The Just Security Podcast

Peace Diplomacy and the Russo-Ukraine War

• Just Security • Season 1 • Episode 113

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Now in its third year, the Russo-Ukraine War has upended the post-Cold War security landscape, exposing deep fractures in the global balance of power. 

As western unity frays and U.S. diplomacy shifts under President Trump, the war has become a flashpoint for competing visions of the international order. 

This week, the European Union gave Russia an ultimatum: accept a proposed ceasefire or face expanded sanctions—just days ahead of a potential round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday. The stakes are high, and the choices made this week could reshape not only the trajectory of the war but the future of global security.

How should we understand the prospects for a sustainable peace in Ukraine amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics and continued battlefield uncertainty? 

To help make sense of these developments, Just Security Senior Fellow and Director of the Oxford Programme for Cyber and Tech Policy, Brianna Rosen, sat down with Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London and Professor Janina Dill, Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. 

This conversation was part of the Calleva-Airey Neave Global Security Seminar Series at the University of Oxford. 

Show Notes: 

Brianna Rosen: Now in its third year, the Russo-Ukraine war has upended the post-Cold War security landscape, exposing deep fractures in the global balance of power. As Western unity frays and US diplomacy shifts under President Trump, the war has become a flashpoint for competing visions of the international order. This week, the European Union gave Russia an ultimatum: accept a proposed ceasefire or face expanded sanctions, just days ahead of a potential round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday. The stakes are high, and the choices made this week could reshape not only the trajectory of the war but the future of global security. How should we understand the prospects for sustainable peace in Ukraine, amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics and continued battlefield uncertainty? 

To help us make sense of these developments, I sat down with Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London, and Professor Janina Dill, Dame Louise Richardson Chair in Global Security at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government. This conversation was part of the Calleva-Airey Neave Global Security Seminar Series at the University of Oxford. I'm your host, Dr. Brianna Rosen, Senior Fellow at Just Security and Director of the Oxford Programme for Cyber and Tech Policy. Welcome to the Just Security Podcast.

Janina Dill: The conflict is fast evolving, the conflict that we're concerned with tonight. And even just today, the U.S. has given Russia an ultimatum to respond to the ceasefire agreement with Ukraine by the end of the day. This is, you know, one salvo in a long exchange of attempts by either side to get the other one to either agree to an agreement or to show it up as not wishing to agree to an agreement. You have previously emphasized the importance of distinguishing between a ceasefire, important as it is on moral grounds and to protect the civilian population, to distinguish that from a comprehensive agreement. What are the main risks in your view of pursuing a ceasefire and the way it is currently pursued without a clear path towards that actually translating into a durable political settlement? 

Sir Lawrence Freedman: Well, you've more or less said it in the question. The problem is, well, you can't have a peace settlement without a ceasefire, so that's prior. You need that. But then if you don't have a political settlement, then the problem doesn't go away, it's not resolved. So we've just spent a few days worrying about India and Pakistan and a ceasefire there was reached in January 1949. The conflict over Kashmir is still not resolved. 1953, Korea ceasefire armies disagreed, still not resolved, and still dangerous. So that's the problem, if you can't go beyond it. 

On the other hand, it's very difficult to get a peace settlement. And my view on the current round of activity from the start of the Trump administration is that not only was it clear that Trump was not really focused much beyond a ceasefire, but that the Russian demands for peace settlement were totally unobtainable. And I think people paid a lot of attention to whether Ukraine was prepared to give up territory, which it may not have much choice about, but would only be de facto rather than de jure and not being a member of NATO, which raises questions of security guarantees, and that sort of dominated the discussion. 

But they didn't look at what the Russians were asking for. They were asking for territory which they had failed to take by force of arms to be handed over to them. They were looking for the original objectives of demilitarization and denazification, which essentially means both regime change and disarmament, as well as neutrality. And also what they call the root causes of a change in security order in Europe. Now, if they sort of blasted through in a blitzkrieg way through Ukraine into the Baltic states, they might have been in a position to demand all of those things, but they weren't, and they're not, and that, I think, is actually the real problem that we've got. It's not that there's no basis for some sort of conversation on how you move on and try to find a way forward, but the territorial issue will always be difficult. 

But Russia wants a different sort of Ukraine, to some extent, that’s subjugated to Russia. It's not going to get that and Trump, even if he wanted to, he couldn't deliver it. So until Putin finds a way to back off, then all you're going to get is a ceasefire, and his position has been—and that's why this moment is so tense that you don't have talks. You have to have the talks, have to have the big issues settled before you get a ceasefire, and again, it's not going to happen. 

Janina: So we have these precedents of ceasefires basically just freezing conflicts. And in some sense, you could say, well, that is a type of a political settlement, right? It simply freezes the status quo. Potentially this isn't even the worst possible outcome of a ceasefire without a long term plan, right? But you're in some sense hinting at the notion that a ceasefire conceived like that could simply give one party here, Russia, the chance to then come back or realize much bigger demands that lead to just an escalated conflict. 

Sir Lawrence: Yeah. I mean, there are a number of frozen conflicts around in the former Soviet Union, Georgia, Moldova, and so on. They're not always that frozen. And you know, as we've seen with Kashmir, there's been goodness knows how many wars and and skirmishes and terrorist outrages and whatever since 1949, the war obviously that led to the original ceasefire. So I don't think they'll necessarily stay frozen. And of course, there was a sort of frozen conflict with Ukraine after 2014, ‘15, the annexation of Crimea, but then all the activity in the Donbas led to the Minsk agreements of September 14 and February 15, which sort of contained the fighting but certainly didn't stop it, thousands still died in the years after that. 

