Is Germany Helping to DEPORT Ukrainian Men to the Front Lines? Glenn Greenwald

Glenn opens with a personal anecdote about studying German in college—initial fluency that faded after learning Portuguese—and briefly digresses before addressing the main question: why liberal institutions did not resist plans to repatriate Ukrainian refugees even as Zelensky’s government pursued draft evaders. He situates the phenomenon within a broader Western fixation on Russia that predates the 2022 full-scale invasion, tracing it through U.S. and European foreign-policy culture. In the United States, he describes a bipartisan establishment view of Russia as a persistent adversary, citing figures like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the post-2016 Russiagate fervor. He argues this animosity influenced policy choices—such as pushing Ukraine toward NATO despite long-standing U.S. memos warning that this would alarm Russia—and transformed the conflict into something the U.S. foreign-policy community treated as its own.

Glenn Greenwald contrasts elite U.S. attitudes with President Obama’s more restrained stance, quoting Obama’s view that confronting Russia militarily over Ukraine would be “idiotic” because Ukraine is vital to Russia but not to the United States. He suggests that domestic political dynamics and historical antagonisms—dating back to Cold War fears—explain why American political players became so invested in opposing Russia, sometimes inconsistently and with opportunistic interventions in other countries’ politics.

He then turns to Europe’s even deeper preoccupation with Russia, which he attributes to geographic proximity and Cold War history. Europeans retained a visceral fear of Russian power because the Cold War and Soviet influence directly affected their continent. This historical memory, he argues, underpins contemporary European willingness to prioritize the war against Russia above other concerns. That priority helps explain why Europe welcomed large numbers of Ukrainian refugees in 2022 despite a rising anti-immigrant sentiment: Ukrainian refugees are white and culturally proximate, but more crucially, supporting Ukraine was framed as defending Europe against a perceived existential Russian threat.

Glenn Greenwald contends that Europe’s current push to repatriate some Ukrainian refugees is less about xenophobia and more about Kyiv’s desperate need for manpower. He suggests European leaders are trying to ensure more men return to Ukraine to fill depleted ranks—what he bluntly calls “cannon fodder”—because the war has inflicted severe demographic losses and draft avoidance has become politically fraught. He links this to a broader European militarization and willingness to spend heavily on defense against Russia, which he calls irrational given Russia’s relative economic weakness and the stalemated nature of the fighting. Although Russia was once painted as a looming threat that might sweep across Europe, Glenn Greenwald argues that five years into the conflict, those apocalyptic scenarios have not come to pass; yet Europe maintains policies and priorities as if such a threat remains imminent.

He closes by thanking listeners for thoughtful questions, encouraging continued engagement via weekly live Q&A sessions and his Substack. He invites subscriptions and reiterates appreciation for the audience before signing off.