In this episode of CrossTalk, Vladimir Putin extends an olive branch with an offer for peace talks, while Zelensky and his Western backers push for a truce. Meanwhile, Trump appears ready to disengage from the Ukraine conflict. Could NATO face a strategic defeat? Join Alfred de Zayas, Aleksandar Pavic, and Ian Proud for a deep dive into these developments. 🌍⚖️
#Putin 🇷🇺 #Ukraine 🇺🇦 #PeaceTalks 🕊️ #Istanbul2 #NATO 🇳🇴 #Trump 🇺🇸 #StrategicDefeat #Zelensky #WesternBackers #UkraineConflict 💥 #Geopolitics 🌍 #CrossTalk #Diplomacy 🗣️ #NATOAlliance #AlfredDeZayas #AleksandarPavic #IanProud #RussiaUkraineWar
#Putin 🇷🇺 #Ukraine 🇺🇦 #PeaceTalks 🕊️ #Istanbul2 #NATO 🇳🇴 #Trump 🇺🇸 #StrategicDefeat #Zelensky #WesternBackers #UkraineConflict 💥 #Geopolitics 🌍 #CrossTalk #Diplomacy 🗣️ #NATOAlliance #AlfredDeZayas #AleksandarPavic #IanProud #RussiaUkraineWar
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to Crosstalk, where all things are considered.
00:25I'm Peter Lavelle.
00:26Vladimir Putin offers peace talks. Zelensky and his Western backers want a truce.
00:31And Trump appears to want to wash his hands of the entire Ukraine project.
00:36Ukraine was offered a very generous deal back in 2022.
00:40It won't be so lucky this time around as NATO faces a strategic defeat.
00:44Crosstalking Ukraine, I'm joined by my guest Ian Proud in London.
00:58He is a senior British diplomat and author of Misfit in Moscow, How British Diplomacy in Russia Failed.
01:03In Geneva, we cross to Alfred Desaes.
01:06He is an author and former UN independent expert on international law.
01:10And in Belgrade, we cross to Aleksandr Kovic.
01:14He is a member of the Serbian parliament.
01:17All right, gentlemen, Crosstalk rules in effect.
01:18That means you can jump anytime you want.
01:20And I always appreciate it.
01:21All right, let's start out with Ian in London.
01:25You all remember Istanbul in 2022.
01:28I remember it very clearly.
01:30I remember I was in my studio, approaching my studio and the story broke.
01:35And we were extremely hopeful.
01:37We didn't know a lot of the details.
01:39The overriding one was neutrality.
01:42And I presented it as a possible diplomatic breakthrough.
01:45Well, here we are three years later.
01:48It's a very, if in fact these negotiations happen in Istanbul, it's a very different environment.
01:54And the outcome will be very different.
01:56Agree or disagree?
01:56Agree.
01:58I agree.
01:59But the fundamentals are the same.
02:01The core underlying concern that Russia has is about Ukraine's NATO aspirations.
02:06Other things have been added to the list over the past three years as the war has dragged on.
02:11But that's a key one.
02:11And that needs to be taken off the table.
02:13But the fundamentals haven't changed.
02:15Well, Alfred, the same thing, because it's really quite interesting what's happened over the last few news cycles.
02:21We had what's called the Coalition of the Willing on a train that looked like a bunker in Berlin in 1945, demanding a unilateral, no precondition ceasefire.
02:34And then President Putin, 2 o'clock in the morning, Moscow time, declared that Russia is open to direct negotiations with the Ukrainians in Istanbul, which has all the symbolism that you can imagine.
02:49And then to top it all off, Donald Trump comes out on his social network and says, yes, immediately.
02:55So where is that 30-day ceasefire?
02:58Because I guess it's been kind of swept under the rug with the announcement coming from the Russian president and the American president.
03:08I'm very optimistic.
03:10I do think that we have progress here.
03:15Steve Vitkoff did a good job.
03:17And this has been well prepared.
03:19Now, obviously, Zelensky knows that he's lost it.
03:25And even though you have a so-called coalition of the willing, a rather obscene term, a toxic term that makes you think of the Iraq war and all the crimes committed against the Iraqi people.
03:42But the fact is that he knows that he knows that the situation on the ground is that he can never aspire to take the Donbass or to take Crimea by force.
04:01And that he better cut a deal now because tomorrow will be much worse.
04:06Again, he had a great chance in March 2022.
