00:00We're going to talk a bit more about Ukraine now with our guest today to discuss what to make of
00:07this apparent change in stance from Donald Trump. I'm joined on the line now from London by
00:13Jaroslava Barbieri. She is a specialist in Ukraine politics and society as well as Russian foreign
00:20policy at the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House Think Tank in London. First of all, thank you for
00:27joining us here on France 24. We do appreciate your time. Perhaps I can start by asking you
00:34what you think motivated Trump. Is this a real shift in his position? Does it amount to any more
00:40than just words? What do you think? Good afternoon. I think that we should take Trump's statements with
00:47a pinch of salt because as your colleague rightly pointed out, Trump has consistently been very
00:53contradictory in its statements towards Russia and Ukraine. And so far, since his coming into
01:00office, he has consistently tended to adopt a more favourable position towards Russia, trying to
01:06pressurise Ukraine into making concessions that would be more advantageous to Russia. I think that
01:14what's happened now is that he has seen that this previous strategy has not yielded any results,
01:21particularly in the aftermath of the summit in Alaska. And so he potentially is now seeing
01:29Russia as being the weakened party in a way because it's positioning itself as a superpower and it has
01:37not been able to make significant advances over three years into the war. So I would interpret these
01:44statements as a potential tactic to try and see whether he can put pressure on Russia that would be
01:52short of imposing secondary sanctions and sort of having enough ram that would shift the blame for not
02:00ending the war on Russia's stubborn position and on European leaders continuing to purchase oil from Russia,
02:11but certainly not of Donald Trump and maintaining this image as an effective peace broker. That's very important to him.
02:19And in that Truth Socials post, he, of course, called Russia a paper tiger. Moscow has already hit back at that.
02:27They said, first of all, we're not a tiger. We are a bear and bears are not made of paper.
02:32You know, do you think he rattled Putin with that comment? And do you think that was his primary intention to get under Putin's skin?
02:42I think his primary intention was making sure that he would not look humiliated and ineffective because he has portrayed himself as this effective peace broker,
02:52the only man capable of bringing Putin to the war. So I'm pretty confident that he's trying to avoid looking humiliated.
03:06But I think there's another statement that also came out from the Kremlin, which is that Russia has no option but to continue its war.
03:13So I think it's very clear that Russia's maximalist objective towards Ukraine have not changed throughout all of this time.
03:21He also says that Trump in that post with the help of Europe and NATO, of course, you know, the US is the key member of NATO,
03:31but he doesn't specifically talk about help from Washington, does he? What do you think Zelensky should read into that?
03:40Absolutely. You're very right. He has not unambiguously said that Washington would be throwing its support behind cave and European countries.
03:50However, he did say that he would continue to preserve the mechanism that allows non-US NATO member states to purchase US military equipment to support Ukraine.
04:02And he said that they would be able to use it however they see fit.
04:08So I think that he is looking for an off-ramp to trying and save face and maintain momentum in terms of his efforts so far have not been fruitless.
04:20However, he's trying to put the pressure on European leaders to really basically take responsibility for their own security and not take US support for granted.
04:34So this European effort to try and keep the US on board for as long as possible as they continue to try and bolster their defence capability,
04:45I think we should expect that to continue in the near future.
04:47And as well as this military war in Ukraine, Moscow does appear as well to be engaged in some kind of campaign to destabilise NATO,
05:01perhaps with this violation of the airspace of NATO countries, numerous countries now, either with jets, drones, sometimes disruption.
05:11We had the shutdown of Copenhagen airport yesterday after unidentified drones.
05:17Russia, of course, says, you know, we are not responsible for this.
05:21What do you make of it? What do you think is going on?
05:23Do you think Russia is behind it? And what do you think Russia is trying to do?
05:27I think we have extensive evidence to suggest that Russia is trying to test the ground, test the waters, test NATO's readiness,
05:39ability to respond to these incursions into NATO's airspace.
05:43And what's worrying is that this escalatory move seems to be accelerating in time.
05:53And of course, you know, it's a very common tactic from the Kremlin of doing something and then denying its involvement.
06:00So that's certainly not surprising.
06:02But what's important to stress is that on the one hand, in the West, we say that, you know, Moscow only understands the language of strength.
06:11And then so it's very important that NATO maintains a consolidated response to these Russia's incursions,
06:22because certainly I think that Russia is preparing for a potential confrontation with NATO.
06:29It's preparing its strategic reserves for a potential extended confrontation in the near future.
06:35And I think that NATO member states should be preparing for all possible scenarios.
06:39And I think that certainly something that has not worked in the past is to not show strength and resilience against Russia's destabilizing operations.
06:54And so I think, though, here we're entering a very delicate phase.
06:57And it's important that NATO member states show strength, resilience and, you know, potentially even strengthen their rules of engagement to make sure that NATO's deterrence capability remains credible.
07:12And then, you know, what do you make of, even from Washington, we've had sort of two lines.
07:18We had Marco Rubio really evading questions over whether Washington would intervene if NATO airspace was violated.
07:29He'd said, you know, nobody's talking about any intervention unless there are attacks.
07:35And Trump said, well, it depends.
07:38You know, is NATO divided on this?
07:40I think that European NATO member states are a bit worried about this ambiguity coming from Washington and this lack of understanding the extent to which Washington would be supporting European states in the case of an escalation with Russia is something that is holding them back.
08:02However, we're seeing more and more consistent efforts and statements coming from European member states in trying to come up with a consolidated and coherent response to these escalatory moves from Russia and sort of making sure that they will not be ignored, that sort of they need to prepare for the worst case scenario.
08:29I think that this reality is sort of thing that this reality is sort of dawning on European leaders.
08:36I'm afraid we're out of time there.
08:38We're going to have to leave it there.
08:39Thank you so much, Araslava Barbieri of Chatham House Think Tank in London.
08:44Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and analysis with us here on France 24.
08:50Thank you so much, Araslava Barbieri of Chatham House Think Tank in London.
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