• Politics
• Russia
• Robbie Gramer

John Sullivan had a rare front-row seat to the dramatic unraveling of U.S.-Russia relations as Washington’s ambassador to Moscow from 2020 to 2022, in the run-up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a massive war in Ukraine. Sullivan is one of just a handful of senior Trump administration appointees that President Joe Biden kept on after winning the White House, giving him a vantage point that spans two wildly different administrations’ foreign-policy strategies.

Sullivan just released a book about his time as ambassador to Russia, aptly titled Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West. Foreign Policy spoke to Sullivan about the inner workings of Moscow’s power structure, the future of a post-Putin Russia, and how the war in Ukraine might end. The interview was conducted shortly before Ukraine launched its own new offensive into Russian territory.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign Policy: Let’s start with this major recent prisoner swap. How could this come about with a country so notoriously hard for the U.S. to negotiate with?

John Sullivan: It would’ve been difficult for me to conceive of either country doing something like what happened.

What was surprising was that we were actually able to pull it off and that the Russians went along with it. There are a lot of moving parts, and anything going wrong at any point could have ruined the deal.

[U.S. special envoy for hostage affairs] Roger Carstens has worked miracles, and he’s really made his office into an important government institution—important not just for the detainees, but particularly for their families. They do yeoman’s work, particularly with families here in the United States.

FP: One criticism Republican lawmakers have brought up is that by making these trades for, in Putin’s eyes, high-valued Russians, Washington is incentivizing autocrats to detain even more Americans for future deals. Is there any way to stop this spiraling trend?

JS: I’ll contrast Russia with North Korea. After Otto Warmbier was released [from North Korea] and then died, Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson issued an order that made it illegal to use a U.S. passport to travel to the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].

The problem with a country like Russia is the number of dual citizens we have. It’s so big and so integrated still into the West, at least through family relationships, it would be virtually impossible to impose that type of rule that Tillerson did for North Korea on Russia. You can’t stop Americans from going there.

We should be so happy for our fellow Americans who’ve been released, and for their families. But there’s a flip side to this, which has continuing serious consequences for the United States. Putin and his supporters think this was a great victory for him.

The message it sends there is: Not only can we snatch Americans and then trade for things we want, but that if I, Putin, send you abroad to do some nefarious act in the West, you can do it and be assured that I’m going to get you out and get you back home.

If there were something we could do to pressure Russia to bend to our will, we would’ve already done that on Ukraine. What are we going to threaten them with now? We’ve hit him with a lot of sticks over Ukraine. If I could come up with better sticks, we’d already be using them on Ukraine now.

FP: In your book, you write that before going to Moscow, you read and reread George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram” that formed the basis of the United States’ Cold War containment strategy toward the Soviet Union. Are there any lessons from Kennan you would apply to Russia policy today?

JS: You can take passages from Kennan’s [writings], honestly, and you substitute “Putin” for “Stalin” and “Russia” for “the Soviet Union,” and what he wrote is as true today as it was then: their approach to diplomacy, their hostile attitude toward the United States, to our culture.

Which is why I found it so riveting after I’d been there awhile and seen it up close—how they behave, how they negotiate, how they treat us. And the things he wrote in 1946-47 were true then and are true now.

It is a hostile, difficult—extremely difficult—government to deal with.

FP: Any specific examples on what was true then and today?

JS: Their negotiating style. It is: maximalist demands, surrender nothing, paranoia to the nth degree.

For example, the concept of a good-faith gesture is unheard of from the Russian side. The American instinct is, “Well, we’ll show them our good faith and we will give them this or concede on that.” And the Russian approach is, we pocket that and don’t change any demands.

Kennan attributes it to their paranoia, their hostility toward the West. It translated in the 20th century, and now in the 21st century, into an adversary that Westerners have trouble negotiating with because it’s hard for us to understand how Russia works and operates. And that’s what Kennan tries to explain, that they’re shameless, they will ask for the moon, demand the moon, and accept nothing less. And they will not compromise. Which is why I say Putin will not compromise over Ukraine.

