- 5 months ago
It has been a long seven days — even by Russia-Ukraine standards. Last week at this time, the talk was of Tomahawk cruise missiles. But instead of delivering missiles, Donald Trump gave a closed-door earful at the White House to Volodymyr Zelensky. Then came talk of a mano à mano U.S.–Russia summit in Budapest.
Now the tide has turned again. No summit—just U.S. sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, an announcement coinciding with China and India reviewing their orders of Russian imports and the price of crude is soaring. Why the sudden about-face? And is Vladimir Putin actually feeling the pinch? Ordinary Russians are grappling with inflation and shortages, a well-documented reality. But do the elites of Moscow and Saint Petersburg even realize they are under economic pressure? We’ll ask about the current mindset there. Finally, on the frontlines, Europe’s bloodiest war in living memory continues to grind on, accompanied by a steady stream of populist rhetoric and nuclear threats. Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington
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http://www.france24.com
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Now the tide has turned again. No summit—just U.S. sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, an announcement coinciding with China and India reviewing their orders of Russian imports and the price of crude is soaring. Why the sudden about-face? And is Vladimir Putin actually feeling the pinch? Ordinary Russians are grappling with inflation and shortages, a well-documented reality. But do the elites of Moscow and Saint Petersburg even realize they are under economic pressure? We’ll ask about the current mindset there. Finally, on the frontlines, Europe’s bloodiest war in living memory continues to grind on, accompanied by a steady stream of populist rhetoric and nuclear threats. Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Ilayda Habip and Daniel Whittington
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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NewsTranscript
00:01It's been a long seven days, even by Russia-Ukraine standards.
00:05Last week at this time, the talk was of tomahawks.
00:08But instead of delivering missiles, Donald Trump gave a closed-door earful at the White House to Volodymyr Zelensky.
00:14Then there was going to be this mano a mano U.S.-Russia summit in Budapest.
00:18Now the tide has turned again.
00:20No summit.
00:21Instead, U.S. sanctions on Russia's top two oil companies.
00:25An announcement that's got China and India reviewing their orders of Russian imports.
00:30And the price of crude soaring.
00:32Why the about face from Washington?
00:35And is Vladimir Putin actually feeling the pinch?
00:38Ordinary Russians are feeling inflation and shortages.
00:41That's well documented.
00:42But do the elites of Moscow and St. Petersburg even know there's a war on?
00:47We'll ask about the current mindset there and about the reality at the front.
00:51As Europe's bloodiest war in living memory grinds on, along with its steady diet of populist rhetoric and nuclear-sized threats.
01:00Today in the France 24 debate, when does Vladimir Putin feel the pinch?
01:04He was France's ambassador to Russia from 2020 to 2024.
01:08Pierre Lévy, author in French of At the Heart of Russia at War.
01:11Thank you for being with us here in the France.
01:12Thanks as well to a former Moscow correspondent in a previous life, Craig Kopitas, Europe correspondent for Newsmax and the author of Bear Hunting with the Politburo.
01:22How are you?
01:23Doing fine, Francois.
01:24He resigned in protest against Vladimir Putin's special military operation from Geneva.
01:29Former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, welcome back to the show.
01:35Good evening.
01:36And from Washington, Anna Borshyshevskaya, fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, the author of Putin's War in Syria, Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America's Absence.
01:47Welcome.
01:47Thanks for having me.
01:50By the way, you can always listen.
01:52That's right, listen to the France 24 debate wherever podcasts are streamed.
01:56Yeah, shares in world oil prices have soared, as those in Luke Oil and Rosneft have tanked.
02:03The price of crude, by the way, on world markets up nearly 6 percent last time we checked.
02:07Too soon to say, though, if Donald Trump will enforce his latest sanctions on Russia.
02:11But certainly he's got the world's attention.
02:14Brian Quinn has more.
02:15Hitting the Kremlin where it hurts, in the wallet.
02:21Wednesday saw President Donald Trump announce new U.S. sanctions on Russia's top two oil companies in a bid to force Moscow to end its war in Ukraine.
02:30Look, these are tremendous sanctions.
02:32These are very big.
02:33Those are against their two big oil companies.
02:36And we hope that they won't be on for long.
02:38We hope that the war will be settled.
02:40The latest measures target Russia's state-owned Rosneft and the privately-owned Luke Oil.
