*We would like to thank Sharon Rivera for helpful comments on previous drafts.

On Nov. 15 of last year, Hamilton hosted Andrei Kozyrev, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation from 1991 to 1996, and Nicolai Petro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, to participate in a discussion about one of the bloodiest and most dangerous conflicts in the world today — the war in Ukraine. The event was part of Hamilton’s Common Ground (CG) initiative, which the College describes as “designed to explore cross-boundary political thought and complex social issues” by bringing “highly respected thought leaders to the Hamilton campus to participate in small classroom dialogues and large event discussions.” President David Wippman, a major proponent of the initiative, has also expressed the hope that the campus community will use these events both to “question their own assumptions” and to “carefully consider” the viewpoints expressed by the invited speakers.

With both those objectives and the further goal of helping the campus community formulate an accurate understanding of the war in Ukraine in mind, we closely examined the presentations given by Kozyrev and Petro. In this article, we share the findings of our deep dives into three of the claims that they advanced. While these claims represent only a fraction of the many ideas that the two speakers conveyed, we felt it necessary to limit our analyses to important claims whose accuracy could be assessed with some degree of certitude. In practice, this meant addressing only descriptive issues and avoiding both causal claims and recommendations for Western policy. In our conclusions, we present a list of objectives that CG events should aim to achieve and then evaluate the event on Nov. 15 against those criteria.

About Common Ground

The program was introduced in Oct. 2017 by President David Wippman as an opportunity to enhance the quality and tenor of discussion and debate both at Hamilton and the U.S. at large. As stated by President Wippman, “the goal is for the speakers to model the kind of respectful dialogue across political boundaries that should occur not just on college campuses, but in the broader society as well. With capable speakers on both sides of a given issue, each willing to acknowledge strengths in the position of the other speaker, we aim to encourage students and other audience members to question their own assumptions and consider carefully the evidence and arguments supporting other viewpoints.” Since the program’s inception, CG has held eight events, drawing big-name speakers of varied political persuasions, with doors open to those in the Hamilton and local communities.

Some members of the student body and faculty, however, are far less convinced of CG’s virtues. After some past events, students have complained that the perspectives advanced by the speakers did not sufficiently diverge. Most significantly, last spring an investigation conducted by The Spectator found that some students and faculty opposed CG because it platformed perspectives that they found to be “heinous,” “racist,” and/or “harmful.” For more on perceptions of CG, see The Spectator’s April 13, 2022 article, “(Un)Common Ground: Program draws mixed reactions from Hamilton Community.”

Fact-Checking Claims Made by Kozyrev and Petro

In this section, we carefully scrutinize the following three claims that were advanced during CG’s Nov. 15 event: 1) that Russia’s current rulers do not actually fear an attack by a NATO country; 2) that the primary goal of U.S. policy toward Ukraine since 1991 has been the containment of Russia; and 3) that the governments of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have opposed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war. Two other assertions made at the event — namely, that “Russia tried repeatedly to become a full-fledged member of the West, inquiring about NATO membership no less than four times, but was always rebuffed” and that Ukraine’s “nationalistic regime…restricts the political, cultural and religious rights of a third of its population” — also struck us as worthy of fact-checking, but for reasons of space we elected not to explore those issues here.

Before proceeding to our substantive analyses, we should note that Kozyrev spoke extemporaneously. Hence, all quotations from his presentation are taken from notes that we took during the event. In contrast, Petro spoke from a prepared text, which he was kind enough to share with us and which we used for all of our quotations from his talk.

Claim #1 (by Kozyrev):



“My ministry was under [the supervision of] the military and KGB….I never met a general or diplomat who ever, ever believed that NATO could pose a military threat to Russia. It’s a crazy idea.” During his visit to Govt. 237: Russia and the World earlier in the day, Kozyrev expounded on this idea at somewhat greater length as follows: “No one even in the Soviet Union believed that NATO might attack the Soviet Union. I was reasonably highly placed in the foreign ministry and absolutely no one could imagine that NATO could attack anyone, never mind invade us. Why would it? If it wanted our natural resources, they could just buy them from us since we were happy to sell them. … So no one seriously regarded NATO as a military threat or military enemy. And the same is true today. In Moscow they call the West a ‘decadent democracy.’ Why would a decadent democracy risk everything by going to war? In addition, Russia still sells its oil to whoever will buy it. If you can buy someone’s oil, why would you risk nuclear war?”

