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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Russians Bear Down On Ukraine's Capital; Saving Lives On Front Line Of The Ukraine War; What Is The Russian Public's Sentiment About The War With Ukraine? Aired 10-11a ET

Aired March 13, 2022 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:01]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: That's going to be a discussion maybe for next week.

Everybody, thank you so much for joining me. Appreciate it.

And thank you for spending your Sunday morning with us. Please join us right here at noon for a special live edition of STATE OF THE UNION with guest including the president of Latvia and Senator Amy Klobuchar who is also going to be joining us from Poland.

"FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts right now.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

Today on the program, Kyiv is preparing for the worst as Russian troops get closer and closer. I will talk to CNN's Clarissa Ward who reports that Ukrainians are ready to defend their capital.

I'll also be joined by a well-known Ukrainian intellectual who has taken up arms to fight the Russians, as well as bandages to heal the wounded. And I've talked to the "New York Times" Moscow bureau chief about Putin's crackdown on the free press and what Russians think of Putin's war. And Paul Krugman on whether China can or will save Russia's economy.

But, first, here's "My Take." Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a seismic event, perhaps the most significant one in international life since the fall of the Berlin Wall. This war marks the end of an age but what can we say about the new one we are entering? Most important, it is marked by the triumph of politics over economics.

For the past three decades most countries have acted with one lone star in mind, economic growth. They've embraced trade, technology and domestic reforms, all to produce more growth. Those kinds of choices are possible in an atmosphere in which one does not have to worry that much about the core issue of national security. But today countries around the world that took security for granted, from Canada to Germany to Japan, are thinking anew about their defense posture and forces. Military security is only one part of the way in which politics is

trumping economics. Countries are searching for greater national security in their supply chains and economies more broadly. This is a trend that began some years ago from Brexit to "Buy American," the policies being adopted by many of the most fervently free market countries are animated more by populist nationalism than market economics.

Last week China's Xi Jinping urged policymakers to stop relying on international markets for food. He said, Chinese bowls should be mainly filled with Chinese food. We may be seeing a reversal of 30 years of globalization. For example, over those three decades McDonald's built a large business in Russia, cultivating a network of farmers and suppliers, opening about 850 restaurants and creating a sizable customer base. All that has been placed on hold and could be shut down permanently.

Aeroflot, the Russian airline, had rebuilt itself after its post- Soviet breakup. Now with Boeing and Airbus refusing to sell its parts or do maintenance on its planes the company might have to stop flying all together.

These kinds of measures which place security and self-sufficiency over efficiency will surely have the effect of raising prices everywhere. As countries search for resilience and move away from excessive dependency on foreign countries, inflation could become a more permanent feature of the new world, even if the supply shocks caused by the war are just temporary.

We are also likely phasing a new world of energy, one in which the prices of oil and natural gas remain high. That means the countries that produce hydrocarbons are going to have lots of cash, trillions of dollars over the next decade. It also highlights why it is crucial to cut off Vladimir Putin's chief source of his revenue, oil and natural gas.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar will be massive sources of surplus capital in the world. One of the defining features of the new era is that it is post-American. By that I mean that the Pax Americana of the past three decades is over. You can see signs of this everywhere. Consider that according to the "Wall Street Journal" the leaders of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two countries that have depended on Washington for their security for decades, refuse to even take phone calls from the American president.

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Consider as well that Israel initially in the Security Council vote and India have refused to describe Putin's actions as an invasion and that all four countries have made it clear they will continue to do business with Russia. At first glance it might seem that this is a new global order stacked against America, but that is not necessarily so. The U.S. remains the world's leading power, still stronger than all the rest by far.

It also benefits from some of the features of this new age. The United States is the world's leading producer of hydrocarbons. High energy prices while terrible for countries such as China and Germany actually stimulate growth in large parts of America. Geopolitically the Russian invasion of Ukraine has put Washington's chief competitor China in an awkward position, forcing Beijing to defend Russia's actions and putting it at odds with the E.U. with which it has tried hard to have close ties.

The greatest strategic opportunity lies with Europe, which could use this challenge to stop being the passive international actor it has been for decades. We now see signs that the Europeans are ready to end the era of free security by raising defense spending and securing NATO's eastern border. Germany's remarkable turnaround is a big start. If Europe becomes a strategic player on the world stage, that could be the biggest geopolitical shift to emerge from this war.

