439. The Pro-Putin President: Are Zelensky and Europe sleepwalking into disaster?

0:00Thanks for listening to The Restless Politics. Sign up to The Restless Politics plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestlessPolitics .com. That's TheRestlessPolitics .com. Coming up on Today's show, Trump was saying he was going to end the war in 24 hours. He meant by giving Putin what he wanted. Trump is on Putin's side on this and always has been. It's all about whether anyone can trust Vladimir Putin. and it seems to me that the only person in this equation who is remotely minded to trust Putin is Trump.

0:32And then it's the question of whether you can trust Trump. What if Trump just doesn't care about Ukraine? Doesn't care about NATO, doesn't care about Europe. His gut instinct is screw Ukraine, it's really part of Russia anyway, it doesn't really matter. Even if Putin proposes a deal and Trump gets behind it, Zelentsky won't accept it. The rest of politics is powered by fused energy and Fuse and I are offering 20 pounds credit and free trick plus membership if you switch to a fixed tariff before the end of August. They've listened carefully to their customers and the number one request was Gas Tariffs.

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3:12Welcome to the rest of this politics with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Alistair Campbell and the first half all matters Ukraine after another big episode of the Trump Realized TV show. And second half, Gaza. And then we'll perhaps go a bit more domestic when we get to question time. Let's start on the soap. Our super keen listeners will have picked up that we did an extra episode on Saturday morning. So live after the Putin Trump meeting in Alaska. We're now recording 48 hours after that. In the time since and people will remember, nothing really was said at the end of the Trump Putin meeting.

3:48But there was massive anxiety from Zelensky, of course, the Ukrainian leader and the European leaders who then jumped on a plane, dropped everything. I've never seen anything like it, how quickly these guys clear their schedules and get on a plane. To get out to Washington to try to sit down with Trump and presumably to return, I mean I guess to my centralality which is that I think always the momentum of Trump, the rolling boulder is heading in the direction of Putin. But over the last eight months again and again the European leaders in Zelensky try to sort of stop it and keep saying please give us security guarantees, please give us to cease fire.

4:25Please don't sign up to what has seemed almost since November the inevitable deal with Putin. I imagine when Trump was saying he was going to end the war in 24 hours. He meant by giving Putin what he wanted. But anyway, over you, what's your sense of what's going on? I mean, it's all about trust, isn't it? It's all about whether anyone can trust Vladimir Putin. And it seems to me that the only person in this equation who is remotely minded to trust Putin is Trump. And then it's the question of whether you can trust Trump to stay engaged, to stay interested. Look, I thought the outcome of Alaska and the optics of Alaska were both horrific for Ukraine and for Europe.

5:04I think that's why you did see this extraordinary action of Macron, Mertz, Starmum, Maloney, Stubb from Finland, Ritter and von der Leyen, all feeling, oh my god, we've got to get this show back on the road. I think the significant shift that's happened since that meeting. If you remember Trump went into the meeting in Alaska saying he would be very unhappy, there'd be severe consequences if he didn't get a ceasefire out of Putin. ceasefire not even discussed. So therefore he comes out with a new line which is basically we don't go to the ceasefire, we go straight to a peace agreement and we go straight to security guarantees.

5:40Okay. So he's sort of totally reframed the kind of the positioning of this thing. for obvious reasons from the the optics and the substance of Alaska. So for obvious reasons, the European leaders were very alarmed, very worried, very anxious about what was going on. The reason why the European leaders were so horrified is that they had had a call with Trump two days earlier in which he had absolutely promised not to do that and they had somehow convinced themselves that they had a deal with Trump that that Trump then broke as soon as he sat down with Putin. And so a lot of the last two days, I guess, has just been trying to reverse and get back to where they thought they were on Friday.

