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00:00Well, for more analysis, I'm joined on set by France 24's James André, who's been reporting on the war over the past three and a half years.
00:06We're also joined via video by Gavin Hall, a teaching fellow in political science and international security at the University of Strathclyde.
00:14Good morning. Thank you so much for being with us.
00:20Good morning.
00:21First, I just want to start with your initial reactions to this summit.
00:24Well, yes, it's certainly been an interesting summit and it's very symbolic that obviously the two have met.
00:35But I think the image that will play sort of around the world is that initial one of Trump and Putin meeting each other on the red carpet and sort of reinforcing this as like a return to the Cold War symbology of the United States and Russia being the great sort of powers who are able to decide what goes on in the world.
00:54And it's noticeable that when Zelensky and other leaders have visited the United States, haven't quite been afforded the same kind of friendship.
01:03And President Putin will be certainly have been enjoying this type of footage of him because it's effectively reinforcing him as like the Russian leader, giving him increased legitimacy and things and a sort of a return to the world.
01:21The world stage is an important power, which is very important to him to reinforce this idea of Russia as a great power.
01:29But the big thing that can't be got away from is there is no deal that's been struck.
01:35There is no agreement. It might have been nice talking to some people, getting everyone around the table and trying to have some progress forward.
01:43But there is no deal.
01:45Previously, President Trump had said that there'd be new sanctions to being imposed on Russia if they hadn't moved towards peace.
01:53Is that now going to happen or is that going to be delayed somewhat, given that President Trump said the meeting's been extremely productive?
02:02One suspects he'll row back on this threat of imposing further sanctions.
02:07But what I thought was particularly interesting was when he said in the Fox News news afterwards and the press conference that many points have been agreed and there are very few left and there was basically one big sticking point left.
02:23If that is the case and it was close and there's only a few little things left to sort out, then how come the meeting didn't go on longer and some extra time was allowed?
02:35So I suspect there's still quite significant divergence between the parties as to what could actually be agreed.
02:43All right. I want to bring in France 24's James Andre as well.
02:46James, would you agree with that?
02:47This summit's sort of empty, essentially, in terms of actually concrete advances other than a big image revival for Vladimir Putin?
02:56Well, it's true that, yeah, for me, I believe that Vladimir Putin is indeed coming out on top with this summit.
03:02I'll just would add something is that Kremlin aide Uchakov just said, this is in the in the wires I'm seeing right now, that he does not know when Putin and Trump will meet again.
03:13Which tends to send the message that, no, there has not been an agreement on a trilateral meeting with Zelensky that would have been scheduled because that could have been expected.
03:24We saw Donald Trump. He was standing there next to Vladimir Putin and he did not announce it, which is something that he was hoping to broker with the summit that he'd announced prior to the summit that he was going to try and set up.
03:37And he did not say it during that very press conference we're seeing the pictures of, which tends to prove that, along with Uchakov's declaration, that for now there is no meeting that has been agreed to.
03:48So, yes, no meeting, no ceasefire, no advances, nothing to announce at this stage.
03:56For example, there could have been, you know, it's interesting if you listen to the Sean Hannity interview talking about sanctions, for example, Donald Trump said, well, he was asked by Sean Hannity if he believed that there should, there needed to be some sanctions, you know, secondary sanctions on Russia, for example, for buying Russian oil on China.
04:17Yeah. And Donald Trump says, well, I don't think we're going to have to look at that in the next two or three weeks at least, because anyway, for now we have a very productive meeting and this will bear fruit.
04:26So we probably won't need more sanctions. So that goes to show that for now, Donald Trump doesn't want to sanction Russia any further, that there is no meeting at this stage.
04:36And also that there doesn't seem to be any concrete step forward when it comes to a peace deal.
04:41Now, we don't know what the two men have discussed.
04:43What we do know, though, is that Donald Trump is now saying that the ball is in Volodymyr Zelensky's court, basically, that Ukraine is now going to have to agree to whatever's been discussed in this meeting.
