This week we talk about Euromaidan, minerals deals, and propaganda.
We also discuss European security, NATO, and the western-led world order.
Recommended Book: Storm Front by Jim Butcher
Transcript
In February of 2014, pro-Russian protests racked parts of southeastern Ukraine and Russian soldiers, their uniforms and weapons stripped of flags and other identifying markers, occupied another part of Ukraine called Crimea.
This was seemingly in response to Ukraine’s overthrow of its pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who was toppled as part of the Euromaidan protests, which were themselves a response to Yanukovych deciding to aim for closer ties with Russia, rather than signing an association agreement with the EU, which would have committed Ukraine to several EU-oriented reforms, related to corruption, among other things, while also giving Ukrainians many new rights, including visa-free movement and access to the European Investment Bank, beginning a few years later, in 2017.
This sudden pivot away from the EU and toward Russia didn’t go down well with the Ukrainian public, which had repeatedly shown it wanted to lean toward the west, and the Euromaidan protests were focused on weeding out government corruption; the existing government was accused of being all sorts of corrupt, and had also been accused of human rights abuses and allowing Russian oligarchs undo influence at the highest rungs of power; Yanukovych was in Russia’s pocket, basically, and his overthrow made Russia worry that they would lose control of their neighbor.
So Russia moved in to take part of Ukraine, basically uncontested, both internally and externally—a lot of other governments made upset noises about this, but Russia gave itself cover by removing their flags from their personnel, and that gave them the ability to paint everything that happened as a natural uprising from within Ukraine, the people wanting freedom from their Ukrainian oppressors, and Russia was just supporting this cry to overthrow oppressive tyrants, because they’re very nice and love freedom.
For the next eight years, the Ukrainian government fought separatist forces, funded and reinforced by the Russian government, in the southeastern portion of their country, while Russia expanded their infrastructure in Crimea, which again, they stole from Ukraine early on, and where they previously leased vital naval facilities from Ukraine; and those facilities are assumed to be a big part of why all this went down the way it did, as without said naval facilities, they wouldn’t have a naval presence in the Black Sea.
Then, in February of 2022, after a multi-month buildup of troops and military hardware along their shared border, which they provided all sorts of excuses for, and which many commentators and governments around the world excused as just a bunch of saber-rattling, nothing to worry about, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, initially aiming for a blitzkrieg-like assault that was meant to take Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv, and decapitate the country’s government within just days, at which point they could replace the government with someone who’s working for them, another puppet they controlled.
As of the day I’m recording this, in early March of 2025, the war is still ongoing, though. And in the years since it began, it’s estimated that more than a million people have been killed or injured, while entire cities across Ukraine have been leveled and tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have fled Russia’s forces as they’ve raped and pillaged and murdered their way across the Ukrainian countryside, those refugees leaving for destinations around the world, but creating a refugee crisis in nearby European nations like Poland and Germany, in particular.
There’s been a lot of back and forth in this conflict, Russia initially thought to have a massive upper hand, probably winning within days, as intended, but then Ukraine held fast, Russia redeployed its troops and armor, Ukraine got some remarkable counter-attacks in, and then Russia started to reset its economy to allow for a more drawn-out conflict.
As of early 2025, Russia is once against considered to have the upper-hand, and though Ukraine has been holding the line even in the most under-assault regions in the eastern portion of its territory, and has in recent weeks managed to take some Russian-held territory back, Russia’s comparably larger number of troops, its recent resupply of soldiers from North Korea, its larger economy and number of supply chains, and its relationships with entities like China and Iran, in addition to North Korea, all of which have been supplying it with things it needs to keep the war effort going, at length, have all conspired to put Ukraine on the back foot.
Additionally, Ukraine is struggling, after this many years of total war, to refill empty boots and make do with whatever their allies can and will offer them, in terms of money, weapons, but also the basics, like food and fuel. They’ve been able to shore-up some limited aspects of their economy, and have innovated like crazy when it comes to things like drones and other fundamentals of asymmetric, defensive warfare, but right now at least, the larger forces swirling around in the geopolitical realm are making life difficult for Ukraine, and for those who are still supporting them.
And that’s what I’d like to talk about today; the continuing conflict in Ukraine, but especially what’s happening on the sidelines, beyond the battle itself—and how those sideline happenings might lead to some fundamental changes in how Europe is organized, and the makeup of the modern world order.
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At this point I’ve done probably half a dozen or more episodes on this conflict; it’s long-lasting, it’s big, it’s important locally, but also globally, and it’s been informing both geopolitical and economic outcomes since day one.
Today I’d like to talk about some recent happenings, most of them from the past few months, that could prove impactful on the eventual outcome of this conflict, and might even determine when that end of fighting arrives.
And at the center of these happenings is recently reelected US President Trump, who has always had a, let’s call it unusual, public appreciation for Russian President Putin, and the strongman image he and other global authoritarians wield, while at the same time not being a big fan of Ukrainian President Zelensky—perhaps in part because Trump called Zelensky back in 2019 to try to get him to come up with evidence supporting a debunked conspiracy theory about his opponent, Joe Biden’s administration, related to alleged impropriety in US-Ukrainian relations.
