- 5/17/2025
In a bold move at the Istanbul peace talks, Russia lays down firm conditions, leaving UK and EU negotiators stunned and demoralized. As Europe struggles to regain footing, Donald Trump is reportedly working behind the scenes to secure a high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin that could reshape the trajectory of the Ukraine conflict. 🧭🕊️
#RussiaUkraine #IstanbulTalks #PeaceNegotiations #TrumpPutin #Geopolitics #AlexanderMercouris #UKPolitics #EUForeignPolicy #RussiaDemands #UkraineWar #RussiaSummit #TrumpDiplomacy #WarAndPeace #GlobalTalks #InternationalRelations #BreakingNews #ConflictResolution #UkraineCrisis #USRussiaRelations #PutinTrumpSummit #PoliticalStrategy
#RussiaUkraine #IstanbulTalks #PeaceNegotiations #TrumpPutin #Geopolitics #AlexanderMercouris #UKPolitics #EUForeignPolicy #RussiaDemands #UkraineWar #RussiaSummit #TrumpDiplomacy #WarAndPeace #GlobalTalks #InternationalRelations #BreakingNews #ConflictResolution #UkraineCrisis #USRussiaRelations #PutinTrumpSummit #PoliticalStrategy
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Good day. Today is Saturday, 17th May 2025, and before proceeding with the substance of this
00:00:08programme, I should quickly say that tomorrow, and for the next three days, I shall be out of
00:00:16the country. In fact, I shall be in Saint Petersburg, in Russia. First time I have visited
00:00:24Russia for seven years, and the first time I have visited Saint Petersburg since, well,
00:00:32since May 2016. So it's a long time since I have been there. I'm attending a legal conference.
00:00:39There will be people there discussing various legal topics. I was invited to attend by the
00:00:48organisers, one of whom I understand is a member of the Russian Constitutional Court.
00:00:55I was very happy to accept the invitation. It will be my first opportunity to see Saint Petersburg,
00:01:02one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and to see Russia again,
00:01:08as I said, for seven years, and to reacquaint myself with the situation there.
00:01:13Now, that inevitably, however, means that I'm going to be affected by the way I do programmes.
00:01:21Firstly, I am not completely sure how straightforward the internet situation
00:01:28is in Russia. I've made various arrangements. I hope that I will be able to do videos without
00:01:36interference or without any problems from then. Interference, obviously, I don't expect
00:01:41interference, but there might be technical problems, though I am confident, if there are,
00:01:48that I will be able to address them. Secondly, it is likely, given that I will be attending a
00:01:56forum, the legal forum, for the full two days that I will be in Saint Petersburg and in Russia,
00:02:04it is very likely that my videos on those days will be much shorter than usual.
00:02:13Lastly, and of course, on Sunday and on Wednesday, I am travelling. I'm travelling
00:02:20on Sunday from London to Saint Petersburg, and on Wednesday from Saint Petersburg to London.
00:02:28And unfortunately, because of the various problems with flights, these are long and
00:02:33very complicated journeys, and I can't be certain at what time I will be able to do programmes.
00:02:40Just saying. But anyway, I will do my absolute best to continue the stream of videos that I do
00:02:50every day. But if there are problems, well, please forgive me in advance, my apologies in
00:02:57advance. Those are the reasons. As I said, this is an opportunity to see what is actually happening
00:03:08in Russia, and to participate, by the way, in a very interesting legal forum, an opportunity to
00:03:16see Russia, and to participate in that forum, which I absolutely obviously could not pass up.
00:03:24So, there may be some of these problems. But anyway, if there are, I will no doubt be able
00:03:32to find ways round them. But in any event, I would ask for your forbearance in advance.
00:03:41Anyway, with that, let us now proceed with the substance of this programme, of today's programme.
00:03:47And the starting point has to be the meeting which took place in Istanbul yesterday between
00:03:55the Russian delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky, and the Ukrainian delegation led by Ukraine's
00:04:04defence minister, Rustem Umarov. A meeting that took place in the Domolbache Palace in Istanbul.
00:04:14The first direct meeting between the Russians and the Ukrainians since the collapse of the Istanbul
00:04:26process that took place in April 2022. And I think before I start with the discussion,
00:04:35I think the first thing to say is that however one packages the events of the last week,
00:04:42there is absolutely no doubt who the winner has been, who has won hands down in the complex,
00:04:53intricate game of poker, that diplomatic poker that was played over the course of the last week.
00:05:03That winner is Vladimir Putin and Russia. Vladimir Putin and the Russians have been saying
00:05:10ever since April 2022 that they're ready for direct negotiations with the Ukrainians.
00:05:16They want to resume the negotiations that were interrupted in Istanbul in April 2022.
00:05:23They have always said that they want to have negotiations take place. And incidentally,
00:05:32and for the record, they also say that there is no need for a ceasefire before negotiations take
00:05:39place. And in fact, they don't think a ceasefire prior to negotiations taking place is a good idea
00:05:51given Ukraine's previous propensity not to honor terms of ceasefires and to make use of ceasefires
00:06:02to its own advantage. Now on this point, by the way, no less than the head of the Russian
00:06:09delegation, Mr. Medinsky, who is of course a historian. There's some people in the West who
00:06:17want to cast doubt on how good a historian he is, as I've read none of his books.
00:06:24I'm not going to comment on that and besides, I don't think it is a relevant issue in this
00:06:31discussion. But anyway, Mr. Medinsky, who is a historian, gave an interview to Rossiya 1
00:06:38television station in which he made the same point that I have made in many, many programs,
00:06:44that it is much more usual in conflicts of this kind for negotiations to take place,
00:06:51which might eventually lead to a ceasefire than for there to be a ceasefire before negotiations
00:06:59begin. And there's a quotation of what Medinsky said from TASS, and I will just quote it because
00:07:08it seems to me it is absolutely on all fours with the historical facts. As Napoleon said,
00:07:17as a rule, war and negotiations always proceed side by side. The Vietnam War talks between the
00:07:25United States and Vietnam continued throughout the conflict. The Korean War negotiations continued
00:07:32amid hostilities. If we look at the 20th century, the Soviet-Finnish war is a perfect example.
