THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, February 25, 2026
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met with videoconference this day at 4:16 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on such issues as may arise from time to time relating to foreign relations and international trade generally.
Senator Peter M. Boehm (Chair ) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good morning, honourable senators. My name is Peter Boehm. I am a senator from Ontario and the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I will now invite committee members participating in today’s meeting to introduce themselves.
[English]
Senator Adler: Charles Adler, Manitoba.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: Amina Gerba from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, Ontario. Welcome.
Senator Woo: Yuen Pau Woo, British Columbia.
Senator Harder: Peter Harder, Ontario.
Senator Wilson: Duncan Wilson, British Columbia.
Senator Al Zaibak: Mohammad Al Zaibak, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Hébert: Martine Hébert from Quebec.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome, senators and to all who may be watching us across the country on ParlVu today.
Colleagues, today we are meeting under our general order of reference to discuss the situation in Ukraine. We have the pleasure of welcoming, as witnesses, Kristy Ironside, Associate Professor of Russian History and William Dawson Scholar, McGill University. Joining us by video conference as an individual is Dani Belo, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Thank you both for joining us today. Before we hear your opening statements and proceed to questions and answers, I ask everyone present to please mute notifications on your devices. I would also encourage everyone to read the instruction card with respect to the use of the microphone and the earpiece so that we do not cause any difficulties for our hard-working interpreters and technical staff.
We are ready to hear opening remarks to be followed, as usual, by questions from senators.
Professor Ironside, the floor is yours.
Kristy Ironside, Associate Professor of Russian History and William Dawson Scholar, as an individual: Thank you very much for inviting me today. I’ve been asked to share my perspective on the current state of the war and how it has affected Russia, which I will do in my capacity as a historian, as someone who thinks about socio-economic change in this place over a long period of time. In particular, I want to highlight some of the ways in which this war has been presented as existential in Russia, which, I believe, helps to explain why it has dragged on for four years.
Across much of the post-Soviet space outside of Russia, a majority of the population was eager to shed the Soviet past. In Russia, there was much greater ambivalence. There was a more profound and more widespread sense of loss, even if Communism as an ideology no longer widely holds allure.
The 1990s saw Russia open up to the outside world, as well as the influx of new cultural influences and new economic investments, much of them from the West. But this was also a very painful and traumatic period for many people in Russian society, one in which they saw their living standards decline dramatically. Many people experienced this as a state collapse, not just as a change of ideology.
On a more psychological level, some rued the country’s loss of a greater sense of purpose and its international prestige. Among nationalists, it also meant the loss of an empire, since the Soviet Union had, in many ways, continued to be one. It meant Russia’s humiliation and exploitation at the hands of the West.
In popular media, Putin is often described as trying to put the Soviet Union back together through his war on Ukraine. If anything, he’s actually trying to reassemble the Russian Empire, hence his constant references to medieval history, not to 20th‑century history. At the same time, I want to emphasize that he strategically manipulates memories of the recent Soviet and post‑Soviet past and especially the trauma of the collapse in the 1990s, as he infamously did in 2005 in the state of the union address in which he called the collapse of the Soviet Union a “major political disaster.” He also called it a “drama” for the Russian nation in which Russian speakers were stranded and, in his view, discriminated against in independent post-Soviet states.
Putin has repeatedly called Ukraine an invention of the Bolsheviks and has suggested that real “de-communization,” or the ongoing removal of communist symbols from public life in Ukraine, would essentially mean modern Ukraine not existing.
Putin has portrayed this war as a chance to right historical wrongs, whether that is regaining territory that was lost due to artificially imposed Soviet-era borders, from his perspective, that became hard borders as the Soviet Union collapsed; whether that’s avenging American and Western triumphalism about victory in the Cold War; or whether that is resisting NATO’s encroachment despite perceived promises that it would not take “one more inch” toward it in Russia’s direction.
Many Russians share such grievances, and thus they accept official justifications for the necessity of this war, although I do want to say that we have to take opinion polls with a grain of salt given the dictatorial control over the public sphere. The Russian government has pushed out or silenced critics of this war. On a personal note, almost all my colleagues and friends in Russia no longer live there and no longer work there.
There is a strong sense in Russia, among elites especially, that this war is not just about punishing it for its actions in Ukraine by the West but that this is about containment of Russia and its interests, in particular, preventing it from regaining its great power status and from realizing its potential in the world, especially its economic potential.
I want to draw attention to the fact that one of the first things that Putin did when he came to office in the early 2000s was to update Boris Yeltsin’s 1997 national security strategy, placing more emphasis on foreign threats over domestic threats. Putin suggested in his document that “a number of states,” by which he meant the United States and its Western allies, were trying to “weaken Russia” and were ignoring or downplaying Russia’s national interests. He claimed that Russia would defend those interests, “. . . upholding its sovereignty and strengthening its position as a great power and as one of the influential centres of a multipolar world.”
Putin also identified all kinds of economic threats, in particular, external threats, such as the country’s overreliance on energy imports and its dependence on food and consumer imports as areas to be rectified.
Since the early 2000s, especially after its annexation of Crimea and the first round of Western sanctions in 2014, and even more so since February 2022, Putin’s government has, through a combination of technological investments and import substitution, tried to limit the damage of the West’s economic weapons. Import substitution has gone into overdrive since 2022, and, admittedly, it has seen some improvements in Russian society. It’s driven growth into parts of the country that traditionally relied on subsidies, which were not traditionally economic powerhouses. It’s not just in military orders but also in consumer orders as well.
We’ve also seen the development of new domestic firms who have taken the place of Western firms that boycotted the Russian market and pulled out.
On the other hand, the high-tech sector has suffered very badly because it was already very dependent on Western imports before this war. But this growth that is associated with the war within Russia, associated with import substitution and mobilizing economics slacks, is coming to an end. The government itself has admitted this.
In June of last year, the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, or the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that the resources driving it have been “truly exhausted.”
Just last week, Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Bank of Russia advisor, argued in The Economist that the Russian economy has entered:
. . . what mountaineers call the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 metres at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired . . . holding itself together while steadily destroying its future capacity.
In other words, the economy is starting to truly decline. You’ve got serious budget shortfalls emerging; growth is slow; and the prospects for next year look even worse.
This war has been presented in Russia as an existential issue, a chance to right historical wrongs and rebuff slights against it, as well as assert Russian sovereignty and its interests on a global scale, rather than as a war of its government’s and its president’s making. In ending the war, they will have to confront the social, political and economic consequences of that choice.
I want to emphasize that it was a choice. It was not a preordained outcome of Russia’s historical grievances. I will end my comments there. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Ironside.
Professor Belo, please.
Dani Belo, Assistant Professor of International Relations, as an individual: Honourable senators, thank you for the opportunity to address you on Ukraine and its implications. I appear before you as a scholar of international security, grey‑zone conflict and intervention dynamics.
The conflict in Ukraine is not only a regional conflict. It is a test of whether borders can be changed by force and whether international norms retain meaning. The main obstacle, in my view, to conflict resolution lies in incompatible objectives. Ukraine seeks sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia seeks coercive leverage and revision of the regional order. These aims are structurally opposed, making a simple, negotiated compromise unlikely.
Second, the conflict extends beyond the battlefield. Military operations are intertwined with cyber coercion, energy pressure and disinformation. Even if kinetic fighting pauses, competition can persist in the grey zone. A ceasefire would not automatically produce durable peace.
Third, there is a credibility deficit. Sustainable settlements require enforceable commitments, yet prior agreements have been violated and trust is minimal. Without robust guarantees, any agreement risks becoming a temporary pause.
Fourth, time horizons differ. Democracies operate under electoral cycles, while illiberal regimes may absorb long-term costs. If one party believes time is on its side, incentives to compromise weaken.
In this environment, Canada’s greatest strength — its reputation for reliability — must be preserved and leveraged.
First, Canada should continue principled support for Ukraine. By aligning our actions with our stated commitments, we reinforce the norms that borders cannot be changed by force and strengthen our credibility globally.
Second, Canada must invest in its own defence, deterrence and industrial capacity. Reputation is sustained by capability. Reliable partners are those who can deliver.
Third, Canada can use its trusted status as a bridge builder. Our credibility enables us to convene coalitions, shape diplomatic initiatives and maintain communication channels without appearing opportunistic.
Fourth, Canada must protect our domestic resilience. Trust abroad begins with cohesion at home, countering foreign interference and safeguarding democratic institutions.