Zelensky could find no such evidence, and when he told Trump there was nothing to be found, Trump blocked payments on $400 million worth of military aid for Ukraine, holding it hostage until Zelensky came up with what he wanted. This became a big scandal only after the fact, and before it could be made public or became known by congress via a whistleblower complaint, Trump released the money. This led to a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump later that year, which led to his impeachment for abusing his power and obstructing Congress—but he was then acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.
This, it’s thought, may have colored Trump’s behavior toward Zelensky when the two men sat down, alongside several other US officials, including US Vice President JD Vance, to discuss a potential mineral deal between the US and Ukraine, which was based on an earlier deal that the Ukrainian government dismissed.
The original deal basically required that Ukraine exploit its mineral wealth and put half of the money it makes from those minerals into a fund that would be used to pay the US back for the military assistance it’s provided so far, to the tune of $500 billion; which is quite a lot more than the $175 billion or so the US has spent on this conflict since Russia invaded, only $128 billion of which has directly aided the Ukrainian government, as opposed to funding US activities associated with the war, or supporting other affected countries thereabouts.
So originally the US asked for more than double what’s been provided so far, in return, paid for by Ukraine’s mineral wealth, which includes a lot of the types of rare earth minerals that are vital for common modern technologies, like computers, batteries, and solar panels.
That didn’t fly, mostly because it didn’t contain a security guarantee for Ukraine—the US saying it would protect them if necessary, basically, in exchange for this huge sum of money—so the new deal asked for $500 billion be placed in a fund, and that fund would be jointly controlled by the US and Ukraine, the funds used to rebuild the country after the war.
50% of all revenues from Ukrainian natural resources newly exploited after the war, so not from existing mines and ports and such, would be put into this fund. Like the first time around, this deal didn’t include a security agreement from the US, but the general idea was that this fund would incentivize new investment in the area, and because Ukraine has a lot of unexploited mineral wealth, this could give the US a new source for these sorts of valuable raw materials that are currently mostly controlled by China, but which the US government is attempting to claim more of, now that it’s realized it’s way behind on locking down sources of these really important things.
At the meeting where this second deal was meant to be signed, though, Zelensky flying to the US to sit down with Trump to make it happen, the President and Vice President more or less verbally attacked Zelensky, criticizing him for not being more overtly grateful, and telling him he was wrong when he said that Russia started the war by invading Ukraine.
It was all pretty bizarre, and even folks in Trump’s own party seemed pretty puzzled by the whole thing, some of them calling it embarrassing, as Trump and Vance were basically parroting Putin’s propaganda that no one actually believes because they ignore easily verifiable facts.
In any event, this led to a lot of fallout between the US and Ukrainian governments, with Trump suggesting he would lean more heavily on Ukraine to get them to accept peace on Russia’s terms, because the Ukrainians couldn’t see reason and accept his version of reality, essentially.
Trump has also suggested that he’s been talking a lot with Putin, and that he believes Putin wants peace, and it’s time to end the war. Putin, for his part, has not seemed inclined to give up anything in order to achieve peace, and Russian attacks on Ukraine have increased in scale since Trump came into office, and even more so after talks about a supposed peace agreement began.
All of which has had implications on the ground.
In Ukraine, Ukrainian soldiers have had to operate with fewer resources, as Trump cut off additional funding and supply shipments, post-meeting. He recently ordered that the US not share intelligence with them, too, and they cut off the sharing of satellite imagery, which Ukraine has used to great effect to strike Russian targets from a distance.
This has also had implications across Europe, though, as while Ukraine is being invaded now, there are concerns that if Putin gets away with taking part or all of Ukraine, he’ll go for other previous Soviet assets, next, maybe starting with the Baltic nations—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—and then tearing off chunks of Poland, Finland, or other neighbors that were previously part of the Soviet Union, like eastern Germany.
The European Union, despite a fair bit of warning about Trump’s stance on the issue, and the possibility that he would return to office, has been seemingly dumbstruck by Trump’s sudden pivot away from supporting Ukraine, and away from NATO more broadly, toward a stance that favors Russia, instead. European governments have been scrambling to come up with an aid package that will replace some of what the US would have given, and have started sharing more intelligence, as well, including satellite imagery.
It won’t be easy, though, as the US versions of these things, from monetary resources to eyes in the sky vastly outshine what even the combination of British, French, and German assets can offer—at least at this stage. And the US has traditionally handled the lion’s share of spending and building in these areas, shouldering the majority of NATO spending, because, well, it could, and that was a major premise of the post-WWII, western-led world order. The US said it would protect global capitalist democracies with its military might and nukes, if necessary, and European nations have been generally happy with this setup as it has generally allowed European governments to spend less money on their militaries and more on other stuff.
That state of affairs seems to have ended, or at the very least become too unreliable to bet on, though, so EU nations are attempting to fill in the gaps left by the suddenly less-reliable-seeming US government, not just for Ukraine, but for themselves, as well.
Poland’s president recently announced that he wants to develop nuclear weapons and wants every adult male to undergo military training, so the country can field an army 500,000-strong.
