00:00But it sounds to me as though you might agree with what the EU foreign policy chief Kaya Kalas has been saying.
00:06She said that the Donbass region, that's one of the regions that Ukraine is under pressure to give up, will not be President Putin's endgame, she thinks.
00:18Would you agree with that, therefore, that if he's given that territory, he might then perhaps eye up some more territory?
00:24Yes, I think if he's given the Donbass, this is my interpretation of it, if Putin is given the Donbass and that's agreed, I would say this is not a peace outcome.
00:36It's a ceasefire outcome.
00:38It's go back to 2014 when when the Russians took Crimea, which was a disgraceful act in of of piracy, of international piracy of a land grab by one country grabbing somebody else's sovereign territory.
00:57Go back to 2014. The international community just said to Russia, well, I'm afraid, you know, that's the way it is.
01:05And to Ukraine, that's the way it is. And and Russia said, well, good, we've got away with it this time.
01:11We'll do it again. And they have. And now they've taken what they hope they'll take the Donbass.
01:16And so that will just be another step in the very, very long term thinking, which is what the Russians have.
01:25Their strategic strategies go out 20, 30, 50 years, and some of them are published and are written about in open publications.
01:34And it's very clear that they want Ukraine. And that will remain a strategic objective to bring Ukraine into the Russian near abroad sphere of influence, subjugation, whatever they can get.
01:50And that is their strategic aim. So getting the Donbass, getting a ceasefire agreement now, getting a withdrawal of troops, stop the fighting, stop the killing.
01:59And that's fine. What needs to be behind that to make it a peace rather than a ceasefire are security guarantees on the side of the Ukrainians.
02:10And on the other side, the penalties which Russia would suffer if they didn't stick with that peace agreement and the penalties that Russia would have to suffer are going to have to be much more consequential than the than the sort of rather feeble sanctions
02:27that have been imposed on their banking, their currency trading and particularly their resource trading, particularly oil trading.
02:35They've they've they've they've so many workarounds on this now that and I'm not never quite sure how how much to how much the sanctions are working on Russia.
02:45Clearly, their economy is a war economy. It's not as it's not a peacetime economy.
02:50And and and in the next two or three years, their their sort of civil infrastructure, their civil economy will collapse to the point of popular dissatisfaction.
03:00The war economy can't go on at this rate for more than another maybe year, two, three years possibly.
03:06But beyond that, it can't. OK.
03:08But if they get a peace fire now and then it gives them three or four years to reestablish their armed forces, learn all the lessons from Ukraine, build up their economy again,
03:18get the oil flowing, build up their currency reserves, they'll be ready to go again.
03:22So the next time they come, the the the the sanctions have got to be much more brutal from the outset,
03:28as well as the military defense against Russian aggression if they persist.
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