- 6/3/2025
In this intense update, Alexander Mercouris breaks down the dramatic turn in the Ukraine conflict ππ₯. Moscow has crushed Kievβs hopes for a US-backed ceasefire, doubling down with tougher demands at the Istanbul negotiations π§Ύπ·πΊ. Meanwhile, a furious Zelensky pushes hard for more Western sanctions π. What does this mean for peace prospects? Can diplomacy survive the latest blows?
Stay informed with sharp geopolitical insight and on-the-ground updates. π§ π‘
π Don't forget to like, share & subscribe for daily deep dives!
#AlexanderMercouris #RussiaUkraineWar #UkraineCrisis #MoscowVsKiev #Zelensky #IstanbulTalks #Geopolitics #WarNews #BreakingNews #EasternEurope #USCeasefire #GlobalPolitics #UkraineConflict #WorldAffairs #PeaceTalks #Sanctions #RussiaNews #UkraineUpdate #InternationalRelations #CrisisReport
Stay informed with sharp geopolitical insight and on-the-ground updates. π§ π‘
π Don't forget to like, share & subscribe for daily deep dives!
#AlexanderMercouris #RussiaUkraineWar #UkraineCrisis #MoscowVsKiev #Zelensky #IstanbulTalks #Geopolitics #WarNews #BreakingNews #EasternEurope #USCeasefire #GlobalPolitics #UkraineConflict #WorldAffairs #PeaceTalks #Sanctions #RussiaNews #UkraineUpdate #InternationalRelations #CrisisReport
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00good day today is tuesday 3rd june 2025 and i am making this program the day after
00:00:07the russian and ukrainian delegations met in istanbul in a former ottoman palace now converted
00:00:17into a major business hotel one which has conference rooms in one of which the meeting
00:00:25between the russians and the ukrainians took place and as always happens with these meetings there's
00:00:31an enormous amount of speculation in advance as to what is going to happen and in particular that
00:00:39speculation tends to focus on whether or not the russians are going to shift from the positions
00:00:48that president putin outlined in his speech to the foreign ministry on the 14th of june
00:00:55what i have described as istanbul plus and whether they're going to start making further moves
00:01:03towards agreeing to the kind of ceasefire the president trump has been advocating ever since
00:01:09he became president and ever since then the ukrainians themselves as ever since the meeting
00:01:16between the americans and the ukrainians in jeddah in march that proposal for a ceasefire that the
00:01:25ukrainians themselves have not only accepted but are now busy promoting and what invariably happens
00:01:34whenever we get these sort of high noon type situations with people wondering and speculating
00:01:41about russian concessions that it turns out that the russians are not making any concessions at all
00:01:48and that is exactly what happened yesterday in istanbul now i would say actually that
00:01:56now that i have read the memorandum which the russians presented to the ukrainians a very short
00:02:05document by the way very clearly and succinctly written um now that i've read that memorandum
00:02:14it seems to me that the russians have in a few places tweaked putin's 14th june 2024 proposals
00:02:24and if anything slightly hardened them so let's just go over what the russians proposed now much of it is
00:02:38things that we have heard before so first of all um the memorandum speaks about uh ukraine
00:02:48uh withdrawing completely from the um four territories the four regions donets lugansk zaporozhye and herson
00:02:59and recognizing these four territories as russian the russians have already made it clear for some time
00:03:08that that is what they expect the ukrainians to do but this is now clearly set out in the proposal not
00:03:15just to withdraw from these four regions but to recognize them as russian now that isn't new in
00:03:23terms of the meeting in istanbul but i believe that it does go slightly beyond what putin said in his
00:03:32speech to the foreign ministry on the 14th of june if 2024 if my memory is correct at that time he was not
00:03:42specifically expecting the ukrainians to recognize the four regions and of course crimea as russian
00:03:52now however it then goes beyond this because the memorandum speaks about a final treaty between ukraine
00:04:06and russia having to be approved by the un security council now that treaty will of course incorporate
00:04:16a provision recognizing the four regions and crimea as part of russia so if this treaty goes to the un
00:04:25security council then the western powers the united states britain and france which have power of veto
00:04:35will be put in a position of either having to support this treaty in which case they will recognize the four
00:04:46regions plus crimea as part of russia in a formal legal document or presumably they would either abstain
00:04:58or vote against the treaty it's a subtle way of increasing pressure down the line on the americans
00:05:09the british and the french and indeed the europeans in general to accept the eventual outcome of the war
00:05:16as far as i know this is new so that is one thing that this russian memorandum also does
00:05:25it does something else as well which is also new it talks about ukraine obviously being a neutral country
00:05:35it also um requires various provisions to be enacted in the final treaty confirming that that would also
00:05:46of course be incorporated in the treaty that would then be presented to the un security council for in
00:05:57effect legal ratification so it would be binding on the western powers not to go back on this agreement and
00:06:08to reverse position and to try to bring ukraine into nato at some future time
00:06:17but of course there's something else in the treaty as well and this does definitely go beyond the april
00:06:242022 istanbul agreement and as far as i know it has not been floated by the russians before
00:06:31as well as calling for limits upon the size of the ukrainian armed forces this treaty
00:06:42specifically prohibits ukraine not only from hosting bases of foreign troops on its territory but from
