School of War - Ep 223: Mick Ryan on Ukraine Negotiations and Fighting

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Major General Mick Ryan, Australian Army (retired), Senior Fellow for Military Studies the Lowy Institute and author of the Futura Doctrina Substack, joins the show to break down the latest on Ukraine, from the battlefield to the White House.  ▪️ Times    •       01:05 Introduction     •      02:06 The front     •      06:23 Fortress belt        •      08:38 ROI      •      10:55 Shifting feelings            •      14:41 A realistic settlement          •      20:53 After Alaska     •      23:15 Boots on the ground     •      25:45 Unpredictability          •      28:49 A different vibe      •      31:31 Stop the killing Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

A lot has been happening in recent days regarding the war in Ukraine. Mick Ryan joins us to break it all down. Let's get into it. We'll fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War.

I am delighted to welcome back to the show today. Major General Mick Ryan, Australian Army, retired, currently with the Lowy Institute, with CSIS. He has a great substack. You have a new book coming out soon, right? What's your new book about, Mac? I have a couple of reports. I've got one on how we might translate Ukraine lessons for the Pacific and another report through special competitive studies project

that looks at how the Ukraine war has metastasized into a global adaptation battle. Well, suffice it to say that anybody who thinks about or cares about the future of war, what's happening in Ukraine, what might happen in the Pacific, not to speak of other battlefields out there, should be following your work. And thank you for coming back to us today to talk. about the latest in Ukraine and the diplomatic battlefields around Ukraine. It's always by pleasure to speak with you, Aaron. Let's start with the battlefield battlefield first. We are here in August. We're getting towards

late summer. The Russians have been applying a lot of pressure. It looks to me in particular in eastern Ukraine. Say what you think is most important about these battlefield developments. And of course, as you are perfectly positioned to do, say how what's happening on the battlefield intersects with these diplomatic efforts in Washington and Alaska and elsewhere. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the northeast of Ukraine has stabilized in most respects. The Russians have not really taken any more ground around Sumer or Kursk. In fact, the Ukrainians appear to advance a bit, and the Russians appear to be going to redeploy forces from there.

They've kind of gone, okay, we've done as much as we can do here. The South is pretty much the same. There's bits and pieces going on in the South, but the main effort for the Russians and consequently the Ukrainians are still in the eastern front, particularly the Pockroft's front and the Pockroft's axis of advance, which after a year the Russians still have not managed to capture. We did see a Russian penetration of the Ukrainian lines to a depth of around 10, 15 kilometres last week. That was, it looks like just Russian forces dismounted using infiltration tactics, which can work pretty well as long as you're prepared to back them up with highly mobile

supporting forces, that doesn't appear to have been the case, and the Ukrainians with the deployment of a whole range of forces were able to cut that off. Where that intersects with international affairs is, you know, you see the media talking about breakthroughs, which it wasn't, but it is about the Russians telegraphing or messaging this inevitable victory narrative to politicians, particularly in America, who aren't inclined to support Ukraine. And that has a impact. on the president's policies because he has two different groups of people kind of trying to influence him on Ukraine. There's a traditional Republican kind of internationalists who want to help Ukraine and then there's the others who don't. So there is an intersection with Ukraine's

operations. Obviously, the aerial attacks continue. The Russians are continuing a very significant attack across Ukraine on cities and military targets while the Ukrainians are smashing Russian oil refineries and military factories. So that's another front of the war that continues to evolve. And indeed, within 48 hours of the end of the Alaska summit, the Ukrainians announced the production of a brand new long-range missile, which will be a bit of a game changer for them, because getting a long distance has not been a problem for the Ukrainians until now, getting big warheads a long distance has. This new flamingo missile has a 3,000-kilometer range, with a 1,000 kilogram warhead.

That's significant. That can do real damage, and that will have an impact on the war going forward. Not a silver bullet, but it will have an impact. So I'm looking at a map here. I personally find having not yet been to eastern Ukraine, I find the geography sort of daunting, because it's all just sort of stepland intersected by rivers, moving in unpredictable trajectories.

