- Hello, I'm Stefanie Mills.

As many of us are aware, late last month Russia launched an unprovoked full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands have been reported killed, threats of a nuclear attack are growing.

Over a million have already fled their homes in Ukraine while people in both countries and around the world are protesting this war led by Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.

As the situation unfolds, we're here to bring you some perspective with Central Michigan University political science professor, David Jesuit.

Professor Jesuit, thank you for being here today.

- Thank you for inviting me.

- To understand what's happening right now, I think it's important to look back at the history of Russia and Ukraine.

So what has their relationship been over the past years if not centuries?

- Well, we might as well go back a few centuries.

What's modern day Ukraine hasn't existed.

The current borders essentially go back to the early 20th century, 1922, and they became part of the Soviet union.

And prior to that though, Ukraine had been an important element, important part of Russian empire.

So the country is divided and we hear about this between east and west, and that Eastern part, they're predominantly Russian speakers and identify more with the Russian ethnicity.

And the west, those are predominantly Ukrainian speakers and they identify more with Europe.

Now, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are also Eastern Orthodox Christians just like Russia.

And so they've shared that common identity for centuries, and it's been crucial in shaping that relationship and thinking about the Ukrainian people as part of the Russian people.

And essentially that's the way Putin sees this.

He's never really seen Ukraine as a sovereign independent state.

He's seen Ukraine as part of a broader Russian empire of Russian ethnicity.

Over the centuries, parts of what is now Ukraine were part of the Ottoman empire, they were part of the Austria-Hungarian empire, they were part of a Polish Lithuanian empire.

And so that has been contested territory in Europe and central Eastern Europe for four centuries.

But during the Soviet era, there was that effort to really suppress any kind of Ukrainian identity and speaking the Ukrainian language.

And so as we look at the second world war, the country is very divided between invasions from Germany, and then the liberation from the Soviet union.

And it was just a horrific battles during the second world war.

So of course, Germany lost.

And then the Soviet union extends its empire to include the Baltic states.

And we'll talk more about the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, because I think that's a very important part of what's going on today.

Then we can kind of flash forward to see the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990, and then the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991.

And Ukraine becomes a sovereign independent state in 1992.

And it's at that time, this time where there's this great instability in the international system where leaders of the west, including George Bush, Bush 41, Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, the leaders of France and Germany, and the United Kingdom, they worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to agree to allow the unified Germany into NATO, that North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

And that was created essentially as the first secretary general said, to keep the Russians out, to keep the Germans down, and keep the Americans in.

And so with that expansion, or with that reunification of Germany, there was great deal of concern.

"Oh my goodness, Germany."

Mitterrand and Thatcher and Bush remember the second world war, they had concerns, especially the French and the British.

So as a way of selling this to Mikhail Gorbachev, they went back to that core mission of NATO, one of them keeping the Germans down.

So they allowed a reunified Germany.

It was divided remember into the German democratic Republic east and west Germany, the Berlin wall.

And so they allowed that reunified Germany into NATO and that set a precedent.

And there were assurances given, and I've done a little bit of research here, It's important because Putin raises this issue.

There were some reassurances given by leaders in the west that that would be it, there would be no, there's no intention of extending NATO further than including a unified or reunified Germany.

Well, that didn't last through the '90s.

And by 1999, those newly sovereign independent states that were part of the Warsaw Pact, which was the collective security organization that the Soviet union had created to counterbalance NATO, those former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic, joined NATO in 1999.

And since then, the NATO has enlarged.

I think I would point to 2004 enlargement where those Baltic states that were part of the Soviet union, they are republics of the Soviet union like Ukraine became members of NATO.

And so Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, also joined NATO.

I don't think it's a coincidence that it was at this time that Russia began interfering in the domestic affairs within Ukraine.

They saw that expansion of NATO as a threat.

- Correct.

Right.

Absolutely.

So then we come up to 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea.

I don't know if that's a start, but we could see the change there taking a more aggressive approach there.

- I would go back a little bit before that, certainly with respect to Ukraine, the occupation of Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, is significant.

There's no doubt.

But even before that, we had the invasion of Georgia in 2008.

And Georgia was considering NATO membership at the time.

And so that is a clear indication to me that Putin was resisting any kind of effort to expand NATO beyond the countries that he regrets losing, so to speak.

- So how long do you think Putin has been planning this?