00:06:55hosting even temporary deployments of foreign troops on its territory at all now this goes beyond
00:07:06what was can set out in the istanbul 2022 agreement the istanbul 2022 agreement
00:07:14set out various guarantees that there would be guarantees for ukraine security that these would be
00:07:20provided by various powers one of these powers would be russia russia russia would provide amongst other
00:07:29countries security guarantees for ukraine and all of the guarantor countries including of course russia
00:07:38would have a right of veto on deployment of foreign troops on ukrainian territory even for temporary periods
00:07:47of time and that was a elaborate elegant way of giving russia veto rights over the deployment of foreign
00:07:58troops on ukrainian territory foreign troops obviously means nato troops this time the agreement is much more
00:08:08straightforward ukraine is not allowed to host foreign troops on its territory including of course and
00:08:16especially of course nato troops it is as simple and as straightforward as that so this this memorandum as i said
00:08:26represents a significant hardening on istanbul 1 the april 2022 agreement in that respect and it is a hardening
00:08:40also from putin's 14th june 2024 proposals which to my recollection made no such provisions and you can see
00:08:53a further hardening in the memorandum as well now the istanbul agreement of april 2022
00:09:05the one that was never fully agreed but which was agreed in draft with the two sides initialing it actually
00:09:13said that russia would support ukraine's application to become a member of the european union this memorandum
00:09:22makes no reference to the european union at all it doesn't say that russia objects to ukraine's
00:09:30application to join the european union but nor does it say that russia would support ukraine's application
00:09:41to join the european union now perhaps and possibly if ukraine were ever to sit down and negotiate the point
00:09:52accepting the memorandum the russian memorandum as a framework for the final agreement something which of
00:10:04course ukraine outright refuses to do well maybe in that event that inconceivable event that ukraine as i said
00:10:14sat down and negotiated and negotiated an agreement based on this memorandum it might be that the
00:10:21russians might be persuaded to revert to the original position of april 2022 in which they were supporting
00:10:31ukraine's application to join the european union but at the moment in this memorandum at least
00:10:42they are not doing so i'm going to say that in the next iteration assuming these talks now break down
00:10:52which i think is highly likely as we will see shortly in the next iteration in the next set of
00:10:59negotiations that might take place possibly in the autumn of this year maybe sometime next year
00:11:09i suspect that at that point the russian position will harden and the russians will say straightforwardly
00:11:16that ukraine cannot join the european union and it must agree not only that it will not join nato but
00:11:25also that it will not join the european union either this is consistent with a series of statements made by
00:11:36russian officials recently including russian foreign minister sergey lavrov that the european union is
00:11:43gradually converting from an economic association into a political military alliance and one that is
00:11:52hostile to russia which of course signals that at some point in the future the russians will object to
00:12:01ukraine joining the eu the door is not closed on this yet but in my opinion it is closing
00:12:14now the memorandum the russian memorandum is divided into three sections the first section
00:12:21is the one about the general peace the outline treaties the transfer of the four regions to russia
00:12:30ukraine's neutral status ukraine's commitment to cease to be a nuclear power and never become one
00:12:37and never host nuclear weapons on its territory ukraine's reduction of its armed forces
00:12:44this is also there clearly set out in the memorandum there is no specific
00:12:52statement of the level to which ukraine is expected to reduce its armed forces this is something that
00:13:00probably the russians feel can only be settled by negotiations setting up their own ideas in a memorandum
00:13:08like this of what size the ukrainian armed forces would be after the peace treaty was signed would convert this
00:13:20memorandum from a memorandum offering a framework proposal into in effect a kind of diktat telling the ukrainians
00:13:33what they must agree to even in terms of their own army and though we might eventually get to the point
00:13:41where the russians do in fact impose such a diktat for the moment they're just about stopping short of doing that
00:13:53but anyway that of course is there and and there are further provisions on rights of russians and for
00:14:02the first time this memorandum now includes specific provisions concerning the rights of the orthodox church
00:14:12in ukraine the russian orthodox church but this of course is understandable because it's since the april
00:14:202022 agreement that ukraine has in effect taken steps to disestablish the russian orthodox church
00:14:29on the territory of ukraine so in it this is the framework the memorandum for the treaty
00:14:36and it is all there all the packages that all the things that the russians have been talking about
00:14:42basically since the special military operation began they are all there the demand also that ukraine
00:14:49purge from its society and its military and its political system the groups that um uphold the
00:14:59ultra-nationalist ideologies of stepan bandera and other people from the mid-1930s and 40s which
00:15:08i'm not going to discuss further in reflection in to the sensitivities of this topic for the platform
00:15:16but anyway all of that is there but there is another section as well there's two other sections