And that led us to a sort of dissatisfaction on both sides. Nobody's happy with it. Ukraine was sort of living with it, and Putin found that frustrating, kind of frustrating that the Ukrainians had sort of work around to the loss of these two enclaves that were meant that he was actually having to subsidize these sort of statelets without really getting a real control over Kyiv, which is what he wanted. 

Janina: I will get to, and I want to emphasize here that one of the critical questions for us to figure out is, what does it take, from the point of view of Ukraine, to keep Ukraine secure? But before I get to it, I would like to pick up on what you said, that basically Putin is making political demands that are entirely out of touch with battlefield reality and with a military performance on the part of Russia. What do we make of that? Is that simply the notion that this—is it a stalling tactic? If you make completely impossible demands, no one thinks it's even worth sitting down, he can get out of peace talks. What is, or is it delusion? What is behind that?

Sir Lawrence: Number of things. I mean, I think what happened was, Putin launched this with some political objective, which is pretty clear. It also became pretty clear that the original plan was misconceived and was becoming an embarrassment, and it was being, forces were being pushed back. And then there was a big turning point, which I think was as important as February 22, which is September 22 when Putin, in a sense, after his forces had been pushed back in the Kharkiv region, he doubled down, doing a number of things. He expanded, in a way absurdly, his demands with these sort of fake referendums and then claims on not just Crimea or even Luhansk and Donetsk or Donbas, but on Kherson, Zaporizhzhia. Secondly, mobilization, mass mobilization, not complete mobilization but pretty extensive, which continues, put the economy more on a war footing, change the command structure, started attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, all of these things extended the war. 

And I think, I sort of came to the conclusion that—and I think that this is still valid, that Putin, to some extent, was going to find it harder to end the war than it was to keep it going. He put a situation that this could roll over, whereas ending the war would raise questions about why the political objectives had not been met, and the longer it went on, the harder I think this became for him. And I think last year, which was a very difficult year for Ukraine, I think Putin thought he could win it, and I think a lot of other people did, certainly in the spring of last year, when Congress was not passing the supplemental bill, when Ukraine was being—was really suffering shortages on artillery ammunition, advances and so on, really struggling at times. And Putin clearly thought it was coming to him and the demands that he's following now, the formula he's following now, were set back down in June last year. 

So, that's what I think. He thought it was going his way, or at least if it was going to end, at least it'll end on his terms. I think what's happened since is two things. First, despite what you read in the papers about Russian initiatives and Russian momentum, they've had a miserable performance. Of course, they've taken—I mean, sheer weight of effort they've taken quite a bit of more Ukrainian territory, but about 0.1 percent in the end, not a lot, a sliver, but they've battered and ruined it in the process, as they have much else of Ukrainian territory that they've taken. It's not a great prize at the end of this. So an enormous cost and horrendous casualties, and obviously costing the Ukrainians. But the tactics have been to throw people at Ukrainian lines. 

And gradually, the Ukrainian position strengthened. By late last year, you could start to see this happening, and the Russian offensive started to stall. Now it's picked up again, because summer is coming, the ground hardens, more foliage, more cover, but it's been a pretty poor performance. Now they can keep on going. They've got a further problem, which is the economy. I'm always wary about assuming that the economy will sort of decide this. And of course, despite expectations about sanctions and so on, the economy did really well, first because the oil prices were sky high and secondly, because the economy was put on a war footing, so you had stimulated demand throughout the economy, and so it boomed for a couple of years. But then again, late last year, you start to see the price: high labor shortages, inflation officially around 11 percent in key areas, many would say it's twice that; in interest rates, 21 percent, no investment into the civilian sector, and now, because of Trump's attempt to crash the global economy, you've got oil price at a level that the Russians have flagged themselves as being problematic. 

Now, the news about sort of Trump's retreat on the trade deal with China and so on may help the oil price to recover a bit, but I'm not sure it will that much. So you have this additional pressure on Putin. And I think the final thing, sorry I'm talking too much, but just the final thing is this is Putin's best chance of a deal. Who's going to get a deal? Trump is by far the most sympathetic president he's going to have. And a lot of things that have been said by Trump, even more so by Steve Witkoff, is all purpose envoy, pretty favorable to Russia. And if he doesn't take advantage of this, he's a bit stuck, hence the ultimatums and so on of today. It could get worse. So I think—I hesitate to say this is a moment of truth for Putin, because these moments come and go, but it indicates that, contrary to many people's expectations, this is not turning out as good for Putin as he thought it might. 

Janina: Of course, we have in reverse, the sense that under a second Trump presidency, Ukraine has an uphill battle to get what it needs, right. And so we haven't heard many maximalist demands from the Ukrainian camp. But if you could just briefly take us into the geopolitics of what is the minimum package of, say, security guarantees, alliances, you know, sovereign defense capabilities and potentially territory that Ukraine needs from any kind of settlement for that to actually be sustainable in terms of preserving its national survival for the long term.

