Since we pay for Ukraine's resistance, in my view, that gives us the right to be included in the decision-making about how this war ends.

Because both on financial grounds and on security grounds, we have a huge stake in this.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and today, how serious is the risk of the war in Ukraine spreading into Europe?

For nearly five years now, Russia's invasion has remained, at least geographically, a war between two countries.

But increasingly, that conflict is spilling out over Ukraine's borders, a threat that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been sounding alarms about.

A war that was not prevented in time, was not stopped in time, and for which Russia was not punished in time, keeps spreading and spreads evil with it.

Vladimir Putin has staked his legacy on victory.

And with the front lines largely frozen, he seems increasingly willing to take risks and absorb enormous human and economic costs to get it.

Russia has stepped up a campaign of hybrid warfare across Europe from arson and cyber attacks, disinformation and sabotage, even assassinations.

An explosive drone was found at Germany's Leipzig airport back in August.

In September, Russia attacked a passenger train just two kilometers from the Polish border.

Russian aircrafts and drones have repeatedly tested NATO airspace.

And this is completely unacceptable.

The Kremlin is putting lives at risk across the continent.

None of these incidents on their own amount to an invasion of Europe.

But together, they suggest that Vladimir Putin is testing Europe's red lines.

And what happens when he crosses them?

So what if the war really does come to Europe's doorstep?

It's a difficult question to answer because Europe isn't a country.

The European Union is a block of 27 member states, each with its own government, military budget, political priorities, and ideas about what European security should look like.

NATO provides the framework for collective defense, but it's facing pressure to do more for its own defense because U.S.

support is no longer a guarantee.

President Trump's recent criticism of Zelensky and overtures towards Putin have been harsh reminders that Europe is increasingly on its own in the fight against Russia.

The challenge right now is for the European Union to build a unified defense strategy without sacrificing the sovereignty and strategic autonomy that its members fiercely protect and how to make Russia pay for hybrid attacks that fall in a gray zone somewhere between war and peace.

Politics are making that even more difficult.

Far-right parties are gaining ground across Europe, arguing that Brussels has too much power already and that national governments need to take back their own control.

The more that Europe turns inward, the harder it may be to act collectively when it matters most.

Putin keeps pushing Europe's red lines, but who's prepared to draw them?

To help answer that question, I'm joined by Poland's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski.

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

- Hello?

- Yes, is this Dawn of Donroe Doctrine?

- Ha, si, senor.

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.

Our people are working to build a brighter future in automotive, greenhouse agriculture, clean tech, environmental conservation and beyond.

Cox Enterprises in the business of what's next since 1898.

Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and... Foreign Minister Poland, Radek Sikorski, great to have you back.

- Hi.

- So here we are in London.

And of course, it has been a very challenging and hardly stable time for the war between Russia and Ukraine.

If you look at the last few months-- I mean, I know the front lines haven't moved very much.

But who do you think presently has the momentum and why?

So as you suggest, wars are never linear.

They go through phases.

If you remember, when the Ukrainians were on the march in the Kherson area, they were recovering huge chunks of territory.

In the last few months, Ukrainians were quite confident in May and June, when they had their first successful strikes on Russian refineries.

But the Russians now have a new type of drone, jet-powered.

- Jet-powered drones, yeah.

- And they've ramped up the ballistic missile production, and they are successfully terrorizing Ukrainian cities.

So there are all these factors.

It's a sort of negative draw in the Black Sea, where neither country can export its grain.

It's a negative draw in the air, because neither country can fly over the territory of the other with jet planes.

And the Ukrainians have the advantage in picking out the oil refineries which are military targets.

But of course, Kiev and other cities are being terrorized.

Interestingly, in Donbas, the Russian offensive, remember?

We've been talking for months and months.

The Ukrainians have actually started recovering territory, and it seems like the losses per square kilometre of Russian gains are now catastrophic.

Interesting.

