Samuel Charap

speaker

472 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 24 Mar

Samuel Charap’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #240 – Samuel Charap on how a Ukraine ceasefire could accidentally set Europe up for a bigger war · 24 Mar 2026 podcast

you know, retreating and essentially losing a lot of credibility that way, or of, you know, launching a Russia-NATO war, neither of which is a particularly good outcome.

The idea that Russia would be completely deterred by the presence of a small number of UK and French forces inside Ukraine

I think is, you know, low probability.

I think it is higher probability that the promise of such a presence will deter Russia from accepting a ceasefire.

Well, I think that the Trump factor plays both ways, because while it is true that, you know, I think there is a plausible case to be made that Russia might have concluded that, you know, all they have to do is wait and Trump's impatience will lead to a full end to U.S.

support for Ukraine.

I think on the flip side, they also recognize that Trump's interest in negotiating an end to the war represents a window of opportunity.

And the open talk about some normalization of U.S.-Russia relations after a ceasefire, you know, I think they recognize is not something that's going to be on the table forever.

So I think Russia does have, you know, incentives in that regard.

I also think there are many in the Russian establishment that, you know—

don't view the acquisition of a few more kilometers or the destruction of X more percentage of Ukrainian energy generation as worth the cost to Russia and that the economic pressures that have been created both by the distortions of the war economy and the sanctions are mounting that do represent an incentive to bring this to a close.

And I think Russia does have reasons to want to end this.

That doesn't mean that, therefore, they'll be willing to make enough concessions to get there.

But, you know, I think it would be... It's not just true that they, you know, everyone in Russia is confident that, like, there'll be a glorious victory in a year.

I just think that the narrow military lens on this is probably one of optimism, to get back to my previous comment.

You know, and Ukraine, I think, has come to the view that, essentially...

the longer this goes on, the worse off they will end up being in the post-war context.

And that therefore they have accepted the idea that this ceasefire is in their interest.

In fact, they would accept an unconditional ceasefire.

It's Russia that is essentially pushing to attach

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