Dan Hoffman Says Putin Needs Victory in Ukraine by May 9

BUCK: We are gonna spend some time now updating you with the latest from the war in Ukraine. How is this going? What is the reality of the Russian pullback from around Kiev? Is it just regrouping for another round of assault on the capital city there? How is the Biden administration handling all of this? We’re joined now by Dan Hoffman. He’s a former CIA station chief. Dan, thanks so much for being here.

HOFFMAN: Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me on the program.

BUCK: Let’s just start with your 30,000-foot view of where is Putin vis-a-vis where he is expected to be at this stage, and how would you assess the Ukrainian resistance is holding up against the Russian onslaught?

HOFFMAN: Yeah. So, we’ve just gotten into the seventh week of this war, which Vladimir Putin called it “a special military operation” when he launched it. I think Vladimir Putin expected to defeat Ukraine quickly, decapitate the government in Kiev, and install his own puppet regime. Well, thanks to those brave Ukrainian freedom fighters, that’s not the way it turned out.

President Zelensky mobilized the West, which has supported Ukraine with — not enough, but some — military assistance that is helping Ukraine stay in the fight. But this is all about those brave Ukrainians fighting for freedom and liberty and democracy against a ruthless enemy. And this is where, you know, the geopolitical fault line is right now between democracy and dictatorship. It’s in Ukraine.

We fortified our support to NATO members. That’s part of the Biden administration’s three-pronged strategy, which also includes economic sanctions against Russia and military assistance to Ukraine. But Ukraine, that’s where the fighting is. And there’s no country that’s done more than Ukraine has to defend, deter, and counter Russia, which is what NATO was established to do in the first place.

But the big concern for me was testimony yesterday from General Milley, who said he thinks this conflict might last years. I think he’s right. If we’re lucky, if this is where the Biden administration continues to go in terms of their support of Ukraine, but we don’t have years. How many more atrocities do we want to witness on Ukrainian soil? How many more cities like Bucha or maternity wards like the one that the Russians bombed in Mariupol? How many times do we want to see that? There’s a moral and ethical component to this. We need to up our ante in supporting the Ukrainians so we can end this faster, not allow it to continue on.

CLAY: Dan, thanks for coming on the show. What about leaving Ukraine and going to Russia? I know you’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the situation in Russia. Reports are that Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings, to the extent that you can rely on anything in Russia, have actually increased during this war. Do you buy that? How much internal political pressure do you think is on Putin inside of Russia?

HOFFMAN: Yeah. So those polls are notoriously inaccurate, because if you ask somebody what they think of the war, it’s either, “I love the war,” not a war, “special military operation,” or they’re going to jail if they’re lucky. So, I don’t really think that — that really tells us a whole lot, but I also don’t think Vladimir Putin is under threat from the Russian population writ large.

I mean, he’s repressing them pretty seriously. They’re not allowed to protest. There’s no free media in Russia — and the only ones who could potentially cause Putin any trouble is his own inner circle, if they decide that they just don’t want to take the orders from the KGB guy in the Kremlin anymore to inflict these atrocities on Ukrainian citizens. Maybe not for that reason but because they want to send their kids to school in the West and they want to continue to steal whatever money they can from Russia’s export of hydrocarbons and other natural resources. Maybe that will motivate them. But that’s kind of, you know, a replay of the failed KGB coup against Gorbachev has to be lurking in Putin’s mind, and so he’s gonna do everything he can to prevent that from happening.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Dan Hoffman, former CIA station chief. Dan, what do you think Putin is trying to get at here? Meaning, what would be an end state where he’d be willing to stop the onslaught in Ukraine? Is it just the east and the south and the land bridge between them in Ukraine? How do you see this coming to a conclusion?

HOFFMAN: Yeah. So I think that’s an incredibly insightful and important question that I’m sure that the Biden administration, key members of the administration are asking our intelligence communities right now. What are Vladimir Putin’s plans and intentions? My reading of this is that Vladimir Putin has gone so far and committed such atrocities against Ukrainian citizens — which brave, very intrepid journalists from Fox News where I work and other networks have recorded, thank goodness.

There’s so much of that that I just think Vladimir Putin is in this thing, he’s a gotta win and he needs an immediate win before May 9 which is, of course, a big day in Russia, the day they celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany and he needs to show success. And whatever he can show, he’ll add a lot of Russian propaganda to that. But I think longer term…

Russia withdrew 20 battalion groups back to Belarus to resupply and refit them. And he’s sending mercenaries groups from Syria, the Wagner group and Chechens, into Ukraine. I just feel like he still wants Kiev. I don’t know that… His ultimate goal has not changed. He definitely wants to fortify the position in the east. He wants a complete land bridge all the way to Crimea. He wants Odessa and the besieged Black Sea city of Mariupol. But I don’t think he’s given up on Kiev, and that’s gotta be the concern. We haven’t… We need to win this, and right now I think we’re kind of allowing Ukraine to stay in the fight and not lose it.

CLAY: Dan, they have been battling in eastern Ukraine since 2014. As you referenced, this battle now could go on for years. How long is the United States — let’s be frank — going to care that much if we end up in some sort of really aggressive and ugly stalemate? Already you can see Ukraine slowly move outside of the national news cycle in the United States. How long are people going to remain committed to paying attention to this conflict, and what is that impact in terms of the political pressure that the attention can bring to bear?

HOFFMAN: Well, I think that’s over to the Biden administration. You know, the president needs to get up on his bully pulpit and explain to us why Ukraine matters, why defending Ukraine’s independence matters. Right now, President Zelensky has kind of been doing that job for everyone in the West. He’s the one who is on eloquently spoken about defending liberty and freedom and democracy, the things that we hold near and dear.

He’s the one who awakens the West out of this post-Cold War slumber that we were in. I think that the Ukrainians are sacrificing right now with their lives, and it’s like they are ready to go to the very last civilian, forget about the last, you know, of their soldiers, and I think we’ve gotta continue to support them —

BUCK: Can I just ask, ’cause said that. I just want to know. In terms of doing more, clearly the Biden administration is giving some weapons. What…? Is it just a volume issue? Are there some weapons or some interventions that you think would be a game-changer on the battlefield? What is more?

HOFFMAN: Yeah. So I think they need more Javelins. They need more Stingers. They received some T-72 tanks from the Czech Republic. They need more of those. They need more drones. We should have given them MiGs, and we still should do that. They need air defense, the S300 systems. Those are still there. They’re in Slovakia. Slovakia wants something to take the place of those S300s. We need to do that as well.

These are massive war crimes on Ukrainian civilians, and we gotta do something to stop it because that’s the right thing to do morally and ethically. But also, we can’t let Vladimir Putin win. We can’t reward his aggression. That puts those NATO member states especially on Russia’s border, especially the Baltic states among others at grave risk. That’s a few, of among many, reasons I think why this matters but if American citizens are wondering why this matters, well, then there’s a failure of communication on the part of the Biden administration to explain it properly.

CLAY: Good stuff. Dan Hoffman, former CIA station chief in Moscow. We appreciate your time. Hope to talk to you again soon.

HOFFMAN: Sounds great. Take care, everybody.