The underdog made a comeback. Now, here’s what Ukraine needs to sustain its victories.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is defying the odds, and it has sent Russian President Vladimir Putin to a new point of desperation: On Friday, he announced that Russia had, in an illegal move, annexed four occupied regions in Ukraine.
Earlier in the week he mobilized hundreds of thousands of Russians, as just as many Russians seem to be fleeing the country to avoid fighting in the conflict.
But there are still big questions about where the war goes from here and what will shape the conflict this winter and onward. To understand them, I spoke with experts on Europe, Russia, and international security, and listened to European leaders speaking candidly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week.
Three determining factors will play an outsized role in Ukraine’s future: support from America and European partners, the risks that Putin is willing to take, and the conflicting definitions of what victory might look like.
- Will war fatigue overtake Europe and the US?
The war is being fought in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are certainly suffering most. But the costs incurred by Ukraine’s primary backers, the United States and Europe, will determine Ukraine’s capacity in defending itself against Russia. Without Western support, Ukraine’s recent victories in the counteroffensive will be difficult to sustain.
Western support for Ukraine is a crucial variable. The sanctions that the US, Western Europe, and some Asian countries have imposed on Russia continue to have a boomerang effect on the world economy. The winter ahead will change the fighting conditions on the ground and, equally importantly, the cold weather will remind Europe of its dependence on Russian fossil fuels for heat. If inflation continues and the energy crisis looms, will the US and an at times divided Europe become fatigued with the war and become less inclined to support it?
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The US has sent more than $14 billion in military assistance to Ukraine. With each package comes new questions around whether this volume of security aid can be sustained — not just economically, but whether enough missiles and bullets exist in Western stockpiles to bolster Ukraine. Some defense experts are warning that the conflict is consuming weapons stockpiles faster than nations can refill them.
The West’s willingness to continue to send weapons may also depend on Ukraine’s momentum on the battlefield, says Kristine Berzina, a security researcher at the German Marshall Fund. “If the underdog is doing well, even if things are hard, there’s something in our societies where supporting the underdog as it takes on the big bad guy successfully — it’s just a good story. How can you not help them?” she said. “Whereas if it feels pessimistic and terrible and depressing, well, then it feels like a lost cause.”
A recent survey fielded by Data for Progress and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft suggests that only 6 percent of Americans polled see the Russian war in Ukraine as one of the “top three most important issues facing America today.” It ranked last, far behind inflation, the economy, and many domestic issues.
Another recent survey of 14 countries in Europe and North America from the German Marshall Fund found that in Italy, France, and Canada, climate is viewed as the primary security challenge, while the countries closer to Russia and Ukraine, on the eastern edges of Europe, named Russia or wars between countries
Though American military aid has been robust, Europe’s support has been much more mixed, with some European countries spending less on the war than they are spending on imported Russian oil and gas. “That point about the difference between the kind of aid that has been provided to Ukraine versus what’s been paid in oil revenue, it just blows my mind every time I hear it,” Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic program at the Center for a New American Security and a former US intelligence official with ties to the Biden administration, said recently on the New York Times’s Ezra Klein Show. Why is it happening? “I wish I knew. I don’t have a good answer,” she said.
Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, told me that the European Commission has not held up its commitments. She says the sluggishness in disbursing economic aid to Ukraine is partly political but mostly due to bureaucratic hurdles.
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Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
So far, European countries, even Hungary, have largely supported Ukraine. But for European leaders staunchly backing Ukraine, political challenges may emerge as the war further exacerbates domestic economic issues. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s exit this summer was hastened by the economy and inflation, issues whose multiple causes include the effects of the Ukraine conflict. French President Emmanuel Macron lost his parliamentary majority in June. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government was split over Ukraine; it wasn’t the only reason for the collapse of his coalition, and now the far-right leader Giorgia Meloni is his successor. The war was not the immediate cause of any political leader’s downfall, but political changes in Europe are a reminder that governance is deeply connected to the emerging energy and economic crises.
If support in Europe wanes, there’s also the question of whether the US will be able to rally it. Since the Cold War, the US has put most of its military and diplomatic focus on first the Middle East and then, more recently, Asia. “Washington just has no real grasp of Europe today, doesn’t understand the centrality of the European Union, and tries to operate as if it doesn’t exist,” Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me in June, in advance of a NATO summit.
