Transcript of Putin Escalates Ukraine War After Talks With Trump Envoys

All hell is breaking loose as Putin has given the world his answer about what he and Donald Trump talked about. Frankly, Donald Trump gave his answer as well. Before Donald Trump went to that deranged so-called Republican midterm convention, Donald Trump said that he had a great call with Putin. He said that Putin was telling him that he wanted to make a deal, but only if Zelensky would agree to basically giving up all of Ukraine. And Donald Trump's like, we'll see if we can get Zelensky to do that, is essentially the horrific thing that Donald Trump was stating or implying. Meanwhile, you had Yuriy Ushakov saying that we never even were presented by the Trump regime any type of roadmap to a solution. And Yuriy Ushakov said, you know, what we've been talking to the Trump regime about is no more aid at all to Ukraine, either direct or indirect. And that's what we think the Trump regime is ultimately going to do. And, uh, Ushakov made it very clear that it's either going to be Russia's way to Donald Trump or no way at all. Donald Trump showing absolute and utter weakness. And one thing that I think was notable as well is that there was a leak that CIA Director John Ratcliffe was going to basically take over negotiations with Putin and with Moscow following that deranged and just awful visit by Witkoff and Kushner.

But even CIA Director Ratcliffe's like, I want nothing to do with this at all. He denied that he's gonna be involved in negotiations at all with Putin and with Kirill Dmitriev and with Yuri Ushakov or Sergei Lavrov. And so Putin gave his answer though, and here's what took place at a shopping mall in the Pavlohrad area. This was in the city center shopping mall in broad daylight. There was at least 4 or 5 people who were killed. There were dozens of people injured. You can see that people were trying to run from the attack. They're mostly teenagers who were there at this time. And Putin gave his answer to Trump following, uh, Witkoff and Kushner's visit to Moscow and Ukraine. Putin had immediately escalated those strikes on Kyiv. and in the, uh, surrounding, uh, cities as well, and basically all throughout Ukraine. I want to share with you what went down in Pavlohrad earlier. Here, play this clip. Here's more footage over here of what went down in Pavlohrad. This is about— I'll just show you 9 seconds of the aftermath. You can see for yourself. Let's play it. And then in the past 24 hours, There have been multiple Russian missile strikes hitting office buildings in Kyiv.

This one hit the Podil district in Kyiv, setting a nearby warehouse on fire. Here, play this clip. More strikes against certain gas stations in Kyiv taking place. I'll show you this footage right here. Let's play it. But look, Zelensky has been striking back. 2 things to note. Right now, Zelensky is in Canada. He's been there for a few days visiting with Prime Minister Carney. They inked a 100-year deal together of Canadian support for Ukraine. Prime Minister Carney Also, I think implying in his speeches that the shoulder-to-shoulder view of Canada and Ukraine is built on shared values and principles, but also the idea that Trump sees Canada the way Putin sees Ukraine. And so while you had Zelensky in Canada, you had all of these strikes that I'm talking about taking place. But, you know, Zelensky and Ukraine were striking back as well. Uh, we previously, uh, had showed you how Ukraine was striking these AZAN logistical facilities, um, and other types of logistical— there was these Wildberry logistical facilities. This is the AZAN logistical facility over here throughout Russia have been hit by Zelensky and Ukraine. This is the one in Saratov. Let me show you the aftermath there.

This is, you know, deep in Russia here. You can see for yourself. And as Ukraine strikes logistical centers there, again, you have— show you the B-roll here. Kyiv shrouded in smoke again over here. Um, new footage over here of large-scale fires in Hostomel, uh, in Ukraine. Dnipro right over here, you're seeing warehouses on fire. Going back to Saratov for a moment, you can see over here, the ozone facility. Zelensky talked about how various oil industry facilities were hit in Saratov and Volgograd in Russia. Also results in the Black Sea. This video was released by Ukraine. You can see for yourself. Let's play it.

