00:00What happened yesterday, I mean, we don't know exactly, but probably during the 10 minutes one-to-one in the car, in the beast, they had a private conversation.
00:13We don't know what they said.
00:14And then during about two and a half hours or three hours, the two delegations were discussing together.
00:21So it's a very limited period of time, and during this limited period of time, Vladimir Putin managed to change completely the mindset of President Trump.
00:33President Trump has been saying for a month that what he wanted was a ceasefire, just a ceasefire, without any condition.
00:41And he finally convinced the Europeans to be on the same position, asking for a ceasefire without any condition.
00:49And even Zelenskyy was also the same.
00:52And, of course, what Putin has done is to explain with rational arguments that it was not a good idea,
01:01because this ceasefire would not be respected, except if you have all a monitoring force for this ceasefire,
01:11which was not at all mentioned, because what, in fact, the President of the United States had in mind
01:18was a political ceasefire without taking care of the details of what was happening on the front line,
01:28which is a very long front line, because it's 1,200 kilometers.
01:33So it's huge.
01:35And probably he managed to convince President Trump that it was not a good idea.
01:41It would create many problems, because ceasefire would be breached every day, by one way or another.
01:48And he said, why don't we go directly to negotiate the peace treaty?
01:53But it's completely different, because a peace treaty is another matter.
01:58And a peace treaty, of course, it gives time to Putin.
02:02Putin wanted to buy time anyway.
02:05He managed to buy time against sanctions, as you mentioned, by receiving Vitkov, the Special Envoy of President Trump,
02:14then by having this summit in Alaska yesterday, and now by saying, well, be reasonable.
02:25We have to negotiate directly a peace treaty.
02:28It would be safer.
02:28Which means that this negotiation will be a huge negotiation, will take many months.
02:36And during that time, the fight will be going on.
02:41And the cities, civilian people will die, of course.
02:46So, I mean, I'm a little bit surprised that Donald Trump accepted so easily this rational argument.
02:54But what he wanted to say, back to the United States, is, I get a ceasefire, and then people won't be killed anymore,
03:04for a certain period of time, during which the negotiation will start for the peace treaty.
03:11And then the second thing is that if we are going straight to a peace treaty,
03:15that means that the different elements of a peace treaty will be permanent element,
03:23which means on the territorial aspects, it will not be for a certain period of time
03:30that the peace of land occupied by Russia will be occupied by Russia.
03:37It's forever.
03:38Yeah, I mean...
03:39It will become the international law.
03:43And, of course, it's completely unacceptable for any Ukrainian leader,
03:49not only for Zelensky, but for any other Ukrainian leader.
03:53So, that's creating a real difficulty.
03:57And third, being a completely different scope,
04:01I mean, it cannot be done, this peace treaty,
04:03by negotiation between Russia and the US.
04:07It has to be another format, including the European,
04:11maybe including all the permanent members of the Security Council,
04:15including China, who has shown interest in that.
04:19It's a completely different scope.
04:21So, the question today is how to establish a peace conference on Ukraine,
04:27where and with whom taking part in it.
04:31A completely different matter.
04:32And, I mean, it also begs the question of the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine's non-negotiables,
04:39in order for there to be peace, have changed.
04:41Russia wants the so-called root causes to be addressed.
04:44Ukraine wants its territorial integrity to be respected.
04:47It has said time and time again,
04:49Volodymyr Zelensky has said time and time again,
04:51that Ukraine will not give up any of its territory,
04:54and that that is a part of its constitution.
04:55So, to the extent that neither of those non-negotiables are changing or have been addressed,
05:00is even negotiating a peace treaty realistic at this stage in the war?
05:05Of course.
05:05Because we are going to end in a deadlock, in fact,
05:08because, as you said, of course,
05:10the Ukrainian could agree at a certain stage
05:13to have a provisional agreement on territorial issues.
05:17But it's to be a permanent agreement with a force of international law,
05:23then they cannot accept anything but sovereignty of Ukraine and territorial integrity.
05:31I mean, for instance, we never had a peace treaty between North Korea and South Korea.
05:37It's just a ceasefire treaty.
05:40It's a ceasefire agreement, but no peace treaty.
05:43No peace treaty also between Russia and Japan,
05:47about the islands which are occupied by Russia.
05:52And if you want to have a peace treaty, it's another matter.
05:56It will take months, maybe years.
05:59You mentioned the importance of the Europeans being involved,
06:03but we have seen a bit of discord amongst EU members since the start of this war, really.
06:08And then today we had a joint statement from a select few leaders
06:11condemning Russia, saying that it cannot veto your Ukrainian membership,
06:15neither in the EU nor NATO.
06:18All of this, while individual member states have a different perspective.
06:21We heard Hungary say that the world is a safer place after that Trump-Putin summit.
06:26We heard Italy's Maloney saying that it, for the first time,
06:29essentially brought a glimmer of hope for peace talks.
06:32Is there a coherent, unified European strategy to speak of at this point?
06:37I mean, of course, we are starting with different positions inside the European Union,
06:44and especially when we come to the guarantee, security guarantee to be given to Ukraine.
06:52In fact, there was a sort of opening in the speech of Putin saying,
06:58well, we are not against any security guarantee given to Ukraine.
07:04But before saying that, he has said, we must deal with the roots of the conflict.