Sir Lawrence: Yeah, which is difficult. All I've said about Russia, I mean, up till certainly mid ’23, you'd have said Ukraine is the one with no interest in a ceasefire, it really wants to recover its territory, and that's its objective. It wants to watch all its territory back. It's not much more complicated than that, but it wants its territory back and to do the things that sovereign and independent states are allowed to do, including joining alliances. So it was quite simple and not outlandish but difficult to achieve when 20 percent of your territory is controlled by Russia and you're under a lot of pressure. And the expectation is, if Russia fails this time, they'll be back for more in the future.

So, that's in a sense the Ukrainian problem. And I think Zelenskyy has had to take a pretty pragmatic approach to this. First, Ukraine probably needs a ceasefire. I mean, it's tired, it's weary, it's been battered, it's traumatized in some ways, they've done amazingly well. And they've become very innovative in their tactics, in their technologies, the use of drones and so on, more so than the Russians, but it's tough. So—like the Russians as well. I mean, both sides could probably do with a bit of relief. Secondly, I think the failure of the counteroffensive in 2023 which was probably built up in a rather exaggerated way, and unfortunately it was pretty obvious where it was going to go, means that it's quite hard to generate expectations of a major push to liberate territory. It's not impossible sometime in the future, but it's hard at the moment. 

And you've got the further problem that the territory itself is a complete mess, which is—and that’s not an argument for not liberating it at all. It's a problem in some ways, for Putin as his prize, because it's full of an exploded ordnance, it's depopulated, it's economically inactive. It's a real problem. So they'd like it back, but the priority to some extent at the moment is survival. And, you know, they've been through another winter of attacks on critical infrastructure. There have been more attacks recently on residences. I think the Russians are being a bit less—not very careful, shall we say, in what they attack, and these are concerning. So, I think the Ukrainian position is quite—they could cease fire without them having to recognize de jure Russian control of their territory. Even just Crimea is something they can, they'll live with for the moment. Security guarantees is a difficult phrase. I mean, nothing's guaranteed. There's always a small print. And clearly they'd like to be members of NATO, which has all sorts of other advantages. That's not on, probably for the moment. And we've had this sort of British, French Coalition of the willing effort, which I wouldn't dismiss. I think it was put together in a hurry because it looked like Trump was going to force through a deal with Putin very quickly. Now, that's less clear that the deal would be as one sided as feared. There's a bit more time to think about that. And I think—so the original ideas, it was never going to be peacekeepers, that was always the wrong phrase, because that suggests, sort of, blue helmets.

Janina: Tripwire.

Sir Lawrence: Well, a tripwire is different, again. So the peacekeepers are blue helmets, likely sufficient weapons just for self defense, easily walked over, as has happened in similar situations in the past. The idea of a tripwire is you just have a few forces there, but then British and French, even if they can't be American, maybe German, Polish, whatever, and as soon as they get killed, the wire is tripped. Well, it's not a particularly comfortable way to approach things, and you then still got to work out what you do when the wire is tripped. So I think—and the problem is, if you want to get a more substantial force, you need a lot of troops, because to have—this is lower than people spoke about. Just have 10,000 troops. You need another 10,000 training, and then you need another 10,000 who've been there in the recovery. So you need 30,000 for every 10,000. And this doesn't necessarily make a big difference. 

So, I think the thinking now is, just build up the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian defense industry is pretty impressive now, and you've got them—got the people, despite all the problems they've had with mobilization, so you can do that, so the front line is strengthened. But if you're coming in saying there’s a no fly zone, it's a perfectly reasonable thing to have once you've got a ceasefire, because you're not saying to the Russians, we see you flying around, if you don't stop doing that, we're going to be there. We're saying there's been a ceasefire, but you'll understand that we're going to monitor the air space for Ukraine, that sort of thing you could imagine. More maritime support, and possibly to have some troops on the ground, but into the west on training missions and so on. So, you could imagine that, and it has a sort of deterrent effect, because it complicates Russian calculations. But you know, the fact is that it's going to take a lot for Russia to get Ukraine out of its system. And I think, well, now the best predictor of a future war is a past war. And it would be nice to think that you could bring all of this to a peaceful conclusion, and they could work out even under conditions of a ceasefire, but it's hard to be optimistic on that. 

Janina: So in a world of kind of rapidly shifting geopolitical alliances and great power positioning, it arguably always seems that sovereign defense capabilities outrank the value of any kind of security guarantee, but we've been inching towards talking much more about battlefield dynamics, rather than the sort of grand geopolitics. And if we think about the possibilities and constraints on settlement, there's sort of a push and a pull, a pull from above in terms of geopolitical dynamics, and then a push from below in terms of how the battlefield unfolds. And I'd like to hand it over here to Brianna to ask a couple of questions about that aspect. 

Brianna: Yeah, thank you. And I'd love to pick up more on an interesting point that you raised earlier, Sir Lawrence, which is that it's easier for Russia to continue the war than to end it on less-than-favorable terms, which of course raises the prospect of yet another perpetual or forever war that continues for quite a long time. So, I want to ask you a little bit about the timing in all of this: is the timing on Russia or Ukraine’s side? Because in the past, people have argued that the timing is on Ukraine’s side, because given sustained Western support and Russia's eventual exhaustion, as the theory goes, they can eventually meet their objectives, whereas others have argued that Russia's strategy of attrition, combined with the shifting geopolitical alliances and the shifting U.S. position post Trump, ultimately gives Russia the advantage. 

