00:00For more on this, we can cross to Kyiv and speak with Peter Zalmayev, the director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative.
00:08Peter, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
00:13Sure. Pleasure to be here.
00:16We've been reporting that Ukraine has targeted Russia's resigned oil factory, as well as sending over 100 drones into Russian territory.
00:25But are these attacks actually having any impact?
00:30Well, I mean, these are, of course, targeted strikes as opposed to what Russia is doing to Ukraine, which is what it's doing is bombing our civilian areas pretty indiscriminately.
00:43The last one, as you know, resulted in 31 dead in Kyiv alone.
00:48Ukraine is doing surgical strikes, obviously, and you're looking at your screens right now.
00:53It's a it's a oil processing refinery, obviously, with this effort.
00:59If it if it were to be scaled up, this would make a significant difference.
01:05The question is, though, whether Ukraine has enough capacity now to multiply this effort.
01:11So far, it's been kind of here and there and far in between.
01:16But the question remains of what Donald Trump will do on this yet another deadline that he set for Russia.
01:25And this is supposed to be August 8th.
01:27He is demonstrating that his patience is running thin.
01:31Well, enabling Ukraine to multiply, to scale up these sort of attacks that do not result in the death of civilians and yet dent Russia's economy quite significantly.
01:43That could be a very effective step if Donald Trump was serious about making Putin pay.
01:49Now, as you mentioned there, Donald Trump has shown that he's losing patience with the Russian president.
01:57You know, he just suddenly now said he's got eight days to to come to a ceasefire agreement or there's going to be you know, there's going to be those sanctions that Zelensky has been pressing for.
02:08But I mean, are we sure this is a hard deadline because he also kind of flips and flops and now he's in a war of words with Dmitry Medvedev and submarines are being repositioned.
02:21How seriously should we be taking all of that?
02:25Well, obviously, Donald Trump, I mean, he flip flops as he breathes.
02:29That's sort of his M.O., modus operandi.
02:31At the same time, you have to consider the sort of the the circumstances that how they've been coming together for Donald Trump.
02:39You know, he is besieged by several crises at home, including the Epstein files scandal that just won't go away and the economy that's apparently slowing down significantly.
02:52And so this is yet another opportunity for him to don't need to sound cynical, but to deflect and, you know, attention from everything else.
03:00And he has shown that he's willing to to go for some drastic decisions, such as the bombing of Iran when these things need to be done.
03:10And he wants to change the conversation.
03:13And last but not least, of course, is Vladimir Putin himself, who has been snubbing Donald Trump for all his peace efforts, for all the visits by his personal envoy, Witkoff, and for all the concessions that Donald Trump has forced Ukraine into making.
03:29He's got nothing for it.
03:31That actually has brought humiliation on his head and some, you know, chattering on the part of his fellow Republicans, who are actually willing to see a more muscular action to punish Vladimir Putin for his intransigence.
03:44Now, those comments from Dmitry Medvedev, where he's saying these ultimatums are a pathway to war, and he's an he's an outspoken critic of the West.
03:56But how seriously should we be taking his rhetoric and how is he viewed in the Kremlin?
04:01Well, it's been said that Dmitry Medvedev is not to be taken seriously.
04:08He's sort of like a court jester, a clown.
04:12And yet at the same time, he has been allowed to make some very provocative statements through his telegram channels, through his Twitter.
04:20And it's been sort of delegated to him to keep this nuclear blackmail rhetoric going.
04:28And this was yet another instance when he pretty much point blank blackmailed or tried to blackmail the United States into backing down on Ukraine and threatening a nuclear war.
04:38Because this message has been actually popular with the MAGA crowd in the United States and Donald Trump's own sons and Tucker Carlson, who have said that it's not worth going to a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine.
04:52But it seems like this is actually wearing pretty old with that crowd.
04:56And Donald Trump himself is very upset with the shenanigans and with Medvedev's rhetoric, this making Trump look weak.
05:04And so everyone else is sort of lining up.
05:07And it seems like, you know, Dmitry Medvedev may have run the, you know, sort of his course with this.
05:12At the same time, Vladimir Putin has obviously used Medvedev for this sort of messaging to keep sort of to keep an arm's length, to keep it at arm's length, to distance himself from all the harder stuff, so to speak, and keep the channels of communication with Donald Trump open.