07:11And for him, the root of the conflict is the presence of Kazinadzi in the government of Ukraine.
07:19And he mentioned by that that he wants the removal of the current president of Ukraine.
07:27And of course, I mean, he can accept,
07:30my assumption is that Putin can accept security guarantee to Ukraine,
07:35provided that the government of Ukraine has changed,
07:39and he had a more friendly government towards Russia.
07:43Then he can accept guarantee.
07:45But otherwise, he won't accept guarantee.
07:47So we are very far away from any kind of agreement towards a peace treaty.
07:53Aside from the question of discord amongst European Union members,
07:58to put it frankly, a lot of what we hear coming today
08:00sounds almost like it's based on illusions, frankly, rather than reality.
08:05There's talk of organizing a trilateral summit,
08:07which, of course, the Kremlin has said we're nowhere near meeting its conditions,
08:11in any case, for such a summit to be organized.
08:14There's claims that we've never been closer to peace in Ukraine,
08:17while, as we've said earlier, neither of their non-negotiables have changed.
08:20And then there's thanks to Donald Trump for his openness to security guarantees for Ukraine,
08:24which do not address the very points that you just made there,
08:26is that, of course, for Vladimir Putin,
08:28that depends on what government is in place in Ukraine,
08:30and that depends on some of these other things that European leaders have failed to address.
08:34So why seemingly so much denial from individual European member states?
08:39Well, we have to see what will be the outcome of the bilateral meeting
08:44between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday,
08:49which will be very important and probably very difficult meeting.
08:54And probably Donald Trump will try to press on Zelensky so that he can accept some of the Russian conditions.
09:03He won't accept them.
09:05And therefore, if he won't accept them,
09:08I doubt very much about the trilateral meeting,
09:13the summit between Putin, Trump and Zelensky,
09:17because Putin will agree to meet Zelensky only if Zelensky has accepted most of his conditions.
09:25Otherwise, he won't accept to have a trilateral meeting with him.
09:29He will say there's no point to do that because Zelensky is an extremist.
09:33And in a way, there is this kind of agreement between Trump and Putin
09:38to accuse Zelensky to be responsible for the continuation of the war.
09:45And again, that discourse, I mean, there is a period of time,
09:48at least two or three weeks ago,
09:49where that discourse was totally the opposite from the Trump administration,
09:53where the Trump administration said, had suggested for once
09:56that the ball was in Vladimir Putin's court, that he could end the war,
09:59and that if he didn't end the war in between 10 to 12 days,
10:01that Donald Trump would impose further crippling sanctions on Russia.
10:04How do you explain such a radical change over just two weeks?
10:08That's another point on which Vladimir Putin has won yesterday,
10:13because there is no question of putting more sanctions from the American administration.
10:18Maybe Donald Trump will have some problem with the Congress,
10:22when the Congress will resume in a month's time or so,
10:25because in Congress, some people, including Republicans,
10:29would like to put sanctions on Vladimir Putin,
10:34and if the fact that we will be in a new framework,
10:41which is trying to establish a conference to negotiate a peace treaty,
10:49I mean, we can negotiate a peace treaty with sanctions against Russia
10:53to put pressure on Russia,
10:55because without pressure on Russia,
10:57there will be no peace treaty, never, never, ever.
11:00So I think this, and the Europeans will probably decide after 18th sanctions package,
11:15they will decide a 19th bunch of sanctions against Russia,
11:21to put sanctions, of course, and to put pressure,
11:24especially to try to dry the financial resources of the budget of Russia
11:31through export of oil and gas.
11:34The numbers, I think, speak for themselves.
11:36You say this is going to be potentially a 19th round of sanctions,
11:38which suggests that over the past three and a half years,
11:4118 rounds of sanctions have not really done much
11:43to discourage Vladimir Putin from pursuing the war.
11:46So my question to you is, and this is unfortunately the last one that we have time for,
11:50but my question to you is,
11:51do you think that there is more that the European Union could have done up until now
11:55in an efficient way,
11:57to produce a more efficient diplomatic response to what we see happening?
12:03Well, of course, they could have done more by giving more armaments to Ukraine.
12:12But, I mean, they don't have unlimited resources in armament.
12:17They don't have stocks, for instance, in ammunitions.
12:21The Americans have.
12:23We don't have,
12:24because everything has been rationalized in the managing of our armies,
12:28and, therefore, we are limited to what we can give to Ukraine.
12:35And some of our partners, anyway, are buying most of their armament to the U.S.
12:42And, therefore, there is a scheme through which there would be a kind of European Union financing
12:51to buy armaments to the U.S. to give it to Ukraine.
12:57But, there again, I mean, the U.S., if it's U.S. armaments,
13:02will keep the reservation for the use of this armament.
13:08So, it's not a complete solution, but it's a way to make progress.
13:13But, there again, I think this morning we have a new situation.
13:17We are not seeking a short-term and, for a limited period of time, ceasefire.
13:24We are going through a peace conference, and a peace conference should take place,
13:30I don't know where, maybe in Geneva, maybe elsewhere,
13:33and with many other participants who have a genuine interest in this war.
13:42Former Ambassador Claude Blanch-Maison, there's so much more to say, unfortunately.
13:46That's all we have time for.
13:47But, thank you very much for joining us today.
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