--:-- Oliver Conway: Welcome to a special Ukraine edition of the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Oliver Conway.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And I'm Vitaly Shevchenko, one of the hosts of the Ukrainecast.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And I'm Olga Robinson, a Russia expert at BBC Verify.
--:-- Frank Gardner: And I'm Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Thanks all for joining us. Let's kick off with the question many people are asking. Will the fighting stop anytime soon?
--:-- Host: Hello, BBC team. With regard to the battlefield, is not it in Putin's interest to delay a complete ceasefire? Plus, could you explain what the positions of Orthodox churches are, both in Ukraine and Russia, in regard to the efforts to achieve a ceasefire?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Hi, I'm Julie from Preston. A recent announcement from Russia of their largest mobilisation in years and the planned military exercises in Kalinograd have further increased my concerns that Russia has no plans of ending this war. Do you think this is an escalation? And do you think Russia will ever agree to peace?
--:-- Olga Robinson: Well, to start answering all those questions, I'll say that there's absolutely nothing in what Russia has said or done recently to suggest that it's remotely interested in peace in Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Just this morning, authorities in Ukraine said that six civilians were killed and 46 injured in the latest wave of Russian strikes.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And when it comes to Russia's rhetoric, Sergei Rabkov, a deputy foreign minister, he said on Tuesday, I believe that, OK, we will like all these peace initiatives coming from the United States. But what about the underlying causes of this conflict? And by that, I think Russia means the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So all that tells me that we are nowhere near a lasting peace or even a ceasefire in Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And the visit by this senior Russian official? Dmitriev is the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So he's all about money and it's telling that Russia chose to dispatch him to the United States, knowing that Donald Trump is largely about money and deal making as well.
--:-- Frank Gardner: So after holding all those meetings in Washington, Kirill Dmitriev, he said that they discussed various initiatives like Russian Earths, cooperation in the Arctic between Russia and the United States, the return of American companies to Russia, and himself, he is sanctioned by the United States.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So this means, I think, that Russia is trying to offer America a better deal than Ukraine would ever be able to offer. And it's all about money.
--:-- Frank Gardner: And Frank, do you think that is so that Russia can keep advancing on the battlefield?
--:-- Olga Robinson: So there are several different aspects to this war. There is, you know, land, sea and air domains and cyber. And in the maritime domain, Russia is having a hard time.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Ukraine is essentially winning that. They've driven the Russian Black Sea fleet right out of Crimea, Russian-occupied Crimea.
--:-- Frank Gardner: They've developed some incredible ingenuity in long-range drone strikes. They're able to hit with extraordinary accuracy, ammunition dumps, air bases, oil refineries, hundreds of kilometers beyond the border, deep in Russia.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Russia is very interested in having a ceasefire in those two areas because that's where Ukraine is hurting it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: What it is not interested in having a ceasefire or any kind of pause is the land battle, because through sheer force of numbers of artillery rounds of drones and of human, frankly, cannon fodder that they are hurling at the front lines, they're able to slowly, incrementally push the Ukrainians back.
--:-- Olga Robinson: We're talking about tiny gains. If you look at that map that we've all looked at for the last three years and the pink shaded bit is the stuff that Russia has occupied. It's hardly changed in three years or two and a half years.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But nevertheless, they are winning slowly on the land.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So Putin is in no hurry to sign a ceasefire on the land.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And in terms of the church, the Orthodox Church, both in Russia and Ukraine, any hopeful signs there that they might be pushing their leaders towards peace?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Not an expert on the Ukrainian church, but on the Russian Orthodox Church. I think what you need to understand about it is that it's effectively in its current state an extension of the Russian state.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So they're fully on board with the invasion and supported. In fact, the Russian Orthodox Church literally has a daily compulsory prayer for the victory of the Russian soldiers against their enemies.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And those very, very few priests who have refused to say it, they have been ousted or have faced sanctions.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So we're not looking at the Russian Orthodox Church as a peacemaking force.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And in Ukraine? Before I speak about Ukraine, let me give you a quote from how the Russian Orthodox Church described this war. Last year, it called this war against Ukraine a holy war, defending the world against the satanic West.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So it's difficult to expect that church to tell Putin, well, look, maybe enough fighting.
