Russia strengthens its military command by appointing a hardline general ahead of a major offensive, signaling serious escalation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Zelensky appears to capitulate by agreeing to direct negotiations with Moscow, opening a potential path to peace talks. The high-stakes moment could redefine the conflict’s future. 🌍🔥
#RussiaUkraine #MilitaryOffensive #Zelensky #PeaceTalks #DirectNegotiations #AlexanderMercouris #Geopolitics #WarUpdate #Kremlin #UkraineConflict #Diplomacy #MilitaryStrategy #BreakingNews #ConflictResolution #GlobalPolitics #Russia #Ukraine #WarAndPeace #Negotiations #InternationalRelations
#RussiaUkraine #MilitaryOffensive #Zelensky #PeaceTalks #DirectNegotiations #AlexanderMercouris #Geopolitics #WarUpdate #Kremlin #UkraineConflict #Diplomacy #MilitaryStrategy #BreakingNews #ConflictResolution #GlobalPolitics #Russia #Ukraine #WarAndPeace #Negotiations #InternationalRelations
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:00Good day. Today is Friday, 16th May 2025, and as I make this program,
00:00:09news has come through that the first meeting, the first direct talks between the Russians and the
00:00:15Ukrainians since March 2020, have taken place in the Domolbache Palace in Istanbul.
00:00:24There was a lot of confusion over the last couple of hours about the format of the talks.
00:00:34There were suggestions that there would be three separate meetings. The first would be a meeting in
00:00:42which Turkey, the United States, and Ukraine would meet with each other in some kind of format. Then
00:00:49there would be a second meeting with the Americans, the Ukrainians, and the Turks all participating
00:00:58together. The Americans, the Ukrainians, the Turks, and I should quickly add the Russians
00:01:03all participating. That would be the plenary meeting, supposedly. And then, supposedly,
00:01:10there was to be yet another meeting later in the day where the Americans, the Ukrainians,
00:01:17and the Turks would get together again. And I think a lot of people were becoming very nervous
00:01:23about this and were saying, wouldn't this be completely lopsided? You'd have one Russian
00:01:31delegation facing three delegations, the Ukrainian delegation and the Turkish and
00:01:38American delegations also, with the Turks and the Americans in effect acting as allies or sort
00:01:48of allies of Ukraine over the course of this conflict. But it's clear to me that this is to
00:01:54misunderstand exactly what took place. And perhaps before I proceed with what has happened, the actual
00:02:02negotiations between the Russians and the Ukrainians, it might be just helpful to clarify
00:02:07this. The first is that yesterday in the evening, the Turkish foreign minister and other officials
00:02:15of the Turkish foreign ministry had a meeting with Vladimir Medinsky and the rest of the Russian
00:02:23delegation. This was intended, I have no doubt, to sort out protocol questions in advance of the
00:02:34substantive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine today. Then early this morning, after
00:02:45the Ukrainian delegation belatedly arrived, a similar meeting also took place in the Turkish
00:02:54foreign ministry in which the Turkish foreign minister and his officials met with the Ukrainians
00:03:01and explained to them the same protocol issues. Then the substantive talks took place. They took
00:03:11place, as I said, in the same room in the Domolbache Palace where the March and April 2022 negotiations
00:03:20took place. At this meeting, the two parties were introduced to each other by the Turkish foreign
00:03:31minister, Mr. Fidan, who made a very interesting speech, which I will touch on shortly. And then
00:03:39the Turks and apparently the Americans who also were there, left the room and left the Ukrainians
00:03:49and the Russians to negotiate with each other, to begin the direct negotiations with each other.
00:03:57So there was no succession of meetings in the way that I think many people assume,
00:04:03and it is not the case that the Turks and the Americans were physically present
00:04:08in the room whilst the negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Russians were taking place.
00:04:14I think this is just one point I want to clarify to resolve some of the misunderstandings that
00:04:22have been floating around. The parties present in the room were the Ukrainians and the Russians.
00:04:28They were the parties that negotiated with each other. Now, for all I know, and it is very likely
00:04:35the case, the Ukrainians have indeed had a meeting, or will have a meeting shortly, with the Turks
00:04:42and the Americans to brief them on what took place. It is not inconceivable that the Russians
00:04:48will do the same, but it is not the same as saying that the Americans and the Turks were
00:04:55physically present in the negotiations. So this is just to clarify that misconception about what
00:05:02happened. Now, how did we get to this point? Because what we had today was direct negotiations
00:05:14between Russia and Ukraine. The Ukrainians and the Russians were physically present
00:05:22in the same room. They were talking to each other. They had discussions with each other.
00:05:29In the first opening minutes of the meeting, the ones where the negotiating teams were introduced
00:05:37to each other by the Turkish foreign minister, and where each of the two delegations made their
00:05:44opening statements, which, by the way, departed from nothing. They restated all their original
00:05:50position. The Russians and the Ukrainians spoke, respectively, in Russian and Ukrainian. Of course,
00:05:58all the Ukrainians speak Russian. And I, for one, would not be surprised if, once the doors were all
00:06:06shut, the entire discussion took place in Russian, which I understand was what happened over the
00:06:12course of the previous negotiations, the ones that took place in March 2022 in the same room.
00:06:20But anyway, these are direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. So, how did this come about?
00:06:27After all, Zelensky has categorically ruled out direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
00:06:37He said that these cannot happen. He has floated the possibility of having direct negotiations
00:06:43between Russia and Ukraine if there is a ceasefire. He's insisted that the ceasefire must come first.
00:06:52He's refused to cancel or rescind his October 2022 decree, which forbids exactly what took place
00:07:06today, direct negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Russians. That decree quite expressly
00:07:15says that there can be no negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Russians.
00:07:20He has, at various times, said that even though other Ukrainian officials are affected by the
00:07:29decree so that they cannot negotiate with the Russians, he himself is not subject to it.
00:07:37Something I've never understood, but anyway, that's what he's always said, that he himself
00:07:42is not subject to that decree, so any negotiations with the Russians must be conducted personally by
00:07:53him and by no one else. He has said that he's only prepared to negotiate with President Putin
00:08:03because he's not going to waste his time talking to President Putin's underlings. In other words,
00:08:11the current negotiating team. Well, we've now had negotiations between the Ukrainians
00:08:19and the Russians. The October 2022 decree has not been rescinded, and Zelensky himself
00:08:27did not participate in the discussions. He was not there in the Donald Archer Palace. He went
00:08:35back from Ankara, where he went, he went on to Albania, where he's going to meet the European
00:08:43leaders, including his dear friends Keir Starmer, and I presume Macron, and Metz, who I believe,
00:08:51certainly in Starmer's case, are also there in Albania. So, nothing, none of the conditions
00:08:58that Zelensky has set down prior to the start of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine
00:09:10have been fulfilled. There is no ceasefire. Putin is not there to conduct the negotiations.