But now, as we're going into this week with the potential of a very significant window of negotiations opening on Thursday in Istanbul, how do you see the balance of strategic patience—how has it evolved over the past few months? And what does this reveal, in your view, about the future trajectory of the war, particularly as we look towards the summer and there's a potential closing window of opportunity there for Ukraine? What's the timing of all of this? 

Sir Lawrence: So I think the Ukrainian position gets stronger this year, just in terms of European production. I mean, the Americans have not—in the last week or so, there's been a couple of contracts, so it doesn't seem to be the case that the Trump administration is ruling out any more support. It just makes—somebody else may have to pay for it, that's the way Trump thinks. But it's not just sort of ruled out. And the idea, or what we saw very briefly after the sort of dreadful meeting in the Oval Office, what we saw then, what were the real problems with intelligence being cut off and so on. So it's important that it's avoided  in the future. 

So, I think Ukraine's position steadily improves, but the production in Europe has been very disappointing despite, you know, we can't say—we've been in this for three years, and it's improving, it’s better than it was, stuff’s being produced. Some countries are better than others, but it's really taken time. So I think the assumption is, in the next six months, Ukraine could do better. Also, Ukraine is producing more longer range systems. They haven't used them, as the Russians have used them. They've attacked oil refineries and command centers and air defenses, some ammunition depots, and so on. All of which is good. It is a problem for Putin, as you saw, with all the excitement about the parade the other day, that there’d be fireworks above Moscow while Putin was welcoming Xi and his other guests to his victory parade. So, Ukraine can unnerve the Russians in that war. It's not war-winning, but it makes a difference. So I think—Russia started this war. In the end, it's very difficult to end it without Russia saying, okay, this has gone about as far as it's going to go, and accepting the futility of the exercise. My concern is that's a very hard thing for Russia to do, and I've got no better insight than anybody else to discussions in the Kremlin but it's notable that over the last couple of months, they haven't moved an inch on any key positions. Let's give a good example, because I think this is very critical as to how much Trump initially misunderstood the Russian position. So, when all this stuff was going on about security guarantees in the European force and so on, and Macron and Starmer went to see Trump, both of them, you know, both of them—Trump said, oh, I think the Russians would be fine with that. And Peskov, you know, sort of fell over himself getting to the microphone, ‘No no no, that's not what we want at all, we don't want any European forces in Ukraine.’ 


And I think, you know, Trump had an image of what the Russians wanted and would accept, which conformed with his views about what they should want and accept. But unfortunately, the disconnect was substantial, and I think now that's become apparent, and that's why we've got the Americans sort of stepping up pressure a bit. So in the end, we're waiting for the Russians to conclude that, in the end, this isn't going anywhere, and the costs—human, political, social, economic—are just not worth it anymore. It's about futility as much as defeat. I think the Ukrainians keep pressure. They can show resilience. They'll keep going. Ukrainians, they never give you any doubt that they'll keep going, however tough it is, and the lack of Russian progress and the fact that the major cities that you might expect them to go in for, like Odessa, have stayed well out of reach. All of that should encourage Russians to feel this sense of futility, but until they do, I'm not quite sure how you force the issue.

Brianna: And what leverage do you think the Trump administration still has at this point, after some of the missteps that they made early on that you mentioned, to push both sides towards a negotiated solution? Because obviously there's the critical mineral deals you mentioned, the pause in strategic intelligence sharing, which was then quickly resumed on the Ukraine side. But what leverage do they have, both with Ukraine and Russia, to really move the needle on this further than they have thus far?

Sir Lawrence: I feel the Ukrainians—I mean Ukrainians, it's tough for them, but I think they got good support from the Europeans, some good advice as well. Understood that if Trump thought that a deal did involve basically a ceasefire, then they should agree to it and put the onus on the Russians not to agree. I think that was quite an important step for them to take, and that was one of the ways they got out of the problems coming from the Oval Office meeting. 

Secondly, the mineral deal, which is nothing in particular, because it's going to take a long time before companies are going to go in there and start testing. But it wasn't an onerous, as onerous a deal anyways, it looked like it might be to start with, and Trump was happy to have a deal. So, I think to that extent, the Ukrainians have done enough. I mean, I think you know, if they, if they tried to take out Putin, tempting though that might have been, that one might—even Trump might have thought that a bit provocative, so, but they didn't do that. So, I think the Ukrainians, for the moment, are not in a bad place with the administration, but that involves, you know, accepting that it’s going to be hard for them to get back their lost territory. 

I think for Russia, I think the prize, in part, was a restoration, normalization of relations with the U.S., which they may get some progress on, nonetheless, some economic deals. But I think, you know, Trump always believes there's more in the economics than there actually is, and U.S. trade with Russia is not that great. Which is one reason beforehand, which is one reason why he couldn't promise to ease sanctions without the Europeans. So, I think they had—and they believed, and you would believe given what Trump has said in the past, and what reported to have said coming into this administration, about NATO and so on, that they could get a rewriting of the European Security Order. I think that, you know, when root causes, that's what they wanted. But it hasn't quite worked out for them yet. 