--:-- Oliver Conway: In Ukraine, it's very much aligned with the government on the war, but for different reasons, because, you know, when you attack, you've got to defend yourself.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But they're also praying for peace, whatever shape it might take.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And just this morning, I've heard reports about a church being destroyed in Kostyantyivka in Donetsk region.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So church itself in Ukraine is under attack too.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And just returning to the battlefield, Julie was asking about the mobilisation and exercises in Kaliningrad. Is that anything unusual?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: No, it's not. This is an annual conscription.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Sorry, it's not mobilisation. It's the conscription which is different from mobilisation.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I know it kind of unsemantic but there's a big difference in these words.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Mobilization reserves would be a crisis measure that would really show he's in trouble. That's calling up the reserves to fight.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Conscription, which is what this is, is the twice, you know, they do it in the spring. They do it in the autumn.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And it goes up by about 10,000 each year.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So in 2022, it was 134,000 roughly, 140,000 odd the next year, 150,000 last year, and this year it's 160,000.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Now, theoretically, none of those men being conscripted will serve in Ukraine or in Russian-occupied Donbass or indeed in Kursk.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But in practice, this has been known to happen.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Yes. Yeah, but it's more of an exception.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I think conscripts in Ukraine have been more of an exception.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But I just wanted to weigh in as somebody who was born and raised in Russia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: You just get used to conscription. It's just like part of your life.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's something that happens all the time.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I mean, in fact, when my child was, my son was born three years ago, I remember my friend called me and said, well, congratulations on having a child.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And I bet you're very happy that now that you live in the UK, you don't have to worry whether you will actually have to like hide him from the army when he's 18.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So it's absolutely like regular thing that does happen.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But it's the current draft as being kind of the largest in years.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It's kind of part of the wider drive and focus on the kind of military activities and the army.
--:-- Olga Robinson: I think we should say it has a dreadful reputation.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Conscription and life for conscripts in the Russian army is brutal.
--:-- Oliver Conway: If you haven't got connections, I mean, in the British army, which I served, You know, the officer's first duty is to look after the men and women under their own command.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: You feed last. You know, when it's the queue for food, you go to the end of the queue. You wait for everybody to eat first.
--:-- Olga Robinson: That is not the way in the Russian army.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Equipment is poor. They're often having to buy their own stuff.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They're having to send home for gloves, for socks that actually fit them.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: The bullying and the hazing is horrendous.
--:-- Olga Robinson: I forget the numbers, but a large, I mean, a shockingly large number of people are killed during their time in conscript service.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So people who've got connections, if you're a well-connected family in St. Petersburg or Moscow, you make sure you get out of it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Let's turn to the diplomatic pressure on Russia. At the NATO meeting on Thursday, Poland's foreign minister told the BBC Vladimir Putin had weeks, not months, to show the Americans he is serious about ending the war.
--:-- Host: All the gloves could come off.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But not all our listeners are convinced.
--:-- Host: Hi, Todd from the US. Can you really see a path that Trump stands up to Putin and demands he gives some territory back or agree to no further territorial expansion?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Or that Trump tells Putin we're going to put European or US troops in the Ukraine to ensure no further Russian advances.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Can you see any path where Putin actually stops and is content?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Well, Ferdinand got in touch to ask, given what's happened so far in the Trump peace deal, am I the only one feeling Trump looks more and more like Alexander Lukashenko, a puppet of Putin, accepting all of the Russian conditions?