In other words, the Witkoff and Kushner trip was an absolute failure. Russia feels more emboldened than ever. And as we're recording this, you have the BRICS bloc meeting taking place in New Delhi, India, where you have, you know, all the founding BRICS countries and others. And they feel that the BRICS alliance is stronger than ever as Donald Trump has been attacking NATO, as Donald Trump has been attacking allies, as Trump attacks Canada and Greenland. And so who better to talk to about this than the former ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration. Why don't I bring on Professor Michael McFaul, former Ambassador McFaul, and I want to speak to him about what's going on right now in Ukraine and Russia. I want to get his feedback and his thoughts about the Witkoff-Kushner trip that they took, that humiliation ritual for the United States, in my view, to Russia and Ukraine. I want to get his view more broadly about the US standing in the world under the Trump regime and what he thinks generally about all of these current events and developments. Let me bring on Professor McFaul, former ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration.

Let's bring it in. Now I want to bring on Professor Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration. Michael, it is great to see you. I want to first start by zooming out and talking about the macro picture here. We're close to 2 years into this despicable, in my view, Trump regime and equally despicable foreign policy that I just think has made us weaker abroad. And it does seem to be accelerating lately as well since this catastrophic war in Iran and the way it was executed. In addition to the fact that, in my view, we should never have done it in the first place, but the way it was also executed, I think, has provided additional intel to foreign entities about US capabilities under Trump in a way that they didn't necessarily have that data point before. So let's zoom out and talk macro picture, what you're seeing right now.

Well, the macro picture over the last 2 years has made America worse off, less secure, less prosperous, less committed to values that used to be embraced by Democratic and Republican administrations alike in a rather dramatic way, to your point that it has accelerated in the second Trump administration. He's been less constrained either by the US Congress or by foreign policy advisors that he had in the first Trump administration that put some constraints on him. And now he believes in his ideas and he's pursuing them in a very unilateral way. And when I say unilateral, I mean both as a country but also within the country. There's not much deliberation. There's no such thing as a real National Security Council that meets. He doesn't confer with our Congress, and he most certainly doesn't talk to our allies. He doesn't talk to the United Nations. That's a joke. He doesn't even bother to think about them. And it would be one thing if it were achieving objectives, but I think on almost all dimensions, we're worse off than we were 2 years ago. And most certainly when it comes to America's standing in the world, America's reputation in the world, the polls on that are overwhelming.

We have just crashed at the time that China is rising. And so if you're worried about America's long-term security, prosperity, pursuit of our values, we're not doing a very good job right now.

You know, there's the policies themselves, which we'll talk about, which are, in my view, disastrous. And then there are the implementation of those policies, which in many ways are even more disastrous than the disastrous policies. And so, you know, before, you and I may have disagreements and serious disagreements agreements with policy directions of prior administrations, but we rarely doubted that the people who were communicating them were not qualified or so woefully qualified as to almost be a movie like Dumb and Dumber, except it's the reality of our kind of current geopolitical situation. So it's not funny. I mean, to me, when I see people representing the United States with positions they weren't appointed to or elected to, And I see people like Witkoff and Kushner showing again what it means to not be qualified. They go there and then they demonstrate, oh, this is exactly why, in my view, you shouldn't be here. The things they're saying both in Moscow and in Ukraine, what was your view of, of that overall trip that, that they took?

Well, first, to your broad point, I, I agree completely. Uh, their ability to implement policies is, is very constrained, even compared to the first Trump administration. To your point, I didn't agree with a lot of it, but when they made a decision, they could implement it. This particular team is different in 2 respects. Number one, the people that have the top jobs don't seem to ever push back on President Trump. They're just sycophants. They don't have— they don't seem to have their own opinions. That's never good for American foreign policy in the past. It's most certainly not good now. And then second, you know, he's gutted the bureaucracy. He's destroyed the State Department. He's destroyed the American armed forces. He's, you know, purged, I think is the word I would use, a lot of our most senior respected generals. And that makes implementation all the harder. To the specific point of Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner going to Moscow and Kyiv, I want to say I do support America, the United States, trying to end this horrible war. I applauded President Trump when he said he was going to do that, but he has no strategy to do it.