02:47Together, the two companies export 3.1 million barrels of crude per day, accounting for nearly half of all Russian oil production.
02:55Tax revenues from the oil and gas sector make up a quarter of Russia's federal budget.
02:59American individuals and companies are now banned from transactions with Rosneft and Luke Oil.
03:05And while there are not yet specific secondary sanctions on other foreign countries or companies,
03:10the U.S. Treasury Department is warning that continuing to do business with them could result in being cut off from the American financial system.
03:18Previous rounds of U.S. sanctions had avoided such moves in an effort to prevent supply shocks and price spikes on global energy markets.
03:26India is Russia's number two oil buyer after China.
03:30New Delhi was already reportedly planning significant import cuts following tariff threats from Trump.
03:36Top Indian refiners are now said to be preparing to sharply reduce or halt their purchases altogether.
03:42Analysts say that though Washington's latest sanctions are significant, Russian oil will likely still find its way to global markets.
03:50It's not enough to just introduce sanctions and let them be.
03:53Because Russia finds a way to prevent them typically within one, three months. It varies.
03:57What sanctions can achieve successfully is limiting the resources available at Putin, in Putin's hands, to continue this war.
04:05Trump's move follows similar sanctions from the U.K. last week.
04:08The EU, meanwhile, has just announced its own new set of sanctions targeting Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers and banning imports of Russian liquefied natural gas.
04:20And just before we go to our panel, let's cross to your better, Armin Georgian, who's at that EU summit in Brussels.
04:25Armin, what are the reactions to these sanctions by the United States on the two big Russian oil majors?
04:31Well, it's definitely a different mood at this EU summit, François, compared to previous ones when Donald Trump was, you know, not on the same page as the EU.
04:47And you can really feel that in the way that Viktor Orban has behaved.
04:53He made a very low-key entrance late in the afternoon.
04:57Normally, he's somebody who makes waves early on at an EU summit.
05:01He grabs a lot of attention.
05:03This time it's been completely different.
05:04He arrived many hours after the opening of the summit, didn't talk to journalists, made a kind of – slipped away, basically, into the huddle without talking to anybody.
05:14So a very diminished Viktor Orban, and I think it reflects the fact that basically his political friend Donald Trump has pulled the rug from under his feet by announcing these sanctions on luke oil, which actually does provide oil to Hungary.
05:29So that now exposes Hungary to secondary sanctions, at least.
05:33And I think this has kind of changed the dynamic of the EU summit when it comes to this whole question of sanctions.
05:40But there is a caveat.
05:42When you look at the 19th package of EU sanctions on Russia that has been approved, it is true that it's the first time that Russian liquefied natural gas, or LNG, has been targeted in this way.
05:55But it's a phased-in ban.
05:58So short-term contracts will have to stop within six months.
06:01But the longer-term LNG contracts with Russia will only end in 2027.
06:08So that's a pace that's been criticized by the Russia hawks.
06:12We heard from Lithuanian president, for example, Gitanas Nowzere, who is saying, you know, why is Russian oil still this sort of sacred cow?
06:21Of course, Lithuania was the first EU country to completely stop Russian gas imports.
06:28The other two Baltic states have made that same choice.
06:31But it's obviously difficult to get all EU countries on the same page on this Russian energy question.
06:37It always has been.
06:38And this year, we've still had a number of EU countries importing Russian energy.
06:44So, for example, not just Hungary and Slovakia, but also France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
06:50So I think even when it comes to this latest package of sanctions, the 19th package, it's actually still quite a mixed bag.
06:56Armand Georgian, thanks for that live update from the EU summit in Brussels.
07:01Pierre Lévy, yeah, this question of oil.
07:04When there was the full invasion of February 2022, you know, we understood you couldn't overnight wean yourself off of Russian oil when the EU continent was so dependent.
07:13Now it's almost 2026.
07:15Your thoughts?
07:16Well, I mean, if you look backwards, since 12th of February, I mean, the first official phone call between the two presidents, there has been a lot of development, a lot of words.
07:31And now it seems to me that it's the first time that there is something really significant regarding oil and gas.
07:40But let me underline that much before there's been, you know, many debates among member states in the EU to decrease very significantly the dependency towards Russia.
07:55I remember, you know, in 2022, 45 percent of the imports were coming from Russia in gas.
