Ukraine Tries To Halt Russian Advance, Biden Woos Kenya, the Fate of Assange, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Ukraine struggles to defend its front lines. U.S. President Biden hosts Kenya's President Ruto for a state visit. And, London's High Court decides the fate of Julian Assange. It's May 16th, 2024 in time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, we're going to have to start in Ukraine, a familiar spot because of new fluid on-the-ground developments there on the front lines. Over the past weekend, Russia launched a new offensive that focused on the northeast away from the usual southern and southeastern front lines. Russian troops have overtaken several villages just outside of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. The United States and other Western countries have pledged significant military aid packages. We just had Secretary Blinken doing the same in Kyiv, but will Ukraine be able to hold out and be able to sort of integrate this weaponry before the situation on the ground changes?

ROBBINS:
Bob, the hope was with U.S. aid flowing, Ukraine could use this year to rebuild its forces. And the line was hold this year, rebuild and in 2025 once again go on the offensive, but the enemy gets a say. And as you said, since last Friday, Russian forces have mounted several major pushes, not just in the northeast but on all of Ukraine's front lines, most notably near Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city with more than a million residents. And analysts were describing it as the most relentless advance since the beginning of the war.

Yesterday, the Ukrainians said that advance had slowed, but we need to emphasize how uncertain the situation really is. And some analysts are warning that the Russians may be trying to take villages within artillery range of Kharkiv so they can set up a siege pounding and pounding the city. The biggest concern is that the Ukrainians had to move troops from the south and further east, which has left them vulnerable to a major assault on the Donbas, which Russia has claimed but does not control.

They're really, really overstretched and Zelenskyy is talking about that. He went up to Kharkiv today and basically they're being pushed on all fronts. Yesterday there were reports the Russians had launched a major new attack on the village of Robotyne in the south and place we've talked about. This was one of the few place that Ukraine managed to recapture during last summer's failed counteroffensive and the Russian Defense Ministry was claiming that they were in full control. The Ukrainians say, "Not," but it's really a mess.

And what the last few days more than anything else have shown us is just how much of a beating the Ukrainians took while the Republicans in the house dithered and held up U.S. aid for more than half a year. We talked about that ten to one advantage in artillery that the Russians had and we're also seeing Ukraine's huge weakness in air defenses, which means the Russians can fly and drop glide bombs pretty much without any fear of getting shut down.

The Russians also used the last six months to build up their numbers and apparently to improve their electronic warfare capabilities, figuring out how to take out Western-supplied drones, which has long been a Ukrainian advantage. And apparently they're even confusing the targeting of missiles and pretty sophisticated missiles that the U.S. and NATO has been supplying.

U.S. officials say the Ukrainians should be able to push back once the full package of aid starts arriving. And Tony Blinken who made the surprise visit that you mentioned, Bob, and announced $2 billion in equipment is going to be rushed there. But what does rush really mean? Ukrainians have also finally passed a new conscription law to bring in younger troops, but that too is going to take several months for them to get ready. So the question more than anything else is the one you posted in the beginning of this, Bob, is how long can they hold on and right here, and whether or how much territory they may lose while they build up their forces and get this aid in?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think the speed of the latest round of developments has been particularly alarming. And I talked to just a few of the Ukraine hands around here at CFR and they are also very worried about what they see is a tide that seems hard to push back against. At least given the time that's going to be needed to be able to onboard new equipment, new defense capabilities, new missile defense capabilities and these glide bombs. This is a Russian innovation, crude but effective. And I think it points to that the Russians have been iterating and working on their approach. And yes, recruiting, they have the ability to recruit a lot more people and they have been described as cannon fodder. Putin has the advantage of not really having to care about that. He's starting a new term.

As we are taping this podcast, he just arrived in China. He's so far getting a strong shot in the arm from China in terms of encouraging comments and language. The other thing that strikes me in this latest offensive Carla is that Kharkiv, this is a heavily Russian-affiliated part of Ukraine. Many of them are Russian speakers. They have relatives in Russia and they're just pounding it relentlessly. They're hitting civilian targets, and it's sort of the narrative about that has seemed to have been lost. Russia's allowed to go out and claim they're pursuing their denazification campaign, this ridiculous charge. And they're not getting called on it, or at least not consistently enough. So that's frustrating. And then there's just giving them the sheer firepower to be able to respond to defend themselves. And something you've touched on a lot, which is the kind of the self sort of restraint that they-

ROBBINS:
The self-deterrence.

