro crisis, took four years to set up the European stability mechanism, banking union and so on. Then we had COVID, took four months to set up the biggest rescue package in European history and now, we're seeing the realization of a European foreign security and defense policy, a thing that people just used to talk about now happening because of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. - Does that also include countries like Finland and Sweden? I mean, it's been quite startling to me to see the percentages of popular support for NATO that we've never seen in history from your country and from Sweden. Is that an inevitability at this point now? - Yeah, definitely. I guess two answers on that. The first one is that, I think there seems to be some misunderstandings, especially about the Finnish position, post-Cold War. I mean, we were neutral during the Cold War, but it wasn't ideological neutrality, it was neutrality - No, it was imposed. - Because of necessity. - It was imposed. - Exactly, you know, we had to, we had to, but when we had the chance to then join the European institutions where we really belong, like the European Union, we immediately did it and we forged a very close relationship with NATO. Now, the second answer is, I think the opinion polls in Finland on NATO, and people have to understand, they've reversed. They used to be 50% against, 20 in favor. Now they're 50 in favor, 20 against and they're driven basically by what I call by what I call 'rational fear.' So there's this fear, what is Russia going to do next? And the rationality behind it is, okay, we don't want to be alone anymore, we need to go into NATO. So I fully understand the reaction of the Finnish public and also, of course, the Swedish public. - I notice also the reaction of the Russian government, the foreign ministry spokesperson saying that there would be both diplomatic and military responses, consequences from Russia if the Finns and the Swedes were to decide to take that step. - Finland and Sweden should not base their security based on damaging security of other countries and their accession to NATO can have detrimental consequences and face some military and political consequences. - How do you read that? - Well, you know, we Finns are pretty calm, cool and collected and our reaction is to say that, well, there's nothing new in that. We've heard it from Putin before, we've heard it from Sergey Lavrov before, now we heard it from the spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry and our answer is, well, I mean, we fully understand your take, but the truth is that, we are a sovereign, independent nation state and take our own security political decisions. You have to remember that Putin has three aims at the moment. Number one, invade and annex Ukraine. Number two, push back the frontiers of NATO to where they were around the Cold War. So get, you know, Central and Eastern Europe out of NATO and then number three, prevent Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. I'm afraid he's going to fail in all three. - Yeah, I was just about to say, as you're going through those, none of those, not only does it look like they're not going to happen, but indeed, Putin's position on all three arguably are likely to be materially worse because of this invasion. You agree with that? - Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, a lot of people talk about the rationality or irrationality of Putin. From his perspective, he's behaving very rationally, but the outcome is the exact opposite, what he was trying to achieve. So his vision is of a single historic Russia, you know, bring in Belarus, Ukraine, perhaps a little bit beyond, be the great leader with a legacy of, you know, Ivan The Terrible, Peter The Great or Stalin. And in one week, in seven days, he basically achieved all the opposite. Number one, he wanted the Russification of Ukraine. Well, it's about as Europeanized at the moment and they ain't going back. Number two, he wanted a un-united European Union. Never seen it more united. He wanted to destroy the Transatlantic partnership. Well, it's Transatlantic 2.0 and then some. Then he wanted to destroy NATO. Well, NATO now has a purpose again and on top of that, he wanted to see Finland and Sweden out of NATO, and with his actions, he's probably caused a permanent change in public opinion and I think the train has left the station, Finland is moving toward full NATO membership. It's not going to happen today, it's not going to happen next week, but it will eventually happen. - And on top of all of that, his economy is falling apart too. So, I mean, given all of that, do you think it is incumbent on the West or smart for the West to try to find some kind of avenue for climb down for Putin? - Well, you know, I had the opportunity to mediate peace in Georgia in 2008, I was Finnish Foreign Minister at the time and Chairman of the OSC. So Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister of France and I went in to Tbilisi and then later to Moscow to broker a five-piece or five-point ceasefire agreement. That was easy to do, we did it, well, easy isn't easy, but we did it in five days. In this particular case, we are beyond the point of no return. Will there be an escape route for Putin? I would argue, no. I mean, it's impossible. The only thing that he understands is power and force, I'm afraid, he's not going to back down. So, you know, what we need to see eventually I hope is regime change happening from the inside. The problem, of course, there is that historically when there's regime change in Russia, you get the hardliners in first. That's what happened in 1991. So we don't want that. It's after all a country that does have nuclear weapons. So to try to get some kind of pathway out for Putin, you know, he can't lose face in front of his own. So therefore, it's going to be very difficult to find a solution on that. - Now, a lot of people say that he can't lose face, but at the same time, of course, Putin completely controls the narrative domestically, much more so than any American or European President, he's gotten rid of all the Western media, he's gotten rid of all the local Russian independent media, can't he sell whatever story he wants to sell? I mean, there are a lot of Russians right now that believe that Ukraine was engaged in acts of genocide against Russians in the Donbas, something that is obviously ridiculously untrue. - Yeah, I mean, I guess the starting point here is to understand that Russia has always, ever since the Romanovs came in, the Czar family, after an era of unrest and un-peace, if you will, they've been led by a strong leader and the system is very hierarchical. You have the leader and then after that, you have sort of a pyramid of his or her princes. They sort of make sure and back up that the leader can do whatever he wants to. So the narrative in Russian history has always been that the rest of the world is out to get us. So that the Russia, the biggest country in the world geographically is somehow surrounded by enemies and throughout history, the enemies have varied from, you know, the Mongols to the Japanese to the Europeans, to the Americans and right now to NATO. So yeah, I'm sure he can push that narrative, but at the same time, you know, we do live in a connected world and at the end of the day, Russians will get the information in. Right now, they don't have it. The narrative is crude. Final point on