Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock argues that the war in Ukraine is a tragedy that might have been avoided through a more prudent Western foreign policy. While acknowledging that Russia’s invasion constitutes a war of aggression, he maintains that NATO expansion, Western interference in Ukrainian politics, and the failure to accommodate legitimate Russian security concerns contributed substantially to the conflict. He warns that continued Western military support risks devastating Ukraine and escalating into nuclear war.
Matlock emphasizes that the Cold War ended before the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The Soviet collapse resulted from internal political forces, not Western pressure. He rejects claims that Vladimir Putin intends to recreate the Soviet Union, arguing that neither evidence nor Russian capabilities support that interpretation.
The original objective of ending the Cold War was to eliminate nuclear confrontation and unify Europe rather than perpetuate opposing military blocs. Matlock recalls assurances during negotiations over German reunification that NATO would not expand eastward. Although these assurances were not incorporated into a formal treaty, he considers subsequent NATO expansion a violation of the understanding that helped end the Cold War.
Matlock describes Ukraine as historically divided between predominantly Ukrainian-speaking western regions and Russian-speaking eastern regions. He argues that Ukraine’s centralized political system failed to accommodate these differences adequately.
He maintains that Ukrainian efforts to diminish the status of the Russian language alienated millions of citizens who identified as Ukrainian but spoke Russian.
Regarding the 2014 Maidan uprising, Matlock acknowledges legitimate popular aspirations for European integration but emphasizes Western involvement in supporting the demonstrations. He characterizes the removal of President Yanukovych as a coup and alleges that extremist nationalist militants, rather than government police, were responsible for crucial shootings of demonstrators. He acknowledges that he cannot establish whether American intelligence (the CIA) helped orchestrate the change of government, although he considers Russian suspicions understandable and though the U.S. was certainly supporting the dissidents.
These are Matlock’s interpretations and allegations, not independently verified findings of this summary.
Matlock argues that the Donbas rebellion arose substantially from local resistance to Ukrainian nationalism and centralization, although Russia provided support.
He maintains that Putin initially rejected separatist requests to join Russia and instead favored Ukrainian neutrality and regional autonomy. Matlock presents the Minsk agreements as a missed opportunity for peace.
He criticizes Ukraine and its Western supporters for failing to implement those agreements and for using the intervening years to strengthen Ukraine’s military. He considers Russia’s subsequent distrust of ceasefire proposals understandable.
Matlock identifies two important Western precedents: NATO’s military intervention in Serbia and recognition of Kosovo’s independence without Serbian consent, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
He explicitly acknowledges that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war of aggression. Nevertheless, he argues that America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq were more extensive and similarly violated international law.
His central contention is that Western governments established precedents for disregarding sovereignty and international agreements while now condemning Russia for comparable conduct.
Matlock warns that supplying Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated weapons, intelligence, and communications capabilities to attack Russian territory risks direct confrontation between NATO and a nuclear-armed Russia.
He stresses that Ukraine and Belarus occupy a uniquely important place in Russian history and security thinking. Any Russian leader, he argues, would regard hostile military alliances in these countries as threatening core national interests.
He is particularly concerned that Russia might employ nuclear weapons if its leadership perceives a threat to the country’s existence. He also criticizes America’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty for increasing European vulnerability.
Matlock advocates sustained diplomatic negotiations and a realistic assessment of achievable outcomes.
He considers restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, including Crimea, unattainable. Continuing the war to achieve that objective, he argues, will only increase Ukrainian casualties and destruction, potentially leaving a severely diminished and impoverished country.
He criticizes Western leaders for encouraging unrealistic expectations and suggests that economic interests associated with military production may contribute to prolonged conflict.
He also laments the deterioration of American diplomatic expertise and the scarcity of serious public debate about foreign policy.
Matlock argues that Western sanctions and military pressure have predictably pushed Russia toward China, increasing Russian economic dependence on Beijing.
He considers this contrary to American interests, particularly because Russia previously cooperated with Washington on nuclear proliferation issues involving Iran and North Korea.
He rejects simplistic portrayals of world politics as a struggle between morally superior democracies and inferior authoritarian states.
Matlock criticizes American media for disproportionately emphasizing Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians while giving comparatively less attention to civilian casualties caused by Israeli attacks in Gaza. He condemns both.
More broadly, he argues that emotionally charged rhetoric has displaced serious analysis of international affairs. The United States, he believes, has largely abandoned the substantive public debates about war, peace, and arms control that characterized the Cold War era.
His overarching message is that diplomacy, historical understanding, compromise, and recognition of other countries’ security interests are essential to preventing further catastrophe.