MCMAHON:
The self-deterrence I should say, yes, that's being exercised because NATO partners, the United States, don't want to cross some of Putin's red lines. Putin continues to dangle a nuclear option out there whenever there's talk of ramping up Western support in terms of boots on the ground let's say, or capabilities that could probe into Russia. So the Ukrainians are really boxed in at this point and it's going to be something we're going to have to watch it on a daily basis. But particularly they need some sort of a ramping up of air defense capabilities that are just not there right now.

ROBBINS:
Well, Zelenskyy was saying, just pointing to Kharkiv, and, "We could really use two new Patriot batteries right now," to stop what they're pounding them with. But if the situation gets even more desperate and it's pretty desperate right now. The debate I think is going to settle into two camps, and you already see these two camps developing. Do we now talk about what's the negotiated settlement and do we have to tell the Ukrainians that they have to negotiate? Something that we haven't done at least publicly, or are we going to go the other route which Macron has been talking about and the Balts have been talking about sending troops of some form or at least giving them much more license. Let's stop self-deterring. We heard the Brits talking about it. They've already given them license to use British-applied equipment to hit inside of Russia. I mean, why do the Russians get to fly in, drop these glide bombs and we're all saying, "You can't use that equipment to push back against them."

And also the point that Zelenskyy raised that all of these allied countries coming into protect Israel from the air during the Iranian attack. I mean we made this sort of trickling in or even pushing in equipment, but still months to come. I mean if Ukraine is on the verge, I don't want to use the term, but if things are that bad, we may have to have a major shift in how we think about supplying this country and how this war is fought or go in the other direction. I personally am in the camp of, let's think about a different way of how this war is fought because I don't want to see Ukraine destroyed.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. And at the same time, it does make you wonder whether there is anything being pursued in terms of an off-ramp for this or pause or anything. It just certainly doesn't seem like it, but what does that even look like? And things are just too hot right now. Russians feel like they have an ability to change facts on the ground for example. So I think it's about digging in and then potentially changing the calculus. Yeah, but again, it's a tough one. I think Blinken has said all the right things, but at the same time the alliance is in a really tough spot right now and Russia seems to be seizing all of the areas of initiative, even while it has its own weaknesses that people shouldn't lose sight of.

ROBBINS:
People in the Congress acted as if somehow were a video game, far off, and these are real people dying. A real war that could be potentially lost, enormous stakes. Yes, Russia has its allies, North Korea, Iran, China, which the Congress is hugely concerned about, perhaps too concerned about. Are those the allies that we want to succeed here?

Bob, let's bring the conversation to Washington. Next Thursday, May 24th, President Biden is going to be hosting Kenyan President William Ruto for a state visit. And this is the first state visit, this is sort of extraordinary, by an African leader in more than fifteen years. The last visit was for President John Kufour of Ghana and now most of Biden's state and official visits so far have been for close allies like India and Japan, Australia, South Korea and France. Why now? Why Kenya? And I gather also that Ruto has not been invited to address Congress despite a lot of pressure from lawmakers on Johnson to extend that invitation as well.

MCMAHON:
Yes. I think in terms of why, let's say why Kenya? Kenya makes a lot of sense for this type of a visit. This is one of the closest allies U.S. has actually in Africa. It's marking its big round number of their relationship, sixty years of a U.S.-Kenyan relationship. And Kenya has been involved in lots of areas that the U.S. deems as important at a time when there have been some backsliding and real defeats, I would say for U.S. on African content in terms of its projection of power and influence.

We should note, and there was a big much noted Washington Post interview with the prime minister of Niger, the coup-installed prime minister of Niger, this week about him saying that the U.S. tried to strong-arm its way to maintaining military base in the country and gave him an ultimatum. And U.S. officials have denied that, but still in all, it's a bit of an ignominious departure. The U.S. is now in the preps for some pretty important bases that we're seeing as counter terror hubs in West Africa.

It's also kind of retreating from its position, the temporary perhaps or not from Chad, which just had some dubious elections in which the status quo was upheld in the period of time in which there had been a number of coups and a number of new power structures coming up that are embracing Russia. China has already been present in its own way, including, by the way, in Kenya where the Belt and Road program has some major initiatives.