--:-- Oliver Conway: And we also had this. Hello, I'm Bob from Glasgow. Since the US-led talks have commenced, there's been no mention of North Korea's involvement in the war.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Why is that?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Many thanks.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Interesting question, Bob. Of course, Donald Trump tried to arrange a deal of his own with North Korea when he was president last time, but it didn't quite work out.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Let's deal with that first. Does the North Korean involvement complicate things?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It does to an extent because nobody in the West wanted this conflict to expand beyond what's going on between Russia and Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And this isn't a concern shared by Russia. They were totally happy to involve Iran with its drones and artillery, North Korea with its soldiers and artillery as well.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And a key objective pursued by the West for years was containment of this conflict, which didn't quite work.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, when it comes to North Koreans in this war, apparently thousands, 4,000 of them were lost in fighting in Russia's Korsk region.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And then they sort of disappeared. Then they apparently, according to South Korea, more deployments were sent to Korsk region.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But I can't say that they've played a major role in this.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: When it comes to Donald Trump, I honestly have seen nothing to suggest that he is willing or even able to put effective pressure on Vladimir Putin to force him to stop this war.
--:-- Oliver Conway: This might change. You never know.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But so far, his rhetoric has been so aligned with the Kremlin's talking points and his actions. They've benefited the Kremlin in terms of, well, a pause in weapons supplies to Ukraine and the general damage his administration has done to the Western alliance that's emerged after the Second World War.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I think when it comes to North Koreans that they if you just look at verified footage that we've been getting from the Korsak region in the past weeks, we haven't really seen much evidence of them being actually present on the ground.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And I think they used to be a bigger factor like particularly last autumn when they were just brought in and we just kept seeing footage and suggestions.
--:-- Oliver Conway: There was a lot of talk about them but it's just like it feels like it has diminished the talk and the visual evidence of them being present on the ground.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But also yeah, according to some of the latest assessments from the UK Defence Ministry they had 5,000 casualties of March and third of them dead.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, Vitaly, you were saying you don't think there's any sign that Donald Trump will put pressure on Vladimir Putin, but we're recording this on Friday and the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says we'll find out within weeks whether Russia is serious.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Well, Marco Rubio was the one who, after the Jeddah talks a couple of weeks ago, said the ball is now in Russia's court.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And so the world thought, aha, finally, the U.S. is actually being an honest broker in all of this.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And suddenly nothing happened and no apparent pressure was put on Moscow whatsoever.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You know, I went down to Riyadh. I covered the second lot of ceasefire negotiations and hopes were very high at the end of it because there seemed to be some kind of agreement.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But then afterwards, Russia introduced a whole lot of more stipulations that they wanted.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They wanted essentially the sanctions lifted on agricultural banks so they could export stuff.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And that would be a way, a crack in the Western sanctions on Russia, which the EU was certainly very unhappy with.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And so would NATO be.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I think Putin has played quite a clever game.
--:-- Oliver Conway: When Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy, not just to the Middle East, but also to the Ukraine talks, when he visited Moscow and met Vladimir Putin.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Putin, whoever advised him on this, or maybe it was his idea. Brilliant. He said he told him that President Putin went to the cathedral to pray for Donald Trump after he got shot.
--:-- Oliver Conway: He commissioned a painting which Witkoff took back with him.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Donald Trump was very touched.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Wow, that's the way to handle him.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: You know, and I'm sorry to say no disrespect to Ukraine's president, but in contrast to that appalling showdown in the Oval Office on the 20th of February, where you had two presidents shouting across each other.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That is not the way to do it.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So Putin is playing Trump very cleverly right now.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And there is clearly a very good personal relationship between those two.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And Donald Trump is leaning over backwards, not to annoy Russia and to spare Russia from the tariffs.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Ukraine's been slapped with a 10% tariff, which they've said we can cope with.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It's not great, but it's not critical.
--:-- Oliver Conway: How much has been slapped on Belarus and Russia? Nothing.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: In defense of Woldemar Zelensky, he did try.