6:20And they also know he is very impressionable. He does have the ability is that what is the thing that lots of people who know well say is that he actually doesn't enjoy confrontation. So I won't have enjoyed that meeting with Zelensky that advanced triggered it. It's probably why Vance was kept in his box. So the Europeans know that the best chance to maybe at least that the margins get him to shift to position, to give them a bit more time to do the things they're trying to achieve, get in the room with them and, you know, that's what they did. You talk about Trump being the bolder, but the bolder is kind of moving, a little bit of like he moved on that red carpet Alaska, it's sort of going a little bit sideways rather than the straight line.

7:00So what the European said is we cannot have a repeat of Trump vans beating up Zelensky in the White House. Have you said thank you once this entire meeting? No, in this entire meeting of you said they feel to do. Therefore we have to kind of be there like a bit of a bolstering shield. Before they went to the White House, first of all for the bilateral was Zalensky, then with the broader meeting with all European leaders, they met at the Ukrainian Embassy. They clearly decided, I think, that whether we like it or not and it's pretty clear they don't all like it, we're going to have to do a bit of, you know, back side kissing so that a lot of that this wouldn't be happening without your leadership.

7:43Thank you so much for getting put into say whatever he said and at least to be talking about security guarantees. The problem where we are now I think is that so if you take care of Starmer's reaction and his response at the end of the day which I thought was fair and balanced he basically said we're at least talking about security guarantees and how the hard work begins on what that means and we're talking about the possibility of a trilateral meeting. The only thing I've been able to pick up that I've not seen in the media from any of the people who are there is that it was put in on the phone call with Trump in the middle of the meeting with European leaders who suggested starting with a bilateral meeting with Zelensky.

8:24Now I don't know quite what to read into that but it seems that that is what gave them some sort of confidence that Putin was at least talking about it. However, the Kremlin line is, they said they had a very frank and constructive discussion. Now, Frank usually means not very friendly, and they then talked about setting up a new process of negotiators to talk about the possibility of the meeting between Trump and Zelensky. So, more drama, more theatre, more announcements of process, but very hard to assess if it actually adds up to very much. I'm going to play a devil's advocate maybe and push harder and say there's a pretty good chance and if I was really forced to predict I'd say that Trump is on Putin's side on this and always has been.

9:20And I think we're misreading it away. I was listening to our friend, the Mooch, saying, you know, how come Trump got so outmaneuvered by Putin, you know, it was 3 -0 against him. What I thought is that maybe we're looking at it the wrong way up. Trump is only outmaneuvered if you assume that what Trump is trying to do is support Ukraine or take the European position. I'm as known out, the Ukrainian European position was outmaneuvered. But what if Trump just doesn't care about Ukraine? doesn't care about NATO, doesn't care about Europe, and what he really cares about is having good relationships with Russia and potentially getting some minerals deal and business deals in Russia.

9:58In which case, from his point of view, the art of the deal he's making doesn't really have anything to do with defending Ukraine or Europe. But we're sort of imagining that in Trump's mind, he's back in the 1980s in New York and somehow Ukraine and Europe are his company. But his company is the US. But, Rory, if that's the case, why doesn't he go much closer to the JD Vance position? And JD Vance looked very miserable yesterday. He was made to sit at the children's table. We had the BT with the leaders there, Trump sitting with all the leaders. And then over there behind that side of the table, I spotted Jonathan Powell and some of the European diplomats who were there.

10:40And then over there you had JD Vance, Rubio, Besant, Hexer, Susie Wiles, and it really did look like this is for the big people and you sit there and you don't speak. And in the meeting in the Oval Office, I think it's quite interesting. Yes, there was a lot of fuss made in the fact that the Zelensky War is suit because last time he wore his uniform that has been wearing since the war started. But the other thing that was very, very different is JD Vance did not open his mouth. So I think Vance was told by Trump to stay in his box. Rubio looked very nervous at both meetings, I thought. But I think a lot of this depends on your base of his saying, they don't care about Ukraine and he only wants to help Putin.