that, remember that for Russia, there are three words for truth and one of them is tactical truth, pravda, and that basically means that you can give not only a white lie, but a blatant lie, as long as it's tactically useful for the good of the whole. In other words, Russia. That's why the Russians are now believing in the propaganda that they hear. - When you think about where the world is going to be in the next 10 years compared to the last 30, how dramatically different does it look, for the average European? - Remember, Finns are not over dramatic and quite often I say that, we human beings have a tendency to do three things. One, we over-rationalize the past, two, we overdramatize the present and three, we underestimate the future. So, when you ask me to look into the future in a nondramatic fashion for the next 10 years, my answer is that this is the 1914, 1939, 1989 moment of our generation and by that, I mean to say that it is the end of the Cold War, but what we don't know, is this a step back into a world that used to exist during the Cold War or are we able to detach ourselves from escalation, from military conflict and move on? What I'm sure about out in the next 10 years is that, if Putin is there, Russia will be utterly, completely and fully isolated. The sanctions are there in the economic field, in finance, in energy, in transport, in sport, in culture, in anything that you can imagine. So we're basically getting this enormous North Korea or Iran or South Africa when they had sanctions on. That is the future that I predict for the next 10 years from a Western perspective. - Now, I'm glad you said from a Western perspective because of course, if we look at the next 10 years, the largest economy in the world is likely to be China and China's view on Russia is not at all to isolate them, but rather to do more business, rather for them to be more dependent economically, technologically, certainly in terms of energy sale. I mean, how much do these old analogies even remotely apply when the largest economy in the world and a lot of other developing countries, the Indians, I mean the Gulf States are not taking Biden's call, but talking to Putin in the last week, I mean, this is not a world where the Americans and Europeans are calling the shots in the way that it was in those previous sort of tipping point geopolitical moments that you mentioned. - Yeah, sure. Perhaps, you know, two observations. One, a global one, and then second one in China. The global one is that we in the West, whatever that means, let's include, say Japan and Australia, New Zealand, you know, South Korea, South Africa in that, we in the West have to understand that this is not about West versus Russia, right? It is more about the global institutional order, the liberal order. What is the resilience of the international institutions that were created in the post-World War II era, whether it's the UN, NATO, the EU, the WTO, you name it, you know, what do we do with those institutions? How do we pivot them to represent what the world is today? Why do we have a security council in which Russia is still a member? Okay, they have nuclear weapons, I understand, but you know, why don't we have other countries there? The second point is to say on China, listen, China's probably right now thinking two things. One, we wanted to focus on the internal affairs. You know, we wanted to focus on our party conference in October, November, the continuation of Xi Jinping, you know, dealing with COVID, perhaps turning economically a little bit inward, et cetera, et cetera. Then at the same time, the sort of slightly cheeky side is saying, well, you know, this sort of instability in Europe is not necessarily a bad thing because right now, the focus is not so much on the tension between the U.S. and China. It's more on the tension between Russia and the U.S. Then my final point on this is to say, do not overestimate the appetite for China to deal with Russia. They might want to use Russia as a little sort of, you know, card in a game, in the sense that the Russian economy is, it's going to, it's now about two, two and a half percent of the world economy, so we're talking, you know, Netherlands, Spain type of size. In the future, it's going to be smaller. The only thing that it has is natural resources, it's got geographic size and then it's got military power. So, you know, the natural business partner, China, is not Russia, and on top of that, with value change, with the Belt and Road Initiative, it's a hell of a lot more dependent, China is, on Europe and the United States than it is on Russia. Of course, you can say that, yes, China can now play the game and I'm sure they will, but don't think for one minute that, you know, the big partnership in the future is going to be China and Russia. - Alexander Stubb, I really appreciate your willingness to under-dramatize the future of this conflict for everyone out there. It's a great service, and I want to thank you for joining us today. - My pleasure, thanks a lot, thanks for having me. (upbeat music) - The war in Ukraine is at its core, of course, a human tragedy, and that's nowhere more evident than at two train stations. One in Berlin, the other in Kyiv. GZERO's Alex Kliment reports. - [Alex] Hour after hour, day after day, trains from the East arrive here at Berlin's main station, each carrying hundreds of refugees from the war in Ukraine. (announcer speaks in foreign language) In the three weeks since Russia's invasion began, more than two million people have fled to neighboring countries like Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. And so far, more than 120,000 of them have made their way onwards to Germany. Most of the refugees are women and children. That's because all Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are required to stay behind and fight. German volunteers are at the station around the clock, helping to welcome and orient the new arrivals. - Our main purpose is to let people know that they're welcome here and also to tell them that it's okay, that they can rest and that they can take a second, that there's food and toilets and something to drink, there's toys for the kids. It's great to see that people care so much, but the volunteer coordinators are totally exhausted. All the people working back there, it seems like they've been there the last four days nonstop and they haven't slept in three days. - [Announcer] Here at the Ukrainian Embassy in Berlin, recently arrived refugees have lined up to get their COVID shots. Some of them shared harrowing stories of escape from the war. - [Alex] And while many of them were relieved to have made it here safely, they were also worried about their loved ones who are braving a worsening situation back home. Kristina Berdynskykh is a journalist from Kyiv who decided to stay there. She spoke to us from her temporary new home, one of the Metro stations that have become makeshift bomb shelter for thousands of people in the Ukrainian capital. Meanwhile, back in Berlin, the Ukrainians who have fled the war had a simple message. - [Alex] For GZERO World, I'm Alex Kliment. That’s our show this week, come back next week. If you like what you see, or even you don’t but you kind of know you need to understand what’s happening in Ukraine because it is a new cold war and it's kind of important. Why don’t you take a minute to sign up for GZERO’s most excellent morning newsletter, it’s called Signal.
