Former U.S. Russian Ambassador Discusses Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Former U.S. Russian Ambassador Michael McFaul, who grew up in Bozeman and attended Bozeman High School, discussed the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its significance for American foreign policy at a virtual lecture hosted by the MSU Honors College on Monday, March 28. 

McFaul provided his insight on the conflict during the lecture, which was structured as a Q&A session. “This was an unprovoked war, completely unnecessary,” he said. “This is really Vladimir Putin's attempt to overthrow a democratic government in Ukraine.” The tension between these two countries has existed since they were both former republics of the Soviet Union. In 2014, the Revolution of Dignity, which was anti-government demonstrations that escalated to a violent confrontation between protesters and police, overthrew Former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych who was close with Putin. “Ever since 2014, Putin has tried to undermine this democratic government,” McFaul said. “That's when he annexed a territory of Ukraine called Crimea, and then supported separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine.”

Before his ambassadorship, McFaul served as special assistant to former President Barack Obama and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs for the National Security Council. He was U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014. McFaul is currently a political science professor at Stanford University. 

McFaul identified two factors that could have influenced Putin’s recent decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of which is the 2019 election of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Part of his campaign platform was that he was the guy that could negotiate with Putin,” McFaul said. For a couple years, there were negotiations between the two countries. “Putin was dishonest in the negotiations,” McFaul said, and in 2021, “Zelenskyy pivoted hard against Russian interests inside Ukraine. And that's when I think Putin became convinced that he wanted to overthrow Zelenskyy.”

The second factor identified by McFaul was U.S elections. “Trump was rather skeptical about NATO and was rather supportive of Vladimir Putin,” McFaul said. “President Trump decided to withhold military assistance to Zelenskyy, and he denied him a visit to Washington until Mr. Zelenskyy helped President Trump dig up alleged dirt on Hunter Biden, the son of then candidate President Biden. It was because of this famous quid pro quo that President Trump was impeached the first time.” These were uncooperative times for the U.S. Ukrainian relations and collaborative times between President Trump and President Putin. 

Analyzing former President Trump’s relationship with Putin, McFaul said, “I think Putin was waiting for the election to be over. Because if President Trump won, and [Putin] demanded that Ukraine never be a member of NATO, I think there's a chance that Trump might have agreed to that,” McFaul said. Once Trump was not reelected, tensions likely rose between the Biden administration and the Putin administration, according to McFaul.

Now five weeks into the war, “the Biden Administration and experts that have been watching this war are quite surprised at how well the Ukrainians have done in fighting this overwhelmingly powerful and much bigger Russian Army,” McFaul said. Despite assassination attempts, President Zelenskyy has vowed that he will not leave Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine which McFaul described as “a very courageous statement that he's made that has inspired his soldiers.” The number of Russian soldiers lost in the war is unknown. According to McFaul, the highest estimate is 20,000. “That means 180,000 Russian soldiers still occupy Ukrainian land,” McFaul said.

The Russian army is currently focused on securing a land bridge between Crimea and Donbas. “Some hope that once [a land bridge is] created Putin will then start to negotiate with Zelenskyy in a more meaningful way,”McFaul said. “I can't predict that. I would only say that so far, every time we thought that Putin was going to stop, he has not.”

“This is not a normal war just so everybody understands,” McFaul said. “Putin is literally killing civilians as a strategy to get Zelenskyy to negotiate. They’re kidnapping citizens of Mariupol including children, according to the Ukrainian government, and marching them to Russia. And they are just flattening cities. It is really a level of cruelty and evil that we have not seen in Europe since World War II.” 

With Ukraine not being a member of NATO, one of the biggest questions surrounding the war has been how NATO should respond. The U.S. is currently not willing to use certain military measures. “I completely support President Biden's decision on that. I do not believe that the United States, for instance, should enforce a no fly zone in Ukraine,” McFaul said. “That would be the equivalent of a declaration of war against Russia, because that would mean that an American pilot would have to shoot down a Russian pilot.”

McFaul said that there has to be a moral response and so far this response has come in the form of military assistance and sanctions. “As long as Putin ratchets up his war, we, in the west, should ratchet up sanctions. But I think we should be very humble in our assessments about how fast that will lead to a change in Putin's calculus about his conduct or this invasion,” McFaul said.

“I'm confident that eventually this will be the beginning of the end. Putin overreached. What I don't know is how long it will take and how many innocent Ukrainians will have to die for that to happen,” McFaul said. “It’s incumbent on us in the West, who are not in the fight directly, to do everything we can to speed up the end of this war, so that there'll be the restoration of freedom and independence in Ukraine and democracy again.”

To close the discussion McFaul alluded to a conversation he recently had with President Zelenskyy. “I think it's wrong to think about this fight in Ukraine as a fight between Russia and Ukraine, countries far away from us. It doesn't matter to us,” McFaul said. “I think instead, the right way to think about it is it is a fight between a dictatorship and democracy…that has, I think, rather big consequences for the entire world, including the United States, depending on how this war ends.”

A recording of the lecture can be found on MSU Honors PresentsYouTube channel.