00:00Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky has met with Pope Leo XIV of the Vatican.
00:05This comes ahead of the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.
00:08The two men discussed the urgent need for a just and lasting peace.
00:12This confirmed in a statement from the Vatican.
00:15Zelensky thanked the Holy See for its efforts to help Ukraine get back.
00:18Thousands of children allegedly abducted to Russia.
00:21Of course, it's worth pointing out Vladimir Putin is under an arrest warrant,
00:25an international arrest warrant, on that issue for war crimes.
00:30Let's bring in for more analysis, Natasha Lindstedt, who's Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Essex in Colchester.
00:37Natasha, thanks for being with us here on France 24.
00:40We've had the biggest series of attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began back in 2022.
00:48700 plus drones, missiles fired across the country.
00:53Do you think Putin's message to Donald Trump could be any clearer right now?
00:57No, exactly.
01:00I mean, he's amping up the attacks on Ukraine, and he's basically ignoring everything that Trump wants him to do.
01:09I mean, Trump, I think, believed that if he just had conversations with Putin because they had some quote-unquote friendship,
01:16that Putin would listen to him.
01:18And I think he's seeing very clearly that Putin isn't going to pay attention to anything that Trump wants him to do.
01:23In fact, it's the other way around, that Putin sees himself as a manipulator and can easily manipulate Trump.
01:29He's strung him along.
01:30He's got him to believe that he was interested in peace, that Ukraine was the aggressor.
01:35At different times, Trump has echoed Russian talking points.
01:38But I think, finally, Trump is starting to see Putin for who he is, that he wants to control all of Ukraine, that he has no interest in peace at all.
01:50And when he had even—Putin had called peace talks, supposed peace talks to take place in Istanbul, he didn't even bother to show up.
01:58So Trump's growing increasingly frustrated and interestingly, because Trump had been a little bit hesitant to really criticize Putin.
02:07He's gone a little bit more critical of Putin, saying he's frustrated with him, saying that all he says is BS and that he's not interested in peace.
02:15So he may finally be getting tired of Putin's game here.
02:19Indeed, that may seem the case.
02:21But of course, just supplying a small amount of Patriot missiles to Ukraine.
02:26Someone on the inside of Ukraine described what Trump has decided to send.
02:30I think it's 10 missiles as barely enough to fend off one night of average Russian attacks.
02:35Nonetheless, it is a good gesture.
02:37The fact that the cutting of military aid came from Pete Hegseth or someone actually behind him in the Defense Department.
02:46Is that saying something else about a kind of Putin sympathy level within the administration, do you think?
02:53Is there something else going on there?
02:55Well, there's always a possibility, of course.
02:58Pete Hegseth does not seem that sympathetic to Ukraine.
03:02I know that the Vice President J.D. Vance isn't involved in that decision-making, but he also didn't care very much about Ukraine.
03:09So it's possible within Trump's administration, there are those that don't want to provide weapons to Ukraine.
03:17I think one of the excuses made is that they're running low, that they need to have an ample supply of these types of Patriot missiles and defense air systems and so forth,
03:27because they need to be prepared for any possible conflict that could take place in the Pacific,
03:34that Hegseth, at least, is more focused on what's going on in the Pacific than in Ukraine.
03:39And we saw that some of the signaling coming from the Trump administration showed that Ukraine wasn't very important to them.
03:45And at times, Trump was even incredibly hostile towards Ukraine.
03:49There was the time back in late February, they had this disastrous press conference where Zelensky came to the White House, and it looked like a setup.
03:57Trump abruptly claimed that he was going to be withholding aid, only to renege on that or turn back on that a week later.
04:05But it's definitely been a very shaky relationship between Trump and Zelensky.
04:10But it seems to be improving at the moment.
04:13And I think that's why, even though the U.S. is only providing Ukraine, allegedly, with these 10 Patriot missiles,
04:19which is only going to help them for one night, it's a sign that things are moving in the right direction.
04:24And Zelensky had said that their most recent phone call or conversation that he had with Trump was their most positive yet.
04:30So he's hoping that he can finally convince Trump that it really is Russia that is the aggressor
04:35and that Russia is not just dangerous to Ukraine, but, of course, to global stability.
04:41Indeed. And, of course, the facts, of course, of the matter do speak for themselves, don't they, about Russia's aggression.
04:47Zelensky's mission in Rome, then, let's come to that, rebuilding, rearming.
04:50He's met the Pope, got the Pope's blessing, which is always a good thing.
04:53But this conference coming up about rebuilding and also rearming.
04:57No, definitely. And I think one of the things that Zelensky has mentioned is they need air defense.
05:04They need all kinds of air defense systems, whatever they can get, because Russia is amping things up.
05:11And what we see with Russia is when they get into a corner, when they don't think that the war is going well, they get bolder.
05:19And the Russians are losing and willing to lose, I mean, thousands and thousands of men.
05:26They were losing in 2024 a thousand men per day for every square kilometer that the Russians gained.
05:32They were losing 100 men. And so Russia has had to incurred huge, heavy losses.
05:38And that's why I think they're trying to offer this heavy type of artillery,
05:42which then would require Ukraine to have a much more robust defense system in place.
05:47And they themselves are, of course, not just only exhausted by the conflict,
05:53but are exhausted in terms of the supplies that they have.
05:56So this is one of the things that Zelensky is trying to underscore,
05:59that they need these types of air defense systems in place to deal with the increased Russian onslaught.
06:06Professor Linster, let me to leave it there.
06:07Thank you very much indeed for joining us.
06:08Natasha Linster, Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Essex in Colchester.