08:02Now it's 13 percent.
08:05And regarding oil, it was 26 percent in 2022 and 3 percent now.
08:11And in fact, it seems to me quite normal to have this phasing out.
08:16And the target is by the end of 2026 to finish all imports from oil.
08:24So I think this is really very, very important if you keep in mind that about 40 percent of the Russian budget comes from oil and gas revenues.
08:33Craig Kapitas, going from 26 percent, if I'm following your statistics here, 26 percent to 3 percent on natural gas, or is it the other way around, oil, 45 to 13 percent.
08:48Enough for Vladimir Putin?
08:52Yeah, phasing in sanctions, unfortunately, Mr. Ambassador, phases me out.
08:56This is more performative chaos that's going on here.
09:00What is the endgame here, as they say in the diplomatic world?
09:04What are the deliverables?
09:05Is the deliverable the end of the war in Ukraine, with Ukraine either joining NATO or becoming part of EU?
09:14Or is it the overthrow of Putin?
09:18Or is it both?
09:19Can you have one without the other?
09:21Now, you started the show tonight with, I think, which was the lead, saying that the French army chief of staff has said to prepare for a direct confrontation with Russia in three to four years.
09:35I agree with that assessment.
09:37And I think that all of this discussion about sanctions and oil is performative chaos, because Putin is going to get whatever oil he wants sold however he wants.
09:53He's going to undercut the world price.
09:55He's going to get it to them on the spooky tankers that you're talking about.
10:01And finally, if Trump and Europe were really, really serious about this, they would go out and interdict or sink the 1,400 ghost tankers that are out there.
10:14And they're not.
10:15All right.
10:16Let me ask you, Anna Borshev-Saskaya, what's the mood in Washington right now?
10:21Because, again, seven days ago, we weren't expecting this announcement from Donald Trump.
10:28And do people think that it's a serious one?
10:32Well, you know, this is definitely a change in how the Trump administration has approached Russia to date.
10:38It is certainly a milestone, and a number of analysts have made that comment.
10:45But from a bigger picture perspective, to the point that one of your guests has mentioned, is what does that fundamentally change and what are our objectives?
10:54The fact of the matter is sanctions to date have not been able to stop the war, and frankly, no one realistically expected them to.
11:04So the bigger question is, what is fundamentally going to change with this imposition of sanctions?
11:10Will Putin still be able to conduct his war?
11:13And the answer is yes.
11:14He still will be able to conduct the war.
11:17That sanctions alone have not been able to deter Putin.
11:20They have not been able to raise the costs on him significantly enough to get him to change his cost-benefit calculus.
11:29But is it a shift in Trump's approach?
11:31Sure.
11:31And that's an important step.
11:33Why did Donald Trump do it?
11:36I think only Donald Trump knows why he did it.
11:39But it's been pretty clear that he has been frustrated with Putin over the last almost year in dealing with him.
11:49You can see it in his comments and the way he responds.
11:51And so it is possible that he eventually concluded that he needed to shift his approach.
11:59But again, only Trump knows ultimately why he did it.
12:03Boris Pondorov, do you agree that sanctions on oil, even if they are enforced with, again, that notion of secondary sanctions,
12:11anybody who uses U.S. dollars will also fall under sanctions, that this ultimately Vladimir Putin will find the workaround and it won't matter?
12:25Yeah, absolutely.
12:27Absolutely.
12:27Russia has accumulated great experience in circumventing sanctions so far.
12:37So these new sanctions, however unpleasant and maybe very painful they could be, they will not be a catastrophe.
12:50They won't be a catastrophe?
12:51What about all this talk of seizing Russian assets from the central bank and elsewhere?
12:58Well, that, I think, would be more significant.
13:02And that would show the resolve, at last the resolve of European Union, at least European countries, to do some proactive steps towards ending the war,
13:16towards signaling Putin that his behavior is at last less acceptable than it has been to this day.
13:24And then it could be used as an instrument of another way of deterrence, a financial deterrence, so to speak.
13:33Yeah, the European Union right now have two minds when it comes to using those frozen Russian assets.
13:39Earlier we heard the Belgian prime minister saying, I'll only do this if all the other members have my back, because a lot of the money is parked in Belgium.
13:48So the United States also have two minds.
13:51According to the Bloomberg News Agency earlier this week, they pushed back against a coordinated effort to seize Russian assets at the G7 level.