04:14Also, the two treaties put on the table by Sergey Lavrov in December 2021 were so moderate, so reasonable, that Jens Stoltenberg and Joe Biden should just dismiss them out of hand and refuse even to talk about them.
04:34I mean, that was a major, major miscalculation on the part of the West.
04:42It's difficult to lose.
04:44I mean, no one likes to lose a football game.
04:46No one wants to lose a tennis match.
04:49And you would think that we, by now, have learned to lose on occasion and to move forward.
04:56Well, I mean, Alfred, it's not losing a sports match.
05:01It's losing your country.
05:03And that's really what's at stake here.
05:05You know, Alexander, Ian's absolutely right.
05:08I mean, a lot of the circumstances are different.
05:11We've had this war that never should have started in the first place.
05:14And Alfred is making reference, was made reference to the two, you know, treaties or demands or ultimate, whatever you want to call it, that came from Moscow in December of 2021 that were dismissed out of hand.
05:27But, Alexander, those are essentially the main outlines of what Russia will want if this meeting happens in Istanbul on May 15th.
05:37It hasn't changed very much.
05:39A lot of things have happened in between.
05:41But Russia's security demands have not changed at all.
05:44No, but the difference between now and three years ago is that three years ago, the West was still speaking in one voice, essentially.
05:59They had this crazy idea that they could actually defeat Russia.
06:04Three years later, they're no longer speaking with one voice.
06:09In fact, their strongest voice is dissenting openly.
06:12That's the United States.
06:14And also, deep down, even if they don't want to admit it, they know they can't defeat Russia.
06:20All they can do now is just fight with the lives, using the lives of more Ukrainians to prolong this war, you know, with this hope that somehow, somehow, we can Russia at least a little bit, because they never had plan B.
06:39Those who started the war in Ukraine never had a plan B.
06:45And this is the thing.
06:46And this is the thing.
06:46The war mongers are now in Europe, Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris, and they don't have a reserve option.
06:55So for them to admit defeat and to say, oh, OK, Russia was right in December 2021, that's the end, not the end of their political careers, the end of the EU as we know it.
07:11Well, and we all know, we all know when it gets to a certain outcome, I don't want to say peace yet, but a certain outcome, there's going to be a forensic study of how this thing started.
07:23And all of us are very well aware of it, but the general public isn't.
07:27I'm very proud to say on this program during the entire course of this conflict, I haven't changed my position whatsoever.
07:33I haven't changed the narrative, everybody likes to say.
07:38You know, what is Trump's role in all of this?
07:41I don't want to say he's the deal maker, deal breaker, but I think we can say he's a wild card.
07:47No, I think, as Alexander said, he's actually smashed the European consensus, indeed, the Western consensus on what's still on Ukraine.
07:57There was complete unanimity before.
08:00He's seen clearly that the war in Ukraine is unwinnable by the Ukrainian side.
08:04He doesn't want to keep pumping billions of US paid.
08:07He's got other bigger priorities on his plate, including the Middle East and, of course, China and Taiwan.
08:12So actually, hopefully, in my view, what he's done has been to completely break the Western consensus and say, actually, look, guys, we need to step back and recognize that this isn't going in the right direction for us.
08:25We need to set a new course.
08:27It's in the best interest of everybody that Ukraine and Russia reach some sort of peaceful settlement that involves compromises on both sides.
08:35And that's going to involve a painful reckoning for the Europeans, of course, in the process.
08:39But actually, I think his role has been fundamentally incredibly helpful.
08:44And I also agree that Wyckoff has played a fantastic job throughout this process.
08:49You know, Alfred, it's really quite remarkable that you, you know, when we are, when American foreign policy is explained to us about, you know, the safe hands and the adults in the room, all of these.
09:05And this is, and this is no affront to you, Ian, you're being a professional diplomat.
09:09But, you know, here's a real estate mogul coming out of nowhere, and he's ended up being like the diplomat of the globe right now.
09:17It's really remarkable.
09:18And because of that, I'm positive, you know, anything that gets us towards peace, even if he's not very well grounded in the issues, his inclinations are in the right place.
09:30Yes, Alfred.
09:30Alfred.
09:31Yeah, it's his instincts.
09:33And these instincts are missing in the Western capitals.
09:40Pierre Starmer and Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, they're on another planet.
09:47And they don't want to be humiliated.
09:50They don't want to lose face.
09:51So they're doing what the Germans say, the Fluchtnaforn, the Fuit en Avon, and they're talking about a European tribunal, penal tribunal, to try Russian war crimes.
10:09Now, what can be more distant from reality than that?