- Well, decades.

The strategic vision that he has includes this restoration of Russian empire.

So not the Soviet union, it's not an ideologically based notion, it's this more of a sorus notion of bringing together all the people who speak Russian and share a common language and identity.

And so I think from the beginning, he's famously said that he thought that the collapse of the Soviet union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.

And so he has been planning this.

This is part of his vision, I think.

- So why invade now?

- Great question.

I think part of it has to do with just the preparedness of the Russian military.

So it was clear at the end of last year as he began positioning forces that they were preparing for that full scale occupation, invasion of Ukraine.

So what I'm hearing is yes, it primarily has to do with the preparedness of Russian military forces to undertake this very large operation.

He does think in a broader longer term strategic perspective.

I don't think this is anything to do with some, with who the president of the United States is.

I don't think it has to do with that.

This is on his timetable.

- [Stefanie] Absolutely.

- And that this is occurring, I think.

But there are some interesting theories as well.

- Well, let's talk about President Putin.

I feel like for so many years, we've heard so much about him, but what do we really know about him?

- Great question.

I think we know quite a bit about him, in fact.

And sometimes I think some of what we know about him, we characterize him as being, he's a former KGB operative.

He definitely is authoritarian.

He is certainly, I would say he has complete control.

And so we have a very good idea of his background.

I think we have a very good idea of predicting what he will do, and I'm reassured by that.

And so one of the things that has come up more recently is whether or not Putin is a rational actor.

- Yeah.

Okay.

I was just gonna say, when we're talking about Putin, one word that's come up a lot with him is isolated.

There's video of him sitting at this large table and everyone on else is so far away from him as advisors.

Then of course, there's been the pandemic.

So what can you speak to his mental state right now?

- Well, that's where that speculation is coming from.

And so he's always been considered, as I said, I think he's been planning this for decades.

So he's very strategic.

And he's thinking about restoring Russian empire.

But then some of his statements and behavior has suggested to careful observers that he might not be quite rational anymore.

In fact, I was shocked as I was watching the news coverage prior to the State of the Union, there was a report that Nancy Pelosi had said he might have cancer.

And I thought, and I'm not seeing this covered in the media, but I did, I went to an interview, and from Nancy Pelosi's press office, she was speculating, "Some say that he has cancer "and so he's engaging in this rush decision "to invade Ukraine."

And I'm not sure I buy any of that.

I think it's too easy to say that this is rational decision and he must be out of his mind to try to invade Ukraine.

I think this has been part of his plan, but I certainly, it's terrible for me to say, but I certainly hope that this was part of his plan because otherwise, if he's not engaging in this rational process of decision making, then he can't be deterred.

And then I think that the danger is much greater.

- Absolutely.

You mentioned earlier, this invasion, it wasn't a surprise.

There was evidence, the buildup was evident for weeks and months in advance.

But I think what has been really surprising was the swift response and the unity by most of the world condemning it.

So let's go to those sanctions, what can they do to put pressure on Putin?

- Well, I think the sanctions are, first of all, sanctions probably won't have any kind of deterrent effect.

And so before the invasion, there was talk of imposing sanctions on Putin to try to deter him from invading.

And I don't think that that would've deterred him at all.

- Do you think that he probably anticipated more sanctions?

- I think yes.

I think he took that into account in making this decision.

There are some interesting aspects of these sanctions, they're so-called smart sanctions.

And so I think that they just announced the United States KleptoCapture.

So they're going directly after financial assets of Russians oligarchs, the ruling elite that are supportive of Putin.

And so that is a way that they hope to avoid punishing the Russian people through sanctions and directly try to affect the decisions or support of Putin from the oligarchs.

And so that's different.

I think that the United States and Europe has removed Russia from the SWIFT banking system, SWIFT code.

So international transactions, if you do an international transaction, there's a SWIFT code for your bank, and this is vital to doing international commerce.

And so it really will affect the ability of those who do international banking and finance and commerce to do business with the rest of the world.

I think that was a big step.

Certainly Germany has been, they wavered at the beginning, but then ultimately they essentially stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline bringing gas into Europe.

That will have consequences, but we won't see those consequences very quickly.

That's not gonna have an immediate impact.

And now I think most recently in Congress, there's talk, bipartisan talk of imposing tougher sanctions on energy coming from Russia.

- Let's go back to NATO.