13:59What is your religion, Ambassador Levy, when it comes to this?
14:03Well, first of all, I think we have to be careful in terms of, you know, legal aspects.
14:09And everybody's been working on a mechanism which will be a sizer of assets, which are in Europe, by the way.
14:18They are not in the U.S., but which could be some sort of advanced payments on reparations once Russia has to pay.
14:33For all the destructions.
14:34So it's a way which doesn't size the assets.
14:37There will be a loan, if I understand well, of something like 150 billion euros to Ukraine and with a guarantee of the EU.
14:49And then which will be based on the assets.
14:53But if I may, perhaps to understand well, to assess well the situation and I want to react to what you have said, I think you need to understand what is the big picture.
15:04The big question for me, having gone through all this experience in Russia and knowing the key role of the U.S., of course, and for the Russians, they say, well, at the end of the game, we'll have a deal with the U.S.
15:21For them, you know, this is key.
15:22I think the big question is to know whether we will go, we will come from a, what I would call a random U.S. diplomacy.
15:31Random U.S. diplomacy.
15:32I mean, you know, there were a lot of, I mean, there were a lot of declarations, words, good words and so on.
15:41I mean, you look at, you remember the summit in Anchorage without result to a diplomacy in which the U.S. will understand that the victory of Russia is a defeat for the U.S.
15:55an easy defeat for President Trump, because all this, you have China behind all this.
16:01And when I was there, I saw the agenda of the Russians to de-westernize the world, you know, de-dolarize the Russian economy, fight against the U.S.
16:11hegemony.
16:12So my concern is that for the time being, I didn't understand exactly why in Washington they didn't understand that they have to have a real confrontation with Russia.
16:25And this element of the sanction regarding oil and gas is one element of a global response of the U.S., which I hope will come regarding military support to Ukraine, support in intelligence,
16:41because I think the priority is to have a Ukraine which is resilient and in front of a President Putin who is more and more confident.
16:51All right, but we saw last Friday that the meeting did not go very well between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
16:58Turns out, though, it's not just Ukraine's president that can rub his U.S. counterpart the wrong way.
17:03When Donald Trump, as the ambassador alluded to, welcomed Vladimir Putin to Alaska back in August,
17:09the U.S. president was looking forward to some art of the deal making.
17:12But last week, the Financial Times revealed that behind closed doors, the Russian president then delivered, quote,
17:20a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise,
17:28along with the 17th century Kozak chieftain Bodan Komelnitsky, figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.
17:38Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said.
17:46He ultimately cut the meeting short and canceled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and cooperations.
17:56To borrow Pierre Lévy's term about random policy, so this blow-up happens, but it's not really a wake-up call, is it?
18:03Because since then, there was this offer of a summit in Budapest.
18:07Which didn't happen.
18:08Look, Donald Trump is astonishingly ignorant about Russia and doing business with Russia.
18:15What Putin did, that historical gobbledygook, was not rambling in Putin's mind.
18:22Trump did not go into this summit with the kind of people he requires to educate him.
18:28Look it, he has dumped his two biggest, most smartest advisers, Fiona Hill and John Bolton,
18:37who he's now prosecuting on 18 counts of what amounts to espionage.
18:43Explain why that history lesson by Vladimir Putin is not rambling.
18:47Because he believes it.
18:48Because Russian history and mysticism is central to Putin's whole core vision of what Europe should be.
18:57Ignore that, ladies and gentlemen, at your peril.
19:03At your peril.
19:04The situation that took place in Alaska, and then Trump offering a summit in, of all places, Budapest,
19:16which we won't go into why that was boneheaded,
19:19it begs a question that I'd like to ask the ambassador, if I might.
19:22In fact, your forebearer, the Marquis de Cristine, who, while Alex de Tocqueville was wandering the United States,
19:32writing Democracy in America.
19:33We're going 1831.
19:34Right.
19:35This is critically important.
19:36Okay.
19:37This is critically important stuff.
19:39It's not funny because Putin knows this stuff.
19:42Yeah.
19:42Okay.
19:43The audience might not, but Putin deals with this stuff on a daily basis, ladies and gentlemen.
19:48Okay.
19:48So, Cristine does the same thing in Russia.
19:53He writes a book called Empire of the Tsar.