Our Judgment:

True

Our Rationale:

Kozyrev’s claims about Moscow’s threat-perceptions represent an important issue to adjudicate because during the run-up to the war, Russian officials repeatedly expressed the concern that further NATO expansion to the east would enable the alliance to deploy missile systems close to Russia’s borders, thereby placing Russian cities in dire jeopardy. During a press conference on February 1, Putin himself commented that missile-defense systems stationed in Romania and Poland could, in theory, be converted into offensive systems that “will have a range extending thousands of kilometers into our territory. Does this really not pose a threat to us?” Moreover, just days before the launch of Russia’s invasion, he further described the possibility of NATO missile deployments in Ukraine as “a knife to our throat.” If Kozyrev’s assertions are valid, however, that would mean that the Kremlin’s expressions of alarm represent propagandistic subterfuge and the true origins of the war are to be found elsewhere.

At least four sets of facts have convinced us that Kozyrev’s descriptions of Moscow’s threat-perceptions are fundamentally accurate. First, a Kremlin that truly harbored fears of a NATO invasion or attack would refrain from taking actions that could be used as justification for such an attack or as a rallying cry with domestic constituencies, yet the list of provocative behaviors that Russia has engaged in since the mid-2000s is lengthy. That list includes interference in elections of major NATO states (including the UK, France, and the U.S.); carrying out assassination attempts of political enemies residing in NATO countries by means of radioactive isotopes and banned chemical weapons whose use entailed the possibility of collateral damage to innocent civilians; repeatedly sending fighter jets and bombers up to or into the airspace of the U.S. and other NATO countries; and seizing the sovereign territory of a neighboring state. In other words, Moscow has been providing NATO with pretexts for war for almost two decades.

Second, even after the many arms reduction treaties reached following the end of the Cold War, Moscow still possesses one of the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world and extremely robust second-strike capability. This unquestioned ability to annihilate an enemy’s major cities should provide Russian leaders with confidence in their ability to deter a major attack on the homeland. Moreover, over the last half decade, Putin has repeatedly expressed confidence in the Russian military’s ability “to guarantee the security of the Russian state” and has boasted that Russia possesses a substantial technological edge over all other countries in intercontinental strategic weaponry. In fact, during a press conference with the president of France two weeks prior to the invasion, he confidently repeated these points. “Of course, the potential strength of a united NATO is not comparable to that of Russia,” Putin stated. “We understand that, but we also understand that Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers and that its arsenal contains certain elements that are more modern and thus superior to those possessed by many others.”

Third, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — like Ukraine, former republics of the USSR that border the Russian Federation — became members of NATO in 2004, yet the subsequent eighteen years witnessed no infringements on Russia’s territorial integrity. Moreover, these states already provide NATO with ample platforms for stationing ballistic missiles that could reach Russia’s second major city, St. Petersburg, in just minutes, yet the alliance did not pursue any such deployments.

And fourth, if the Kremlin feared an attack by NATO, then it would be certain to maintain strong fortifications along Russia’s western borders, yet over the course of 2022 Moscow withdrew the bulk of forces that had been stationed in the regions bordering Norway and the Baltic states (as well as Finland) and deployed them to Ukraine instead. The result is that huge chunks of Russian territory have been left almost completely undefended. If NATO were interested in annexing territory from Russia, now would be the time to do so. However, no NATO state has taken any such steps because no NATO state has any designs on Russian territory. Russia’s troop deployments show that its political and military leaders understand all of this perfectly well.

Claim #2 (by Petro):



“The fact that America’s Ukraine policy since 1991 has never been about Ukraine at all, but about using Ukraine to contain Russia, raises all sorts of ethical and practical concerns.”

Our Judgment:

False in regard to U.S. policy between 1991 and Jan. 2014; somewhat true in regard to U.S. policy between Feb. 2014 and January 2022; true in regard to U.S. policy since Feb. 2022.

Our Rationale:

After becoming independent states in December 1991, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine found themselves in possession of a large portion (consisting of 3,200 strategic and 4,000 tactical warheads) of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Moscow’s desire was to become the sole nuclear power in Eurasia and thus it requested those three states to transfer their arsenals to Russia. All of the tactical weapons were transported to Russia in 1992; Belarus and Kazakhstan quickly acquiesced in regard to strategic weaponry as well. However, Ukraine changed its position on this issue several times over the course of the next three years.