And it comes back to the point I was making, is the problem of: this is their best chance, that somebody must—and I think the desperation they're showing to find ways of demonstrating a concern for peace with the three-day ceasefire, the offer of direct talks and so on, is a way of trying to demonstrate that without actually abandoning any of their positions. And there's no, you know, it's worth noting, as far as the talks in Turkey are concerned: this is symbolic for the Russians, because they believe, on April 22 there was almost a deal, which I think is part of the mythology of the conflict. They hadn't talked about territory at all then, they were leaving that for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, they talked about neutrality and disarmament. But at the time the Ukrainians were reeling and desperately trying to cope with the situation, and then you got the revelations about Bucha and atrocities and so on, and Ukrainian opinion hardened, and also they realized they weren't actually doing that badly. So that's why, you know, people believed it was all going fine until Boris Johnson came in and told Zelenskyy that he mustn't do it. Absolutely this was a Ukrainian decision, that this was not going anywhere. So, you know, Peskov has spoken about potential talks in Turkey as picking up. Were the ones left off before in Turkey, and I think that's completely unrealistic. 

Brianna: I want to get in a little bit to the role of technology in shaping battlefield dynamics. But before we do that, I just want to touch a little bit on something we haven't talked about, which is that, as with most conflicts, this is not simply a war between Russia and Ukraine. There are many other players involved, and we talk a lot about the U.S., E.U., and NATO, but it's not just the West. There are many nonwestern players involved: China, Iran for some, Turkey hosting the talks potentially this week, North Korea as well. Can you talk a little bit about the role that nonwestern powers are playing in this conflict, and how that's shaping evolving notions of deterrence and diplomacy as the war goes on?

Sir Lawrence: Well, the Russians would have had trouble without the North Koreans and the Iranians, and they're still very important suppliers. How good their stuff is on the North Korean side, I don't know, but a lot of their artillery shells come from North Korea. To be fair, a lot of Ukraine’s came from South Korea, because these are two countries frozen in conflict, which they have a supply. They have the supplies. So China is interesting, because China, unlike North Korea, has not been a wholehearted supporter of the Russian position. It has relations with Ukraine, it was quite a major trading partner with Ukraine before the full scale invasion. And interestingly, in the notorious General Assembly vote on the anniversary of the war, where the U.S. voted with Russia and North Korea, China abstained. And so they've never quite approved of the annexations or anything like that. They don't support that. 

On the other hand, they're close to Russia. They want to keep close to Russia. They don't want Putin to fail. And I think that's affecting the way that they conduct themselves. They're very important to Russia economically, less important, probably with some of the microchips and so on, less important in other respects. And I thought they might play some sort of, try to play some sort of diplomatic role, but they haven't particularly, and others who have expressed interest, like the South Africans and the Saudis and so on, who hosted, you know, who hosted the talks earlier in the year, haven't played much more of an independent role in this. I think it's a—-there's a sort of a general line that the Global South is more supportive of Russia, that's just not backed up by any vote. What is the case is they're not particularly supportive of the West, and they think we're hypocrites. And, you know, complain about, talk about our problems, they don't talk about Africa or Sudan or whatever. So I think there's an element of that, and there's some truth in it. We don't talk enough about Sudan or lots of things going on in Africa that are as costly and loss of life and so on. But it doesn't mean to say that they've got particular sympathy or respect for the Russian position—as you can see in the General Assembly, they voted to either abstain or vote with Ukraine. 

So I think their background, I don't think they're going to make a major difference. Iran I think is quite an interesting one to watch, because Iran is weak at the moment. It's had a dreadful year, with its proxies being battered, and its economy is in a mess. The sort of clerical regime is scared of its own civil society now. And there is a possibility of a deal with the Americans on nuclear, again, a different administration, you might have some confidence that they would not only try and get a deal, but if they do, try and push the Iranians on the help they're giving to the Russians, I'm not convinced they'll do that, but it's just an indication—that's one of the sort more fragile parts of the pro-Russian coalition. 

On the European side, given all—what used to be said about Ukraine fatigue and so on, I think the Ukraine, the European governments, the main ones, have realized the stakes are very high here. You wish they could have done more or quicker doing it, but have hung in there, and they'll keep Ukraine going. And I think critically—and again, you know geopolitical moments, a moment when you might—and in the past, the Europeans and the Americans would fall over each other to align their positions, just hasn't happened this time. It's understood that the Europeans will be much more supportive of Ukraine, and somehow they've managed to keep talking with the Americans and stop the Americans going completely in the other direction. So it's not about—it's not great, but it's not about record. And you've obviously got some figures in all of this who are all balanced, Fico, more pro-Russian. But so far, the core European position has held. 

Brianna: And of course, in terms of the prospects for the Trump administration pressuring Iran on this, it is important to bear in mind that it was this administration that left the Iran nuclear deal unilaterally in the first place. So that's a whole other conversation we could have. 

Sir Lawrence: The brilliance of Trump's deal making. 

Brianna: I wanted to touch briefly on a point that you alluded to earlier, about the role of technology in shaping battlefield dynamics and how Ukraine has become really a testing ground for emerging technologies ranging from AI-enabled tools to drone swarms to precision guided artillery and new evolving dynamics in cyber warfare. So this is a really well known fact that's analyzed quite a bit, but beyond tactical advantages—and I really want to get your views on this as a strategic military thinker, how are these technical tools transforming decision making at the strategic level and the traditional logics of escalation, deterrence, and control? That's something that I feel is really under explored in this debate.

Sir Lawrence: That's an interesting question. I mean, first, I think the nuclear issue is interesting. We haven't talked about—

Brianna: We will.