But Krovs, which we were just talking about, But this is sort of a Ukrainian salient into Russian lines. I'm not sure you should do. I'm not sure if you use the term salient in a defensive fashion, but it is this Ukrainian pocket in Russian lines. And then to the north, in what is, I think, still Dhenetsk Oblast, you have this series of cities, the pronunciations of which I'll probably massacre here, but like Sloviansk, Kramatorsk,

and then the third one's really going to get me, Dhrushkivka, that I've heard described by others who followed the war closely as a fortress belt where that's also a kind of that's a much bigger Ukrainian pocket or hold up to Russian advances. I know in some ways one of the points you just made implicitly, one of the big points you've made repeatedly is this battlefield, the ground battle is only one piece of a much broader strategic puzzle. But I want to ask you about, I want to keep here for a minute because if anything, I want to just make clear to the listener just how slow the going is and how absent breakthroughs that have as yet not manifested themselves.

for the Russians since 2022, and then they had some breakthroughs break against them later that year. You know, how long this would take to get to Kiev? I mean, this fortress spell, I don't know if you would accept that phrase. I've picked that up from our friends at the Institute for the Study of War. This is what Putin essentially asked President Trump in Alaska to pressure the Ukrainians to just give up in return for freezing the battle line elsewhere. What role does this play defensively and how are the Russians doing against it? Yeah, this is a term, I think, that's well accepted by the Ukrainians and others, and the Institute for Study Award did a very good report on that last week, I thought, that they do some great work, and I thought that in particular was a very

good product, so it's worth a read. Now, the city's Lovianz, Kramatos, and all the way down to Pocrofts, you know, North the Lehman, have been a very important, what you call Fortress Belt, because they provide critical logistics, command and control, transportation, medical support to frontline forces. They have throughout this war, but they also played an important role. But they also played an important role all the way back to 2014. So the Ukrainians invested a lot in defending this region over the last 11 years or so, not just the last three and a bit years. My last trip out there, I pretty much drove along the front line on the east from Harjiv down to Lehman and then down through Kramatarsk and into Nipro. You know, there's some rolling hills. There's a lot of flatlands,

there's river valleys and river lines and some foresting. But, you know, there is some good ground to defend. And some bad ground to defend. The Ukrainians still have some decent ground to defend, but if they were to lose of all the Donbass, you know, it would be much more difficult and daunting for them. Just on how long it might take, I mean, the British just published a report, the British Ministry of Defence, so, you know, there's credibility there about how long it might take Russia to take the rest of the Donbass at the current rate. They estimate about another four years and another two million casualties. That's why Putin is begging. He's begging Russia, America, he's begging Trump to have him give him all this territory.

He knows how much it's going to cost him. And just to the east of this zone, this is the town of Bakhmut, which was the scene of just fierce fighting, which ultimately the Russians did prevail there. And that was, what was that, 22 or 23? But that, that's just the east of here. I'm just looking at both, yeah. I'm looking at the map. I raise it again is having captured Bakhmut, which was this bloody, attritional, you know, huge battle just to the east of these places that we're talking about.

They've only gone about another, they've basically just gone to the other side of town. They're in the suburbs of Bakhmud on the west, and that's as far as they've advanced. Yeah. I mean, if we were applying traditional Western military thought, we would say this is a terrible return on investment. I mean, the Russians have lost, you know, a quarter of a million this year alone. they've only advanced kilometers. They have advanced, but they've only advanced, you know, in kilometers or tens of kilometers. But Putin isn't applying Western military theory here. This isn't about lean.

Russia is the largest country in the world. It doesn't need more territory. What it needs is a strategic narrative, that its victory is inevitable, that it will outlast Ukraine and the West. And therefore, everyone might as well negotiate a peace with them because the Russians aren't going to stop. Now, I think we can call that into question. There are some elements of truth in the manpower advantage the Russians have, but this is not a war about territory. This is a war about Putin ensuring there is not a country on his border that offers an alternative vision of government to the one provided by his regime. So that's a perfect transition to the diplomatic

level, which is the reason we're having this conversation today, has been a tremendous amount of movement in the last few days. And even a few weeks before that, and a few weeks before that, we saw this turn from a situation earlier in 2025 where, you know, the president and vice president Vance and others had that meeting in the Oval Office, with Zelensky that took a bad turn and things were pretty hostile.

And it was sort of an open question, what would come next, with the United States completely pull support. That stabilized a bit. And then it, I don't know, a month ago, something like that, it took a real turn towards the in the direction of white house hostility towards Russia. You had the president threatening to impose much fiercer sanctions should Putin not agree to a ceasefire, which the Ukrainians had sort of put themselves in the position of looking like they were more for peace to the president, which seems to be the core of the game right now in terms of

winning the president's affections. And now in the last week or so, I mean, as we speak, there are still meetings occurring at the White House. It's not entirely clear where we stand. But how did we get from the general hostility towards Putin from the White House, which was the case there for several weeks, to Alaska? Take us through that part of the story. Yeah, I think the shift, or at least temporary shift in hostility towards Putin was largely the result of the Russians stepping up their attacks on Ukrainian cities. And that's a result of them increasing the production of the Shahid drones.