Washington thus faced a stark policy choice. One option before U.S. policymakers was to seek to surround Russia with nuclear-armed states as a bulwark against the future reconstitution of the USSR — in essence, a policy of renewed containment of Russia. The second option was to side with Moscow and seek to reduce the number of nuclear powers in Eurasia to one. These two options were debated within the Bush and then Clinton administrations only briefly; both administrations quickly and categorically opted to push for Russia to become the sole nuclear power in Eurasia. U.S. policymakers even threatened to terminate all economic assistance to Ukraine if it failed to transfer its warheads to Russia and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state, which it did in the mid-1990s. Two prominent scholars, Samuel Charap and Timothy Colton, conclude that “American pressure and aid were central to incentivizing Ukraine to denuclearize.”

In regard to the two decades between the mid-1990s and early 2014, moreover, the story appears to be much the same in that Ukrainian denuclearization and the safe and secure disposal of radioactive materials remained the primary goals behind U.S. policy toward that country, not the containment of Russia. A report recently published by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think-tank, offers the following details: “military aid to Ukraine between FY2003-FY2013 totaled $504 million, placing it just behind the total amounts provided to Bolivia and Kazakhstan during that period. Although a significant amount of assistance, that $504 million wouldn’t place Ukraine in the top 20 U.S. security assistance recipients during those years. Of that total, more than half ($304 million) came from the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program — an initiative created to secure and dismantle stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and their associated equipment left behind in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. In other words, much of the security assistance provided to Ukraine before 2014 was not directed at improving Kyiv’s military capability or wherewithal, but at securing its substantial nuclear infrastructure.”

After Russia annexed Ukrainian territory in March 2014, however, both the scope and purpose of U.S. security assistance changed dramatically. The Stimson Center report notes that “U.S. military aid to Ukraine [in FY2014] more than doubled the amount provided in the previous fiscal year, rising from $49 million to $91 million, before doubling again in FY2015 to $182 million. The figures would continue to grow and by the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the United States’ investment in Ukrainian security assistance since 2014 totaled $2.8 billion.” Equally as important is that “[a]ssistance pivoted from securing nuclear stockpiles to supporting the development of Ukraine’s military capabilities.”

Finally, the report highlights the fact that since February 2022 the U.S. has undertaken “the most intensive military assistance enterprise of the 21st century” for the purpose of thwarting Russia’s current effort to conquer all of Ukraine: “Between February 24 and October 4, 2022, the United States provided Kyiv with at least $17.6 billion in security assistance, more than six times what the United States provided in all eight years following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.” President Biden announced in May that this assistance has included, among other items, “Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger antiaircraft missiles, powerful artillery and precision rocket systems, radars, unmanned aerial vehicles, Mi-17 helicopters and ammunition” as well as “more advanced rocket systems,” such as the much-trumpeted HIMARS. The U.S. has also organized the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, under whose auspices fully 47 states have coordinated efforts to supply Ukraine with weaponry.

In sum, Ukraine’s successful denuclearization, not the containment of Russia, was the primary goal of U.S. policy toward Ukraine during the initial twenty-three years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preventing Russia’s forceful incorporation of some or all of Ukraine’s territory became the overarching goal of U.S. policy only after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

Claim #3 (by Petro):



“The Biden administration argues that Ukraine is the most significant national security interest the United States has today, one upon which the entire future of the global order hangs. That is why it has opposed negotiations to end the current conflict”; and “The oft-stated goal of the governments of the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom has been to prolong the conflict as long as necessary to achieve the West’s strategic objective of defeating Putin. Ending the conflict short of defeating Putin, even if it saves lives, is unacceptable.”

Our Judgment:

False

Our Rationale:

At no point over the course of Russia and Ukraine’s year-long war have the public statements of the leaders of any of these states been consistent with these characterizations of their positions on negotiations or ending the war. On May 31, 2022, President Biden published an essay in the New York Times that presented a comprehensive overview of his administration’s approach to the war, including the issue of negotiations. At the start of the essay, Biden quoted Zelensky to the effect that the war “will only definitively end through diplomacy” as prologue to explaining why the U.S. is providing military support to Ukraine. “We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table,” the president declared. Perceiving no contradiction between supporting Ukraine with armaments and encouraging diplomacy, Biden goes on to say that the White House “will not pressure the Ukrainian government — in private or public — to make any territorial concessions” but that it “will continue to work to strengthen Ukraine and support its efforts to achieve a negotiated end to the conflict.” In other words, Biden’s essay clearly signals to both Kyiv and the world that the U.S. stance on negotiations is a positive one.