Sir Lawrence: I think the sort of assumption of the automaticity of escalation was always overdone. I think if Putin was going to start the first nuclear war since 1945 he wouldn't do so with a few short range weapons, low yield on territories claimed for himself. It just stuck me as being, people have called it preemptive panic about what could happen. That Putin was very clear on his red light, If NATO forces had been fighting side by side with Ukrainian forces, that would be a different situation, although even then, I'm not wholly convinced he would have gone nuclear but at least the issue was more likely to arise then. 

So, I think we overstated the nuclear issue. I think it's important, it's contained the conflict, but it hasn't, so far at least, it hasn't gone nuclear. I think what's happened is the Ukrainians have developed options which to start with—all strategies. It's basically defense. I mean, you're just scrambling to survive. I mean, the first decision Zelenskyy had to take was whether to stay in Kyiv or go to the west—I mean, to Lviv or even across the border. And then over time, you develop options. And I think Zelenskyy is frustrated he doesn't have more offensive options, hence why they tried Kursk and so on, which worked for a bit, not sort of over. So I think there was—but the ways of attacking Russian soil and the ways of doing it. So we've got more options than before. I think command has been a consistent problem for the Ukrainians. They’ve struggled to manage operations almost above company level, certainly not at sort of divisional level, and that's been a problem. And as partly systems, partly training, there's some tensions in the Ukrainian military between sort of, as with Russian, sort of Soviet style, top down command systems, and the need for much more flexible, giving more discretion to local commanders, mission command, as we would call it. So I think there’s lots of problems, which I think the Ukrainians actually started to make some progress on, but it took a long time. So I think it's affecting them. Clearly, what's interesting, and I think important about the technology, is they seemed—you know, one of the things these wars bring home to you is the importance of mass. 

We talk about precision systems and so, but they're expensive and you have limited numbers of them. Mass is important. And what they've done—and artillery provides you with the degree, they just need the shells to keep on coming, the artillery pieces, and they've done that with drones. So, you just have thousands and thousands of expendable drones being used in all sorts of different roles. And that means that a lot of decision making has to be decentralized because you've got local commanders, they've got sort of proper units now, somebody getting the feeds from the imagery that gets picked up from drones, but from elsewhere, somebody's got picking up targets and so on. 

And the AI is helping, working out how available systems can be linked to available targets. So, they've got quite good at this, but it requires a lot of decentralized decision making. And that again creates a problem if you're trying to manage things across a sort of a wide front. And it's why I think a lot of the—you know, you hear reports of, there's been one hundred engagements today and then you look at, as one can do, the sort of videos of this, and you know, it's ten Russians on motorbikes charging in an open field and getting blown up. I mean, it's not, these are not sort of great tank battles of the sort that—the ones that we saw earlier in the war were much more significant than what we're seeing now. 

So, there's lots, it's lots of small-scale skirmishing, effectively, which is why I think the Russians have struggled to make a real push, breakthrough, and the Ukrainians have got much better at spreading their people around, partly because they have to, because they don't have as many of them as they want, but also because when they did, they were easy targets for glide bombs, a dumb weapon, one of the dumbest weapons around, and very effective when they're starting to hit quite a sort of dense front line. So I think the tactics have evolved a lot, but it's led to a very fragmented battle space. 

Brianna: I think the point you raised about mass is really crucial, and perhaps with the increasing integration of AI into this conflict, what we're actually entering now is an era of precise mass, to quote Michael Horowitz, which is a changing dynamic. And perhaps that's a good segue to the final portion of this conversation, which is to look at how Ukraine is changing the overall character of war, as much as I hate to use that overused phrase, but this is in many ways a largely conventional conflict, as you mentioned, and yet there are highly asymmetric, unconventional aspects to it that are blended in a new way that we haven't quite seen before in the past. I think it's quite interesting to reflect on what this means. We're in an era of geopolitical upheaval, of great power competition. 

What lessons are other powers taking away from this conflict that might change and shape the future character of war? And I'll turn it over to Janina, to press a little bit on this point and in particular to delve more into the nuclear piece of this and the role of the institutions in changing this international order.

Janina: Yeah, I think if you try to come up with a scenario that is uniquely suited to show up the enforcement weaknesses of international law and the limitations of international institutions, you could really hardly imagine a more fitting case, right? We have a nuclear-armed Permanent Member of the Security Council invading a neighboring sovereign state with the express purpose of ending its existence as a sovereign state, in violation, in explicit violation not only of the foundational rules of the non-use of force in international relations, but the underlying prohibition that in some sense motivates the international order, which is the prohibition on conquest, right. 

I want to not make this out as a kind of case of institutional failure, because international courts have done their bit, right? The ICC came out with arrest warrants relatively quickly in response to this really blatant violation of international law, the ICJ dismissed the charge, the sort of spurious allegation of Ukraine committing genocide. But in terms of the institutions really charged with upholding global security, they have been, in some sense, shown up as not really having a response. What should we expect to happen in terms of, how does this case put pressure on the evolution progression, potentially decline of these institutions? 

Sir Lawrence: It's more decline. I mean, I think if Russia—as you said, you've got a Permanent Member of the Security Council who can veto any initiative that’s done—I mean, the General Assembly can say things, but it can't enforce anything. So it provides a forum where everybody can say their piece, and did say their piece, and you can watch—the Security Council was in session when the news of the Russian invasion came through, and you can see all the reactions and so on, it's quite dramatic stuff. But they couldn't do anything about it. And I think, you know, these things are never linear, and they never go in a simple direction. But I think you're seeing much more fragmentation generally in international affairs, even within NATO, it's more sort of, you can see more coalitions of the willing, as it were, more, you know, like the Joint Expeditionary Force in the north and so on. I think people are just going to do things together more. And it's a more realist world in the old use of the term, rather than the Mearsheimer use of the term. 