Canada is consistently ranked among the most reputable and trusted countries in the world. That reputation is not symbolic. It is a strategic asset. In an era of fractured alliances and intensifying great power competition, credibility, predictability and trustworthiness are forms of power. They shape who listens, who partners with Canada and who believes in Canada’s commitments. In a world where the reliability of some allies may be questioned, Canada’s comparative advantage can be steadiness. By remaining consistent, capable and rooted in a coherent foreign policy doctrine, Canada can convert trust into influence and help shape the conditions for eventual conflict resolution in Ukraine.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions, senators.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Belo, for your comments.
Colleagues, as per usual, you each have a maximum of only three minutes for your questions and, of course, to the witnesses, within that three-minute period for your answers. I encourage you to please be concise with your preambles if you can be, so we can extract the maximum information from our witnesses today. We can always go to a second round if we have time.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our guests for being here. My first question I direct to Professor Ironside.
You mentioned an interview a few years back that you felt that sanctions were only being felt by everyday Russians, not the top brass or the oligarchs calling the shots. Is there still any utility in making everyday Russians feel the pain, as it were, perhaps putting pressure on the Putin regime? Or is that very unlikely, and it is just punishing people who, frankly, may not deserve it?
Ms. Ironside: I am still quite pessimistic that sanctions are going to influence Russians to rise up against Putin, to be honest. I think this government has done a lot to prevent people from feeling the pain. They have replaced the departing Western brands, and they have heavily spent on welfare benefits to the families of soldiers who have fought, things like that. I’m just not sure that they are going to feel enough pain to make this be a viable strategy, to be honest.
The other thing is that, historically, sanctions tend to work best when there is a threat of sanctions; less so the sanctions themselves because people adapt and governments adapt.
One last thing I will say is: The Soviet government, before the Putin government, were experts at adapting to sanctions because they were sanctioned for virtually their entire existence. They know how to manipulate and work around this. There is muscle memory there, if that makes sense.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you for that.
I will flip this to you, Professor Belo, if you don’t mind. It is more of a NATO-related question. I’m wondering how unique you think the prospect is of Ukraine’s membership in NATO? Given that U.S. support is no guarantee in the event of an Article 5 breach, is this something Canada and our European allies really want? I’m just wondering, from your perspective, anything that you could comment on with that.
Mr. Belo: Considering the consistency of the signalling out of Moscow over the past four years, it seems to be the case that it would be incredibly difficult for Ukraine to eventually join NATO. The first condition is that the territorial integrity of Ukraine has to be maintained, because the consequences of that, if the violence continues, then the rest of NATO would join this fight, and I am sure that a lot of members of the transatlantic alliance will not go along with that. There has to be at least a meaningful agreement prior to that. The challenge is that the meaningful agreement can only come as a consequence of addressing what Ukraine’s role in NATO would be or not be. From Russia’s position, that’s the interesting thing. The transatlantic security community is not dealing with an adversary that changes the goalposts all the time. The messaging has been very consistent for the past four years and even before that, and the message is that Ukraine cannot join NATO.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Professor Belo. Sorry, we are just past time there.
Senator Harder: I have a very brief question and would like both to comment. Perhaps we could start with Professor Ironside. Can Russia lose?
Ms. Ironside: A very good question. I’m a historian. I don’t predict. That’s my weak answer to that. I believe in contingency, not predetermination. But I don’t see how they can win this either in any meaningful sense. Even if they win, they will have lost so much in going to war and doing this in the first place. I don’t see a clear victory coming out of this. I just don’t.
Senator Harder: As a supplementary, and then Professor Belo. I read a report which said that all of the things that you said that they are putting in place to, in a sense, buffer their population can last for about a year. That’s about the extent of their fiscal capacity. Would you concur with that?
Ms. Ironside: The most recent estimates, yes, growth has slowed to about 1%. This isn’t looking very good. It depends on which sector of the economy you are looking at. High tech has really suffered. Other sectors less so. The consumer sectors have actually been relatively okay. Food, they started preparing for this a long time ago. They also depend on China a lot these days. But China has the upper hand in that relationship and can put prices up.
They can hang on a bit longer, and they are good at waiting. How much longer? It is hard for me to say.
Senator Harder: Professor Belo, can Russia lose?
Mr. Belo: It depends on the angle. Just as my colleague said — we have heard time and time again when Russia was disconnected from SWIFT and when Europe stopped importing Russian oil, that the Russian economy would collapse. Well, looking back — and hindsight is 20/20 — it didn’t happen. If we were to be hedging bets, we have to look at what has already happened, and it is very difficult to say with certainty that this will happen all of a sudden now.
Senator Harder: Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: The EU’s ability to respond effectively to the needs in Ukraine has been bedevilled by Hungary’s actions. Last week, Hungary vetoed EU funding. Viktor Orbán is running for re-election, a huge campaign of disinformation, and huge Russian involvement in the Hungarian election. Hungary seems to have forgotten 1951 or seems to be prepared to do it all over again. What are your thoughts on that? How should the EU deal with Hungary?
Ms. Ironside: A little outside of my area of expertise, to be honest. I will say that Putin has really strategically reached out to Orbán and has used him as a sort of realist within the EU, someone who has very pragmatic interests. But it is interesting because, historically, it was not a good relationship between these two countries. I don’t see an enormous amount of recognition that this history is there. I don’t see that coming up.
It is not a very good answer to your question because it is not my area of expertise. Perhaps we can ask the international relations scholar about this.
Mr. Belo: The challenge is that the leadership in Hungary and the leadership in Moscow found friends in each other because they see eye to eye on social policy. They see eye to eye on social policy, and they also found that to be fertile ground in order to maintain power with that commonality of social policy. It has to do with the variety of human rights approaches and so on and so forth.
So breaking that relationship is going to be very difficult, because it is not just based on economic cost-benefit calculations.
Senator Kutcher: How should the EU deal with Hungary given this situation?
Mr. Belo: With the tools that they have been using so far, this is the best that they can do. They have currency relationships; they have trade relationships. The European Union funds many projects in Hungary. And for some reason — and it is probably because of both sides — that was insufficient leverage. In terms of economics, it is not that the Europeans could simply let Hungary go because it is an inseparable part of the eurozone.
Senator Kutcher: Do you think that Europe is indefinitely tied by Hungary’s intransigence?
Mr. Belo: I think this dynamic has been going on for a while, and it does not seem that any of the parties involved in the continuous friction have an easy off-ramp. Hungary cannot move closer to Russia because it will certainly lose a lot of the benefits that being part of the European Union has. But at the same time, being too close to the European social doctrine will prevent local elites from maintaining power through their chosen social policy.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Let me add my 50 euros’ worth and say that it is not only Russia that is supporting Viktor Orbán but also the Trump administration, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently visited Budapest.
Senator Woo: Thank you to Dr. Belo and Dr. Ironside. My question is for you, Dr. Ironside. I am intrigued by your framing of Russian motivations for its invasion of Ukraine. You talk about it as a kind of restoration of previous glory, but is it a restoration of Soviet times? Is it a restoration of imperial times? If we are talking about imperial times, are we talking about Catherine or Peter or Ivan the Great or Ivan the Terrible? I ask this not to be cute, but because much of the narrative around why we should support Ukraine — and I absolutely accept that we should support Ukraine — is because Russia will not stop at Ukraine. That is the narrative in the West. They will keep going. They will keep going all the way to the English Channel, you know, and beyond. What do you make of that argument?
Ms. Ironside: On the issue of Russian imperialism, one thing that has come up multiple times is that Putin keeps going back to Kyivan Rus, which was this medieval confederation that is kind of the cradle of civilization if you want to put it in those terms, of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus saying, we were all one place at one point; we can be one place again.
This is a fallacious argument because there are plenty of medieval polities that don’t map on to what a country looks like now. The modern concept of the nation-state didn’t exist at that time. There are other places you can point to.
This idea that somehow they are entitled to restore back to the 9th-century borders of the polity is sort of ridiculous to me on some level. Are there cultural linkages? Do these places have intertwined histories? Yes. But that does not justify anything.
He keeps going back to this. An infamous example of this is when he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was like, “Tell me about NATO.” And he said, “Let me tell you about Poland, Lithuania and medieval Russia.” Because for him, this is where he thinks this goes back to, and this sense that somehow they were artificially split up by the Bolsheviks, who tried to keep the Russian Empire together to a certain extent by creating these socialist republics — socialist in content but national in form. He thinks this was all artificial. For him I think it’s definitely restorationist in the sense that it’s about getting back to some pre-Soviet uncorrupted understanding of Russia —
Senator Woo: What kind of restoration do you think he is thinking of? This is the key question, because the Germans are afraid he will move in; of course, the Baltics are afraid; France is saying, and on and on.