Most of the leaders of the NATO alliance seem to hold the exact same position on the issue of negotiations: that the decision on whether or not to conduct them is in the hands of the Ukrainians. Just one day prior to the Kozyrev-Petro event, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the UK’s stance as follows: “Our job is to continue to help the Ukrainians defend themselves, and put themselves in the strongest possible position at a time of their choosing, to bring a negotiated settlement.” On Friday, Nov. 25, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that “what we do is measured in money, what they do is measured in blood, lost lives every day. So it has to be up to Ukraine to decide [about whether or not to negotiate].” In December, French President Emmanuel Macron stated: “It is up to Ukraine, a victim of this aggression, to decide on the conditions for a just and lasting peace.” Gen. Mark A. Milley, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, similarly declared in November that it is “up to Ukraine to decide how or when or if they will negotiate with the Russians,” as did Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who stated that the goals to be pursued in this war “are the Ukrainians.’ They’re not ours. … In terms of what’s a good time to negotiate, we’ve said repeatedly that the Ukrainians are going to decide that, not us.”

Moreover, some U.S. officials have been willing to advocate publicly for restarting the negotiation process. In particular, last fall General Milley gave several major speeches in which he argued that the approaching winter would be an opportune time to do so. “Russia right now is on its back. The Russian military is suffering tremendously. You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at strength and your opponent is at weakness,” he recommended. Just days earlier he phrased the matter even more strongly, asserting that “a military victory is probably…not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means.” More generally, in December the Biden administration reportedly urged Kyiv behind the scenes to abandon its refusal to engage in peace talks while Putin remains in office and publicly signal its openness to negotiations.

In contrast, after Russia formally annexed regions in eastern and southern Ukraine in September, President Zelensky declared that it would not be possible to negotiate with Russia as long as Putin is president but he also expressed a willingness to negotiate with a new Russian leader. Speaking at the World Economic Forum just weeks ago, for instance, he stated: “When we speak about ‘peace talks’ — I don’t understand whom we’d be talking to. … I think that Russia needs to produce somebody first, and then propose something.” In other words, the Ukrainian government has been more reluctant to reopen negotiations with Russia than have its Western supporters abroad.

In sum, it is true that the United States has not been exerting much, if any, pressure on Kyiv to engage in peace talks with Russia. However, the public statements of the leaders of the Western alliance, including President Biden, provide no basis for the claim that any of them has opposed Ukraine’s return to the negotiating table.

Assessing the Success of the Kozyrev-Petro Event

The Common Ground program has ambitious and noble goals. Political polarization and animosities currently run deep in the U.S. and efforts to encourage the different sides of the political aisle to understand their opponents and view them as members of a single American community seem likely to benefit us all. As The Spectator’s investigative article of April 13, 2022, revealed, however, many members of the campus community are skeptical of, even hostile toward, CG’s purposes and modus operandi. The existence of these skeptical voices makes it imperative that the organizers of CG events make special efforts to ensure that they successfully achieve the program’s objectives.

What are those objectives? First, speakers should have a track record of engaging in respectful dialogue with political or ideological opponents, and they should be paired with individuals who will advance substantially divergent viewpoints. In addition, invited speakers are, generally speaking, paid well. Hence, it strikes us as reasonable to request that they arrive with prepared remarks and not just speak off the cuff. Finally, events should be engaging and, most critically, genuinely educational for the student body and members of the Clinton community. Hence, it is important for organizers to take steps to guarantee that speakers will disseminate accurate information and not impart false or grossly distorted understandings of the world.

How does the Kozyrev-Petro event stack up against these criteria? First, both Kozyrev and Petro get high marks for interacting with each other and the audience with appropriate levels of decorum and respect. Second, the organizers of the event should be praised for inviting speakers who offered widely divergent perspectives on the topic at hand. Third, Petro receives high marks for preparing a thoughtful and carefully-worded presentation in advance; in contrast, Kozyrev failed to satisfy this criterion.

Fourth and perhaps most importantly, the event was incredibly engaging, so much so that it stimulated us to undertake this in-depth investigation. In addition, our fact-checking of various of the claims made at the event has uncovered that Kozyrev’s talk succeeded in advancing an insider’s perspective on the substance and drivers of Russian foreign policy whose core factual and descriptive claims hold up well upon close inspection. In contrast, several of Petro’s core descriptive claims did not survive our close scrutiny.

Nevertheless, CG’s November event brought to campus a former foreign minister of the Russian Federation to share his insights on a war that is currently being waged by his native country and that is fraught with the risk of nuclear escalation. In addition, we were able to hear a Russian take pro-Ukrainian positions while he sparred with an eloquent and thoughtful expert who both possesses a high degree of empathy with the Russian side and shares many of the Kremlin’s perspectives on both the war and Russian-NATO relations. We suspect that these features combine to make Kozyrev’s and Petro’s visit to campus one of the more productive and successful events that Common Ground has ever held.