So, it's a tough world in that sense. And you know, you have China sort of standing up saying, Well, you know, we believe in multilateralism and so on. But you know, without necessarily everybody having great confidence that if it suits them, they'll stick to it too. So it's—David Miliband did an election quite a long time ago about the age of impunity. And there is a problem with impunity, and what are you going to do about it? You know, I dare you. And I think you see that in, you know, arguably in Trump's domestic political behavior, you know, okay, these are the rules, I don't agree with them, or this is how I interpret them. What are you going to do about it? And I think, so that, I think you've got a real crisis in that sense. 

Now you might hope in, you know, as happened in sort of the last great, sort of burst of optimism in the early 90s, that after some big shift in the future, then people say, well, you know, maybe we need to reinvent this. And so it's not the, we shouldn't be thinking and trying to imagine different designs and thinking about how in different circumstances the UN could be changed, but you wouldn't have it without the veto power. So you know that was the compromise that was understood in 1945 and it's this historic tension between, surely we can find better ways to resolve disputes and make for more peaceful relations, and it's an anarchic world and power counts. We've always had it, and I don't think we're going to escape it. 

Janina: I mean, most innovations of international law, most important international institutions, were born from scandalization after crisis, right? 

Sir Lawrence: Yeah.

Janina: And yes, we don't have the sense that a new United Nations is about to be born. But what about the nuclear order, which is a much more informal order, right? Something resting on the kind of mutual power of deterrence. In some sense, this conflict has really shown it up as unreliable and unstable as the underlying dynamics of power shift. 

Sir Lawrence: I think nuclear deterrence has done fine. I think nuclear deterrence has worked exactly as the theory would tell you. Russia hasn't invaded, hasn’t used nuclear weapons against NATO countries. NATO countries have stayed out of the Ukraine conflict. It's exactly as you would have expected. I mean, I think the problem with us talking about—I mean, nobody tried to deter the full scale invasion, other than talking about economic sanctions, which was never going to work. That's all they talked about. They didn't say, mark my word, Mr. Putin, if you invade, we're going to be in there like a shock. They didn't say that. So we didn't—this is a failure of deterrence, it's a failure of a different sort of deterrence. Now, if you're worried about the nuclear order, then I would say the thing I would worry about most is Trump's total disinterest in alliances. Because if it's the case that extended deterrence doesn't operate anymore. And to, you know, he has said, he said to Starmer, oh, I'm not abandoning Article Five, I just don't think we need it. 

Janina: Just don’t like it.

Sir Lawrence: No, just don't think we need it. But, you know, you talk to people well away from Europe, in South Korea and Japan and so on and Taiwan. And you'll say, well, if I was relying on U.S. nuclear deterrence, how sure am I? And here you have countries that wouldn't take a lot to become nuclear weapon states. That's where I'd worry about proliferation. So, I think that there's a potential challenge. 

I think you can never control what lessons people are going to learn from these events. And Ukrainians would say, well, if we hadn't given up our nuclear weapons with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 we wouldn't be in this mess now. Now there's very good work to demonstrate that the Ukrainians would have found real difficulty in turning that into an operational nuclear capability, but you can't blame the Ukrainians for wondering whether they made the right choices there, because they got damn all in return. In fact, they were misled by us as well as the Russians, and blamed by the Russians. 

So, you know, that sort of thing may give a push to proliferation. Against that, it should be expected—and you can see this in some of the European discussions at the moment, the Poles and others and German for that matter, it's an expensive business. Everybody can see what you're doing. There are legal issues because you're still members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So in the end, you say, well, can we do something with the British and French as well as the Americans? Maybe you can. So I think there's a lot in flux, but I don't—the conclusion I would draw is that nuclear weapons play the role that they've played since 1945 which is they make conflict between major power powers a bad idea. 

Janina: I like this notion of optimism. I do worry that—we’re asking two things of the nuclear order, we asking for it predominantly to prevent nuclear escalation, but we also ask for it to, in some sense, promote nuclear non-proliferation, because non-proliferation has been instrumental in reducing the chances of nuclear escalation. And I worry that the combination of Ukraine's fate with the American changes, or rather, flexibility in posturing, might mean the predominant lesson that other states take for the nuclear order going into the next decades and century, it's that proliferation is the way to go. 

Sir Lawrence: I think if I was in Seoul or Tokyo, I'd be having serious thoughts about this. But they don't really want to do it. I mean, I think, all in all, and you can see this in the European debate, if they can hold on to the American Alliance, they will. So it's up to the Americans, really, to tell them, don't don't rely on us.

Janina: I'll hand it back to Brianna for the last question.

Brianna: I want to zoom out once more here at the end and ask a somewhat philosophical question. But in the meantime, please have your questions ready, because after this, we'll turn to the audience here and online. Across your long and distinguished career, Sir Lawrence, you've elucidated not only how wars are fought, but also how they're imagined, how narratives, doctrines, and strategic cultures shape the conduct and meaning of conflict. And it's a theme that I picked up in my own work as well, where I've said that AI changes not just how we use force, but how we actually think about the use of force. So I'm wondering if you can zoom out a little bit in the case of the Russo-Ukraine war, and tell us whether we're witnessing a transformation in the very logic of war, in its purpose, its limits, its role in the international order that we've been discussing earlier today. Or are there deeper continuities here that suggest that war, despite all of the technological and geopolitical shifts, ultimately remains governed by enduring patterns of politics and power?