The Biden administration has been hugely successful in dispatching US diplomats to unify Europe, but Washington is still operating with a deficit on the continent and without a deep understanding of a sustainable long-term Europe policy.
- What risks is Putin willing to take?
Putin’s announcement of the annexation of Russian-held territories in Ukraine was a show of weakness, as was his partial mobilization of 300,000 troops. His unpredictability is a major X factor.
It’s unlikely that the mobilization will be effective because Russia doesn’t seem to have the highly trained personnel or advanced weapons to quickly alter their position in the war. “There will be bodies who will be there but they will not have equipment, they will not have significant training, and they will not really have the provisions for the conditions they’re going into, especially given that we’re again heading into the cold season,” Berzina said.
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AFP via Getty Images
That could mean an increasingly desperate Putin. “It’s quite existential for him. It always has been,” said Jade McGlynn, a researcher of Russian studies at Middlebury College. “His whole entire idea of what Russia is — this great messianic power — depends on having Ukraine.”
Nowhere has that desperation been more apparent than in the rhetoric surrounding nuclear weapons. In the early hours of the war, Putin threatened “consequences you have never seen” against Ukraine’s supporters, and again in recent days he has offered veiled threats of using a small nuke. That would be norm-shattering and earth-shattering, figuratively and literally. Even threatening to use a nuke violates the norms of international relations.
Putin in his remarks on Friday emphasized that the United States was the only country that had used a nuclear weapon, (twice) on Japan during World War II. It seemed to be a retort to Biden’s United Nations speech last week in which he chastised Putin for his “reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation regime” while minutes later praising President Harry Truman, the president who authorized those nuclear attacks.
Another concern is, if things continue to go badly for Putin, whether he will expand the theater of war to other fronts and countries.
In the category of desperate acts falls what may potentially be an act of self-sabotage, a Russian attack on the Nord Stream gas pipeline that was reported earlier this week. It raises concerns that Russia may attack other critical energy infrastructure in Europe.
The nationalists in Russia, according to McGlynn, may pose the biggest threat to Putin, as they push him toward even more extreme means. They want him to go all-in on the war, even as the mobilization won’t likely alter Russia’s footing.
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Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
The extent to which Putin might be willing to repress Russians is also important. The calling up of reserves is one indicator, as is the shuttering of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and other media outlets, and the arrests of critics and activists. That intensity of repression also limits the possibility for Russian domestic opposition standing up to Putin.
- What is the definition of Ukraine winning?
The country that so many analysts predicted would fall in the first week of the invasion in February has endured the first 200 days of war, and Ukrainians say they are confident in carrying on the fight so long as they have ample support from the West.
A senior Ukrainian official, speaking recently in New York on the condition of anonymity, said that Ukraine was united in its war against Russia — and hugely depends on Western support. “The truth is that the battlefield today is the negotiating table with Putin. Because he respects strength,” they said.
“We are going to fight until we defeat Russia,” Oksana Nesterenko, a Ukrainian legal scholar currently at Princeton University, told me. Not because Ukrainians are so brave or have so many resources, she explained. “It’s about the future of the Ukrainian nation, about the future of Ukrainian democracy,” Nesterenko says. “We don’t have any choice.”
But there is a great deal of confusion as to how anyone defines victory. The Ukrainians, the Europeans, and the Americans “haven’t talked in specific terms about what we consider an acceptable outcome to this conflict,” Thomas Graham, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me.
While the Ukrainians have expanded their demands in light of their successful counteroffensive and are now talking about nothing short of retaking the territory Russian has occupied since 2014, the United States and each European country seem to hold their own perspective. “The Germans and the French, at the leadership level, would accept a negotiated solution that might include some territorial concessions on the part of Ukraine as a way of de-escalating and helping deal with what they see as an increasingly difficult socio-economic situation,” Graham said.
On the Russian side, Putin initially claimed to want the demilitarization and de-Nazification — in essence, regime change — of Ukraine. And now he has annexed four provinces that he has long sought. “The possibility that Russia could win on its terms, that possibility is now very remote,” says Michael Kimmage, a Catholic University professor who specializes in Russia. “I do think that we could, in a very worrisome way, enter into a nihilistic phase of the conflict where Russia is not able to impose victory on the war, but will try to impose defeat on the other side. And maybe that’s the Russian version of victory in this war.”