00:09:16He is not conducting the negotiations. Negotiating teams from the Russians and
00:09:23the Ukrainians are conducting the negotiations, and he is not himself involved. It would seem,
00:09:33on the face of it, that not only is everything that Zelensky has been saying for the last
00:09:42two plus years being set aside, thrown into the dustbin, but his own October 2022 decree
00:09:53has just been rendered a nonsense. It hasn't been rescinded, it hasn't been cancelled,
00:10:00yet in spite of that, the negotiations, the direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine
00:10:07have taken place. Well, I was saying yesterday in my program that the Russians have been going
00:10:13about this in a calm, professional way, even as everybody else goes mad around them, and,
00:10:20well, in a kind of a way, that madness has persisted today, though maybe some of it is
00:10:29quietly abating. Now, the first thing to say is that throughout yesterday,
00:10:36this incredibly disruptive behavior that Vladimir Zelensky has been engaged in
00:10:42throughout the last week, in fact, many would say throughout the last three plus years,
00:10:48but certainly throughout the last week, continued. He went to Ankara instead of Istanbul.
00:10:56He refused to meet with the Russians. He spoke with President Erdogan of Turkey for three hours,
00:11:08and that, I think, provides an important clue to understand what happened. Anyway,
00:11:15he met with Erdogan for three hours. He then came out of that meeting, as far as I could see,
00:11:23in a cold rage. He gave an extraordinary press conference. He often gives very strange press
00:11:30conferences, but this was extraordinary, even by his standards. It went on for a long time.
00:11:40As far as I know, he didn't actually take any questions. His comments, as far as I was concerned,
00:11:49amounted, in effect, to a kind of rant. He ranted at Putin. He ranted at the Russian negotiators.
00:11:57He said that the Russian negotiators were nobodies, and really weren't people that could
00:12:04be taken into account. He made it absolutely clear that, as far as he was concerned,
00:12:11these nobodies were not in a position to agree to anything. In other words, he spoke incredibly
00:12:21disrespectfully about Russia's negotiators, who he'd kept waiting in Istanbul for a whole day.
00:12:32It's worth pointing out that the meeting between the Ukrainians and the Russians was originally
00:12:38timed to start at 10 o'clock yesterday morning. Then it was put back to 6 p.m. in the afternoon.
00:12:49Of course, no meeting took place, because Zelensky wasn't going to send his negotiating team
00:12:58to Istanbul. He kept everybody guessing about whether he was going to send any sort of negotiating
00:13:03team to Istanbul at all. He said that the Russians clearly were not interested in peace.
00:13:11He said that the only topic that he's interested in is an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
00:13:16And he went on demanding sanctions. He wanted the sanctions that the United States and the
00:13:23Europeans apparently promised him last week, including over the course of that, as is now clear,
00:13:35disastrous and massively ill-conceived trip to Kiev by Macron, Stahmer, Metz, and Tusk,
00:13:46the one where they gave Vladimir Putin a two-day ultimatum to agree a 30-day ceasefire,
00:13:56warning him of sanctions if he didn't. Anyway, Zelensky was clearly promised those sanctions
00:14:06on that day. He was led to believe that the United States was in agreement with that policy
00:14:12and would impose those sanctions on Russia. He is furious that nothing like that has happened.
00:14:21He is furious that he has been put in a position where instead he's been asked to negotiate with
00:14:28the Russians, and it all boiled over over the course of this, as I say, rant that he gave yesterday.
00:14:36And again, as I said, he demanded the sanctions which he thought he was promised. He seems to
00:14:42expect that these sanctions would be granted, and even as he has acted in this extraordinarily
00:14:49disruptive way throughout the whole of the last week, he seemed to feel that he's entitled to
00:14:56these sanctions and had, frankly, the temerity to say that unless these sanctions were imposed,
00:15:05or at least these sanctions had to be imposed because supposedly they are the only way to get
00:15:11the Russians to negotiate seriously, to achieve peace. This, even as a Russian delegation has
00:15:21been kept waiting for a whole day in a different city in Turkey from the one that Zelensky chose
00:15:30to go to, kept waiting for a whole day before the Ukrainians finally showed up.
00:15:38So, the fact that Zelensky spoke in this furious manner after his meeting with Erdogan, the fact
00:15:47that he's now flying to Tirana, to Albania, to meet with his European friends, no doubt to get
00:15:55their hugs and comfort and reassurance, well, that brings us back to what must have happened
00:16:04over the course of that three-hour meeting with Erdogan. Because, as far as I can tell,
00:16:14Zelensky came to Turkey with no intention of engaging the Russians in any kind of negotiation.
00:16:23He didn't want to meet with the Russians. He didn't want to send a delegation to meet with
00:16:28the Russians. He obviously wasn't going to go and meet with the Russians himself. This entirely
00:16:35bogus, phony narrative that he has spun, which far too many people have fallen for over the last
00:16:43week, that this is a weak Russian delegation when it is actually a very strong one, that Putin
00:16:50himself should come and take charge of the negotiations, which is complete nonsense, as I
00:16:55have patiently tried to explain in program after program, both on this channel and on the Duran.
00:17:05Well, all of that, apparently, he came to Ankara, still insisting on, still saying he was probably
00:17:14trying to get Erdogan to come over to his side, to get Erdogan perhaps to put pressure on Putin
00:17:24to come to Istanbul to meet with Zelensky, probably with the hope that Putin would refuse
00:17:36and that Erdogan and Trump and all of the others would then move forward and give Zelensky
00:17:44the sanctions against Russia that he wanted. Well, he then encountered, when he finally met
00:17:54with Erdogan, an Erdogan who was clearly not interested in any of this. The fact that this
00:18:01was a meeting that lasted for three hours strongly suggests to me that there was a strong disagreement
00:18:08between the two men, quite possibly a row. No doubt, Erdogan, who has good relations,
00:18:15at least at the moment, with Trump, was in regular touch with Trump and with the Americans.
