Interview: Ex-Envoy McFaul On Putin After The Mutiny, And 'Retiring' The Argument That NATO Membership For Ukraine Is A 'Provocation'

Michael McFaul served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-14 and is currently a professor of international studies at Stanford University. He is an author of numerous books and articles and a former special assistant to the U.S. president on Russian and Eurasian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council.

McFaul spoke with RFE/RL's Georgian Service about the recent mutiny led by Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian culpability for Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, and the question of NATO membership for Ukraine.

RFE/RL: What have we learned about Putin and Russia in the wake of Yevgeny Prigozhin's short-lived rebellion?

Michael McFaul: Well, we still don't know the full consequences, and there are a lot of mysterious things that I would still like to have answers to. But generally, if you think about Putin's strength within his country, and with his military and his commanders a week ago versus now, he's emerged from this crisis in a much weaker position. Anytime there's a mutiny against you, or anytime there's the specter of civil war -- that was his phrase, not mine -- that suggests that you're not fully in control of what's happening inside your country.... As far as Wagner armed forces, thugs, mercenaries being pulled off the battlefield, as far as I'm concerned; it's a good thing for Ukraine; it's a bad thing for Russia's war efforts.

We still don't know all the facts, of course, but everybody wants to know what happened to [Russian Aerospace Forces commander] General [Sergei] Surovikin. There've been lots of press reports that he's under arrest and has been for some time. I don't know if that's true or not, but the speculation about it suggests there are divisions within the Russian armed forces -- the conventional armed forces, about Putin's leadership, about [Russian chief of the General Staff] General [Valery] Gerasimov's leadership, [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu's leadership. And that's not good if you're Vladimir Putin.

And then, finally, two other lessons I think are important -- one relating to the war in Ukraine and one related to ongoing instability in Russia. When the mutiny was under way, and it went very smoothly and made it very easily to Rostov and on the road to Moscow, Putin made a very dramatic speech -- I listened to it in real time and I've listened to it several times since -- where he called these people "traitors" and said they're going to use all the means necessary to squash this mutiny, this "rebellion" is the word he used. And yet, when push came to shove, he didn't do that. He didn't escalate. He didn't double down. He didn't use massive military force. He negotiated with these "traitors."

He had tough choices, I want to be clear about that. But the assumption about the war in Ukraine is always that Putin is this tough guy, that he will escalate if you do too much. If we send them tanks, he's going to escalate; if we send them Patriots (air-defense systems), he's going to escalate; if we send them fighter jets, he's going to escalate; and now you hear that we don't want to send certain long-range missiles -- ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) -- because Putin will escalate.

And I don't know what he'll do in Ukraine, and I don't pretend to know. But [in] this case study of escalation, he had the opportunity to escalate -- he could have, he had the military means to do so -- and he didn't. And that suggests to me a very important lesson for those countries supporting Ukraine: The assumption is always that he is going to escalate; well, maybe he'll capitulate, maybe he'll negotiate when faced with the specter of losing the war in Ukraine. So, I think that's a really important lesson from that first speech.

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And then the other lesson, from the second speech, is that he hasn't yet figured out how to deal with Wagner. I was very struck that we were told by Mr. [Dmitry] Peskov, his press spokesperson, that this was going to be a major, major speech. And what was it? It was a speech delivered just to the Wagner fighters, just to the Wagner mercenaries. That's so strange, if you think about it: a national address, and the only audience that he's talking to is these hired guns? And his main message was: "Your leaders betrayed you, they deceived you. Split with them and come with me." And that suggests to me that they haven't done that yet. And from what we hear, there weren't many Wagner fighters that took the offer to join the Russian conventional forces. So that means he still hasn't resolved fully how he deals with these fighters.

RFE/RL: You write in your memoirs From Cold War To Hot Peace: An American Ambassador To Putin's Russia that "So long as Putin rules Russia, strategic partnership was impossible." Essentially it boils down to something like "our problem isn't Russia, it's Putin." We've just seen perhaps the strongest challenge to his rule to date. And that invites a question: What kind of relationship might be possible with Putin's eventual successor? Could it still be that your problem is Russia, and not merely Putin?

McFaul: Well, what do you mean "Russia"? It's Russians, right? Let's be specific about what we're talking about.