Ms. Ironside: The Baltics have well-founded fear because they were in the Russian Empire.
Senator Woo: Absolutely.
Ms. Ironside: As for Germany, they had a foot in Germany after World War II. I think there is a lot of genuine fear in these places because in the past this was a place that expressed imperialist aims, whether you called it world communism or something else. I cannot say that he is going to go off and invade Germany tomorrow or anything like that. What I can say is that they do not view the contemporary borders of Ukraine as meaningful. They view them as an artificial construct of the Bolsheviks, and something that only became hard after 1991 and as a result of how the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Wilson: My question is for Professor Ironside. I’m going to do a terrible job of paraphrasing what you were saying about what sounds like an impending implosion in terms of the sustainability of Russia’s efforts that we may see that within a year or so. I would like to hear more about that in the context of what impact does that have on the dynamics in terms of how Putin behaves specifically with respect to the war in Ukraine and how the rest of us should be responding or preparing.
Ms. Ironside: Putin has basically allowed himself to be president for the rest of his natural life. The elections, at this point, are pretty meaningless in Russia. They have elections. They still have official opposition parties and all of this, but it is kind of just going through the motions. I don’t think there is any meaningful way for him to be voted out of office because of the things he is doing domestically and the impact of this war on people’s lives. I don’t see any situation in which he leaves office voluntarily. I don’t know if this answers your question.
In terms of what we should be doing, what I will say as a historian — again, I’m not a military expert or political scientist. But as a historian, these things can be very unpredictable. The pressure can be sustained because you can have an unpredictable tipping point. No one expected the Soviet Union to collapse, but it did, and it sent things off in a different direction. I don’t think that he should be in any way, shape or form rewarded for what he has done by just waiting it out — if that makes sense — which seems to be the strategy right now; to just wait until people give up, until they have lost interest in this and moved on, and then go about doing our own thing. I don’t think we should give up the pressure there, but it doesn’t mean that it will automatically have an immediate response.
The Chair: Professor Belo?
Mr. Belo: I would like to approach this from a more zoomed‑out perspective. I would like to introduce, just for general understanding, that there are five pillars to Russian foreign policy that are true across time. It also goes back to the senator who asked about the limits of the expansion.
The first pillar is outward orientation. There should be no expectation that Russia will ever look at itself internally and never look outward. It will always have friction, or it has had friction, and it will likely continue.
A whole-of-society approach to fighting, meaning that it is never framed as and never is simply a conflict of the elites — Putin, the people in the Kremlin. It is always framed as the people’s war. It is very difficult to fight that because the expectation is that everyone will tighten their belts for the effort of foreign policy.
The next, which is very important to understand, is justice over lawfulness. This is why international agreements mean little compared to justice. That’s why we hear a lot of narratives that this is just, and it will always supersede lawfulness.
Buffer zones. Russia seeks buffer zones; north, east, west, it doesn’t matter.
And then state survival, which is the framing of an existential threat.
Those are pillars that have been consistent throughout Russian history, Soviet Union and contemporary Russian foreign policy. So to answer at what point does the current Russia stop — does it stop at Ukraine? As long as it achieves and fulfills these five pillars of foreign policy, then it will stop; when it feels that these are satisfied. Short of that, it will continue.
The Chair: Thank you, Professor Belo.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I think my question will be for Mr. Belo.
If I understood correctly, you said that Russia’s economic outlook is sluggish, with a weak growth forecast. Russian indicators show that, in 2023 and 2024, the GDP was 1%, if memory serves.
How much of that is due to Western sanctions? Do you think this slowdown will weigh on Russian military capabilities?
[English]
Mr. Belo: I believe that the percentages were actually addressed by my colleague Dr. Ironside, but I’m happy to answer it, and then maybe I can yield to my colleague. In terms of the impact of Western sanctions, did they have an impact? Yes. Did they create a meaningful uprising that would internally risk the current regime falling? It doesn’t seem that way. There is certainly resistance. We have seen resistance by Yevgeny Prigozhin and other members of the fighting corps of Russia in Ukraine, who have tried to do a number of things. But in terms of meaningful impact, there is a lot of adaptability. It goes back to the whole-of-society approach to fighting. Yes, sanctions; now the signal is everyone tightens their belt. And that is very difficult to deal with.
Ms. Ironside: Let me just add that the concept of economic sovereignty is not a new one right now in Russia. This has been ongoing since the early 2000s. One of the things that Putin saw in the 1990s was that Russia had high foreign loans. It declared a moratorium on repaying its foreign debt. It had to default. One of the first things he did once oil prices went up was pay off all that debt to remove that source of pressure. They have a very low debt-to-GDP ratio compared to other countries.
They have tried to make sure that they are not dependent on the rest of the world for food. This was a long-standing thorn in the side of the Soviet government. They imported food every year from 1963 onward. They stopped doing that. In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, they put embargoes on Western products coming in. This project of a more militant sense of economic sovereignty has been ongoing for a while.
When it comes to military spending and military strength, they have diverted a lot of money to the military. I don’t have numbers off the top of my head, but they have spent a lot of money on this. And this has driven growth. There are parts of the country that are producing things for the military. There is a special economic zone in the middle of the country called Alabuga that shifted basically to import substitution and making drones. A couple of years before this, they were making packaging for McDonald’s. They have adapted pretty quickly.
I don’t know what that says about military strength, but they will pay for the military before they will care about how some little grandma is doing in the provinces.
Senator Al Zaibak: Yesterday marked four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At this stage, in your view, who has greater incentive to negotiate seriously: Ukraine or Russia? Do you see evidence that either side is prepared to compromise on core territorial issues? The question is to both of our witnesses.
Ms. Ironside: I don’t think Putin is negotiating in particularly good faith at the moment. He is dragging his feet. I don’t see any compromise happening there, so in terms of incentives, I’m not sure he feels a strong sense of incentive to negotiate, to be honest. Again, though, I’m a historian, so I don’t want to predict. I will pass it to my colleague.
Mr. Belo: Your question, senator, very much addresses what I have mentioned in my opening statement that the main obstacle to conflict resolution is incompatible objectives. That’s where the real challenge is: The objectives are so divergent — so far apart — that contract space is very difficult to identify because they overlap. Ukraine seeks sovereignty and territorial integrity; Russia seeks the opposite of that, which is leverage and revision of the regional, if not larger, order.
It is very difficult to identify what a famous scholar would call contract space. For them to find that contract space, they literally have to capitulate on their most principled positions.
Senator Al Zaibak: Today is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, a reminder of our commitment to protect our children from bullying and abuse. At the same time, thousands of Ukrainian children remain abducted in Russia, held in more than 200 facilities for re-education and forced military training. In your opinion, how can Canada and its allies most effectively address these abuses and work toward the safe return of these children to their families?
The Chair: Which of you would like to take that question? You have 30 seconds.
Ms. Ironside: I’m not sure I have an answer, to be honest.
Mr. Belo: Very quickly, it would be incredibly difficult. I think the best chance to counter this phenomenon is to treat the return of children like the return of prisoners of war, because that has worked before; we have seen a good number of exchanges. That would at least be a starting point.
Senator Al Zaibak: Thank you.
Senator Adler: Thank you very much, witnesses, for being here. When people like us — meaning Westerners — are looking at Ukraine and Russia, I sometimes wonder whether we project our own values and expectations. Isn’t the historical record fairly clear that the area we call “Ukraine” and the area we call “Russia” have had, over the years, an incredibly high threshold of pain, the ancillary effect of which is to have a low expectation of prosperity?
Ms. Ironside: It depends on what period we are looking at. One thing the Soviet government did was promise that they would deliver prosperity, but they also kept postponing it and never managed to deliver on their promises. Then, the government comes along after the collapse of Communism and says that it’s now just a matter of some economic reforms and that we just need to get beyond this painful period, and then you will have prosperity. That was postponement.
There is a lot of patience for those promises, but I will say, as I answered to someone else’s question, the tipping points are often really unpredictable. There are many examples throughout Russian history of revolutions. There were the bread riots that started the February revolution in 1917. In 1962, in Novocherkassk, after they put up the prices of butter and meat, they rioted and the tanks came in.
I wouldn’t say that people just suffer long in silence about this, but there is a lot of capacity for endurance; let’s put it that way.
Senator Adler: If we just take Russia, I realize some polls are less reliable than other polls, but all the indicators from people who have appeared here are that Putin, despite everything, is still popular. Would that not tell you that the threshold for pain of the Russian people — and I realize there are many peoples in Russia, in general — do they not have a higher tolerance for pain than we would in a similar circumstance?
