That assessment echoes the view of Alexander Gabuev, who played the Russian president in our war game.

As someone who has always been a committed pacifist, I've gone through quite a long journey myself, and I've come to believe that European rearmament really is an investment in peace.

If Europe does not rearm, there is no deterrence, and without deterrence, the Russian leadership starts getting these kind of ideas.

There has to be a level of deterrence where both sides meet on equal terms.

Only then can you seriously start talking about arms control again.

There is little Moscow can do about that.

From a purely military perspective, we're actually inferior to NATO in the Baltic Sea.

I wouldn't commit too many resources to trying to break through NATO's A2/AD bubble there.

Instead, I'd focus on what countermeasures are available to us.

Now, the president wants to turn those military gains into a political reality, and he already has a plan for how to do that.

First, we'll send a civilian convoy with supplies and humanitarian aid.

Russian media will be filming the whole thing, showing that there really are civilians there, that this is completely humanitarian.

We'll do a massive PR operation around it.

The Russian president gets straight to the point.

So we would reenergize the process of rearranging the European security architecture with the US participation.

He does not treat the United States as part of NATO, but as a power in its own right, and he makes the American side a concrete proposal.

We are happy to welcome, like, let's say, 30 unarmed US monitors to be embedded there and to have ability to monitor that human rights are not violated and so on.

We are totally open for that.

We are really looking for a solution here.

And Gabuev says no one will stop Putin from attacking another country if he believes he can get away with it.

If he wakes up one morning, whether in the Kremlin or at his residence outside Moscow, and says, "In three months we are marching into the Baltics," who in the Russian government is going to tell him, "Sir, you're out of your mind.

That's too dangerous.

We are not doing it"?

According to that logic, this is the most dangerous moment.

When the war in Ukraine ends, Russia will have a massive army, larger than before the war and with extensive recent combat experience.

Europe, by contrast, has only just begun to rearm.

This gap in time is extremely dangerous.

But that is not their only option.

Mr.

Military Chief, you already outlined a few options.

Let's briefly go through them.

The Russian president picks up the phone himself and calls the US State Department.

Hi, Mr.

Secretary.

I decided to call myself because of the gravity of the situation.

And Gabuev says, no one will stop Putin from attacking another country if he believes he can get away with it.

If he wakes up one morning, whether in the Kremlin or at his residence outside Moscow, and says, in three months, we are marching into the Baltics, who in the Russian government is going to tell him, sir, you're out of your mind.

That's too dangerous.

We are not doing it.

According to that logic, this is the most dangerous moment.

When the war in Ukraine ends, Russia will have a massive army, larger than before the war and with extensive recent combat experience.

Europe, by contrast, has only just begun to rearm.

This gap in time is extremely dangerous.

Is there a particular opportunity, though, for Vladimir Putin right now, given that what you were talking about in terms of its, its raw materials, its, its oil and gas, which it can export to China, that because of events in the Middle East right now, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, that maybe that's something on which Vladimir Putin can play?

Russia is already the largest cruel exporter to China.

It has a big overland pipeline.

It's the major destination for the Russian shadow fleet, the vessels that transport Russian oil from its ports in the Pacific and also the Black and the Baltic Seas.

It has a natural gas pipeline from Eastern Siberia, and it's completing a second smaller pipeline.

However, this time around, Vladimir Putin hopes to seal a deal of a new pipeline coming from Western Siberia and transporting natural gas that used to be destined to Germany.

The capacity will be fifty billion cubic meter, and Chinese are ambivalent up to this point because they can close their energy balance without this gas, and at the same time, the discounts that the Russians are ready to provide because they don't have any other markets are attractive.

Do, do you think it's plausible?

What's your sense of how strong that relationship is right now, and whether, given everything you've been saying about how the, the conflict in the Middle East is helping Putin, whether that's making him want to double down on helping Iran?

I guess that the data set that we are operating upon is patchy at this point, and we rely a lot on the revelations of Western intelligence agencies done through the media, the statistics, and so on, doesn't give you a very clear picture at this point.

Russia is not Iran's treaty ally.

It doesn't have an obligation to come to Iranian defense.

The much-hyped strategic cooperation treaty is really not a military alliance and doesn't give Iran type of Article 5 guarantee.

However, Russia is happy to help Iran with its limited means, and bandwidth necessarily is not there to make a big difference because, well, Iranian air defense bubble was popped during the previous war last June, so there was just very limited time to deliver a lot of systems that Iran would need to restore its air defenses.

And by the way, Russia needs its air defenses, too, because it's standing up to a very potent opponent, being Ukraine, that strikes a lot of targets inside Russia, including industrial, military, thousands of kilometers away from Ukrainian territory.

I mean, at what point does Russia's transformation into a wartime economy, a war machine, the immense loss of life that we're seeing, at what point does all of this multiply, turn into this sort of exponential kind of effect where the people lose faith in Putin and the very project that he's embarked on?

Yeah

... parliament or on the streets and ultimately force Mr. Putin out or force the Kremlin to stop this criminal war.

And I think that in terms of anger, yes, it's there.

It's palpable.

People I know start to open up and talk to each other about the war or about their dissatisfaction, something that didn't happen couple of months back, and that's new because the society is code by repression.

Again, thousands of people go to jail a year because of their criticism of the war or get fined.

