Two American presidents are trying to shape the future of the war in Ukraine at the same time. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Haleema Shah, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Photo by MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What recent developments are happening in Ukraine?
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Luke Harding at The Guardian has been covering the war in Ukraine since it started. We asked him what's changed in the past few weeks.
Yeah, it's really been hotting up on several fronts, political, military, internationally, on the battlefield. I visited recently in the northeast Kharkiv region, a place called Kupinsk, and also another front line near Sumy, where Ukraine has since August occupied a chunk of territory inside Russia.
At least 11 people, including two children, were killed by a Russian missile on Sunday night, Ukraine officials said. It hit a nine-story residential building in the northeastern region of Sumy.
There is full-scale fighting going on. It's... Loud.
A morning shattered by the eerie wail of air raid sirens and drones and missiles that were intercepted. And those that were not.
In Kupinsk, where I was, the Russians were a couple of miles away. They are sending drones into the streets to chase and hunt civilians. And Russia is winning the war in the east of Ukraine purely because of mass. It's got more of everything. It's got more men. It's got more tanks. It's got more warplanes. And, you know, meanwhile, of course, the other big development is Donald Trump.
I believe I will be able to make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly.
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Chapter 2: How are two American presidents influencing the war in Ukraine?
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Josh Keating is a senior correspondent at Vox who writes about foreign policy. We asked him if the incoming Trump administration is at all miffed by how much action the outgoing Biden administration is taking on Ukraine.
So the last tranche of Ukraine aid was allocated by Congress last April.
After more than six months, a bill pledging further military aid for Ukraine finally passed. President Zelensky had personally met with US lawmakers to lobby for support.
That was $61 billion. And basically, they're trying to rush whatever they can out the door before Inauguration Day. So they're trying to get all these contracts in place, get as much aid moving to Ukraine now as they can. The incoming Trump administration does seem to be sort of irritated by this.
We saw Richard Grenell, who was the former Trump administration ambassador to Germany, a real kind of like sharp elbowed, you know, you know. Troll, basically, a guy who talks a lot of smack on social media and did so even when he was a diplomat. He's accused the Biden administration on Twitter of escalating the war before he leaves office.
There's been some coverage that's mentioned him as potentially a candidate for the Trump administration's envoy to Ukraine. So he could be somebody who's like very closely involved in this.
Right. It is plausible that Biden is trying to ramp up his support for Ukraine in advance of an administration coming in that has been less than totally sympathetic to Ukraine. Absolutely.
And whenever you're in a negotiation, you want to be in the best position possible when you start from that negotiation. You don't have to have written the art of the deal to know that you want to move into talks from a position of strength. And I think that there's clearly a desire that if... Ukraine and Russia are pressured into a position where they're talking about territorial concessions.
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