00:07:39History tends to repeat itself. It's quite remarkable. Stalin offered a truce to Finland,
00:07:46an armistice, while the British and French told Finland to hold out. Don't negotiate with the
00:07:52Soviets. Don't sign a peace deal. We will provide you with military aid. Volunteer expeditionary
00:08:00forces will arrive. Fight the Russians to the last Finn. I'm not saying, by the way, that
00:08:07Medinsky is characterizing what the British and the French were telling the Finns at that time
00:08:12correctly. I don't know the history. But anyway, he goes on. Yet even as fighting continued,
00:08:19peace talks were underway, and in the end, those talks led to a peace agreement,
00:08:24which brought the conflict to a close. My point is, throughout history, war and negotiations
00:08:31have always happened at the same time. I think he's right. Now, I'm not saying that we've never
00:08:38had situations where there have been ceasefires before negotiations begin, but I think that is
00:08:46very, very much the exception. What Medinsky is saying here, I think, comes closest
00:08:55to the historical record. You have a conflict. The conflict goes on.
00:09:02Talks begin. As the parties move forward with the talks, as it begins to seem as if they're likely
00:09:11to reach some kind of an agreement, the first step they take on the way to that agreement
00:09:19is to agree the terms of a ceasefire. I'm not saying that there has never been,
00:09:26in recorded history, a single case where there's been a ceasefire first, and then talks. I'm sure
00:09:34if you scrabble around and search, you will probably find examples where that happened.
00:09:42But it is not by any means the most usual way in which wars end. Mostly the negotiations begin
00:09:50and lead to the ceasefire, and then the final settlement, and not the other way around.
00:09:57On this issue, at least, Mr. Medinsky knows his history. Anyway, the Russians said that they
00:10:04wanted direct talks with the Ukrainians to begin, and they were not going to start those talks
00:10:12after a ceasefire was agreed, because if that were to happen on the basis of the previous history,
00:10:22the Ukrainians would spin out the talks indefinitely, the talks would lead to no
00:10:27sort of conclusion, and the Ukrainians would use the ceasefire in the meantime to reorganize,
00:10:36reinforce, re-equip, and prepare for the next round of the war. So, that was the Russian position,
00:10:46and last week, this week, they won the point. There is no ceasefire, and notwithstanding that,
00:10:56direct negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Russians have begun. Moreover,
00:11:04the Ukrainians have passed an edict, a law, a decree, whatever it is,
00:11:13supposedly prohibiting themselves from engaging the Russians in negotiations.
00:11:21And, well, that edict, law, decree, whatever it is, has now been cast to one side. We see that
00:11:32the Ukrainians, despite the existence of that decree, are now sitting down and talking to the
00:11:39Russians. So, the Russians have won conclusively this particular argument. They've got direct
00:11:51negotiations. There is no ceasefire. The Ukrainians rejected direct negotiations. Without
00:12:00a ceasefire, they are nonetheless now sitting down and negotiating with the Russians, despite
00:12:07the terms of their own decree. Now, what the Ukrainians propose to do with their decree,
00:12:14I think, is actually a serious point which needs to be addressed at some point in the near future.
00:12:24Do they leave that decree in place, which might ultimately cast a question mark on all of the
00:12:34discussions that are taking place in Istanbul? Might it not be the case that at some point in
00:12:41the future someone in Ukraine will say that the talks in Istanbul have no legal validity
00:12:50because they are taking place without a proper legal basis, because they are prohibited by the
00:12:57decree? I am confident that sooner or later the question of the decree will come up and that the
00:13:03Russians will insist that it must be rescinded, and I suspect that they will get support for that
00:13:10position from the United States. But anyway, for the moment at least, it is the Ukrainians
00:13:17who have had to pull back. They've had to retreat. They've had to agree to direct negotiations,
00:13:23which they didn't want to agree to, without a ceasefire. And there is no ceasefire,
00:13:30and despite their decree, and despite all of those things, the direct talks have taken place.
00:13:39The New York Times has acknowledged that the Russians have won this round, and they are
00:13:46obviously right. Now, this may not have huge significance going forward. It could be
00:13:57that everything reverses again in some way, that the Ukrainians pull out of the process,
00:14:05that the Americans become exasperated with the Russians. Who knows? But I think it is worth saying
00:14:13at this stage that at this point the Russians have won an important point and are decisively
00:14:21ahead on points. Now, there is a narrative that is there all across the media and which Zelensky
00:14:30himself has been busy promoting over the last few hours, which is that because the
00:14:37delegation that went to Istanbul from Russia was so weak and underpowered and so poorly led,
00:14:44because none of the people on that delegation had a mandate to agree anything, because the
00:14:50Russians made extraordinary and extravagant and unreasonable demands over the course of the two-hour
00:14:57meeting, nothing was achieved. The whole negotiation, every single part of what happened
00:15:05in Istanbul was a complete failure, and well, the Russians supposedly are to blame for that.
00:15:13And, of course, Zelensky, who is now in Tirana, or at least went to Tirana yesterday, where he
00:15:20met with his dear friends Macron, Stahmer, Mertz, Tursk, all of them, they're all in Tirana at the
00:15:28moment. Anyway, Zelensky, of course, has been repeating this point relentlessly, and it's been
00:15:38taken up by the media in the West relentlessly, and it is what you read in every place, that these
00:15:44were inconsequential talks, that this is all theatre, that it was meaningless, that nothing
00:15:50productive or important actually took place. And I have to say that there are some people on
00:15:59what I would call independent media who take the same view. I have to say that I don't actually
00:16:09fully agree with this. I think that clearly, even though the talks only lasted for two hours,
00:16:18some things were achieved, and I will say very briefly, firstly, what they were. Now,
00:16:26for starters, there is some argument as to what language the Ukrainians spoke during the
00:16:34negotiation. Prior to the start of the negotiation, the Ukrainians certainly, in the public part,
00:16:40in the introductory comment, were talking in Ukrainian. All the Ukrainian representatives,
00:16:47of course, speak Russian. I suspect that in many cases, it is their first language. But,
00:16:56in their first introductory comments, they definitely spoke Ukrainian, and the official
00:17:02position is that the Ukrainians stuck to Ukrainian throughout the entire two hours of the meeting.
00:17:11However, Ukrainian commentators in Ukraine itself, including one whose name I believe
00:17:20from memory is Goncharenko, who I believe is quite a heavyweight commentator.
00:17:25Anyway, they are saying that as soon as the Turks and the others left the room,
00:17:32as soon as the television cameras left the room, the entire discussion
00:17:39continued with both sides talking to the other in Russian. So, it could be that that is what
00:17:47happened. And I have to say, if that was the case, it again suggests that the balance of advantage
00:17:58over the course of this meeting did tilt further towards the Russian side.