19:55And in that book, he says, I do not reproach the Russians for being what they are.
20:03What I blame in them is they're pretending to be what we are.
20:09Would you agree with Cristine's assessment?
20:12Well, you know, to refer to George Kennan, eminent U.S. ambassador in the U.S., I admire him very much.
20:22And I've been head of policy planning for five years at the ministry.
20:25You know, he's the one who created the policy planning stuff at the State Department.
20:31And he said something about Cristine.
20:33He said it was a very bad book at his time.
20:36It's a very good book at the time of the Soviet Union.
20:39You know, so it's very interesting because, of course, when you read it again, you have astonishing elements.
20:47But let me add one remark regarding the attitude of Putin.
20:50I still keep in mind the interview by Tucker Carlson, you remember, in Moscow.
20:58And it was fascinating.
20:59I was there at that time, you know, closely taking notes.
21:03It was fascinating because Putin talked about 20 or 25 minutes about the arrival of the Vareg in 8th century in Kiev.
21:16And Tucker Carlson was astonished and it was like a tunnel, as you would say, as a journalist.
21:23So he's very much in the past.
21:25He very much believes that time is on his side.
21:29He thinks, you know, to be I'm convinced that his decision to go to war is very related to the constitutional reform in 2020.
21:38You know, he's now allowed to stay until 2036.
21:43And so I think this this idea of, you know, to solve the Ukrainian question was far in his since a long time in his mind.
21:52And he said, well, now it's time I work for the legacy.
21:56I work for history.
21:57I work to have my name.
21:58It's critically important.
22:00So I think this is this is the key element which induces him to to go to war.
22:05And so, of course, coming back to the sanctions, you know, there is a lot of debate.
22:11Do the sanction work or not?
22:12The sanctions bite, you know, and I think that it won't it won't make him change his overall strategy,
22:20but it will make him calculate exactly the cost of the war.
22:24Boris Bandarov, do you agree in how much of the are these historical references important and misunderstood in the here in the West?
22:39Well, there are more, I would say, objective reasons or grounds for this war.
22:45The questions of political survival of the Putin regime and also very big role belongs to Putin's personal, historical and other political imagination.
22:59And yes, I agree that his historical views on what place Russia must take among the other countries in the world are very, very central to understand what he is doing and what are his goals.
23:14And if we take it seriously, and I think we should, it would be totally understandable that Putin is not after Donbass region.
23:26He's not after two, three, four, five Ukrainian regions.
23:31So it's not it will not be sufficient to give him these regions and buy Ukraine and European security out of his, you know, grip.
23:41No, because he's not even about Ukraine.
23:46He wants to establish Russia as the as the stronghold of its own civilization as he sees it, impregnable.
23:54So the Western countries, which are destined to aggression, to eternal aggression against Russia, as he sees it again, would not do anything.
24:04So his goal is to make the West helpless, to make, to deprive of this threat that West countries owes to Russia.
24:19As he sees it again, so he must get from the Western countries acknowledgement that Russia is a great power, truly great power, that it has its own sphere of influence where nobody shall interfere.
24:35And that then it will be OK.
24:38Then the war stops.
24:40Anna Borshevskaya, you can...
24:42When there will be no NATO, when the Europe has to trade with Putin one by one without any trans-American teddy behind, then Putin will may feel satisfied.
24:55All right, so no NATO, no European Union.
24:59Anna Borshevskaya, of course, that's not going to happen, is it?
25:03So what are your thoughts on these misunderstandings of what Donald Trump wants and what Vladimir Putin wants?
25:10Well, while it's not going to happen, as you say, I think it is important for us to understand what Putin wants and how far he's willing to go to achieve it.
25:23Trump, unfortunately, like his predecessors, frankly, does not understand Russia.
25:30This is, you know, he certainly puts his own unique personality on these interactions.
25:36But the West, unfortunately, has a very long history, even before Trump, of not understanding Russia and what it truly wants to achieve.
25:46What that means for us is we haven't clarified what our goals are and what it would take for us to achieve them.
25:54I agree with what our panelists have said in terms of Putin's worldview and what he wants to see.
25:59What that means for us is that Putin wants to see a fundamentally different world, a different world order.
26:06And that means that it is one thing to simply ensure that Ukraine does not lose.
26:12But that is not the same as ensuring that Ukraine wins.