--:-- Oliver Conway: He brought a U6 boxing champion belt. Didn't work.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: I think it's really interesting about generally how Putin is playing Trump at the moment, because I just keep when I when I look at the reports and what we are seeing right now, I just keep thinking about some of the biographies of Putin that mentioned that, you know, he worked with assets in Western Germany when he was part of the Russian intelligence community there.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And you can just, you know, he knows how to work with businessmen.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And Trump is, after all, a businessman.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But I found the comparison with Alexander Lukashenko really fascinating because it's not scientific, but purely anecdotally, I can remember some cases of Alexander Lukashenko actually be more critical of Russia than Trump has ever been.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Because like a few years ago, he's accused Russia literally of lying about some mercenaries that they arrested on the border with Belarus.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But also like saying, oh, we won't allow Russia to annex us because otherwise that means war.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: That's pretty much like a harsher rhetoric, arguably, than whatever we've heard from Trump so far.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, as the three of you have reflected, the Trump administration has certainly faced criticism that it's been too sympathetic to the Kremlin viewpoint.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: But some listeners wonder if we should actually look more at Russia's grievances.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I'm Tony from Ottawa in Canada. One of Putin's root causes for his invasion is the claimed maltreatment of Russians living in Ukraine.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: For example, the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church are not accepted officially and banned respectfully.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Has Zelensky proposed any measures to change this?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And David emailed to ask, why does the BBC not report other narratives on the cause of the Ukraine conflict?
--:-- Oliver Conway: For example, NATO ignoring Russia's security concerns and the 2014 ousting of the pro-Russia president in Kiev.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Is the West not 50% to blame?
--:-- Oliver Conway: As a Russian speaker who spent most of his life living in eastern Ukraine I think I can tackle this.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: When Tony mentions Russians in Ukraine I suspect he means Russian speakers because the notion of ethnicity is kind of hazy in Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I certainly never felt threatened or oppressed, nor were my friends in Zaporizhia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: We could speak Russian freely.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's not banned.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And in official communication in schools, for example, yes, you're supposed to speak Ukrainian, but it's Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And this comes after decades and decades of Soviet communist Russian efforts to eradicate the Ukrainian language.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: So we sort of accepted it and found it natural.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And after Russia started its war against Ukraine, so many Russian speakers in Ukraine speaking Ukrainian now because it feels wrong to continue speaking Russian.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Now, Russia's security concerns, I don't think any of them were legitimate.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I keep using this phrase because I try to stick to the facts and nothing in Ukraine's, NATO's, the West's actions or rhetoric in the run up to the initial secret invasion of 2014 or full scale invasion 2022 suggested that there was a threat forming against Russia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It's an excuse to attack Ukraine because no aggressor wants to be seen as an aggressor.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Russia, Vladimir Putin, repeatedly presents this attack on Ukraine as something preemptive.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And I think it's really important to get the language right here, because when we're talking about the supposed maltreatment of Russian speakers or threat of NATO to Russia, These are not rude causes of the conflict.
--:-- Oliver Conway: These are excuses, as Vitaly rightly put it, that Russia used to invade.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And in reality, you know, when it comes to maltreatment of supposed maltreatment of Russian speakers, you know, that whole narrative that Russia was pushing that was baseless, it was accompanied by massive years long propaganda effort from Russian state media with multiple examples of completely fabricated evidence of maltreatment of Russian speakers in Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And the most famous story was the crucified boy in Slymansk in 2014.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And that just simply never happened.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So the idea that NATO is somehow gobbling up countries across Europe against their will and threatening Russia is a very tired and false narrative.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: NATO doesn't ask countries to join it. It's when countries feel threatened, they asked to join NATO.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So all those countries that used to belong to the Warsaw Pact, which was the Soviet-run defence organisation that comprised countries like Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and so on, they've all joined NATO, including the Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, because they feel threatened by Russia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Finland, which has jealously guarded its neutrality, as has Sweden for decades.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And Finland, remember, has fought two wars with Russia during the Second World War, just before it, and has been neutral all this time and has got an 800-mile-plus border with Russia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: And yet it felt so threatened by Russia post the full-scale invasion of 2022 that it has joined NATO.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So Moscow has brought this on itself, but none of these countries are threatening to attack, invade, or in any way threaten Russia.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: It is, as Olga says, a false narrative.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And of course, I was just going to say, of course, we do often on the BBC hear Russia's viewpoint from the BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg and other colleagues in Moscow.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Well, next, let's turn to some questions about the war itself.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Hello BBC, my name is Rajesh and I'm from India and my question is With Ukraine's continuous abuse for advanced aid defence systems How have vaccinations responded and what impact has this had on the ground?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Hello, I'm Roger from Auckland in New Zealand Why has Ukraine not yet destroyed the Kirsch Bridge?
