Mike Graham and columnist Peter Hitchens discuss Donald Trump disruptive actions on the Ukraine and Russia conflict.
He argued that Volodymyr Zelensky is not a dictator, as the US President claimed, but a manipulated figure.
Hitchens questions Britain's involvement, suggesting it should end now that the US is pulling out.
#donaldtrump #ukraine #zelensky #russia #putin #usa #trump
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He argued that Volodymyr Zelensky is not a dictator, as the US President claimed, but a manipulated figure.
Hitchens questions Britain's involvement, suggesting it should end now that the US is pulling out.
#donaldtrump #ukraine #zelensky #russia #putin #usa #trump
Click here for more from Talk https://talk.tv
If you need any help visit: https://talk.tv/helplines
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00:00Let's talk to Peter Hitchens and see what he makes of it all. Peter, very good morning.
00:03Good morning.
00:05Where to begin? I mean, I suppose it would be pointless to ask you what you think of Donald Trump's intervention here,
00:11because, I mean, everybody can see what Donald Trump is doing.
00:15The question is, is he doing something that will work, I suppose?
00:19Well, we know, don't we, that he likes to do these disruptive things.
00:23He might equally have said that he wanted to turn Crimea into a World Holiday Resort run by himself.
00:29It would have the same effect of just making people follow his agenda in what comes,
00:36because now he's disrupted totally the idea that Volodymyr Zelensky is a sort of new Churchill by calling him a dictator.
00:46I mean, even though he obviously is not a dictator.
00:49In fact, rather the reverse.
00:51Poor old Zelensky has for some time been a manipulated puppet of much more powerful forces in Ukraine.
00:58Remember, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected as a peace president and tried, to his great credit,
01:04for some time to achieve peace and was completely frustrated by forces in his own country,
01:09including his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, and the ultra-nationalists.
01:13So to call him a dictator is obviously absurd.
01:16He isn't that, and it's not unreasonable for a country in the middle of being invaded to suspend elections,
01:21as has been many times pointed out.
01:24This country suspended elections during the Second World War.
01:27That's not unusual or particularly bad.
01:31But what Trump has done is he's started people thinking about,
01:35well, obviously Zelensky is not a dictator, but what exactly is he?
01:39And what has Ukraine been doing to achieve peace over the past several years?
01:44And how did this combat originate?
01:48What he can't say, or won't say, or perhaps doesn't know,
01:52and I'm referring here to President Trump,
01:54is that this war was really, ultimately, the creation of an American decision to push NATO relentlessly eastwards.
02:03Despite the repeated warnings of Russia, they weren't ultimately prepared to tolerate this.
02:10I have to add here, people will now say, oh, you're excusing the Russian invasion.
02:14I'm not.
02:15The Russian invasion was not just unlawful, stupid,
02:19but also morally wrong and has covered Ukraine in blood.
02:24I don't defend it or excuse it, but I am saying it was, to some extent, provoked,
02:29and it was, to some extent, the result of Western policy,
02:32particularly the 2008 Bucharest summit at which George W. Bush, the genius of Iraq,
02:40proposed that Ukraine should become a member of NATO.
02:44And for most of the problems which have come about have followed from an American decision
02:49to pursue a very aggressive foreign policy in that part of the world.
02:53And here we are.
02:54So, if Donald Trump is now abandoning that policy, which even from the American side,
02:59the baffling thing about the policy of the United States towards Russia, really, since then,
03:05is that it actually hasn't done the United States any good.
03:08It hasn't done Europe any good.
03:10It certainly hasn't done Ukraine any good.
03:13Ukraine is a devastated mess at the moment.
03:15It's economy in ruins.
03:16Very little electrical power.
03:18Many people dead.
03:19Huge numbers of young men maimed.
03:21And many people have fled.
03:23Many of the best people in Ukraine have fled the country rather than stay.
03:26So, it's been a disaster for them.
03:28None of these things are good.
03:29So, anybody who says let's bring an end to this stupid mayhem and start reconstructing Ukraine
03:35surely has a point.
03:36But it's obvious Zelensky is not a dictator, but I would like people to think.
03:40And your contributor, whose words you quoted at the beginning of this exchange,
03:44seems to be speaking very good sense.
03:47Why is it that British people have somehow been recruited into becoming Ukrainian super patriots?
03:53What is Britain's interest in Ukraine?
03:56What has it ever been?
03:58What will it be?
03:59There's no historic connection between us and them, nor do I see any particular British interest in this region.
04:05What are we doing there?
04:06And I don't understand it.
04:08The Americans who are the progenitors of this, in my view, totally unnecessary and disastrous combat,
04:17now they're pulling out.
04:19Why should Britain and the rest of the European nations be saying, OK, well, in that case, we'll carry it on?