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FP: You titled one of your book’s chapters “The Elusive Search for Stability,” about the Biden administration’s ill-fated efforts to reset U.S.-Russia relations before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Looking back, was that U.S. attempt to hash out a “stable” relationship a massive policy mistake?

JS: It wasn’t just the Biden administration; it was the Trump administration before that. My charge both from [former President Donald] Trump and from Biden was to oppose the Russians in all those areas where we were opposed to their policies, but then to try to find those few areas—arms control, space, climate change—where we could try to make progress. And by doing that, try to stabilize the relationship.

Looking back now in hindsight, including at the summit meeting that President Biden had with Putin in Geneva in June 2021, I’m convinced that Putin at that point was going to try to get what he wanted out of Ukraine, which is demilitarization and “denazification.” He was going to get it either by Ukrainian capitulation—which he would expect would come under pressure from the Americans in the West—or by the euphemism they use, “military technical means,” which is an invasion. The Russians didn’t stress Ukraine in June 2021, and then months later, when they publicly postured to justify the invasion, it became their highest existential priority.

They had the opportunity to discuss this with Biden just months before. I interpret that as: They had been planning to do this, and this was sham diplomacy to try to keep [China] and others in the global south on their side.

FP: Was there any point in the run-up to the war where U.S. actions could have averted it?

JS: The honest answer is: I don’t know. But I’ll give you my impression. When I became ambassador, Putin introduced all of these constitutional reforms. We all focused on the term limits reform, which let him run for two more six-year terms after his then-existing term was up in 2024. But there were a number of other constitutional provisions, including one that makes it unconstitutional for a Russian leader to separate any territory of the Russian Federation and give it to another country. At the time, everybody thought, “Eh, this is about Crimea.”

But that was a signal to me of how long ago he’d been thinking about absorbing Ukraine. Short of Ukraine totally capitulating, he was going to invade. I don’t think he was deterrable at that point. He was going to do it.

By the time [CIA Director] Bill Burns traveled to Moscow in early November 2021 with threats of sanctions and a unified Western response, their reaction, as I look back on it now, really said it all. It was a shrug of the shoulders and a, “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, but we opt to do the same. And we can take care of ourselves, thank you. We’re back. Our military strength has been restored.”

FP: Given the dismal state of U.S.-Russia relations, what type of access does a U.S. ambassador in Moscow actually have to Putin and his inner circle?

JS: From the day I arrived, I got access to virtually any top Russian advisor I wanted to speak to, short of Putin—I couldn’t just demand to see him whenever I wanted. I’ve met with [Nikolai] Patrushev; [Yuri] Ushakov, who’s in the Kremlin as Putin’s foreign-policy advisor; [Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov.

Patrushev, the former secretary of the Security Council and a former director of the FSB [Federal Security Service], is very, very close to Putin from his KGB days.

They would use me to convey messages back to Washington, which is an ambassador’s job. For virtually all of my tenure, I never had a problem with access. It was getting successful results from that access.

They’d hear me out, and then they would always steer the meeting to their conclusion, which was: Whatever problems there were in U.S.-Russia relations were entirely the fault of the United States. So access was good. On results from the meeting, I had a very low rate of success, bordering on zero.

FP: Who has the most influence in Putin’s inner circle, and what could that tell us about Russia’s future approach to Ukraine and the West?

JS: The group that surrounds him that he relies on has been shrinking over time, over years. That shrinking accelerated during the pandemic.

Patrushev is one of them, and while he has now been removed from his role as secretary of the Security Council, I don’t think it’s an indication of diminution in his influence. Because at the same moment that he was removed, his son [Dmitry Patrushev] was promoted from minister of agriculture to be deputy prime minister. There’s dynastic movement there. Igor Sechin, who’s the CEO of [Russian state oil giant] Rosneft, is another top influential advisor.