And most certainly, I mean, he just keeps appeasing Putin. He just keeps giving Putin gifts, expecting nothing in return. And to the specifics of those 2 gentlemen, you know, the president gets to choose his team, Democrat or Republican. I get that. That's our system. But there were a couple of comments that were just really galling to me as both a professor, a student of American foreign policy, and, and a practitioner of it for 5 years in the Obama administration. One was when Kushner said there are no permanent friends and enemies in the world. And I looked at that and I was like, what empirical basis is he making that on? Um, for a long time, we had a permanent enduring ally in Canada. until this administration. We had lots in Europe. The notion that this is all just transactional and changes over time is very— I'd just say inaccurate historically. And then he doubled down on Germany, and he said, well, we used to be enemies, and now we're friends. Well, he forgot in that historical metaphor that we became allies because we destroyed the Nazi regime and the Nazi army first, then we occupied them, then we help them build democratic institutions, none of which we're doing with Putin's autocratic Russia.

So I just found that to be particularly jarring. The other one was when he said, you know, Trump believes in win-win outcomes, he's a businessman, and we're just looking at a way to make Putin happy and make the people of Ukraine happy. And I just listened to that and that's like, okay, we're going to reward war, we're going to reward imperialism because his preferences have to be treated in the same value as the Ukrainian people. And I just thought those were really bad frames and therefore not likely to pursue— uh, to produce results.

Yeah, Keith Kellogg, who was the first former ambassador to Russia and Ukraine, and then Putin said, uh-uh, uh, we're not going to make you— sorry, the former special envoy rather to them, right? Um, and then Kellogg said, you're not going to be the envoy there, you could just be the envoy to Ukraine, and I want to negotiate with Witkoff. Like Putin said, I want to pick who my negotiator is. It's Witkoff. Kellogg said his big issue, um, amongst many, is that he's like, Witkoff is like a real estate guy that Trump knew in Manhattan. And when I saw this guy, he thinks this is like a business real estate transaction for like air rights over a building on Fifth Avenue. He's like, that's not— that's just not what this process is. And then Kushner's got his own equity fund, you know, in the region and is thinking about things in terms of, you know, increasing his investment. But you go back to the first Trump administration with Kushner, Kushner couldn't run the one building that he had. And then people forget about this, but there was the blockade of Qatar. And then there was the, you know, private equity that had to bail Kushner out that may or may not have had Qatari money go into that.

And so these aren't particularly even great business people at all. I mean, Trump's bankrupted a lot, and they're doing a business framework with Putin about a win-win business deal. And that's— I mean, you know how international diplomacy, it's not a we're building a building on Fifth Avenue situation.

You're right, but Putin thinks you're wrong. It's been very clear to me from the very beginning of the second Trump administration was to engage with the United States and with those particular people, Witkoff in particular, to make this about win-win economic transactions for Americans and Russians. That's the primary focus. And ending the war, dealing with Ukraine, that's secondary. It was clear when they first showed up, the first meeting between Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov. By the way, the Russian team, They're all the same people that I dealt with when I was the ambassador, the exact same team. Lavrov, Ushakov, the foreign policy advisor to Putin, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the investment fund for Russia, and obviously Putin. They're exactly the same team. I know all these people. And when they showed up, there was Kirill Dmitriev. He's not a diplomat either, by the way. He is an investment guy. And ever since, when you watch Witkoff, who is he meeting with first? It's Kirill Dmitriev, because the Russian strategy is to say, work with us and we will do multi-billion-dollar deals with you all. And tragically, I think it's working. I mean, when you listen to Mr. Witkoff talk, he says all these endearing things about Putin.

He somehow thinks that flattery is going to convince Putin to do things. That's never— I don't think that works generally in diplomacy. I think this notion That you're going to befriend somebody and then they're going to do you a favor. I don't think that even works with our allies. It most certainly doesn't work with Putin, somebody I have directly been in the room with for many years and studied his career for his entire time in government. Flattery for him is a sign of weakness. And then secondly, I would just say, you know, the other thing that bothered me about this trip and previous trips When, when Witkoff walks into the room, he's so deferential. He's so, I'm so honored to have the pleasure to be with you. You've been trustworthy. He said that when he was in Kyiv, by the way, about Vladimir Putin. And I can tell you, Ukrainians found that just so insulting. And somehow Witkoff believes if he checks his values at the door and flatters Putin, he's going to achieve results. It just doesn't work that way. And don't take my word for it. I urge your viewers and listeners to go look at George Shultz's memoirs.