Sir Lawrence: It always becomes a cliche to talk about continuity and change. But there is a law, so it's a good reminder that people go to war believing it's going to be quite easy to win. And it turns out, it's not. And the consequences of it means that you end up in a long war. I wrote an article in Foreign Affairs on this quite recently, latest edition. And it's a pattern that repeats itself, that wars start because of a belief that a surprise attack can be decisive. I mean not—they start for other reasons, which is why they don't always start that way. But a lot of them start—and sometimes the surprise attacks are decisive, Israel in ’67 and so on. But then it doesn't, you're still left with that lingering problem. The defeated power never quite forgives you, and is often looking for a way to reverse what was achieved even over decades, Alsace-Lorraine and so on after 1871. 

So, that's a problem with wars. Very few wars, Falklands, may be one, can solve the problem, but dealt with it for a long time, and was quick. So, there's the forever war problem, I think, in terms of the way this one's being fought, as a good reminder that, I mean, I put it in terms of layers, but there's layers of technology, some very old and basic. You look at the Getty imagery from Ukraine and there's trench warfare. There's people digging their trenches, the artillery comes over. It doesn't look that different from how we imagine the First World War was being fought. 

Then you have the elements that came in later with the end of the First World War, the armor, then you've got the aircraft, then you've got missiles, then you've got drones. Now you've got AI, and there's layers there. It's the interaction between all of this that gives the war its character. So it's not that this is solely drone warfare and artillery is still as important, in some cases, more important than the drones, but they had an element that just wasn't there before. And AI has got to cope in this very complex environment, which again, is why I'm less convinced that it's going to make big differences at the strategic level, but it will be important with targeting and managing air defenses and things like that. So, a lot of the technology evolves and changes. 

But as I mentioned before, you know, one of the most effective Russian weapons is the glide bomb, which is as dumb as they come, but it pushes in the right direction. It lands with an enormous bang and makes a mess of anything that's on the receiving end. And if you've got enough of those, it doesn't matter if they're not super smart, they really make a difference. And the longer a war goes on, the more innovation you get. So, you know, you fight the first months of a war with what you've got, and then over time, you start to innovate. A lot of the innovations—electronic warfare, for example, so cat and mouse going on with that defense duel. 

And then drones come in. The initial drones in the war, these Turkish ones, are quite big and expensive, quite effective. Eventually the Russians worked out their counters, and the Ukrainians just worked and worked. Now the Russians have also worked and worked on counters to drones, electronic warfare, and their own drones. And there's competition in the sort of the real time of war, pushes innovation in ways you just wouldn't find in peacetime. And there's all sorts of innovations taking place, naval drones weren't really talked about very much. We knew about them and weren't talked about very much. One just took out quite a capable Russian jet. The fact that the Ukrainians don't have a navy, and they've managed to treat an awful lot of the Black Sea Fleet. I mean, all of these things are unexpected, and they pose things to think about. 

Now, future wars are going to be different, because you look across it and into Africa. So, drones are becoming more important there. It's a lot more basic stuff is going on, because the distances are different. More wars fought more with militias, hunger used more as a weapon, or what's going on in Gaza again, different again. And if you think of another big war, say, over Taiwan, maritime, but you know, the Chinese are looking at this pretty carefully. The Taiwanese looking at this pretty carefully and thinking about, well, you know, would we be so sure of a quick victory that they might have been optimistic about before? Because the thing about war, in the end, is that it isn't predictable, and things—it didn't have to work out the way it worked out on February 22 in part because a lot of Ukrainians just took the initiative themselves. While Kyiv was working out what to do, people who'd been in the military before, who had their rifles close by, just went and did things. And that helped hold up the Russians. The Russians hadn't taken that into their plans at all. The Russians had a completely erroneous view of Ukraine and the legitimacy of the government and the views of the people, and they got surprised. 

So you know, the main lesson you hope people draw from this—when I did the Iraq Inquiry, what's the main lesson? I'd say, don't do it again. It’s a basic thing. These things never work out as you want, and if you go into somewhere where you're not welcome, you'll have a miserable time.

Janina: This has been such an incredible opportunity to hear from someone who is so deeply steeped in military history and strategy at this really pivotal moment in the conflict. So thank you for all of your perspectives on this wide-ranging conversation we've had over the past hour. You've given us so much to think about, Sir Lawrence, I think we all have to go away and think very deeply about the insights you've given us not only about the Russo-Ukraine war, but all future wars and indeed, the future of global peace and security more broadly. 

Brianna: This brilliant conversation with Sir Lawrence Friedman, Professor Janina Dill and me, Dr. Brianna Rosen, was brought to you as part of the Calleva-Airey Neave Global Security Seminar Series hosted at the University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government. This episode was produced by Maya Nir with help from Clara Apt and Pooja Shah. Special thanks to Sir Lawrence and Janina for sharing their deep insights with us today. For more coverage on global security and the Russo-Ukraine War, visit the Just Security website, and if you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Until next time. This is the Just Security podcast.