The Duran Podcast - US-Russia Talks Stall, Escalation Expected - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

US-Russia Talks Stall, Escalation Expected - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi everyone and welcome. I am joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Professor John Meersheimer to discuss Trump the peacemaker because well there's a lot of parts of the world where he would like to make peace. We'll see what we have time for but let's start with Ukraine I thought because the negotiations do not appear to go exactly as many I had hoped. Also it's a bit doubtful whether or not Russia can get what it wants in negotiations. If it doesn't achieve what it wants in negotiations, will the war simply continue? And without it, is it possible even for Russia to get a decisive victory?

And if not, how is this going to play out? Again, in the midst of some of the optimism to end the war, it seems as if there's a lot of possible problems which could pop up. But if you first look at this proposal from the United States with this general ceasefire, again, it's been a while since this was pushed aside by the Russians, which was, I guess, fair enough, none of the problems were addressed or resolved, such as NATO expansion. But where do we go from here?

What is happening with the negotiations? Because we've had the meetings now in Saudi Arabia, the US appears to believe that the Americans are that the Russians are dragging their feet while the Russians seems to think that the US is trying to pull a fast one on them so well what can we make of these deals are they a progress or what was achieved with the energy infrastructure the Black Sea navigation where do you see this going because I know yeah Alexander has spoken about this already a bit in, well, we've spoken at least about it, but I'm very eager to hear what,

yeah, both of you think about these negotiations. Let me start and then we can go to Alexander. Of course, has been talking a great deal about this and knows more than I do. But my sense here is that what the West wants, mainly the United States, is a general ceasefire, sort of an overarching. ceasefire and then we'll move to talking about a real peace agreement. What the Russians want is they want to get a real peace agreement on the table and they want everybody to read on the agreement and then there'll be a ceasefire. So at the most general level, you have a fundamental

disagreement between the two sides. However, what's happened here is we've opened discussions on a ceasefire or a pair of ceasefires. But it's very important to emphasize that this is not a general ceasefire. The Russians have no interest in a general ceasefire, as I said, at this point in time. So you get these two ceasefires on not terribly meaningful issues. One is you restore the Black Sea agreement, and two, you have this agreement on strike energy facilities. And they're limited agreements, and I can't tell whether they're in effect.

It's not clear who's agreed to exactly what. It's not agreed to exactly when they started and whether they have started. And again, they're not on the major issues. This is not an overarching ceasefire. And furthermore, the Russians are not interested in an overarching ceasefire. For smart reasons, they'd be crazy to agree to a ceasefire of a general sort because they're on the march. And they want to deal with the big issues on the table, which are, you know, whether Ukraine is in NATO, what territory the Ukrainians are going to give up and how much disarmament is going to take place inside of Ukraine.

those are the core issues the Russians understandably care about. And it's best I can tell from the outside, we've made no progress on those issues, which are the key issues. Instead, we're fuzzling around with these small ceasefires and not even making much progress there. Let me make one final point before I turn it over to Alexander. It's very clear from just watching the ceasefire negotiations play out, that the Ukrainians are going to do everything they can to undermine any kind of U.S. Russian agreement. And this does not portend well for the future. I agree with that completely. I think that there is a fundamental difference between the Americans and the Russians

in the way that they're approaching these discussions. The Americans want to end this thing very quickly. When do I say end this? They want to end the fighting very quickly. That seems to be their priority. There are probably many reasons why they want this. It probably is connected to Trump's own domestic positions and all kinds of things. But he wants the fighting, as he puts it, to stop.

The Russians, on the other hand, they want exactly, as John says, a meaningful dialogue about what they call the root causes of the conflict. ending to a final piece. And the Russians say, well, if we stop, if we agree this ceasefire, we may never get to that point because we've tried this before. We've had ceasefires in the past. We've then tried to negotiate over the substantive issues. That was what Minsk was all about. It dragged on for eight years and it got nowhere at all. And we're not going to go there again. So I think that this has been the problem, that the Americans are pushing very fast. They're in a tremendous hurry.

The Russians are refusing to be hurried. They say we've got to take things step by step. We've got to go through all of these issues one by one. We have to look at all of the various details of this conflict, the root causes, the reasons why it happened. And this may take a very long time. but if there is going to be a negotiated peace, that is how it has to be. So we've had these two so-called ceasefires. I think the one in the Black Sea is frankly dead on arrival.

It was conditional on the Europeans lifting sanctions, certain sanctions. The Europeans are not going to lift those sanctions. It's incredible that people in the Trump team don't. seem to have understood that. And I thought an awful lot about the handling of the negotiations, the latest negotiations in Riyadh, went all over, was all over the place. The other agreement, the agreement on the attacks on the energy facilities, again, there's no agreement even as to what date it starts from. The Russians say it's the 18th of March. The Ukrainians have never said clearly what they think it started on, nor have the Americans. There's only

partial agreement on what kind of facilities are covered by the ceasefire. The Ukrainians are attacking Russian energy facilities, or at least what the Russians consider to be energy facilities in the area of the special military operation. The Ukrainians will say that's not covered by the ceasefire because these facilities are not in Russia. The Russian of course will disagree. Nothing has been worked out and it's only for 30 days and the Russians today are saying if this continues we're not going to stick by that either. So unless the Trump people finally understand that this thing has to be conducted in a formal way with proper negotiators meeting, as has been done many previous occasions, the two countries, Russia and the United States,

having their negotiating teams, meeting on a semi-continuous basis, negotiating, going through all of the details, working towards a peace treaty, a little like what you saw in Paris over the Vietnam War in the 70s, like many of the things we saw during the Strategic Arms talks, we're not going to get to this final settlement through a peace. process. It will be decided by war. Notice that on the substantive issues, the Russians are not giving an inch. I mean, they've rejected the ceasefire proposal. They basically set out their conditions in great detail. Even on the, even on these small ceasefire proposals, the Russians are not conceding any key points. And that is a message.

that the Americans need to start addressing and listening to, if they really want to negotiate and end this thing peacefully in that kind of way. I think basically what you're saying, Alexander, and I think what I'm saying as well, is we are nowhere in terms of making progress on shutting this war down. No. No. No. It's not because it's not, they don't think of it. the Americans are not thinking of it in terms of shutting the war down.