00:18:04Now, there have been many accounts about what happened over the course of this meeting. All
00:18:12of these accounts, bar a brief statement from Medinsky, have come from the Ukrainian side.
00:18:22And I think that is a point that everybody needs to understand. Some Russians, like
00:18:32Margarita Simonyan, have come forward and have given their own accounts, which appear to be based
00:18:41on sources, but mostly it is the Ukrainians who have been telling us what took place over the
00:18:49course of this meeting. Nonetheless, I think we can get a fair idea of what did take place,
00:18:56because I notice that the Russians are not contradicting what the Ukrainians said.
00:19:03Firstly, let us go to what was publicly agreed, and this has been confirmed in a short statement
00:19:14by Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation. The Ukrainians have also confirmed it, and there
00:19:21is no doubt about this, because this has been stated publicly. The first point of agreement
00:19:31was that there was to be a big prisoner exchange. One thousand Ukrainian prisoners would be handed
00:19:36over by the Russians in return for one thousand Russian prisoners being handed over to the
00:19:43Russians by the Ukrainians. Prisoner exchanges have happened throughout the war. This is a bigger
00:19:49one than usual, but there have been other pretty big ones as well, and this is a prisoner exchange
00:19:56that has been agreed. The second is that the two parties did agree to exchange written ideas
00:20:07about what a future ceasefire might look like, and Medinsky confirmed this, and the Ukrainians
00:20:16have confirmed this as well. Thirdly, it has been agreed by both sides that there will be follow-up
00:20:23talks, probably in June, also probably in Istanbul at the Dolmabahce Palace. I understand
00:20:35that the Americans will not be involved in those discussions. That's what we know was agreed.
00:20:45So, clearly, we are at the start of a process. But, as I said, we've now been getting a lot of
00:20:51information about what took place over the course of the meeting itself. So, firstly,
00:20:59the Ukrainians came into the meeting with the mandate they were given by Zelensky,
00:21:08and they demanded an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire. The Russians said no. They
00:21:16said they were not prepared to agree to an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
00:21:25They said, the Russians said, that as a minimum condition for a ceasefire, the Ukrainians needed
00:21:36to withdraw from the four regions, from Zaporozhye, Kherson, those parts of Donetsk that they still
00:21:44control, and the few remaining kilometres of Lugansk region that they also still control,
00:21:50the last apparently being mostly uninhabited. So, the Russians said that that was the minimum
00:22:03that they would agree to, that they would require in order for a ceasefire to be agreed.
00:22:12The Ukrainians pushed back. They said that this demand was unmoored to reality,
00:22:20that Ukraine was in control of this territory, that the Russians couldn't be serious about
00:22:25demanding that Ukraine withdraw from territory that it already controlled in return for a ceasefire.
00:22:34And then the Russians snapped back and said that, unless that happened, unless Ukraine did
00:22:40withdraw from the four regions and, by the way, eventually recognised the four regions as Russian,
00:22:49then the war would go on and the Russians eventually would occupy more territory
00:22:57beyond those four regions and would begin to demand that all of that additional territory
00:23:09be admitted by Ukraine to be Russian as well. Now, there is some conflict here about what exactly it
00:23:21was that the Russians said they might seek in addition to the four regions if their demand
00:23:31that the Ukrainians withdraw from the four regions were not accepted. The Ukrainians
00:23:39are saying that the Russians would basically tell them that if the Ukrainians did not
00:23:48withdraw from the four regions, the Russians ultimately would be taking five.
00:23:54The Russians are saying it differently, and here I'm going to read out what Margarita Simonyan said,
00:24:00and this is, I believe, said on X.
00:24:04Story has been making rounds that Ukrainians were outraged when Russian negotiators said that Ukrainian
00:24:12soldiers must leave the four new Russian regions as part of the ceasefire, to which the Moscow
00:24:19delegation replied next time it will be five. Our reporter, and she's a member of the Rossiya
00:24:29Svobodnaya organization, which includes the news agency Novosti and the heavily sanctioned
00:24:39television channel which she heads, our reporter in Istanbul got to ask the Russian side
00:24:48how it really went down. We didn't say five, and this is a quote supposedly from one of the
00:24:57Russian negotiators, we didn't say five, we said eight. Eight. Now that obviously includes,
00:25:08as well as the four regions, plus Crimea, it must include Sumy, Dnipro,
00:25:18Chernigov, Kharkov, Poltava region, as well as Nikolaev region, Odessa, all of these places,
00:25:34all of these Russian-speaking, historically Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine. The
00:25:40Ukrainians have been put on notice that if they don't agree to a ceasefire, if they don't agree
00:25:47to the Russian terms, then they will lose most of their country, or at least half of their country,
00:25:55but by far the most productive, and the most urbanized, and I believe the most populous part.
00:26:03So, very tough demand, and that would include, by the way, just to say, obviously the loss of Odessa
00:26:11and Nikolaev, and Ukraine's entire Black Sea coast, I believe it would mean loss of nearly all
00:26:20of the famous Black Earth region, the enormously rich agricultural region that Ukraine controls.
00:26:29It would mean loss of still more of the natural resources, the rare earths, well not rare earths so
00:26:38much, but lithium deposits, natural gas deposits, and all of those things which Ukraine has just
00:26:46signed an agreement about with the United States. The Russians are giving the Ukrainians notice
00:26:52that this is the risk they run if they continue to hold out and delay agreeing peace by rejecting
00:27:02Russian terms. And the Ukrainians apparently then said that this is completely unreasonable,
00:27:11that there is still a war going on, for the Russians to take all of this territory might
00:27:17take years, and allegedly, and apparently this is, well I say allegedly, it's largely accepted that he
00:27:26did say it. Medinsky, again, demonstrating that he's a historian, he said that Russia, if it needed to,
00:27:35would take, would do it, would go for as long as it takes, might be one, two, three, five, ten years.
00:27:44Russia fought the Great Northern War, the war that Peter the Great fought and won against Sweden,
00:27:54that lasted for 21 years. Why do the Ukrainians assume that the fact that it might take the
00:28:01Russians some more time to capture this territory, why do they assume that the Russians lack the will
00:28:09and the capacity to do it? Very much, again, the sort of reply that you would get from
00:28:18a historian, which is what Medinsky is. So, apparently, according to the Ukrainian leaks,
00:28:26the Russians also made various other further demands. They demanded that Ukraine must once
00:28:35again go back to what it agreed in Istanbul in April 2022, which is that it not join NATO,
00:28:45that, in fact, it make provisions that it never join NATO. And, apparently, the Russians brought
00:28:54up the provisions of the Austrian state treaty that was agreed in, I believe, 1955 between the
00:29:02Soviet Union, Austria, and the Western powers, whereby the Soviets, the Austrians, and the
00:29:08Western powers agreed that Austria would remain permanently neutral and would never join NATO.