A United States joined by a focused and unified Europe would be a super alliance in support of liberal values. But for the West to become newly united and powerful, there is one essential condition. It must succeed in Ukraine. That is why the urgent necessity of the moment is to do what it takes, bearing costs and risks, to ensure that Vladimir Putin does not prevail.

Go to CNN.com/fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

Let's get straight to CNN's Clarissa Ward who continues her extraordinary reporting. She's live for us once again from Kyiv.

Clarissa, it appears from a distance that what is happening is the Russians are encircling Kyiv, presumably to begin a siege. This, again, this seems like straight out of World War II history. Is Kyiv encircled? Are the Russians planning a siege from what you can tell?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Fareed, from what we can see the Russians have not yet fully encircled the city. They have taken a lot of territory to the north and northwest and they've also made a big push in the recent days to the east, but the south we have not yet seen them make a concerted push to take the south of the city as well or the southern outskirts which would then allow them to lay siege to the city.

But we do understand from multiple sources that that indeed is the intention. We have heard from the mayor of Kyiv and his brother who have repeatedly said that they believe that Kyiv is the prize for Russian forces. They went on to say that if there is some kind of siege here, food supplies would last just about two weeks.

And one other interesting thing we saw today, Fareed, that seems to bolster this idea that this is the sort of plan of action for the Russians is the Russian media is reporting that the Chechen leader has Ramzan Kadyrov has actually traveled here to Ukraine and was seen talking to Russian soldiers -- again, this is according to Russian media, we can't independently confirm it -- outside of the capital.

And according to Russia 24 in that meeting with those Russian soldiers he said that the real target right now, the most important objective is to try to take the capital. And that is why you are seeing a lot of consternation here, Fareed, on many levels not just about the possibility of an uptick in bombardment and the kind of heavy fighting that we've seen in the suburbs but also about the possibility of a real humanitarian crisis playing out here as supply lines would potentially be choked off.

But so far there are still possibilities to move in and out of the city to the south. It has taken the Russians quite a bit of time to get even this far, Fareed, but no one knows exactly when they could complete trying to encircle the capital, Fareed.

WARD: Clarissa, the reference to Kadyrov is truly frightening because of course the method that he used with Russian support to pacify Chechnya was absolutely brutal, flattening of cities, massive casualties, by some estimates a quarter of a million civilians were killed in the Chechen war.

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Is there a sense that the Russians could do something that dramatic and brutal in Kyiv itself? You know, an important city in the Russian- speaking world?

WARD: I mean, I think for everybody it's hard to imagine logically and sensibly that they would pursue that courses of action given that Kyiv is like the ancient mother city of Russia or ancient Rus I should say and there is a deep attachment spiritually. There are many orthodox churches here, world heritage sites. At the same time when you look at what's been happening and you look at the intensification of the bombardment, the increasingly indiscriminate shelling particularly of civilian areas.

We've seen in Mariupol, a maternity hospital hit. We see multiple instances of humanitarian convoys coming under fire, of people being besieged in some of these cities, not allowed to bring aid in, not allowed to bring civilians out. Residential areas being hammered by large missile strikes, people being targeted as they -- civilians, I should say -- as they try to leave some of these hardest hit areas.

And all of this is really feeding into the fear that as President Putin's plans have not exactly come to fruition in the way perhaps he would have liked and the momentum has sort of stalled between Russia's invasion -- you know, the momentum behind Russia's invasion has stalled, the fear becomes that you will see a resorting to the type of tactics we saw in Grozny as you mentioned, but also the sort of tactics that we saw in Syria.

And even the idea of these Chechen forces has a very powerful effect on people's minds here in terms of really putting the fear of God into them honestly, Fareed. When we've spent time in some of these suburban areas that have been hard hit people terrified telling us about seeing Chechen fighters near their homes, about looting that's been happening at the hands of these soldiers.

And so it also plays into, you know, an attempt to demoralize the psyche of Ukrainian people and to really make them even more frightened as Russia tries to tighten its noose on this city.

ZAKARIA: Understandably so. Clarissa, continue your amazing reporting and stay safe. We will talk to you soon.

Next on GPS, we will stay in Kyiv to talk to a well-known Ukrainian intellectual who now drives an ambulance healing Ukrainians and he is ready to fight the Russians on a moment's notice.