It's a very complex question. And I don't want to cartoonize it. Let me try to answer it with sentences and paragraphs, not a soundbite. I do not believe that countries act the same over centuries because of history and culture, and that's the way they are. I don't think Georgians are that way; I don't think Russians are that way; I don't think Americans are that way; I don't think Chinese are that way. And that's a very legitimate big debate in academia: Are there these structural forces that cause countries to behave in a way, or do individuals matter? I think that individuals matter and that regime type matters. And I think autocracies behave in the world in one way, and democracies behave in the world in a different way.

And so, with respect to Russia, over the last 30 years -- but I'm going to come to your very important question about Putin and Russians right now -- because I've changed my view since writing that book. So when it comes over the last 30 years, I do not see continuity in the way that Russia has behaved to the outside world. There was not continuity between [Soviet leader from 1964-82 Leonid] Brezhnev and [Soviet leader from 1985-91 Mikhail] Gorbachev, just to be very clear. The way Brezhnev dealt with uprisings in Eastern Europe, he invaded in '68. When Gorbachev was faced with similar choices in '89, he said, "Go your own way." If Russia, as a country, and Russians behave the same way all the time, we should have expected that Gorbachev should have invaded Germany when there were uprisings in 1989; and he didn't. And I could go on.

But the idea that the Soviet Union behaved the same under Gorbachev as it did under Brezhnev -- let alone Khrushchev or [Soviet leader from 1924-53 Josef] Stalin -- I just think the evidence is so overwhelmingly obvious that that argument is not very compelling to me.

Second, [Russian President from 1991-99 Boris] Yeltsin didn't behave the same way [after the 1993 constitutional crisis] that Putin is behaving today. Yeltsin declared independence from the Soviet Union and then, you know, worked to bring about the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As did leaders in Georgia, and leaders in Ukraine, and leaders in the Baltic states. And so just to say that they're acting the same way, I don't see it that way.

But to speed up to Putin. Remember, Putin was a completely accidental leader of Russia. There was no groundswell of support. There was no Putin movement in 1999 and 2000. He was a creature of the existing regime; he wasn't an opposition leader, he wasn't with the Communists or with [right-wing populist leader Vladimir] Zhirinovsky.

Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister, and then Yeltsin appointed him acting president and the people of Russia ratified that choice afterwards. Putin wants you to believe otherwise. He wants to create this myth that "there was the chaos of the '90s, and I came in as the hero." That's complete and utter nonsense; that's not the history the way it was in real time.

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And what if Yeltsin had chosen somebody else? In fact, he wanted to choose somebody else; his name was Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov was the heir apparent, and then something interrupted that plan; it was the August 1998 financial crash, when the government at the time had to then be thrown out -- of which Nemtsov was in -- because Russia still then was a quasi-democracy. So imagine if that financial crash had not happened, just for a moment -- we call these counterfactuals. Imagine, had Yeltsin appointed Boris Nemtsov as his heir apparent, the Russian people would have ratified that, just like they ratified Putin because they controlled that election rather comprehensively. There's no doubt in my mind that the history of Russia's relations with Georgia and Ukraine and my country would have been radically different, had Boris Nemtsov been elected president at that time. So that suggests to me that there's an interplay.

Having said all that, I want to say something, honestly, that I have tried analytically and in my academic writings to suggest, is that there's Putin, and we don't necessarily know if Russians support him. How do you know when there's not real free and fair elections, when there's no real media? You can't know if he's popular or not in those conditions.

But having said that, I changed my views as a result of this horrific, barbaric war in Ukraine, because Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine. There was no vote; there's no referendum. We don't know what Russians actually thought about that decision. There is public-opinion polling before it to suggest that they didn't want that fight, including by independent organizations, even Western organizations. But once he went in, there was support -- as there usually is when countries go to war -- and now there are Russians that are raping Ukrainian women and children; there are Russians that are committing massive atrocities inside Ukraine. So Putin can't do those things without the support of Russians. And therefore, this excuse that Russians are not guilty and they shouldn't be treated badly, and they shouldn't be sanctioned because of autocracy, I disagree with that.

RFE/RL: Also, for a country of 142 million people, there weren't 14 million people in the streets protesting the war, were there?

McFaul: Well, initially, there were some very brave people that did protest.

RFE/RL: Yes, I don't doubt their bravery. But if you see, of the overall population, what percentage of them took to the streets, that also must be telling.

McFaul: Well, let's dig into that a little bit, if you want to. Repression works. When you arrest people -- when you give my friend Vladimir Kara-Murza 25 years in jail for saying something slightly critical of the war -- it's very rational not to go protest. And I want to be honest with you: If I were a Russian citizen, I'm not sure I would be brave enough myself to go and protest against Putin, facing the specter of going to jail for 25 years.