They're thinking of ending hostilities. And that's not what the Russians are interested in. So you have to grapple with these very complicated issues which Trump, for all sorts of reasons, clearly doesn't want to because I think he realizes that this is going to be very demanding and very difficult. But if you want a peace settlement, that is what we have to do.

everything at the moment is stuck. And as of today, as of today, the day we are meeting, notice there are no contacts that we know of between the Americans and the Russians. There's no word of another Putin-Trump telephone call. There's no announcements of any further meetings of negotiators. Everything looks as if it's as a standstill. It is interesting, though, after three years of no diplomacy at all,

It's a huge rush to get the fighting over with, but it is quite striking, though, the similarities which was with Minsk, because it's worth noting that the Minsk agreements came into place after, well, more or less a Ukrainian defeat. That is, that they didn't care for these agreements exactly because they were in a very weak position as they were being defeated. But the whole point of the ceasefire then was it first stopped the fighting and then implement a political settlement, once the fighting ended, we saw what happened, the rearmament and the whole incentive for actually implementing the peace was slowly removed by changing realities on the ground.

So I think this is quite important because Minsk is really where the Russian suspicions come in because what would happen if there would be a ceasefire? If the Russians could trust Americans, yeah, it would be one thing, but the Europeans might attempt to move into Ukraine as at least Dharma suggested, if there was a ceasefire, or at least used to time them to rearm Ukraine. And it's also from the Ukrainian side.

They still say that all of the Russian demands are effectively all crossing their red lines. So it's very unclear what would actually be, what could actually be achieved. And for that sake, the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suggested that we can't normalize relations with Russia for decades to come. So what kind of a political settlement are we planning?

Because if there won't be any political settlement, what is the purpose of the ceasefire? What is we stop fighting? But again, the whole point for the Russian invasion was to restore Ukraine's neutrality. What is the possibility of a... Well, what might the peace agreement look like these days? I ask because I always thought that neutrality was something that NATO could accept but the main area where we can't agree, the real sticking point would be the territorial

concessions. But if the Russians could have some flexibility there, some willingness to make compromises, it would be one thing. But without a political settlement and the assumption that this would just start, up again in the future. Wouldn't they need the territory to have more territory as an insurance guarantee in case conflicts will start up again? A new administration comes into the U.S., the Europeans decide that they will want to prop up Ukraine. It's very hard. I don't know, there's a lot of optimism around the negotiations. I see a bit of a shadow falling over it at

the moment. I think the fundamental problem here is this. that there are only a handful of people in the West who understand the essence of this conflict. We are three of those people, but they're not that many of us, and we have been marginalized. It's just very important to understand that. And the people who operate in the mainstream, both in the media and in the policy world, have a very different picture in their head of what's going on and what can be achieved. And I think that collectively we think that these people are delusional, that they just don't understand the nature of the conflict. And the fact is the Russians are winning on the battlefield, and the Russians have made a series of demands that are non-negotiable.

I mean, you can debate about how much territory they're going to give up, but they're going to keep those four oblasts plus Crimea, and they're probably going to even want some more territory. And these are non-negotiable demands. The same goes with regard to disarming Ukraine to the point where it's not an offensive threat to Russia. And the same goes with security guarantees and Ukraine being a NATO. And we either accept those things or we don't. It's just that simple. The deal that has to be worked out is obvious to us. But I think that a lot of people in the mainstream believe that we can push the Russians and get them to make important concessions at the same time we make important conceptions.

This is not going to happen. The Russians see what's happening in Ukraine as an existential threat, and they want to excise that threat once and for all. And if we don't cooperate with them and the Ukrainians don't cooperate with them in the Uyranians don't cooperate with them, the Europeans don't cooperate with them, this conflict is going to go on for a long, long time. I completely agree. I completely agree. I think that one of the other problems,

and I'm going to say this, I'm going to be a bit unkind, I don't think the American negotiators are very experienced people. I mean, Mr. Wickough, very clever man. I've no doubt at all. Very capable negotiator in the world of, you know, business that he's been involved in. But he's never conducted negotiations at this level with the Russians before. He cannot possibly have got on top of this very, very complex problem.

And I think the same applies to the others. I think Mr. Rubio and Mr. Wals, I'm not saying anything against them in terms of their intelligence and their ability. But they've also no real experience of conducting negotiations of this kind in the past. You look at the other side, you know, the Russians, they are very experienced. They know this problem inside out. And if we go to the, just a discrete example, the Black Sea initiative that, you know, was floated on Monday,

seemed to have been agreed on Tuesday, looked like it had fallen apart on Wednesday. The sanctions relief that the Russians were demanding was the sanctions that they'd already given back in 2020 when they agreed to exactly the same ceasefire deal then. At that time, in 2022, they accepted the deal, they went into it, they agreed to the ceasefire

in the expectation that the sanctions reliefs that they thought they were going to get would be provided and then it wasn't provided. So unsurprisingly, they're saying this time, we're absolutely, we'll go into this detail, into this agreement, again, that this time we want it reversed. We want first the sanctions relief and then we go into the agreement. Now, again, you can understand why the Russians do that. You might not agree.