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ZAKARIA: Given his resume, Gennadiy Druzenko would be a great choice for a GPS guest at any time. He's a constitutional lawyer, one of Ukraine's best and brightest, but faced with war he has fired up an ambulance corps that he co-founded in response to Russia's 2014 invasion of his nation. He and his family are also armed and ready to fight the invaders. Gennadiy joins me now from Kyiv.

Let me start, Gennadiy, by asking you, you know, a question we're all wondering when we see people like you, how are you feeling? How are you right now?

GENNADIY DRUZENKO, CHAIR, UKRAINE'S CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DESIGN: Thank you, Fareed. Thank you, Fareed, for such great introduction, but now I am just one of the maybe hundred of thousand of ordinary Ukrainians who just defend not just our land, but freedom, dignity and very basic, very fundamental things.

To understand how we feel now, maybe Americans should remind their use of the -- born of the country. 250 years ago when the farmers, lawyers, doctors, created a great country. I love it. I spent one year in American universities. So it is not a professional war. What it should be understood by American audience. It is a war that is really a popular war.

Me, as lawyer, a constitutional scholar, who used to spend time in universities throughout the world, now leads a volunteer hospital, there's a lot of medics which save the lives. My wife who is a medic in a children's hospital near me and she treated children and soldiers, whoever needs they help. My son who is a medic as well, now in (INAUDIBLE), a Kyiv hospital. And a lot of my friends who are businessmen, who are lawyers as well, who are artists, have taken arms in their hand.

And just believe me, Russia never, ever, ever could win because for us it is not just army against army. That all Ukrainian nation. I have never seen so cohesion, so solidarity. So (INAUDIBLE). Because you just got whatever you need like that, and we just ask it to the Internet about to supply food for my volunteers. We got this from the restaurant the same day. I opened the next location and we got as well.

We got like (INAUDIBLE). And this is unbelievable. This is like a whole miracle. And people -- even those that Russians is very serious enemy. And they're horribly unhuman, to say just unhuman. [10:20:09]

Ukrainians are not afraid, are not about that. They're really people ready to fight, some of them just taking arms in their hands for the first time in their life, but they still want to defend our freedom and dignity.

ZAKARIA: So do you think, Gennadiy, if the Russians do lay siege to Kyiv it will be a very bitter fight that the Ukrainians will not allow the city to be laid siege like that?

DRUZENKO: First of all, they will never siege my native city. Kyiv population is about generally speaking four million. Our whole population is still in Kyiv, OK, let's count a quarter of that, that is 5,000 adult men who could take arms and defend. And Russians just do not have enough soldiers.

Centrally we now fight against tanks, against armored vehicle. These Kalashnikov in our hand. I'm really thankful for American government, the U.K. government and other governments which supplied our army with some state-of-the-art weapons, (INAUDIBLE) like Javelins or Stingers. I reiterated again and again, here in Ukraine we have a million and maybe millions of brave hearts and hands ready to fight.

But we need something serious like state-of-the-art weapons in their hand. And so you supply us with that. Thank you for that. I understand it is America not like in the Korean War or World War II ready to fight against evil, that is not Russians, that is something unbelievable. Every day I got a lot of calls, a lot of information, ambulances was shot, there's a child was killed, the small girl lost their arms.

And finally today, just a couple of hours ago, they killed American journalist near Irpin, who is, I just say his name. He's Brent Renaud who was born in February 10th, 1971, a guy like me, my age, and another journalist, his fellow, was wounded and my team treated him and delivered him to the hospital. So it is just something I have not seen. What I could compare it is Nazi forces. No any provision and rule of war. No any humanity. No any -- they are not -- they are not humans.

But we are ready to fight. We have no choice. And finally we win. And I hope that the free war -- it is not the fighting for Ukraine as such, for our territory or even our independence. Like American independence war that is war for the future of this world. If we lost the whole Western civilization, democracy, humanity, dignity, freedom, lost. They're lost. So when a lot of volunteers from the Western countries, U.K., U.S., have joined us, we just welcome and hope your government finally follows it.

I know that America have used to wait for a while when the world war started but then you joined the right side of the war and finally we together win. We win. We won the World War II together. The Ukrainian (INAUDIBLE) the biggest in Europe. And I hope finally we will win this war for future of democracy, for future of humanity in this war.

ZAKARIA: Gennadiy, thank you so much for joining us. We admire what you're doing and wish you all the best.