George Shultz was the Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, Republican administration. He also engaged with the Soviets. He has a chapter called Reengaging the Soviets because he thought it was our national interest to do so. But one of the things he says in that chapter, I think it's chapter 29, I've read it so closely, I think he says, Yes, you got to talk to thugs sometimes. You got to talk to dictators. Those are my words, not George Shultz's words. But you don't need to check your values at the door when doing so. And I think when Whitkopf does that, he just exposes weakness. And that has led to, you know, very bad results.

And what are the values and principles anymore that the United States stands for under the Trump regime? There, there seems to be none. It seems to be make Trump money, make Trump happy, potentially others in Trump's orbit, but to me they're disposable. And there's no sense of national interest at all, which is kind of, again, another macro concept. I mean, when you look at what Prime Minister Carney is representing, it's Canada, it's sovereignty, it's national interest. He's united premiers on basis of national interest. I mean, in a very different example, when the US is engaged in this catastrophic war with Iran, nonetheless, Iran and their leadership is still working in their perception of a national interest about what they're doing against Donald Trump, who's there memeing every day and making it about him and making himself the actor in this thing. And it's like, you represent a country. The very concept of that seems divorced from this discourse. And look, Xi Jinping pursuing national strategies, 10, 20, 30-year strategies, which are accelerating. I know I said a lot of things, so let me try to focus the question, which is first Asia, then let me go to Canada, and then let's do a NATO to wrap it up.

But let's talk about Asia right now, what you're seeing over there, because Xi Jinping is rising in a way he was before, but that's accelerating fast.

Well, before I get to China, I just really want to associate myself with what you just said. The— this is the over-personalization of American foreign policy. Now, presidents always put their stamp on foreign policy. Uh, there are different doctrines named after different presidents, but I've never seen anything like this or studied anything like this. It's just about what Trump thinks and what Trump believes. They don't sit, to the best of my knowledge, in the National Security Council meetings, in the White House Situation Room where I used to sit with President Obama, with everybody at the table, debating foreign policies, what's good for us, what's bad for us, what's the cost of pursuing this policy versus another. There's no evidence that they do that. And so he over-personalizes things. He makes decisions, you know, getting in a war with Iran, getting in a trade war with Canada based just on his personal preferences. And then he doubles down and he just does juvenile things. I mean, what he's done with Canada as an American, I am just so embarrassed as a proud American citizen by the things he said, these memes he's put out. Um, it's just embarrassing.

And I can't believe this plays with anybody but his strong base. I can't even believe it plays with a guy like Secretary Rubio. This is all just the president personalizing American foreign policy in ways that, in my view, do not advance America's interests. And by the way, polls show that most Americans agree with me. I think this is something that is really important to underscore. There's been this argument in my world, foreign policy circles, about, oh, Trump's not the cause of these policies. He's just the reflection of these deep structural things going on in American society. That was very popular back when he first won the first time around. And there are elements of that. I wanna say it's not black and white, but I think we overdo it when we think that these things are what the American people want. The polls show really clearly Americans don't wanna invade Greenland. They don't wanna have a trade war with Canada. They didn't wanna get into a war with Iran. They don't support Vladimir Putin, and they like allies. And I think Trump is really out of step with American society right now. But now to your question about China, here is an example where all this stuff matters for what I think are the big national security interests facing the United States in the 21st century.

I just wrote a book last fall called Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder. And front and center in that book was the challenges we will have for decades to come with managing a very difficult competitive relationship with China. To me, that needs to be the focal point of American foreign policy moving forward for a long, long time. And what Trump has done is he's weakened our standing around the world. That's good for China. He makes us look like a rogue state by this attacking of Iran. It puts us in the same category in the eyes of people around the world as Putin and Ukraine. That doesn't serve America's national interests. And yet when it came to confronting China, and he said he was going to do that, he played a game of chicken with Xi Jinping and then he backed down. And that— I was just in China a few months ago— that play with respect to trade made America look weak. So when it comes to leaders like Xi Jinping, and I would add Putin to this, and even Kim Jong-un in North Korea, you see appeasement and you see accommodation.