So if you were to focus more on the changes in the military balance or the ramping up of the economic damage, and here I mean both to Ukraine and to Russia, which do you say right now is more consequential if you think about the war going forward?

Well, that depends on whether we can sustain the financing and whether the Ukrainians can sustain the civilian losses.

And from what I hear, Vladimir Putin has a pretty good sense of the situation at the contact line, but is not being told the whole picture as regards the difficult financial and economic position.

And that's part of why CIA Director John Ratcliffe went to Moscow, was the view in the United States that that was the case.

- Our embassy reports that there are now petrol shortages in Moscow itself.

And as you know, in the Russian system, the old capital and the even older capital are usually protected.

So if they're not, that means that it's getting serious.

So you think that there is an environment where in a year's time, the Russian economy is starting to affect the way Putin is able to pursue this war, or not really?

Well, the new drones have Chinese jet engines, so he's getting support.

And we know that that's not the only kind of support.

Ukraine is being rocketed with North Korean ballistic missiles.

And as you know, there are Korean soldiers in Europe fighting in a European war.

And there are also soldiers, some tricked into signing-- From African countries, for example.

From all over the place.

We don't quite know what the resilience of the Russian economy is, because it has been put on a wartime footing.

And we just don't know how much Russia can borrow or how much gold it can sell.

But there is the other factor, namely that there are rumours of mobilisation by stealth.

And to my mind, there might be a psychological difference between the way contract soldiers look at their mission.

These are people who, under duress or out of greed, have signed up contracts for a lot of money.

That's one kind of psychology.

And conscripts really don't want to be there.

Because when you are sent on one of those meat assaults, the life expectancy of a Russian soldier is 30 minutes.

Yeah, it's been astonishing to hear, when you're actually on the front lines, I mean, you're basically done.

You don't expect to come back.

Now you mentioned some of this is a question of how long we can continue to support the Ukrainians economically.

We in this case is the Europeans.

It's not the United States anymore.

There's no more money coming from the US.

Since January last year, the US contribution financially is zero.

It's zero.

So on the one hand, Trump has been happy about that piece of the war.

On the other, we see what's happening with the French bond markets right now.

We see the possibility of Marine Le Pen, who certainly would want two-stop support for Ukraine.

We see a lot of countries that are feeling more economic squeeze in this environment, the gains of the AFD in Germany.

At the local level.

But remember... But how confident do you feel that the Europeans will continue?

You know, we worried about what would happen in Italy and Prime Minister Meloni... - She's been strong.

- ...has been solid.

- Yes.

Britain has been solid even though the baton was passed from the Conservatives to Labour and so on.

You know, you say and think some things when you're in opposition, and then when you get the full picture, you sometimes legitimately can change your view.

Now look, if you'd asked me five years ago, before the Russian invasion, how much Europe will do and how long it'll sustain doing it, and you told me what has happened and what is still the support.

I would have said that's too much to hope for.

So my view is that Europe has overperformed and Russia has underperformed.

We thought that Russia had the second best army in the world.

And Europe has now spent, I mean, various estimates, but certainly well over 100 billion dollars.

Billion euros.

Euros.

And it all depends how you look at it.

It's a lot of money.

But if Putin conquered Ukraine and grabbed its industry and forced its people into his army, the cost of deterring him in terms of our own defence expenditure would probably be higher.

I think that it's important for people watching the show to understand just how much, especially because in the United States it's very fashionable to talk about, oh, Europe is a museum, they don't grow, they're not productive, that in reality the Europeans are covering the entirety of that economic burden.

And that is unquestionably not only a big deal but was unexpected by those that were involved.

And this should have political consequences.

You know, when the US says correctly that it is the main military force behind NATO, we don't question the US's leading role in NATO.

And in fact, you know, we try to buy American equipment and contribute to US presence in Europe.

In Poland, we pay $15,000 per soldier per annum.