00:29:16That treaty, by the way, is still in effect. So, though Austria is a member of the European Union,
00:29:21it is not and cannot be a member of NATO. Anyway, notice that this is a treaty
00:29:31which was entered into by the Soviet Union, Austria, and the Western powers. So, if the
00:29:39Russians are bringing up the Austrian formula, then they presumably are saying that not only must
00:29:51Ukraine agree that it will never join NATO, but there have to be treaty commitments by the Western
00:29:59powers that Ukraine not join NATO also. A fresh demand that goes well beyond what the Russians
00:30:10sought in Istanbul in April 2022. And, alongside that, there were all the provisions that one might
00:30:22expect about protections for Russian citizens in Ukraine. The Russians, somewhat cheekily,
00:30:31but very understandably, said that Ukraine must agree to protections for Russians,
00:30:38identical to the protections that the various European Union provisions
00:30:46for protections of the rights of minorities set out. The European Union, by the way,
00:30:54is very patchy in terms of enforcing that in terms of its own territory. It doesn't always
00:31:02go through with its supposed protections of minorities. But, never mind. The Russians want
00:31:09the Ukrainians to commit at least to that. And the Russians also want steps to be taken,
00:31:17as they've always said, to shut down the entire Bandera movement, the nationalist movement in
00:31:24Ukraine, which the Russians also, of course, discussed and insisted upon at the time of the
00:31:30Istanbul agreement of April 2022. Now, the Ukrainians, and as I said, we're getting all
00:31:40of this information from the Ukrainians, have not mentioned whether the Russians also brought up
00:31:49limits on the size of the Ukrainian armed forces. But, given how tough all of Russia's
00:31:59other positions, other demands, are turning out to be, I think it is inconceivable that the
00:32:08Russians did not bring that up also. So, the Russians not only are sticking with Istanbul Plus,
00:32:18they are making it clear to the Ukrainians that they will insist on Istanbul Plus,
00:32:28and that unless Istanbul Plus is accepted in full by the Ukrainians, Istanbul Plus being
00:32:35what Putin proposed in his speech to the foreign ministry of 14th June 2024,
00:32:43if the Ukrainians don't agree to all of that, to the whole package,
00:32:47then the Russians will continue the war. They will continue it for as long as it takes.
00:32:53They will take, at the very least, eight regions, as opposed to four, leaving Ukraine as a romp
00:33:04state, and, well, it might even conceivably, I suppose, go beyond that as well. So, an absolutely
00:33:13uncompromising message from the Russians to the Ukrainians. So, that was apparently what passed
00:33:21at this meeting. And, interestingly, and in spite of all of that, it seems that the Ukrainians took
00:33:31it all very calmly. There were no raised voices. There was, in fact, some humour. The Russians,
00:33:37apparently, were laughing at one particular point in response to one of the points that the Ukrainians
00:33:44were making. As I said, if Mr. Goncharenko, and I gather it is Mr. Goncharenko in Ukraine,
00:33:52is telling the truth, the entire conversation took place in Russian. I'm not saying that the
00:33:58Ukrainians are going to agree to the Russian proposals, but the Russians have made their
00:34:04proposals. And that brings us back to the one point of agreement, which is that each side has said
00:34:12that it will present to the other their own conceptions of what a ceasefire will look at.
00:34:21Well, the Russians have already told us what it will look like. They say that, as a minimum,
00:34:31it must include Ukrainian withdrawal from the four regions. What the Ukrainians are going to say,
00:34:38I don't know. But anyway, that apparently is what the Russians are going to say. In fact,
00:34:44they've already said that it is what they're going to say. Probably, there will be much more.
00:34:50There will be provisions for monitoring the ceasefire. There will be further provisions for
00:34:58preventing Ukraine from receiving new weapons. And it'll be the Ukrainians who will be expected to
00:35:04agree to that, by the way. And for Ukraine not receiving any further intelligence from the
00:35:14Western powers. So I expect all of that to be in the Russian proposal. We will see what, if anything,
00:35:23is in the Ukrainian one. Now, there was one other demand that the Russians did apparently make
00:35:32over the course of the meeting yesterday. And that is that not only should Ukraine withdraw
00:35:41from the four regions, the entirety of the four regions, including the cities of Kherson and
00:35:47Zaporozhye, but the Ukrainians should also formally recognize these four territories
00:35:59as Russian, as well as Crimea as Russian, and should not prevent or should take no steps
00:36:10to prevent other countries from recognizing these territories also. And I'm going to say here that
00:36:20if that happens, if the Ukrainians do, in some unlikely but perhaps not impossible reality,
00:36:32reach that point, when they do recognize Crimea and the rest of the four regions as Russian,
00:36:39then I fully expect a cascade of countries will come forward and do so as well.
00:36:48One of the most interesting things, and I say this now purely as an aside,
00:36:52is that over the last few months I've been following the Indian media much more closely
00:36:59than I used to do. This is the result of the proliferation of Indian television channels
00:37:08and the way in which Indian newspapers now regularly have channels of their own on YouTube.
00:37:17And I've been reading and I've been following what these channels say, and I notice that over
00:37:23the last few months there has been a significant shift, or so at least it seems to me, a significant
00:37:30shift in Indian coverage of the conflict in Ukraine. Whereas, say, a year or so ago,
00:37:41the Indian media tended to be very even-handed in the way it covered the war,
00:37:49now they are becoming increasingly and increasingly obviously
00:37:59more weighted in favor of the Russians. And I, for one, expect that if Ukraine were to recognize
00:38:08the four regions as Russian, India quite plausibly would follow suit and do so as well.
00:38:16I suspect China would. Other countries in the global south probably would. Nobody should be
00:38:22surprised if there is a cascade of countries that do that, and if the United States does that too.
00:38:29And Donald Trump, of course, has hinted as much. He, after all, proposed through his intermediaries
00:38:39in Witgoff and Kellogg that the United States recognize Crimea as Russian and the four regions
00:38:48as Russian de facto. Well, it would not surprise me if we have a similar administration, if Trump
00:38:55is still president, if one of the countries that follows suit is the United States as well. Just
00:39:02saying, unlikely though that seems, to reiterate, the Ukrainians, for the moment, are showing no
00:39:10willingness to recognize any of their lost territory as Russian. But as I said, were that
00:39:17to change, I expect that there would be a cascade of countries that would recognize that also.