You might say this isn't how it should be. But I don't think many people understand that these particular sanctions, there was talk about lifting them three years ago. And unless you have that sort of granular understanding of what you're doing, discussing, you're always going to find yourselves in problems and you're going to have all kinds of difficulties negotiating your way through. What I think the Trump administration needs to do if he really wants peace. I'm not sure that they do by the way, but I think perhaps what they want is this problem to go away rather than to achieve an actual peace. But if they want a piece,

they need to conduct these negotiations in a much more conventional way. They need to stop thinking in terms of these very artificial deadlines that they're imposing on everybody. And they need to widen and strengthen their negotiating teams, by which I mean they need to bring in more people, not just people who have an understanding and history of the problem, but people who understand how to conduct negotiations at this level people who I suspect they're not that many of either in the United States today,

but I suspect they could be found. Yeah, let me come at this from a slightly different angle, but just to reinforce what you said, Alexander. You want to remember that inside the Trump administration, there are a lot of neoconservatives, a lot of super hawks. And what I believe Trump has done is he's broiled. in Steve Whitkoff because he doesn't trust people like Mark or Rubio and Mike Vance. He knows he needs them for certain political reasons, but he doesn't trust him. So who is his main negotiator on Russia?

It's Whitkoff. Who is his main negotiator on the Middle East? It's Whitkoff. So you bring in this guy who is very smart and he's a great negotiator in the country. context of the real estate world in New York City. But as we all know, you have to know these cases like the back of your hand if you're going to be the lead negotiator, right? You have to know the Ukraine case and the Israel case backwards and forwards. And Steve Whitkoff doesn't know hardly anything. He's not spent his life studying these issues. And again, not only is he dealing with the Ukraine issue, he's dealing with the Middle East issue as well. And that one's a thorny, maybe even thornyer than the Ukraine issue. So he's pulled in two different directions. And furthermore,

Trump and Whitkoff are surrounded by people who fundamentally disagree on what Trump and Whitkoff are doing. You know, going back to this phone call that the conversation that took place on signal, it's no accident that that Mike Walt, the National Security Advisor, had Jeff Goldberg on his list of phone numbers and accidentally plugged him into the conversation, because Jeff Goldberg is a superhawk on Ukraine and on the Middle East, and Waltz is superhawk on Ukraine in the Middle East. And I'm sure that Waltz has talked to Goldberg before, right? And this is what Trump is up against. This is the problem Trump had the first time around from 2017 to 2021. He has said this on many occasions and he's not going to let it happen again. But he brought these people into

the administration who think about the Ukraine crisis differently than he does. So we basically have a situation here. You have Steve Whitkoff who just doesn't know a lot, doesn't have a lot of experience in these kinds of negotiations, is pulled in two different directions and is surrounded by people like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, who were superhawks on Ukraine. And it's hardly surprising that the Trump administration is getting nowhere on trying to solve the Ukraine war. So what is the plan B then? Because if Trump can't negotiate an end to the war, does it turn on anyone? Because does it turn against the Russians or will he still try to normalize relations?

America's interest in Russia goes beyond Europe. He needs them for other issues as well. Or will he turn a bit on the Europeans to Ukrainians? Because there is a bit of a split at a moment between the US and the EU. And what you do now see with the Europeans not wanting to scale back any sanctions in any deal or even pushing back against some of Trump's diplomatic efforts, How are the Americans going to react to this? Because I think we all saw the signal messages, you know, during the bombing of Yemen. And it did appear that people like Vans suggested, you know, why did we help the Europeans with trying to open up these shipping lanes? These are important with the Europeans, not us.

Why are we, you know, doing their bidding again? So it does appear to be some resentment. And again, if they're going to try to end the war in Europe and the Europeans will, try to hamper and prevent Americans from doing so. Are they going to turn on the Europeans? And the same with Ukraine, I guess, because you have to remember that when you had this clash in the Oval Office, it was largely because Zelensky was pushing back against the whole idea of diplomacy altogether.

Over the last few days now, as in Zelensky argue that we don't really need that much diplomacy because we can wait for Putin to die, which was a strange peace strategy. Also, you know, take pictures of himself in front of pictures of, you know, the sinking of Moscow and the burning of Kremlin behind him, saying that this is what he surrounds himself. Again, it's not the rhetoric which the Americans asked to get during peace negotiations, neither from the Ukrainians or the Europeans. So what are we looking at here? When this, if, again, there's still an if, these negotiations could work. But if they begin to fail, how will America react to this? Will they blame the Russians, Europeans, Ukrainians, or simply just cut itself off from the whole thing?

I'll defer to Alexander on this one. It's a bit difficult predicting in the Trump era. It is very difficult because I'm not sure that Trump himself knows his own mind here. I think that one of the things is that Trump is now very committed to some kind of a peace process. It would be very difficult for him to walk it back. I mean, what is he going to do? Is he going to go back to doing what Biden did? I mean, John Mersheimer, Professor Mershryor pointed that out in our previous program.