The French president has said he wants to extend his country’s nuclear umbrella—guaranteed deterrence, basically, using nuclear weapons—to the whole of the EU. France has far fewer nukes than the US and Russia, but this captures a sense of the moment in the Union, where a bunch of currently underfunded militaries are realizing they might not be able to rely on the US in a pinch. And while they collectively have a lot more people and resources than Russia, Russia is fully mobilized and has shown itself to be willing to attack sovereign nations, whenever it pleases, caring a lot less for the human lives it spends, in the process, than is typical in western-style democracies.
Even short of full-scale, out of nowhere invasions, Russia could pose a threat to European governments via asymmetrical routes. It’s been seemingly approving all sorts of espionage operations meant to increase immigration arrivals in European nations where immigration is already a hot-button issue, nudging politics to the far-right, and it’s allegedly been attacking infrastructure, in terms of hacking and just blowing stuff up, in order to sow discord and fear.
As I mentioned earlier, too, part of Germany was previously held by the Soviet Union, and that same part of the country has recently voted heavily in favor of the country’s furthest-right party, which wants stronger ties with Russia. So while conventional military issues are at the forefront of discussion, right now, Russia’s long history of asymmetric warfare is also getting a fair bit of attention, as it could conceivably use these groups as a casus belli to attack, carving off pieces of its European neighbors and slowly incorporating them into its sphere of influence, similar to what it did in Ukraine, beginning in 2014; if eastern Germany supports Russia, it could fund and in other ways support uprising efforts in these regions, creating chaos and potentially even breaking off separatist states that would pull those regions into Russia’s orbit.
It’s a tumultuous moment in this part of the world, then, in part because of the conflict that’s still ongoing—a much larger and more powerful nation having invaded its smaller, less-powerful neighbor. But it’s also tumultuous because of the implications of that conflict, especially if Russia comes out on top. If they win, there would seem to be a far greater chance of their deciding to keep the ball rolling, replicating a model that worked (without significant long-term consequences) across more neighboring nations.
And if they can do that before Europe reinforces itself—assuming that’s what the EU does, as it can be difficult to get a bunch of people with a bunch of at times competing interests to agree on anything, and even more so when said agreement involves both money and potentially sending civilians into harm’s way—if Russia can get there before a new, restructured and reinforced Europe emerges, we could see another, similar conflict soon, and this one could be even more successful than the last, if Russia tweaks its formula to make it more effective, and European governments succumb to war weariness, exhausted by the war in Ukraine, in the meantime.
Show Notes
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal
https://www.csis.org/analysis/breaking-down-us-ukraine-minerals-deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/08/world/europe/ukraine-russia-north-korea-kursk.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/08/zelensky-trump-fallout-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/world/europe/ukraine-us-trump-military-support.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/ukraine-zelensky-trump-russia.html
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-dobropillya-us-intelligence-3d0bad105a93933e9cdaca5cf31fcf74
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/no-substitute-for-victory-how-to-negotiate-from-a-position-of-strength-to-end-the-russo-ukraine-war/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-leaders-cautiously-welcome-macrons-nuclear-umbrella-offer-2025-03-06/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/world/europe/bulgarians-guilty-spying-russia-uk.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/08/europe-scrambles-to-aid-ukraine-after-us-intelligence-cutoff-00219678
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wpy9x890wo
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/keith-kellogg-ukraine-intelligence-sharing-pause/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8yz5dk82wo
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/world/us-ukraine-satellite-imagery.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c05m907r39qo
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-russia-sanctions-tariffs.html
https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-future-vision-and-current-capabilities-waging-ai-enabled-autonomous-warfare
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-tusk-plan-train-poland-men-military-service-russia
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/08/poland-says-it-plans-to-give-every-adult-male-military-training
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/world/europe/ukraine-trump-minerals.html
https://apnews.com/article/ten-days-that-upended-us-support-for-ukraine-8930c01a15910a7ad8a7f7c7fac9ba3a
https://www.wsj.com/world/white-house-and-ukraine-close-in-on-deal-for-mineral-rights-e924c672
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-us-still-ironing-parts-191805611.html
https://www.reuters.com/business/us-could-cut-ukraines-access-starlink-internet-services-over-minerals-say-2025-02-22/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/world/europe/ukraine-minerals-deal.html
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/26/europe/ukraine-us-mineral-resources-deal-explained-intl-latam/index.html
https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/electric-power/122624-eu-moving-to-develop-infrastructure-for-nuclear-energy-expansion-officials
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-07/european-stocks-see-most-inflows-in-decade-amid-defense-splurge
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/business/ai-summit-paris.html
https://apnews.com/article/germany-ukraine-debt-brake-economy-military-spending-74be8e96d8515ddddd53a99a69957651
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.b15Z.1EA4tDb_37Bq
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/world/europe/ukraine-russia-eastern-front-line.html
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/02/combat-losses-and-manpower-challenges-underscore-the-importance-of-mass-in-ukraine/
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-7-2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union%E2%80%93Ukraine_Association_Agreement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine_(1_January_2025_%E2%80%93_present)
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