04:55And we don't know what that is. And that if that was not to be agreed upon by the Ukrainians and also the Europeans, then potentially they would fall on Donald Trump's bad side.
05:07When Russia is now seen by him as a force that potentially wants to negotiate.
05:13We're starting to get some sort of trickles in of reactions from Europeans.
05:18The Czech defense minister said we must maintain Western cohesion and keep supporting Ukraine.
05:23We were getting a similar similar statements from Norway's foreign minister sort of reiterating support for Ukraine.
05:29Gavin Hall, I want to go back to you.
05:31Where does this summit leave the Europeans and Ukraine at this point?
05:36What could their next move be?
05:39Well, the Europeans next move is really still trying to find a role for themselves and what that what they're actually going to be able to do in terms of continuing to support Ukraine's still being able to try and help a push for peace.
05:54We know in the run up to the discussions that lots of phone calls were made between various European leaders and President Trump trying to sort of relay the Ukrainian position and what would and wouldn't be acceptable to try and help steer the direction that President Trump attempted to take the negotiations.
06:15And really, at the moment, that's the European Union's level of influence is just trying to steer conversations rather than having a concrete role.
06:26Yes, in the past, there have been, let's say, preemptive offers of support to potentially put troops on the ground into Ukraine in support of some form of ceasefire, though those are very premature.
06:40So the European Union and European Union and countries within Europe are essentially trying to indicate that they are prepared to take concrete steps.
06:49But no one's really quite sure what that will be is they're very much still on the outside.
06:55For Ukraine, they whatever has been discussed or decided, President Trump has said, ultimately, it's up to them now.
07:05So it's very much trying to put pressure on Vladimir Selensky to accept or embrace at least the general positions that they would have talked about and saying, well, look, for there to be progress.
07:20We now we now need to be speaking to getting Ukraine's OK to do whatever it is that they've done, which, as your correspondent in the studio was saying, is very much creating an imbalance between how the United States views Putin and Selensky, which could be detrimental going forward.
07:40Yeah. Yeah. How how much do you think that the Ukrainians might be willing to accept?
07:46I mean, obviously, we don't know what Trump and Putin discussed, so it's a little difficult to say, you know, what we're dealing with.
07:51But what you know, where do you think the limits are of what Ukraine could compromise on?
07:56Yeah. Well, we know that Ukraine's position is reinforced by Selensky a couple of days ago was that he can't cede any territory.
08:08It's not within him. The Ukrainian constitution doesn't allow it to happen.
08:12Therefore, we can't really talk about giving up territory.
08:16How well that stands to test, I'm not sure. I think there is scope there, particularly with regards with, say, recognising Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 as being legitimate or something.
08:32But more specifically in Luhansk and Donetsk, where they're substantially Russian controlled, could those be up for the cards in negotiation?
08:43But also one thing that has come out a little bit this week is the raw earth minerals that Ukraine has got.
08:54Is there going to be some form of a bargaining chip that these can be some of these can be used to effectively siphon them off to Russia from certain areas?
09:06Or does Ukraine want to try and maintain control of those?
09:10And that could well be sticking points as to why certain areas of land and territory within Ukraine become more important in terms of any negotiations going forward.
09:21I want to turn to James Andre back in the studio.
09:23James, do you agree with that kind of what you imagine might be part of some sort of some sort of deal going forward?
09:29Well, it's true that we don't have the specifics as to what that deal could comprise.
09:37And yes, I agree, of course, critical minerals will certainly be part of the equation.
09:43No, we could imagine a lot of things.
09:46What we do know, though, is that what Vladimir Putin referred to during that press statement was, you know, the root causes of the conflict.
09:56And we do know what that is. That is, in his view, you know, basically the fact that he wants to see a Ukraine that is not part of NATO, that is partially demilitarized.
10:08Basically, that would mean, you know, with very little sovereignty and also, you know, the desire to annex Crimea, part of the east of the country.