--:-- Oliver Conway: It seems to me like an obvious target I'm Roald from River Falls in Wisconsin How might Ukrainian forces better protect Kherson from shelling and drone attacks by Russian forces on the east bank of the Dnipro?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Can little be done to protect the civilians remaining there?
--:-- Oliver Conway: OK, who wants to pick up?
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Well, why don't you guys do talk about Kirch, the Kirch Bridge?
--:-- Olga Robinson: I'm just dying to start talking about Kirch.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Go for it. Because it's such a verified story.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Ukraine has twice successfully attacked the Kirch Bridge.
--:-- Vitaly Shevchenko: Well, not completely successfully because it's still there.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, it's still there, but causing damage, as in partially successfully.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Good correction.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So there have been two attacks, one using a truck that exploded, another one using sea drones.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And we know from satellite imagery, if you look from space onto the area around the bridge, you can see that Russians have now built protections, like floating protections against the sea drones, but also there are literally era defences on the bridge protecting it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But also it's important to know that after the repeated attacks, partially successful, by Ukraine, that there's evidence that Russians have been, for logistical purposes, have been using ground routes through occupied territory rather than the main Korean bridge.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And that means that it kind of diminishes the importance of it for Ukrainians as a target.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So on air defence, Ukraine has advanced a long way since the dark days of 2022, when literally policemen were firing Kalashnikovs at Shaheed drones that Iran was shipping to Russia.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But this is a numbers game.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And Ukraine is slowly running out of effective air defence.
--:-- Olga Robinson: It depends what you're, you know, if it's relatively low grade Shahid 136 drones that Russia has manufactured using an Iranian model, they're fairly easy to hit.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But it's much harder to shoot down certain missiles.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And the hardest one of all was the one fired at Dnipro, the Oreshnik, which I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is Russian for hazel bush.
--:-- Oliver Conway: This is a hypersonic missile that travels at speeds in excess of five times the speed of sound.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Goes right up high up above the stratosphere or into the stratosphere and then comes down at such a speed that it's almost impossible to to stop it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So they haven't got many of them russia but that is a bit of a sort of it's not an end of days weapon but it's pretty scary and that's even with the conventional warhead now.
--:-- Olga Robinson: The thing that Ukraine is crying out for more of and desperately needs is patriots.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They are extremely expensive.
--:-- Olga Robinson: They cost millions of dollars.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And they wanted more under the Biden administration.
--:-- Olga Robinson: He released a few. They want more under the Trump administration. They're not releasing any.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Some countries in Europe have got them, but some of them have been sent to Israel, for example, America's big ally in the Middle East, because there could possibly be some kind of conflict coming up with Iran.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So they are in short supply.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But the short answer is that as the longer this war drags on, the more critical Ukraine's need for air defense is going to be to stop the civilian casualties and the attacks on its infrastructure.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And in terms of protecting Kherson? It's also a numbers game.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Because of the shortage of air defence systems that Ukraine has, it's a question of where do you deploy them?
--:-- Olga Robinson: What do you consider more important?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Which lives you choose to preserve?
--:-- Olga Robinson: It's a very difficult choice.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But the fact is Ukraine can't build a dome, iron or any other sort of dome, over all of its territory, each and every settlement.