DRUZENKO: (INAUDIBLE), Americans, what I need, I beg you, I request you.

ZAKARIA: OK. Yes. Sure.

DRUZENKO: Armory. Ambulances. Yes. We really -- it is a shame for our government but not from us. We are eight year in war and Ukraine still haven't armory ambulances and we couldn't evacuate people from the so- called red zone where there was shooting. I couldn't send doctors there because to prepare a doctor we need 10 years at least, but to kill them you need one second.

I beg you, Americans. I know you are not ready still to fight shoulder to shoulder, provide my team, provide Ukrainians this armored ambulances.

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It's to save hundreds, thousands of lives. Thank you in advance. I hope to get them soon.

ZAKARIA: All right. You heard that, they need ambulances, I hope people will start mobilizing --

DRUZENKO: Armored. Armored ambulances.

ZAKARIA: Armored ambulances. Yes. Yes. I should say that CNN has not independently confirmed the names of the journalists killed who were mentioned.

Next up, what is the public sentiment about this war in Russia? I will talk to "The New York Times'" Moscow bureau chief.

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ZAKARIA: Most of Russia's homegrown free media has now been silenced.

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ZAKARIA: Most of Russia's homegrown free media has now been silenced. Most Western outlets have stopped reporting from Russia. This comes after that country enacted a new law that promises punishment of up to 15 years in prison for, frankly, reporting the truth about Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

So, given the news blackout, can Russians learn the truth about what is going on?

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times. He joins me now from Istanbul.

Anton, let me -- let me start by just asking that simple question, which is what do we think Russians -- what do Russians understand? What is their reaction? Because it used to be that Russian TV media was all totally state-

controlled but that there was a free Internet and people had access to all kinds of things from YouTube to Instagram. It seems like all that is shut down now. So what is the state, and are Russians buying the -- the state's propaganda?

ANTON TROIANOVSKI, MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF, NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah, you're right, just if we look at what happened in the last two weeks, the media and landscape in Russia has completely been transformed. So indeed, while television is state-controlled, you had plenty of independent media in the Russian language operating both inside and outside Russia that were widely available to Russians, that were being widely read. People were getting news on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter as well. So that is all going away now.

And I think the question now really comes down to will this shift lead more people to actually viewing and watching state TV, or will Russians work to get around these new bans on Internet -- these new blockages of Internet news outlets? Will they spread, kind of, more critical analysis of the war through things like Whatsapp or Telegram, which continue to operate?

It's a really critical moment right now in Russia when it comes to media consumption, absolutely.

ZAKARIA: And, you know, the question becomes, do people -- are people likely to believe the story that is being put out by the Putin regime, which is very complicated, you know, which is, rather than simply Russia invaded Ukraine, which is what happened, it is this story about how the Ukrainian government actually is itself committing genocide against its own people in the East and then, you know, you show a few photographs of people who are supposed to be fleeing to Russia, and the Russians came in to protect them.

You know, are people buying this?

I mean, Russians have a healthy skepticism of this kind of thing after 70 years of Communism.

TROIANOVSKI: Yeah, absolutely. I think the polls show that something like half of Russians trust state TV. And half is a lot, but half is less than it was eight years ago during the annexation of Crimea.

And, I mean, you know, it you look at what has happened in those last eight years, in 2014, when the Ukraine crisis began, when Putin annexed Crimea, there was real, genuine jubilation in the streets and among Russians. Even people who were critical of Putin were very positive about that in many cases. That's not happening right now.

So I think there is a lot of skepticism in Russia about this war. It's not -- you know, we don't know it's the majority. A state-run poll the other day showed 70 percent of Russians supporting the war. Again, that's something coming from the Kremlin, and even that essentially shows 30 percent of people being against it.

So, yes, there is a healthy skepticism. You know, is it enough to really affect the course of events right now? That's a separate matter.

ZAKARIA: So that is what I have to ask you about. Is -- is there -- is there enough dissent, do you think, within Putin's inner circle?

I don't think you're going to get a mass uprising in what has essentially become a police state, but could you imagine some part of the Russian elite having enough power to dislodge Putin?

TROIANOVSKI: Well, we are seeing a lot of discontent, relatively, in the Russian elite. You know, you've even seen some of the richest and most powerful oligarchs speak out against the war and also against the economic policies that the Kremlin is pursuing right now.

