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00:00We can now bring in Nikolai Petrov, senior fellow at the new Eurasian Strategy Center
00:04and a consulting fellow with Chatham House. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us on
00:08the program today. Vladimir Zelensky is reportedly speaking right now with the US President. He will
00:16likely ask him to ramp up pressure on Russia and Vladimir Putin. Will he get what he wants,
00:21you think? First of all, I don't think that President Trump, he has a lot of leverage
00:29to put bigger pressure on Russia. And second, I think Ukraine is hardly at the center of his
00:36plans. And we've heard about the long phone talk between President Putin and President Trump,
00:45but they did touch a lot of problems, a lot of interests both countries have in different
00:52parts of the world and not only on Ukraine. So I don't think that there is a way to push Putin
01:02in a direction more favorable from the point of view of Ukraine now. Because there were hopes
01:08yesterday when this call was taking place that Russia would agree to the 30-day ceasefire that
01:14Kiev had agreed to a week earlier. It didn't happen. Instead, it seems that Russia is agreeing
01:20to a plan that has already been floated by the British and the French for a ceasefire over
01:30Ukraine's energy sites as well as seas and air. But it seems that Russia is doing this in baby
01:35steps, agreeing to this plan in baby steps in conjunction with the United States.
01:41First of all, let's understand that there wasn't any real ceasefire plan, because ceasefire is
01:50something which should be observed, which should be checked. And there are a lot of technical
01:56agreements which should be concluded before the ceasefire. There was the general slogan
02:03that it will be good to have 30 days of ceasefire, but it couldn't happen overnight.
02:12Do you think Russia is hesitant for a full-fledged ceasefire right now,
02:16because it is making gains on the battlefield? I think that Putin feels that he is in a much
02:24stronger position than Ukraine is. He's not in a hurry. He can continue. And he feels like he's
02:33winning the war of attrition, unlike Ukrainians. That's why it's not that easy to negotiate with
02:40him. It seems from the Kremlin's readout of the call that took place yesterday with the US
02:46president that Russia and the United States are thinking about their futures down the line,
02:53in the long term, bilaterally, how they can solve problems in the Middle East,
02:58how they can tackle Iran, how they can host hockey games together. Is that a fair assessment?
03:05Yes, it is. And I think that we do not know exactly which regions and which projects,
03:13including Arctic, where interests of the United States and Russia overlap, including Near East
03:22and all other parts of the world have been discussed. But it looks like Trump is not very
03:30much focused on Ukraine itself. And that's why they could discuss very different plans and ideas
03:39where Russia can either oppose or can not oppose the United States and its interests. And China
03:48is perhaps the biggest of these. You said earlier that Donald Trump doesn't have leverage
03:53over Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. But just a couple of days ago, we had the US president who
03:59said he had tools at his disposal, sanctions, financial tools that would cause a lot of harm.
04:06Is that something he could use to get Vladimir Putin to jump on board to a ceasefire?
04:11I don't think so. If only the United States president would have these tools, they would be
04:19used because the war is going on for three years. They are not used just due to the fact that
04:26there are not so many tools. The trade between Russia and the United States is negligible,
04:33and all other ways to put bigger pressure on Russia have been used. And moreover,
04:39they cannot have immediate effect. From the Kremlin readout of the call yesterday,
04:45it seemed that Russia and the US want to solve the war in Ukraine bilaterally. They were quite
04:53specific on that term. Is Europe going to be frozen out of the equation no matter what it tries to do?
05:01I think that President Trump is interested not so much in fixing the conflict and stopping the war,
05:13but just to demonstrate that he did invest certain efforts. And if only Ukraine or Europe
05:22will not agree with conditions to the problem of Ukraine and Europe, not of the United States.
05:29How do you think this conflict is going to end? Will Ukraine get to have a say in its future?
05:35Yes, absolutely. But it's needed to understand that so far Ukraine doesn't have good options
05:44on the table. So we can speak about just end of the war. We can speak about restoration of, well,
05:54justice in general. But we should understand that it will be not achieved in a short while.
06:02So Ukraine will choose between bad and worse options.
06:07And in terms of security guarantees, will European troops, troops of NATO member states,
06:14will they be allowed to be positioned in Ukraine to oversee whatever ceasefire does come into effect?
06:22I think that the single way to have a kind of game changer would be direct participation of
06:30European NATO countries in this war. All other ideas are not acceptable for Russia and perhaps
06:41will take much more time from European countries to be realized.
06:47Nikolai Petrov, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for
06:49joining us on the program today.