00:18:22And what Zelensky probably experienced over the course of his meeting with Erdogan was
00:18:34something akin to the third degree. He was told, probably by the Turks and indirectly through
00:18:44Erdogan by the Americans, that he absolutely did need to send a delegation to negotiate
00:18:53with the Russians today. And he ducked and weaved, and knowing what Zelensky's like,
00:19:01he was probably quite rude. And for all I know, it went beyond that. Though, of course,
00:19:06I wasn't present in the meeting, so I don't know. I don't know whether there were raised voices,
00:19:11but with Zelensky, that is perfectly likely. But eventually, after three grueling hours,
00:19:18and three hours is a very, very long time for a meeting. As I said, it clearly shows acrimony and
00:19:27difficulty over the course of the meeting. Anyway, after those three hours, Zelensky realised
00:19:35that he had no choice but to send a delegation to meet with the Russians in Istanbul.
00:19:44I don't know what the Turks and the Americans said to him, but of course,
00:19:52Zelensky knows perfectly well the extraordinary power that Trump has over him and over Ukraine.
00:20:01You must recall how in March, after the disastrous Oval Office meeting,
00:20:07Trump stopped all military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. He almost
00:20:13certainly will not want to be put in that position again. No doubt, and quite plausibly,
00:20:20over the course of the meeting, the European leaders were contacted. They were probably told
00:20:27by the Americans and the Turks also to get Zelensky to come round. And one way or the other,
00:20:37Zelensky found that he was left with no choice but to send his delegation to
00:20:44Istanbul, which he did in the evening yesterday. And, well, there we go. And that delegation headed
00:20:54by the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Rustem Umarov, who is incidentally a Crimean Tatar
00:21:03and therefore probably speaks Turkish, just to say. Anyway, this delegation went to
00:21:11Istanbul and it appears to have been hurriedly put together. One wonders whether these people
00:21:19were flown in from Kiev or how it was done, but it does seem to be a real delegation made of
00:21:27people from the various ministries in Kiev. It has something of the look of the Russian delegation
00:21:35about it, but without the kind of coherence that the Russian one has and, of course, without the
00:21:41experience that the Russian one does. Anyway, that, I think, is what happened. Now, obviously,
00:21:47to some extent, I am speculating, but I do think these speculations are without foundation.
00:21:57A three-hour meeting, and bear in mind that Zelensky was only in Ankara for five hours,
00:22:06a three-hour meeting is a very long meeting indeed, especially if, as was certainly the case
00:22:14in this instance, it was to discuss one specific issue, which is the meeting in Istanbul that has
00:22:23taken place between the Russians and the Ukrainians today. Now, Ian Proud, former British
00:22:30diplomat, and I'm going to say this bluntly, I consider myself a friend of his, by the way.
00:22:37We only got to know each other over the last couple of months, but I consider him one of the
00:22:42best and most sane people in Britain on this whole topic. He has now written a fine piece
00:22:52on his blog, The Peacemonger, in which he says that from this point on, the best thing for
00:22:58Zelensky to do is to stay out of the negotiations entirely, not involve himself any further in the
00:23:05negotiations, to let his negotiating team and the Russians to work this out together and to see
00:23:14whether a consensus between them might be reached. That is going to prove extraordinarily difficult,
00:23:23but if Zelensky involves himself directly in the discussions, then one can absolutely guarantee
00:23:31that these discussions will go nowhere. We will instead get performances and theatrics
00:23:38and all of that kind of thing. Now, having discussed all of this, there is one further
00:23:44thing I do have to say, and by the way, Alex Christoforo and I touched upon it in a program
00:23:51that we did on the Duran, which you will find on the Duran probably later today, which is that
00:23:59Zelensky's behavior is all of the piece with the way that Zelensky behaves.
00:24:06But what is unfathomable, what is truly extraordinary, is that everybody else involved
00:24:13in this crisis, the Russians, the Europeans, the Americans, the Turks, everybody, instead of
00:24:25telling Zelensky to shut up, tolerates this sort of behavior from him.
00:24:33I understand that there is sympathy for him. I understand that he is the leader of an embattled
00:24:41country, and inevitably that will cause others to cut him a certain degree of slack. But the
00:24:49way he has acted over the last week, and the way in particular that he acted yesterday, is
00:24:57extraordinary and extraordinarily disruptive. It is incredible that the Russians were prepared to
00:25:08put up with it, that they were prepared to sit and wait it out in Istanbul. Most other negotiations,
00:25:16in most other negotiations that I've been involved in, if one of the parties behaved in this kind of
00:25:21way, well, the negotiating team, in this case the Russian negotiating team, would have been saying
00:25:27enough's enough, we wasted our time, they would be packing their suitcases and bags and flying back
00:25:33to Moscow. Well, they didn't, almost certainly because they had instructions from Moscow to stay,
00:25:41and because the Russians have probably been on the receiving end of urgent calls
00:25:52from Turkey and possibly the United States to keep them there and to let them stay.
00:26:00But anyway, many, and I suspect some people in Moscow, will ask, why do the Russians continue
00:26:10to indulge Zelensky in this manner? For the record, I think they were right to do so,
00:26:17and I think they've come out looking better and stronger as a result, but many others will take a
00:26:23different view. But all right, that's the Russians. Why does everybody else tolerate this behavior
00:26:31as much as they do? Briefly, during the Oval Office meeting in February, Trump and Vance
00:26:39and the Americans responded in the only appropriate way to this kind of disruptive
00:26:47behavior one gets from Zelensky. But the Europeans, in particular, instead of
00:26:56pushing back, instead of telling Zelensky this sort of behavior is outrageous and cannot be
00:27:04tolerated, instead of telling Zelensky that ultimately you are the leader of Ukraine,
00:27:12you make a decision. Either when you get a proposal like the one you got from Putin
00:27:19on Saturday, you reject it and say that you are not going to send a delegation to Istanbul,
00:27:28or, alternatively, you agree to negotiate in Istanbul, rescind your October 2022
00:27:37decree, and send a proper accredited delegation to meet with the Russians. That was the proper
00:27:47appropriate choice or choices that a leader in Zelensky's position might have followed.
00:27:56You don't put on the extraordinary display that we've seen put on over the last week.
00:28:03Nobody does this. Everybody tolerates this behavior. Everybody pretends that this is normal
00:28:10and acceptable in some ways. Everybody accepts, or at least everybody but the Russians,
00:28:16goes along with this fiction that this is a weak Russian delegation and that the right thing was
00:28:22for Putin to go there, which is, as I said, completely absurd. And, of course, tolerating
00:28:30this simply guarantees that we're going to get more of the same. And that, inevitably,
00:28:37is going to complicate and disrupt any further attempts to negotiate seriously and to achieve
00:28:45peace. Anyway, that's all I want to say about this. It's something I do have certain feelings
00:28:51about. But anyway, there it is. That's what I wanted to say about it. Now, as I started making
00:28:59this program, news came in that the meeting between the Ukrainians and the Russians lasted just two
00:29:06hours, that the Russians – and this is according to Reuters – said that a ceasefire could be agreed,
00:29:15but only if the Ukrainians withdrew their forces from all of the territory of the four regions,
00:29:22including Zaporozhye, Kherson, and Donetsk, where the Ukrainians still control territory.