And then I wanna talk a little bit more about the oligarchs and what other countries are doing to help Ukraine here.

But as of today, March 4th, NATO rejected Ukraine's no fly zone, but earlier this week during the State of the Union, I believe President Biden put a no fly zone on planes entering the US from Russia.

Can you explain the difference between the two?

- Okay, so let's start with the no fly zone over Ukraine.

And there's great reluctance of the west, of the United States to impose a no fly zone over Ukraine.

Essentially, that would prevent Russia from being able to have air superiority, air supremacy over Ukraine.

And that would be ideal from a Ukrainian perspective, of course, Zelenskyy has asked for this, you either impose a no fly zone or give me the planes.

Because to enforce that, you would be shooting down Russian aircraft.

And so that's why the United States and NATO allies are pretty reluctant to become engaged in that war with Russia.

It would be war with Russia.

- [Stefanie] It would be.

- There's just no way to enforce a fly zone without engaging Russian military.

I don't think Putin's gonna say, "Oh no, they declared a no fly zone," and then just stop flying, no.

So that's pretty much off the table.

What Biden has announced is really affecting commercial traffic.

So no Russian aircraft coming into the US.

- Got it.

Let's talk about China for a minute.

We have not heard much from China since the start of this war.

So can you talk a little bit about China's relationship with Russia right now?

And maybe its views towards the west and the US.

- This is a great question.

And I think it speaks to one of the scenarios that worries me the most and others, would be a scenario where People's Republic of China tries to take advantage of the situation in Europe to reclaim its territory in Taiwan.

Of course, they see that as part of China, the one China, and that would likely lead to conflict with China because of the security guarantees essentially.

There's a strategic ambiguity, we call it, with respect to Taiwan.

Is the US going to defend Taiwan or not?

Yes, no.

Yes, yes.

And so I think that that was the great concern from the beginning and it's also a reason why there's just no doubt in my mind that if this conflict were to involve a NATO member, there would be war with Russia.

Because if the United States doesn't uphold its treaty commitment to a NATO country, then it's treaty commitments to other countries around the world, not just Taiwan, but Japan, would be meaningless.

- Got you.

All right.

We're gonna move along here to, we're gonna talk about those oligarchs that you've mentioned.

Who are they?

Why do they have so much power in Russia?

- Well, this goes back again to the end of the cold war and part of the restructuring of the Soviet union, the dismantling of the Soviet union involved privatization of state owned assets.

And when those assets were privatized, they were friends, cronies, initially some associated with Gorbachev, with then President Yeltsin.

And so the rise of the oligarchy really begins with the privatization of those state owned assets under Yeltsin.

And they became billionaires because it's a corrupt system.

And so those individuals who had the correct connections were able to take advantage of that privatization to make billions of dollars, billions of dollars.

And so when Putin becomes president, well, he removes some of Yeltsin's oligarchs, not all, and brings in some of his own oligarchs, but the principle is still the same.

It's essentially a kleptocracy where those individuals, those oligarchs have that close relationship with Putin so that their status as billionaires is essentially dependent on Putin ability to maintain power.

And so that's where if you could undermine, perhaps the thought is that if you undermine the oligarchs, they might be able to exert leverage on Putin and say, "This is a bad idea."

- Right, and now we're seeing the attempt to seize their yachts, their luxury apartments, and so on and so forth.

I think some of them have spoken out against Putin.

So okay, that's where the oligarchs come from.

I wanna move on to social media because this war is playing out differently than any war ever has in certain fronts.

We're getting firsthand accounts from people who are on the front lines, from refugees who are fleeing Ukraine.

It's providing a direct line of contact to President Zelenskyy.

He's very active.

How is that changing?

How can that change our perspective on the war?

- That's a great question.

And I've seen just some incredible images, some video on social media of the conflict.

And so I think having that unfiltered view is horrifying quite frankly.

And I think that clearly the ability to see directly the consequences, the horrific consequences of this invasion are important in explaining and helping us understand why there's such a huge ground swell of support for the west and for the people of Ukraine against Putin.

And I think that the ability then of Putin to control that social media becomes vital.

And so I have some friends who visit us here in Mount Pleasant, and they were members of an opposition political party in Russia.

This was part of an exchange, the Open World program supported by Congress.

That goes back to the end of the cold war and try to increase our relationship better, our relationship there.