00:15:22in a relatively short document and they are very interesting firstly the second section discusses
00:15:30ceasefire plans and here we see that the russians have had to maneuver a little because vladimir putin
00:15:40in his speech to the foreign ministry on the 14th of june 2024 said that russia would
00:15:46only agree to a ceasefire whose purpose would be for would be the withdrawal of ukrainian troops
00:15:57from the four regions no other ceasefire would do russia had been tricked into temporary ceasefires
00:16:07before or ceasefires before the february 2015 minsk agreement contained a ceasefire ukraine used
00:16:16those ceasefires to rearm and to resume the war and the russians therefore would not countenance
00:16:24another temporary ceasefire well that was the russian position until march
00:16:31this year to be precise until the 18th of march this year when following the meeting between the americans
00:16:40and the ukrainians in jeddah where the ukrainians agreed to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire
00:16:48donald trump telephoned vladimir putin on the 18th of march of this year and demanded that putin also
00:16:56agree to the same type of unconditional 30-day ceasefire and putin said that he could not agree to an
00:17:07unconditional ceasefire he was prepared to accept a ceasefire along the existing contact line but there
00:17:15would have to be nuances as it was put which would need to be addressed and he set out what those nuances
00:17:22would be he spoke about the ceasefire having to be carefully monitored through some kind of monitoring
00:17:30process and he said that over the course of that ceasefire there would have to be
00:17:38a clear commitment from the united states and the western powers that they would not provide ukraine
00:17:44with any further military equipment and that intelligence sharing with ukraine should also stop
00:17:51now that obviously is a different ceasefire plan from the one that putin outlined in his speech to the
00:18:04foreign ministry on the 14th of june 2024 and i had assumed therefore that putin and the russians have
00:18:16essentially moved beyond the 14th june 2024 ceasefire a ceasefire intended purely to facilitate the withdrawal of
00:18:28ukrainian troops to from the four regions and would now stick with the 18th of march 2025 ceasefire which is
00:18:40essentially was essentially was essentially a ceasefire plan whereby the ukrainian military would be
00:18:46basically uh prevented from re-arming and reinforcing and would be um stripped of intelligence from the unit
00:18:56from the west from the united states and the western powers well that's not actually what the russians
00:19:03ultimately did because um rather um teasingly they proposed both ceasefire plans to the ukrainians as
00:19:17alternative options they said that the ukrainians could choose between one of two ceasefire schemes
00:19:25the first was putin's 20 14th june 2024 ceasefire plan the ukrainians use a ceasefire to withdraw their troops from the four regions
00:19:40there would have to be agreements on how this was to be done and there would be all kinds of procedures to that
00:19:46end and if you read the entire memorandum in its entirety it's clear that even this ceasefire would be limited to
00:19:5530 days so that would require the ukrainians to pull all their troops out of the four regions within 30 days
00:20:04anyway that is ceasefire plan one putin's original ceasefire plan or in the alternative ceasefire plan
00:20:16two the ceasefire plan that putin basically agreed in response to trump's demand for an unconditional ceasefire
00:20:29the ceasefire on the existing contact line but one in which the ukrainians were denied further military
00:20:38supplies from the west or military supplies from the west would cease and intelligence sharing from the west
00:20:45would cease as well now the russians have toughened up this second ceasefire proposal they say that not only
00:20:56if the ukrainians went for this second option should ukraine stop receiving intelligence
00:21:03from the western powers or indeed any third party so um there would not be there would no longer be any
00:21:14intelligence supplied to ukraine from nato or the united states or perhaps intelligence
00:21:24still supplied ultimately by nato and the united states but laundered through a third party like
00:21:31say israel i'm just suggesting israel or argentina or some other country like that so no intelligence
00:21:40no further arm supplies but also ukraine would have to stop mobilization and in fact begin demobilization
00:21:51it would have to begin the process of in other words disarming um ending
00:21:59um basically demobilizing its army over this 30-day period again a hardening of the russian position
00:22:13since the 18th of march of this year and again a proposal which of course the ukrainians are going to
00:22:19refuse they're going to refuse both ceasefire proposals in fact they have already done so
00:22:26and interestingly then there is the third part of the memorandum which also
00:22:38tells us what needs to happen during this 30-day ceasefire period 30 days for whichever ceasefire plan
00:22:49is enacted firstly ukraine would have to lift martial law and it would need to schedule elections
00:23:02presidential and i presume parliamentary elections which would need to happen within the next 100 days
00:23:11and looking at the plan also it seems clear that ukraine would also have to lift all restrictions on those
00:23:21elections and would need to allow various people who have been prevented from participating in those elections
00:23:32it would have to allow those persons to participate in those elections as well now i can't help but think
00:23:40that this proposal for elections to be held within 100 days of the lifting of martial law is an attempt basically
00:23:53to oust vladimir zelensky from the presidency and um it would of course indirectly
00:24:06resolve the question of the question of who would ultimately be the person to sign and of course it would
