U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.

Transcript

Laura Coates: We're joined now by Mary Glantz. She is a Ph.D and Senior Advisor for the Russia and Europe Center for the United States Institute of Peace. She joins us now, Mary, welcome and good morning. How are you?

Mary Glantz: Thank you. I'm good. How are you?

Laura Coates: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for asking. Look, we're a little less than a week now from the summit, the NATO Summit, that is going to take place in Lithuania. It's of course, one of the big considerations and big topics everyone's thinking about is what happened with Ukraine, and whether there is a clear path to membership [inaudible]? Where do things stand?

Mary Glantz: Yeah, that's absolutely true. That's the biggest issue and we probably won't get any absolute certainty until the summit itself because they'll be doing some last minute negotiations. But Ukraine wants a clear path to membership. Some of the Eastern European allies, like the Baltic States and Poland, also want that clear path to Ukrainian membership. They want a timeline, they want to know exactly when Ukraine is going to get in something really strong to signal to Putin that his attempts to keep Ukraine out of NATO have failed. Other allies are more hesitant. I'm thinking more of like the Western European allies who don't want to be that forward-leaning. And so what the Biden administration is doing is trying to balance. It would really like to avoid the appearance of a split. They think that that would send a really bad signal to Putin that the alliance is not fully united. And they want to avoid that. So we probably won't see until the very last minute how far it is. But I imagine they're gonna send some sort of strong signal to Ukraine to encourage it. I just don't know if it will be, you know, the direct path that Ukraine wants.

Laura Coates: What are those signals? I mean, will they get some kind of and obviously, it's hard to evaluate what that looks like, but what would a meaningful commitment look like? I mean, it's one thing, if you're not presently involved in war. It's another thing if you're just wanting to have a sort of esoteric conversation if you're Ukraine, right, in terms of NATO. But here they are more than a year into this invasion by the geopolitical and an enemy of many of these, all these NATO countries really. Certainly not an ally. What would a meaningful commitment even look like?

Mary Glantz: You know, and that's the million dollar question. I think Ukraine wants membership, that's clear. And I think a lot of allies also want Ukraine to be an ally because they've shown their toughness, they've shown their resilience, they've shown their ability to contribute to European security, which is one of the key things that that we look for from NATO members is that you're a security contributor. They've shown all that. I think that what a stronger commitment might look like would be maybe abandoning the whole Membership Action Plan, you know, all these series of steps that you have to go through because Ukraine has gone through some of them already. And giving them something a little more direct, saying, you know, something definitely stronger than what was given earlier, that commitment that Ukraine and Georgia will be a member of NATO. Something much more concrete than that, like, you know, they're on the path, something creative. I mean, it's hard to say exactly what, but something stronger than a Membership Action Plan. But very direct and planned, you know, very direct and leading towards that membership.

Laura Coates: You know, we're already hearing and I'm sure it will take up a lot of conversation that's happening in NATO, for obvious reasons obviously, but President Zelenskyy has been saying that the Russians have put explosives on top of several buildings in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and for some kind of a false flag operation. Are you thinking that will be a part of what would be part of these meaningful considerations or commitments that would have to be discussed at the NATO summit?

Mary Glantz: Yeah, that's a good question. I saw that, again, this isn't the first time that Zaporizhzhia has come into play. Russia continually threatens some sort of nuclear catastrophe or nuclear attack or things like that. They wave the nuclear saber a lot. I don't think, I know that that's not what it won't make the Baltic States and Poland hesitate at all. And it probably won't make the alliance as a whole hesitate because we've seen this so many times now. And really, what it just reiterates is the need to stop Putin, and that's what Ukraine is doing the most of right now is stopping Putin as he gets more and more aggressive.

Laura Coates: Speaking of aggression, we remember it wasn't even really a little more than a week ago at this point and Prigozhin was leading, what he later said, was simply a protest, not some kind of an insurrection or an attempt or coup? No, no, no, I was just, I was just marching with a military force. But that's not what you thought it was. We can all sort of raise our eyebrows and try to see through that particular level of, let's just say, absurdity that we believe that. But Prigozhin, we haven't heard a whole lot from him since, but you do know a whole lot of conversations are happening about how he was able to have this happen with the Wagner Group with very little resistance or penalty at this point. What is this saying about the power of Russia's President Putin? And I would mention Zelenskyy, in an interview with my colleague, Erin Burnett, on CNN, made the comment of, well, you're not really seeing Putin walk in the streets, you're not really seeing him among the people, so to speak, not that we saw a lot of that anyway, but he's not really among everyone. Is there a chance that his power is, in fact, shrinking?

Mary Glantz: So the Prigozhin case is really fascinating and telling, but in a way, it's actually how the system was designed to work because Putin keeps all of these people around him, so the [inaudible], the the people with weapons basically. And he doesn't just have a ministry of defense and a police force, he's divided it up amongst several different oligarchs or people. So he has the Federal Protection Organization, which are like his bodyguards, and they're supposedly getting some heavy weapons. Now, he's got the National Guard, which is led by a former bodyguard of his, which is definitely getting some more heavy weapons. He had Wagner, he has Kadyrovites and the Chechens, he has the regular Ministry of Defense. So he has all of these different people around him with balancing forces who compete with each other. And that's what you saw with Prigozhin was Prigozhin competing with the Ministry of Defense over who would have the most power. And actually, it was Prigozhin who was already on the way out and he lost to the Ministry of Defense. So in an act of desperation, he launched this insurrection called the, you know, march for justice. He's disappeared now. Why, largely, I imagine they're in the process of dismantling Wagner. They're taking his troops and giving them either to allow them to go home, go to Belarus, or join the Ministry of Defense. He's taken all their, Putin has taken all the weapons away from Wagner and given that to the Ministry of Defense so he's redistributed power. I don't think it's necessarily weakened him. Incidentally, you also saw him going, after seeing this pictures of Prigozhin, all the people taking selfies with him, you saw Putin actually got into Dagestan and there's a picture of him kissing a girl on the forehead, you know, he's out amongst his people, which is really surprising, because he hasn't done that in years. So he's definitely trying to recreate that that popular opinion. That said, what the Wagner March on Moscow showed was that this system is incredibly brittle. We don't know what's going on. The balance of powers is great, it keeps people from being able to attack Putin without other people coming to Putin's defense. But it shows that he doesn't really have complete control. The system is very brutal, when it cracks, it's gonna crack big time and you won't probably see it coming.

Laura Coates: There's a lot there, I mean, just the idea of, oh, I got your selfie and I'm gonna do a forehead kiss just to help you. But the fact that he felt he maybe had to is very telling. But the bottom line here, Mary, it's unlikely that this NATO Summit will result in a forward needle motion for NATO membership of Ukraine in the new features, is that right?

Mary Glantz: I think it will send a signal that Ukraine is moving forward and perhaps, they'll get a compromise that makes it a little bit faster than it would have been otherwise. I think the history is on Ukraine's side right now in terms of the NATO Summit. I think the opinion in the [inaudible] is leaning toward Ukraine moving in faster rather than slower. But I don't think it's going to be as clear cut as the Baltic States and Poland and Ukraine when they get to see.

Laura Coates: Mary Glantz, thank you for your expertise. We appreciate it so much.

Mary Glantz: Thank you very much.