You know, you look at the media elite here, where I am, in Istanbul there are so many Russian journalists and others who -- who have fled the country in the last two weeks. But does that really affect, you know, that inner circle around Putin? Honestly, quite hard to imagine.

You know, Putin has been in power for 22 years.

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One of the things he's worked on very much is making sure that there are no independent poles of power in the government. Basically, everyone who has power in the Russian state owes that power to Putin.

So it's very hard to imagine some kind of faction that could bring him down, even though we also have plenty of reason to assume that there are plenty of people in government in Russia who are looking with horror upon what we're seeing right now.

ZAKARIA: That was terrifically illuminating, Anton. Thank you so much.

TROIANOVSKI: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," Paul Krugman will tell us whether China will come to Russia's rescue. Back in a moment.

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ZAKARIA: As the West wages economic war against Russia, Moscow's main stock exchange has been closed for two weeks, and the ruble has fallen some 30 percent against the dollar in that time.

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One big problem for Putin is that there aren't a lot of countries that can save Russia from financial failure. Russia's friends, like Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, certainly don't have the cash to prop up Putin. But many people are wondering whether China will or can come to Russia's rescue.

To answer that, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman joins me.

Paul, let me first ask you, Putin thought he had built a kind of sanctions-proof economy. He had built up that big war chest of 600-odd billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves. Was the freezing of that -- those foreign exchange reserves the kind of central reason why Russia seems to be so badly battered by these sanctions?

PAUL KRUGMAN, OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, it's part of it. I mean, I think that Putin had no idea what kinds of sanctions he was going to be facing. He thought maybe it would -- you know, a few exports would be restricted, not that Russia would be shut out completely from the world financial system, which is pretty much what's happened.

And what -- when you do that, the fact that you have, you know, reserves, which are mostly just deposits in banks overseas, doesn't do you a bit of good. They're all frozen. And, you know, the rest of the reserves is largely gold bars sitting in Russia, which are also actually not really useful for -- for global commerce.

So I think Putin just had a completely false idea of what kind of economic regime he was going to face.

ZAKARIA: But what about the oil and gas revenues?

Those seem to continue uninterrupted. And is that a big loophole in the sanctions regime?

KRUGMAN: It's not clear that it matters -- first of all, it's not even clear exactly that Russia can even quite get at the cash that's coming in. I mean, you have to ask, how are those imports being paid for? How are people paying for Russian oil?

If they're putting money into -- into a Russian bank account, well, Russia doesn't have access to that bank account. And, also, I think the biggest problem for Putin is really not export revenue; it's actually the ability to import, which is not at all the same thing. And it's becoming extremely hard for Russia to access the stuff it buys, which is crucial to its economy.

ZAKARIA: So that gets us to China. Can China be the solution?

Can China buy Russian oil and then give Russia, you know, a series of, essentially, a kind of barter, a (inaudible) that can be used to buy stuff in China (inaudible) China is a huge economy?

KRUGMAN: OK. There are a couple of problems with that. One is, in terms of China buying Russian oil, you need to think a little bit about the physical side of stuff. That's one of the things we've learned these -- you know, in this whole supply chain crisis era. China and Russia may share a border, but that border is extremely remote from everything that matters.

Russia -- the Russian economy is west of the Urals. The Chinese economy is mostly along the coast. There's an immense distance between them.

Oil is normally shipped by pipelines to ports where it's loaded onto super tankers. There's no sea route from Russia -- or, not a usable one -- from Russia to China. There's no pipeline crossing the entire expanse of Siberia. You can put it into tank cars and put it on railroads, but it's -- there's, you know, only a handful of rail lines, and it's -- again, it's 3,500 miles from Moscow to Beijing.

So, just logistically, trying to make China the market for Russia's oil doesn't work very well. And on the other side, on the import side, China is an industrial powerhouse, but still it's a middle-income country that doesn't produce the full range of stuff. It doesn't produce the semi-conductor -- high-end semi-conductor chips that Russia needs. It can't supply the parts for Western airplanes, which is mostly what Russia flies, even on domestic flights. So China is much less of a useful escape valve for Russia than you might imagine.

ZAKARIA: Is there a danger that this kind of weaponized use of the dollar, particularly when you're up against China and Russia, you know, and some other countries like India that continue to buy everything from Russia, that it will lead to some kind of alternative regime to the dollar, to SWIFT? Could it accelerate that transition?