00:24:15also indirectly resolve this question that the russians have been bringing up or at least vladimir
00:24:22putin has been repeatedly bringing up about zelensky's constitutional status whether he is
00:24:31really a legal president of ukraine whether he holds power unconstitutionally the russians have repeatedly said
00:24:40that at the present time they can't rely upon any signature to a final treaty that zelensky signs
00:24:50because his own status under ukrainian constitutional law is under is in question
00:25:00and that might leave it open for ukraine at some point in the future to simply go back
00:25:07on zelensky's signature and say that zelensky's signature is invalid and therefore the whole treaty also is
00:25:16anyway that's what the russians um appear to be trying to do here they're basically still casting
00:25:24doubt on zelensky's legitimacy as president and they're demanding that ukraine hold elections in order to
00:25:33resolve that before the treaty the final treaty is signed and it's pretty obvious that they want those
00:25:41elections or would like those elections to result in someone else not vladimir zelensky becoming
00:25:49president of ukraine and being the person to sign that final treaty now i think incidentally that the
00:25:57russians over the last couple of days have given another pretty broad hint as to who it is that they
00:26:03would personally that they would themselves prefer to see as the future president of ukraine i've spoken
00:26:12how in the past the russians have seemed to want to see victor medvedchuk the leader of ukraine's biggest
00:26:22opposition party before the february 2022 um conflict uh armed conflict began um that they wanted to see
00:26:31him as the future president of ukraine i think they've come to realize that medvedchuk is too controversial
00:26:39a figure in ukraine for that to happen and i think that their hopes now rest on mikola azarov who was
00:26:52victor yanukovych is much respected widely respected prime minister uh during the period when yanukovych was
00:27:01president until uh azarov and yanukovych fell out during the period of the maidan protests azarov is like
00:27:14medvedchuk in exile in russia he is by the way i understand ethnic and ethnic russian just saying but
00:27:23the russians have just made us taken a step which confirms that they hold azarov in extremely high
00:27:31regard which is that they have just elected him a member of their academy of sciences now i'm not
00:27:40going to discuss in this program the enormously high status within russia of the academy of sciences
00:27:49something that has no analog in any western country just to say but for example the fact that andrei
00:28:00sakharov during the soviet era was a member of the academy of sciences academician sakharov gave him a
00:28:09huge prestige within the soviet union and within russia itself and it was something which the soviet
00:28:18government was never able to deprive sakharov of the academy of sciences consistently refused or resisted
00:28:29all attempts by the soviet government to have um sakharov removed from the academy of sciences
00:28:38so here we have azarov who does have a scientific past he is a mining specialist suddenly elevated to the
00:28:48status of academician and obviously this confirms um his prestige and makes him appear in russia a person of
00:29:01very very high repute indeed whether there is any realistic possibility of azarov becoming the leader of ukraine
00:29:13to be frank i completely doubt but anyway i suspect that there are some people in russia who would be
00:29:21quite pleased if that were indeed the outcome so there we have it that's the russian proposals that's
00:29:28the set of proposals that the russians have now provided to the ukrainians far from seeing a softening
00:29:37of the russian position we have seen a slight hardening of the russian position now the russians
00:29:45did come up with certain other proposals they spoke this the third part as well as setting out you know
00:29:53what would happen during the negotiation the ceasefire the lifting of martial law the elections and all of
00:29:59that they also um set out various steps that would be taken um in along the way to achieving this 30-day
00:30:12ceasefire what you might call confidence building measures they included an agreement by both sides
00:30:23to agree to short three-day ceasefires on various parts of the battle lines in order to recover the
00:30:31bodies of dead soldiers that is not by the way uh new in war the soviets and the germans never did
00:30:42anything like that during the second world war but the allies and the germans did just saying the western
00:30:48allies and the germans did so that is not unusual and the russians have apparently told the ukrainians
00:30:55that they are prepared to hand over to the ukrainians 6 000 bodies of fallen ukrainian soldiers dead
00:31:04ukrainian soldiers who have who are in their possession and who will be handed over to the ukrainians
00:31:12without conditions and so that these soldiers can receive as the russians put it christian burial
00:31:22incidentally there is some confusion about whether these are 6 000 soldiers or 6 000 officers my understanding
00:31:34is that we're talking about soldiers the ukrainians are not happy or impressed with either of these
00:31:41these proposals not i think because they object to receiving the bodies of these these dead soldiers
00:31:47exactly at least that not what they've said but because um they probably perceive this
00:31:56uh these russian proposals as intended to put ukraine in an embarrassing position and
00:32:04and i believe that ukraine doesn't have anything like 6 000 dead bodies of russian soldiers it can send
00:32:16back to russia in ukraine and i further suspect that the ukrainians are not happy with the admission
00:32:25that there are 6 000 bodies of dead ukrainian soldiers in russian possession because that speaks to much