Last month, you saw them shoot 5,500 of these things at Ukraine. If you imagine 5,500 Shahid drones being shot at American cities a month, what kind of political or military reaction that might necessitate. And, you know, it's reported that the First Lady, you know, had to talk to a husband. And it will be interesting for historians just to see what was the role of the First Lady on influencing the president. It's clearly not zero. So, you know, President Trump said, listen, we've got to stop this.

I don't like this. But then when we arrive at the summit, you know, sometimes you're, you do have to talk with the most repulsive individuals known to reach peace. So the president, you know, invited Putin to Anchorage. The optics weren't great. I didn't think doing it in a former Russian province, but there you are. I thought the optics of the B2 flyover were tremendous. You recall the Alsatian that Putin brought to his meeting with Merkel to scare her. This is the president of the United States saying, well, you might bring a do. dog, look at what I'm bringing. And I actually really thought that was a great idea. Whoever

came up with that kudos and then lining the runway with raptors, which the Russians would never be able to produce. They don't have anything like them. So those kind of optics actually were good. But I think the smiling and back slapping and riding in the presidential limousine was probably a bit too much for many of us who have Ukrainian sympathies and have watched this war for a while. But anyway, they did the talks. The plane was a breakfast, talks for a few hours of lunch and then a press conference. The lunch didn't happen, but they did about nearly three hours of talks. And then did statements. Putin came out, smiling like a Cheshoe cap. He was very happy. You know, he had lost nothing, been accepted back into the international community, did not get any more sanctions, didn't get any tariffs like the rest of us, and was free to leave after laying a reef at a fallen Soviet air. Airman's graves. Truck didn't look that happy. If you had to look at the body language, you know, Putin was the happier.

Trump didn't seem that happier, happy. He didn't get the ceasefire that he wanted. And constantly he said there's going to be big consequences if I don't get the ceasefire. There were no consequences, unfortunately. And I think now that Putin has Trump's measure. And I think one of the reasons he was smiling, as I wrote, is he knows the rest of us know that. At least that's the perception he's trying to build. So, you know, I don't think it was a great summit for America or Ukraine.

It was a pretty good one for Russia. But, you know, America's had bad summits before. You know, Kennedy had a worst one with Khrushchev. So, you know, this isn't the end of all things. It's part of a journey. And that's how we need to see this summit. It's part of a journey just as this meeting is in Washington, D.C. today. Can I – we'll get to D.C. and today and other developments in a second,

But just because it occurs to me from what you just said, what is a kind of negotiated settlement that you, Mick Ryan, would say, you know, it's not Russian defeat. I mean, I think anyone sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause would be happy to see the collapse of the Russian military position and essentially Ukraine reclaim all its territory. Let's say that that's not in the cards for purposes of argument. And let's say this is realistically what you're going to negotiate at the table. What within the realm of the of the loosely possible, what is the end of the. the spectrum look like that you would be most happy with? Well, I think at this point of the war, firstly, it would be a ceasefire to start off with. That's the first point. I stopped to Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities, a stop to offensive operations on all ground fronts. So that's got to be the first point. Direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, mediated by some third party, US could be somebody else, on a longer term resolution. no international recognition of Russia's ownership of the territory it occupies, recognition that it occupies it, but no recognition that it is sovereign Russian territory.

And then there needs to be, I think there will need to be the presence of foreign troops, even as observers, as a minimalist approach, but I think it will be more than that, probably more air defense and response forces, logistics and things like that. And, you know, I think that's under very serious consideration. And then the third, there's two final bits. One, a heap of international economic assistance for Ukraine to rebuild the areas that it still occupies. And then I think the final step is, you know, once there's a negotiated solution, there probably has to be elections in Ukraine. I mean, I think that is kind of the cherry on top to the Ukrainian people because they understand that martial law says they can't have an election,

but I do think that some kind of presidential election, after all, this is done, will be an important thing for the Ukrainian people, but also for the international community. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot there to unpack. I mean, to your earlier point that Russia's ambitions, while they obviously have a territorial component, are not principally territorial. There's a way in which you could imagine a deal demanding, you know, political change in Ukraine or even just elections in Ukraine playing to Russian advantage. And I'm curious how you think about conditioning that or avoiding that being to the Russian advantage. Well, I think, you know, Ukraine does need to have an election, but it needs to be the last step, not the first step. There's a lot to sort out.

