00:00A lot of people are asking this question. We see Vladimir Putin making a lot of calls.
00:05We heard, of course, that he'd had a phone call with Donald Trump. And what was interesting is
00:10Donald Trump actually phoned him. But is Vladimir Putin using the war to his advantage?
00:17Absolutely. I mean, many politicians are. Let's be frank, this isn't just a Putin thing. We've
00:23seen President Macron being quite opportunistic and sending his ships rapidly to defend British
00:29bases, which is opportunistic of him as well. That is what politicians do. But I think in terms of
00:37Putin, I mean, he was having a bad year. If you think of his allies, Kemeny was an ally for
00:42many
00:43years to Russia, as was Maduro in Venezuela. And when both of those have been taken out by the
00:49United States, you could argue he might be feeling as though his status or control of funds for his
00:57war machine were badly affected as well. But he does have somehow, for some reason, some sort of
01:04hold over President Trump. He certainly seems to hold the balance of power in negotiations over the
01:09victim, Vladimir Zelensky, whenever he is in discussions. We obviously all remember that
01:15awful, embarrassing hosting of the president of Ukraine in Washington when they said, you know,
01:21you don't hold any cards. Well, things are different now, aren't they, when the Ukrainians are
01:25offering this expertise on drone interception to the UAE and other countries. But I think my point
01:31on Putin is, you know, he is, we are seeing this rise in oil prices. They obviously still continue
01:38to export to some countries that benefits them. We've also seen the softening of sanctions already
01:44from the states with America saying that Indian refineries can access Russian oil for 30 days so that
01:52they don't get stranded at sea. And there is some discussion about whether broader sanctions might
01:58be loosened as well in order to try and ease the pressure on oil prices. Now, we've seen the IEA,
02:06the International Energy Authority, 32 members today coming out with this unprecedented move,
02:13haven't we, to access 400 million barrels of reserves in order to ease that pressure.
02:20And we've also seen the G7 coming out saying, you know, it was absolutely not something they want to see
02:25as those sanctions on Russia being eased. But certainly this is something that, you know,
02:29Russia will be offering an easy out for Trump when we know that his MAGA base at home are not
02:35happy with
02:36what's happening in the Middle East. They were promised and Trump stood on the promise of no forever wars,
02:42as Freddie's already described, this doesn't look like it's going to be over quickly. And so could
02:46President Trump be, you know, offering an easy out for Trump? And we know that Trump can be easily
02:53flattered. We know that Putin never publicly criticizes Trump. And so it's a really interesting
03:00dynamic that is coming out in all of this. There is also, as I mentioned, you know, Zelensky and the
03:07Ukraine are offering this expertise. But it also means that some of their assets,
03:11some of their defences, and frankly, the eyes of the world are no longer on Ukraine. So if you see
03:18suddenly, you know, money flooding back into Russia as sanctions are lifted, the price of oil going up,
03:23and also some of Ukraine's defences moving away, then, you know, there is an opportunity there,
03:30undeniably, for President Putin, who has made it perfectly clear that he, as part of any ceasefire
03:35deal, would like to permanently take stretches of territory from Ukraine. So it's an interesting
03:41element in all of this. And I think it's a fairly depressing one.
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