04:24I am genuinely baffled as to the thought process which leads people to say,
04:29well, now the people who really, really wanted this fight have pulled out of it.
04:34The United States almost invariably does pull out of its foreign engagements.
04:38Now they've pulled out of it.
04:40We should keep it going.
04:42I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam,
04:44oh, let's send lots of British troops in.
04:46No, exactly right.
04:47And also the other thing that's been pointed out this last 24 hours or so is that people say,
04:54oh, America's abandoning Europe.
04:56People say, well, hang on a minute.
04:58They didn't really come into the Second World War until Pearl Harbor happened.
05:01They didn't really come into the First World War until 1917.
05:03They haven't always stood absolutely full square for the beginning of every single war that's happened in Europe.
05:08It's not their job.
05:09Why should they?
05:10No, quite.
05:11I'm not arguing against that.
05:13It's another country.
05:15When they acted in the First World War, a lot of their decisions were based on the fact they'd lent so much money to Britain,
05:21they didn't want to lose it if we went under, so they thought they'd better make sure we won,
05:26which is, again, not unreasonable.
05:28I don't criticise them for it, nor do I criticise them for their extremely stringent behaviour towards us in 1939-40,
05:34when they pretty much made us hold a bankruptcy hearing before they'd give us loaned lease.
05:39It's not a sentimental relationship.
05:41The Americans don't engage in Europe because they love us all so much and they like coming to Paris.
05:47The Americans engage in Europe because a stable Europe is good for American politics and diplomacy.
05:52What they have discovered, it seems to me, in this conflict is that pushing NATO this far east does not have the effect of creating a stable Europe
06:04or an economically prosperous Europe.
06:07On the contrary, it has destabilised Europe quite gravely and is not doing anybody any good.
06:12If Donald Trump can see that, then it's to his credit, even if the rest of what he says is bilge.
06:18Yes, indeed.
06:20There's an interesting piece in The Telegraph today by Alistair Heath in which he talks about, you know,
06:24if Keir Starmer was a real patriot and he really cared about security of the West, he would tear up his entire agenda.
06:30He would announce a rearmament programme, a la 1934, and the reconstruction of a homegrown military industrial chain.
06:36He would get rid of the leftist nonsense about net zero and he would drastically increase the size of the armed forces.
06:41But, of course, he's not going to do any of those things.
06:44He's not, and I doubt whether any British government would or could do those things,
06:48because the effects on the levels of taxation on the economy of ramping up military spending in that way,
06:55without any other general rearrangement of our priorities, would be enormously burdensome on the population
07:04and very, very hard to get through once people saw the cost.
07:07We did indeed rearm after 1934, and it cost a great deal of money, and it was fortunate that we did,
07:14and the much reviled Neville Chamberlain was responsible, of course, for the creation of the modern Royal Air Force,
07:21and the Spitfires wouldn't have been there in 1939-40 if it hadn't been for Chamberlain's very considerable military spending
07:28and naval spending, but that's another era.
07:31What we've had established here, it seems to me, is this extraordinary split mind between the people who are so anxious
07:40for us to be at war in Ukraine.
07:43They say simultaneously, the Russians are this most terrible threat.
07:47If we don't stop them in Ukraine before we know where they are, they'll be in Dover.
07:51And the same people say, but then look at these Russians.
07:54They're incompetent. Their army can barely move an inch.
07:57It takes them months of offensive to gain a few yards in the Don Basin.
08:02Their army is incompetent. They can't get recruits.
08:05They have to rely on North Korea, which is true.
08:07Is it true that they're poised, they're a vast and competent military power poised to sweep across Europe,
08:13or is it true that they are, it seems to me to be demonstrated by this war, a fairly minor conventional power
08:21with very limited resources, very limited manpower, and a lot of corruption and incompetence in their armed forces?
08:26You aren't really that much of a mess, and could be contained by far better methods than this.
08:31Yes, and that's an interesting point in itself.
08:33So where does this go, though?
08:35Do you think that, you know, Zelensky's basically saying,
08:38I'm not going to accept anything that involves me giving up any land whatsoever.
08:41I mean, we take you back to 2014 again, where nobody did anything when they went into Crimea from Russia.
08:47Do you see this ending with Russia gaining part of Ukraine?
08:51Well, I think it looks as if it's inevitable.
08:54It's inevitable. I've never recommended or urged or supported that.
08:57I don't think people should gain by invasions.
08:59But what does it matter?
09:01Well, I think if this war is to end, then it seems to me to be quite likely that the Russians will actually,
09:09because of the relatively strong, and I say relatively strong, not globally strong,
09:14the relatively strong position there might be quite likely to hang on to those parts of Ukraine, which they've seized.