And, you know, even America, even Britain had elections in the wake of, you know, either just before the end or just, after the end of wars because they either had been put off or for a range of reasons. And I think Ukraine's going to have to do the same. And as we saw with the protests not long ago over the anti-corruption task force, I think the Ukrainian people at some point will say, well, listen, the war's over. We've got a war termination agreement. We still need to defend ourselves, but martial law isn't needed. And normal politics must resume because that's what countries are for.

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem to me just, just noodling here from my privileged position as an observer of all this, that the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty seems like the key thing. It's the thing that Putin most wants to undermine, or arguably most wants to undermine in parallel with splitting the Western powers that are skeptical of him. And the thing that you could give up a bunch of territory. But so long as the Ukrainians are still legally and de facto free to plot their own future. So, for example, you could say something like, it's just not in the car, is that Ukraine's going to join NATO anytime soon. Like, the United States could say that. It's the truth, as best as I can tell.

But to compel the Ukrainians to say they would not pursue NATO membership, I think that's a meaningful distinction between the two of them. Like, you want to preserve actual Ukrainian sovereignty, even if there is the loss of territory, which regrettable, though it is, may be inevitable at this stage. Yeah, I mean, Ukraine must be free. Ukraine is free. The Ukrainian people believe they are free and have fought to keep it free. That is an essential precondition for the end of this war and for post-war relationships. And I think, too, on the NATO piece, I mean, NATO has set up a pathway for Ukraine to join at some point. That was the 2023 and 2024 summits. And whilst both Biden and Trump have both said, you know, Ukraine's not joining NATO anytime soon. Yeah, that doesn't stop them joining at some point in the future.

They've had a relationship and a partnership with NATO since 1996, 1997. That will continue to evolve whether the security guarantees will match up to an Article 5 guarantee in NATO. We just don't know yet. But, you know, that's the big thing with NATO, right, is that Article 5 guarantee. and that's what countries like the United States and some others don't want to extend. Well, that takes us nicely into the discussions that are happening today in Washington. You heard a lot of different.

It was kind of all over the place. You heard lots of different people saying lots of different things about what actually was discussed in Alaska on Friday. One of them was Steve Whitkoff, the president's diplomatic envoy, saying that there was a possibility of quote unquote article five. It might have been Article 5 type. Sorry, I shouldn't say quote unquote because I can't remember the exact phrasing. But the term Article 5 was certainly used by Wickoff to say Article 5 type guarantees given to Ukraine, not by NATO, but potentially by NATO members, including the United States and some of our European allies. So that was one thing that was apparently on the table. There was this question of, I heard the phrase land swaps, though it was unclear to me what Russia was giving back.

It was clear to me Russia wanted the rest of the Donbass that wanted the parts, the Fortress Belt area and parts like that. that really the war has been, as you point out, waged on since 2014. And it's the heavily fortified spot. It's also this eastern part of Ukraine that is economically sort of traditionally productive as sort of the old Soviet industrial heartline or adjacent to it as you go further east. That's what Russia wanted, but I heard the phrase swap invoked. So that's two things. There were some other things as well.

Like coming out of Alaska, what was your best impression of what the White House was going to bring to Zelensky and the Europeans is the contours of a potential deal? Yeah, I think that after Alaska there was a sense that Putin may have. I'm not saying he did, because we don't know definitively, but he may have convinced the President of the United States that a land swap was in Ukraine's interests. It's clearly not. You know, Russia, Russian occupation of territory at the moment is one thing, giving Russia a whole bunch of territory that Ukraine currently occupies, which is sovereign Ukrainian territory, is a totally different thing. But I do have the sense that Trump might have been convinced that giving Russia all of the Donbass was going to be part of a future settlement. But, you know, we did hold out the branch about troops on the ground, which is a step beyond where he's gone before. I mean, previously, this administration has been very clear about not deploying US troops into Ukraine, including the president, has said that. So this has gone well beyond that narrative.