But Kenya has been a sturdy ally to the U.S., not that they don't have their differences. But let's just take a case in point, the forthcoming deployment of a Kenyan mission of about a thousand peacekeepers or police units in Haiti, which is coming at extremely perilous time for Haiti. We have been talking recently about the gangs who are taking over huge swaths of the capital. There's now an interim leadership installed there, but a key part of upholding that is a peacekeeping contingent. The U.S. has pledged something like $300 million dollars to help support that. I think Kenya would like to hear more about what sort of support it's going to get for that endeavor and sort of talk about cementing their existence there. So there's a security element. They're also working together to help in East Africa where al-Shabaab remains active. The U.S. would like to maintain a base in Kenya and eyes on the ground in that part of the world. Ethiopia had been thought of until the last couple of years as another hub, a stable hub, and that's certainly no longer the case. So Kenya has emerged even more so as an important actor in the region. So I think they want to talk about the African element.

But also this is a time of the U.S. discussing, renewing an African trade agreement, a free trade agreement that Kenya certainly would dearly love to see renewed. It's known probably for most often in the U.S. market for the appearance of Kenyan-made apparel and things like that. They'd like to expand that though. There's going to be a prominent appearance at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Ruto. There's going to be also appearances at other factories and things. So it's a business trip, it's a security related trip. It's an important time for the U.S. to signal in meaningful ways that it actually has...It can be a partner and it can be a partner in ways that benefit the African side of the partnership, and not just sort of this bit of a crude security transaction that we have sometimes seen in the past.

ROBBINS:
And it's all been this huge criticism, the United States of ceding Africa to the Chinese and to the Russians and to a greater sense, ceding Latin America as well. So much of life is showing up, but I think Kenya's really interesting. The fact that they are part of the Belt and Road initiative, but at the same time they're cooperating with the United States sending this peacekeeping mission. They seem to be quite adept at balancing, but my impression, he went to China, didn't he go on a visit to China recently, Ruto?

MCMAHON:
He did, yes. Yeah, last year I believe he went, towards the end of last year as well. So certainly keeping their options open and again, it shows the Chinese deftness and in the way they are working towards maintaining ties. They too have visits of heads of state and government coming from Africa and again, this trade agreement I mentioned, these kinds of things are important. It shows what are the benefits these countries get by being in the U.S. embrace, which also can include some strong language when they are seen as wandering from their commitments to human rights or democracy and so forth.

Again, democracy has been on the retreat in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and these new coup-installed leaderships and heavily military-influenced leaderships just don't want to hear about the U.S. wagging their fingers at them. They have no problem turning to the mercenary groups like Wagner to help prop up their positions in power, and they're not mindful towards the importance of setting up free and fair elections for the way forward as long as they can then there's a quid pro quo for allowing Western parties to do their bidding on the continent. France has also I think taken a hit in parts of Africa as well where it had sway. So there's definitely this change going on.

Publics in Africa though would still like to have less corrupt and functional governments. There's a real problem across Africa of brain drain going on, and so I think at the end of the day it would serve these countries better to be in a closer partnership with the U.S. But the U.S. just has to show more and again, this first state visit in fifteen years, there's a demonstration effect and maybe they can build on it, Carla.

ROBBINS:
And we will have to keep an eye on this Haiti mission. The U.S. is down there building barracks for these troops at the airport, and I gather that these Kenyan officers were called back from leave this week, so it looks like they're going to be there in the next few weeks. So we'll have a lot to talk about there. I don't think this is militarily going to be all that challenging, but from a police point of view, I think it could be really potentially quite dangerous on both for the Kenyans and for the Haitians. So we'll have to watch that.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it's very much an experiment. The Haitians deserve to have a strong sort of international coalition trying to help them. The Kenyans deserve to have their backs supported by strong partners like the U.S. and some UN partners. So this is a very important experiment for a really a failed state at this point. So yes, I think it's going to be worth watching as of this month. By the end of the month, this is going to be the first deployment.

Carla, I'm going to move us back over to London where next Monday, London's High Court is going to decide whether the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States. Assange has been in a longstanding legal battle ever since he released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. military documents that related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what does it mean if Assange is actually sent to stand trial in the United States?

ROBBINS:
There are a lot of uncertainties here. Will this British High Court decide to extradite him? Will the European Court of Human Rights intervene to stop the extradition if that decision is made. And if he's put on a U.S. military transport and sent to the U.S., will there be some sort of a plea deal? There's reports potentially they could change the charges to mishandling of classified documents. The Biden administration sent a host of mixed signals about its plans for Assange last month after speaking with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Assange is an Australian citizen. Biden said the U.S. was considering dropping its prosecution altogether, but then to win Assange's extradition, the U.S. sent assurances to the British High Court that he would not face the death penalty, that he could seek protections under the First Amendment, which doesn't sound like they plan to drop the case altogether.