00:29:31Obviously, that is unacceptable to the Ukrainians. Before the meeting,
00:29:37the Ukrainian delegation and the Russian delegation set out what their objectives were.
00:29:44Medinsky, the leader of the Russian delegation, gave yesterday a very short statement in which
00:29:54he said that the remit of the Russian delegation – its mandate – had been discussed and approved
00:30:04at the meeting in Moscow chaired by Putin, which I discussed in my program yesterday. The one
00:30:13which the military also attended in force, that the Russian delegation has all of the
00:30:24plenipotentiary powers that a negotiating team would normally be granted,
00:30:32that their objective was to move forward towards agreeing a final sustainable peace settlement
00:30:44which would address the root causes of the conflict. This has, of course, been the consistent
00:30:49Russian line ever since the resumption of talks and negotiations began. Medinsky went out of his
00:30:59way to say what I have been saying again in program after program, that the Russians regard
00:31:09the negotiations between themselves and the Ukrainians which took place today as a resumption
00:31:16and a continuation of the talks between Russia and Ukraine which were broken off in Istanbul
00:31:25in March 2022, and that the Russians would be looking to see whether, through the negotiations,
00:31:34whether ways forward could be found and whether solutions could be agreed.
00:31:41Now, I notice that there is some confusion in some of the media outlets. The word solutions
00:31:53in Medinsky's statement was initially translated as compromises,
00:32:02and that also appeared on some of the Russian statements, some of the Russian statements or
00:32:07descriptions of this statement of Medinsky's. But as the day wore on, I noticed that the word
00:32:14compromises was deleted in Russian accounts, and instead the Russians began to speak about
00:32:24solutions. I don't know exactly what Medinsky said, but this whole topic of whether Medinsky
00:32:38said compromises or solutions, the way it was handled by the Russian media, in effect,
00:32:47shows that the Russians are not really looking for compromises. They're looking for solutions,
00:32:53and the solutions are the ones that Putin outlined in his speech to the foreign ministry
00:32:59on the 14th of June 2024. Now, I don't have the full statement that the Ukrainians provided,
00:33:09but I do know two things that they said. First of all, they completely reject any suggestion that
00:33:15this meeting today, or the negotiations that are now taking place, have any connection at all
00:33:23to the meetings that happened in Istanbul in 2022. They're not bound in any way by what took place
00:33:32or what was agreed in Istanbul 2022. As far as they are concerned, these discussions that are
00:33:41taking place now are not a resumption of those previous discussions. They are an entirely new
00:33:51set of discussions. In other words, the slate has supposedly been wiped clean. Any concessions that
00:34:06Ukraine made in 2022, it no longer feels bound by, and the talks must now proceed on the basis
00:34:17that they do so from a blank sheet of paper. The Russians are not going to accept that,
00:34:23and I should say that that is, in my opinion, a completely unrealistic and entirely unsustainable
00:34:30position, given that Ukraine is in a much weaker position than it was during those previous
00:34:40negotiations in February, March, April 2022. The Ukrainians are not in a position to take back
00:34:51their previous concessions, and the Russians will repeatedly make clear that they are not.
00:34:57Anyway, that's one thing that the Ukrainians said. The other thing that I understand the
00:35:04Ukrainians said is that, as far as they're concerned, the only purpose of the discussions
00:35:09for the moment is to agree a 30-day ceasefire, and that they're not, for the moment, prepared to
00:35:16discuss any other matters. That is what Zelensky has told them. That is the remit they have from
00:35:26Zelensky, and for the moment, at least, they're not prepared to go beyond it. So, that was the
00:35:33position that the two sides took. The position is completely incompatible. The Russians have
00:35:41completely rejected the whole 30-day ceasefire idea on the basis of the existing contact line.
00:35:50The Russians have been saying ever since June of last year that a ceasefire can happen, but only
00:35:57to facilitate Ukrainian withdrawal from the remaining territory of the four regions that
00:36:04Ukraine still controls. That, anyway, a ceasefire should be agreed in conjunction with a framework
00:36:18document to agree the overall contours of the final settlement. As I said, the two positions
00:36:27are completely in conflict with each other, and that they're in such profound disagreement with
00:36:32each other that it was inconceivable, frankly, that there would be any agreement reached or
00:36:38consensus arrived at today. Now, what I don't know is whether, despite the fact that the
00:36:48two parties have such diametrically opposed views, whether there has been any agreement
00:36:55for a future meeting. Just saying. I suspect if it was left to Zelensky, the answer would be no,
00:37:04but Turkey has moved heaven and earth to get this meeting going. I think the Turks will not be happy
00:37:14if the Ukrainians call off future negotiations in Istanbul, and they will make that clear
00:37:22to the Ukrainians, and I suspect that will be the American position also. As for the Turks,
00:37:30as I said, the Turkish foreign minister, Mr. Fidan, made some very interesting
00:37:36comments at the beginning of the meeting. He said that ultimately only Russia and Ukraine
00:37:48can decide between them whether there is going to be peace, and that, it seemed to me,
00:37:57was a clear signal to the Ukrainians that if they want peace, they must negotiate
00:38:05henceforth seriously with the Russians in order to achieve that peace. That, it seemed to me,
00:38:13was the Turkish position, and I suspect that the Turks, in making it, probably were getting some
00:38:22encouragement from at least some Americans. We will come to the Americans again shortly.
00:38:31So anyway, there it is, a meeting. One meeting has taken place in Istanbul.
00:38:38It doesn't seem to have achieved anything other than to have the two sides restate their views,
00:38:45but it is a meeting. It is a meeting nonetheless. Zelensky didn't want it. He's moved heaven and
00:38:53earth to try to avoid it. He's been forced to agree to it. He's now going to no doubt go out
00:39:03and say that the Russians are not interested in a ceasefire, that they're not interested in a peace,
00:39:08that the behavior of their delegation in Istanbul proves as much, and that means that there must
00:39:16be no more negotiations, no more discussions. We must move forward and go ahead and impose the
00:39:21massive sanctions on Russia that he has been insisting upon and which he thought he was
00:39:29promised on Saturday. As night follows day, that is what Zelensky is going to say, or so I expect.
00:39:38Anyway, we will see what happens, and we will see what the outcome of all of this is.