I mean, that is utterly sterile. The intelligence community has just published its 2025 annual review. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard had some hand in it, but I suspect most of what is there probably preceded her becoming director of national intelligence. It says essentially that there's nothing that can be done by the United States now that will inflict on the Russians such a cost as it's going to change the outcome in Ukraine. So Trump presumably knows this. presumably knows that this isn't a policy that's succeeding. Presumably he does want to go and become Biden. So I would have thought that after an initial hesitancy and pause,

recalibration, he's going to try and come back and come back with some more kind of peace initiative to move this forward. but how he's going to do it, I don't know. One of the problems is putting, by the way, absolutely agree, accept completely what John just said about the fact that we have an administration with lots of neocons, people who are ultimately deeply hostile to this policy, who probably don't even understand why the president wants to pursue this policy. but Trump has to try and find a way around

he can't just rely on Whitgolf he's got to reach out beyond the administration there are people there's people like Ambassador Freeman that he could speak to there's one of us here who he can speak to as well who is not inaccessible there are people he can talk to

and if he gets the right advice probably there are people who are no longer in government, but they might be able to help him so that he can get a proper negotiating team together and start to move this thing forward. It's not as if he doesn't have some support within his administration as well. His vice president does seem to want to see an end to this conflict.

I suspect we talked about Tulsi Gabbard. I think she probably does too. But he has to build on what he has and set himself a more realistic objective at a much, much more realistic time scale. This isn't going to be ended in a hundred days or ten days or one day. It's going to take a long time to do. But if it is done properly, it perhaps can be brought to an end. And it might be worth, it would, it might be in itself worthwhile.

And not to get, you know, thrown off. because there's problems at the beginning. There are often in negotiations, to commit to the negotiations, to continue with them, but to try to do so from now on in a more organised and conventional way. Trouble is, I don't know whether Trump really understands that or whether he thinks like this.

He has this idea of himself, which is this great deal maker and negotiator, which in the world of realistic, perhaps he is, but in terms of superpower negotiations, he isn't. I'll tell you what I think might be the only viable strategy for Trump to succeed. That is to recognize that at the moment, he can't do much because he doesn't have the course of leverage over the Ukrainians or the Europeans or even over a lot of people in his administration.

But you wait a while and see what happens on the battlefield. And if the Russians are very successful this spring and this summer and this fall, which I think is likely, it's very hard to tell what exactly they're going to do and how many forces they've built up and so forth and so on. But I think a good case can be made that the Russians will soon be back on the march. And the Ukrainian defenses will continue to crumble. That's point one. Point two is there are. a lot of weapons and a lot of money in the pipeline.

But that pipeline is not forever. That's the Biden pipeline. And Trump is not going to go back to Congress. The votes are not there in Congress to sort of put more material and more money in the pipeline. So you send a message to the Ukrainians. You say, I'll let you have the stuff that Biden promised you. But when that runs out, it's all over with. And then the third thing is you let the Europeans continue to squabble among themselves,

which is already happening. And you're not dealing any longer with the United Europe. And if you're Trump, you find those Europeans, those European countries that are willing to play ball with you and you work out deals with them to try and fracture the Europeans. And at the same time, you tell the Ukrainians, look, the Europeans are not going to pull your chest duts out of the fire. Congress is not going to give you any more money and any more weaponry, and the Russians are on the march. Have you noticed that you're losing more territory, and you're going to lose more territory if you don't settle? And I want to cut a deal now. So let's cut the deal now. I think that's the best hope for Trump, just to let events play out.

And in a perverse kind of way, hope they play out to Russia's advantage, because that will give you coercive leverage over both the Ukrainians and the Europeans. But if that doesn't work, the war just goes on and on. And the Russians will take more and more territory and they'll be more ruthless over time in terms of dealing with the Ukrainians because they'll want to shut this war down. So, well, America has some leverage over the Ukrainians and the Europeans. As you said, you can cut off the weapons, which would, um, yeah, perhaps a, I guess escalate the pressure on the Ukrainians to all accept more of a concession.

Of course, any pressure on Zelensky could also work. I think there's some indication that Trump has been, or at least this administration has been talking more with the Ukrainian opposition or the other people in government at least to suggest that maybe Zelensky could be replaced. Again, more pressure on Ukraine and of course, yeah, as you said, splitting the Europeans. But that being said, what about, does America have any leverage against Russia or is it, as we began saying, that there's, given that Russia considers this existential threat, they're not going to give any way or make any concessions or, well, if they would try to get some concessions out of the Russians, where would it be? Because like we said, the neutrality issue, I think, is, yeah, there's nothing there. But the disarmament of Ukraine, because, you know, You know, this is not either yes or no. You have to, like, how big can Ukraine and army be? Do you think they're willing to reconsider some of the territorial borders?

Is there any possibility at all to whether you think the Russians would accept some compromise? And if so, where would the American pressure point be? Because if Trump goes back and asks more war weapons, this is not, it's going to reflect very poorly on him. and also it might ruin the whole negotiation process. I think the only issue on which there's bargaining space is territory. And I think the 4-0-blas in total are gone. Crimea is gone.

And then the question is, can you negotiate with the Russians and get them to stop with the 4-0-blas plus Crimea? But in terms of disarming, Ukraine to the point where it's no longer an offensive threat and in terms of creating a truly neutral Ukraine, no security guarantees, no de facto NATO, no de jure NATO. Those are non-negotiable issues for the Russians, as they should be. So I think the only place you have bargaining space is on territory. And my view, as I've said many times, is the longer the war goes on, the more territory, the Russians are going to take and the harder it's going to be to take that territory away from them.

