What cards does Russia have?

What is going on in Donald Trump’s head? What is he up to? There is much deliberation from scholars of international diplomacy over whether we should take his utterances “literally” or “seriously”. It is hard to do either when he says the opposite from one day to the next. For instance, is his threat to invade Canada just one of his little jokes?

So far as Ukraine is concerned, there was an interesting discussion last week on GB News between Charles Moore and Jacob Rees-Mogg on the “paradox” of Trump’s stance – saying “we are out of this” but also “I’m the boss, you’ve got to do my deal.” “It seems to me it’s slightly got to be one or the other,” said Moore. Quite so. We have both Trump the isolationist – (We’re not spending any more money. Europe should sort itself out. We are going to build a Golden Dome defence shield, it’s going to be beautiful…) – and Trump the head of a swanking, swaggering superpower taking charge of the planet.

There is nothing new about isolationist sentiment in the United States. On April 25th 1941, there was a report in The Times from its correspondent in New York of a mass meeting of the America First Committee. Charles Lindbergh was speaking. “England is losing the war,” he said to huge cheers.

“They hope that they may be able to persuade us to send another expeditionary force to Europe and to share with England militarily as well as financially the fiasco of this war.”

Another speaker, Senator David Walsh, objected even to the limited assistance that America was already providing:

“Convoys means war. Do we want war?”

The America First Committee had a coalition of support. During the period of the Nazi/Soviet Pact, the American Communist Party were active backers. Pacifists naturally were consistently supportive. Some others were Nazi sympathisers but they tended to be repudiated – Henry Ford resigned due to his anti-semitic views being a source of embarrassment. (Lindbergh himself was also pretty dubious on this score.) Most America First supporters simply argued that as America was not under threat, they could keep out of the conflict. The organisation was dissolved after the attack on Pearl Harbour.

So why is Trump going beyond simple isolationism and expressing praise for Putin, while denouncing Zelensky? Perhaps Trump is sincere in his claim that Ukraine is losing the war. The difficulty, he feels, is that the Ukrainians don’t accept this yet, and so the war continues. Trump is impatient to end the war and to notch up an historic achievement as having negotiated the peace deal, with some compromise over land and other terms. So he wants to deny help to Ukraine and bludgeon them into accepting some loss of territory and giving up the prospect of a clear victory.

“You don’t have the cards,” Trump declares. But what cards does Russia have? I don’t spend much time playing card games. But I gather what matters is not merely what cards you have in your hand but how they compare to your opponents. Russia is almost broke – its current level of war spending is not sustainable. Its reserves are down from $100 billion to $38 billion. Interest rates are at 21 per cent. Europe has been slowly weaning itself off Russian oil and gas.

What of military losses? Of course, such estimates are difficult. Both sides treat their own casuality figures as state secrets. But I don’t think any reputable and independent sources dispute that Russia’s have been exponentially higher than Ukraine’s – both in terms of lives and equipment. Each day we have news of Russia attacking civilian targets in Ukraine. Sometimes they get through – with pensioners and children being killed. Leave aside the brutality – how does that advance their military objectives? By contrast, Ukrainian drones have been getting increasingly far into Russia and destroying oil refineries and military stockpiles.

What has Russia to show for depleting so much of its military might? It’s been a bit of a stalemate. In 2014, Russia had already annexed seven per cent of Ukraine’s territory – without the world taking much notice. Then we had the 2022 invasion which was pushed back. Russia has since made modest advances – but then we also saw Ukraine rather audaciously invade Russia last August – capturing territory in the Kursk region. At the moment Russia occupies around 20 per cent of Ukraine. But that has been at huge cost. Not just the military and economic costs noted but also in other countries waking up in response. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. Poland has boosted its defence spending to nearly five per cent of its GDP. Russia has had a bust up with its Wagner military proxy force. It has also lost Syria. How long can it count on its ally Iran?

Russia is a dictatorship. That might be a plus in some ways. Life is cheap. It is easier to get away with casualties than it would be in a democracy – also consumer hardships. That explains why Russia has been able to keep pounding away as long as it has. But dictatorship also stifles innovation. The Ukrainians have shown greater capacity for ingenuity – such as developing cheap but effective drones in garages. The groaning bureaucracy and corruption of the Russian state has proved less fleet of foot.

This is not to suggest that the Ukrainians are not struggling. Just that the Russians are even more so. The way to stop the killing and end the war is to boost support for the Ukrainians, not to cut off their supplies. Reducing dependency on Russian energy is important – here Trump’s “Drill baby, drill” approach is helpful. How much easier it would be defeat Putin is we had got fracking 15 or 20 years ago. A great misfortune of the Coalition Government was that Ed Davey as Energy Minister imposed the most absurd restrictions on shale development – with a tremor on your house more modest than the impact of a lorry driving past being presented as an “earthquake.”

Also frustrating has been the delay in handing over the £230 billion of frozen Russian state assets to the Ukrainians.

When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago the “experts” were emphatic that Kyiv would fall within days. The human factor of the resilience of a proud and freedom-loving people was discounted by the desiccated calculating machines. The Ukrainians are still being underestimated by some. I reckon they can win – with or without Trump. Which means we would win too.