05:30But once again, Donald Trump is not seeing any results for all his peace efforts.
05:36And so his patience may indeed be running pretty thin.
05:40We'll have to see if this new deadline he's set will finally be a true deadline pretty soon, on August 8th.
05:47Now, I want to step back for a minute and talk a little bit about President Zelensky.
05:54You know, a couple of days ago, he said that he was ready for a leaders meeting with the Russian president.
06:01But Moscow says that its goals still remain the same from the very beginning.
06:06So where are we in this peace process and peace talks and negotiations?
06:11Are we stalled or is there an opportunity here?
06:13Well, it is quite a sort of a diplomatic dead end when we talk about a meeting between the two presidents.
06:25Well, first of all, both sides have sort of considered any sort of one-on-one talks between heads of state as illegitimate.
06:32Vladimir Putin considers Zelensky as illegitimate because his firm in office has expired, essentially.
06:39And Zelensky actually, early in the war, signed the law whereby there are to be no direct negotiations with Vladimir Putin.
06:49So kind of both sides have boxed themselves in with this rhetoric, having said that Vladimir Putin might actually kind of be able to contemplate a meeting with Zelensky
06:58were he to agree to capitulation of Ukraine and cited sort of like what the, you know, the Germans were forced to do in May of 1945.
07:09Well, Ukraine is nowhere near this point of having to capitulate.
07:13At the same time, Vladimir Putin is confident.
07:15And that's precisely why this war is continuing and he's not actually, you know, willing to meet Donald Trump half ways because he's confident that, you know, time is on his side.
07:27He can knock out more of Ukraine's territory.
07:30And sooner or later, Ukraine will have to surrender to his terms.
07:34I want to pick up on what you said there about Putin being confident that time is on his side.
07:42Russia is definitely taking territory.
07:46They just took another city in Donetsk.
07:50You know, July, they've seen quite large gains.
07:53So what is that doing to morale in Ukraine?
07:57And do they realistically think that they can hang in there?
08:02Yeah.
08:04Well, I mean, this has been, I mean, the morale has been on the decrease on the Ukrainian side for quite some time.
08:10And yet Ukraine is still hanging on.
08:13Even with all these territorial gains that Russia has displayed lately, the pace and the sort of the expenditure of life and treasure that Russia is bearing,
08:24we're talking about up to a thousand dead and wounded per day on some days.
08:28That's costly.
08:29That's costing Russia quite a bit.
08:31So I'm not sure that Vladimir Putin will be eventually justified in his thinking, be that as it may, it is also very difficult for Ukraine.
08:39But, you know, what does affect Ukraine's morale is actually its allies' Western, you know, willingness to be with Ukraine all the way.
08:48Something that Western countries, the coalition of Rammstein, including the U.S., of course, first and foremost, have said time and again, we are with Ukraine for however long it takes.
08:57Well, if that holds true, the morale will be there.
09:00If we see our allies sort of stepping down, you know, thinking about, you know, some sort of backdoor negotiations with the Russians and losing faith in the ability of Ukraine to continue resisting,
09:13well, that will actually be very detrimental to our morale.
09:16Well, I just want to ask one final question here.
09:21We've seen the damage that those Russian drones and missiles have been doing across Ukraine, especially Kyiv just the other day.
09:30How are people reacting and what are they doing to keep themselves safe in the capital city?
09:37Well, well, this is a new normal of life in Ukraine.
09:44People know that there's no other there's no alternative if they were to live and if they are to continue to live in an independent, sovereign state.
09:53I mean, this is the price they have to bear.
09:55We've had countless examples of this sort of resilience before.
09:58And obviously, the bombing of of London that took place over several years and cost tens of thousands of lives, you know.
10:06And at the end, they prevailed.
10:08Ukrainians keep and are actually keeping the faith that in the end, truth will will prevail.
10:15But there is is sort of the truth in this struggle.
10:18As hard as it is, people continue to go about their business.
10:22They continue to adapt.
10:24And so Vladimir Putin will eventually, I'm confident, you know, lose in his calculation that he can bring Ukrainians to their knees.
10:32Peter, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.
10:37That is Peter Zelmeyev, the director of the Eurasia Democracy Initiative.