11:28If he doesn't really care, why go through all this effort? I wonder whether getting into Trump's psychology or Putin's psychology is very difficult. Well, it's all the leaders we're doing yesterday. Yeah, well, we're all doing that. Let's say broadly speaking, your analysis is that the things that he cares most about now are fame, money, but he's got more money than he used to, and that he has certain sorts of beliefs of which the strongest one is he loves tariffs. The second one is he doesn't like immigration, and third, but maybe not quite as strong is the belief that the world is divided into spheres of influence, and big countries get to do what they want in their backyard.

12:10Yeah. And basically Russia gets to do what it wants back at. But if it's a slightly less strong belief than his love of tariffs and his hatred of immigration, then he's facing a concerted effort by an enormous amount, not just of European allies, but NATO, a lot of the Republicans, a lot of American public opinion who are skeptical about Russia. So, although his, I think his gut instinct is screw Ukraine, it's really part of Russia anyway. It doesn't really matter. Everything would be much easier. And anyway, they're never going to win. I think that's another very important part. He thinks that Putin is winning.

12:48Ukraine's doomed the way to get peace is just to let Putin get the ones. But the reason in eight months he hasn't quite got there is that he quite enjoys probably having all these European leaders jumping on planes to see him all the time. He loved it. He loved it. And he probably feels well, I don't care enough really about this issue to totally throw my whole weight behind Putin, but if you were to grab him one -on -one, I think he hasn't changed his position, which is still Ukraine's really part of Russia. This isn't relevant to the United States. If we get to sell some weapons to Europe great, but that's not that important to me either.

13:25And I'd like the Nobel Peace Prize and the easiest way to get peace in a vertical is to take the aggressors piece. And the most straightforward sort of piece is, dear Putin, have some more territory and stop fighting. Yeah, of course, so much that we talk about Trump's psychology. We lot of this is about what Putin thinks. It was really interesting. During the pool spray at the top of Zelensky, oh my God, I did try Brewery. I've fed in to every person I could think of or had any influence on this, please can we not have a pool spray at the top of Zelensky? But it happened. If you listen very carefully, Roy, you heard Zelensky when Trump was obviously going to take questions.

14:04Zelensky said, he's sort of whispered, let's make it short. And Trump said short, very short. Then went on for about five years. He took questions from Marjorie Taylor, Green's boyfriend about every three minutes, including about policing in male and balloting all sorts of nonsense. I thought Zelensky was quite clever. When he reached Ed for the envelope, I thought, oh, no. or he said, who's the Ukrainian king who's going to give a state visit to Trump? But in fact, he was a letter from his wife to Melania Trump. We obviously think about Trump a lot because he's in our heads all the time because he's on our phones and on our TV screens all the time.

14:41Putin, we see a lot less of. But here's Rory, let's try why you just been talking, the other Rory in my life, my son, he said with his tweet, have you seen this? It's a tweet from Medvedev, former president, still a, you know, we don't know how important to he remains in the Putin's sphere. He wasn't there at the meeting, but this is his tweet. This morning, the anti -Russian war -mongering coalition of the willing fails to outplay Trump on his turf. Europe thanked and sucked up to him. That's true. The question now is which tune, the Kiev clown, that's Zelensky, will play about guarantees and territories back home, once he's put on his green military uniform again.

15:20So he's trolling Zelensky, he's trolling the Europeans. I mean, we talk about Putin being a sort of Barbara's dictator. Does Medvedev put that out there with Putin's blessing or not? Because if he does, he's basically taking the piss. I think he has taken the piss and I think if I were Putin, I'd be pretty confident at the moment that things are going in my direction, that these European meetings are just froth. I mean, I'm increasingly coming to the view on lots of fundamental things with Trump, including tariffs, but also what we'll get on to, I think maybe when we talk about some question time, some of his internal repression stuff that he's actually surprisingly consistent.