Ms. Ironside: Putin really skillfully manipulates their feelings and worries about instability. He says that instability is the thing that would make them less prosperous; stability will make them prosper. You see this when he came back to power in 2012, after Medvedev was the placeholder president, many people were happy to see that because they saw him as stability; he was the person who brought that about. That has a lot to do with the economic successes he was able to engineer at the beginning of his first two presidencies and less to do with what happened after that, especially after he cane back to power in 2012.
There is a lot of fear and anxiety around instability in that society, and, on some level, it’s the devil you know. Also, he is very good at manipulating those feelings.
Senator Adler: — business to Putin in the sense that many ambitious Russians — and ambitious Ukrainians — are allowed to leave?
Ms. Ironside: Yes, they have left. There has been a massive brain drain since this started. Plenty of people have left. I think they are happier to have those people abroad because, on some level, that neutralizes the criticism. However, it also means you are consistently seeing your smartest, and the most talented people go abroad. There is a trade-off there, but it is one they are willing to make.
The Chair: I’m going to use my prerogative as chair to ask a question. I want to ask this of Professor Belo.
Just over a week ago, President Zelenskyy, in Munich, told the assembled that Ukraine is the defender of Europe. If you look at the sophistication of Ukrainian weaponry, their intelligence and the way they are just being so steadfast, it is hard not to believe that. That leads to the question of the Russian war machine itself — the conventional war machine, even though we are into drone warfare and everything, but taking nuclear weapons off the table. The tolls are high in terms of the killed and injured. It really is a slaughter on the front lines. Of course, there is a drag on the economy, as the economy is basically a war economy for equipment. Recruitment or conscription doesn’t seem to be in the future in terms of the more, shall we say, European areas of the country.
So, I’m not convinced that Russia really poses such a significant, immediate threat to Europe. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Mr. Belo: Thank you for asking this very important question and for giving me the opportunity to directly speak about the military capabilities.
If Russia started a conventional war with Poland today, it is very unlikely that they would win. The first factor is the drainage of resources, the lack of capability of outdated technology and a lack of personnel who are qualified; many of the qualified cadres in the Russian military have lost their lives on the battlefield, whether in the early part of the war or now.
In terms of the overall capability, as you said, short of nuclear capabilities, they are rather limited. The chance that Russia would be able to swiftly move across what used to be called Eastern Europe and Central Europe is very unlikely. It does not have the capability to achieve its military goals even in western Ukraine. If it starts fighting with a NATO country that is even better equipped, it would pose a severe challenge, and Russia would likely fail.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Harder: My question is for Professor Ironside. I had a conversation with John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago, whose central thesis, as you would well know, is that much of this conflict is rooted in the behaviour of the West.
He suggests that we have much to answer for in terms of how various governments in the West, beginning with — in his history with George H. W. Bush and the commitments made, he alleges, with respect to the expansion of NATO and the like.
As a historian, how do you judge your fellow historian at the University of Chicago?
Ms. Ironside: There is a great book by Mary Sarotte about this — basically, there is no promise, right? There is nothing on paper. But there are others, such as Jack Matlock, the last American ambassador to the Soviet Union, who said, “No, I was in the room, and I heard it said.” My reaction to this is even if there is no smoking gun, which there isn’t always in the archives — we would love for there to be a great piece of paper that says, “I say this is happening” — there is a strongly held perception that it happened. It structures their behaviour from the 1990s onward. This is something that Boris Yeltsin was complaining about in his phone conversations with Bill Clinton, which are all declassified, and you can go through the 20,000 pages of it if you want to. I’ve looked at some of them. It is a long-standing grievance, one that Putin picked up again in the early 2000s. I believe Putin believes that that the promise was made and broken.
As to what the West is responsible for and what it needs to ask for forgiveness for over John Mearsheimer, this is not my area of expertise, but I will say this is a very influential thesis. If you look up this stuff online, you will encounter John Mearsheimer within 30 seconds.
Senator Harder: Thank you.
The Chair: Did you want to comment on that as well, Professor Belo?
Mr. Belo: My response would be a little bit longer, so maybe I will hold off my interesting counterfactual to another time.
The Chair: That makes you rare among witnesses, so thank you for that.
Senator Kutcher: I would like to ask Professor Ironside to weigh in on this issue of giving up territory, which seems to be very popular to talk about, and in your understanding of Russian and Ukrainian history, for Ukraine, this is not about giving up territory, it is about giving up identity. It would mean capitulating to an enemy that they have constructed over decades and decades and centuries, based on some real realities — the Holodomor, the killings during the collectivization period, all the taking of dissidents and sending them to Siberia — and good luck coming back — and all of the Stalin Russification programs in Ukraine, making the language illegal. All those other kinds of things. This is not an issue of territory. As a historian, how can you help us understand that this is not just simply trading a piece of land for something else?
Ms. Ironside: You are absolutely right. This is an issue of identity, and it’s also about international agreements. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine and Russia had an agreement about where the border was, and that agreement was still in effect and it was violated. I will say that one thing that animates some of this discussion is that the parts of eastern Ukraine, where more Russian speakers are, does not automatically mean that those people there identify as Russian. There is a difference between a Russophone and a Russian. The Russian government has instrumentalized things like giving passports easily to people who live in these borderland regions, not just in eastern Ukraine. They have done this along the southern border as well. They have a very expansive definition of what it means to be a compatriot. This discourse has animated, part of why they think they are doing this war in the first place: “We have to go and defend these people who are being genocided against.” This is the language that they use, actually, which is an inversion of the language that Ukraine uses against them. They are lobbing these accusations at each other. You are absolutely right. This is an identity issue for Ukraine. Essentially, on some level, Putin does not believe that Ukraine exists. He is like, there is a part of it in the West that historically was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland and Lithuania, but the rest of it was part of us. I don’t think that that view is going anywhere. I don’t think he has adapted that view at all. As my colleague says, this is a non-negotiable. It is a line in the sand.
Senator Woo: Yes. My question is on Russia-China relations, which in the West is usually portrayed as a no-limits partnership, but I am old enough to remember when no limits means no limit to the animosity between the two countries.
There was a time when China betrayed the Soviet Union and turned to the United States as a Nixon detente, of course. They described it as a feinting toward Moscow while pivoting toward Washington. I wonder if there is a possibility, as people are discussing now, that Russia may be feinting toward China while pivoting to the United States? We see that, of course, in Trump’s overtures to Putin and reports of business deals and so on. I don’t know which one of you might be qualified or courageous enough to comment on that.
Ms. Ironside: I can just say that this is not an equal relationship, that —
Senator Woo: That’s clear.
Ms. Ironside: It’s very clear to me that it is not and that it is also not going to make up for all of the other ways the economy has been damaged since 2022. The relationship with China won’t do that.
I don’t know that they envision a broader level of cooperation — you read these reports, like, everyone — their kids are learning Chinese and all of this. Maybe. I don’t know. Did you want to add something to that, Professor Belo?
Mr. Belo: The territorial disputes in the Far East of Russia vis-à-vis China have not gone anywhere, and what this indicates — what is happening now is that it is a very instrumental type of relationship that they have. Today, they have memoranda of understanding that they are in this together, fighting the transatlantic community in a number of domains, but it can easily change tomorrow. As you have noted. Senator, today, we’re in this scenario. During the Nixon era, it was a pragmatic understanding that a difference scenario was beneficial to China. I will echo my colleague to say that this is a very unequal relationship. Russia is much more dependent on China than China is on Russia. China is much better connected to the rest of the world. Russia is connected to China, and its connection with India is now losing traction. This can’t be sustainable in the long run because the stronger partner will eventually abandon ship once its options have gotten better.
The Chair: Thank you. That last exchange reminds me of Arctic questions and China’s assertion that it is a near-Arctic nation. So if it is that, with an Arctic nation beside it with whom it has boundary disputes as we do, for example, with the United States, that could lead to some interesting future scenarios. I just wanted to put that there.
Would any other senator like to ask a question, because if not, I will put one forward? I don’t want to speak too much for my colleague, Senator Harder, but both he and I, in our previous lives, were involved as G8 sherpas and in other duties in trying to bring Russia more into the Western fold. There was great optimism for a long time. And then it all ended. We could see it ending, but it all ended in 2014, when the G8 again became the G7. The question I always ask myself is why. Was it just Putin’s discomfort with the whole concept of somehow being subservient when, in fact, the economic advantage was very great regardless of the oligarchical system and the like? I would like the opinion of both of you just to close out our meeting today. Can we start with Professor Ironside, the historian?