00:32:36higher casualties overall including dead and injured than the ukrainians have been willing to admit to
00:32:45up to now but anyway that was another proposal that the russians made and these are as i said are intended to
00:32:53be good faith confidence building measures leading towards the kind of ceasefires that the russians are now
00:33:02proposing so it's all there in the russian memorandum and predictably the ukrainians are very very unhappy
00:33:13they don't like this zelensky has already said that the russian negotiators are piffling and unimportant
00:33:21people they're not up to the level and standard that one would expect from the russians
00:33:30the zelensky has trashed the idea of three-day ceasefires even for this limited humanitarian purpose
00:33:39only a 30-day unconscious unconditional ceasefire apparently will do
00:33:46and predictably he and yermak who is supposedly on his way to washington are now demanding sanctions more
00:33:55sanctions and more actions by the western powers to force the russians to make concessions and to agree to
00:34:04the unconditional ceasefire which essentially to all intents and purposes is the only thing that ukraine
00:34:12currently is prepared to accept so that's where we are that's where the russian proposals
00:34:22are taking us now um the meeting between the russian and ukrainian delegations apparently lasted
00:34:35for just over an hour which doesn't surprise me after all what is there to discuss the gap between the
00:34:44two sides is enormous and frankly at the moment it looks to me unbridgeable
00:34:53but interestingly it turns out that the head of the ukrainian delegation the ukrainian defense
00:35:00minister rustem umerov and medinsky vladimir vidinsky the russian chief negotiator who is turning out to
00:35:09be an awful lot tougher and much more incisive than he was at the time of the march 2022 negotiations
00:35:17he made a public statement ridiculing the entire ukrainian issue about supposed abducted children
00:35:26i've already discussed this in many places and i've made my own feelings about this clear
00:35:33i consider this whole topic to have no legal foundation at all but anyway medinsky spoke about
00:35:41it in absolutely mockingly harsh terms something i remember that he never did during the march and
00:35:51april negotiations in 2022. anyway medinsky and umerov had a private meeting which lasted for apparently two
00:36:04and a half hours and that appears to have been the major meeting between these two um umerov himself
00:36:11apparently skipped um the meeting between the two negotiating teams um he was away for 40 minutes
00:36:21of it so the entire ukrainian delegation was only in the meeting room with the entire russian
00:36:29delegation for something like 30 minutes the real discussion took place between medinsky and umerov
00:36:38before the discussion took place and it's very very interesting and it begs a number of questions
00:36:46questions and i'm going to suggest that the reason it happened like that is because medinsky wanted to make
00:36:55clear to umerov in a format separate from the plenary session that these terms that the russians are putting
00:37:08are indeed effectively final terms that this is indeed an ultimatum in effect that if ukraine imagines
00:37:24that escapades like sending drones into russian air bases taking steps to cut off electricity supplies in
00:37:34zaporozhia and herson region as has happened over the last 24 hours or planting bombs in rail on railways which
00:37:45kill russian civilians if the ukrainians think that anything like that is going to make the russians
00:37:53shift their ground or modify their position in any way then the ukrainians are completely wrong and entirely
00:38:01deluded and that in ukraine's own interests it should accept these proposals because they are the best
00:38:10proposals that ukraine is going to get so i suspect that this is the message that medinsky was conveying
00:38:20to umerov and the fact that the meeting between them lasted for two and a half hours suggests to me a very
00:38:28acrimonious and intense discussion between the two men probably a very angry one and the fact that umerov
00:38:37stayed away from the plenary meeting for 40 minutes suggests that he was indeed extremely angry and probably
00:38:45was also briefing zelensky and other people about what was going on now there is a further intrigue
00:38:52um coming out of the meeting in istanbul at least according to the russians they're claiming that
00:39:00whilst the meeting was underway even whilst the turkish foreign minister mr fidan was introducing the two
00:39:10delegations to each other the ukrainians were busy sending messages on their mobile phones to some
00:39:17mysterious third party now this could all be overblown it may be that the ukrainians were communicating
00:39:28with um their own government zelensky and the others in kiev itself or it could be that the ukrainians
00:39:41were indeed briefing someone in europe or maybe someone in the united states it really doesn't matter
00:39:50but anyway it was a strange thing to do and it could also be the case of course that the ukrainians
00:39:58were gaining instructions were getting instructions even whilst the talks were taking place anyway i don't
00:40:05think we can describe what took place in istanbul yesterday as a negotiation the ukrainians came with
00:40:13their proposal for an unconditional ceasefire in effect a freezing of the conflict the russians ignored
00:40:21that proposal completely as far as i can see it's essentially the same proposal apparently that kellogg
00:40:29um and the ukrainians hammered um and the ukrainians hammered out together the 22-point plan that
00:40:34um whitgolf was supposed to take with him to moscow and to present to putin putin refused to meet with
00:40:42gov with that proposal and refused to receive this 22-point plan um the russians behaved throughout the meeting