Here are some direct quotes from the rough transcript obtained using AI on the audio:
[The government in Ukraine in 2014] was a very corrupt government. At the same time, Russia offered them a much larger loan and pointed out that they would no longer have free trade with Russia if they were associated with the EU. Russia did not say you can’t be associated, it was just that we won’t have a completely free trade, and I think at least 40 percent of their trade was with Russia, and had been at that time. But at that time, the United States and the EU had representatives that were supporting the demonstrators, and at one point when there had finally come to an agreement that the current president would have another election a few months later, there were shooting against the demonstrators that actually came not from the Ukrainian police, but from a building occupied by some of the neo-Nazi elements,At that time, the United States and the EU had representatives that were completely free trade, and I think at least 40 percent of their trade was with Russia, and had been at that time. So, but at that time,
The United States and the EU had representatives that were supporting the demonstrators, and at one point when they had finally come to an agreement that the current president would have another election a few months later, there were shooting against the demonstrators that actually came not from the Ukrainian police, but from a building occupied by some of the neo-Nazi
elements in Ukraine. In other words, that wasn’t attacked then, they accused the officials, the official police for having fired the shots, but the evidence is absolutely conclusive that it came actually from these neo-Nazi militants. So, and then you had in effect a coup d’etat that simply replaced the government and put it in a different person, and that coup d’etat, I’m sure that the Russian government thought that the US CIA and also the EU was involved in it. Well, all I can say is that was not an irrational conclusion. I don’t know whether we were or not, although publicly we were supporting the demonstrators, and Assistant Secretary of State [Victoria Nuland] was actually talking to our ambassador in Kyiv as to who should be the next prime minister, and in fact, after the coup he was.
Well, the problem here is that if, say, any foreign country was supporting demonstrations in, let’s say, Mexico City against the United States and trying to bring Mexico into an alliance with any other country, of course that would be totally unacceptable to us, but nobody seemed, at least in the US government, seemed to understand how this would be taken. Then there was actually a rebellion in the Donbas, because the Ukrainian government had gradually begun to try to, I would say, eliminate the use of the Russian language in Ukraine by telling people you can’t be a Ukrainian, a true Ukrainian, if you speak Russian. Well, when Ukraine got its independence, 44 percent of its people preferred to speak Russian. I mean, they did naturally. Some of them were ethnic Ukrainians, but it was quite all right then to say I’m Ukrainian, I live in Ukraine, but Russian is my native language. There was an attempt actually to tell people that, and this would take me true in the Crimea, which was over 80 percent Russian speaking, that if you’ve got a Russian name, you’ve got to change it to its Ukrainian form. I mean, these in effect were attacks on Russian speakers’ sense of identity, sense of individuality, and it was a highly emotional. And so there was an attempt by the two provinces in the Donbas to secede. Now, and they undoubtedly had some unofficial support coming from Russia, but it started there, and they actually asked the Russian government to think they want to become part of Russia. At that point, President Putin said no. He turned that down, but he said that we could settle this if the Ukrainian government would again pledge its neutrality and not enter a foreign military alliance, and if they would grant a degree of autonomy to these obelisks, to these provinces. And this was actually placed in an agreement called the Minsk Agreement, one that was also entered into between Russia and Ukraine, France and Germany, with the U.S. not a signature, but approving. But what happened? The Ukrainians kept attacking these states, and I would say gradually the U.S. and other NATO powers began to supply military support to them.
Now, obviously this is something that is happening in our neighborhood, but something else for you is what we have to do. And in fact, we had set precedence for what happened later in the 1990s, when there was a rebellion developing in Kosovo against Serbia. Actually, NATO made an undeclared war against Serbia and then changed the border, and that was against a violation of an agreement we had made toward the end of the Cold War, but it was agreed that any future changes of borders would be only by mutual consent. Serbia did not consent, but when after NATO had bombed Serbia and then actually occupied Kosovo, the Kosovo parliament voted to declare its independence, and this was recognized by the United States and other NATO powers. Russia considered this a sort of a direct violation of agreements that we had made earlier, but just as, I would say, the beginning to expand NATO, which we started in the 1990s, had violated a commitment that we made in negotiating the end of the Cold War, when we had said that if the Soviet Union agreed to the unification of Germany, that there would be no expansion of NATO to the east, and this was not in a treaty specifically, but it was something in the negotiations at that time, which was very important. So later, when we started expanding NATO, in effect, what this did, it took what had originally been a defensive alliance to protect Western Europe if there should be a attack from the east and then turned it into an offensive alliance in the first instance against Serbia, which had traditionally been a Russian ally. So and then we recognized Kosovo as independent without any agreement from Serbia. So that was one precedent that we set.
The second precedent we set for the later attack was our attack on Iraq. Iraq had not attacked or threatened any member of NATO or the United States. And again, I’m certainly no friend of Sadaam Hussein or how he was ruling Iraq, but the fact is that in attacking and occupying Iraq as we did, was totally contrary to traditional international law, it was a war of aggression.
So when we say that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a war of aggression, yes it is, but it has been actually not nearly as thorough as our attack, occupation of Iraq, and total destruction of the government and the army to begin with. And so that’s the reason I say, unfortunately, we had given President Putin a precedence for what he is doing.
And yet we are reacting to that in a way that I think makes the matter worse. And what is particularly tragic is what is happening to Ukraine.