Ms. Ironside: That’s a good question. Because it also seems like a bit of an about-face from the earlier Putin, too, because in the early 2000s, he was explicitly arguing for greater economic integration, foreign direct investment in Russia and all of this, and then, by 2014, that changed. Then it moved much more in that direction of this concept of militant economic sovereignty, embargoes, and all of the rest. I don’t know what goes on in his head. I can’t speak for that. But it does seem that this sense of trying to restore Russia to great power status is very, very meaningfully important to him, and that seems to trump other things. He thinks it is worth the economic pain. It might be in the sense that, in the long run, it will even out or pay off. But this is definitely something he is willing to sacrifice plenty for.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Belo: The main difficulty is getting into, of course, President Vladimir Putin’s head, but what is absolutely clear, I think, at this point, after fighting a war for four years, is that there is an ideological component to this. If there was simply a pragmatic cost-benefit calculation, that war would have likely ended two and a half to three years ago. So there is some sort of ideological component, and that’s very difficult to deter and to deal with.
Clearly, Russia has indicated it is willing to absorb absolutely disproportionate costs, and again, the question is of negotiation. Where does one begin to even negotiate with a country that is acting for ideological reasons? The consequence is that Russia is able to tighten its belt significantly. The expectation is that ordinary Russian citizens will as well. It is very characteristic of Russian foreign policy when engaging in conflict.
I don’t envy diplomats who have to deal with this because, as my colleague has said, there are a lot of unknowns. There could be a spark and a tectonic change that is awaiting us, or there could be continuity. What is absolutely clear is that the ideological desire for greatness plays a significant role, the ideological desire for greatness on their own terms, and I think that “on their own terms” is a real line in the sand.
The Chair: Thank you very much. “On their own terms” sounds a bit familiar in terms of neighbours that we have close to us.
I would like to thank Professor Ironside and Professor Belo for joining us today as witnesses. I think the committee was enriched by your commentary, so thank you very much.
Colleagues, for our second panel, we are pleased to welcome by videoconference from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Max Bergmann, Director, Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program; and from the Institute for the Study of War, George Barros, Russia Team Lead, Senior Analyst.
Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. We are ready to receive your opening remarks. Mr. Bergmann, you have the floor, and you will be followed by Mr. Barros. Please go ahead.
Max Bergmann, Director, Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program, Center for Strategic and International Studies: Honourable senators, apologies for not being able to be there in person, but thank you so much for asking me to testify before you and offer my perspective, which will, hopefully, be helpful and useful to your work.
This discussion is especially timely, as this week marks the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. To set the scene, I will outline the status of negotiations, the most likely scenarios to come in the next stage of the war and what Ukraine needs to defend its territory and protect its sovereignty moving forward.
First, the reality is that negotiations, in my view, unfortunately, are unlikely to lead to a durable and lasting ceasefire. Right now, I would say there are two general perspectives on negotiations. The Trump administration, as I see it, has viewed this mainly as an argument or war about land and that Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that he wants to seize the entire Donbas region, the Donbas oblast, and therefore, if Ukraine gives up the Donbas, the war can come to an end.
The other perspective — this is my perspective, and I think it’s one that is pretty widely shared within the Russia expert community, at least here in Washington — is that this is not a war, ultimately, about territory, but this is a war about Russia’s status as a great power and its desire to control the country of Ukraine and that for Russia to be a great power, it needs to control Ukraine.
From this perspective, Russia will effectively have little or no interest in a lasting ceasefire that would enable Ukraine to leave its orbit or that would enable Ukraine to turn toward Brussels and the European Union. Therefore, in the Kremlin’s eyes, a ceasefire does not serve its ends. In fact, the way Vladimir Putin would see it, I think, is Russia effectively losing the war if it were to agree to a lasting ceasefire.
While I hope the Trump negotiators are correct and a deal is in reach, sadly, I think the evidence points in the other direction; effectively, these talks are headed nowhere.
I take my 6-year-old to a playground at our local elementary school, and on that playground there’s a merry-go-round. The merry-go-round is very exciting; there’s a lot of movement; you spin around in a circle; you get a little dizzy; there’s a lot of activity; but, ultimately, you end up where you started, and that’s where I see these negotiations going.
There’s a lot of spinning in circles, talks and press attention, but ultimately we’ve gotten almost nowhere. It has been a year, and there are, effectively, now, trilateral talks happening with a rather low-level Russian interlocutor that are not that central, as I see it, to Kremlin decision making. I don’t really see these talks making a lot of progress.
Where does that leave us? That brings me to my second point. The war is likely to continue, I think, with intense ferocity over this year. Mr. Barros may be better placed to speak about this from the Institute for the Study of War, which has been doing great work tracking what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.
I think Russia believes that it has the upper hand in this war. Russians likely believe they are on the right side of the war of attrition. They also likely look at the approaching end of U.S. military funding, or U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, as a significant problem for the Ukrainian military.
Almost all of the current military assistance — the weapons flowing to Ukraine from U.S. stockpiles — was paid for during the Biden administration. That means that over this next year, and likely into 2027, we’re going to see a decline in the number of weapons deliveries that the U.S. is providing to Ukraine. Russia thinks it can perhaps take advantage of this handover between the U.S. providing military aid and the Europeans stepping up.
What is also clear is Russia is suffering massive losses in this war. It has, astonishingly, recruited roughly 400,000 men per year to fight in this war, and it has done so through tremendous financial costs, by essentially bribing its citizens to go and fight in this war.
This is not the great patriotic war of World War II. In some ways, the Russian military more and more represents, in some ways, a mercenary military.
At the same time, Ukraine has lost very little territory, despite, effectively, non-stop Russian offensives. It is unclear how accurate the information is that Putin is receiving or how he is being informed about this war. He may think he is on the right side of the war, in part because the information he is getting is not that accurate. I do think we may hit a point this year where Russia decides it needs to dial down the fighting.
This leads to my third point. We have viewed the peace talks and the current way forward as a dichotomy between war and peace. Either Russia is going to go all out in fighting Ukraine, or there will be a ceasefire and talks because all wars have to end at the negotiating table, as is constantly said; I think there is some truth to this.
However, I think there is a third path, which strikes me as the most likely direction where this conflict is headed, which I would describe as a forever war, or a hot-frozen conflict, where Russia dials down the fighting but maintains a hostile posture toward Ukraine. Maybe it’s not going on offensives to try to take back territory, but it is still lobbing artillery at Ukrainian front lines and lobbing missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, preventing Ukraine from proceeding on a reconstruction path, and essentially leaving Ukraine in a state of purgatory indefinitely.
This is effectively what we saw between 2015 and 2022, where Ukraine was not able to realize its European future, not really able to go on a path to joining the European Union and NATO. I think that might be a much more sustainable approach to this war, and it means that the fighting will go on for a very long time.
This is my final point. How do we, as the West, prepare to back Ukraine for the long haul? It is very critical that we begin to think about this war, not in six-month increments and how do we fund Ukraine to get through this winter or this next year, but to begin to take a longer-term approach of how do we begin to shift this war in the direction of the Ukrainian military?
I think the only way Russia really comes to the table and seriously negotiates is if they fear they might end up losing this war and are on the wrong side of this war of attrition. That means taking a much longer-term perspective toward aiding Ukraine, roughly of the three to five-year time frame.
Unfortunately, I don’t see my country taking that perspective and approach, but I think it is critical that Europe, Canada, and others in NATO who strongly back Ukraine adopt that approach. That is the only way Ukraine can effectively realize its European dream of membership in the European Union and turning away from Russia.
I will close there for now and look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Barros, please.
George Barros, Russia Team Lead, Senior Analyst, Institute for the Study of War: Thank you, honourable senators. Thank you for the invitation to testify before the committee as we mark the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
My testimony today will cover the Institute for the Study of War’s assessment of the situation on the battlefield, the cost that the war is inflicting on Russia and the current negotiation process.
First, the battlefield assessment:
Ukraine’s lines are holding and will likely continue to hold. The situation on the battlefield is difficult but not critical. While Russia remains dangerous, the collapse of Ukraine’s line is unlikely.
Russian forces’ best prospects in 2026 are continued marginal gains. Russia will not seize the remainder of Donetsk oblast this year. Under optimized assumptions that benefit Moscow, Russian forces may be able to seize Donetsk oblast in late 2027 or early 2028, assuming Ukraine’s international partners continue to support Ukraine.
Ukraine’s drone kill zone has trapped Russian forces into brutal, positional warfare by denying Russia the ability to amass tanks and other armoured vehicles necessary for a breakthrough.
The front line is neither heavily manned nor contiguous. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces maintain strongpoints, interspersed throughout the line like small islands. The main way in which Russian forces advance is in small infantry groups of three to five soldiers who slowly needle their way through a kill zone punctuated by Russian- and Ukrainian-held positions.