--:-- Olga Robinson: That's why we've been hearing reports of this awful human safari.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That's what it's been reported as in Kherson, where Russian drones hunt down civilians and bicycles on public transport.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Old women at bus stops. Bus stops as well.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's terrible.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But the fact is, it's happening because Ukraine is unable to stop it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, most of Europe has voiced strong support for Ukraine, of course.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Some of that's down to self-interest, the fear that if Vladimir Putin wins, Poland or the Baltics could be next.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But some listeners want to know what Europe is doing to protect itself.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Hello, I'm Maurizio from London. Is Europe and the UK developing new weapon systems to tackle the Red Army?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Thank you.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Well, thank you for that, Mauricio. I'm not sure that they still call it the Red Army, but I presume by that you mean Russia's army.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Europe has had a bit of a cold shower after the Munich Security Conference, where they have woken up to the fact that this administration in Washington, the Trump presidency, is no longer going to provide the automatic security blanket that Europe has enjoyed, or some would say freeloaded off for the last 80 years since the Second World War.
--:-- Olga Robinson: It's going to have to provide more for its own defence.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And this is a real political hot potato right now because the US is saying that NATO countries need to be spending up to 5% of their GDP, their national wealth, on defence.
--:-- Olga Robinson: That is going to be really hard.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Even America only spends 3.3%, 3.4%.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Countries like Spain only spend 1.6%.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And it's coming at a time when there are huge demands on health, on welfare, on road building, hospital, schools, all the daily things that governments ought to be spending the money on.
--:-- Olga Robinson: It would be much nicer if there wasn't a threat coming from Moscow.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But there is.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And Europe's defences are run down.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They are decrepit and not able, you know, the armories have been emptied out to support Ukraine.
--:-- Olga Robinson: If there was a war tomorrow, a conventional war in Europe, Britain's army would run out of ammunition in less than two weeks.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And the numbers are tiny.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So there is a big move.
--:-- Oliver Conway: I've just recently been in Berlin. covering the Bundestag, the German parliament vote to lift, to remove the brakes on defence spending.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So potentially spending hundreds of billions of euros on defence.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They don't have the technical capability that the Americans have.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And so even though you can pour money into European defence, they are still many, many years behind some of the capabilities that the Americans have.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So the idea that Europe can do this divorced from the US is not realistic but it's hard to tell exactly what President Trump wants.
--:-- Olga Robinson: One moment he saying Europe you got to spend more on your defence Well slapping a load of tariffs on Europe and hurting European economies is not exactly going to enable that defensive build-up.
--:-- Oliver Conway: On that, David emailed us to ask, is it significant that France is putting a lot of resources into the prospect of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine after withdrawing from commitments in Africa?
--:-- Olga Robinson: And would Russia accept them anyway?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Meanwhile, Eugenia Agostini says, should the EU not be more careful in broadcasting strategies and intentions when it comes to Ukraine?
--:-- Olga Robinson: Anyone know about France?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, I can tell you right now that Russia is not going to accept any sort of Western military presence in Ukraine and they have repeatedly said that they wouldn't.
--:-- Olga Robinson: We've heard suggestions of a possible quote-unquote peacekeeping force being deployed to Ukraine. We've heard them from France and Britain as well.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But there are numerous question marks over that idea, such as what exactly are they going to be doing there?
--:-- Olga Robinson: Is that going to be a combat role?
--:-- Oliver Conway: And Macron said that apparently they would be a station somewhere out of harm's way, which begs the question, OK, so what's the point?
--:-- Olga Robinson: Another question is what happens if they get targeted? How will they respond? Will they attack back?
--:-- Oliver Conway: And is this World War Three suddenly? That's another unanswered question.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And also, OK, Russia says no. Are Western allies of Ukraine prepared to do it despite Russian objections?
--:-- Oliver Conway: I mean, now Macron says that it's not up to Russia to decide.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But I think these suggestions are just that, an idea.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So I'm going to stick my neck out. I agree with Vitaly. I don't think this force is going to happen, at least not in the way that it was conceived by Prime Minister Sakhir Starmer.
