00:00The talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are set to resume today for a second day.
00:05Washington's top envoy signalling optimism in the bid to end Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II.
00:11Steve Wyckoff saying that the diplomatic efforts have made strides in Washington's bid to end the conflict.
00:17Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is saying the talks have to discuss the ongoing attacks on Ukraine.
00:27The team must raise the issue of these strikes, first of all, before the American side,
00:32which had proposed that both we and Russia refrain from attacks.
00:37Ukraine is ready. We don't need this war. We always act in a mirror manner.
00:42We defend our state and our independence.
00:45At the same time, we are ready to move quickly towards a decent agreement to end the war.
00:55Doug Herbert is with me, our international affairs commentator.
00:58So, Doug, the second round of these latest talks.
01:00Still, though, to be realistic, hopes of a breakthrough are pretty slim.
01:05Let's start with the official line, right?
01:08A source, a Kremlin source, tells the Russian-controlled propaganda newswire TASS, basically,
01:14that today's talks are on five tracks.
01:17Territorial, military, political, economic, security.
01:21OK, so that's officially what they're talking about.
01:23Let's put all of that aside.
01:25At the end of the day, Russia remains stuck hard, fast to its maximalist demands.
01:32And that's not me saying it.
01:33This is the Kremlin's clear signaling.
01:36You have the defense chairman of the Defense Committee in the State Duma,
01:40which is the lower house of the Russian parliament,
01:42basically saying that Russia's goal remains, ultimately, its objective,
01:48is to prevent or destroy any hopes of an independent Ukraine.
01:52Let me say that again.
01:53Russia's goal, the maximalist goal, the official policy of the Kremlin is to destroy any hopes
01:59that Ukraine can remain a viable sovereign state.
02:03It might not be spelled out in the talks that way.
02:05Those are the goals.
02:06And essentially, what they're saying is the only way Ukraine can, quote, win—this is,
02:12once again, that Duma defense chairperson, defense committee chairperson—the only way Ukraine can
02:18win is by joining the Russian Federation.
02:20So, the message that the Russians are projecting, both to their domestic audience, in terms of
02:27their false propaganda narrative, but also wanting the outsiders to hear, is that their
02:32technological and military superiority is so far superior to that of Ukraine, that Ukraine
02:38would be a fool to keep on fighting, that if they know what's good for them, they should
02:43capitulate now and give in to Russia's demands, or face months, if not years, of bloody, endless
02:50fighting on the battlefield.
02:51The problem with the narrative is it tends to be false.
02:55We have seen, in the past five days alone, Wednesday to Sunday—and we talked about this
03:00yesterday—Ukraine got over 200 square kilometers, took back Russian territory.
03:05So, this narrative of a Russian juggernaut about to raise Ukraine unless it capitulate, and
03:10Ukraine just better give in if it knows what's good—it's a false narrative, or at least
03:14it's a very skewed narrative that is seeking to project an image of Russia far superior and
03:20in far better shape than it actually is militarily and technologically and economically on the
03:25battlefield.
03:26Doug, I know you want to talk about one of the personalities involved.
03:28This is the man heading the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky.
03:31He's a familiar face to the Ukrainian side.
03:34A lot of people seeing it as a discouraging sign that he's even involved in this.
03:38Yeah, a discouraging sign because he's attached at the hip ideologically and politically
03:42to his mentor, Vladimir Putin.
03:45He's a former culture minister.
03:46But perhaps more importantly than that, he is the guy who co-wrote, who helped rewrite
03:52the revised, the revisionist historical Russian history textbook, which was rolled out back
03:58in 2023 for Russian high school students.
04:01What were some of the prominent themes of these new revised Russian history textbooks?
04:05Well, one heaping phrase on Joseph Stalin, perhaps one of the most worst and brutal dictators
04:10of the 20th century.
04:11And in addition to that, portraying Russia's so-called special military operation in Ukraine
04:17as nothing more than a continuation, a justified continuation of Russia's valiant battle during
04:24the Soviet era against Nazi Germany in World War II.
04:26The same fight taken to a new era.
04:30So the same fight that Russia waged the Soviet Red Army against Nazi Germany and Nazi Germany's
04:36Hitler's collaborators is the fight that the valiant Russian forces are waging today in Ukraine.
04:41That's not—once again, I can't make this up.
04:44This is the official Russian narrative, a narrative that the diehards, including Putin and his immediate
04:51circle, and the man you just mentioned, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the delegation,
04:54they believe it.
04:56Medinsky has been known in the past, when he was first part of the talks way back in the
05:00early days of this war, first in Belarus and then in Istanbul.
05:03Those talks are obviously collapsed.
05:05He lectured the Ukrainians, long lectures about Russian history as seen through a Russian prism
05:12in which Ukraine had a bit role as its destiny being basically to be Russia.
05:17That's the man who's leading the delegation.
05:19So when you say discouraging sign, I will take it one bit further.
05:22It shows that Vladimir Putin is sending his ideological henchman to dictate terms to the Ukrainians.
05:30Finally, Doug, let's talk about the latest worries from the Ukrainian side.
05:34This is about Vladimir Zelensky, isn't it?
05:36It's having doubts about the staying power of Western security guarantees.
05:40Based on recent history, those doubts?
05:42Yeah, based on history 32 years ago.
05:445th of December, 1994.
05:46We might even be able to show a picture.
05:48There were leaders who sat around a table in Budapest, and they signed something today known
05:53as the Budapest Memorandum.
05:54I know we've talked and reported about it before.
05:57And they're the leaders there.
05:58It was the U.S., it was U.K. and Russia, notably.
06:01Now, Ukraine's leader, Belarus, Kazakhstan, were there.
06:04What did the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan do as a result of this memorandum,
06:09which offered them so-called security assurances from the U.K., the U.S., and Russia?
06:15They relinquished their nuclear arsenals.
06:18The Soviet Union had collapsed three years earlier.
06:20They had all these nuclear weapons left on their soil.
06:23What did they do?
06:24They agreed.
06:25The U.S. and others wanted them to get them out of potential terrorist hands or falling into the wrong—
06:30so give them all to Russia.
06:31So they gave all their nuclear weapons to Russia to be dismantled.
06:35In quotes, I say that.
06:36What happened?
06:37Well, we know what happened.
06:38The security assurances in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 were supposed to ensure that the territorial integrity
06:47and the inviolability of borders were respected by the U.K., the U.S., and Russia, which signed the Budapest
06:54Memorandum.
06:54Now, Russia has a far different take on what happened in Budapest today in their propaganda narrative.
06:59But the fact of the matter is, when Zelensky looks back on that,
07:02he sees anything 32 years later of hard-clad, iron-clad security assurances.
07:07He sees a memorandum which was not really adhered to, and proof positive is what happened after the Russian invasion
07:13in 2022.
07:14So right now, when he looks back on that, he cites that as proof as to why he is not
07:19just being whiny when he says,
07:21I need really ironclad security guarantees.
07:25A little piece of paper is not enough.
07:26I need to know exactly what you're going to do, and I need to know it now,
07:29because we are being pummeled day after day by Russian forces.
07:3332 years is not so long, is it, Doug?
07:35Doug, thank you very much.
07:36Doug Herbert, our international affairs commentator here on France 24.
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