But since we pay for Ukraine's resistance, in my view, that gives us the right to be included in the decision-making about how this war ends.

Because both on financial grounds and on security grounds, we have a huge stake in this.

Clearly.

Now, you have another stake, which is that increasingly, Europeans are facing direct attacks, not just asymmetric attacks, but kinetic attacks from Russia itself.

We've seen this with drones in Poland.

We've seen this in Leipzig airport, most spectacularly.

We've seen this in the Baltic states.

- We had a cruise missile, the second one actually, exploding in Poland.

We think on purpose.

So far, understandably, the Europeans are reluctant to escalate in a way that could potentially precipitate a broader war.

I think that there's also some concern about how forward the United States would be in supporting the Europeans in that environment.

But this is only emboldening the Russians over the past months.

I mean, they've only gone one direction in terms of their warfare inside NATO itself.

Five years ago, if I had asked you, do you think that there's going to be a Russian war that would include the NATO states directly, you probably would have been skeptical of that.

How should the Europeans respond if they haven't so far?

Well, yes, we've had the full range of arsons, flammable parcels on airliners, armed drones in Germany, but also traversing Lithuania, unarmed drones breaching our airspace, cyber attacks on our heating systems and our electricity systems, assassinations in Poland recently.

And we have responded, I feel that Poland has given an inspiration.

So after each major attack in Poland, I closed down one Russian consulate.

We feel that other countries should allow Russian diplomats to move only in their own countries where they are presumably under watch from counterintelligence.

And there's an obvious thing that we should do.

We should demand all Russian citizens traveling to the West to have biometric passports so that identities can be established.

And, you know, we are passing, I think we're on our 22nd package of sanctions, which we hope over time will do the work.

So when you see a kinetic Russian attack, a cruise missile, a drone, the destruction directly of critical infrastructure inside-- We've had nothing like what the Ukrainians have had.

Of course.

But again, Ukraine is not in NATO.

They've been invited, but there is no process.

The NATO has a collective security agreement.

Does there need to be a preparedness for a tit-for-tat, for a kinetic response?

And I'm not saying this to goad you into, yes, we should do that.

I'm just asking what you think the right approach is.

- I think you'll find that NATO Secretary General is clear that every inch of NATO territory will be defended.

When President Trump, who continues to provide a lot of weapons to the Europeans that are being sold on-- being provided to Ukraine, providing a lot of intelligence, even though it was suspended briefly-- We buy the weapons.

Yes, you buy the weapons.

Intelligence continues to be provided.

But when President Trump says-- tells the Ukrainians, hey, you need to stop attacking Russian diesel because that's really affecting the markets and certainly isn't saying anything to the Russians about what they need to stop.

What is the appropriate - that does not seem, let's say, fully aligned with the approach of other NATO countries.

Do you believe that there is a significant gap between what the American president is saying and doing on Ukraine and what the Europeans are, leaving aside the money that's being provided?

>> I think President Zelensky has been a good student of President Trump.

He's learned that you have to have cards and his card is the ability to strike Russian refineries and he is using it and I don't think he has any intention of giving it up.

So China you mentioned is clearly providing a lot of support to the Russians right now.

EU relations with China have gotten quite a bit more challenging, mostly seen on the economic front, but do you think that this war and China's support for the war is starting to have an impact on how the European governments are thinking about their relationship with China?

Well China promised us that she wouldn't supply weapons to Russia but she seems to be supplying a lot of stuff.

I mean jet engines for drones is pretty close to the line.

That's not dual use.

And we think that China is the one country that could actually force the end of this war.

If China threatened a trade embargo with Russia, that would, I think, end the war.

So I want to shift a bit from Russia and ask you a bit.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, gave a speech recently in Greece.

And it was really a speech about the potential of civilizational failure.

It was one that was directed at Europe.

It was a much more nationalist speech.

It was a speech that was about the West.

We've seen a fair amount of this in the national security strategy from the US written by Michael Anton.