26:18Putin's goals, indeed, go beyond Ukraine.
26:20This is not simply about Ukraine.
26:23And he will not be satisfied with even a ceasefire.
26:27It'll simply turn into a frozen conflict.
26:29So the bigger question is, will there be a bigger confrontation between NATO and Russia or the West at large and Russia if the war drags on for as long as it does?
26:41Because certainly Putin, for his part, is pushing towards that confrontation.
26:45So I think it's important to understand what it is that the world that we're living in and where it's headed.
26:53NATO has been very careful to, for good reasons, to avoid a confrontation.
26:58But you have the other side that is pushing for that confrontation and has the resources to do it.
27:03And that's why you cited previous intelligence assessment about preparation for potential war with Russia.
27:07Let me ask you about this, Pierre Lévy.
27:10Very important what Anna just said about frozen conflicts.
27:15When it comes to understanding Russia, we were told East German-born Angela Merkel, the then-chancellor of Germany, understood it.
27:23Her and the then-French president agreed to the so-called Normandy format in a bid to freeze the conflict in 2014 to stop the guns.
27:33Do you think that the Germans and the French, and, you know, you were ambassador when Emmanuel Macron went to Moscow for the, had to sit at that big long table when he was trying to avoid the all-out invasion.
27:46Do you think that the French and the Germans understand Russia?
27:49Well, I think that, first of all, we had to do everything we could, you know, to try and prevent a war.
27:58And I remember the huge tension, including in spring 2021, you know, it doesn't come from one day to another.
28:06And I think that we have, you know, in the French diplomacy, we have experts.
28:12And I think in Germany, too, you have very good experts of Russia, and we've been working closely with them.
28:20But I think we are on a very two different political and strategic software.
28:27And I think the problem comes from that, which is, as I explained, Vladimir Putin is very messianic.
28:34You know, he has this historical vision, whatever happens, I have to restore, to reinstall Russia as a big power, which creates fear.
28:49On our side, we were more rational, you know, we are together and on the same continent, we have to work, we are together at a security council.
28:58We believe that we could do something. And I still believe, having left Moscow, that this war is unnecessary, you know.
29:08Totally, the Russians got exactly the contrary they wanted.
29:12Look, they could stop Ukraine on the path, on the Euro-Atlantic path, to freeze the conflict in the no-money format.
29:20The question of Ukraine membership in NATO was not on the table since the Bucharest summit, and they could have ways to weaken Zelensky.
29:31So all this is totally unnecessary. And they got exactly what they didn't want for years.
29:36So all this is, you know, the government has strengthened NATO, enlargement of NATO, membership to Ukraine, more unity in the Europeans.
29:46And the relation between Russia and the EU is lost for generations.
29:54Boris Bandarov, do you agree with that? Because earlier you talked about kind of a vital necessity on the part of Vladimir Putin in having this war.
30:02Well, I don't really see how NATO has been strengthened.
30:09I think if we, OK, listen to Mark Rutte, who says that to shoot down drones in NATO airspace is a sign of weakness,
30:17and not to shoot them down is a sign of strength, then OK, NATO is very strong now.
30:24But I think Moscow thinks otherwise.
30:27And, well, you know, expansion of NATO does not equal to its strengthening.
30:35Or I would say the experience which we have now in most recent histories shows that the more members an alliance has,
30:45the less effective it can be, because there will be more members who do not agree with one another.
30:54And now we have in the heart of NATO a few countries which openly questions, at least questions, the basic policies of this defensive war.
31:06Pierre Lévy?
31:07You know, if I may follow the points, I think really to understand, I fully agree with many points which have been said,
31:21but I think to understand exactly what are the issues, I use in my book this image of a matrioshka conflict.
31:30You know, the Russian dolls.
31:32The Russian dolls.
31:33You have the smallest doll, it's about Ukraine, Donbass, and so on, the end of sovereignty.
31:39The other doll, the bigger one, is about the fight against the US, NATO, and the EU.
31:47And the biggest doll, the third one, it's about a new world order, what Putin calls
31:53multi-polarity or polycentric against the US hegemony, against to de-westernize the world.
32:01And I even have some, I had some contacts, people very courageous in Russia fighting for human rights,
32:08who said to me that one objective also of Putin is to change Russia profoundly,
32:14to have some sort of, you know, social revolution, conservative revolution inside Russia.