00:39:46Ultimately, it all depends on the United States, and there has been a very interesting article
00:39:53in Der Spiegel, which speaks of panic in Kiev, amongst the political leadership in Kiev.
00:40:02They're very unable to understand the direction of Trump's policies. They're becoming exhausted
00:40:11and demoralized by the way in which Trump seems to promise something one day, take it back as
00:40:18they see it the next day, that they find it very, very difficult to bend and manipulate Trump – that's
00:40:26my way of describing it, not Der Spiegel – bend and manipulate Trump to their own purposes, and that
00:40:35Zelensky himself is becoming tired, even though he's bearing up with it, and he feels that he's
00:40:43having to play simultaneous poker games with all sorts of people – I'm not sure which people
00:40:50precisely – but anyway, that this is what he's feeling, and that though he feels able to do it,
00:40:56he's finding it more and more difficult to keep up with it. That at least was what I got, the sense I
00:41:02got from the article in Der Spiegel. So Zelensky will try to speak of today's negotiations as a
00:41:13failure. He's going to hope that if that view is accepted, that the Americans will blame the
00:41:25Russians, and he's hoping that if that happens, that will lead to the sanctions on Russia, which
00:41:33he was promised, and which he hopes will then fully commit Donald Trump to support,
00:41:42indefinite support, for himself and for Ukraine. So that's, I suspect, Zelensky's approach.
00:41:52The Russians will want this whole negotiation process to go forward. They will want further
00:42:00meetings with the Ukrainians. But something else has happened over the last 24 hours,
00:42:12which I think the Russians will see as potentially working to their advantage, because Donald Trump
00:42:22was asked whether he thought that the fact that the delegation that the Russians had sent to
00:42:30Istanbul was a weak one was a sign that the Russians weren't serious about the negotiations,
00:42:38and what he thought about the fact that Putin supposedly had failed to turn up.
00:42:44And instead of the strong condemnation from Putin that I think many people in the West were hoping
00:42:51for, Trump said that, well, he wasn't fully surprised about all of this, because he didn't
00:42:57really think that Putin would want to come to Istanbul if he, Trump, wasn't there, and that
00:43:04ultimately he expects that the way that this conflict in Ukraine is finally going to be
00:43:14settled is if he, Trump, and Putin meet together and settle it between them.
00:43:26Now, since then, since that comment of Trump's, various American officials, obviously acting on
00:43:32Trump's instructions, have been talking about the need for a summit meeting, an urgent summit meeting
00:43:40between Putin and Trump. Now, I think the Russians are going to resist calls for an urgent summit
00:43:47meeting. They don't want to be put in a position where Putin goes to a summit meeting, is faced
00:43:56by direct demands over the course of a meeting with Trump, from Trump, to agree a ceasefire,
00:44:06something that Putin doesn't want to agree to, where the Russians are forced to accept a ceasefire,
00:44:11and Trump and the Americans blame Putin for the failure of the summit meeting. So,
00:44:18that's… I don't think the Russians are keen on a summit meeting at the moment.
00:44:24But, if we look at it from a somewhat different perspective, what Trump is saying
00:44:36is that the Ukraine conflict will be settled not through dialogue, negotiation between Ukraine
00:44:47and Russia, but through negotiations between Russia and the United States.
00:44:56And I have to say that this has been my view all along. As everyone knows, I thought that Donald
00:45:03Trump, for his own… in his own interests, should have stood clear of this whole business. He should
00:45:13not have involved himself in negotiations to try to settle the conflict in Ukraine. I think it was
00:45:20a big mistake of his to do so. I think it's landed him with no end of trouble, and it's taking up a
00:45:26huge amount of his time. I think that getting a negotiation or a resolution of this conflict
00:45:34is going to be very difficult, and it's going to take a very great deal of time.
00:45:40But, if it is going to be achieved at all, then just as was the case with the agreement that was
00:45:51reached in the early 1970s, which enabled the United States to pull its forces out of Vietnam,
00:46:00and as was the case with the agreement that was reached some years ago under Trump, by the way,
00:46:07which enabled the United States to pull its forces out of Afghanistan, ultimately,
00:46:16this will have to be negotiated directly, bilaterally, between the United States and
00:46:24Russia. The United States is deeply involved in Ukraine. It has conducted what some call a proxy
00:46:35war in Ukraine against Russia, but which ultimately turned out to be much, much more than
00:46:43that. The United States, or at least Donald Trump and some people within his administration, have
00:46:50concluded that that was a mistake and a squandering of American resources, and a mistake also because
00:47:02it has jeopardized America's relationship with Russia, another great power, putting at risk
00:47:09world peace. If the Americans really do want to negotiate their way out of this mess,
00:47:19instead of perhaps simply walking away, then the party they need to negotiate with is Russia.
00:47:27They can't let Vladimir Zelensky conduct the negotiation for them, because Zelensky,
00:47:38putting aside the eccentricities of his personality, anyway, his objective is to
00:47:46keep them committed, to keep them in. So, at some point, the Americans have to deal directly with
00:47:54the Russians and cut the Ukrainians out, if they are going to achieve the objective that they want.
00:48:02And Trump's suggestion of a meeting between Putin and himself, which finally resolves
00:48:13this problem, may be the first admission from the American president that he's coming round
00:48:26to understand this. Anyway, there we are. Let's see what happens over the next few hours.
00:48:33As I said, unfortunately, and I have to say I've found this last week both exhausting and
00:48:41ultimately tedious in some ways. Let's see how it all comes together. I'm going to finish with
00:48:51one little point before I move on to the military situation, and that is that Zelensky's people,
00:49:00I notice, are now busy spreading yet another narrative. This is that the Istanbul negotiation
00:49:07of February-March-April 2022 was a failure, that the Russians put maximalist demands,
00:49:16and that the Ukrainians couldn't accept them, and that it was this which caused the talks to
00:49:23break down. I've now been reading lots of articles which make that claim in the British media,
00:49:29in the American media, in the European media, claims that the negotiations in Istanbul in the
00:49:37spring of 2022 in some way failed. They did not fail. They were successful. A draft agreement was
00:49:46reached. All you need to do is to go back and read what Ukrainian officials were telling the Financial
00:49:56Times at that time in lengthy articles and interviews reported by the Financial Times
00:50:05in March 2022. The Ukrainians were euphoric, as I remember, about the deal they seemed about to do
00:50:15with the Russians. The talks were successful. The draft agreement was initialed. It looked as if
00:50:25we'd achieved a diplomatic breakthrough. And then, after intervention from Britain
00:50:34and the United States, as confirmed by lots of people, including explicitly by one of the mediators,
00:50:43the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the Ukrainians suddenly pulled out. They
00:50:50never rejected publicly the Istanbul agreement of April 2022. They never said that they rejected
00:51:05the terms that had been in principle agreed in Istanbul in April 2022, which, as I said,
00:51:16their representatives, with Zelensky's full backing, initialed. They simply walked away from
00:51:24the discussions and spent the next three years basically pretending that those discussions
00:51:34in Istanbul in April 2022, and that agreement that was reached as a result of those discussions,
00:51:43that none of that, in effect, took place. And over the last three and a half years,
00:51:52the Western media has mostly gone along with that. There's been the odd article about the
00:51:58Istanbul discussions and the Istanbul agreement, but overall we've had a silence. You might almost
00:52:11say a code of honor about the whole business, a refusal to acknowledge or to discuss frankly
00:52:19how close the parties actually came to a final agreement in Istanbul in April 2022, and
00:52:29the role that various third parties had in bringing that failure, the failure of that
00:52:36agreement, about. Now the best person to go to to get a sense of all of this is the former
00:52:44German diplomat and UN official Michael von der Schulenburg. He's written about this extensively.