and I'm not sure what's changed there. It's positive, clearly, although not for many in the US polity, but it is a positive step that will help get leverage with Russia, hopefully. At the end of the day, Putin gave nothing. He's retained his maximalist objectives for Ukraine. And besides handshakes in smiles, he gave nothing at all at that summit. Yeah, this is one of the ways in which, diplomatic journeys in 2025 or so rollercoaster-like, you know, you go from real palpable

hostility towards Zelensky and the Ukrainians to real palpable, I don't know exactly the word I want here, disappointment, frustration with Putin, and then this kind of flip back to talking to Putin. And now as the contour of the, I mean, who's to say what's going to come to pass in the next few days? I mean, a cynic might suggest that Putin by identifying this, you know, surrender of the remainder of the Donbass has cleverly, but not necessarily brilliantly because anyone can come up with this, put a poison pill that Zelensky can just never accept. He can just never accept giving up all this territory that hasn't actually been lost on the battlefield. But let's just say for a moment that maybe maybe something actually happens here. We're going to go to Article 5 guarantees and European, potentially American boots on the ground in Ukraine. I mean, that's real, that's much greater commitment than we've ever shown. in the past, unless I'm mistaken about the details here. It certainly is towards Ukraine. It's not a greater commitment that the American people have shown throughout their history towards Europe and Asia and other countries.

I mean, there's, it's hard to come up with another country in the history of humankind that's done what America has done for other nations, particularly in the last 110 years or so. I mean, the American people have been extraordinarily generous with their blood and treasure. So this in some respects is in line with that heritage that Americans have of saying, no, this isn't right. We're going to do something about it. The problem we have is we need to ensure every other democracy feels the same way. And, you know, part of Trump's policy has been saying, hey, we're happy to pull our weight and carry our load.

But we need all the rest of you to carry an equal load. And that has not always been the case in Europe and in our region, indeed with my own country. So, you know, that narrative, I think, is a powerful and an effective one in America, but also in many parts of the world. And I think if America's going to do something, it will expect everyone else to step up in Ukraine as well. And I think that's an entirely reasonable expectation. You know, you pointed out that there are fissures on the American right about Ukraine and tensions between traditionalist, Republican hawks and folks who are less sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause. And it's another feature of the diplomatic roller coaster or the grand strategic roller coaster of 2025 is, again, who knows what the world will look like in two or three days. But the current shape of the deal, it appears to be under discussion, which involves implausible elements like the surrender of the Donbass.

But you might also say implausible elements like American Article 5 commitments and boots on the ground. You know, the very people who are the most enthusiastic about extricating the United States from its support for Ukraine on the American right, because, you know, you hear any number of different arguments. One, you will hear there's the manpower resource argument, that Russian victory in the long run is just inevitable. By the way, when it comes to munitions, this is just a grinder. We need these munitions for a potential fight with China or other national security concerns.

It's just in our interest to end this. I have a feeling that the same people, if you went to them and said, oh, okay, we're going to end it, but President Trump says that we're going to give Article 5 commitments to Ukraine. I don't think they'd like that very much. I mean, it's just more entanglement in the very space where they wouldn't want to be entangled. So it's, it's, it's just always a roller coaster here. Yeah, and ultimately, how this looks at the end is unpredictable. As you well know, war is unpredictable. And we don't

know where this is going to end. I mean, President Trump, you know, is, is a man who can be difficult to predict on many occasions. And as you said, his views on Ukraine have shifted. So, you know, I think there's a few more twists and turns along this road yet. And the ultimate destination of the journey may not be the end point of it. It will just be an intermediate thing. I listened to a podcast recently where Condoleezza Rice talked about intractable problems were generally dealt with with what they called as devices. They weren't end solutions, but they were devices to make sure the situation didn't get any worse whilst they eventually come up with a challenge. You know, Eastern West Germany is a device. Taiwan is kind of one of those things. And she said it might be

the same with Ukraine. And I thought, well, yes, whatever we achieve out of this probably won't be that end solution. It will be a way for us to manage the situation down the track. Yeah. And I suppose, you know, security guarantees even framed very aggressively as Article 5 guarantees just are not going to be sufficient to satisfy Ukraine or even Ukraine's European friends, just for the simple reason, right, that such, maybe not the Article 5 exactly. I don't have like the text of the Budapest memorandum in front of me, but, you know, security guarantees have been made to Ukraine and honored, we'll just say only in part or here and there. No, that's true. I mean, security guarantees were made in the early 90s by Britain, by the United

States and Russia for Ukraine giving up their nuclear at the warheads. And we all know how those obligations played out. Now, to be fair, to the US and UK, they have provided an enormous amount of support to Ukraine since 2014 and since 2022, short of boots on the ground. To be unfair to Russia, they have done exactly the opposite. They've been a predatory, aggressive, brutal neighbor. So they don't always work out like that. But, you know, all of America's friends and allies are watching this very closely because they are looking for hints at how the US might deal with them when they're at their most perilous time, Whether you're in Europe or in Asia, all of us are looking at this.