We've seen it, of course, most famously from JD Vance when he attended the Munich Security Conference.

You and I were both in the room watching him talk about the EU as facing failure and supporting a lot of these nationalist movements that seem to be more aligned with where Trump wants to go.

How should the Europeans respond to this ideological development in US foreign policy?

I think we need to respond with proper information because there are some commentators in the United States that seem to have a gripe against Europe.

You know, we have advantages and disadvantages.

America has this amazing high-tech industry which we don't have in Europe, but on most indices of quality of life, the top countries in the world are mostly in Europe.

We seem to be attracting people.

As a Polish foreign minister, I can tell you that we now have a net flow of Polish people returning from the United States to Poland, voting with their feet.

We have thousands of Americans, more than in the past, applying for Polish passports.

So there are clearly some, there must be some advantages to being a European.

So the question is, is not so much whether Poland is doing well or badly.

It's very clear the economic growth speaks for itself and the attractiveness of the country.

It's more a question of whether Europe, the European Union, as it stands, a strong EU is good for the United States or bad, and whether or not the US is better served by having strong relations with national governments absent the EU and supporting the movements and the parties inside those countries that wish a more Euro-skeptic position.

So I guess I'm interested in Poland and your view on that.

Well, so there are some oddities here.

So, for example, we are being told by a country composed of immigrants that we have too much immigration, whereas actually the number of people, proportions of people born outside either the EU or the United States are pretty similar.

I think the proportion is in fact higher in the United States.

So, in Poland, we have a tough migration policy.

We've built a big and beautiful fence on our border with Belarus, and the border is now under control.

I've tightened up on visas, on student visas, on business visas, and the people respond well to that.

People feel everywhere that we have passports, visas, border guards for a purpose, namely to decide who may or who may not come through.

But as regards the political preferences, the tradition used to be that we don't interfere in each other's party political competition.

Because, you know, I mean, in Poland, our attitude is we want to have good relations with the United States, irrespective of who is in charge, either in Poland or in the United States.

And once you start interfering, the other side has a gripe.

In Hungary, there was a wave.

There was support for Orbán.

Orbán lost.

And that doesn't create an ally-like vibes.

So I think I like the traditional attitude, which was that we interfere in the politics of autocracies on behalf of democracy, but we don't interfere in democracies.

And now it's the other way around.

And now it's the other way around.

Radoslaw Sikorski, good to see you my friend.

Now it's time for something much less complicated than getting 27 European countries to agree on anything.

I've got your puppet regime.

Should we call him up just to mess with him?

It's your idea, but I'm not stopping you.

That's what you always say, Xi.

Okay, let's do it.

- Hello?

- Yes, is this Dawn of Donroe Doctrine?

Ha ha, si senor.

More like the non-Roe doctrine.

Too soon.

- What are you talking?

Bro, please, if you're going to do the I control western hemisphere bit, you have to do better than that.

Better than what?

- You couldn't even rig most important election in your own backyard?

Hey, bravio, if no one's backyard.

No comment.

- What?

Lula just keeps popping up like that.

You were trying for months to make sure your guy won.

Well, it was totally rigged.

Weren't you supposed to be doing the rigging?

I was... I was... You were too busy looking at John Husted's zopa.

To be fair, I was looking at his entire anatomy, 'cause he's one big, strong piece of meat.

Yo.

- Look, unlike you two freaks, I actually have my own elections to worry about.

>> So at this point I bet you can't even meddle in those.

Oh no?

No.

- Yeah?

Do it.

Well, maybe I will.

Great.

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 think you can defend Europe from exploding drones and arson attacks, we've got you covered.

Come check us out at gzeromedia.com.

[MUSIC PLAYING] 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.

Our people are working to build a brighter future in automotive, greenhouse agriculture, clean tech, environmental conservation and beyond.

Cox Enterprises, in the business of what's next since 1898.

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

And...