00:40:52yesterday as if that ukrainian yesterday as if that ukrainian proposal which they obviously don't take
00:40:57seriously anyway they behaved as if that proposal did not even exist and as for the ukrainians
00:41:07they were presented with this russian memorandum which as i said previously looks to me to have something
00:41:18of the quality of the quality of an ultimatum about it a fact backed by comments made by people like dmitry
00:41:27medvedev in russia and obviously they weren't happy at all with what they were given so the ukrainians
00:41:38went back and they're already complaining in kiev about what happened in istanbul and if reports are true
00:41:46um zelensky has sent um yamak his chief of staff to washington and i am going to guess that yamak's
00:41:58purpose in going to washington is to try to persuade the americans that this negotiation process is going
00:42:05absolutely nowhere what the united states needs to do in order to force the russians to come round
00:42:12is to step up military supplies and to impose lindsey graham's bone crushing sanctions ukraine is not
00:42:20going to accept these proposals anyway that's where we are there are also reports that donald trump
00:42:27is very frustrated by the outcome of these discussions in istanbul the american ambassador to istanbul is
00:42:36apparently saying this well donald trump may be very frustrated but as i said on many occasions he
00:42:47cannot control vladimir putin or the russians he simply doesn't have the leverage over them to get them to
00:42:57make compromises to make concessions um on points that the russians consider essential and existential to
00:43:07themselves now at this point i need to turn to another topic which is this extraordinarily confusing
00:43:17and garbled question about whether or not donald trump was indeed briefed about the ukrainian attack
00:43:25on the russian bases the basis of the strategic aviation that the ukrainians carried out in what they now
00:43:36are um well they're calling it operation spiders web a somewhat uh you know
00:43:45cloak and dagger name for a cloak and dagger operation by the way we have gradually got more information
00:43:55about the actual damage that the ukrainians did over the course of this operation it looks as if three
00:44:02tuple f-95 bombers in total were destroyed and five tuple f-95 bombers were damaged but damaged in a way
00:44:13that apparently can mean leaves it possible to bring them back to a state of repair also two tuple f-22m3
00:44:23bombers medium bombers were also damaged it's not clear to me whether they can be brought back to a
00:44:30state of repair a blow to russian strategic aviation obviously an embarrassment even a humiliation for the
00:44:39russians if you will but not a body blow to their strategic aviation by any means the vast bulk of it
00:44:48remains intact their nuclear deterrence remain deterrent remains overall unaffected um
00:44:59um i come back to all the points i made in my program yesterday um one should not understate
00:45:09what the ukrainians achieved but one should not overstate it either and it will not change the course
00:45:16of the war and it will not affect the global balance of military power either so anyway was trump
00:45:26and were the western powers briefed about this in advance and were western intelligence agencies were
00:45:39involved in this attack now at one point i did not make in my program yesterday and perhaps i should have
00:45:46done is that though the bombers themselves though they are strategic assets are also weapons used in a
00:45:54conventional war and for that reason could arguably be described as legitimate targets for the ukrainians
00:46:05the bases the bases which the ukrainians attacked since they are strategic bases almost certainly house
00:46:16nuclear weapons there will be nuclear weapons there will be nuclear weapons stored somewhere in these bases
00:46:24now presumably these nuclear weapons are stored in hardened shelters the light fpv drones that the ukrainians
00:46:34used to carry up the attack would not be able to damage these nuclear weapons but nonetheless
00:46:43the ukrainians have carried out an attack on russian bases when nuclear weapons are stored and one would assume
00:46:56that before taking a step of that kind the ukrainians would have first briefed the western powers
00:47:04and obtained obtained their agreement to that perhaps the agreement would have been given quite plausibly it would have been
00:47:15but surely the ukrainians would have done that well all of the western powers are now saying that they were
00:47:22not briefed in advance and the u.s administration is now saying it was not briefed in advance and apparently
00:47:32axios which initially published a report saying that the u.s had indeed been briefed in advance and that donald trump
00:47:41himself had been briefed in advance has now retracted that story and are also saying that the united states was
00:47:50not briefed in advance well if that is true then i think that the ukrainians are treating their allies
00:47:59um with extraordinary degree of recklessness and even content however
00:48:11ineffectual fpv drones of the kind that were used in the attack would be against hardened shelters housing
00:48:21nuclear bombs nuclear weapons nuclear weapons however ineffectual they would be given the fact that there are
00:48:30nuclear weapons in these bases one would expect an ally like ukraine to brief its allies especially the united states
00:48:44about an attack of this kind in advance if the ukrainians did not do so one would expect a strong reaction
00:48:55from the united states the americans telling the ukrainians never ever do such a thing again without at least
00:49:04informing us and getting our consent in advance there ought to be a huge row between the americans and the ukrainians
00:49:17about this maybe there is maybe that is the reason why yermak is flying to washington if the reports about