KRUGMAN: Well, what we've learned -- and this is from lots of stuff that comes from long before this crisis -- is that replacing the dollar as the global key currency is a lot harder than people seem to imagine. It's not something you can do by decree.

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What you need to have a global currency is you need -- first of all, it has to be in widespread use in world trade to begin with. It has to be backed by a significant economy. It has to be backed by a deep, highly liquid bond market.

So nothing that's happened so far would seriously threaten the dollar's hegemony.

ZAKARIA: So, bottom line, it sounds like you're saying Putin is going to pay a very high price and the Russian economy is going to -- is essentially collapsing?

KRUGMAN: Yeah, I'm looking at estimates that from, you know, banks doing this, they're talking about 10 to 15 percent decline in real GDP. And they look low to me. This looks to me like it's a really catastrophic event for Russia.

ZAKARIA: Ironically, those are the kind of declines you saw in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is in some ways what brought Vladimir Putin to power.

KRUGMAN: Yep. He really just seems to have had absolutely no idea what he was getting himself into.

ZAKARIA: Paul Krugman, pleasure to have you on.

KRUGMAN: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: And we will be back.

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ZAKARIA: Now for the last look. This week the Lithuanian foreign minister stood beside Antony Blinken and addressed the world. He said, "We cannot pay for oil and gas with Ukrainian blood."

He was referring to an uncomfortable truth. The huge amount of crude oil and natural gas that Russia pumps into Europe produces revenues that give Vladimir Putin the freedom to wage his brutal war on Ukraine.

The West is trying to break that link. This week the U.S. banned the import of Russian oil, gas and coal, but it relies on Russia for only small quantities of each of these. Most significantly, the European Union outlined a plan to wean itself off Russian energy imports before 2030. The plan could cut imports of Russian gas by two-thirds by the end of this year. These steps are necessary, if implemented, but they come at a cost.

The price of Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, has reached levels not seen in more than a decade. We talked to one of the best minds in energy policy today, Columbia Climate School co-founding dean Jason Bordoff.

He says the world is facing the prospect of an energy crisis not seen since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when oil-producing states in the Middle East cut off supply to the U.S. for its support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli war.

That was a moment in U.S. history when it was deeply dependent on foreign oil. The price of oil quadrupled in just months.

Our current moment is in some ways even more unstable because we are not just dealing with a crisis over a single commodity; we are dealing with a world dependent on oil and natural gas and still coal, all produced by a country that also has nuclear weapons, Bordoff points out.

But disengaging from Russian energy exports will not be easy, because so many countries are dependent on it. Russia supplies Europe with 25 percent of its oil and 40 percent of its gas.

The head of OPEC said on Monday that it would be impossible to replace all of the nearly 5 million barrels a day of crude oil that Russia exports into the world. Replacing even some of it will require Washington to suspend sanctions on oil-rich countries like Iran and Venezuela.

So what else to do?

Well, the plan that the E.U. announced is sound. In addition to storing more energy in the short term, Europe must diversify its energy sources. That means importing more liquefied natural gas from countries beside Russia. Germany is also working on increasing its capacity to store and

convert LNG to gas. And Europe badly needs better transportation links for gas within the continent. Germany has made the most dramatic reversal in energy policy on the continent, announcing late last month that it would suspend the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia and build LNG terminals to receive shipments from other countries. The rest of Europe needs to follow.

Undoubtedly, some of the effects of this crisis will be bad for the environment. Oil production will go up, including in the U.S. Even coal use will go up, Bordoff says. There is no other way to meet global energy demand.

As Bordoff put it, this conflict is forcing a reckoning with how large the gap is between today's energy reality and tomorrow's climate ambition. Global energy policy must incorporate both the ramping up of fossil fuel production in the short term and speeding the transition to renewable energy in the longer term.

It may seem hopeless, but remember, governments in crisis have done extraordinary things. After the Arab oil embargo, the U.S. federal government instituted a 55 mile per hour national speed limit because lower speeds conserve fuel.

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The Ford administration introduced fuel economy standards for cars. As Michael Ross wrote in The Guardian, funding for energy and conservation research rose sevenfold between 1973 and '79.

Per capita emissions in the U.S. peaked in 1973 and have mostly trended downwards ever since. And the U.S. did manage to decrease its dependence on foreign oil.

The crisis to come will be painful for the world, but it also represents an opportunity, if we can seize it.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.