So the meeting looks like the last time I looked right as we started recording. We're recording this, I should say. It's about 5.30 in the afternoon, Washington time on Monday, August 18th. And I just say that because things can move quite quickly. It look like conversations between the president and this really impressive lineup of the European heads of state and government, plus Zelensky himself, we're still chatting at the White House. It's a team, mate. Yeah, yeah.

To include people, you know, it's interesting. there are people who clearly have good relationships with President Trump, the Finnish president who's been sort of oppressed darling in the last couple of weeks because they've bonded over Gulf, it seems. And then the NATO Secretary General as well seems to have developed a good relationship. But what are you seeing? I mean, it's dangerous to say too much because the meeting's underway, but what are you seeing? What do you think is happening as best as you can tell? First and foremost, before they say enough, and I just look at the body language and facial expressions. and, you know, this is, it has a different vibe to Alaska.

I mean, President Trump actually looks happy and engaged in this group. And for me, that's a great sign. I mean, you know, it may only last 24 hours, but it's a good sign that the President of the United States appears happy and engaged with a group of like-minded democracies. You know, Zelensky has a totally different approach to this meeting. You know, he's shaped it over months with a different administration, different PM, different defense minister, different ambassador to the United States.

He's turned up in a suit this time. He's thanked America. So he's, you know, kind of smashed through all the problems that a couple of people have with him last time. So he's changed his approach to dealing with the United States and with President Trump in particular. That's clever. You know, some people say that's sucking up.

It's not. It's just good politics and it's good relationship management. And that's what the Europeans. are doing as part of this meeting. You know, I think out of this meeting, once again, we'll be about let's not give away the farm, that's number one in territory. Let's ensure we get a ceasefire before we go into negotiations. And let's look at the issue of security guarantees. And beyond that, I don't know they'll achieve much more. Yeah, that does seem to me like the strongest hand they have to play, which is the ceasefire front, which the president, you know,

something I've just sort of learned paying attention to the way he conducts foreign policy. I thought you saw this really clearly in the Iran stuff, is that actually, for all the roller coaster nature of things that I've described, there's a way in which on core issues, he really does mean what he says. So when he said no enrichment in the Iran context, he really meant it. He meant no enrichment. And if that meant a deal was going to be hard to get, well, so be it. He meant no enrichment.

So you people need to understand, I mean no enrichment. Here, when he says he wants peace and that that's his primary goal, I'm inclined to think that that's exactly what he means. He wants the killing to stop. And Ukraine, it seems to me, for the last several months, has successfully positioned itself as the country that would be willing to stop shooting today. And obviously Putin came out of Friday having refused to make that concession for a while there looked because the president hasn't imposed these tough sanctions. It looks like the president for a period of time has sort of accepted that if the Europeans and Zelensky can re-persuade or make the case that, hey, we'd stop the shooting today, Mr. President. We'd get peace today and then we can work everything else out.

that seems to me to be a strong natural position for them to take, given his proclivities. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the President of the United States minds, but it has been a consistent narrative. I want to stop the killing. And, you know, he clearly has a couple of core beliefs and desirable outcomes with his administration and, you know, most of them are domestic, but in international peace, stopping the killing in Ukraine has been a consistent message since before his election. Now, how we get there is, you know, it's kind of like me playing golf. The ball zigzags down the fairway, not straight down it. You got to hang out with the Finnish president, Mike. Yeah. You know, I probably need far more practice. But, you know, partially that's because you see Trump

changing his views, but partially that's just the nature of war and international affairs. It's, it's hard, you know, go back to the 90s and negotiating a peace in the former Yugoslav states. That was really, really hard. Dealing with Iraq over many years. really, really hard. This will not be simple to resolve. And whilst, you know, sometimes it would be nice to have the president stick to a single line on things with who he deals with. Ultimately, the hardness in resolving this is not because of Trump. It's because it is a very difficult problem to resolve. Major General Mick Ryan, always appreciate your insight and your ability to shift back between battlefield progress and diplomatic progress. Thank you for joining as always.

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