There are layers of complexity in the Kremlin that we in the United States don’t have good insight on, because it’s not just the government officials; it’s the oligarchs and friends from back in Putin’s KGB days that he trusts and has trusted for decades.

FP: What does a post-Putin Russia look like? Is there any chance of any sort of democracy movement springing up?

JS: Unlikely in the extreme.

I heard this common refrain from many Russians, from many different parts of Russian society, some who fled to the West, some who are still there, some who support Putin: “If you and the U.S. government are working to replace Putin, be careful, because what you might get as a successor will probably be even worse.”

And they say that because they believe that Putin has exercised a brake on those Russian nationalists who are more willing to blow up Russia’s economic relations with the West.

My fear is that if the good Lord were to call Putin from this world overnight, his immediate successor—I am 100 percent sure—is not going to deviate from the policies of the “special military operation” in Ukraine and is going to be working very hard to consolidate control.

It is very unlikely that [Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin] would succeed Putin. He’s a technocrat, not a person versed in military and national security issues. In a country like Russia, it would be virtually unthinkable that this prime minister would succeed Putin.

FP: Former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Iran as the risk of war between Israel and Iran and its proxy groups accelerates. What’s your read on Russia’s calculations in the Middle East? Could Russia in a strange way be helpful for de-escalating Middle East tensions because a full-scale war there is not in its direct interests?

JS: I’ve heard this raised in a number of different contexts over the years: Syria, Libya, the Sahel. It’s Westerners thinking, “Well, they’ve got influence. Maybe, just maybe.” But inevitably, Russia is opposed to the United States and is not a positive influence.

I am not hoping, expecting, or anticipating that the Russians will exercise a positive check on Iran.

As the secretary of the Security Council, Shoigu is somewhat analogous to the national security advisor at the White House; he would be conveying messages from Putin. And whatever those messages are, I’m confident they are not in the interest of the United States.

FP: You’ve spoken a lot about the national security council and defense ministry and oligarchs. Does Russia’s foreign minister have any influence whatsoever in the Kremlin’s policymaking now?

JS: I distinguish Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov from the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. The MFA does not have the central role that it might have in either earlier days in the Russian Federation or in the Soviet Union. But Lavrov is different. Lavrov is a very useful person to Putin. The rumor is that Lavrov, who is older than Putin, has been looking to retire, and that Putin hasn’t let him because, with all of his experience and contacts around the world, he’s a useful spokesman.

Now, useful spokesman, that’s one thing. Does he trust his policy judgments? Is he somebody that he’s going to go up to and say, “Sergey, should I launch the special military operation? Yes or no?” I’m not sure that he’s in that tight circle of those who advise Putin. But Putin wants him to be his face to the international community.

The rest of [the] MFA, I believe, had no idea the special military operation was actually going to be launched until the rest of the world found out about it.

FP: How does the war in Ukraine end?

JS: Well, I’ll tell you, it doesn’t end with capitulation by Putin.

Among the most plausible scenarios and the best that we could hope for involves a cease-fire without conceding or recognizing any territory as Russia, the same way we did with the Baltic States for decades when Moscow claimed them as Soviet republics. And that would include Crimea.

Another idea is a massive support program for Ukraine through a new lend-lease type program. But all of that depends on a counterpart in the Kremlin that was willing to negotiate. And I come back to the fact that Putin is not going to.

A, he can’t be trusted, and B, it’s not of his nature to compromise on issues that are so fundamental to him as a person and his conception of Russia and the so-called Russkiy mir, the Russian world.

I am pessimistic about the future in Ukraine because neither party at this point is looking to negotiate. The Ukrainians so far can’t push the Russians out of the Ukrainian territory they control. But on the flip side, the Russians haven’t been able to mount any major offensive to take more parts of Ukraine. So a stalemate is the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future.