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That would mean stretching the war on as long as possible, hence the massive mobilization, and the possibility of a war of attrition. McGlynn says that Putin’s notion of victory is at this point divorced from what the Russian army can actually do. “What we’re most likely to see is a way to entrench a situation on the ground in areas that they already control,” she told me.
In Washington, meanwhile, there has been little talk of what diplomacy among the parties might look like. It’s not that a team of negotiators is going to hash out a settlement over carryout, but ongoing diplomatic engagement between the US and Russia is going to be needed on a variety of levels and in a variety of forums to set the conditions for a future resolution — and even to address the narrow goal of averting any potential misunderstanding that could end up looking like the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia expert Fiona Hill who served in the Trump administration recently emphasized to the New Yorker the risks of Putin’s brinkmanship and the misunderstanding it breeds. “The problem is, of course, us misreading him, but also him misreading us,” she said. More communication could help. But Secretary of State Tony Blinken hasn’t met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov since January 2022 (they had a “frank” phone call in July). And the recent Data for Progress survey emphasized that a majority of Americans would like to see more diplomacy. “A majority (57 percent) of Americans support US negotiations to end the war in Ukraine as soon as possible, even if it means Ukraine making some compromises with Russia,” writes Jessica Rosenblum of the Quincy Institute.
The war’s endgame may be a long way off. Still, it’s no small feat that Turkey has brokered a deal to get Ukrainian grain to countries that need it and Saudi Arabia arranged for a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. In the meantime, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan hosted talks between senior officials from Azerbaijan and Armenia last week, but the Biden administration has hardly been discussing avenues for diplomacy with Russia.
Though Graham praises President Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, he worries that the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric from the White House precludes opportunities for engagement with Russians. “If I fault the administration in any way — I don’t think it has articulated in public what this conflict is really about,” he told me. The US has alienated broad swaths of the Russian population through sanctions, and Biden has framed the conflict as an existential one between democracy and autocracy.
“Existential conflicts have a way of not persuading the other side, perhaps, to negotiate a solution to this problem that meets their needs, their minimal security requirements,” Graham told me. “In general, I think it is inappropriate to frame conflicts as a struggle between good and evil.”
In shows like And Just Like That and Only Murders in the Building, main characters have become podcasters. But not every show gets it right.
Welcome to Noticed, Vox’s cultural trend column. You know that thing you’ve been seeing all over the place? Allow us to explain it.
What it is
Main characters in television shows and movies who are podcast hosts or are part of a podcast, but the “podcasting” in question doesn’t resemble podcasting at all. Sometimes these podcasts are just radio shows. Sometimes these portrayals make podcasting look as simple as recording a voice note.
Where it is
On the Sex and the City revival And Just Like That, the X, Y and Me podcast co-hosted by Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) and Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is essentially a live radio show. Che works a soundboard with “trigger warning” and “woke moment” sound effects, and Bradshaw takes live calls.
Similarly, Bobby (Billy Eichner) in the upcoming movie Bros is a part-time podcaster who, like Bradshaw, fields a live call while ostensibly recording. This conflation of podcasting and call-in shows also popped up back on The Bold Type, as Scarlet Magazine’s resident man, Alex (Matt Ward), hosted “Ask Alex Live.”
The problem that podcasts are largely prerecorded and not live isn’t the only issue, however. The protagonists of Only Murders in the Building become true crime podcasters but aren’t ever seen putting the podcast together aside from recording their lines. C’mon C’Mon centers on an audio journalist played by Joaquin Phoenix who doesn’t seem to use essential podcasting tools like headphones. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a child named Podcast (Logan Kim) doesn’t seem to know how a mic works.
Why you’re seeing it everywhere
The easy answer is that podcasting is everywhere.
In two years, podcasting will reportedly be a $4 billion industry, according to The Verge. That astronomical amount of money isn’t just about the number of podcasts in production, or the new programs created year over year, or the massive audiences they bring. That sum also signifies the amount of money companies spend advertising on those podcasts to tap into very loyal audiences. Lots of people listen to lots of podcasts, and podcasts are a fixture of many people’s everyday lives.