--:-- Olga Robinson: It's technically been called the MFU, the multinational force Ukraine.
--:-- Oliver Conway: They're not peacekeepers. They are supposed to be a reassurance force.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But there are two reasons, and Vitaly's mentioned one of them. Moscow is adamant that it won't accept NATO member troops in Ukraine, whatever badge or berry they're wearing.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Secondly, those countries that have signed up to it, in theory, are saying, yeah, but that's conditional on a US backstop, a US security guarantee, which the US is not prepared so far to commit.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So I think the most we can hope for is some kind of maritime policing in the Black Sea and possibly air patrols based in Poland and Romania.
--:-- Oliver Conway: But, you know, you do not want to have a situation where, let's say, a small unit of Russian tanks advances a few kilometres into Zaporizhia Oblast and French Rafale aircraft fire on them and suddenly you've got World War III.
--:-- Oliver Conway: You know, the Biden administration, for all their many faults in this, have tried really hard to empower Ukraine, in their words, so as to get to a position where it would be in a strong position in peace talks, which hasn't really happened, but without coming into direct conflict with Russia.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And that's what everybody's still trying to avoid.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Time is pushing on. So let's end with some bigger questions about the future.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Fergus sent us this about the political situation in Ukraine. Now election rumours in Ukraine are popular at the moment and a recent poll suggests that 69% of Ukrainians trust Zelensky in leadership.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Do you think an election would consolidate Zelensky's power in Ukraine to increase war efforts against Russia?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, first of all, as you may know, Ukrainian law prohibits elections during wartime.
--:-- Olga Robinson: To change that, I'll have to change a lot of laws and the constitution itself.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Volodymyr Zelensky's popularity shot up following Donald Trump's criticism and American suggestions that he is, and I quote, a dictator without elections.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Ukrainians seem to be rallying around their president.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And I have to say, many of them do not really like Zelensky.
--:-- Olga Robinson: But, you know, it's a democracy and that's the only leader they've got.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Now, there are other possible contenders for the role, such as Valery Zaluzny, the former Ukrainian army commander, various volunteers involved in supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And all of them, they hold roughly the same position when it comes to fighting Russia.
--:-- Oliver Conway: We need to fight for our country.
--:-- Olga Robinson: So replacing Zelensky isn't really going to change that.
--:-- Oliver Conway: However, if such an election were to be held under a theoretical scenario, the fear is that Russia would be able to manipulate that.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And they're so skilled at doing, at manipulating elections.
--:-- Oliver Conway: As it has allegedly done in Georgia and Romania.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Yes.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So that's why Ukraine is really reluctant to hold that.
--:-- Olga Robinson: There's absolutely no doubt that Russia will be trying to exploit any possible election using disinformation networks.
--:-- Oliver Conway: And actually, the ones that Russia-linked disinformation networks we've been tracking, we're already seeing slight pivot towards back to focusing on Zelensky and even the elections.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Well, staying with politics, we had this question.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Hello, I am Nefeli Collingen from France, and I would like to know how realistic is it for Ukraine to join the EU?
--:-- Olga Robinson: And what will that mean for the future of Europe?
--:-- Oliver Conway: Frank?
--:-- Olga Robinson: Well, it's more realistic than Ukraine joining NATO, which I think is completely off the table for the foreseeable future, despite offers and guarantees given to it.
--:-- Oliver Conway: That's not going to happen.
--:-- Olga Robinson: For it to join the EU, there are economic reasons why several countries in Europe are not going to be very keen on this.
--:-- Oliver Conway: Polish farmers for a start.
--:-- Olga Robinson: And Poland, of course, is fast becoming the strongest conventional force in NATO with very high percentage of, you know, they are an incredibly valuable member of NATO.
--:-- Oliver Conway: So their objections will be listened to.
--:-- Olga Robinson: Look, you've got to remember the reason why this invasion happened in 2022.
--:-- Oliver Conway: It's because Vladimir Putin did not like the way things were going in Ukraine, that it was moving westwards,