00:39:25Anyway, those were the Russian demands. They were very tough and very hard line. And I'm
00:39:31going to say something that I have said in previous programs, that despite the appointment
00:39:37of Medinsky as chief negotiator, which carries over from the previous negotiating team
00:39:46the Ukrainians had to deal with in February, March, April 2022, apart from Medinsky
00:39:56and Alexander Forman, the Russian military diplomat, who was also a member of the previous
00:40:03delegation and is a member of this delegation also. The new delegation that has been sent to
00:40:12Istanbul is much tougher, much stronger than the earlier delegation. And we're starting to see
00:40:20the effect of that. Apparently, they're saying it as it is. They're being blunt and outspoken,
00:40:28and apparently sometimes humorous in the way they go about setting up their positions.
00:40:35But they're not giving an inch. And for every Ukrainian response, the Russians immediately
00:40:44seem to have their own response. It's clear that they've gained this very, very carefully,
00:40:51as they have probably been working hard to do over the days preceding the meeting in Istanbul.
00:40:59So anyway, there we go. An incredibly tough line from the Russians.
00:41:05Now, Zelensky went to Tirana. He's met all his good friends there, his European chums.
00:41:12There's even a photograph, which I understand was made in Tirana, which shows Zelensky with some of
00:41:18them, including Starmer, by the way, in a room with lots of big windows and foliage behind.
00:41:28I presume this is the meeting in Tirana. I'm not absolutely sure, but I assume it is.
00:41:35Anyway, the media reports in Britain, in Bloomberg, are that the Europeans are now sunk
00:41:48in gloom. Nothing is turning out as they'd expected. This whole complicated poker game
00:41:58that they've been playing, not just over the last week, but basically ever since the disastrous
00:42:05Oval Office meeting, which took place at the end of February, between Zelensky, Trump and Vance.
00:42:15That whole poker game, as of this specific moment in time, appears to have failed.
00:42:24They were trying to win Trump over to Ukraine's side. They were working with Kellogg to try to get
00:42:34Trump and the Americans to commit to a ceasefire and to impose massive sanctions on the Russians
00:42:45if the Russians didn't agree to that ceasefire, which, of course, the Russians have consistently
00:42:51said they were not prepared to do. There's a very interesting article in The Guardian by
00:42:58The Guardian's journalist, Sean Walker, which provided a few more details. It confirms,
00:43:06by the way, that the Europeans have been working very closely with Lindsey Graham,
00:43:11who put forward the massive sanctions package, the bone-crunching sanctions package,
00:43:17which supposedly has the support of 72 senators. I never, for one moment, believed or thought
00:43:25that the Europeans weren't in touch with Lindsey Graham, but it is clear now that they are.
00:43:32So they've been working with Lindsey Graham, they've been working with Kellogg, they've been
00:43:36working, in other words, with the neocons in Washington, and they've been trying to manoeuvre
00:43:42Trump into a position where he blames Putin for the fact that there isn't a ceasefire and imposes
00:43:50sanctions upon Russia, these Lindsey Graham's sanctions, these bone-crunching sanctions on Russia.
00:43:59And, as we know, last week the Europeans thought they'd got there. And Sean Walker now has some
00:44:10really rather interesting information, which isn't fully consistent with what I previously
00:44:19believed. Now, according to Sean Walker, at no point in time last week did Trump actually say
00:44:29that he was going to impose sanctions on Russia if the Russians didn't agree to an unconditional
00:44:38ceasefire. But the Europeans went around telling everybody that he had done. And the famous
00:44:51telephone call that took place in Ukraine, where the four leaders, Macron, Starmer, Tusk, and
00:44:59Maltz, were in Ukraine, the famous telephone call in which the four European leaders, plus Zelensky
00:45:10called and spoke to Trump, was unexpected by Trump. Apparently he was asleep when they called and he
00:45:18had to be woken up. So they were talking to a sleepy Trump, who perhaps hadn't expected, who
00:45:27obviously hadn't expected, and who probably didn't welcome their call. I wonder whether that was
00:45:34intentional, by the way, just saying. Anyway, the European leaders then left that call and told
00:45:43everybody that they'd spoken to Trump. They didn't tell us that they were talking to a sleepy Trump,
00:45:50and that Trump had endorsed fully their position, and was ready and set to impose
00:45:57the bone-crunching sanctions if the Russians didn't agree to the ultimatum to accept the
00:46:08ceasefire, the unconditional ceasefire, on Monday. Now, if all of that is true,
00:46:15if Sean Walker is right about this, then it looks as if the Europeans not only were trying to bounce
00:46:21Trump into agreeing, signing off on these bone-crunching sanctions, but as if they were
00:46:30misrepresenting, in public, Trump's position by saying that he had committed himself to agree
00:46:42sanctions, which he never did. Now, I have to say, if that is true, then Trump, who doesn't,
00:46:51I think, take kindly to being manipulated in this way – nobody ever does, by the way,
00:46:57but I'm sure that Trump doesn't – I can well imagine that Trump must have been inwardly furious,
00:47:04and that might very well explain some of his reactions over the last couple of days.
00:47:14His enthusiastic acceptance of Putin's proposal for direct talks with Ukraine on Thursday,
00:47:22his categorical insistence that the Ukrainians attend the talks, his general
00:47:31welcome of the talks and of the way that they have happened, and his intensely relaxed
00:47:43response to the fact that Putin himself didn't turn up to attend the talks, as Zelensky
00:47:51absurdly suggested, and also the way in which Trump is now talking about a possible summit
00:48:03meeting between Putin and himself to basically resolve the conflict. It could be that Trump
00:48:12is indeed very, very angry, but that he is angry with Macron, Stama, and Tusk, and, of course,
00:48:22Zelensky, and not with Putin, because of the way they tried to maneuver him in to signing off
00:48:34on sanctions in ways that Trump himself never agreed to do. Now, this is all from Sean Walker,
00:48:44and one has to be a bit careful here, because there is one piece of evidence that might
00:48:49arguably argue against this, and that is the post that Trump published on Truth Social,
00:49:00post that Trump published on Truth Social, which I've discussed many times and in several places,
00:49:08which appeared on Thursday of last week, in which Trump did seem to float at least the possibility
00:49:19that the United States and its allies, in other words, the Europeans, would move forward with
00:49:26sanctions if there wasn't either a ceasefire or negotiations. It was unclear which. Maybe the
00:49:34Europeans seized on that post and tried to, as I said, propel Trump further than he intended
00:49:43towards sanctions, or perhaps the story is more complicated than Sean Walker knows.
