00:00Let's bring in now Scott Lucas for further analysis of the situation.
00:04Scott Lucas is the Professor of International Politics at the University of Dublin.
00:08Scott, pleasure to have you in France 24. Always a pleasure to welcome you here.
00:11And we really appreciate your analysis.
00:12And we need it now because we have a situation where Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have spoken.
00:18And Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are going to another summit that's going to happen in Budapest.
00:21And of course, all the time this is happening, Trump is hearing Putin but not Zelensky.
00:26Should Ukraine be worried about this development?
00:30Well, I think Ukraine and its European partners, including France, will have anticipated this.
00:37And they will be trying to maintain the initiative, in a sense, having their voices in Trump's ear.
00:46Let's put this in wider context.
00:48Back in August, when Putin really wanted the meeting with Donald Trump, finally gave Trump that face-to-face meeting he had craved.
00:55It was in the context of Russia making very little advance on the front line, including in eastern Ukraine, but facing the threat of American sanctions, toughened American sanctions.
01:08And the Russians wanted to push that back.
01:10All right.
01:11Two months later, where are we?
01:13The Russians still are making very little advance on the front line.
01:17And that's part of the reason why you see them throwing so much into this attempt to break Ukraine's energy infrastructure with the attacks from the air.
01:25Six sets since the start of October.
01:27But now, the Russians not only face the Americans having stepped up indirect sanctions on their biggest customers of oil, India, and Trump now threatening it on China.
01:38They are also facing this prospect that the U.S., having renewed the supply of military equipment to Ukraine via NATO allies, could give Ukraine those Tomahawk missiles.
01:51And why are those Tomahawks so important?
01:53Because in a war with multiple fronts, Ukraine is causing serious damage to Russia with its own strikes already on the oil refineries, on gas pipelines, on railway hubs, on chemical electronics factories.
02:07And the Tomahawks would add to that arsenal they can use that is beginning to constrain Russia's military effort, even as you go into the winter with that difficulty.
02:19Where is Russia going to make a breakthrough that would force Ukraine to capitulate?
02:24And quite predictably, Scott, the Kremlin says Putin told Trump the Tomahawks would not change the battlefield situation, but would harm U.S.-Russia ties, such as they are, and the peace process.
02:35That seems like, well, I think, predictable words from Putin, but perhaps, in a sense, meaningless words.
02:43Been there before.
02:45We were there when the Americans finally decided they were going to give tanks to Ukraine to defend themselves on the front line.
02:55And the Russians shook their finger and said, oh, you want to be careful about that.
02:59We were there when the Americans provided HIMARS rocket systems that allowed shorter-range attacks on Russia inside occupied Ukraine, and indeed, in some areas of Russia itself.
03:11We are now there with the possibility—we were there with F-16 fighter jets, which Ukraine eventually got.
03:20And we are now there with the Tomahawk missiles.
03:22This is not only coming from Putin.
03:24It will come from the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, making those references to Russia's nuclear arsenal.
03:29And the fact here is that if Russia widens this war beyond Ukraine to attack other European countries or uses nuclear weapons, heaven forbid, that is almost an admission they've lost this.
03:40Because once they do that, there will be no limitations on Europe and, indeed, I think even the Americans coming in to defend NATO against a Russian onslaught.
03:50So, in terms of what we're hearing across Europe, we had Georgia's president, Salome Zubourishvili, come to see us here in the studio yesterday to talk about Russian interference in her country.
04:02We're clearly hearing about what's happened in Moldova, other countries, of course, in the area, too.
04:07There could well be, even if there is a settlement and peace happens in Ukraine, a continuation of that kind of Russian interference and influence in the whole running of Ukraine.
04:18Where I'm going with this is that if some kind of peace deal is miraculously struck when Trump and Putin meet in Budapest and then a fait accomplice may be perhaps presented to Ukraine, there's no guarantee that's going to work in future, is there?
04:32No guarantee at all.
04:34Mark, we're not going to get a peace deal.
04:36I mean, let me just say this right now because, let me make clear, the Russians are not interested in a negotiated settlement.
04:43What the Kremlin is insisting is, is that it be given even more territory in Ukraine, that it be given all of the Donetsk region in the east, that it be allowed to extend its occupation in the south.
04:55And in the meantime, sanctions lifted on Moscow and Ukraine blocked from getting military and economic assistance from the west, including a path to the European Union.
05:04So we're not going to get that.
05:06Instead, what we get is a continuation of what you would call hybrid warfare beyond Ukraine.
05:10This has been going on since 2014, when the Russians seized Crimea.
05:14They've conducted cyber operations.
05:16They've conducted disinformation and propaganda.
05:19They have conducted operations to destabilize Europe, for example, by trying to drive people into Eastern Europe overrunning borders.
05:30Well, that's what they continue to do now, for example, with the drone and with the fighter jet incursions into airspace from Estonia to Poland.
05:40So to summarize this, I said this was a conflict with multiple fronts.
05:46Well, one of those fronts is beyond Ukraine in terms of countries such as the Baltic, such as Poland, such as the Czech Republic, and more broadly NATO, not through direct military operations, but other operations to try to destabilize the bloc.
06:02And just as you have to defend Ukraine directly, you have to make sure that NATO is resilient in the air, on the ground, and in terms of information operations, in terms of cyber operations, so that the Russians don't begin to split Europe, to weaken it at a time when its support for Ukraine is needed more than ever.
06:23Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics at the University of Dublin.
06:26As always, thank you very much for being with us here on France 24.
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