The News
Semafor’s Morgan Chalfant interviewed John Sullivan, former US ambassador to Russia under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, about Moscow’s war in Ukraine, wrongful detentions, foreign policy in the 2024 campaign, and his forthcoming book “Midnight in Moscow.” This conversation is edited for length and clarity.
Morgan Chalfant: What did you learn about Russian President Vladimir Putin on the job that you might not have known otherwise, or that people don’t understand about him and the way that he operates?
John Sullivan: I went to Moscow, I didn’t have high hopes for great success and accomplishing lots of things as ambassador, but I thought there may be a few areas where we could make some modest progress and what I discovered was — and this is before the war started, this is before February 2022 — that the Russian government, as opposed to Russia and the Russian people, the Russian government under Putin is an implacable adversary of the United States and anyone who goes into negotiations with the Russians, a Westerner, who approaches negotiations and uses that term the way we do is certain to fail. And when I say that people think I mean, ‘Well, we shouldn’t be talking to the Russians.’ No. I think we need to talk to the Russians, but we need to talk to them, we need to tell them things, and we need to listen to what they tell us, but as soon as a Westerner says all wars end in negotiations, and we have to negotiate with the Russians. When a Westerner talks about negotiations, it is doomed to fail. You start talking about things — ‘We’ll start things off with a good-faith gesture.’ A good-faith gesture? I mean, that is just a sign of weakness to the Russians and will be pocketed and the Russians will want more. I guess what I learned was, as bad as I thought it was when I left as ambassador and that was part of the challenge that I was looking forward to, it was even worse than I thought.
What I often say to audiences when talking about the discussion in Congress on support for Ukraine and our attitude towards Russia and in general the situation today in the world with the unlimited friendship … between Russia and Beijing. We in the United States, we’re asleep. We’re asleep now. We’re asleep to the threat that Russia and that Russia, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang pose to not just the international system but to the United States in particular.
MC: So who is asleep?
JS: I think the American public doesn’t understand it and it’s reflected in their elected members of Congress. We’re asleep and we think that history ended in the 1990s and that yeah there are problems around the world, we cause a lot of them. We start wars, we end wars badly, but we’ll just stumble along and continue to be prosperous and happy and that is not guaranteed.
MC: A lot of the discussion around the election is what would another Trump administration do on Ukraine, what would the policy be. Donald Trump has talked about negotiating peace on Day One but hasn’t really laid out exactly what that would look like. JD Vance has been very opposed to further Ukraine aid. Are you worried about what a Trump administration would do?
JS: When I talk to my fellow Republicans, and particularly when they bring up Ukraine and make statements like, ‘Why are we spending money on Ukraine’s border and not our southern border in the United States,’ I say to them, ‘You’re focused on Ukraine, you need to be focused on Russia.’ And not passing legislation that allows for up to $60 billion worth of aid to Ukraine to resist the aggression by the Russian Federation and if that means that Ukraine’s defenses collapse, do you really think you’re going to reduce the budget of the Department of Defense, a huge proportion of which is spent to oppose Russia. You want to cut the defense budget by $60 billion? That budget which is dedicated to opposing Russia and aggressions and its nuclear weapons that are pointed at the United States? It’s not going to save money. This is about opposing Russia and Russia’s aggressive war and we’re doing it through Ukraine, supporting Ukraine, and we do that because as Americans I stand firmly behind the proposition that we should be supporting Ukraine on the merits but even if you’re just focused on what is in the interest of the United States and you put aside our interests in promoting democracy and defending democracies, opposing aggression, is opposing the Russian Federation which considers itself an enemy of the United States and has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. But here’s where I take some hope: two bits of information I’ll pass along. First, my experience in the first Trump administration when I was deputy secretary of state and as Trump’s ambassador for one year, I was then Biden’s ambassador for two years, it would have been news to Putin and the Russian Federation that the United States government was soft on the Russian Federation, with all the sanctions we imposed, etcetera. But there was a line in the infamous debate between Trump and Biden last month where Trump is basically asked, ‘Do you want to see Putin win?’ and he says, ‘No, I don’t want to see Putin win.’ And I have heard him say to me personally as deputy secretary that he knows that Putin and the Russian Federation is an enemy of the United States, that they’re not our friends. Now, where people get, I think, misdirected is focused on spending money to support Ukraine when really what we’re doing is spending money to oppose Russia and defend ourselves and the West against Russia. That’s my message to Republicans.
MC: How do you square that with some of Trump’s rhetoric, his comments about NATO for example?
JS: It was certainly the case that when I became deputy secretary in 2017 that NATO allies, including large NATO allies who could afford it, were not pulling their weight and in fact not only were they not spending the money, their militaries since the Cold War had really deteriorated. The shock of Feb. 24, 2022, changed perceptions but there are still laggards and if the United States is spending with a huge economy a much larger proportion than what was the Wales commitment of 2% of GDP on defense and there are other governments closer to the physical threat of the Russian Federation and the Russian military who are spending a fraction of that, Trump’s message isn’t wrong and I think that was demonstrated on Feb. 24, 2022. How that message is conveyed and implemented — threatening to withdraw from NATO — I do not support that and didn’t when I was deputy secretary.
MC: Are you supporting Trump in the election?
JS: I keep my vote to myself. I write about it in the book that I voted for and supported Trump’s candidacy and I’m a lifelong Republican, so you can do the arithmetic.
MC: Do you know what the Russians are asking for in exchange for releasing Paul Whelan?
JS: Here’s how my conversations would go with the Rusians, and this has implications for Evan Gershkovich’s case as well. The Russians would not talk about any American detainee until that detainee had been convicted, so it’s significant that Evan has been convicted of espionage, to 16 years. For Evan’s case — convicted of espionage — and Paul — convicted of the same crime with the same length sentence, 16 years — the charge of espionage is significant and the Russians would always make that distinction. Brittney Griner was convicted of a narcotics offense, Trevor Reed was convicted of assaulting two police officers. Espionage, they say, is different. We’re not going to trade — this is the Russians speaking — we’re not going to trade an American convicted of espionage for someone who has just been convicted of what the Russians would consider an ordinary crime. They made it clear they wanted a like for like transfer and from their perspective, an American convicted of espionage should be worth a lot to us and therefore they should get a lot in return and that’s what distinguished Paul’s case from Trevor, Brittney, etc., and the other Americans who are wrongfully detained, and now Evan’s case. They want more in return.
MC: You write in the book about how you had to move from the typical ambassador’s residence, Spaso House, back to the embassy. What was it like being in Russia during this war? How did that affect your daily life?
JS: The fact that I moved out was noticed, but it really had nothing to do with the impact of the war by the Russians in Moscow. It was more the impact of Washington on me as ambassador because as I write about in the book, the pace of phone calls, video conferences, and so forth, I had to be available with an eight-hour time difference around the clock and the residence was a 15-minute drive from the embassy compound, so if I wanted to ever get any sleep or lead any sort of a more normal life, I had to basically live in a townhouse right next to the office building where I had my office. So, it was really more Washington having more of an impact on my life because of the war and less about what the Russians were doing. I get this question you asked all of the time about, for example, my physical security and what it was like being there after the war started. I never felt physically insecure. I always believed, I think accurately, that the Russian government didn’t want anything to happen to me. They devoted a lot of resources to undermine me, embarrass me, harass me, provoke me, compromise me, but it would have reflected badly on them if something physical had happened to me. So I thought that they wanted me protected, but they were willing to devote a lot of time and thousands of FSB officers to smothering the US embassy and otherwise making our lives unhappy.