So you ought to tell the Ukrainians you want to cut a deal now and minimize your losses. But that's an argument that's just almost impossible to sell at this point. In terms of leverage that the United States might have over Russia, I don't myself see that he's got much leverage at all. One of the great disastrous mistakes that's been made over the last three years is that all the leverage has already been used up and thrown away. I mean, we've imposed all these enormous sanctions. We've talked about seizing their financial assets, which the Russians by now have long since written off. People still come up with this idea that China can be persuaded to put pressure on Russia.

that isn't going to happen, all the more so as the relations between the US and Russia and China are now becoming increasingly strained. And why would the Chinese want to put their relations with Russia in jeopardy at this time? So I don't think there is much leverage. And I think it's this refusal to acknowledge this fact, which is also one of the key problems. people are not being realistic about the situation on the battlefronts. There's still this illusion that there is some kind of stalemate. Whenever the Russians advance, their sort of acceptance that they're winning. And then eventually, when an offensive ends, as all offensives do,

and the Russians stop for a time and consolidate and reorganise and rebuild, we get back into the stalemate narrative. There isn't a stalemate. The war is going steadily in Russia's favor, but people won't acknowledge this. And people still believe that, you know, there's a sanction somehow which can be imposed. We can do things that will somehow push Russia over the limit because their interest rates are higher than 20%. That means that their economy is about to collapse, something of that kind. And until and unless we stop thinking like this, it's going to be very difficult to get negotiations moving forward in any sort of meaningful way, which is why perhaps John is right that you need an actual sense of crisis and sense that the Russians are breaking through, that things are becoming really very dangerous for Ukraine to finally concentrate the mind and to force people, finally to come round and to accept that some.

kind of negotiation has been done, in which case Trump's major falls was trying to embark on this process prematurely before that point had been reached. Let me ask both of you, what do you think the Russians are going to do militarily in the months ahead? I mean, I have a sense, not based on much evidence, that there are going to be some powerful offensives coming and the Ukrainians are going to suffer significantly. But I'm not sure that's the case because the evidence is not that clear to me. But I'm curious with you, Alexander, and you, Glenn, think about this issue. Well, I'm not going to try and guess Russian battle plans because whenever I do, I usually get them wrong.

But Putin did say today that they're advancing on everything. part of the front line, that they hold the initiative, and that we're coming to the point where I can't remember the exact words he used, but he seemed to imply that we're close to ending this. In other words, that there is going to be a major offensive in the spring and summer, and that he expects this to be a knockout blow. This is my take of what he said yesterday when he was in the seaport in Wormansk and talking to the naval people there. So I think there is going to be a big offensive.

If I had to make a guess, I think it will be towards the NEPA to try to reach the deeper river, not in southern Ukraine, but in the central industrial areas of Ukraine. And if the Russians reach the NEPA in that area, then they are in essentially, Ukraine's heartland. And at that point, Ukraine's ability to function as a state will itself be in jeopardy.

So I think that is most likely what they're going to do. But as I said, maybe they have more other plans, but that an offensive, a big offensive is coming. The way Putin spoke, the very confident way he spoke suggests to me that that is definitely on the way. I can just say a quick word before I turn it over to you, Glenn. It seems to me the Russians have mobilized a huge number of troops over the past few years. And furthermore, unlike the Ukrainians, they really do train those troops up. They don't mobilize them and then send them to the front right away. So you would think that the Russians have in reserve a large body of troops that probably

have some combat experience because they've probably been rotated onto the front line and off the front line who could launch this major offensive. But that's just an observation. Sorry, Glenn, I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, it's interesting. And I don't disagree. But again, I also agree with that. I want to be careful, you know, looking too deep into the crystal ball because it's, yeah, difficult to make

these predictions. But it is interesting now that we see that the... Ukrainian defenses are falling apart and Russia is taking Chassiviar and Toretsk that opens up both the east and the south on the road to Constantinvka and Constantinivka. And from there on I think given that much further north, they are also moving a bit north towards Sivirsk. I think the main price they would like in order to consolidate control over Donbass would have to be Kremat Torsk and Slaviansk. I think they will be a high priority. So I think, yeah, I would keep my eyes on Krematarsk and Slaviansk. In addition, I think if you look at the Pokrovsk region,

the Russians will try to move further west that is moving into Nipro-Petrovsk and closer and closer to the Nipa River. That will also create a huge mess for the Ukrainian logistics. So again, I think there's a lot of... opportunities now for the Russians the way they would see it because the Ukrainian forces have been thinned out, also the debacle we have now over Kursk. So yeah, I think it's not just one one area given the fact that this, that the ability to move forward in such a war of attrition depends on where the adversaries forces are thinned out. I think the Russians will likely

just attack along the whole front because they are not an opportunity to put a lot of pressure on Sumi. They can put a lot of pressure on Karkov. They can move in towards most of the Netsk and yeah, even push towards the NEPA river. So I think if they do a bit of everything, it's going to be very hard for

Ukrainians to hold the lines. And again, I think this is why you see in the final stages of wars. This is when the casualties really exploded because like you saw in Kursk, this is when the troops have to do disorganized withdrawals. This is when you have troops

being surrounded. This is one, communication begins to break down. And so I think this is the situation. The Russians will try to create on a much, much wider scale. So again, and I think when one of the fronts begin to fall apart, it will have perhaps a cascading effect. So but again, I'm not a military planner, so I'm not quite sure what exactly the Russians have in mind.

But no, I see it as well. they will definitely increase the pressure now in the months ahead. If I could ask you to another question, do you have a sense that there is significant pressure on Putin to get tougher, that he could have waged this war more vigorously and now is the time to do that? Maybe go after targets, government targets, go after the bridges, go after other targets that he's left alone up to now, all for the purposes of delivering a hammer blow at this crucial moment? Or am I exaggerating here? I think that is absolutely the case.