00:49:51To say it straightforwardly, I suspect there's been an awful lot of discussion
00:49:56and things going on behind the scenes, which of course we have no idea about. Anybody,
00:50:02those of us who are not involved, have no idea about. And I'm sure that there's been much more
00:50:08to-ing and fro-ing and discussion and contacts between everybody, Americans and Russians,
00:50:14Americans and Europeans, Europeans and Ukrainians, than we can guess, than I can guess. But anyway,
00:50:22I set this all up. Anyway, there we go. So the Europeans are very, very gloomy.
00:50:30They don't know what to do. Apparently, in fact, not apparently, there was another call to Trump,
00:50:38as far as I can make out, by the same gaggle of European leaders, plus Zelensky from Tirana.
00:50:46They found Trump completely unreceptive to the idea of announcing sanctions against Russia,
00:50:54given that direct negotiations are now underway, and that the Ukrainians have agreed to a further
00:51:00meeting in June. Really doesn't seem any sense in that. The Europeans are now starting to lose hope
00:51:07that Trump is in fact going to announce further sanctions. And I think my sense is
00:51:17that the Europeans are perhaps for the first time starting to say to themselves
00:51:26that the game is lost, that Trump will never carry, do what they want him to do.
00:51:36He will never break with the Russians. He will never impose the sanctions. He will never fully
00:51:42recommit to Ukraine. That all attempts to try to tie him down, to corner him, to try to get him
00:51:51to do that, are going to fail. And that as a result, because of Trump's stance,
00:51:59Project Ukraine is about to fail also. As I said, I understand that is the general mood
00:52:06in Europe at the moment. It is despondent and gloomy. Nobody apparently knows what to do.
00:52:15They're wringing their hands and apparently complaining to each other. No doubt some
00:52:21people are coming up with all kinds of ideas. They don't really expect more big American arms
00:52:29packages to Ukraine. They now realize that there is no real prospect of Europe filling up,
00:52:36making the difference of getting more weapons to Ukraine to compensate for the weapons the
00:52:44Americans aren't providing. And as I said, it may be, and I want to stress this is heavily qualified,
00:52:54but it may be, and judging from some of the news reports, that the EU, the Europeans,
00:53:04the British, the Germans, the French, Starmer, Macron, Merz, are finally, finally coming close
00:53:12to that point when they realize that they have lost. Lost not just this current diplomatic tussle,
00:53:25but the entire game that the Russians are going to win, either through negotiations
00:53:33or on the battlefield, and that there is nothing they can do now to prevent it.
00:53:39So anyway, I may be wrong, and it's also important to say that, you know, this may be the mood
00:53:46in Europe today, but it was next week. Human nature being what it is, it may be that somebody
00:53:53else might come up with some wonderful new great plan which they hope or think is going to turn
00:54:00everything round, and then hope might restart. But I do get the sense that some great line at
00:54:10the moment has been crossed. In Europe, I should stress. Now about great plans, and the way great
00:54:17plans can go horribly astray, I have to say that I read, and I confess, with something of a chuckle,
00:54:28an article which appeared in the Financial Times. It reads how Ukraine lost hundreds of millions
00:54:36on arms deals gone wrong. Now, many of you may remember that I think it was back in 2023,
00:54:44President Pavel of the Czech Republic came up with a plan to buy shells, artillery shells,
00:54:52of the international arms market for Ukraine. The European Union assigned to him 5 billion euros
00:55:01to buy these shells, and I predicted at the time that this is a disastrous idea,
00:55:09that the international arms merchants and all of these people would be rubbing their hands with
00:55:15delight, that the end result of this project, of this plan, would be that the Czechs would indeed
00:55:24place contracts for shells, but never as many shells as they were hoping for, because the
00:55:32arms dealers would inevitably jack up their prices, that some of the shells that the
00:55:39Czechs thought they were buying would be shells that exist only in the imagination,
00:55:47and that some of the shells that were eventually provided would be defective and would turn out to
00:55:54be duds. Well, over the next couple of months, about a year, articles started to appear in the
00:56:03media confirming that very thing, and this was a huge embarrassment, and I noticed some months ago
00:56:13that there were some attempts, some very unconvincing attempts, from people in the
00:56:17Czech Republic, some people in the Czech Republic, to pretend that President Pavel's great plan
00:56:25to buy shells on the international arms market, well, that they actually turned out well after all.
00:56:33You can believe that if you wish. If you do, well, I have a bridge to sell you. That's all I would say.
00:56:42Anyway, this article in the Financial Times is about an entirely different but rather similar
00:56:48project, and it seems that the Ukrainians spent 770 million, I think it was dollars,
00:56:59or it might have been pounds, but anyway, that they, it was dollars, 770 million dollars
00:57:05buying weapons on the international arms market. The article makes, by the way,
00:57:12very interesting admission that at the time when the special military operation began, in February
00:57:182022, Ukraine only had shells for about two weeks of fighting, so we can be sure that there must
00:57:28have been massive deliveries of shells to Ukraine from the Western powers in the very first days
00:57:35of the war to get Ukraine through, because it is inconceivable that Ukraine could obtain the
00:57:43shells it needed in any other way. But anyway, Ukraine went on a shopping expedition, spending
00:57:52770 million dollars to buy arms on the international arms market. There is no
00:58:02explanation here, by the way, in this article about how Ukraine, which is a bankrupt country,
00:58:10found this money. The short answer, of course, is that it was provided by Western,
00:58:17American, and European taxpayers. So, we're talking about American and European taxpayers'
00:58:24money, just saying. Anyway, 770 million dollars, and well, it all went horribly wrong, and
00:58:37the subtitle, I'm not going to read the whole article, it's quite funny in places,
00:58:41the whole article tells us about how the Ukrainians encountered, as one does when one
00:58:48goes on shopping expeditions of this kind, with large amounts of money in one's pocket,
00:58:54they encountered all sorts of interesting and plausible people in all kinds of interesting
00:59:00places. You can find details of some of these people in this article. Anyway, they came along,
00:59:09all kinds of deals were done, and well, some weapons were obtained. But, to go to the subtitle,
00:59:18desperate to source munitions, Kiev paid foreign brokers for weapons and shells
00:59:26that were sometimes unusable or never arrived. The word never arrived,
00:59:33is very elegant, that never existed for an accurate description, I suspect, of the realities.