10:16And are they aware that since 2014, not now, 2014, the Russians have been meticulously, systematically keeping book on all war crimes and atrocities committed by Ukrainians,
10:34by mercenaries from the United Kingdom, from France, and...
10:43Perpetrated against the people, against the people in the Donbass.
10:48The targeted assassinations of journalists, targeted assassinations of scientists, etc.
10:57The number of crimes committed by the West is so enormous that you would think that they would feel, you know, better not talk about that.
11:12Better not bring in...
11:14That brings up a good point.
11:15Let me go to Alexander.
11:16It's such an interesting point because they don't have the economic power to, at least in a military-industrial complex.
11:25Not like what Russia has.
11:26It's an integrated military-industrial complex.
11:29The United States, more or less, has the same thing.
11:31The Europeans don't have it.
11:34They don't have the same kind of coordination.
11:37They really don't have the money anymore.
11:39They're just going to have to borrow it.
11:40So, Alexander, what are they trading in?
11:44Their moral standing?
11:46Is that what they think they derive their power from?
11:49Because in geopolitics, moral standing doesn't mean squat.
11:53Go ahead, Alexander.
11:55Well, yes.
11:56But also, they're engaging in a pretty big bluff, actually, on a grand scale.
12:01And, you know, they were doing a similar thing to what Netanyahu was trying to do, was keep the U.S. engaged and maybe, just maybe, hope that some event will make the United States commit to something they don't want to commit to.
12:21They were buying time.
12:22They were hoping that something would happen, that, I don't know, that Russia would be provoked by Zelensky more than it had been before, that maybe even the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye, it would be attacked.
12:37And that would be used as some kind of a false flag to accuse Russia.
12:41You know, they were hoping for a miracle of some sort that would make the United States stay in the game.
12:48But that didn't happen because they did not realize just how serious Donald Trump was to stop U.S. engagement in this war.
12:58Nobody took him seriously enough, and Trump has shown that he's very serious about this.
13:04He does not want war between the United States and Russia.
13:09That is now clear to everyone.
13:12Alexander, let me ask you a question, and maybe all of you can address it in the second half of the program.
13:17Has the United States successfully, at least perception-wise, moved from a co-belligerent to a mediator?
13:25Because that's what Trump wants to be seen as, a mediator, though the United States has been a co-belligerent the entire time.
13:31Alexander, before we go to the break.
13:33I think it has.
13:35I think it has.
13:36Also, let's not disregard the help he's had from Moscow.
13:40I think Vladimir Putin has allowed Trump to appear as a mediator.
13:45You know, I think Putin, Vladimir Putin, has gone out of his way to help Trump appear as the mediator that he wanted to appear as.
13:57Because I think Vladimir Putin really believes—
14:03Okay, well, I have to interrupt here.
14:05We're going to talk about the bilateral relationship in the second half of the program.
14:09Gentlemen, I'm jumping in.
14:10We're going to go to a hard break.
14:11And after that hard break, we'll continue our discussion on Ukraine.
14:13Stay with our team.
14:15Welcome back to Crosstalk, where all things are considered.
14:21I'm Peter Lavelle.
14:22To remind you, we're discussing Ukraine.
14:31All right, let's go back to London here.
14:36Let's continue talking about Trump's role in all of this, because I think it's extremely important.
14:41I mean, obviously, the Europeans are playing this kabuki theater of deflection and blame game.
14:49It's going to be who's going to be stuck holding the hot potato, proverbially.
14:54And they've angled themselves to doing that.
14:56I think a lot of wind was taken out of their sails when Putin and Trump intervened.
15:02I mean, again, going back to looking at these guys on a train, it looked like a bunker to me.
15:08And they're waiting for wonder weapons to save their situation.
15:12Seriously.
15:12I mean, it's really quite pathetic.
15:14All right.
15:15But, you know, and what's important to me is peace here.
15:20And who gets credit for it?
15:22I could care less.
15:23I want to see the young men in the killing fields.
15:27I want all that to come to an end.
15:30So, I mean, has the United States successfully, in the public mind, been able to go from what I would say a co-belligerent to a mediator?
15:40I'm not sure how much, you know, the members of the public, certainly the UK, understand diplomacy.
15:45But from what I can see, substantively, that shift has happened.
15:48If you look at the Americans' voting patterns just in the United Nations, where they're voting alongside Russia against European states.
15:56I mean, that is a huge shift.