15:59And the reason that we get confused is because he'll send out posts on truth social, saying things like I'm getting fed up with Putin or he's got 50 days and I'll put sanctions on. But never actually happens. It's the same with Israel. There were moments where everyone was like, always getting really annoyed when Netanyahu didn't visit him on his golf tour, etc. But fundamentally, it feels as though he is never actually going to punish either Russia or in fact Israel, whatever they do. And that's because at some level, he's kind of on their side. On the Russian thing, it's also really worth emphasizing that Putin rightly or wrongly seems much, much more confident now about his military position.

16:40So I was looking at some of the statistics around recruitment. And the Russians are consistently recruiting about twice as many people a day as the Ukrainians. And it's really remarkable. Part of this is about incredibly generous payouts that they're making. Yeah. So in Russia, you can normal personal on about $900 a month, so you know, 750 pounds a month. So in British terms, very, very much well below the minimum wage. But soldiers on the front line earn much more than their British equivalents. If you're on the front line, you get $2 ,450 a month, salary, so nearly two and a half times median income, $30 ,000 signing bonus.

17:23Then you get special money for, you get $12 ,000 if you get a medal, you get money if you get tanks and helicopters. And when you retire, you get a guaranteed $1 ,100 pension a month for the rest of your life. That's a really significant thing and they don't seem to have any problem recruiting. At the same time, there have been these breakthroughs. There was a breakthrough in Poverosk, which begins to seem to threaten nearly 10 miles worth of breakthrough, which is forcing the Ukrainians into a very, very narrow corridor to one of their central logistics bases in the east. So I think if you're Putin, you're sitting there thinking, in the end, the war's going in my favour.

18:02In the end, I know that yes, the Europeans will continue to buy American stuff, but there's going to be less American stuff, less American focus. I know that there is no US appetite, so you talked about Vance. I know with these stories, then, if you're on Sunday, he said, I think the president, and I certainly think that America, we're done with the funding of the Ukraine War business. But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we're okay with that, but we're not going to fund it ourselves anymore. That basically is what they mean by security guarantees.

18:32We will make weapons and you lot can buy them. Yeah, we're over to you on that. So that's the final thing. So this security guarantee's story. Remember Macron in his meeting with Trump, which I think is now back in February, thought that he'd got security guarantees out of Trump. But if you listen to Trump, there's no detail on what these guarantees are. And if I were Putin, I would think, well, this isn't anything like Maloney's article five NATO, you know, attack on one, it's an attack on all. And if it remains ambiguous, it's not really a deterrent, is it? those press conferences are utterly horrific because the journalists just they don't do their job there.

19:07You have people like this Mr. Mayor, Marjorie Taylor Green who was actually talking about going for a walk with MTG around Washington. Thank you Mr. President, it felt so safe if you can walk around Washington safe with MTG, you know, then the plates thank you and then all this sort of nonsense going on. The guy from Fox News basically just trying to needle Zelensky the whole time. But the other point where you say that about them being more confident militarily, there's an amazing thing. I don't if you follow this thing that goes out pretty much every day, the British Ministry of Defence military intelligence put out these kind of analysis of what's going on.

19:44They get way more coverage around the world than they do in Britain. But the one that I call my eye this week, the Wendtown, basically says, if they carry based on the battle field advances so far in 2025, it will take Russian forces approximately 4 .4 more years to gain 100 % of the 4 Ukrainian oblast's territory. Now, just think about that because what Trump seems to have fallen forward Putin is the idea that Zelensky will have no problem handing over the Donbass, which is two of those or blasts. And somebody said yesterday that it's like saying to Trump, look, give, decide who your biggest enemy in the world is and give them Florida and maybe throw in a bit of Texas as well.

20:31You're from the economist Shasha and Joshi. I saw him being interviewed on television yesterday. And he said for Zelensky to hand over the Donbass would be suicidal. So that can't happen. That means that this really hasn't moved past stage one. And Zelensky He did not give any promises on that. At all. Again, the coverage has tended to assume that we're on the cusp of a deal. The way it's normally described as there's like a pro -Russian deal, and the pro -Russian deal would mean that Putin would get, as you say, the head of the Donbass, and Ukraine would agree to demilitarize, so limit the size of its army, not join NATO, not join the EU, and sanctions will be left in Russia, so that's the kind of pro -Russian position, which is I think the position to which Trump basically favors in his gut.