And yet when it comes to our most loyal, enduring democratic allies in Canada, in Europe, and in Asia, Trump insults them. And I just don't think this is a long-term strategy for advancing America's national interests that you rightly emphasize. We do have national interests, and, and presidents usually try to define them and pursue them. Trump just has over-personalized it in ways that I don't think are good for the American people.

Right. I mean, at a basic level, we don't even have to overcomplicate it. There's foreign policy. Trump— there's no policy. It's kind of foreign Trump wakes up and feels some way today, and that's what we do. And then maybe tomorrow he does another thing, then he makes a threat, and then he backs down, there's no, uh, any core to any of this. You mentioned China, one of the very first tacos that Trump did when he, uh, you know, said, I'm going to do 150% tariffs on China. And then Xi Jinping was ready. Okay, we're gonna withhold rare earths. Markets crashed right away. And then within an instant, Donald Trump rushed, you know, to China, you know, and said, we got to do a deal. Then he came up with some framework of a framework of a fake framework of a framework in May. And then Trump celebrated that China was going to buy 13 million metric tons of soybeans when previously Xi Jinping was buying 26 million metric tons of soybeans. And so it was half. And then Trump declared that a win. And then I think Xi saw that and said, oh, got it.

So when I was speaking with Susan Rice, Ambassador Rice, about this, she goes, Ben, even beyond the memes, When he does these threats, and then the threats are, by the way, war crimes and threats that should never be made in the first place, then he makes his own fake deals with himself the next day. We've never seen that before. He's showing weakness and making these weird threats. It's bizarre. And ultimately, the world's figured out this guy's weak. That's why he looks like a loser to the world stage now. And that's where I think a lot of countries are at. Are you seeing that?

Yes, tragically, yes. With our allies, he looks weak, but he also, you know, people are just done with his bullying ways. They're tired of it. Everybody's applauding the Prime Minister of Canada, Carney, for what he has done, and they're saying enough is enough. But to our competitors, our autocratic competitors, that's where he looks the weakest. To your point, he changes his mind erratically. The way he's conducted the war in Iran, every other day it's a different peace or war. It's very erratic and it undermines the long, you know, countries, leaders of countries around the world, they have to make calculations about their country's long-term national interests based on a relationship with the United States. And I see this paradox. I travel a lot in Europe. I was just in Asia a couple of times in the spring. Actually, I was in Beijing just days after President Trump was there. And what I see with our allies is doubt whether we are reliable. You know, just having been in Estonia several weeks ago, we always had this Article 5 commitment, an attack on one is an attack on all. And most certainly, when that was invoked to— when we were attacked, and the anniversary coming up in a couple of days, NATO responded.

All of our allies responded. NATO soldiers died next to American soldiers fighting for our security 25 years ago. Now, there's a lot of doubt about that, and so you see hedging strategies, particularly in Europe, about we have to think about alternatives if Americans will not be with us. But the same thing is in Asia, where allies and even partner countries are thinking, well, maybe we can't rely on Americans, so maybe we better have better relations with the Chinese. And I just don't think this serves America's long-term interests, but I also don't think it serves the world's long-term interests, because a world dominated by China, uh, and threatened by Russia, I think, is a very unstable world. I hope that the trajectory we're on right now under President Trump is not a long-term one. In fact, I'm pretty optimistic it's not a long-term one. It's so deeply unpopular here at home that I'm confident in predicting we'll have a change when we have a change in administration, even if we had a Republican elected, but most certainly if a Democrat wins. I think there'll be Quite a radical change, and I hope that the damage done right now will not be so deep and long-lasting and scarring that it'll be difficult to unravel.

That, that's a hope, that's not a prediction.

Well, we'll leave it on that optimistic note, and then we'll have you come back, and I'd love to broaden this conversation. There's so many areas I want to talk about, whether it's the Mecca Pact in, uh, Middle East, whether it is um, Carney's meeting with the European Union. And we— there's so much we can talk about. We'll leave it here for now.

Okay, let's do it again sometime. Great.

And, uh, we appreciate you, uh, Ambassador Michael McFaul, former ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration. We appreciate your time.

Great conversation. Thanks for having me.

Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Hey, if you want the full story, how democracy got here and how we take it back, pre-order our new book WTF America today. Just scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Let's do this.