I mean, Putin even acknowledged it to some extent again. In his speech yesterday, when he said that, you know, the Russians have been moving forward, perhaps not as fast as some people would like. And that very comment suggests that there's been criticism and that he's been having to accept this. There's something else which Daniel Davis, whom I think we all know,

said to me that he's been in touch with some people in Russia, which I've no doubt, and that they've been telling him that there's considerable frustration within the military, that they have been piling up forces, exactly in the way that you say, John, and that up to now those forces have been husbanded and have not been unleashed in the way

that they could be. So I think those pressures are absolutely there. I think that one of the factors that is never understood in the West is that Putin himself

is a very cautious man and a moderate in Russian terms. He is not the kind of aggressive megalomaniac imperialist. that he's represented, far from it.

Perhaps there are some people in Russia who are like that, but not him. And his ability to maintain a kind of discipline on the political system has been remarkable and a sign of the political capital that he's been able to build up over the 25 years that he's been Russia's leader. But that political capital is not inexhaustible.

and one of the things that you immediately sensed the moment the negotiations, the discussions with the Americans began, was that there was this wave of tension, is he going to give it away? Is he going to give us another Minsk 3? And there was this sense of relief after he spoke with Trump on the 18th of March and it became clear that on the contrary,

he was going to stick to the positions. So Putin's political maneuver space is nowhere near as big as I think some people suppose. And certainly that criticism is there. If you look at how Putin has waged the war since February 24, 2022, and then you think about how the Americans or the Israelis would have waged the same war. In other words, if the Americans or the Israelis had been in Moscow running this war, we would have been much more ruthless than in the Israelis.

I mean, I don't even want to think about what they would have done to the Ukrainians. They were in charge. So it's really quite amazing to me that Putin has this reputation in the West of being the second coming of Adolf Hitler, this ruthless and highly aggressive dictator who's bent on murdering as many civilians as possible.

And if we can just get rid of him and get somebody else in there, things will be much better. I think this is simply wrong. I mean, any time a country wages war, it's a horrible thing and lots of people get killed. But the Russians have been remarkably restrained, at least to me, given my study of war over a long period of time, the Russians have not been especially aggressive or barbaric, given how many other militaries have behaved in the past. I have long argued that it is likely if you get rid of Putin, that whoever replaces him will be more aggressive, not less aggressive.

But this is an argument that is hard to sell in the West. Well, it's one of the problems, I think, in the West, whenever we go to war, we always go to war against the leader. We always go, you know, we don't say we go to war against Yugoslavia, we go against Milosevic, we go against Saddam Hussein, we go against Putin. So the idea here is that you have to demonize the leader to a large extent, which assumes that you're actually not fighting the people, just the leader. The problem there is that you have to demonize the leader. And then the assumption is that, as you said, whoever comes next would be better. But it's worth noting, as you said correctly, that in Russia,

the key criticism of Putin has been that has been too pro-Western that is he wanted to get Ukraine. Russia integrated with the West, but more as an equal rather than what Yeltsin was pursuing. But indeed, after 2014, a lot of criticism came from the military as well, because he had to taken Crimea, given the need to protect the Black Sea fleet. But what many were pushing for us, you know, this is this is the time to, you know, step up either also take Donbass or at least start to build. build up and push back against the West because many people criticize them quite openly in the military that if you just try to make peace with the West, they will see this as a weakness

and they will again begin to mobilize their forces, put them in the Baltic countries. And yeah, so essentially what we're saying about the Russians, they don't respect to diplomacy, they see it as a weakness. And then of course you see the same in 2022. The Russians invade. And as you see the amount of troops that were used. were used, the kind of tactics, also how little bombing there were. I mean, this is not a thing easy to say in Europe because it's become a blasted for being a supporter of Putin if, Putin if

say so. But it is also true that the Russians dropped fewer bombs in the first month of the war than the Americans did on the first 24 hours of the Iraq war. So given the troop levels, the few little bombing, again, it's not because there were necessarily that much better people than we but they saw this as something that would undermine the possibility of pushing peace. Because again, they did from day one after the invasion contact the Ukrainians and say, let's now start to discuss neutrality, which you have refused to do for the past eight years to implement. So I think this idea that Putin would be replaced by someone softer or more pro-Western. I think it's nonsense.

I wrote in an Australian think tank when I lived there back in 2015. I think that Putin was the last pro-Western alternative. All the other ones coming after him, we're not going to be happy with what we see. But again, he has to be present in this way. Just very quickly on what you said about Trump, I think that Putin to a large extent, He perhaps wanted to go a bit softer to see if the diplomacy went anywhere. Again, I don't know that as a fact, but given what we have talked about as well,

that the Ukrainians and Europeans seem to push back, and Americans, they're also a bit stuck in terms of not moving forward with this. And if diplomacy and a deal can only come with a collapse or partial collapse of the front line, then I think it's better to. put the pressure now, this is the main thinking. So, no, so yes, Alexander also said this signaling that the Kremlin is doing is also

quite obvious because given that Russia for so many years, we're pursuing this greater Europe, prioritized integration with the West. Many have been worried that, you know, if the West began to offer some kind of a reward

that he would jump on this. But he would see him in the in terms of his international partners and economic actors within Russia, he's been trying to reassure them. Once this war is done, we're not going to just jump back into the arms of the West and try to restore these relations. We're going to prioritize our BRICS partners. We're going to prioritize our domestic economic actors.

And I think he also wants to reassure his audience as well as his military now and political class that they're not going to sell out some of the objectives of this war. So go for, again, a third Minsk agreement. But so, no, I see, again, a big offensive coming in the near future. I can make one quick point on escalation. Let's assume that the Russians do launch an offensive and it's not very successful. Or it's quasi-successful, but the Ukrainians continue to resist. And weapons continue to flow and money,

continues to flow from the United States and from Europe to the Ukrainians. One could argue if the Russians are not successful on the battlefield in a meaningful way that the pressure on Putin to really escalate will be very great. I believe this is an argument that's sort of embedded in Sergei Karaganov's analysis moving forward. He makes the point, which I think is true, that many people, the West have lost sight of how dangerous nuclear weapons are and therefore it's a world in which we have to worry about nuclear deterrence not working and ending up in a nuclear war.

