Ukraine is the first country in the world that invaded Russia since Second World War.

And Ukraine has also become the first nation in the entire history of the world that started striking Russia in Siberia.

No one ever did that before.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And as the Iran war heats up once again, it has been easier to overlook what is happening thousands of miles to the west in Ukraine.

But do so at your own peril, because for the first time in four years, Ukraine has Russia on the back foot.

Russian citizens have long tolerated the war's high body count and economic impact as long as the fighting stayed in Ukraine.

But in recent months, long-range Ukrainian drones and ballistic missiles have systematically bombed oil refineries, ports, even major cities deep inside Russia.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has said the strikes are aimed at pressuring Putin to end the war.

And despite Putin's dismissal of Ukraine's, quote, "imaginary achievements" on the battlefield, momentum certainly seems to have shifted in Kyiv's favor.

But does Zelenskyy have the cards, as Donald Trump would put it, to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table?

Is a negotiated peace with Russia remotely possible?

And if not, when will this war end?

Joining me from Kyiv to discuss all that and more, Dmytro Kuleba.

He was Ukraine's foreign minister during the first years of the war, one of the country's most authoritative voices on the conflict.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

- With me, it's always yes.

Is Strait of Hormuz open or closed?

- Yes.

- That's not the... - Hold on, I got another call.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... For more than four years, the war in Ukraine has rested on one simple assumption.

Time is on Russia's side.

The Kremlin has more people, more resources, and more tolerance for casualties than Ukraine.

So eventually, Ukraine runs out of soldiers, the European's resolve will weaken, and the United States will lose interest.

But lately, it looks like Vladimir Putin's bet may not pay off.

More than four years into the war, Russia still controls only about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is bringing the war deep into Russia, also notably to Crimea.

Since annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Putin has treated it as the crown jewel of his project to restore Russian power.

He's invested billions to cement control over this strategically vital gateway to the Black Sea.

But Ukrainian drones are steadily undermining that project, striking military sites and fuel supplies and transport links and vessels tied to Russia's shadow fleet.

Fuel shortages in Crimea have recently become so dire that officials have warned gasoline may not be available for public sale on some days.

Ukraine will not be able to retake Crimea anytime soon, but it is proving that Russia can't secure it either.

The strikes deep inside Russia may be even more significant.

Long-range Ukrainian drones and ballistic missiles have hit energy infrastructure far from the front, including oil refineries near Moscow and St.

Petersburg.

The war's new reality was on display at the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, when Ukraine's president responded to President Trump's suggestion of a Moscow meeting with Putin.

I don't know that he'd go to Moscow.

Maybe he would.

Would you go to Moscow?

It's difficult.

There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there.

Zelenskyy had reason to be in a good mood in Ankara.

He arrived at the NATO summit in his strongest diplomatic position since the war began.

NATO allies reaffirmed major military support for Ukraine, and even President Trump was striking a warmer tone toward Kyiv, backing expanded cooperation on Patriot missile production.

The pressure on Putin is mounting.

Russia's economy is increasingly geared towards sustaining the war, yet growth is slowing.

Labor shortages are rising, and even the Russian Central Bank is now warning of a weaker outlook.

Meanwhile, the Russian president is reportedly growing more isolated and paranoid as the war drags on.

Mind you, that does not make a Russian tactical nuclear strike or an invasion of NATO territory imminent.

Thankfully so, those would carry enormous risks, and Putin is still betting he can outlast the Ukrainians.

The more plausible danger is that Russia expands the gray zone tactics it is already using, like cyber attacks and sabotage, military provocations, and other actions designed to intimidate the West without triggering full-scale war.

And the more Ukraine raises the cost for Russia, the more likely Putin is to raise the stakes too.

When an authoritarian leader with few good options begins to feel cornered, things can get dangerous fast.

Joining me to talk about the state of the Ukraine war from Kyiv is Dmytro Kuleba.

He was Ukraine's foreign minister during the first years of Russia's full-scale invasion.