And the members of this Yabloko, which means apple political party, they're allowed to exist.

Putin allows them to exist, but they're not allowed to really compete.

- [Stefanie] Do anything.

- Right.

And so I've seen some posts there from my friends, and I'm very wary of participating in those posts.

I would say, I would characterize it as a cryptic message that I'm not sure how to take what they're saying and we've been friends on Facebook for a while.

And so I'm wondering if there's some censorship and certainly, people are scared.

We've seen protests in Russia, and it's not a free country, and there have been mass arrests, and the people who are protesting Putin are doing so with, I'd say, pretty great risk to their freedoms.

And so I understand why there would be some reluctance and I think that that's gonna be the difficulty or one of the difficulties that Putin faces is can he control the social media like the people's Republic of China is very good at controlling social media?

- We have just about five minutes left.

I'm gonna try and get in as many questions as we can.

But let's talk about different scenarios as far as an outcome of this.

I don't think anybody really knows what's gonna happen, but how is this war different and the same from other wars?

- Well, it's the same as this is involving boots on the ground occupation of another country.

And so Russia right now, I think is probably consolidating some gains.

As I follow this, in the south of the country, they're doing well, they're achieving some military objectives.

They definitely had been bogged down by the heroic resistance of Ukrainian people.

But unfortunately, I think it's inevitable that there will be a military victory of this first phase and they will occupy Ukraine, including Kyiv.

Now, it might take weeks, but I think that eventually, this first phase, maybe within a month will be over.

There will be peace talks that have begun.

I think they've had two meetings in Belarus and they'll continue those.

I suspect that we'll see some humanitarian corridors opened up as the circle around Kyiv tightens and they restrict access to fuel, food, ammunition.

They will begin allowing some people to leave.

Russia and Ukraine will agree to allow more people who are trapped to leave.

And then I think that the conflict enters another phase where there's an insurgency that'll go on for years.

And so that's my suspicion of where we're headed-- - (indistinct) something similar to Syria.

- We are, yes, indeed.

And I think he's counting on the west losing patience and just thinking, "Oh, well, they'll forget about it."

Again, as I said, he's been thinking strategically and longer term, he's thinking five, 10 years, he could prevail and he'll chip away at Western resolve and eventually, he'll have his objective, which will be control of Ukraine.

- Speaking of the west in terms of retaliation here, as you said, the response from the west was real quick, very united, but how worried should those countries be about a possible retaliation from Russia?

- Well, it's interesting, and I've spoken to a friend who grew up in Poland and he lives in Europe now, not in Poland, he's frightened.

And I think it's because he grew up in a system part of the Warsaw Pact.

He grew up in essentially a totalitarian system.

So I was surprised, I don't think that he's threatened, he's in Western Europe, but he's definitely concerned.

I think that the message has been so clear from the west that any invasion of Estonia, for example, and likely the first chink that he would go after Estonia, any invasion of Estonia, of a NATO member, would lead to war.

And there would be the kinds of military consequences that will be overwhelming for Russia.

- So what could that be?

Are we talking cyber warfare?

Are we talking nuclear attacks?

We've got just about a minute left.

- Yep, cyber war begins there.

I think that's where I expected more actually cyber war to occur, but it seems that he's reluctant to escalate in that area because there would be retaliation against Russia using cyber war.

Unfortunately, he's talked about the nuclear arsenal that Russia possesses, which is quite disturbing and unusual that he has to mention that Russia possesses thousands, tens of thousands of nuclear warheads.

That's the doomsday scenario that I don't think we're facing mutually assured destruction, but I grew up during cold war part two in the 1980s and it shaped me and I think people in my generation to have these fears about nuclear war.

And so it's something that's in the back of my mind.

- In about 20 seconds, how can people get involved?

- Great question.

I think is learning more.

I teach international relations.

We have a major at CMU.

One of the things that we've done is called global classroom, where we've brought refugees into our class.

These are refugees from Africa.

And they participate in a virtual classroom through this global classroom.

And it's really been beneficial for our students to meet directly with peoples whose lives have been destroyed through war or famine, any natural disaster.

So learning more I think is where to start.

- Knowledge, knowledge is key.

- Knowledge is key.

- Dr. Jesuit, thank you so much for joining us today and for continuing coverage on the invasion of Ukraine online and over the air.

Stay with the PBS NewsHour on WCMU.

Thanks for watching.