But he also, I believe, makes the point that the Russians, because they don't have the demographics and they don't have economics on their side, right, that they're not that powerful a country. This is not to say they're a weak country, but they can't fight a forever war against Ukraine and the West. And at some point, they have to, you know, use unusual means to bring this war to an end. Now, he's hinting it using nuclear weapons in such a scenario, and I'm not arguing that Putin would do that, and I don't think he would. But again, he could really ramp up the attacks on Ukraine in a serious. way and try to bring the Ukrainian economy to its knees, wreck the bridges, destroy cities, destroy government installations in a really serious way, sort of try to do to Ukraine what the Israelis

did in Gaza. I'm overstating the case a bit. But the point I'm trying to make here is if you think about what's going to happen over the course of the next year on the battlefield, it's not clear to me that Ukraine stymieming the Russians would be to the Ukraine's interest or terror interest and in fact if the Russians are successful on the battlefield as I said before that might be a way of convincing people that this has to be shut down now which would be all for the good so I think I personally feel like I'm in a paradoxical situation where I'm rooting for the Russians to do better on the battlefield because I think that in the end works out best for not just the Russians but also for the Ukrainians and the West.

I think that's probably true because whenever the Ukrainians have performed better than expected, it has ended up being bad for them. I mean, both they, they, and the West then becomes overconfident. And that leads to a stronger Russian reaction going down the line. So a quicker Russian victory hopefully avoids those scenarios. I think it's worth asking why Putin has been so careful and methodical in the way that he's conducted it. And that is, it goes exactly back to what you said, John,

about Russia not being able to. to afford a forever war. He wants to settle this by negotiations. He's conducted the war in this way, precisely because he's always been trying to create the groundwork for negotiations. He did this in the first weeks of the war. He's pitched his demands, as he believes, the ones that he made in June last year,

at a level which still preserves a Ukraine that he can negotiate with because he doesn't want a forever war, he doesn't want a conflict that is going to drain Russian resources, pitch Russia into permanent confrontation with the United States and with the West. He wants to leave to leave space open to come to an arrangement. that will secure Russian security on its western borders so that Russia can begin to concentrate fully on its own pressing domestic needs. This isn't guesses. This is what Putin has himself said. So this is why he's conducted the war in that way.

But it's also the fact that he's gone to war at all, despite being such a cautious man, shows that he understands the importance, the urgency of achieving some kind of a victory in Ukraine for Russia in order to achieve that security on his western borders. And if things don't go well this summer in that Russian offensive, and if things, the Russians fall short, the pressure on him certainly will increase. And I think his own belief that perhaps he has to escalate will also increase as well. If I could just add one other point, if you go back to his famous article that he wrote on July 12, 2021, what's clear in that article is that he believes that Ukrainians and Russians are blood brothers,

and blood sisters. It's very clear that he has not only zero animosity towards the Ukrainians, he sees the Ukrainians as part of the same tribe. And he's not interested in killing Ukrainians and having hostile relations with Ukraine. It's exactly the opposite. So I think that he has been somewhat cautious. I can't prove this obviously, but just reading not only the July 12th, 2021 article, but a number of his speeches before the war, there's just no hostility on his part towards Ukraine or towards the Ukrainian people. And he really can't understand Ukrainian nationalism, right? He thinks that they should all, you know, understand that they're part of the same tribe. He recognizes that's not true, but that animosity is not there. And I think,

that informs his military policy towards Ukraine? It was what's put to me very much, very clearly by a Russian, that one of the one of Putin's reasons why he doesn't bomb Kiev is because as far as he's concerned, Kiev is the mother of Russian sisters. It was the first capital of Russia, so you don't bomb your own capital. And this is apparently very much something that he thinks. And there are others, he's not the only Russian who think,

who thinks in that way. Of course, you're quite right. He doesn't understand Ukrainian nationalism. He's blind to its strength and its reality. He still thinks it's a few people with, you know, neo-Nazi views, and they do exist, there are lots of them, but he still thinks if you just get rid of these people, shuffle them off the out of the place, then all will be well, and what he calls the triune, the three nations that make up Rus, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, will come together and all will be well. His anger, if you actually read his speeches, his anger is directed at the Europeans at the moment, less at the Americans and certainly not at the Ukrainians.

I think this is a very interesting development that it's the Europeans that will be now because we were the good Europeans. Now, this are the good West. Europe was the EU was the good West. NATO because of the US was the bad West for at least the 90s, 2000s. But it's kind of switched now. The Americans are seen as being much more pragmatic. But I just want to make the point that I think that this is why the narratives which have gotten

stuck in the West are so dangerous because the assumption at least here in Europe is if we can just put up enough resistance to Russia, then again, they would have be forced to make painful compromises. But this is the opposite, given that they see this is an existential threat. It will only then incentivize them to push back even more viciously. And this is why I always warn as will be careful what you wish for here, because if you start defeating the world's largest nuclear power on the battlefield, which considers this to be an existential threat, you will encourage a very, very aggressive answer. Now, I don't think that we are currently on the path to defeating Russia or anything,

but if we're successful in making this into another long war, that is that there can't be a negotiated settlement and they can't be a decisive victory, what are the Russians going to do in such a situation? Again, the issue of long war, I think this is the key thing that the Russians are worried about. also what Zelensky called it, by the way, when he back in March of 2022 argued that many Western countries didn't want a peaceful settlement because if they wanted a long war, because then they could bleed the Russians slowly,

you know, get another Soviet Union collapse, this kind of mentality. And I think this is also now starting to be pushed back against by the Ukrainians. Indeed, you saw the former German head of intelligence, I think, chief who was making the point that, well, it's better to keep the war going for another five years. years because then we'll put Russia's focus on the Ukraine so we have time to build our military. And then, you know, Timoshenko, she went out and said, this is all we are for the Europeans. We're just, you know, meet to, you know, to take some of Russia's aggression so we can stay. So they can stay safe.