00:52:53He's written most recently about all of this. He's published various statements about this.
00:52:58He is the indispensable source to anybody who really wants to understand what took place over
00:53:05the course of the Istanbul negotiations. The idea propagated today over the last couple of days
00:53:14that the Istanbul negotiations in April 2022 supposedly collapsed because Ukraine couldn't
00:53:21accept Russia's supposedly maximalist demands is a fiction. It is not compatible
00:53:34with the known facts which on the contrary clearly show that an agreement in principle
00:53:43on those supposedly maximalist Russian demands was in fact reached.
00:53:51Zelensky and his people of course are saying all of that now because they don't want to
00:53:57they don't want to accept that they made those concessions three years ago and that any further
00:54:05negotiations must take those concessions as the starting point. Anyway on that point let me now
00:54:11turn to the other big issue because the fact remains that even as the Russians are meeting
00:54:22with the Ukrainians in Istanbul even as they extend a kind of velvet glove to the Ukrainians
00:54:32the Russians are increasingly deploying what you might describe as the mailed fist.
00:54:40A number of people, I think Ian Proud again was one of them, has said that
00:54:44it is the Russians who are the drivers in this process and the reason they are the drivers
00:54:49is straightforwardly because they are winning the war. As I have said in program again after program
00:54:58winners dictate the outcome of wars not losers. This is something which people like Starmer and
00:55:06Macron, Metz and all the others struggle to understand but it is obvious. Anyway
00:55:12we have seen a number of very important developments from Moscow over the last couple
00:55:19of days which suggest very strongly to me that we are indeed going to see the mailed fist
00:55:30be wielded alongside the velvet glove which is the diplomacy in Istanbul.
00:55:39Now there have been, there were over the last 24 hours, a certain number
00:55:48of personnel changes within the military leadership in Moscow which have been grotesquely
00:55:55misrepresented in the West. First of all the commander of Russia's ground forces, the man who in fact
00:56:05commanded the parade on Red Square on Victory Day, General Salyukov of the Russian army
00:56:17has retired from the post of ground forces commander. He has not been sacked as virtually
00:56:27been sacked as virtually everybody in the West has been saying. He has reached retirement age
00:56:37on the 15th of May when he's when the announcement came that he was stepping down.
00:56:44He was six days short of his 70th birthday and according to Russian military regulations
00:56:53commanding officers cannot maintain their position as commanders once they reach the
00:56:59age of 70. So he was about to retire and well as a result he wasn't in a position to remain
00:57:08commander-in-chief of the ground forces. The interesting thing about Salyukov is not that
00:57:15he has retired from the position of commander-in-chief of the ground forces. To repeat again
00:57:21that had to happen because he's just a few days short of his 70th birthday when he is legally
00:57:29required to stand down. It is that he has been appointed to a deputy position, a deputy to Sergey
00:57:36Shoigu the secretary of the security council, in other words Putin's national security advisor
00:57:43who by the way has just renewed his contract as a full general in the Russian armed forces.
00:57:53So Shoigu though a person with a civilian background continues to be
00:58:00legally a soldier and therefore subject to military discipline and regulations.
00:58:09Now the point is that this movement of Salyukov to become one of Shoigu's deputies
00:58:19brings a senior military officer, another very senior military officer and one of the deputy
00:58:30commanders of the military operation, the special military operation in Ukraine. He was a deputy to
00:58:42General Gerasimov, the overall commander. Anyway it brings one of those deputy commanders
00:58:49into the security council or at least into the secretariat of the security council.
00:58:58The security council being as I've discussed in many places the key policy-making body in Russia
00:59:07with its secretariat with forming, playing a key role in coordinating and developing policy.
00:59:22So a military officer, a very senior military officer with some experience of the special
00:59:28military operation instead of being simply allowed to retire has now been brought into this very
00:59:36senior position in the security council which by the way will give him regular, potentially could
00:59:42give him regular access to the Kremlin itself, in fact potentially to Putin.
00:59:51But the other change is in some ways even more interesting because Salyukov's replacement
01:00:01as ground forces commander is none other than General Mordvichev. Now General Mordvichev was
01:00:09the commander of a group of forces centre, the people who captured Avdeevka and Novogrodivka
01:00:18and Solidovo whose forces have battled successfully all the way to Pokrovsk who won one battle after
01:00:27another and General Mordvichev is widely considered by many people to be the most talented military
01:00:34commander that the Russians have produced over the period of the special military operation.
01:00:43He is also by the way a general who the Ukrainians have claimed to have killed
01:00:50on at least one occasion, perhaps more than one, and I remember reading accounts I think in 2022
01:01:00in the media in Britain telling us about how General Mordvichev had been killed by the Ukrainians.
01:01:08Well he's alive and well and has played a major role in the special military operation
01:01:14and he is now the overall commander of the ground forces. Now the point is that as I have discussed
01:01:23in many programs the Russians are assembling enormous forces which they are preparing
01:01:30potentially for a major offensive which could take place in the summer. We're talking about
01:01:38at least two reserve armies, a total force of around a quarter of a million men.
01:01:46I can't help but think that the appointment of Mordvichev to this very senior position in Moscow
01:01:59means that he's been given some kind of coordinating role in preparing the ground
01:02:07forces for this offensive. I say that because he's likely or so it seems to me
01:02:15to take Salyukov's place not just as ground overall ground forces commander
01:02:25but also as one of Gerasimov's deputies in command of the Russian forces in the area of the special
01:02:37military operation. I wonder whether Mordvichev has been brought to Moscow precisely with the
01:02:43remit to prepare and organize the offensive. I know that this is a widespread view. I believe
01:02:52it is also the view in Kiev. It would make total sense. It seems the obvious explanation to me.
