00:00Let's talk a little bit about the latest round of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
00:05We can bring in Melinda Harring, who is a senior fellow at the Eurasia Centre at the Atlantic Council.
00:12Melinda, thanks for speaking to France 24 this afternoon.
00:16These talks then coming just ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
00:22It has to be said, talks, these trilateral talks, of which there have been two previous rounds, didn't yield any
00:29major breakthroughs.
00:30Was there optimism that something could be done this time around?
00:35No, there was none. There was none in Kiev and there was none in Moscow.
00:39I think there may have been a touch of optimism in Washington.
00:42We see Donald Trump pressing forward and trying to get this war resolved by June.
00:47That's the deadline that he set. And he set that deadline for internal domestic reasons.
00:53He faces midterm elections and he wants to have one more notch of he wants to be able to claim
00:58that he ended the war before election season begins here in the U.S.
01:03OK, so the timing, you say, is everything. No coincidences, we often say in politics.
01:09We heard there from Rostov Amorov, Ukraine's lead negotiator.
01:13One of the things that came out of this conference was this idea that he would discuss alongside Russia details
01:22on two separate tracks, notably the political and then the military issues.
01:26If we think of the political side, these territorial issues still remain at the center of these negotiations.
01:34That's the central obstacle here. Would you agree with that?
01:38I think that the military and political issues are interrelated, and that's why Russia and Ukraine are so stuck.
01:45So we see this is the third series of negotiations in 26.
01:49And we see the discussion centered around the issue of security guarantees, which Ukraine says they must have before they
01:57sign any kind of end of war documents.
02:00And then we see the issue of territory.
02:03So Moscow wants the Donbass. It's not a huge area. It's about the size of the state of Delaware.
02:10But Ukraine currently holds that territory. And Kiev's argument is, why should we give that up?
02:14You haven't conquered it on the battlefield. Let's freeze the line.
02:17There have been a couple of compromises that have been offered.
02:20The latest compromise that Zelensky proposed is that both sides would pull back a certain agreed upon distance.
02:27There'd be a demilitarized zone. Moscow doesn't seem to be biting.
02:30But the issue is one of sequencing. Kiev is saying we're not signing anything until there's real security guarantees.
02:36So they have leverage. So we're stuck. We're really stuck in a sequencing issue right now.
02:42I mean, and off the back of that sequencing issue, you spoke about the two issues being interconnected.
02:47This idea of security guarantees. Ukraine is wanting more from Washington in terms of how long that they are able
02:54to to secure or to ensure that, you know, Ukraine has those security guarantees.
03:00They want a longer period.
03:03That's right. So we know that 15 years has been offered.
03:06Zelensky has been pushing for at least 20.
03:09But it's really a question of what's in the details and what this means.
03:13It's a security deterrent.
03:14It's a guarantee that Moscow will not attack Ukraine again.
03:18And the Ukrainians are not going to give on this.
03:21They remember 1994 when they gave up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances that the West betrayed them
03:27over.
03:27So this is a seriously sticky point for the Ukrainians, and it should be.
03:32So we've seen France and the United Kingdom say that they would be willing to put troops on the ground
03:36once the war is over.
03:38We saw Donald Trump last year at the end of last year say that he would be willing to give
03:42them air support.
03:43I wouldn't put very much money on that promise.
03:45I don't think many people would.
03:46But Moscow has said no foreign troops on the ground.
03:49So there's a lot of stickiness.
03:51I think Zelensky summarized it well.
03:53Yesterday we saw Moscow kicking the can down the road.
03:56And even if you look at the negotiating team, the negotiating team on the Russian side tells you everything you
04:01need to know.
04:01They put Viktor Medinsky in there.
04:03He is a joker.
04:04He's a Russian historian who makes up a lot of facts.
04:08He's meant to run the clock down.
04:10Russia is not serious about peace.
04:12And just, you know, if we stay with those sticking points, Melinda, this idea of border controls is one which
04:18for Ukraine is also non-negotiable.
04:21Walk us through what it is that Ukraine is wanting in terms of its border.
04:27So Ukraine would like to have its 1991 borders back.
04:32But at this point, that's not militarily possible.
04:35So we have the status of Crimea to deal with.
04:37And we have the status of the Donbass to deal with.
04:39The sticking point right now is the Donbass obelisk.
04:43Russia controls most of it.
04:45But like I said before, there's a piece of it that Ukraine has been fighting for since 2014.
04:52Too many people have died there.
04:54The Ukrainians themselves have told Zelensky, do not give this away.
04:58In the last poll, 75 percent of Ukrainians said no way.
05:02So Zelensky himself has narrow negotiating room as well.
05:05This is an area where Kiev is not going to be giving up.
05:09But in order, they have to have real security guarantees in order to begin any kind of negotiations over the
05:16borders of Ukraine.
05:17And even then, I don't expect those borders to, look, there's a principle of non-recognition.
05:23So even if Russia claims Crimea and it claims part of eastern Ukraine, the international community doesn't have to recognize
05:31what Russia has done.
05:33That was the principle in the Baltics.
05:35And that's a principle that I think the international community will go back to at the end of this war.
05:39All right, Melinda Haring, a senior fellow at the Euro-Asia Center of the Atlantic Council.
05:44Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us today.
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