So something there is changing.

Explain to us how he has that grip on power, what you're anticipating for the elections come September, because might there be some small sentiment that the, the normal architecture, which would just facilitate Putin coming in again, might feel disgruntled enough to do something different this time around?

What can you tell us, or what more do you know about how this is going for Putin and what kind of public, uh, dissent is brewing?

I guess that we don't have a crystal ball to read Vladimir Putin's mind, although we wish.

All the data points available show that there is a growing concern about his personal safety, that his protection detail is really worried about Ukrainian ability to kill him the way the supreme leader of Iran was killed, and this is why indeed they're going an extra mile to take precautions.

And then on the second part, indeed, we see that the approval for the war and the current course in Russia is diminishing because Russia is feeling the economic heat of the sanctions and the war.

Ukrainians are bringing message back home with their strikes, and then the Kremlin has shut down internet in most populous city, which is deeply unpopular.

How did you feel about that, first, and what was your conclusion at the end of this war game?

Uh, that was a very awkward feeling.

I was a reporter before I joined the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.

Do you think that was wh- you know, was one, one of Putin's goals to, in some way, broaden the relationship to something beyond the Ukraine war?

war?That's the only unaccomplished goal on President Putin's bucket list.

Uh, he wanted to compartmentalize the relationship with the United States and make war in Ukraine just one part of it, while other parts, like giant investment opportunities he promises President Trump's envoy Steve Wykoff, or arms control, or various regional crises around the world, all of that will be on the table and will continue in parallel while Russia and the United States are looking for a solution out of Ukraine.

So, the only good news out of this summit is that President Trump didn't give Putin that path, and he said, "We solve Ukraine first, and then we continue with everything else." The problem is that unfortunately, apart from giving Putin a red carpet welcome and parroting his narratives or having this very solid personal rapport it seems, he really has shot himself in the foot by canceling his own negotiation strategy, which was ceasefire first, and then we go into substantive talks.

To me, it was very clear that President Putin was not ready for a ceasefire.

Continuation of the war against Ukraine remains his only point of leverage.

He believes that he's winning this war gradually, and that Ukraine is not losing much territory, but it's losing its manpower, and that it's on a gradual path of implosion.

You have to take it or leave it." Is, is Zelenskyy in a position to be able to agree to such a deal?

Is Putin openly defying Trump?

I think the impression in the Kremlin is that you need to stay on the good side of President Trump, massage his ego, praise him and tell how great he is, how grateful you, as Russia, are for his attempts to end this conflict on terms acceptable to Russia, and also how much this war is Biden's fault.

At the same time, so far Russians have seen a lot of bark from the American side, but no bite.

Mr. Trump has not demonstrated ability or will to push Russia into peace negotiations and arrive to terms of peace acceptable to both the United States and Ukraine.

With that, Mr. Putin believes that he can have his way and he can push and pursue his war aims and arrive at peace on his conditions, which means subjugation of Ukraine, breaking the line that connects Ukraine's self-defense effort with the Western military intelligence machine and defense industrial complex and leaving rump state of Ukraine on trajectory of potential failure and definitely at the Kremlin's mercy going forward.

That's his goal.

I absolutely agree with you, that's his goal.

And for that, cutting this lifeline that connects Ukrainian self-defense effort, its army, its intelligence machine, and its defense production to the West, where a lot of critical intelligence that helps Ukrainians to protect their skies and their cities and inflict a lot of damage on the Russian occupiers is coming from the US and from the West, where a lot of material that Ukraine needs, artillery shells, drones, uh, air defense systems come from the West, particularly from the United States.

Alexander Gabuev directs the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and says Xi and Putin cannot be separated and believe time is on their side.

Arrival of Donald Trump brings, in itself, a lot of unpredictability but also a lot of opportunities for them.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin feel very emboldened and they know that working together is the surest way to, uh, deliver this post-Pax Americana, a new multipolar world order where they will be standing tall, uh, dominating their respective regions.

Maybe even more than we disappoint them.

Vladimir Putin is not interested in a temporary ceasefire because Ukraine can use this time to create facts on the ground.

For example, regroup, rearmament.

Russia's calculus is that Ukraine is still standing but it's exhausted and, in a war of attrition, a country with more soldiers, more artillery firepower and more resources can win over time.

(uplifting music)

Uh, tell us how, how this has been viewed in the Kremlin.

Kremlin.Great to see you, Bianna.

Uh, well, it's indeed like Easter, Hanukkah, Christmas, birthday of Vladimir Putin, and everything is happening on one day.

So whatever champagne is not chilled is brought to the fridge, and other bottles are uncorked.

It's too early to celebrate, but just the sheer optics of everything, what's transpiring, is definitely beneficial for the Kremlin.

Because on one hand you have a U-turn in the US foreign policy, isolate Russia, make Putin a pariah leader, uh, help to get him, uh, get an arrest warrant of, uh, International Court of Justice, and, like, all of that.

And on the other hand, you see fracturing in transatlantic support network for Ukraine, and the signal that all of this Trump's sending to Kyiv and his friends that Ukraine and the United States are not one team, and Team Trump is playing its own game.

Uh, you are dubious about this intelligence, and I'm just wondering, do these types of threats and warnings actually work against President Zelensky and Ukraine among, uh, Europeans?