Now at Harvard's Belfer Center, he remains one of the country's most influential voices on the war and on Europe's security.

Dmytro Kuleba, thanks for joining us again.

It's my pleasure, Ian.

- So I know you're in Kyiv right now.

From my perspective, the last few months have felt like a lot of momentum shifting towards the Ukrainians in this war.

You've told me you're more cautious than that, why?

Well, it's fair to say it's shifting, but has it shifted yet?

I don't think so, because if you look at our long deep strikes into Russia, we are clearly changing the dynamics, and we have changed the dynamics in the war.

If you look at the front line, Russia is still advancing in one part, we are advancing in other parts, so it's more or less on par.

And we are heading into another winter, which I think Putin will exploit to the maximum of his capabilities in order to break Ukraine down.

So, yes, we are stronger than we were six months ago, but is this the end?

I don't think so.

The place where the Ukrainians have had the greatest impact, at least in terms of the headlines, has been the ability to strike, it appears with impunity, deep, deep inside Russia, in Siberia, in the Arctic, in St.

Petersburg, and in Moscow.

What's the intention?

How much of this is about wanting to just really crush their energy capabilities, which is a lot of the targeting, how much of it is need to bring this to the Russian people, show them that the Ukrainians are a far more capable adversary?

- Let's get the record straight here.

Ukraine is the first country in the world that invaded Russia since the Second World War, last in the summer of 2024 in the region of Kursk.

And Ukraine has also become the first nation in the entire history of the world that started striking Russia in Siberia.

No one ever did that before.

So I think these two mere facts speak in favor of the conclusion that Ukraine kind of developed very special capabilities, but also has stamina to deploy them, unlike our friends from the West, who have always been very cautious about doing anything inside of Russia, and only allowed hitting Russia back inside of Ukraine.

Talk to me about what the Ukrainians believe they are accomplishing and what they want to accomplish through this military capacity.

- Since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine, unlike its partners, was not viewing this war through the prism of the escalation ladder.

It rather saw it as an area that needs to be saturated with as many challenges to Russia as possible, and take this pressure to the extent when Russia will not be capable of handling all of them simultaneously.

We have been less successful in the past, we are more successful now, but this is the strategy.

You cannot defeat Russia on the battlefield only.

You have to go into the rear, you have to chase Russian shadow fleet all across the globe.

It's basically a strategy of scorched earth.

Where are the Russians potentially weakest?

Is it all of the casualties they're taking, which are greater than replacement rate of what the Russians can raise in their soldiers?

Is it the impact on their economy and the shortages with gas?

Is it the visible strikes against Moscow and Petersburg?

Because again, all of these things are in service of trying to end the war.

So far, no success at all there.

Where do you think, if there is going to be progress, where do you think that progress is most likely to come from and why?

On all fronts, preferably simultaneously.

But I am a child of the late Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was collapsing in front of my teenage eyes.

And I remember vividly the scene in Moscow that I witnessed in 1991, empty shelves in what used to be Soviet supermarkets, like completely empty, and people realizing that the system collapsed, the system failed.

This is what Ukraine is trying to achieve with its deep strikes.

It's not only to deprive Russia of oil or gas resources and weaken its war machine.

It is also to bring the war home to the Russians, to show them the weakness of the, to expose the weakness of the regime to them, and to basically nudge the regime towards the collapse.

What have you seen so far, if anything, from either the Russian people or from the Russian leadership that could show you that there is the beginning of that occurring?

I mean, I could easily refer to the social, Russian social media and the emergence of various viral posts coming from the Russians who complain on their authorities for not being capable to protect them and to provide them with basic services.

I would not overestimate the impact of those messages on Kremlin yet, because, you know, this is a walk, a long walk starts with the first step.

But we have found the lever, and that lever is inside of Russia.

It's not in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

- And you've heard from President Zelenskyy that what is it, 40 days now, that he's expecting to see particularly intense strikes against Russia to show them what the Ukrainian capabilities are.