So far, Assange is facing eighteen charges nearly all under the Espionage Act, which is brought by the Trump Justice Department. And at least on paper, these charges could mean a sentence of 175 years in prison. But legal experts are predicting something close to four to six years if he were convicted.

As for why this all matters, Assange is no hero in my book, and there seems little doubt that he was a willing or very convenient collaborator with Russian intelligence when he published these hacked DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. But that's not this case. That's not the WikiLeaks case here. What he is on trial for is committing journalism. He's been indicted for obtaining and disclosing sensitive information that was undeniably in the public interest, including dossiers of prisoners held in Guantanamo without trial. Reports that showed civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq were far higher than official U.S. government estimates, and I could just go on. And if he were convicted, even then, this is the first time in our history someone would be put on trial for publishing information under the Espionage Act. Until now, the government only went after the officials who leaked the classified documents or the spies who stole them, not the people who published them.

So is he a journalist? He certainly wasn't a good or responsible person in this case. When he and WikiLeaks first worked with the Times, and the Guardian, and Britain, and Der Spiegel on the WikiLeaks documents. These documents were carefully redacted to take out the names of anybody who could get hurt. And then he turned around and dumped completely unredacted documents on the net, which was extremely dangerous and irresponsible. He's not a great guy. That said, bringing him to trial under the Espionage Act for committing journalism is very dangerous for you, for me, for every journalist we know, Bob. So if he's extradited, I certainly hope the Biden administration drops the case. It is chilling to think that he's going to do it with stipulation that he is no hero in my book.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I mean whenever you start to peel the layers in the Assange case, it's just there's trouble in every direction and it starts with his own kind of character and comportment certainly. And there's the principle of the thing though, as you mentioned, Carla, and it makes you wonder whether there's a way out of this that includes time served in a way, in terms of him being in a kind of a limbo for a number of years maybe as part of it. I don't know. The official efforts against him are hard to kind of glean at this point. It revved up under the Trump administration I think, and then with the Biden administration has it in its hands, and I wouldn't be surprised if they find some way to soft pedal this a little bit more and not level him with a firm charge. But I'm not sure how that figures into the extradition necessarily, whether there's some sort of deal involved. It's a bit beyond my ken legally what they can do.

ROBBINS:
I'm not sure why they've pushed this forward because the Obama administration, as furious as they were, didn't charge him. This was under the Trump administration and they kept ginning up the charges, actually. They didn't start out with these espionage charges. And as I said, this would be the first time you'd go after someone for publishing classified documents under the Espionage Act. This hasn't been done before. And this is also the Biden administration, which has rolled back some of the worst restrictions that the Trump administration did. Some of the worst things they did to go after journalists.

Garland in October of '22 issued new regulations that would ban the use of subpoenas and warrants or court orders to seize reporters communications. We found out that the Trump administration had secretly gone after the records of a bunch of reporters, reporters for CNN and the Post and the Times. This was not a happy relationship with the press and the Trump administration, so why after claiming that they were going to champion the First Amendment of freedom of the press, why they're going forward with this is beyond me. And I think, as I said, it's chilling for all journalists if they push this one. No matter how you feel about Assange and WikiLeaks and hacking of the DNC, and his irresponsibility for dumping the unredacted on this. In this case, there really is a principle involved.

MCMAHON:
Again, another important case that has drifted for a while, but we could have some clarity on next week, Carla. So for the reasons you cited, really worth watching closely for his people, in our business and elsewhere.

ROBBINS:
It's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. And this is a figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. And this week, Bob, our audience selected the one that you and I very much wanted them to select, which is "10 Thousand Plus Protest Georgia's "Foreign Agents Bill." This is a bill that looks like it was written in Moscow, the term foreign agent to label journalists and dissidents and go after them. Is this the end of democracy in Georgia and the end of Georgia's chances of joining the EU and NATO?

MCMAHON:
Well, I think the sustained size and passion of the protests show that there's very much concern that it is, especially among young Georgians. And you see the young people involved in demonstrating and in organizing these protests is pretty astounding. The Georgian Dream after coming in as seen as an antidote to some pretty corrupt and even authoritarian-minded previous Georgian governments has itself turned into, a very disturbingly, towards a pro-Moscow unit. There were comments that came out from their leaders—from both the prime minister and the power behind the scenes, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the wealthiest man in the country—that sounded like Moscow talking points, Kremlin talking points, about not pursuing this legislation would open up the country to the Western designs to turn it into another front against Russia. They decried the way the West has supported Ukraine and so forth.