00:59:44But you can go to the article yourself and draw your own conclusions. As I said,
00:59:50the international arms market is absolutely not for the faint-hearted. You will find all sorts
00:59:57of interesting people there, and as I said, they can see Osaka coming from a distance,
01:00:03and you can imagine the delight with which this person is received. The article does, by the way,
01:00:12say that it wasn't just these interesting people that the Ukrainian buyers found around the world.
01:00:23It's not impossible that some of the money, the $770 million, vanished in Ukraine itself
01:00:35because of the well-known problems accounting for money which exist there.
01:00:44Anyway, it's an interesting article. I would not be surprised, just saying, if over the next couple
01:00:51of weeks, if American arms supplies really did start to wind down, if we start to see
01:00:59more projects of this kind, with, of course, the identical outcome. Anyway, moving on.
01:01:08There's probably another factor, another reason, why the Europeans are apparently in a gloomy
01:01:20and despondent mood, because it seems that the White House and the Pentagon
01:01:27is now telling the Europeans that the United States is about to conduct a major drawdown
01:01:34of U.S. military forces from Europe. It's not clear to me whether only a proportion of these forces
01:01:45are being withdrawn, or whether all of them are. Somewhat to my surprise, some of the reports
01:01:54suggest that all of them are. I can't quite believe that. Not at this stage. But I notice that the
01:02:03American officials who are passing on this information to the Europeans about this drawdown
01:02:11of American forces from Europe are also coming and telling the Europeans that the United States is
01:02:21going to remain fully committed to NATO, that it continues to be a big ally. Now, when those
01:02:34assurances, when assurances of that kind, have to be given, that suggests that the drawdown of
01:02:41American forces from Europe is a big deal. So, it's a big deal, but it's a big deal, and it's a big deal.
01:02:48Now, to repeat again, this is not because the United States has gone soft. It is not because the United States is giving up its geopolitical position.
01:03:04It is because the United States faces a resource crisis. President Trump and his officials are
01:03:14talking up the fact that recruitment into the US military has now finally started to pick up again.
01:03:22But even if it recovers fully to the position that it was, the United States is still
01:03:31massively overextended in many places, and given that it has decided that China is the main challenger,
01:03:42what appears to be happening is a reshuffling of American forces from Europe to the Asia-Pacific
01:03:51region. Now, from a European perspective, they're not going to like that at all. They want the
01:04:01Americans to stay. I've discussed this in many programs. They want the Americans to stay because
01:04:08they rely on the Americans to keep the Russians at bay. They rely on the Americans to keep pressure
01:04:16on the Russians. The Europeans probably sense that in any future negotiations with the Russians on,
01:04:25say, energy issues, or even simple things like fishing, quotas, and things of that kind,
01:04:34they will be in a significantly weaker position if they don't have the American superpower
01:04:41fully behind them. So, the Europeans will not like that at all. And besides,
01:04:52when they get reassurances that the United States remains fully committed to NATO and is still
01:05:00a firm ally, more likely than not, that is going to trigger some European concerns,
01:05:07that the very fact that the Americans are saying that may be a sign that, in fact, they are
01:05:13reconsidering their commitment to NATO and that they're not such a firm ally after all.
01:05:21So, one could see why the Europeans are worried about this. And they are worried by something else.
01:05:30And again, this is openly discussed in the European media. They're very concerned now
01:05:38about the possibility of a summit meeting between Putin and Trump. And Peskov, Putin's spokesman,
01:05:45has been talking about this. And he says that, absolutely, such a meeting is necessary.
01:05:51It must take place. Not quite yet. There still needs to be a lot of work done
01:06:01in order to prepare for that meeting. But in a way, for the Europeans, that is even more
01:06:08alarming because it suggests that the Russians are planning an expansive agenda for this meeting,
01:06:18including maybe a re-examination of the security situation and the security architecture in Europe.
01:06:29And the Europeans must worry that Trump and the administration, because they want to refocus
01:06:38on Asia and the Pacific, might be tempted to agree to some of the things that the Russians want.
01:06:46So, one could understand the gloom and the nervousness in Europe at this time.
01:06:54Now, I have to say this. They do have a way out. Now, Michael von der Schulenburg,
01:07:04German diplomat, UN official, a person who's given advice, a member of the European Parliament also,
01:07:12I should say, a person who's worked with the BSW in Germany, a voice of reason and sanity
01:07:19on foreign policy for a very, very long time. He has recently, I noticed, been to Moscow. He was
01:07:26there for the Victory Day celebrations. He emphatically did not attend, I should make this
01:07:33clear, the parade on Red Square, but he did visit Moscow. He did speak to various Russian officials.
01:07:45From what I understand, he spoke to ordinary Russians as well. And he and the group of MPs,
01:07:57European MPs, of which he was part, issued certain statements which you can track down and find.
01:08:08I find them very moving and very important, by the way, in which
01:08:16Schulenburg and the others make the point that in Russia you find none of the anger and hysteria and
01:08:28vindictiveness, if I have to say it, towards the Europeans, that you find on the part of
01:08:35the Europeans towards the Russians. Now, that is actually very astonishing,
01:08:42given the amount of abuse and language that has been used by the European leadership,
01:08:49and which continues to be used by the European leadership about Russia. Friedrich Merz, as I
01:08:56said, the Chancellor of Germany, made a speech in which he talked about the Russians committing
01:09:02barbaric acts, for example. But the Russians have never reciprocated in anything like the same way.
01:09:14It could be because they're winning the war, and, of course, if you're winning the war,
01:09:19you don't have to use this hysterical and shrill language. Or it could be because
01:09:28there's aspects of the Russian character that work against them acting in this way.
01:09:34Or it could be because – and this is probably the most likely explanation – because they're taking
01:09:41their cue from the Kremlin itself, which has notably avoided stooping to this kind of rhetoric.