If at the end of those 40 days, we see no movement from Putin, no movement on negotiations, nothing happening inside of Russia that would make you change your assessment, what then do the Ukrainians need to do?

Well, I'm pretty certain that we will be having our own like a little Trump Trumpian moment when the deadline is first set, then extended, and then it becomes fluid.

But the comparison, the parallel ends here, because what Ukraine is going to do is clear.

It will it will ramp up and double down.

The more time we have, the more drones, long range drones we will produce and the more sophisticated they will be.

The more time we have, the better will be our missile capabilities.

So our greatest weakness today is air defenses.

And it's crucial actually, because I believe that the main battles of this war from now on will be fought in the air, not on the ground.

- Now, President Trump in the recent NATO summit in Ankara was certainly much more engaged and friendly with your president Zelenskyy than we've seen in past meetings.

I'd say the most that we've seen.

The promise to provide licenses to deal with, on the Patriot, interceptors, which would help to address this vulnerability you're talking about.

It seems that we're quite far from actually operationalizing that.

Was that actually a significant change in policy from the US?

Yes, it's a big change in policy.

And in that sense, Trump is going much further than President Biden did.

And, you know, I appreciate what President Biden did for Ukraine, no doubt about that.

But I was in the room when Ukraine raised the licensing issue for the first time with President Biden.

And that was December 2023.

And it's been what, two and a half years.

So if we presume that it takes at least two years to build a factory, to put it in production, to address all the bottlenecks when it comes to the supply, to the supplies, I don't think, I think it's a big, it's a big political breakthrough.

It's a strategically important development, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Because I think in general, the solution will not be in providing Ukraine with any specific type of weapon, but in developing an ecosystem of air defenses, where Patriot missiles will be doing their, will be playing their role, but Ukraine will also have its own anti-ballistic missile.

And of course, we will have to offer many more local solutions for air defenses.

There is not one single, you know, wonder weapon that can solve our problem.

We need to address the issue in its complexity.

It does seem, though, that more broadly, the crisis that we saw Zelenskyy walk into and out of at the White House a year ago in April, when Trump said he didn't have the cards.

You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards.

Right now, you're playing cards.

You're playing cards.

You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You're gambling with World War III.

You're gambling with World War III.

We seem to be in a very different environment today in the NATO summit in Ankara, where the Americans and the Europeans, maybe not equally frustrated with Putin, but certainly frustrated with Putin, blaming the Russians more for not ending the war than Trump had been blaming Zelenskyy.

Do you think that's accurate?

And do you see NATO policy as pretty coordinated in support of Ukraine right now?

- I believe one problem is to make President Trump change his mind and align with European view and Ukrainian view of the war.

But it's a different level of problem to make President Trump sustain his position on the matter.

And Zelenskyy and other European leaders should be commended, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, for spending a year and a half basically placating Trump, but in the end taking him to the safe port.

But how to keep him there?

This is the question.

And I think it will be a big, big question for them, and they will be spending a lot of energy on solving it, on answering it.

- If Putin ends up in a much worse position over time, and he starts to feel the need to lash out as a consequence, to escalate, do you think that the potential for that escalation is growing into actual NATO states, not just Ukraine itself?

We hear a lot about this from some advisors around Putin.

We certainly haven't heard Putin make those threats directly.

- Yeah, I think it's a plausible scenario, but whether he will actually resort to it, that's another question.

Because if you look at him, like what kind of options does he have?

What kind of cards does he have in his hands?

Technological breakthrough, he can instruct his engineers to come up with new solutions to both attack Ukraine and defend Russia from Ukrainian attacks.

Mobilization, more cannon fodder, and the third one is changing the tactics, smarter generals, smarter officers on the ground, more efficient combat.

The fourth one is actually attack against a NATO ally.

And the fifth one is nuclear.

So I think he will be playing with the first four while threatening from time to time the fifths.

And these five elements will, these five cards will constitute his strategy, basically, for the months to come, if not years.

Let me ask, before we close, I want to ask just a couple more questions about Ukraine's future.