And it's a piece of legislation that, as you say, echoes what Russia did about 2012 or so. Russia used this legislation to basically turn around and swiftly and comprehensively stifle descent, curb independent media, clamp down systematically on any voices of independence on a whole host of things—but, especially as we've seen most recently, on the war in Ukraine, which you're not allowed to call "war." It's a law that basically says media outlets, NGOs, any or other nonprofits have to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power" if they get more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, which is what many of them do. Now, the president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, has said she would veto the legislation, but she does not, and her supporters do not have the votes in Parliament to sustain that veto. So that could be overturned if she goes that route, which she's supposed to do within ten days of the vote, which was just a couple of days ago.

So we're looking like an ongoing power struggle here that seems to be going in the direction of Georgian Dream. Now, a year ago, this came up and it was paused. This bill came up. There are elections this October. That speculation goes that the Georgian Dream forces, the pro-Russian forces are trying to get this all in place before those elections so they can really sort of stack the decks in their favor and say, "Look, we have a democratically elected government that's deciding to go our own way and not align ourselves with the West."

What's interesting also though, is that even some of the Georgian Dream legislators themselves had spoken in not too distant past about the pro-EU orientation and the accession process that was just starting in favorable ways. One line of analysis is that as some of the Georgian Dream officials, especially those closest to the oligarch, Ivanishvili, have been concerned about how the EU accession process would start to compromise their ability to gain revenues and their ability to pull levers and so forth. Basically because its EU accession is about sort of solidifying rule of law and anti-corruption and so forth.

ROBBINS:
I hate when that happens.

MCMAHON:
And that challenge is special interest. I'm sorry, that's what happens. I mean, I recall living in the Czech Republic when they were part of the accession process, and that was hugely supported in that country. But there was also a great deal of resentment over some of the things that started rolling out, some of the laws, what they call these chapters. And the EU was trying to close various chapters and the countries get in. Now, the Czechs have since then benefited grandly from EU largess. As have the Hungarians by the way, which are the big...The fly in the EU ointment continuously, as we've discussed in this podcast. But we're at a time now where the countries are taking sides. Kyrgyzstan has its own "foreign agents" law. There are aspects of a sort of "foreign agents" list that Kazakhstan is reportedly keeping. As I said, Russia has its law.

We have also ferment, totally unrelated, but ferment happening in Armenia over the way their leadership is pursuing a possible peace and border deal with Azerbaijani forces there. And then to add even further instability potentially to the broader region, we just had this week an attempted assassination of the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico. He is said at latest report to be recovering, he was shot multiple times. It's going to seemingly be a long recovery, and we don't know whether that's going to lead to reprisals by a also Moscow-leaning government against opposition forces.

So we're looking at a landscape now of real challenge in the region. Georgia itself certainly should be discussed in and of itself because this is a country that I do think the public yearns for this orientation. And there's many parallels actually to what we saw in Ukraine in 2014 with the Maidan protests, Georgia, but still in all, there's a broader set of things happening in the region. And so yet again, you talk about the stakes of what's involved and it's country's ability to decide their own destiny, their own sovereignty, and not be aligned with a sort of gangster-run complex. That is the way that Russia likes to sort of keep things going in these places.

We should also note finally that Russia is in control of about 20 percent of Georgian territory. These two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are under Russia's sway now. I happen to be in Georgia about five years ago on a wonderful trip. I mean we drove not far from the border with South Ossetia, and Georgians told us that basically every year Russians move the fences further and further into Georgia from South Ossetia. And it's sort of a defiant way of just sort of showing where they are. There was a 2008 mini-war we should note where the Russians came in and routed the Georgians, and that is certainly on people's minds as well. So a lot of concern. And back to your original question, a lot at stake.

ROBBINS:
Of course, this is one of these things you can never prove, but one of the great thought exercises is had the George W. Bush administration stood up more forcefully for Georgia in 2008, had the Obama administration stood up more forcefully for Ukraine in 2014, would we not be in this situation in Ukraine now? It's not like the Russians didn't telegraph it. And with that thought, Bob...

MCMAHON:
And so that's another look at the turbulent world next week, Carla. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on if you have the bandwidth. The Dominican Republic holds general elections. This is the country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits Japan. And, Taiwan's Lai Ching-te takes office as the new president.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at twnw@cfr.org. The publications mentioned in this episode as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Justin Schuster for his research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria, and this is Carla Robbins saying, so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying, goodbye and be careful out there.