21:17And then there's the other position which is the kind of pro -Ukraine deal, which is no recognition of the territory Russia has taken, frees the front lines where they are. Ukraine can arm as much as it wants. It's got a free pass to join NATO and the EU and America will produce in the most optimistic scenario, almost the kind of NATO -style guarantee for the security of Ukraine. My guess is that neither of these things are going to happen. My guess is that even if Putin proposes a deal and Trump gets behind it, Zalensky won't accept it. And therefore, what you'll really have is a sort of frozen conflict, a kind of grey zone going on for years and years and years.

21:57I was reminded thinking about this, our interview with the president of Cyprus and the way that he thinks about Turkish occupied North Cyprus. So obviously from his point of view, he in a way is like Ukraine. That was part of their territory. The Turks invaded, they captured half the territory, and 60 years later, the Greek Cyprids are still saying this is an illegal occupation, we don't recognise it, get out. But the rest of the world, unfortunately, is beginning to, I'm afraid, lose energy and think, well, facts are facts, and basically, Turkey occupies an onsite, President might as well have a two -state solution.

22:30So there's a serious chance that that's the kind of world that you end up in Ukraine. Well, the other thing that we, you know, when we talk about, you can't work out from psychology, but so much of this is about his psychology. He doesn't stick with things for long. So we're going to talk in the second half after the break. We're going to talk about Gaza. Now what's been happening in Gaza in the last 24 or 48 hours? There's been some pretty consequential stuff going on. But was there any mention of that yesterday in the long ramble that he did in the overall office? Because in his head he's kind of already, I think moved on from that.

23:06He's now thinking Ukraine is the episode I'm dealing with now. That is what I'm going to get fixed. I've got to get a new storyline out every day. And then event, I think you're right. I think eventually this will possibly beat around. Now, I don't think we should underestimate by the way the significance. You know, we can laugh and say, oh, you're looking at them all getting on a plane and going to sort of get his backside. It felt to me quite significant that the Europeans were there yesterday. And that he felt this need for whatever reason, he went round the table, basically saying something very nice about all of them.

23:37And even though to some European eyes it will have been puke -making to watch them say, we couldn't do this without you and blah blah blah. One, they stopped short of any of the Nobel Prize nonsense. But two, when you actually dig into what they were saying, there were some pretty substantial points being made. The one point in the round table when Trump, I felt, is about to lose it, was with melts because MOUTS was absolutely clear, you cannot possibly go on with these negotiations without ceasefire. Likewise with Macron, Macron said, yeah, be grave and get a trilateral meeting, but then there should be a quadrilateral meeting, where we should be there as well, because Ukraine's security is Europe's security.

24:17So they were making some pretty substantial points. So of course, the big point, there's a lensky kept making repeatedly, was security guarantees. Now what nobody did in public, but I suspect this is what they're now doing in private, is okay, you've said security guarantees, let's drill down on that. And you know one of the most interesting moving things I saw this week, I don't know when it was done, but it was an interview that Bill Clinton did with Miriam O 'Calaan, who's the Irish television presenter. He was talking about the deal that Ukraine did to get rid of its nuclear weapons. And he was basically saying, I feel really bad about that because I was part of swading the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear weapons on the bases that Russia would never attack them.

25:03Russia has now attacked them with the same leader. That's this point about trust. How do you possibly trust somebody who has broken so many promises and so many red lines? And as you know, I'm in Germany and I picked up develt yesterday and there's an amazing feast by Gary Kasparov. Now Gary Kasparov we know is not a fan of, yeah, Vladimir Putin. He's actually quite courageous Kasparov. I mean his criticism is like, I mean, those kind of Russian criticisms of Putin by a leading figure have ended up with people being assassinated. Well, absolutely. I mean, you know, you see comedians doing his stories about, you know, who's going to fall out the window next.