32:19So, you know, this is much more complex than what we, it's not about territory.
32:24It's not about Donbass only.
32:26It's much bigger than that.
32:28Anna Burshevska, let me ask you, is it to change Russia or to bring it back to something it was before?
32:36Good question.
32:38Well, it might be a little bit of both.
32:41But, you know, for us, what that means for us, again, is really going back to the original main topics of our discussion.
32:50And that is, is NATO strengthened or not?
32:54Will the war widen outside Ukraine?
32:57All of these issues go back to the main point of European and Western security.
33:03The fact of the matter is, I don't think we are any more secure than we were yesterday because there are now more sanctions on Russia's energy sector.
33:14So these same questions about fundamental European security very much should concern us, that they're still on the table.
33:22And especially with, you know, with NATO, what Russia is doing now is with these drones that have flown into Polish airspace, Russia is normalizing these types of violations.
33:34And if there's no adequate response, what it's going to do is slowly erode credibility of NATO, which is a vital Western institution.
33:43And that is part of Putin's plan.
33:47In other words, you know, he's not going to, you're not going to have Russian troops storming Berlin.
33:52Instead, you're going to have these types of multi-pronged attacks that normalize the erosion of credibility and trust of these institutions.
34:03All right. So here's the question then, and is a weakened EU, does that necessarily mean a strengthened Russia?
34:14Last month in an article that's morbidly titled Death by Falling, the Moscow Times listed 18 cases of prominent Russians who've died after going through a window in the past three years.
34:28Wikipedia hosts a broader, there's the article from the Moscow Times, Wikipedia hosts a broader suspicious deaths page for the same period.
34:39It goes just beyond falling out the window. 38, the number there.
34:43The Moscow Times tally, by the way, needs an update.
34:45With the death of Vladislav Leontiev, the 87-year-old former publisher of newspaper Pravda fell from the fifth floor window of his Moscow apartment after what's described as a nervous breakdown.
34:57Some of these, of course, can be suicides, morbid jokes aside.
35:04If it is a calling card, though, by the Kremlin to the elites in Moscow, in St. Petersburg, what is the message?
35:15You toe the line or you die.
35:18And is it a sign of Putin's strength or weakness?
35:21You're asking a Western question.
35:24I'll answer it in a Russian way, OK?
35:27He's getting rid of those who aren't supporting him.
35:30They're no longer part of what's known as the Kremlin ration.
35:34The most dangerous thing you can do is analyze what goes on in Russia through a Western lens.
35:41It's death.
35:42You take, for example, I believe what Anna was pointing out, I think quite properly as well.
35:50The last time I won a bet, $300, was in November of 2015 when Tayyip Erdogan splashed that Russian Sukhoi jet with an F-15 and everyone thought, oh, they're going to invade Turkey.
36:05Putin ran and hid under the nearest rug.
36:08Putin is a bully and a chicken.
36:11You need to respond to these people.
36:14This is the issue.
36:15And what you have, as Powell was saying, is the Europeans understand Russia.
36:26I've known European diplomats and experts in Russia since the 80s.
36:30You know your stuff.
36:32The problem is you're being led by the Americans.
36:35And Trump has neither the intelligence, the education, nor the support staff to grasp what's really happening there and lead a cogent and coherent system to take out Putin and bring peace to Ukraine.
36:51That is an essential key problem that I don't see a solution to.
36:55You're not going to end this with sanctions.
36:58It ain't going to happen.
36:59All right.
37:00None of the panelists here, of course, inside of Russia right now.
37:02So we're on the outside looking in, and we're reading what's being said by those who look from the outside.
37:08Writing for the Carnegie Russia Center think tank, senior fellow Tatiana Stanovaya wrote a piece last week claiming Russia's system is beginning to eat its own.
37:18She, for instance, points to the routing of the political clan of the once powerful former defense minister Sergei Shoigu.
37:27And she goes on to say that traditional forms of political protection are no longer reliable and are being closed.
37:35And being close to an influential figure, no longer a guarantee of being able to, for instance, avoid arrest if you're suddenly accused of corruption.
37:45Boris Bondarev, is the system inside of Moscow more solid than ever, or is there trouble?
37:57There are always troubles.
37:58There are always mechanisms in place to cope with these troubles.
38:03And, of course, now the stress is growing bigger.