Since movies and television shows are often about fictional people in real-life settings, it makes sense that some would reflect podcasts and podcasters. Hollywood loves shows about media types, ranging from newspaper journalists (less glamorous), to columnists (slightly more glam), to radio hosts and magazine editors. Podcasters fit into that niche too, and dare I say, some people think podcasting and being a podcaster is cool.
The problem that arises is that podcasting itself isn’t very glamorous. There’s hours of research, scripting, recording, scheduling, and editing that go into each podcast episode. A hunched-over, broken-down podcaster on their computer editing the same piece of audio doesn’t exactly make for fun television.
Hence the desire to jazz up podcasting, perhaps making it more fun, chatty, and spontaneous — like radio.
That seems to be the mentality behind And Just Like That, which sees sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw taking on a new profession as a sex advice podcaster on X, Y, and Me. In the finale of And Just Like That, Carrie has her own podcast and uses it to answer live calls and dispense advice. It makes for a more dynamic scene and allows Carrie to seem more human. If she were just answering a question on the air, it would turn into a monologue. And Just Like That essentially recreated The Dr. Frasier Crane Show.
A realistic remedy would be for the show to say that Carrie is on Twitch or some kind of streaming social media platform where she could ostensibly host a call-in show (R.I.P. radio), but that doesn’t have the same recognition that podcasting does.
Spicing up a podcast is one way to make podcasting seem more fun than it is in real life. Many shows elide the process altogether. When I asked Vox’s audio team if they saw depictions of their jobs that seemed out of touch with reality, they pointed to how easy Only Murders in the Building made it look with its characters never actually assembling the audio they record in a specific way or how in C’mon C’mon Joaquin Phoenix’s character doesn’t use headphones (and therefore isn’t listening to the audio he’s recording). One also pointed out how there’s an actual child named Podcast in the new Ghostbusters movie, but said he doesn’t know how to hold a mic (and would pick up all kinds of unwanted audio) and thus is a failure to their name. Another pointed out how podcasters in the 2018 Halloween remake commit an egregious journalistic oops and set Michael Myers free.
While audio folks I spoke to laid out their gripes, they also conceded that the general public would maybe not be particularly invested in seeing a harried editor splice audio for three hours, nor is there a blazing desire to see a producer instruct a guest to plug their headphones into the right jack. Maybe some things aren’t made for TV or the movies, and the minutiae of podcasting may just be better left in real life — where it’s heard and not seen.
Messages released in Twitter’s lawsuit against the Tesla founder show some of the nation’s wealthiest people offered support and even cash to buy the platform, as some users expressed dismay.
A trove of Elon Musk’s text messages was released this week as part of a lawsuit Twitter has filed against the billionaire, and it’s proving to be an illuminating look inside conversations between Musk and a who’s who of celebrities, journalists, Silicon Valley elites, and even politicians.
Among the very rich and very famous who have a direct line to the Tesla CEO are Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, podcaster Joe Rogan, and broadcast journalist Gayle King. In texts, ultrawealthy investors casually offer billions of dollars to assist in Musk’s effort. Their sheer enthusiasm for Musk’s bid to take over Twitter also confirms what many have long suspected about billionaires’ interest in owning media companies: They’re keenly aware that controlling a company like Twitter means being able to shape narratives and wield influence.
Some, like Rogan, praised Musk’s bid to buy the social media platform. On April 4, when Musk announced a 9 percent stake in Twitter but hadn’t yet made an offer to buy it outright, Rogan asked, “Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?” Weeks later, on April 23, Rogan texted, “I REALLY hope you get Twitter.”
Many of those texting Musk echoed his public comments arguing the importance of free speech on Twitter. Musk has taken issue with the more proactive approach to content moderation that Twitter has taken in recent years — policies that right-wing Twitter users have decried as discriminatory, especially in light of Trump’s permanent Twitter suspension in January 2021.
Within days of the announcement that the Twitter board had accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer, Benioff, who is currently worth more than $6 billion, sent Musk a cryptic text about his own vision for the platform, writing on April 27, “Happy to talk about it if this is interesting: Twitter conversational OS—the townsquare for your digital life.”
Musk demurred, saying, “Well I don’t own it yet.”
The potential for some power and influence over Twitter attracted politicians and the media, too. The messages reveal that former Republican Rep. Justin Amash wanted to talk to Musk, offering his help on “how to handle speech and moderation.” According to a text message from Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — widely seen as a potential GOP nominee for the 2024 presidential race — threw his support behind Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. Lonsdale floated the idea of having Musk and DeSantis chat.
