The Excerpt podcast: Putin's Russia flexes its muscles
On Sunday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been making international headlines this week, just six days from what will be the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stories about troop buildup and the possibility of nuclear space weapons are just two of many. Are Russia’s ambitions in Europe shifting and how worried should the United States, arguably his biggest foe, be? Paste BN Pentagon Correspondent Tom Vanden Brook joins The Excerpt to share his insights on recent military developments.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, February 18th, 2024. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been making international headlines this week, just six days from what will be the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Stories about troop buildup along Russia's border, NATO, and the possibility of nuclear space weapons are just two of many new stories out in recent weeks. Are Putin's ambitions in Europe shifting and how worried should the United States arguably his biggest foe be? To learn more about this fast developing situation, I'm joined now by USA Today's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Vanden Brook. Thanks for being on The Excerpt, Tom.
Tom Vanden Brook:
Dana, thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Let's start with the bombshell news last week regarding Putin's ambition to put nuclear weapons in space. What's the story here Tom?
Tom Vanden Brook:
The story has to do with satellite weapons and specifically weapons that Putin wants to put into space to hamper our satellites, and obviously satellites govern a variety of things that we do from GPS to communication, so it's a big concern. The White House is trying to downplay this and said that these weapons have not been deployed. It's a capability hopes to deploy, so it hasn't been sent into space yet.
Dana Taylor:
Also, last week, the Estonian Foreign Spying Agency released its annual report. Its director general spoke with reporters and said Russians are planning to increase the military force along the Baltic States border, but also the Finnish border. How worrisome is that development from a military perspective?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, it would be worrisome, given that when he last massed forces along the Ukrainian border, he actually invaded there. However, Putin has a war on his hands obviously, that's mauled his armed forces in Ukraine, so whether he wants to open another front seems pretty doubtful, but you can never bank on exactly what he's going to do.
Dana Taylor:
Finland just gained membership into NATO, the world's largest military alliance just last year. Sweden also vying for membership with Germany saying just last week, according to Reuters, that that needed to happen. Now, what did these developments mean for the alliance?
Tom Vanden Brook:
They're huge plus for the alliance, having two democracies with developed very sophisticated, well-trained militaries on Russia's border, a 900 mile border with Finland, and then having Sweden also adjoin means two very potent partners for NATO joining the alliance and has to be a major concern for Putin who was trying to split the alliance, and instead he's seeing it grow considerably.
Dana Taylor:
When we talk about NATO, a common focal point for discussion is the importance of Article 5. What is Article 5 and how central is it to this Western alliance?
Tom Vanden Brook:
It's fundamental to it. Simply put, it means if one member's attacked, the others have to go to that country's aid. It's been invoked only once and it's when the United States was attacked on 9/11.
Dana Taylor:
NATO leadership met just last week in Brussels. What news came out of that Tom?
Tom Vanden Brook:
I think the main thing for our folks, our readers and listeners, and viewers to know is what Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said afterward, he reiterated a point that President Biden has made that the US remains committed to protecting every inch of NATO territory. So we're saying to Putin, "Don't try anything otherwise you'll face all of NATO".
Dana Taylor:
The Estonian intelligence report comes as likely Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, said over the weekend that he would encourage Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" and "to any NATO member country that doesn't meet the 31 nation military organizations defense spending guidelines," currently 2% of GDP. How concerning are his comments to America's NATO allies?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, very concerning. I mean, that's central to the alliance, right? And whether or not he would follow through on that is another matter. He threatened countries when he was president. If he becomes president again, would he do that? Would he allow another nation to be attacked without responding? That would violate Article 5. So it's got to be a tremendous concern, and it already is. I mean, we're already seeing the Secretary General of NATO speak out against it, so it's a concern for certain.
Dana Taylor:
President Joe Biden condemned Trump's NATO threat as an un-American signal to the world. Is there any precedent here, Tom, for the US to pull out of an alliance like NATO and what might be the impact if we did?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Well, I don't know that there's any direct precedent to it. When Trump was president before he talked about removing all of our troops from South Korea where there are 28,000 posted to prevent re-invasion from the north. That didn't happen, obviously, but it caused a lot of jitters, so it hasn't happened. Whether it does happen is another matter, and it would, again, if we were to remove ourselves from NATO, it would shatter what has been one of the key alliances that the United States has made in its history.
Dana Taylor:
Meanwhile, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday in an interview on his country's state TV that he'd rather have Joe Biden, 81, in the White House than Donald Trump, 77, because the former was an old school politician. What's Biden's relationship with the Russian leader been like?
Tom Vanden Brook:
Pretty chilly, I would say. I mean, he's called him a dictator. He's criticized his invasion of Ukraine as unprovoked and illegal, so in other words, not very good. It's hard to see why he would prefer Biden to Trump.
Dana Taylor:
We're just six days away now from the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They say they're running low on weapons. Meanwhile, Congress hasn't yet been able to get an aid package through. What might happen if Ukraine doesn't get this military aid soon?
Tom Vanden Brook:
The White House is already saying that we're seeing the effects of this lack of aid. The last shipment of aid came late last year, and without Congress approving the $60 billion package that the White House has asked for and that Senate has approved, we're going to see shortages of air defense missiles that are needed to knock down the drones and missiles that Russia has launched, and even more critically, it came up in a recent briefing by John Kirby at the White House with a lack of artillery shells, Ukraine is already starting to lose some of the ground that it's clawed back from Russia. So without some sort of aid coming fairly quickly in the next weeks or months, Ukraine is going to have very much... has got a lot of difficulty holding on to what ground it has and thwarting Russian advance.
Dana Taylor:
Tom Vanden Brook is USA Today's Pentagon correspondent. Tom, thank you so much for sharing your insights here.
Tom Vanden Brook:
You're welcome Dana. Thank you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.