00:49:27him doing so are true that he's there to assuage the americans and to assure them that all the precautions
00:49:33the necessary precautions were indeed made and that ukraine would never do this again unfortunately there is
00:49:41another possibility and that is that the united states was informed and that they did approve this attack
00:49:51but that the president of the united states donald trump was either not briefed about it or was not
00:49:59informed about it in other words that this was kept from him now i say this because there's been a very
00:50:06very alarming interview that lieutenant colonel lawrence wilkerson has given lieutenant colonel wilkerson
00:50:16former chief of staff of colin powell who was both chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at one time
00:50:24and also uh secretary of state very senior man and wilkerson is somebody who i rely upon entirely i just anything
00:50:35that he says i absolutely consider to be true and he says that donald trump is not attending the intelligence
00:50:47briefings briefings that he's not being briefed by the intelligence community he's not attending the daily
00:50:55brief that the person who has been briefed by the intelligence community is the vice president
00:51:03jd vance and that trump himself is not attending now i think this is extremely bad
00:51:13and wrong and i would say that trump as president of the united states must and should attend those daily
00:51:26briefings as wilkerson correctly said it is through attending those sort of briefings that the president
00:51:35is properly informed about what is going on not just about what the other side might be doing
00:51:46but about what his own side might be doing it will be through the daily briefings for example that the
00:51:53president might learn that there is an operation being prepared by ukraine to launch drone attacks on
00:52:01russian strategic basis just saying and then the president can ask and find out why he has not been
00:52:10informed about this in advance and can bring those who might have done this sort of thing back into line
00:52:19wilkerson gave an example of what happened when the president was not attending to the intelligence
00:52:26properly he pointed to the iran contra affair which was concocted by two officials of the us national
00:52:35security council admiral point dexter and lieutenant colonel oliver north as i very well remember and
00:52:42that of course landed the president of the time ronald reagan in a great deal of political problems and
00:52:49created a crisis a potential crisis between the united states and iran so the president needs to be
00:52:58informed it is not good enough to just leave these matters in the hands of the vice president
00:53:06the vice president does not have the president's authority even if the president tells the bureaucracy
00:53:14that he does the bureaucracy knows that the vice president isn't is not the president himself
00:53:25and does not have the power the constitutional power to give instructions to them in the way that the
00:53:35president can do and they will simply ignore if they choose some of his apparent instructions
00:53:44if the president himself is not receiving his briefs then he will gradually lose control
00:53:53of his own government now i'm not going to discuss this further because i don't know what role if any this
00:54:00played in the um events of the last couple of hours operation spiderweb and all of that
00:54:10that but if he did then it should set alarm bells ringing in the white house and donald trump himself
00:54:19needs to consider very carefully where he's going and what he's doing and how he's managing his
00:54:25administration at this time now to repeat again we are at an impasse in the negotiations nobody should
00:54:33expect the russians to moderate their stance there's been a lot more news from the front lines over the
00:54:40last 24 hours the russians seem to be pushing forward in sumi area in northern um in northern ukraine
00:54:51and it's almost as if resistance by the ukrainians there is so weak that they're not able to hold the
00:55:00russians back in any place russian attacks seem to capture territory and fortified positions and
00:55:08villages almost with i won't say without resistance but only against very very limited resistance there's
00:55:15also reports that the russians are on the verge of a breakthrough in the liman area um they captured
00:55:21this village of red logub they're getting its name right some days ago uh they have they then reached
00:55:30the nitrius river nitrius which many people assumed would be the point where this attack would stop
00:55:39and where the russians would start turning south and advancing towards liman but instead the russians
00:55:47and this confirmation of this have apparently crossed the river nitrius again apparently unopposed
00:55:55and are advancing deeper into ukrainian positions which in this area of the battlefronts
00:56:02also are looking extremely unstable and there are reports that the russians also have made major advances
00:56:13south of konstantinovka ukrainian defenses there are disintegrating and that the russians have now captured
00:56:23more of the outlying positions that the ukrainians held in chasse of yard and that they're advancing north of
00:56:30chasse of yah also throughout the battlefronts ukrainian resistance looks increasingly ragged and i'm only
00:56:38touching on some parts of the battlefronts there's more reports going on about russian advances in
00:56:44zaporozhian region in william polyef towards the town of gulyapolio for example which i simply don't
00:56:51have the time to cover at length in this program so the russians are continuing to advance across the
00:56:59front lines now there is a view that the russians are being completely unreasonable in their proposals
00:57:09that they're demanding too much after all that was what jd vance said when they say that they want the
00:57:14four regions and all of these territories and all of the rest and some people are also saying there's
