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00:00And Ben, you spent many years in Russia and the Kremlin is accusing the U.S. president of emotional overload.
00:08Do you agree with this assessment?
00:11And is Russia's trademark flattery of Donald Trump that we've seen in the last few months slowly vanishing?
00:20I think it's better to understand that Trump's caught in a dilemma.
00:23On the one hand, he wants to be seen as a peacemaker.
00:27He casts himself as a dealmaker and he would like to bring this war to an end.
00:33On the other hand, he's a businessman.
00:35I mean, he's turned the whole U.S. foreign policy into a purely transactional business with his tariffs and the negotiations going on there.
00:43And he's sort of caught on the horns here between wanting to bring the war to an end, but he's not particularly interested in geopolitics and doing business.
00:52He's made it very clear that he sees Russia's oil, gas, rare earth minerals, critical minerals, commodities, and he wants to do business.
01:01And so he's not prepared to give that up because at the end of the day, he is a businessman.
01:06And now he's caught in a dilemma whereby if he sanctions Russia, then he has to walk away from all those billion dollar deals that he's been looking at.
01:15And I think he's unhappy about it, which is why I'm saying I'm reserving judgment to see what happens.