And even now Stovic made this point that, yeah, the Europeans, they will not let us make a peace. They will just, you know, Seseek to drag this war on. And yeah, the prime minister of Denmark. She also managed to say the same thing. She said, oh, I think maybe peace is more dangerous than war now because you don't want an angry Russia, which isn't being held up with fighting anyone. So I think this is the main concern of the Russians, that they will also get stuck in this

long war. And that's why I think if it will go too slowly, they will start to escalate. quite dramatically. And this is my main concern, but it's very, it's an argument very difficult to explain in Europe because no one accepts the premise. So everything sounds like, again, like a celebration or support for Russia against Ukraine. But it's my firm conviction that if we don't accept some kind of painful concessions and if we try to push this into a long war draining Russia that this will make the Russians do commit to some actions which will just completely devastate and destroy Ukraine yeah i think when your comments highlight that understanding

the causes of the war is of paramount importance and the three of us and a number of other people in the west understand that it was NATO expansion and that was an end of an existential threat to Russia. And the key words there is existential threat. Most people in the West do not think that NATO expansion is an existential threat. They think the Russians are just bluffing when they say this. And if you think that, then you don't worry about settling this one, and you don't understand what the Russian demands are all about. Because you don't think that Putin views NATO expansion is an existential threat. But they do. And this has huge consequences for how they think and huge consequences for how we should respond to them to shut this horrible war down.

I absolutely agree. Can I just say that what you were saying, Glenn, about how even Ukrainians are now walking and they're saying, you know, that a long war to buy Europe's security at our expense. Well, they should have been more alive to these possibilities long ago. I mean, absolutely. And by the way, Alexander, if you look at the mineral deal that's now been rewritten, oh my God, I mean, what we're doing to the Ukrainians, right? So here you have all these people who are saying, let's just throw more Ukrainian bodies into the meat grinder so that we can bleed the Russians white we'll sit back in Europe we'll sit back in the United States they do the dying and oh by the way we're giving them a lot of money but we're going to get it back because we've

concoated this mineral deal that's basically going to rape their economy this is like hard to believe talk about leading them down the primrose path my god exactly i i mean i can't add anything to that i hope it doesn't i hope it doesn't come to that but i don't think you will either i think that i think that Either there will be a negotiation and a peace agreement in the end, or I think the Russians will achieve that victory, probably either this year on my own view. You know, we talk about Putin trusting the Americans too much. It's the Ukrainians who really trusted the Americans too much. Yes, yes, exactly.

Boy, they are paying a god awful price for trusting the Americans or trusting the West more generally. exactly this is a terrible position they were put in as well because not only were they were quite a divided country but given that they were just on the front line of the redivided Europe I think it's yeah you see now how they're being used

as a proxy that is how the country is torn apart now of course the Russians are stripping them of some of the most strategic territories the Americans going after all their well resources power plants and then of course europeans still want to see if there's more young ukrainian men who can be sent to die to buy europe a little bit more time i mean it's really yeah it's no it's it's quite a yeah devastating fate they've had considering that none of this had to happen

if we can go back to 2014 and accept that they wouldn't have to choose between these West. Yeah, and the other thing is, Glenn, these people claim the moral high ground. That's what I find shocking. Yes. So any final comments before we wrap this up?

Let's not, you know, give up on this diplomatic process. I mean, things can look very, I mean, negotiations as complicated as this. It was never going to be as straightforward as I think some people, Trump, for example,

expected it would be. So let's not give up on it. But at the moment, what's happened is the Trump and his team are colliding with reality, which is what we've discussed on this program.

I think they need to adjust and rethink and perhaps listen to the advice they've just been given by John, maybe wait a few months and then come back. Yeah. When you collide with reality, reality usually, wins in my experience. The other thing I just my final point Glenn and Alexander is that it is possible

that the Trump administration is negotiating behind closed doors and don't know about it and they are negotiating the terms of a meaningful peace agreement. I'm not saying that's happening for one second, but that is possible. We just don't know. We just don't know. We just yet now. No, but I do think that would be the main format, though, because first, if you recognize this is primarily being a proxy war between NATO and Russia, the United States being the main or only

real actor within NATO, I think you do have to get the Americans and Russians first to agree to something, and if they can agree, I think the Americans could perhaps get the Ukrainians and the Europeans in line. But,

yeah, no, I hope something is going on behind the scenes, because if a collapse is coming now in Ukraine, I think the casualty numbers will just explode. Again, I see the argument why this might just have to wait a few months, but these few months before negotiations can kick off, it's going to have such an incredible cost. And that's not just a humanitarian disaster, but it's also the ability of Ukraine to rebuild after the war

and making sure that the region is stable. I think all of this can be lost if they, drag this on for too long. Anyways, Alexander, John, it's always a great pleasure. I hope to have you both back again very soon. My pleasure being with you guys again. I always thoroughly enjoy it and learn a lot. Thank you.

Thank you, John.