00:00David Dunn is Professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham.
00:04Great to have you on the programme again.
00:07So what do you think the potential is of these talks in Washington being more consequential than the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska?
00:18Well, I think you have to see them as part of the same process.
00:21What we had in Alaska was the Russians trying to reframe the conflict in Ukraine as an irritant and an obstacle to better relations between Russia and the United States.
00:36Putin talked about the possibility of collaboration in space technology, digital technology and cooperation in the Arctic as a way of saying all these things are possible
00:48if we can get behind the difficulty of solving the Ukrainian problem.
00:52What the Europeans are saying is that actually that's the wrong way to look at it.
00:58And what they're there to do is to say that the problem here is Russia in its illegal aggression, occupation of 20 percent of a sovereign state on its borders,
01:09and that Russia represents a threat to European security and the rule of law.
01:14And that's the way to think about these things, not as some nostalgic idea that there can be great cooperation between Russia and the United States.
01:23Because despite the way in which Vladimir Putin portrayed it, Russia is a defunct economy, a failing, declining regional power
01:33that's only propped up by China and India and buying its oil.
01:36So how far do you think Trump's thinking has changed?
01:42I mean, that's presumably why many of these European leaders are accompanying Vladimir Zelensky.
01:48Yeah.
01:48So what we had is we have an evolution of Trump's thinking over six months, whereby six months ago he was berating Zelensky as the problem.
01:59And over that six months, he's realized that the Russians have not been serious about a ceasefire, have not been serious about ending the conflict and have been even more expansive in their unreasonable demands for the subjugation of Ukraine to Russia's will and the recreation of the Soviet Union.
02:16And he, a week ago, got to the position whereby he was threatening them with tariffs if they didn't agree to immediate ceasefire.
02:25By virtue of being better prepared and more skillful in their statecraft, the Russians just seem to reverse that and Trump seems to have changed his mind.
02:34So what we have now is the Europeans trying to be the last person in the room that seems to be affecting the way in which Donald Trump works in order to actually try and change his mind back again.
02:45So what we have is Zelensky being flanked by a bodyguard of serious Europeans, able to try and influence the way in which the debate in Washington goes from the vacillating Mr. Trump.
02:58But let's look at what is presumably on the table at the moment.
03:02What will handing the Donbass region to Russia mean for Ukraine?
03:06And what would it mean if Zelensky says no to what Trump is proposing?
03:12So Russia is maximized in its demand.
03:14It wants the so-called demacification, de-democratization and pacification and de-militarization of the sovereign country that is Ukraine.
03:23Having illegally occupied 20% of it, it's now demanding the parts of it which it claims legally as to have annexed, but yet has failed to achieve monetarily.
03:36The idea that the Ukrainians would give that up is not going to happen, because to do so would be to give away their defensive lines and open up the country to the possibility of Russia could invade and then conquer the whole country, including the capital key.
03:49So what you have instead is, is that the Ukrainians saying this is unacceptable and we're not going to agree to that.
03:58And the Europeans are buttressing him and trying to make the Trump administration appreciate this is unreasonable as well as an illegal demand.
04:06And as a consequence of that, you may have an impasse whereby the Trump administration wants to put pressure on Ukraine to end the war, even on these egregious terms.
04:17And that is potentially what's at stake in Washington this week.
04:22We're going to have to leave it there. Such a shame.
04:24David Dunn, Professor of International Politics at the University of Birmingham.
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