01:03:04Obviously there might be others but I wonder what other explanation there could be but that.
01:03:11Anyway that's one thing I wanted to say. The second point I wanted to make is that
01:03:18over the last couple of days we have seen that the military in Russia is increasingly playing
01:03:25an ever more significant role in policy making. Now when Putin set up the negotiating team
01:03:36in the spring of 2022 as far as I'm aware he made all the key decisions as to who would be
01:03:42appointed and what their remit would be by himself. This time he had to sort it out in
01:03:50a meeting of the security council at which the chief of the general staff General Gerasimov
01:03:57and all of the commanders of the groups of forces on the battlefronts participated.
01:04:07Medinsky has said that each one of these commanders gave a report about the situation
01:04:18in their sector of the front lines and that they fully participated and were engaged in
01:04:27the discussions that followed. I wonder whether after the announcement that was made
01:04:38on Saturday by Putin that he was going to send a delegation to Istanbul to negotiate with the
01:04:48Ukrainians whether there wasn't some pushback from the military. With the military perhaps
01:04:56remembering well the events of 2022 when Putin called at least one ceasefire that I can remember
01:05:08in order to facilitate talks without the military being consulted and to their intense anger. When
01:05:15Putin also ordered a withdrawal of Russian forces from outside Kyiv again in ways that
01:05:25maybe the military weren't fully happy with whether in effect the military said look this time
01:05:34it has to be different we can't just leave it to the diplomats we must also be involved
01:05:43and that is why the meeting in Moscow took place at which they were all present and why
01:05:52we've had a negotiating team sent to Istanbul with so many military officers participating and
01:06:02with no lesser person than the head of the GRU Russian military intelligence participating.
01:06:10Now I say all of that because all of the indications are from the battlefronts that even as the
01:06:17discussions in Istanbul have been taking place the Russian military continues to be
01:06:31focused on conducting and preparing for its offensive and I'm going to say this I think that
01:06:43there is probably a current of thinking in Moscow that in some ways things were much simpler
01:06:52when Joe Biden was around. He obviously was not interested in negotiations with the Russians,
01:07:01the Brazilians and the Chinese and the Indians sometimes put some kind some levels of pressure
01:07:06some levels of pressure on the Russians to try to move towards negotiations with the Ukrainians
01:07:15but with the Americans hostile to negotiations and with Zelensky emphatically opposing negotiations
01:07:24it was easy for the Russians to swat all those calls away so the Russians were able to focus
01:07:33fully on the conduct of the war itself. Then after January along comes Donald Trump
01:07:41and he's keen on negotiations and he's keen on ceasefires and this has created a whole new
01:07:49complexity that the Russians have to deal with and many Russians obviously remember the way in which
01:07:58the Russians were deceived as they see it by the Ukrainians and by the western powers over the
01:08:03course of previous negotiations but many Russians will also feel that one of the reasons the Russians
01:08:10were deceived was because the diplomats and dare one say even Putin himself lent themselves to that
01:08:20deception so this time the generals are saying never again we're not having that happen again
01:08:29this time we want to be involved we are fighting the war we insist on having our say
01:08:39you can't just run this negotiation all by yourself you are of course our commander we
01:08:47obey and respect you but given the importance of this conflict to the army and to the nation
01:08:57we must be party to any discussions that you make now this has precedence in Russian history
01:09:07it's not entirely new but it's not a situation that Putin has ever himself as far as I know
01:09:16faced before anyway there it is the military clearly are playing a bigger role and one of
01:09:25their toughest generals has now been appointed ground forces commander and another of their
01:09:32most experienced generals now has a senior position which gives him access to the Kremlin
01:09:42and potentially to Putin himself so I can't help but think that we've seen now
01:09:50an interesting development in terms of Russian internal politics which will have a bearing
01:09:58on both the conduct of the war and the conduct of the negotiations assuming they continue
01:10:06between Russia and Ukraine anyway this I think inevitably leads to a quick discussion of the
01:10:16military situation and it is unfortunate that these discussions have to be so quick
01:10:21maybe my next program I will devote more time to them but events are moving faster and faster
01:10:28now yesterday the Russian defense ministry confirmed that the village of Torsk in the
01:10:34Siversk area west of Siversk has now fallen to the Russians and is fully under Russian control
01:10:43now this is an important village because if the Russians push south from it which
01:10:49of course they will and capture the next village to the south which is a village called Yampol
01:10:55then that will sever cut off Siversk the garrison in Siversk from resupply
01:11:01the Russians briefly controlled Yampol I seem to remember in 2022 but at that time the garrison
01:11:13in Siversk was getting its supplies from Bakhmut and Solidar which were at that time still
01:11:22under Ukrainian control the Russians now control Bakhmut and Solidar and other places north
01:11:29of those two towns so if the Ukrainians lose Yampol then it seems to me that the garrison in Siversk
01:11:40is to all intents and purposes cut off all of this has been happening even as the Russians
01:11:46have been pushing towards Siversk from the east their forces have been driving closer to Siversk
01:11:54they were claiming yesterday that they have captured much more of the village the key
01:12:00village of Verkhomyansk which has been bitterly fought over if the Russians capture Verkhomyansk
01:12:08they are literally outside Siversk and the Russians also seem to be working to capture
01:12:18various other positions around Siversk to the east and north of Siversk as well
01:12:25there's been several Russian attempts to capture Siversk over the course of the war these have
01:12:31been consistently unsuccessful it would be a story a little like the one at Uglada in the south
01:12:40where the Russians made repeated attempts to capture Uglada some of which ended in disastrous
01:12:48and humiliating failure with one general one Russian general being cashiered for the blundering
01:12:57way in which he conducted the attack on Uglada however more methodical generals did eventually
01:13:07take over and last year Uglada was finally lost to Ukraine it seems to me that with Siversk
01:13:16we're looking at events play out in a similar way after multiple attempts to capture Siversk
01:13:24some perhaps more half-hearted than others after long battles in which Siversk has been successfully
01:13:33defended by Ukraine it looks as if finally the ring around Siversk is closing it could be that
01:13:45at some point in the next couple of weeks we see a collapse in Siversk very like the one we saw
01:13:53in Uglada and it was if Siversk is captured by the Russians it will simplify Russian
01:14:03tasks in this area just as the fall of Uglada opened the way for the Russians to capture