15:57You know, you look at the direct bilateral talks between the U.S. and the Russian delegations that have taken place in Saudi Arabia.
16:04You look at the shuttle diplomacy of Steve Witkoff actually meeting the president of Russia personally.
16:10You know, President Putin personally meeting an emissary of Donald Trump.
16:13I mean, these are big, big shifts that are happening right now, and the Europeans are annoyed about it.
16:20Well, Alfred, also an important issue in play here, something that's important to Moscow.
16:27And something that's important to Washington is they want an improvement of bilateral relations.
16:34And I don't know where that is in the hierarchy.
16:36Is that more important than Ukraine or peace in Ukraine more important than the bilateral relationship?
16:41I really don't know.
16:43But it's obviously that that's key.
16:45And Trump has to be painfully aware.
16:49He's expended political capital, a lot of political capital, actually, to improve relations with Moscow.
16:55So that's going to give a little bit more oomph to Trump in his loyal – you know, Marco Rubio apparently is going to be in Turkey at the same time.
17:04You know, I hope he's put on a train and sent somewhere because I don't think he should be trusted.
17:10So, I mean, the bilateral relationship is at stake, I would say, because of what could happen if it does happen in Istanbul.
17:19Alfred?
17:20Well, caution is called for.
17:23The United States is not just Donald Trump.
17:27The United States has a very long track record of breaking agreements, breaking treaties, from breaking out words to Gorbachev in 1989-1990, to the Minsk Accords, to the Turkey negotiations in March 2022.
17:53So, you can't quite trust the United States.
17:56You can't trust the Europeans in any event.
17:59But caution will be, I am sure, Putin and certainly Sergei Lavrov is very much aware of that.
18:10So, what's important is that Russia's position be very clear.
18:16Russia has two demands, one being security, neutrality for Ukraine.
18:22The other one being the self-determination of the Russian majorities in Crimea and in the Donbass.
18:31That seems to be forgotten most of the time.
18:34People talk about these territories.
18:36They talk about territorial integrity.
18:38But I say, how about asking the people of these territories whether they would accept ever being ruled again by Kiev.
18:52It's like asking the Albanians of Kosovo whether they would accept being reincorporated into Serbia.
19:01I mean, this is a non-starter.
19:04So, let's focus on that.
19:06What can Russia do by way of a concession?
19:10Russia can show its readiness to help rebuild Ukraine.
19:16Again, there are $300 billion of Russian assets that have been frozen in the West.
19:26Maybe Russia could say, okay, you already took them anyhow.
19:29You may want to use these $300 billion for the rebuilding of the Ukraine.
19:37And that would be, I think, a significant concession.
19:42But I would not be-
19:42Well, I mean, I agree.
19:44But I think that would be kind of lower down the list and after a general settlement had been agreed to.
19:52But so, Alexander, when push comes to shove, we all know the Russian position.
20:00The Russian position hasn't really changed, okay?
20:03There's some nuances.
20:04Zelensky, does he have the power to do it?
20:10Or, I mean, and also, even if he does come to some kind of agreement, can he fly back to Kiev if he does it?
20:19Yeah, big question.
20:22But does he have the legitimacy, first of all?
20:25You know, his term has expired.
20:27I mean, we're all forgetting about that.
20:30Not we in this room.
20:31But, I mean, generally, the media would like to forget this convenient little fact.
20:38He's no longer the legitimate president of Ukraine.
20:42So, you know, all sorts of problems.
20:44But, yeah, you're right.
20:46Russia's fundamental demands haven't changed.
20:50And it's totally understandable.
20:51I mean, and it's not, let's not say it's Russia that's demanding anything.
20:56You know, if NATO hadn't decided to expand back in 1997, we wouldn't have this problem.
21:03And we still don't have the true answer to the question, why did NATO continue to exist after the Warsaw Pact was disbanded?
21:12We don't have a good answer to that.
21:14There is no satisfactory answer.
21:16If that had happened, we would probably have had peace in Europe.
21:21And we would have had Russia integrated into Europe, not as part of the EU.
21:29But still, it would have been, the situation in Europe would have been normalized.
21:34It's the expansion of NATO that led to the Russian reaction.
21:40Well, I agree with you completely, but I would rephrase it.
21:44And I'm going to go to Ian on this.
21:46The North Atlantic ethos, let's put it that way, can't accept having a European security structure that includes Russia.
21:57They can conceive of it collectively as against Russia.
22:01That needs to change.
22:02I said in my introduction, NATO is facing a strategic defeat.