I mean, you know, Ukraine historically wanted to join NATO.

That had been, you know, a kind of a, it's a red line for Putin.

It's also been in reality, a red line for Biden and certainly for Trump.

Does it matter going forward when Ukraine actually is creating the most powerful defense in Europe on the European continent?

Does it matter when the Europeans are working to invest in Ukraine's defense, developing joint ventures, the Germans, other countries.

I mean, does NATO really all that important for Ukraine as a consequence of the realities of defense cooperation on the ground?

As we speak, it is less important than it was.

But strategically, for all of the reasons that you mentioned, Ukraine will of course prefer to be a part of a collective security mechanism, whether it's NATO or something that will come after it.

But look at what Ukraine is doing with other European nations.

We co-produce, we set up joint ventures.

So if our defense industry becomes integrated, it would be foolish not to integrate the whole security architecture into one.

And I sincerely believe that for many reasons it would be in the best interest of NATO to have Ukraine on board, not only to benefit from its capabilities and its vigor, but also to kind of have a certain level of control of how Ukraine will be willing to apply its force in the region and beyond.

And on the EU side, since the last time you and I have spoken, Viktor Orban was dramatically and summarily defeated in his elections in Hungary.

This was the biggest thorn in opposition to Ukrainian membership in the EU.

You now have a leader that's much more interested.

Does that process now look reasonably smooth to you?

And how important is it for the Ukrainians?

- You know, our relationship with the European Union was taken to the next level as a result of the creeping annexation of Ukrainian lands by Russia.

That was a wake-up call to Europe.

Before the 2022 invasion.

Yes, even before 2022, and particularly since that.

Today, I would describe our reality as a creeping accession of Ukraine into the European Union.

There will be many obstacles because our Central European friends, I think, will do to us everything their Western European friends did to them when they were exceeding the European Union.

There will be tons of problems.

And if not Orbán, there will be someone else.

We see what's happening in Poland, for example, when it comes to the demands towards Ukraine and conditioning Ukraine's accession to addressing historical issues.

So tons of problems are ahead, but I think they will be resolved eventually because, you know, the project of the European Union was launched to make Europe safe and prosperous.

Without security, you cannot be prosperous.

And without Ukraine, Europe cannot be a safe place.

So it's just, it's not the will of politicians, it's the wills of history that will pull Ukraine into the EU.

Dmytro Kuleba, great to see you again.

Thank you.

And now for something silly and dumb and therefore deeply relevant to geopolitics today, I've got your Puppet Regime.

Hello, Vladimir.

- Donchik.

- Long time no speak.

Where you been hiding?

- I'm not hiding.

I'm saving my skin.

It's very hot summer and drone index is off of chart.

- Those FPV rays are crazy.

Speaking of which, you wanna end the war in Ukraine?

Still no.

Still no.

Listen, you always with the no.

Can't stop, won't stop.

You ever try "yes"?

Okay.

With me, it's always "yes".

Is Strait of Hormuz open or closed?

Yes.

- That's not... Hold on, I got another call.

Hello?

- Donald, it's Zelenskyy.

Are you helping Putin or helping me?

Yes.

- Don Presidente, is Venezuela a country or a colony?

Yes, Delcy sita, yes.

Ay, gracias, Don Presidente.

Y gracias a Don Marco también.

Donald, it's Bibi here.

Can I ask you... You know what, actually, with you, I'm not so sure I want to say yes again, to be honest.

Donald, are you trying to save NATO or destroy it?

You're so stupid.

Yes.

Goodbye.

Anyway, Vladimir, you see what I mean?

The art of yes.

I think I get it now.

Great.

So, are you going to keep giving me a runaround, or are we going to do a deal?

Hmm.

Yes.

That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you, like Russia's president, are growing increasingly isolated and irritable, why don't you check us out at GZEROmedia.com?

[MUSIC] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is investing in the future, working to create an impact in advanced recycling and in emerging technology companies that will help shape tomorrow.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.

Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And...