00:57:22a good article there's an article about this in responsible statecraft by anatole leaven for example
00:57:29he's saying that both the russians and the ukrainians are demanding too much the ukrainians demanding
00:57:36reparations and that kind of thing makes their whole ceasefire proposal unworkable and guarantees its
00:57:43rejection by the russians whilst the russians are demanding too much also by insisting that the
00:57:53entire territory of the entire territory of the four regions passed to them be transferred to them by ukraine
00:58:01but there is a fundamental difference here and that is that the russians are advancing and it may take
00:58:08them many more months or even a year or so declare the four regions for the record i don't believe that
00:58:16but eventually they will do so and the entire pattern of this conflict since it began ultimately in february
00:58:282014 with the maidan coup is that the russians make proposals which then fail
00:58:40fail because even when the ukrainians appear to accept them they go out of their way to undermine them
00:58:49and then we get to the next stage and the russian proposals become harder anybody familiar with litigation
00:59:01commercial litigation battles in law courts between big companies and law firms will be very familiar with
00:59:11this process in which the stronger side puts forward reasonable proposals and they're rejected by the weaker
00:59:22party and the litigation continues and costs are incurred and then
00:59:29the weaker party eventually agrees to further negotiations and discovers that the stronger party
00:59:40has upped its demands and the longer the litigation goes the more this process continues until eventually
00:59:50the weaker party is left with nothing and this is the same thing that is happening in this conflict
01:00:01the russians put forward proposals the ukrainians either pretend to accept them and then undermine them
01:00:11or then reject them outright and the russians come back at the next stage and demand even more
01:00:22and there is nothing that is going to change this there is not going to the russians are not going to be
01:00:28thrown off balance by drone attacks on their strategic aviation bases which will dent their strategic forces
01:00:36but won't damage them but won't damage them they're not going to be intimidated by rain trained derailments
01:00:45or attacks on pop concerts in moscow or the murder of individual generals or other things over the course of this
01:00:56conflict the russians have absorbed successful ukrainian counter-attacks in kharkiv the loss of herson city
01:01:04the withdrawal of their forces from kiev and they still come on they still carry on coming
01:01:13and they still go on advancing and they're now advancing closer and closer to the heartland areas of ukraine
01:01:23itself in central ukraine without which ukraine as i said ceases to be functional as a state
01:01:32i think anybody who thinks that this can be changed that some more sanctions lindsey graham's bone crunching
01:01:44sanctions or some offers to the russians about other things security architecture in europe you know
01:01:56proposals that proposals that proposals which um by the way donald trump has shown no interest in making
01:02:04and which i'm far from convinced he would be in a position to make because of opera's opposition
01:02:11from the ukraine from the u.s political elite anyway anybody who thinks that the russians are going to
01:02:18compromise on ukraine because these things happen i think is simply not been following either the course of
01:02:31the conflict or the course of the war itself closely enough if the western powers really had ukraine's
01:02:43interests at heart they would be telling ukraine hard and difficult as it is for you for heaven's sake accept this
01:02:53memorandum which at least preserves ukraine and ensures that ukraine retains some access to the sea through the port of
01:03:02odessa because as night follows day if this memorandum is refused then in three months six months years time
01:03:15we will have perhaps another negotiation in which the russians do what they have now threatened demand the
01:03:23handover of the handover of odessa kharkov um perhaps poltava perhaps other places along the dnieper kremenchuk who
01:03:33knows um until eventually this process will end with nothing left of ukraine and in the meantime ukraine continues to
01:03:46suffer losses of men machines people it becomes increasingly a failed state ian proud has written
01:03:57a series of superb articles on his blog the peacemonger pointing out how ukraine is now in a catastrophic economic
01:04:09situation that is the reality and nothing is going to change it and it points to settling
01:04:20on russian terms now because the next terms will be harsher and they will go on getting harsher until
01:04:30there is no ukraine left now i have been saying this making this point for well years now
01:04:37it doesn't seem that people in the west want to accept it they still think maybe that you know if
01:04:46we go in for bone crushing sanctions russia will collapse into hyperinflation or something of that
01:04:52kind i don't know but there is an enormous degree of denial about this reality but it is one that
01:05:00eventually sooner or later western leaders are going to have to face anyway this is my program for today
01:05:07there will be more from me soon obviously i will continue to do programs um whilst i'm here in
01:05:12tobilisi let me remind you again you can find all our programs on our various platforms locals rumble and
01:05:19x you can support our work via a patreon and subscribe star and by going to our shop links under this video
01:05:27last but not least if you've liked this video please remember to tick the like button and to check your
01:05:32subscription to this channel that's me for today more from me soon have a very good day
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