22:07Your thoughts?
22:09Well, people too often make the mistake of thinking about NATO as a military alliance.
22:14It's not.
22:14It's a bureaucratic, undemocratically accountable grouping of nations, much like the European Union.
22:21And people need to kind of think about it in that way.
22:23It has a bureaucratic need to exist.
22:26That means it needs a rationale.
22:27Its rationale is the protection of European security against the threat.
22:31What's the threat?
22:31The threats of Russia.
22:33So actually, if you think about it through the bureaucratic lens, you realize that, in fact, it suffers from exactly the same faults and failings that the European Union is suffering right now.
22:43As Europe starts slowly, unfortunately, to unravel.
22:46And I'm very much a pro-European.
22:49Well, you know, Alfred, Donald Trump said, I think it was last week, in a kind of very convoluted interview on one of the major cable networks, that he's saving Ukraine.
23:03He didn't use the word sovereign state, meaning he can be the savior of what remains of Ukraine, and that can be defined as a victory.
23:16In his mind, that is kind of a victory.
23:20And if that's how you want to frame it, you know, the West has had so many different narrative shifts about this conflict.
23:27Trump is going to say, I saved Ukraine.
23:29I mean, in a way, it's kind of ingenious.
23:32I mean, I don't know if he came up with it on his own, but he's the savior of Ukraine.
23:37And I don't know if he can get his people to sell it that way.
23:40It might work.
23:41Go ahead, Alfred.
23:42Perception, public relations, and also propaganda is so important.
23:48And we have sold, in the West, NATO, as a defensive alliance.
23:53It has absolutely nothing to do with defense.
23:56It is a war coalition.
23:58It is a military alliance to threaten other countries.
24:03And it is not at all a legitimate regional organization under Article 52 of the UN Charter.
24:11So if you want to sell peace in Ukraine, saving Ukraine, certainly use that line.
24:19But the New York Times is not going to use that line.
24:22Washington Post is not going to use it.
24:24CNN is not going to use it.
24:25The Wall Street Journal is not going to use it.
24:27So we know that Trump is against a whole cabal of the mainstream media, and they will not
24:38buy his narrative.
24:40But I'm glad that the narrative is actually being put out.
24:45And we are repeating it.
24:48And the Intercept will repeat it.
24:51And Max Blumenthal and Grayzone will be repeating it, et cetera.
24:55And gradually, we're making inroads.
25:00Well, Alexander, how is this all going to end?
25:03Because the way it should end is a victory for European security.
25:10I think all of us on this program would like to see that.
25:14But I don't see the guys in the train car wanting that.
25:18They want a strategic defeat of Russia.
25:21They don't want peace in Europe.
25:23They're very different things.
25:25We're for one.
25:26They're for the other.
25:27Yeah.
25:28Absolutely.
25:29The present ruling elites in the EU are not interested in peace because that would mean
25:34a Russian victory in their own eyes.
25:38Because the only thing that's acceptable to them is a Russian strategic defeat.
25:45So we have a problem.
25:46And the thing is, the people of Europe are recognizing the problem.
25:51So they're voting against these elites.
25:54So guess what these EU elites are doing?
25:57Well, they're not recognizing it.
25:59They are actually eliminating candidates who are anti-war.
26:06They did it in France.
26:08They did it in Romania.
26:11They're doing it in Germany.
26:13So that's the problem.
26:15The problem is there's this panic in Europe over peace breaking out.
26:20And that's the main problem in the European continent.
26:24It's going to end with a Russian victory.
26:26And the only way that it can be palatable for the rest of Europe is if we get new leadership
26:34in Brussels, in Berlin, in London, in Paris.
26:38People who are realists, who realize that Russia is not this boogeyman, that Russia is not some
26:46sort of devil in disguise, that it's a country that wants to live with other countries.
26:52Just to look at Russia as a normal country, the way it was looked in Europe for hundreds
26:57of years before the Bolshevik Revolution.
27:00So that's a tall task for somebody like Ursula von der Leyen, for Emmanuel Macron.
27:06But, you know, for all the coke beans in the train wagon that we saw.
27:13Well, in the train wagon, I have to jump in here, gentlemen.
27:16We've run out of time.
27:17But the train wagon, it's not the coalition of the willing.
27:20It's the coalition of the defeated.
27:23OK, I want to thank my guests in London, Geneva and in Belgrade.
27:27And of course, I want to thank our viewers for watching us here at RTC.
27:30See you next time.
27:30Remember, crosstalk rules.