09:19I think a lot of Ukrainians, particularly the nationalists in the West,
09:22would privately be quite glad to see the back of these areas,
09:25because they're full of people who are in many cases Russian speakers and look still towards Moscow
09:30and aren't ever likely to fully engage in the very nationalist Ukraine these people want to create.
09:36But that's another issue which people need to consider in this,
09:40what has been going on in Ukraine itself and what its political balance is.
09:45Zelensky, I don't think, could conceivably agree peace on those terms.
09:49If he did, he'd be, I think, immediately removed and be replaced by somebody much more militant.
09:54So he can't do that.
09:56It's always been the problem with these negotiations that whatever happens,
10:01whichever way it goes, one of the leaders will have to go.
10:05Putin, I think, has reached a stage where it's going to be quite likely that it isn't going to be him who goes,
10:11because he's gained and held this land and because Donald Trump has now broken the stalemate
10:17and made it quite clear that he doesn't really mind how unjust the settlement is if it ends the war.
10:24And that is quite plainly his view.
10:26He's not interested in any kind of justice here.
10:28He just wants to bring it to an end.
10:30And as a result, he appears as it were to have chosen a side.
10:34And that will mean, it seems to me quite likely, that Russia will hold on to the territories that it has gained by illegal force.
10:43Well, no one can be glad about that.
10:45But then again, I keep asking people, how did this start?
10:49Was it necessary to start it?
10:51Who's really to blame?
10:53And I say that it's certainly not as simple as so many people make out.
10:58And we are absolutely not seeing a rerun of Europe in 1938, 1939, and 1940.
11:04This began, this whole crisis began, as people forget, with Russia withdrawing from huge areas of both Central Europe and Central Asia,
11:13not particularly out of principle or niceness, because Russia had become, with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
11:19too weak to hold on to these territories.
11:21And it remains too weak.
11:23And I keep pointing out that the gross domestic product of Russia is smaller than that of Italy.
11:29We're not dealing here with a great economic giant.
11:32It still has nuclear weapons, which makes certain kinds of war against it very difficult.
11:36This is why the Americans, and indeed other NATO members, have never directly, openly engaged in the Ukraine war,
11:43because if they did so, that would take on a path which might lead to nuclear confrontation.
11:47So that is one of the difficulties in this war.
11:50They could never do that.
11:52Everything had to be done by Ukraine as a proxy.
11:55And Ukraine was used by the Americans as a battering ram.
11:59And now they've given up battering Russia, they're laying aside their battering ram.
12:02And those who took part in the battering, I'm afraid, are going to find themselves alone,
12:07and quite possibly abandoned, as many, many other American allies from Vietnam to Afghanistan have discovered.
12:14Absolutely right.
12:15And they do it in a very unusually cold manner, it does have to be said.
12:20I don't decry that.
12:22Great powers behave like that, that's what they do.
12:25If they don't do that, they don't survive.
12:27No, quite.
12:28Let me ask you just one final question, before we let you go.
12:32You got a piece in the mail today about Lucy Letby, saying you understand why many people find the idea that she's innocent offensive,
12:39but we have to accept that our police and courts can make terrible mistakes.
12:42They do, and continue to do so, don't they?
12:45They do indeed.
12:46But I do think, I'm reaching out here a bit to those people who continue to believe that Ms. Letby is guilty.
12:51I understand why they do so.
12:53I myself was totally wrong about the Birmingham Six for many years, something I greatly regret.
12:58But for the same reasons, it's very, very hard to accept that your justice system isn't working properly,
13:04and can sometimes produce terrible unjust results.
13:06It unsettles your entire life.
13:09If your justice system is at fault, then really it's quite difficult to live a good moral life, isn't it?
13:15If you can't believe in these institutions, if you can't believe the police are fair,
13:20and if you can't believe the courts are fair, then everything else begins to crumble.
13:24I understand that.
13:25But I think in the end, you have to accept that even in a good justice system,
13:30and by comparison with most of the world, I have to say ours is still pretty good,
13:33even in a good justice system, mistakes are made.
13:36And it strengthens that justice system to acknowledge those mistakes.
13:39And I do ask those people who still think that Ms Letby is guilty to look very much at the Shuley report
13:45and the evidence that has come out and will follow, and to reconsider,
13:49because it doesn't seem to me to be any good purpose to be achieved
13:55by keeping this young woman in prison when there has never been an adequate case against her,
14:00and she's not been convicted beyond reasonable doubt.
14:02Okay. Good to talk to you, Peter. Thank you very much indeed, as ever.
14:05We've got a column in the Mail today about that, of course.
14:08It's on page 24. Lucy Letby, who he believes very much deserves,
14:12he's never said that she's innocent, he just thinks that she should have another trial.