10:15When it comes to the famous land swaps Donald Trump has been talking about, I mean, they're not really land swaps in a sense.
10:22They're more like Ukrainian concessions because, you know, Ukraine does not hold any territory in Russia right now.
10:29They did at one stage. They had part of the Korsk province in, you know, at the north of Ukraine for some time.
10:36Basically, they lost that partly because the United States pulled their military assistance at a crucial moment in that battle.
10:42So what we're talking about is potentially swapping, you know, whatever, for example, land Russia has taken at the north of the Sumi oblast.
10:50You know, they've taken a few villages across the border, maybe the Enor Khodar, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant,
10:58maybe other things that could be swapped for other cities or parts.
11:00But that's all very complex and is going to be, it's going to be a displaced population and it's going to be very, very, very difficult to accept for the Ukrainian public,
11:10even if Volodymyr Zelensky were to actually get on board with these negotiations.
11:15But also what I think is that this is going to put Volodymyr Zelensky in a position where he's potentially going to have to refuse these concessions with the Trump administration.
11:25And this might not go down very well. And, you know, the Europeans are going to be on Ukraine's side on this,
11:31which obviously is very problematic because this drives a wedge, a division between the United States and the Trump administration,
11:38who wants to finish this war, no matter what, and the Europeans who are thinking long term and thinking about the security architecture of the continent,
11:46on the security of Ukraine, which is obviously two different things.
11:49And then there is one last thing. The Ukrainians do not trust Vladimir Putin when it comes to ceasefires and peace accords.
11:58I mean, they have a long history of that not working out. So this is why they will want guarantees.
12:03And on the other hand, the Kremlin does not want NATO involved in the defense of Ukraine in the future.
12:08So that's obviously a very difficult knot to untie there.
12:12And so, yes, we are in a situation which is complex. We'll have to see indeed what the demands are.
12:20But it's true that today, yes, the Ukrainians are probably ready to make more concessions than they were three and a half years ago.
12:26That is pretty certain.
12:28James, as you've described, you know, Donald Trump's loyalties seem to be flip-flopping a bit between, you know,
12:32putting the pressure on Ukraine versus putting the pressure on Russia.
12:35After this summit, he's putting it back on Ukraine.
12:38Gavin Hall, I want to ask you, what could Ukraine do at this point to turn the tables again to kind of –
12:44they're in a difficult position after this summit, I think it's fair to say.
12:47How could they flip the pressure back onto Russia?
12:51Well, that's increasingly – it's very problematic, really, for Ukraine,
12:56how it can increase further pressure on Russia, other than unless there's an incident that was to say involved lots of civilian casualties within Ukraine.
13:07But Russia recently has been a little bit more careful in its targeting, though.
13:12It has been making some fairly big gains on the ground recently in and around Donetsk.
13:19But really, Ukraine effectively just wants to try and reinforce that it's capable of continuing on to fight the conflict.
13:29If there isn't any form of peace still, it can carry on making incursions into Russia,
13:35such as we saw with the drone strikes targeting the Russian bomber planes.
13:43It can target drones into Moscow.
13:45It still has a capability to fight.
13:48That's very important for Ukraine to be able to still develop that,
13:52though that doesn't necessarily get it back into the grace and favour of President Trump in terms of securing a peace deal
14:01and showing that they're willing to go along with whatever President Trump's plan is.
14:08So really, it's diplomacy, talking to their friends throughout Europe,
14:15whether that's President Macron in France, Keir Starmer, amongst others,
14:21and trying to reinforce the message that we need representation.
14:26We need to be the people that are involved with these talks,
14:29and you can't be deciding our future without us.
14:34And that's really the continuing message that Ukraine needs to be trying to put forward.
14:39All right, Gavin Hall, thank you so much for your analysis.
14:42Again, that's Gavin Hall, a teaching fellow in political science and international security
14:45at the University of Strathclyde.
14:47I also want to thank James Andre of France 24 here with me in the studio.
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