But that doesn't tell us what people believe. Those protests on the streets were massive in the beginning -- tens of thousands -- and then they put people in jail. And I just don't think we should assume that because we're not seeing those protests now, that there's massive support for Putin's war.

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I used to do public-opinion polling in Russia for many years, and I know all those firms, I know all the experts. I think there are three categories in Russia. Yes, there's the hard-core supporters that support Putin. That's 25 to 35 percent. They're the ones watching, you know, the Russian national television stations controlled by Putin. And they're like, you know, "molodyets!" (Editor's note: This is "fine young men," a Russian phrase that refers to the obedient masses.) You know who they are? We know who they are. They tend to be older people, more rural people, less educated people, and less wealthy people. That's who they are. Core people who will support him no matter what.

There's another group of Russians: a smaller but in not insignificant 20 percent. And they don't support this war at all; and they don't support Putin; and they don't watch Russian television or television at all; they get their news from the Internet and from media, and from Telegram, and from [the YouTube program of jailed opposition leader Aleksei] Navalny Live, and from Dozhd, and from you [at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]. Their media world is entirely different. And we know who they are. They're younger, urban, educated, richer. In other words, the future of Russia. They're not with Putin's project at all.

And then, in the middle, there's what the Russians call the "boloto," the swampland. That's where most Russians are. And they support Putin because he's "vlast" [homeland], because he's the power, he's the president. They've never known anybody else for a quarter of a century. But do they enthusiastically support him and the war? There's little evidence for that. In fact, there's been some polling that suggests that two-thirds of Russians would rally to Putin's side if he ended the war tomorrow. So I think it's very complicated to know who is what.

RFE/RL: I want to ask you about the Vilnius NATO summit that's looming, and the consensus among the allies that seems to be that they cannot invite in a country that is still at war. And that seems logical at first. But what are the unsaid implications for Ukraine here? How does one read into that? Will NATO invite in Ukraine if it loses? How about if there is a frozen conflict? What if Ukraine goes and wins an outright victory against Russia? What do these narratives mean for Ukraine?

McFaul: I'm not a member of the government. But my sense of governments about this issue is exactly how you described it: that there is not enthusiasm at the Vilnius summit to lean too forward, because Ukraine is at war. And remember, all the NATO countries are democracies -- they're not dictatorships -- so they have to listen to their people. And I understand the argument that I hear from officials in the Biden administration that say that the American people wouldn't support bringing Ukraine in right now, while they're at war, because they think -- erroneously, I think, it's more complicated than that -- but the conventional wisdom is that would mean we would have to go to war with Russia. And I don't think there's appetite for that among the American people.

That said, I would hope that in Vilnius there would be a much stronger signal about the path of Ukrainian membership to NATO than there's been in the past. I think we need to say honestly that since the Bucharest summit [in 2008 when NATO declared its "open-door policy"] and the convoluted messages for Georgia and for Ukraine that occurred at that meeting -- and I don't think there was any upside to have that convoluted messaging -- but ever since, especially after Putin invaded Georgia, after Russia invaded Georgia -- notice I said both -- a serious conversation about both Georgia and Ukraine has been frozen, and we've done nothing.

And the fear was always, "Oh, if we do something, Putin is going to respond; maybe he'll invade Ukraine." Well, guess what? Since Bucharest, he's invaded Ukraine twice...and Georgia once. So, I think that argument has to be retired -- forever -- that this somehow is going to be a provocation. The argument that if we do this, it'll provoke Russia to invade Georgia and Ukraine. Well, we didn't expand NATO when we could have, by the way; my view is that we could have been doing much more in the '90s, but that's ancient history. But the argument that if we do this, it'll provoke Russia to invade Georgia and Ukraine; well, we didn't expand NATO, and he did it anyway. So I think that argument has to be retired.

No. 2: This is just my view, but I think we've got to get ourselves around to rethinking who is providing security for whom in the Ukraine-NATO relationship. The old conventional thinking is that Ukraine needs to join NATO to enhance its security. And that will be true when that happens. And there's no doubt in my mind that Ukraine will join NATO, it's just a question of when and how. But a conceptual change that needs to happen in the West is: Who is providing whom security after this horrific, horrible war is over? Right now, Ukraine is receiving weapons from NATO and is an importer of security from NATO.