These tactics render Russia meagre results at an extraordinary cost. Russia seized 0.8% of Ukraine’s total territory last year. In 2025 Russian forces seized, on average, 13 to 15 square kilometres per day while suffering an estimated 83 casualties per square kilometre seized.
Russian forces will continue to make tactical gains in some sectors of the line this year, but a collapse remains unlikely. Ukraine’s command staff, operational concepts, mid-range strike capabilities and new Corps structures are maturing. The front will likely continue to stabilize and mature into positional warfare in the war’s fifth year.
Second, regarding the war’s effects on Russia:
Russia’s military power is finite. The assumption that Russia can fight indefinitely, at least at the current tempo, is false. The war imposes high compounding costs on the Russian economy. In January 2025, Russia raised its value-added tax to 22% to offset record military spending amid falling oil and gas revenues.
In October, Russia began the compulsory mobilization of reservists for the first time, a significant inflection in Russia’s force-generation strategy that reflects strain on Russia’s ability to spend its way through a war. In November, Russia began selling gold reserves for the time as its sovereign wealth fund continues to shrink.
Facing a significant labour shortage, Russia plans to recruit tens of thousands of migrant workers. Anticipating social unrest, Russia is now working to throttle Telegram, the popular messaging platform, and conduct internet blackout tests designed to cut Russian citizens off from the internet.
Putin is trying to conceal the extent to which Russia is in a precarious position that will likely become worse as the war protracts. The international community supporting Ukraine can leverage these vulnerabilities to achieve an end to the war that contains Russia’s ambitions and ability to wage future wars of conquest.
Finally, and third, on negotiations. I agree with my colleague, Mr. Bergmann. The current U.S.-led negotiations are unlikely to result in sustainable peace anytime soon. The obstacle to peace is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to be satisfied with what he has already taken.
Putin has refused to make any concessions that suggest he is willing to retreat from his maximalist, prewar ultimata issued in late 2021. These ultimata, notably, do not only concern Ukraine, but also NATO’s North Atlantic Treaty and the foundations of the European security architecture as well.
Ending the conflict requires invalidating Putin’s theory of victory, which posits that Russia can win an attritional war as long as Russian forces keep advancing, even if slowly, and that Russia can outlast the West and its willingness to support Ukraine.
Invalidating this theory of victory requires Ukraine to stop Russian battlefield advances cold. This is not a far-fetched possibility or proposition given the already slow rate of Russian forces’ current advance.
The centre of gravity for this war thus remains, and has always been, the international community’s continued support for Ukraine. Ukrainian forces, through sustained Western support and military adaptation, can halt Russian advances and give Putin a reason to negotiate based on battlefield realities. The reasonable starting point for conflict termination negotiations is also the current de facto lines of control, not cajoling Ukraine into preemptively surrendering swaths of strategically vital fortified terrain, the so-called fortress belt in Donetsk, that Russian forces are unlikely to seize anytime soon.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Barros.
Senator Harder: Thank you to both of our witnesses. I appreciate your assessment of the terrain. I have to assume that this information is broadly shared in the State Department and the White House, and I am confounded as to what strategy President Trump is following with respect to bringing an end to the war. It seems to me that his strategy does not recognize what is happening on the ground.
The Europeans increasingly are doing exactly as you would have hoped and wished. Should they not now take over the front of negotiation on this, as the Americans have pulled out military support to 99% less? The only serious assistance from the United States remaining is the CIA and the intelligence assessments. What is your reaction to how the American contribution to this so-called negotiation is proceeding?
The Chair: Why don’t you go first, Mr. Bergmann, and then Mr. Barros will follow.
Mr. Bergmann: Thank you. In terms of U.S. support for Ukraine, intelligence support remains very crucial. Weapon deliveries are still very important for supporting Ukraine. That was more important last year but remains essential. Congress allocated money in April 2024, and the Biden administration spent it all down by January 20, 2025. Most of this went to industry to build weapon systems, and those are being delivered now. Turning off that pipeline would be problematic for Ukraine.
I think what you have seen is that the Ukrainians want to keep that going. Therefore, what I would describe bluntly is that they are engaging in a dance with the Russians for the benefit of the White House. I don’t think the Ukrainians have any expectation that the peace talks will go anywhere, but that it is not worth angering the President by walking away from these talks. But the hopes that they will progress are very limited.
This is where it would be beneficial if the Europeans had a single point of contact. There is talk about the Europeans creating a special envoy to engage with Russia, perhaps the Finnish president or the former Finnish president. I think it would be beneficial because the Europeans are out of the conversations and need to become engaged. The theory of the case is a wrong reading of Russia and what this war is about. It is a real estate transaction and not one that is fundamentally about geopolitics and power. They are misguided in how they are pursuing this and think it is the Ukrainians at fault for there not being peace. This is a view that I reject, and there is a lot of spinning of the wheels about these negotiations.
The Chair: Thank you. We are over the time limit, Mr. Barros. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you will get your points in as we move along.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you, witnesses. My question will be for Mr. Barros so that you can get your time in. I will start with an observation that no one has ever won a war without playing offence. I would go to Jake Sullivan and his infamous “The Sources of American Power: A Foreign Policy for the Middle Class,” piece in Foreign Affairs of December 2023, where he basically laid out that there was going to be no way that he would allow Ukraine to attack targets in Russia.
Europe continues this process. Without shooting the archer instead of the arrow, you are not going to be able to stop the destruction of civilians, which is what Putin is trying because he can’t win on the battlefield. He is trying to kill innocent people as a war of attrition. My question is this: Why is Europe playing Jake Sullivan’s game?
Mr. Barros: Thank you for the question, Senator Kutcher. Part of it is that the Europeans have been falling victim to what the Russians and Russian literature refer to as a “reflex of control.” It’s a concept of psychological warfare which essentially reasons that if you understand the psychological profile of your interlocutor, you understand the stimuli that he or she reacts to, and you understand the biases that, basically in a Pavlovian fashion, you can feed them particular stimuli and reflexively control what they are going to do.
It’s not a coincidence that yesterday the Russian foreign intelligence service issued a statement about how France and the United Kingdom are preparing to send Ukraine a nuclear device or a dirty bomb whenever there has been a potential policy debate about having the United States or a western European country step up their support for Ukraine or taking the fight to Russia or, as you said, attacking the archer, not the arrow. The Russians do these pin pricks that immediately trigger these knee-jerk reactions in the establishment of the national security apparatuses for these various countries.
This is how the Russians have been able to leverage a very weak conventional hand compared to these western states because they know how to get into our heads and affect our decision making. The journey of the last four or five years of this war has been essentially proving that all the previous taboos of the things we previously argued we could not do in a conventional war, in which Russia has been belligerent, and we have proven that you can do them, and it is a shame that we didn’t come to this conclusion earlier. I would argue we should lean into that as we continue into the second half of a decade’s worth of fighting.
[Translation]
Senator Gerba: I would like to thank both of our witnesses for being here. My question is for Professor Bergmann.
You mentioned the CIA’s involvement in this unsolicited war in Ukraine. Hypothetically, if your country, the United States, decided to stop this monitoring of the CIA, what would happen to Ukraine?
[English]
Mr. Bergmann: Thank you, senator. It is a very good question. I don’t know exactly. It is a bit of an unknown. I do think that it is not simply the CIA, but much of the support is on the direct military side to assist the Ukrainians with targeting, using the vast space intelligence assets the U.S. has to identify targets, to help Ukrainian operators identify those targets and hit those targets, and to see the battle space. When there have been reports that when there were periods when U.S. intelligence support was not there, Ukraine was flying blind in terms of knowing what to shoot at. I take that seriously.
I believe that the Europeans have some assets that could come in to support Ukraine, and there has been work done over the last year to build some redundancies, particularly on the part of the French. Emmanuel Macron said that France is now providing increasing intelligence support. I think that was met with skepticism in Washington that France could really be a like‑for‑like replacement, but in war, what would happen is that if this got turned off, the Ukrainians would scramble. They are very good at scrambling and figuring out alternatives, but the best‑case scenario is they don’t have to keep scrambling to fight the way they’ve been fighting.