01:09:50When I discussed Putin's comments, his speech to the journalists,
01:09:59the one that he made on Saturday, the one in which he announced Russia's intention to send
01:10:06a negotiating team to Istanbul on Thursday, I made the point that he was very careful to avoid using
01:10:16any of the language about the Ukrainians or about the Europeans that the Europeans and the Ukrainians
01:10:26use about Russia and about him. The nearest he has come to, in terms of outright abuse,
01:10:38abuse, insults, that kind of thing, was a couple of days ago when, over the course of an economics
01:10:46meeting, he said that the European leaders were idiots to think about imposing further sanctions
01:10:54on Russia, which would only backfire against them and worsen the conditions of life of their own
01:11:02people. Well, idiots is very strong, and it does give one a sense of what Putin thinks about these
01:11:09people, but it falls far, far short of what the Western leaders routinely say about him. Anyway,
01:11:19put that aside. Schulenberg found that the Russians are absolutely open to contacts with
01:11:26the Europeans, that they take a very calm response. They have a very calm response
01:11:33to all that has been happening. He says that he didn't encounter any hostility,
01:11:41nor did his group, whilst they were in Russia. And, well, I think that European leaders,
01:11:51if they were wise, would build on that. Why do they not do that which I, Michael Schulenberg,
01:12:04Ian Proud, Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Alex Kristoforo, my colleague and friend on the Duran,
01:12:13all of us have been saying, the Russians have also been saying,
01:12:18why don't the Europeans finally, if they feel so gloomy and despondent about the situation,
01:12:29finally pick up the courage, pick up the telephone, call Lavrov or Putin and say,
01:12:37look, we understand that we've now reached this point. We want to meet with you. Will you accept
01:12:46our representative in Moscow? In response to which, there is an absolute certainty that the Russians
01:12:55will say yes. So, at that point, the European representative, who, heavens help us,
01:13:04currently is Emmanuel Macron of France, can presumably go to Moscow and talk with the
01:13:13Russians and, well, perhaps see what, if anything, can be done. Isn't that a far more sensible
01:13:24approach? I should add Robert Skidelsky, Lord Skidelsky, in Britain, as another person who
01:13:31calls for Europe and the British, by the way, to start doing that kind of thing. Well, of course,
01:13:37they're not going to do it, not for the moment. Probably, they're going to wait further
01:13:46until things get worse, worse for Ukraine, worse for the people of Europe. They will do it
01:13:55only when they have absolutely no choice. And even then, they might try to avoid doing it.
01:14:05Anyway, I'm not going to discuss the military situation today. I was hoping to do so,
01:14:12but obviously, we've had more developments. I will try to return to it further in my program
01:14:18tomorrow. But suffice to say that the military situation continues to go very badly for Ukraine.
01:14:26Today, this morning, we got a whole new set of claims that the fortified village of Bagatyr
01:14:34has now fallen completely under Russian control. I think that is likely to be true.
01:14:41We will probably get confirmation of this over the course of the day, and we shall see.
01:14:50It's becoming increasingly clear to me that the Russians almost certainly do have an armed
01:14:58presence inside southern Pokrovsk, though the area is very subject to heavy fighting.
01:15:06And technically, it might not be Pokrovsk. It might be some of the outlying villages,
01:15:12or supposed villages, that in reality do form, as far as I can see, part of the built-up area
01:15:20that ultimately amounts to Pokrovsk. So, clearly, the Russians are advancing there,
01:15:29and they're advancing in Konstantinovka, around Konstantinovka as well.
01:15:36And Radovka, the other day, was saying that they now expect that the Ukrainian forces
01:15:44south of Konstantinovka are going to withdraw from their positions and retreat into the urban
01:15:51areas of the town, because to do otherwise would bring upon them their own destruction.
01:16:02Serzhiy, the Ukrainian military chief, has now finally acknowledged what Brian Beletnik
01:16:13and myself and Alex Vashinin and all sorts of others have been saying for years, that Russia
01:16:20is waging a war of attrition against Ukraine, which is obviously true. He didn't say that the
01:16:26Russians are winning the war of attrition, though they obviously are. But anyway, as I said, the
01:16:33military situation continues to deteriorate for Ukraine. I am going to just quickly say one
01:16:41further thing, that I still have significant doubts about whether the Russians have indeed
01:16:50established bridgeheads on the west bank of the Dnieper River. But anyway, I will try, hopefully,
01:16:57to discuss that further in my program tomorrow. Anyway, in the meantime, and just to say this,
01:17:08I will just say a few quick words about the situation in the Middle East. It seems that
01:17:15Israel has now begun another offensive in Gaza. There are reports all across the media now that
01:17:23the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself have called on Israel, that the relationship
01:17:30between Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively broken down, that Donald Trump
01:17:40conspicuously did not visit Israel during his Middle East trip. He went to Saudi Arabia and
01:17:47the Gulf, but he didn't go to Israel. His comments about Israel, whilst in Saudi Arabia, were perhaps
01:17:54less fulsome, certainly a lot less extensive than one might have expected. And there is now
01:18:03a widespread view that even in Europe, or at least also in Europe, and certainly in Britain
01:18:13and France, though I think less so in Germany, the tide of opinion is beginning to turn against
01:18:21Israel. I think that this is probably true. I think that, again, it might be unwise to make
01:18:33too many assumptions about this. In Trump's case, I have no doubt at all that what has annoyed him
01:18:42is Israel's incessant lobbying for an attack on Iran, and the revelations that Israel has been
01:18:52able to get its friends within the administration to lobby on its behalf, and that Donald Trump's
01:19:01own National Security Advisor, Mike Walsh, at one time seemed to be working more closely with the
01:19:08Israelis than he was for the President himself. So it may be that the mood is indeed finally
01:19:17shifting against Israel, and that might be something that the Israeli authorities might,
01:19:26in normal times, notice and act on. I have to say that so far I've not seen anything happen
01:19:38that might constrain Israeli actions. If there is this shift in the mood, then the right place again
01:19:48for it to acquire form would be in the United Nations. Until we actually see
01:20:00Western countries supporting resolutions in the Security Council and in the General Assembly
01:20:10which require Israel to stop, I will take all of this talk about a change in mood in Europe
01:20:19with a pinch of salt. Anyway, that's what I wanted to say in my program today.
01:20:27I expect that I will be making a program, by the way, tomorrow, a normal program tomorrow,
01:20:34though it might appear earlier than usual because obviously I'm traveling.
01:20:41And I fully intend to do programs on Monday and Tuesday and for Wednesday,
01:20:50though, as I said, there may be technical issues that I will need to resolve.
01:20:56And anyway, whatever. So expect my next program, and I will try and keep you all informed
01:21:03about what I'm doing. And in the meantime, I would remind you again that you can find all
01:21:10our programs on our various platforms, Locals, Rumble and X, and you can support our work
01:21:17via Patreon and Subscribestar and by going to our shop, links under this video. Last but not least,
01:21:24please remember if you've liked this video to tick the like button and to check your subscription
01:21:29to this channel. Thank you again. More from me soon. Have a very good day.
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