38:07People are falling out of the windows, as you mentioned somehow.
38:10And, of course, there is a need to discipline those who may think something that is not in line with what Vladimir Putin and his close interests think.
38:21But the message that it is not now safe to be close to a prominent figure, well, it's always been like that.
38:30And in the past, also, some people who were considered to be untouchable were touched quite effectively.
38:41But maybe not as much as today.
38:44But I think it's a logic, of course.
38:46The country is in war.
38:48It needs more discipline inside.
38:51And discipline must be maintained at all costs.
38:54And, of course, there is also still pie.
38:59Pie is still enormous, but it gets no more portion.
39:04So people must limit the appetites.
39:07Who cannot limit the appetites, according to the party line, they will be excluded.
39:12And we see it.
39:14All right.
39:15There is discipline in the inner circle.
39:19Ordinary Russians are feeling the pinch.
39:21We can show you an example from Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains.
39:30An explosion at a military plant.
39:33Four killed local authorities.
39:35There is no evidence of drone activity.
39:38We saw on Wednesday Russia's military command.
39:40There's the pictures from the Ural Mountains.
39:42Russia's military command Wednesday announced the use of reservists to protect critical infrastructure,
39:48like oil installations that have been the target of Ukrainian drone strikes.
39:52And for its fall recruitment drive, the Russian Ministry of Defense publishing images of brand-new conscripts,
39:58taking part in a military roll-call ceremony.
40:01This in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
40:03And since it's for the cameras, listen up, here's an important caveat.
40:07Our guys are heading to the military units on the territory of the Russian Federation, to the sites of permanent location.
40:18They will not be involved in this special military operation.
40:24They're not for the special military operation.
40:28At what point does it become a problem, all the dead and wounded, inside of Russia?
40:35Well, I'm not sure that, you know, the people know the amount of losses, you know.
40:42Because the figures we have in the West, they are not published in Russia.
40:47But when you travel in Russia, or you look at social networks, you see fresh graves.
40:54You know, you see a lot of, there is a lot of information or networks like Insider.
41:01You know, they got a lot of experience having, counting the deaths through the COVID.
41:07But it's very surreal when you live in Moscow or in St. Petersburg,
41:12because they still talk about the SVO, special military operation, more and more about the war.
41:18But you don't see much about the, you don't see much about the war.
41:22You know, you see only placards to recruit people.
41:27But, you know, to come back to your precedent question, I think a lot of people in Russia,
41:33around the governing circles, have interest to carry on the war.
41:37Because you have oligarchs who buy cheap assets, cheap Western assets.
41:42And then you have a way to manage the power.
41:45Let me take the example, if I have time, of Shoigu.
41:48You know, Shoigu…
41:49The former defense minister.
41:50The former minister of defense.
41:52They never fire or expel.
41:54Shoigu has been recycled at the Security Council, even if…
41:59It's been a purge of his inner circle.
42:01Yes, but no, no, has been recycled.
42:04Even if Prigogine, you know, remember Prigogine, he was very right,
42:09saying that all the system is corrupted, the war is a catastrophe, and so on.
42:16I remember, and this is the first time I saw Putin worried about that.
42:21But they don't fire Shoigu.
42:23They recycle him in the, you know, at the Security Council.
42:27Oh, he keeps… he's loyal.
42:29And this is the way the system works, you know, to keep the people in some sort of dependency,
42:36or to get rid of them, or to kill them.
42:38Is there a tipping point, or there is no tipping point, where at one point they're no longer loyal?
42:43You know…
42:44It's been this way since Ivan the Terrible.
42:47No, no, I'm very humble in that respect.
42:49You know, you hear a lot, you know, this is a black box.
42:52You don't know what is inside.
42:54Sometimes you learn that a senior official has resigned, like Kazak, you know,
42:59who was a very important man at the presidential administration.
43:03You don't really know.
43:04You know, this is a very difficult game to understand.
43:07And, you know, classically in the Russian history, perhaps you wake up one morning
43:12and you discover that, you know, something has changed.
43:15All right.
43:16Well, until it does, everything stays the same for now.
43:19Pierre Lévy, I want to thank you so much for joining us.
43:21I want to thank, as well, Craig Kopitas, Boris Bondareff for being with us from Geneva,
43:25Anna Borchewskaya from Washington.
43:28Thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate.
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