Mr. Barros: Thank you, Senator Gerba. I completely agree with Mr. Bergmann. In addition to the targeted support, it is also crucial for civilians. For example, the Russians have strategic air bases that are deep in Russia, the Engels-2 air base, for example, where the Russians store the Tupolev Tu-95 air bombers that air‑launch cruise missiles. The United States, through the Keyhole intelligence program, I believe, can give an order and monitor those sites, so we can actually give the Ukrainians fair warning when the Russians are loading up the strategic bombers with air‑launch cruise missiles so civilians have notice to go to the shelters. Without that intelligence sharing, Ukrainians will have less reaction time and fewer civilians will get to shelters, and the civilian casualties will be worse. In addition to the practical, raw military asset value of knowing where to shoot, it is also important for protecting civilian lives as well.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our guests for being here today. Mr. Bergmann, I think you answered a huge part of my question about what victory looks like, what a war finishing looks like and the possibility of a forever war. I try to think about what victory will look like for Ukraine, the timing and how this will all work out. I think you have taken that on.
I have two probing questions about that, and I’ll ask them together. At this moment in Russia, everyday people are feeling the effects of sanctions. Is there any possibility of the — group leading to the toppling of a Putin regime? Or do the oligarchs need to be the catalyst for that topple? That’s the first part.
The second part is about the same issue but in the media. The BBC reported a story about how Russian troops who don’t follow orders are getting shot. We know it has happened before. Perhaps it is a habit. Can some of this be another form of dissension among the ranks?
Mr. Bergmann: Thank you, senator. It’s a great question. I have to answer with a degree of humility. If you told me four years ago that Russia would lose 100,000 troops, I would have said Putin would be in trouble. They’ve had more than a million casualties, and I think Russia is now struggling. Mr. Barros mentioned many of the negative effects that are starting to really hit the Russian military.
The Russian economy, I think, is going to really struggle this year, but we have to be clear that they had some economic growth in 2025. I don’t think that is going to happen in 2026, but we have to be humble and, in some ways, respect and be in awe of, in a morbid way, Russia’s ability to absorb the casualties and the economic strain. No one would have predicted that Prigozhin would march on Moscow or that he would stop himself and how far he would get.
When I think of future change agents in Russia, I don’t look to the populace, although you never know. I think things would have to get very bad economically. The military, in Russian history, has, at times, taken action into their own hands. To be clear, there is no real sign of that happening, but the brutality on the front lines is part of the way that the Russian military has kept things in line. Now, if we get to a point where there is another year and no gains, morale starts to crumble and the economy is not doing well, you can see it spiralling, but I think Putin would then look for an off-ramp as it starts to threaten his regime. Right now, I think he feels quite secure.
My last point is that a lot of people have left Russia. Those who would be pushing for protests have left. A sort of new Gulag system has been set up — new forms of oppression and censorship. This is moving more to a totalitarian place than Russia was previously. It was much more of an authoritarian state. There isn’t a lot of space for political opposition from the public, so oligarchs could move, but they are a very chastened bunch, I think, by the last four years of this war.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Senator Wilson: My question is probably for Mr. Bergmann, but it is based on Mr. Barros’ testimony. I have found that we haven’t heard much optimism on this topic, and that was the most optimism I have heard. I’m interested to hear your perspective on if we are successful in pushing Russia back and holding that line, if we recognize that negotiations will not go anywhere with this Trump-led effort and if we are getting better at not having the Russians get into our heads about other stuff that is distracting us, then what then is to stop Ukraine from moving forward with more formal ties with the EU and NATO?
Mr. Bergmann: I think one of the major obstacles in Ukraine moving forward with EU membership is that there is an active conflict. I think it was part of the reason that people who wanted to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine said they were worried about Ukraine joining NATO or the EU. Russia effectively created a veto the moment it invaded Ukraine and had this frozen conflict in the Donbas region. The challenge for Ukraine is how to modernize their country and adopt all the reforms that the EU demands, for example, the 10,000 pages of law that you have to adopt to become an EU country. Ukrainians are working on that. It is very hard to do that when you are fighting a war under martial law.
For the Europeans, bringing Ukraine in would mean they would have to make a lot of reforms themselves, like their common agricultural policy. I don’t see progress toward EU membership unless there is a cessation of the war. That is why Vladimir Putin would not want it to end. The best thing for Ukraine is to work hard toward EU membership so that at the moment there is a cessation of the conflict, maybe in five or ten years or maybe in two years or two months, Ukraine is ready to move quickly toward EU membership.
Mr. Barros: I’ll give a slightly different view here. I think there are actually better security guarantees and better collective security things that we can do for Ukraine outside of the rubric of NATO. All the Ukrainians, of course, want admittance to NATO, and that is their right. The NATO charter can allow them to do that. However, I would note that NATO’s Article 5 is pretty mushy and doesn’t obligate any particular military course of action to defend any particular member.
In fact, I think a more robust guarantee should be modelled after the language that’s in the treaty that the United States has with Japan, which is also a Senate ratified treaty. Essentially, if Japan invokes it, there is no Article 5 implication where the allies gather and convene and decide what the appropriate military response is. It is much more straightforward. If the Japanese invoke their treaty, the United States is obligated to go defend Japan. I think that with the language of Article 5 — which the Russians have been testing with their various incursions and sabotage acts and other acts of de facto war against European states, which they practically decided to ignore — the Russians could get away with some other malfeasance with Ukraine. We should think about the security guarantees in a different package, not the NATO package. I’ll leave it at that.
The Chair: Thank you. We are coming to the end of the first round. I would like to ask a question or two of each of you.
Mr. Barros, you, of course, know about military capabilities more than any of us. My question for you is this: Ukrainians have been very resourceful in developing their own weaponry, such as the Neptune marine drone. They have basically cleared the Black Sea of the Russian navy. They also have a new weapon called the Flamingo, which is supposed to be similar to a Tomahawk. I’m not sure if it is, but it would have a longer range.
Do you see this being viable as the conflict progresses?
Mr. Barros: Yes. The jury is still out on the Flamingo. It has been used a few times. Earlier this month, the Ukrainians struck a Russian training ground deep in the Russian interior, but the strike was likely not fully effective. The system is still undergoing development, but it shows promise.
The Ukrainians have other systems, as well. You mentioned the Neptune. It is, basically, a naval coastal defence missile system that has been modified to also launch as a type of ballistic missile, too. That has been quite effective, as well.
The Ukrainian defence industry has tremendous potential. The rate determiner for its output and putting out effective systems is just capital; it is an underemployed sector. I would argue that, instead of giving oodles of cash to American prime contractors that prefer to produce a small number of spectacular but very expensive systems, I think it is more resourceful to provide the cash to Ukrainians who can build a large volume of effective systems at scale.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Mr. Bergmann, you mentioned in your opening remarks the possibility of a frozen conflict in the Donbas. Is that really realistic? Frozen conflicts that we know of — we think of Nagorno-Karabakh, a relatively small territory — and, here, we are looking at vast territory, with a very long border, where the conflict has been taking place. So is it really that realistic?
Second, is there a possibility in your mind that there could be a coalition of the willing between European countries, ourselves and maybe a few others that would not involve the United States?
Mr. Bergmann: Thank you, senator. I take your point on the scale of this. That is why the term “frozen conflict” may not be the right one, because I think it would be a hot-frozen conflict. A sustainable forever war is maybe another way to put it. Russia, instead of doing what it did in 2025, which was to basically keep going with wave after wave of offensives to try to take territory and attrit the Ukrainian military. My understanding is that their losses are so much more significant than the Ukrainians are, and you could see Russia hit a certain limit where it says, “Okay, we are basically going to stop trying to take territory because we know that it is not going to work. We are banging our heads against concrete, so we are just going to stop doing that, but we are not actually going to enable Ukraine to get out of this terrible war situation. We will still bombard Ukrainian cities and still shell Ukrainian front lines. People will still die.” So it’s a hot war, but it is one that Russia could probably fight indefinitely without much in the way of costs or concerns.
If you are Russia and you cannot win, the next best option is not to lose and to maintain the conflict. That is the concern I have. Therefore, I think things like long-range strikes are very important for Ukrainians to develop or receive so they can bring the pain to Russia so that Russia wants the war to stop. That way, there is something to trade in a potential negotiation.
As for the coalition of the willing, I am somewhat skeptical about the idea of NATO countries having boots on the ground in Ukraine to preserve peace. I say that for a few reasons. One, I don’t see Russia accepting that, and I think Russia would oppose that as part of any ceasefire. As part of a ceasefire negotiation, the idea of having Western boots on the ground — I think it would be a non-starter for Russia.
Also, if Russia thinks that, as part of any ceasefire, Ukraine would then bring in Western boots on the ground, that is an incentive for Russia to keep fighting. I don’t see the political will on the parts of NATO countries, including the United States, to inject forces into a live combat situation.