Other acquaintances, like Hoffman, discussed helping Musk buy Twitter. “$2B?” Musk floated, after Hoffman asked how much he and his VC partners could throw in.
“Great. Probably doable,” replied Hoffman, who did not end up investing in the deal.
The messages were revealed in court as part of the pretrial discovery process in Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk for breach of contract, filed after Musk backed out of the deal to buy Twitter in July, claiming that the company had misled him on the number of spam bots and fake accounts on its platform. Twitter, for its part, is arguing that Musk reneged on the deal not due to bots but because of a downturn in both Tesla and Twitter stocks. The trial is set to begin on October 17 in the Delaware Chancery Court.
The texts reveal that in the weeks after Musk inked the Twitter deal in late April, professing his desire to protect free speech on the platform, his friends and associates eagerly offered (sometimes unsolicited) advice on the direction Twitter should take with Musk at the helm. One person identified as BL Lee — it’s unclear who that is — suggested that Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist of Uber fame, be appointed CEO of Twitter. At one point, Musk texts broadcast journalist Gayle King, “maybe Oprah would be interested in joining the Twitter board if my bid succeeds.”
Multiple people sought to make introductions to others hoping to have Musk’s ear. Among the most determined to meet Musk was billionaire philanthropist Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The initial volley came from Will MacAskill, an Oxford philosopher and one of the founders of the effective altruism movement, whose ideas Musk has said align closely with his own. MacAskill revealed that Bankman-Fried had been interested in buying Twitter for a while and was interested in a “possible joint effort.”
“Does he have huge amounts of money?” Musk asked.
“Depends on how you define ‘huge’!” MacAskill replied. “He’s worth $24B, and his early employees (with shared values) bump that to $30B.” Musk, the richest person in the world, is currently worth around $252 billion, according to Forbes.
Several of the text conversations between Musk and his associates run in this vein. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who contributed $1 billion to the Twitter deal, tells Musk in a text that he’s prepared to commit “whatever you recommend.”
Bankman-Fried, also a proponent of effective altruism, has previously tweeted about how a decentralized Twitter that lives on the blockchain might function, and how it could be monetized. In recent years, he has also become a major Democratic donor and has been lobbying in Washington for changes in cryptocurrency regulations.
MacAskill, the philosopher, noted to Musk that it would be “easy” for Bankman-Fried to throw in $1 to $3 billion — or even contribute as much as $15 billion, but that could require financing.
While the billionaires in Musk’s texts showed nothing but enthusiasm at his bid, many others — including Twitter users and free speech advocates — expressed wariness if not outright alarm. Twitter is a platform used by hundreds of millions of users — though Musk might dispute that — and, in particular, is used by journalists to share and discuss the news of the day. To them, the prospect of a Twitter led by an outspoken billionaire who is a frequent critic of the media and of journalists was cause for concern.
But some media moguls did not reject the idea out of hand. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of German media group Axel Springer, which owns media outlets such as Business Insider and Politico, even offered to run Twitter for Musk if he bought it. “Would be a real contribution to democracy,” texted Döpfner in late March, weeks before Musk put in an offer to buy the site.
Even the Murdochs, scions of conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch, make an appearance in the texts. On April 26, James Murdoch — the younger son of Rupert Murdoch and a director on Tesla’s board — told Musk that he will call “when some of the dust settles.” His wife, Kathryn Murdoch, a philanthropist and activist whose politics differ from her father-in-law’s, asked Musk if he’ll bring back Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who left the company in 2021 to focus on other projects. “Jack doesn’t want to come back,” Musk replied. Dorsey did, however, exchange several text messages with Musk on their shared vision for an improved Twitter.
These behind-the-scenes exchanges reveal how quick and easy it is for a relatively small circle of moneyed elites to throw in billions to help buy a public company that’s used by hundreds of millions of people and serves as a place where individuals gather to find a community around common hobbies, beliefs, or goals. It’s a powerful tool for disseminating news and information. Billionaires’ interest in helping buy Twitter wasn’t just about wanting a piece of the pie in terms of equity. The texts suggest that, for many in Musk’s elite circle, it was important to have a say in what Twitter would look like in the future — a “free speech” town square where they’ll conveniently continue to have the biggest megaphones.