But after this war is over, Ukraine will begin to build the most qualified, modernized fighting force in all of Europe; they're already on that path today. And down the road, Ukraine will be a net exporter of security to the NATO alliance, not an importer. They will be providing security, especially for small countries in the neighborhood. They'll be providing security for Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania and other countries that don't have the military capabilities that the Ukrainian armed forces will have, especially now that they're on the path of switching over to platforms from the West and getting rid of all that Soviet junk that they've had to fight with in the past. And I think that is a conceptual change that not a lot of people understand but I think should be part of the debate in Vilnius.

RFE/RL: So, Ukraine as NATO's easternmost and most fortified bastion. Is there an appetite for that in the West?

McFaul: Well, I hope there should. I mean, if you want to enhance our deterrence vis-a-vis Russia for all of the NATO alliance, Ukraine will be a critical partner in doing that. This is after the war I'm talking about, not right now. We have to see. But after the war, I think that's true.

And let me answer your other very important point about frozen conflicts. I think that argument also needs to be retired. I don't know how the war ends. I hope it ends with unified borders of Ukraine, the 1991 borders; that should be the ultimate goal. But if, God forbid, it doesn't in the short run, [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy himself and the people of Ukraine, they're the ones that need to make that decision -- not me in Palo Alto, and not President Biden sitting in Washington or anybody else. That is arrogant beyond belief that we should pretend that that's our decision; that's his decision and the people of Ukraine's.

But if somehow it settles into a frozen conflict, that should never again be used as an excuse to say, "Well, we can't have NATO membership." And I think the analogy is West Germany in 1955, when they joined the alliance. Because the borders were unsettled, but we found it in our interests to help bring West Germany into the alliance to stabilize the setting there and then, long-term, create the conditions for unification.

Because I'm convinced that if, tragically, the borders were somehow not the 1991 borders, the goal for Ukraine has to be to become a thriving economy, capitalist economy, thriving democracy; and you need security for that. And one day, their success will be what compels people on the other side of the border to rejoin and reunite, just like we saw in Germany in 1989. And so that needs to be the goal, and NATO membership is part of reaching that goal.

RFE/RL: If I might be a bit insolent, is that your trademark optimism speaking?

McFaul: It's realism. I 100 percent disagree with you, OK? You can have your opinion, but that is hard-core realism based on knowledge of the Cold War. And I'm really tired of people saying it's unrealistic, because that's what got us into these situations in the first place. I remember these debates about the NATO expansion to the Baltic states; I'm a veteran of that. When I was told, "Oh, Mike, you're naïve, you're idealistic, blah, blah, blah." Look, who's the realist now? Had we not extended NATO when we did in the "big bang" starting in 2002, consummated in 2004, what a mess Eastern Europe would be right now. And I just want to remind you -- maybe you weren't around in those debates -- but these are exactly the debates that people were making 20 years ago: You idealists, you don't understand the real world. No disrespect, but those that made those arguments were wrong then, and I predict that 10 or 20 years from now, we'll be able to say exactly the same thing.

RFE/RL: I most certainly would be looking forward to that. There is something that there is not much to be optimistic about, and that's Georgia. Regarding the Bucharest summit in 2008, I think you'll agree that Ukraine and Georgia were considered a tandem, right, two countries that wanted to join? And they had to wait. They got not exactly Membership Action Plans but helpful things. And fast-forward to today, and we aren't exactly considered a tandem anymore, are we? When it comes to NATO and Georgia, how far down has it fallen?

McFaul: I would go even further and say in 2008, Georgia was a leader. You were ahead of the Ukrainians; you were leading both in argumentation and in preparedness. Your society was much more enthusiastic about joining NATO back then than Ukrainian society was. That's how I remember it very vividly.

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So, it wasn't just in tandem; you were ahead, I'd say. And to me, it's tragic to see how that's changed. I'm not an expert on Georgian politics and I don't want to pretend to be one, other than to say that especially it was disheartening to me, not only on the NATO side -- when the EU announced that Ukraine and Moldova would be on a path to joining the union and left Georgia out of that. And that, to me, was a tragic signal of how Georgia has fallen behind.

I think that's very tragic. Because I think Georgia is a European country and has shown that they can be a democratic country in a thriving market economy in the past, and did some fantastic reforms that was a leader to the entire post-Soviet world. I remember when everybody was flying to Georgia to learn about what you had done to achieve a postcommunist democratic breakthrough.... But that momentum has stalled, and I hope that forces inside Georgia, in cooperation with institutions like the European Union, can get it back on track.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length