To me, this has been an important diplomatic exercise to demonstrate to the President of the United States support for Ukraine in these negotiations to back the idea that there should be some sort of peace process. I think the military planning that has been going on is quite useful. That may need to pivot from a notional ceasefire situation to one that is focused on how we continue to support Ukraine and build the future Ukrainian military that could potentially turn this to Ukraine’s advantage.
The Chair: Thank you very much. That was very helpful.
Senator Kutcher: I have two questions. These so-called peace talks started after a phone call between Putin and Trump around February last year. The first meeting, actually, was between Russia and the United States.
Help me to understand this. Here we have two strongmen who both play a zero-sum game when it comes to negotiating anything. Peace talks give Russia cover for inflicting civilian casualties, because they cannot win on the battleground. The war’s attrition has gone to the civilian population, trying to break the resilience of the Ukrainian people. The quid pro quo is that Trump has started paying attention to Iran. Help me understand what is going on.
Mr. Bergmann: There is a lot of confusion about what is going on. We have a special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who is trying to negotiate peace between Israel-Gaza, with Iran and with Russia. He may be a very competent business executive, but even the most astute foreign policy hand with years of expertise would struggle with that much on their plate.
I think what is going on is that, in the president’s mind, this war was Ukraine, in some ways, being uppity, provoking Russia, and Russia responded. Then Trump thought that, by putting pressure on Ukraine, he could get this war to end. I think he has realized over the last year that is not the case. However, I think what is now happening is that you have a special envoy who is engaging with Russia, Russia is telling them certain things, and then he is bringing that back to both Ukraine and Europe. Then, we are negotiating among ourselves to meet something that Steve Witkoff thinks might be agreeable to Russia only to find out the Russians aren’t interested.
This is a classic Russian effort and negotiating tactic to draw out this process and try to blame Ukraine for the failure of these talks. The best-case scenario for Russia is if the United States gets very exasperated with Ukraine and cuts off intelligence support and military deliveries, and walks away. Then Russia is free to have a bilateral relationship with the United States. And you can see Russia trying to pursue that on those fronts.
Ukrainians have been smart by trying to negotiate in good faith and demonstrating that it is really Russia that is not interested in any sort of ceasefire.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for the merry-go-round analogy. I was looking for one, and that is perfect.
The other question is around a common industrial security base. Ukraine has now opened a defence plant in the United Kingdom, and they are going to co-produce with the United Kingdom a whole system of intelligence drones. What is the impact of this? Does this create a new European security architecture? It is very different from before. How do we understand what is happening? Why can’t Canada do the same thing? Mr. Barros, please.
Mr. Barros: Thank you, Senator Kutcher. It is not fundamentally an inflection in the European security architecture, but it is, however, an important development in our arms procurement and development. Notably, there are several practical reasons to have Ukraine co-manufacturing things inside other countries.
First, the Ukrainian power grid is extremely fragile, and I am extremely concerned that the Russians in the next six months may actually just flat-out collapse the Ukrainian power grid. Weapon manufacturing is notoriously a capital-heavy industry, and, therefore, it is an energy-heavy industry. Energy is actually very important for production, so physically basing production facilities inside other countries that are, for lack of a better word, under the NATO shield, even though I do not like that analogy, is actually practical.
Second, I am prepared to argue that the Russian Federation and President Putin have ambitions that go beyond Ukraine, in fact. That is actually part of the 2021 ultimata. The Russians are refining their operational concepts for how to fight a pure competitor or near-pure competitor in the war on Ukraine. I would argue that the Russo-Ukrainian War is to the next global war what the Spanish Civil War was to the Wehrmacht in terms of how to fight what then became the Second World War.
By having Western firms understand the realities of the current battlefield, the system’s requirements, tactics and operational concepts, we actually help loop ourselves into the direction of the future character of warfare. In that way, we can actually have a better posture to deter and, if necessary, God forbid, defeat a Russian attack.
The Russians are going to emerge from this war battle-hardened and bloodied. There is no NATO country, the United States included, by the way, which has any sort of commensurate, large-scale, high-tempo combat operations like those which the Russian Federation is going to emerge with.
For those reasons, NATO actually benefits by having the Ukrainians do the co-production and learning as much from them as possible.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Harder: I want to follow up on the question the chair asked with respect to the Coalition of the Willing, assuming for the first part of my question that the Coalition of the Willing is the EU, Canada, perhaps Australia and South Korea, but not the United States. In the context of diplomatic overtures, I was part of a conversation the other day saying that one thing that the EU is at least looking at is the notion of provisional membership, so Ukraine would join provisionally and be given a 10-year horizon to meet the criteria, which, otherwise, would be preconditioned.
Would that have any impact, at least on the diplomatic side, in terms of showing the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government some hope and some support? My second question is an even more hopeful question. Is there any chance President Trump would emerge one day and say that he doesn’t like what Putin has done or not done, and he is not negotiating in good faith, and change his view? Is there any volatility on this point, or is he adamant about being in Putin’s hands?
Mr. Bergmann: Thank you, senator. On the EU enlargement question, there are really interesting and fascinating conversations happening right now in Brussels about how enlargement works. There has been a traditional process that has left a lot of the western Balkan countries, as well as Ukraine and Moldova, on the outside, and there has been no momentum in that process. Trying to think that maybe there is a two-speed process for Ukraine on the track for membership, the major challenge for countries like France and others is that it is very hard for the EU to get things done with 27 countries, with everyone agreeing. Adding more countries that then have a veto on certain decisions is holding a lot back. If you could basically bring a country in without giving them that direct vote, that might smooth the way.
There are still issues, like a common agricultural policy. We always talk about the Europeans being divided, and it is very easy to be divided with 27 countries and have one get in the way, like what is currently happening with Hungary. But there is tremendous unity, as I see it, in Europe in support of Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union, and that is the lodestar of this European Commission of Ursula von der Leyen, and so I expect progress to occur. It may not be as fast as the Ukrainians like, and what we’re seeing is President Zelenskyy pushing very aggressively for more progress, and that’s what he should do, and we’re going to see a push and pull there.
As for President Trump, I think it is possible — and I think you could even say likely — that the United States will decide at the end of the day that these talks are going nowhere, Russia is to blame, and we take the Ukrainian side. However, I find it very hard to believe now, and I don’t think it is very likely that the United States will go back to being a major financier of this war. I don’t see the President going to Congress and asking for money to support Ukraine the way the Biden administration did.
We’re looking at a situation where the United States is increasingly less involved in this war, at least from a military assistance perspective. One additional point there is that we actually get a lot of benefits from aiding Ukraine on the intelligence side because we learn a lot about the Russians. They are experts on what is happening inside of Russia. There are real benefits to us for that.
One just final quick point is that the European defence industrial base, the EU, sees Ukraine fundamentally as part of the European defence industrial base, so as the EU is generating more funding for Ukraine, it is incorporating Ukraine more and more into Europe’s defence industrial base, and that is quite positive.
The Chair: Mr. Barros, you have the last word if you want it.
Mr. Barros: Certainly. In response to Senator Harder’s question, I largely agree with Mr. Bergmann’s statements. President Trump is a famously mercurial figure. He can go from one position to the other. What we know is that he is not an isolationist. He has not committed to that. In fact, we just nabbed Nicolás Maduro back in January. I would say anything is possible, so we can never give up hope that the President might lean into it. But I do tend to agree that the strategic arc bends toward the U.S. largely decoupling.
It is very important that more intellectual weight be put into thinking about how to militarily dismantle Russia’s operational concepts for how they are actually advancing. As we mark the fourth anniversary of the war, the Ukrainians have been extremely successful in denying the Russians the ability to actually use mechanized armour at scale.
In 2022, the basic Russian unit of manœuvre was the mechanized reinforced battalion, which is about 500 people in tanks and armoured personnel carriers. The current unit of manœuvre is an infiltration team of three to five people. That is not a coincidence. There were a lot of military problems that were solved, and there are actually military problems that can be solved to make that advance be zero and enable the occasional Ukrainian counterattack.
I’m happy to discuss those at length, perhaps in a different forum, but this discussion about conflict termination is, honestly, very premature, and we need to think about how we actually get Putin to the table because he does not have any incentive to do so as long as his forces advance even so slowly.
The Chair: Thank you very much. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank Max Bergmann and George Barros for joining us today. We know this is the world that you inhabit, analysis both for foreign policy and defence. We appreciate your comments very much, and we will take them into consideration as we deliberate further this very vexing problem — the war in Ukraine.
On behalf of the committee, thank you. Colleagues, we will reconvene tomorrow morning at 10:30 in this room to discuss the national security strategy of the United States of America, so this was a very good precursor in terms of what we want to discuss.
(The committee adjourned.)