00:00Samuel Romani is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute, Royal United Services Institute, RUSI, and joins us now.
00:07Samuel, thanks so much for your time. Let's begin with Ukraine. How promising are these latest talks, in your view?
00:16Well, I think that they've done a good job at basically smoothing out some of the areas of disagreement between the United States and Ukraine
00:23that festered after that 28-point peace plan came out that was seen to be pro-Russian from the Ukrainian point of view.
00:29It now seems as if the United States is largely behind security guarantees for Ukraine of a NATO style.
00:36The longevity of them and the depth of the U.S.-backed commitment in terms of personnel and military resources is still yet to be seen,
00:43but it does seem as if the U.S. is committed and has a stake in Ukraine's long-term security.
00:47On the other hand, it doesn't seem as if the talks between the U.S. and Ukraine and Trump's shuttle diplomacy with Putin
00:53is doing anything to move the needle on the Russian side.
00:55We saw a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry basically just three days ago saying that there's no change in their overall approach towards the war
01:04and territorial gains for Russia are progressing on a variety of fronts, including Haleopale in Zaporizhia as well as in Siversk and the Donutsk front.
01:13Yeah, Zaporizhia and, of course, what to do with the contested land.
01:16Big sticking points.
01:18Do you think those are going to be very, very difficult to resolve, or are you seeing signs of movement?
01:24Well, I mean, the Russians basically view the Ukrainian proposal for a demilitarization zone on both sides as something of a non-starter right now
01:30because they want to take over all of Donbass.
01:32So as long as that's the kind of baseline, then I think that there's pretty much stagnation on the issue of territory,
01:37which is by far the most important one.
01:39When it comes to this operation nuclear plant, there's been a temporary IEA-announced ceasefire between the Russians and the Ukrainians
01:46that only seems to be confined for a couple of days to the restoration of the power line.
01:50So once power is restored, that will also be an area where there will be military conflict around it,
01:55and the Ukrainians want full ownership, the Russians want to keep it.
02:00So I think on both of these issues, there's little progress of a near-term movement in spite of everything that Trump is doing.
02:05Later, we know that Donald Trump is due to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the second phase of the Gaza peace deal,
02:12which has always been a tricky issue.
02:14What are you expecting?
02:17Well, I think that there is obviously some optimism that the ceasefire in basic terms is going to maintain.
02:23However, hundreds of Palestinians have died since the ceasefire has taken effect.
02:28We've been seeing winter storms and flooding, worsening humanitarian conditions and collapsing buildings where the displaced Gazans are being held,
02:36restrictions on aid far below required levels,
02:39as well as the struggles towards the demilitarization of Hamas
02:42and the ongoing clashes between Hamas and armed groups,
02:46which many Palestinians claim they're being backed indirectly by the Israelis to sow discord.
02:51So there's a lot of problems at play.
02:54I think that Netanyahu and Trump will basically agree that these two needs to be implemented.
02:59But I don't think that Trump is going to push Netanyahu very strongly on additional aid to the Gaza Strip
03:04or an improvement to the humanitarian situation.
03:07And I think that the overall discussion will be that Netanyahu will say,
03:10we have to continue military action because the mass will disarm.
03:13I think that Trump will go along with that.
03:15All right. Thank you so much for that update on both those conflict areas.
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