01:14:13Velika Novoselka and Kurakhovo the fall of Siversk will probably have a similar effect
01:14:23enabling the Russians to capture places like Konstantinovka and Druzhivka
01:14:31important communities in this area as they gradually press forward with their attack
01:14:37on Konstantinovka and a little to the west of Siversk there's Liman which the Russians
01:14:48also briefly captured for a period in 2022 but which they lost like Toretsk and Yampol
01:14:58over the course of Ukraine's autumn 2022 counter-offensive but the Russians
01:15:06apparently have now captured a significant part of the village of Kolodziej
01:15:13very close to Liman and over the last day or so I've heard reports that the Ukrainians are now
01:15:24evacuating civilians from Liman and also from Druzhivka all of which suggests that
01:15:35the Ukrainians expect the battle for Liman at least to begin very very shortly I think that
01:15:42Liman itself if Siversk falls and all of the other places around fall it looks undefendable
01:15:52I suspect that just as Ukrainian defences in Liman collapsed in the spring of 2022 and Russian
01:16:01defences in Liman collapsed in the autumn of 2022 so again if the Russians press home
01:16:11and attack on on Liman having captured all of these other places Liman will also fall
01:16:18to the Russians and fall very fast and Stanislav Kraminic told us on the Duran that the fall of
01:16:28Liman opens the way for the capture of places like Kramatorsk it is the high ground Slavyansk
01:16:37sorry it is the high ground relative to these places now there's been a lot there's been more
01:16:42news about Chasov Yar again there isn't very much photographic and film evidence but I understand
01:16:52that even DS the Ukrainian mapping project are now admitting that the Russians control
01:17:00practically all of the central high rise area of Chasov Yar they appear to believe that there are
01:17:11one or two places still left but probably not more than one or two buildings it looks as if
01:17:23the central area of Chasov Yar has finally fallen there may be other locations around Chasov Yar
01:17:31some of the outlying micro districts where some fighting still needs to take place
01:17:37but it does look as if the battle of Chasov Yar and by the way the Bakhmut battles plural which
01:17:46began in earnest in November 2022 are now finally coming to an end opening the way
01:17:56for an attack on Konstantinovka but anyway all of this is important even more consequential in some
01:18:05ways is the gathering catastrophe and this isn't just understatement which is the Ukrainian defenses
01:18:16around Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka the battle of Konstantinovka is becoming very very confusing
01:18:26the Russians have taken up all kinds of positions around the southern arc of Konstantinovka of
01:18:32course if they capture Chasov Yar once they finish the capture of Chasov Yar they will be
01:18:39located to the east of Konstantinovka as well and they will occupy the high ground around
01:18:46Konstantinovka anyway it is a confusing and muddling battle the Russians have taken more
01:18:53positions north of Toretsk apparently that will prevent any further Ukrainian counterattacks
01:19:00towards Toretsk misguided though those counterattacks are and it looks as if Ukrainian
01:19:08defenses south of Toretsk are fragmenting and are starting to crumble and there are some claims
01:19:17that the Ukrainians are retreating into the urban area of Konstantinovka itself because
01:19:27their defenses south of Konstantinovka are no longer viable anymore in which case very much
01:19:37like what we're seeing in Pokrovsk a battle for Konstantinovka could soon begin and it is exactly
01:19:45the same with Pokrovsk there are now reports that the Russians are closing in are moving closer
01:19:55towards an attack on the village of Novoekonomichne immediately to the east of
01:20:02Pokrovsk and Mirnograd and that the Russians have continued to control territory
01:20:12perhaps even parts of the southern built-up area of Pokrovsk itself and it all points to
01:20:23a Russian potential Russian attack on Pokrovsk starting to develop perhaps over the next few
01:20:30weeks. If Konstantinovka falls and if Pokrovsk falls to be straightforward about it I don't
01:20:39think that the defenses in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk can last for very long the Ukrainian defenders
01:20:46would lack operational depth I suspect that there would be a cascade effect and that we would see
01:20:54all of these towns fall rapidly one after another. Now there have been other reports of Russian
01:21:02advances in other places there are more reports today giving us more information or shall I say
01:21:11making more claims about these bridgeheads that the Russians are supposed to have established
01:21:19on the east bank of the Dnieper in Kherson region immediately to the north of the city of Kherson.
01:21:28I don't know very much about these I don't know the details but well who knows maybe maybe all
01:21:36this is happening or maybe it's just some people over excitedly describing more than is really
01:21:46taking place who knows but to repeat again it looks as if the first meeting between the Ukrainians
01:21:55and the Russians which took place in Istanbul saw the Russians restate their demands and
01:22:04my own view is that what the Russians probably envisage the Istanbul talks to be is either a
01:22:16mechanism for providing a format for Ukraine's eventual capitulation as this Russian offensive
01:22:30rolls through in the summer and captures more and more territory in Ukraine or perhaps
01:22:41either alternatively or in conjunction a pathway towards some kind of
01:22:50bilateral dialogue with the United States with the Putin-Trump summit round the corner.
01:23:01In the meantime the leaders of Europe meet in Tirana. Friedrich Merz apparently for the moment
01:23:10has given up his plan to supply tourist missiles to Ukraine but he's made another extraordinary
01:23:17speech about Russia to the Bundestag using language like barbaric and all of that which
01:23:26I have to say I think is unhelpful to put it mildly at this time as well as being actually
01:23:34factually wrong but anyway I'm not going to discuss that but anyway Europe for the moment
01:23:40for the moment isolated adrift kept isolating itself from these currents this beautiful plan
01:23:51that Stahmer and Macron worked out to present Putin with an ultimatum and to get sanctions
01:24:04against Russia and to sign up for those sanctions for the moment has turned to dust doesn't mean it
01:24:11might be might not be resurrected at any point perhaps even in the next few days but that it
01:24:18seems to me is where we stand anyway this is where I finish my program today we will have more about
01:24:25the negotiations in Istanbul probably during my program tomorrow hopefully I say hopefully because
01:24:32I'm becoming tired of this whole debate just as Zelensky supposedly is we will then see a remission
01:24:42and we will be able to focus instead more on the military developments though you never know
01:24:48and anyway we will see what happens and that'll be in my next program but until then
01:24:56all it remains is for me to remind you that you can find all our programs on our various
01:25:00platforms locals rumble and x you can support our work by patreon and subscribe star and by
01:25:06going to our shop links under this video last but not least if you've liked this video please
01:25:12remember to tick the like button and to check your subscription to this channel
01:25:17that's me for today more from me soon have a very good day
01:25:42you