Is Putin about to go to war with Europe? – The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:11Our people are over in Russia right now to see if we can get it settled. Not an easy situation, let me tell you. What a mess. So-called peace talks between the US and Russia over Ukraine's future have stalled. And pressure is mounting. Vladimir Putin has now taken swipes at Europe, saying he's ready for war. NATO says it's ready to do whatever it takes to protect itself. Putin believes he can outlast us, but we are not going anywhere. To my mind, Trump supports Putin and either wants Russia to win or is entirely indifferent to what happens to Ukraine or both. This is not actually a peace process because the Russians are not serious.

0:55they want to continue the war and they think they are winning. From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoff.

1:07I'm joined by Luke Harding, foreign correspondent for The Guardian. Well, Luke, there is so much diplomacy going on on multiple fronts, isn't there? But you've just got back from Ukraine and I just want to start with how is this process being perceived on the ground there? How different is it to the reality of what Ukrainians are living through? Well, I've just been in Kyiv and there is enormous skepticism in Ukraine, Lucy, that this peace process actually is a peace process. It certainly doesn't feel like one on the ground. There are missile attacks most nights. You hear explosions at one, two in the morning.

1:43The rattle of machine gun fire of Ukrainian air defense. Then just when you're going back to sleep, then ballistic missiles that they normally come about five or six a.m. over a thousand kilometer front line with the Russians grinding slowly forward in the east of the country, but no conclusive victory from the Russian side. And meanwhile, of course, as you say, we've seen these negotiations between the Ukrainians and the Americans, the Americans and the Russians most recently in Moscow with Steve Wyckoff, Trump's special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, talking with Putin. But really, what I would like to tell you is that this is not actually a peace process because the Russians are not serious.

2:26They want to continue the war and they think they are winning. So let's talk about the meeting that happened with Steve Witkoff, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Putin last night. So Kushner and Witkoff flew into Moscow. They were kept waiting for several hours by Putin, as is his way when he's speaking to foreign dignitaries. But the meeting took place three hours late. They were then in there for about five hours. It sounds like quite limited progress was made. But as you say, this isn't really about a good faith negotiation at all, is it? I mean, there is no progress because there can be no progress.

3:02I mean, essentially, Russian demands, Putin's demands are what they were back in 2022. And that, in essence, is for Ukraine's capitulation, for the removal of its pro-Western government, the extinction of its hopes to join NATO and the European Union. And what Putin wants to do is conquer Ukraine and fold it back into a kind of great Russian empire. That's been his aim throughout. He does not think that Ukraine is a country or a nation or a people. And we know that from what's happened to areas that he's already occupied, about 20 % of the country, which have been forcibly Russified. And really, I think his strategy is to try and get what he can't get on the battlefield from the White House, from Donald Trump, who, let's face it, is the most pro-Russian president.

3:45we have seen in history who has endless patience for Putin, finds Zelensky exasperating. You remember what happened in February in the Oval Office when Zelensky was kicked out. And it's a sort of faux process. To my mind, it's not real at all. And in the hours leading up to that meeting, Putin was on Russian TV wearing sort of deliberate military attire. He gave a speech where he said that whilst Russia didn't want a war with Europe, it was ready to go to war with Europe if it needed to. What's he signalling there? What's that statement about as he prepared to meet with this US delegation? Well, I mean, Lucy, that statement is one about the idea of Russia as the eternal victim, which is a trope of Kremlin state propaganda and television that basically nothing is ever Russia's fault.

4:33Russia is never the author of anything. And Putin's message is basically to the White House that there could be a deal were it not for the stubborn corrupt Ukrainians and the pesky Europeans who are the impediment. And, you know, there's a play, what you might call a sort of KGB play at work here, which is to divide America from its traditional European and NATO allies to exploit Ukraine's weakness. Bear in mind that Zelensky has been dealing with a massive corruption scandal in the last couple of weeks. And also to stop America from doing punitive stuff. I mean, there's been a lot of talk about sanctions, particularly secondary sanctions on China and India that import huge amounts of Russian oil.

5:11Now, these haven't happened and they've sort of got lost, really, in the noise of negotiation, which is exactly what Putin wants. So, Luke, you've mentioned this sort of pesky Europe, slightly patronising tone from Putin towards Europe. But meanwhile, they are desperately trying to get themselves a seat at the table in this process. And we've had a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels today, haven't we, NATO? What's been going on there? What's on the table? Well, the big discussion has been about Russian frozen assets. We're talking about$210 billion. Yeah, no small sum. Which has been immobilised since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

5:49And really what the European Commission, what Ursula von der Leyen wants to do, and most other European governments, is give this money to Ukraine. And she was talking today about$90 billion for Ukraine, two thirds of what Ukraine needs over the next couple of years. There are two problems. One is the Belgians who are holding this money in a series of clearing accounts, who are worried about legal liability should the Russians sue. And the other, of course, is Donald Trump, who from kind of his leaked peace plan, which actually, in fact, was a Russian peace plan with 28 points, which we saw a couple of weeks ago, the plan with Russia was for the Americans to take this money or some of it and to invest it.

6:29In other words, Putin and Trump want to put their little mitts on this money together. So, you know, we're not there until we're there. But I think that the Ukrainians will be heartened. There is some progress, at least, on the financial side. You mentioned that there'd been talks over the weekend with American officials in Ukraine. How did those talks go? Yeah, I mean, you have to feel for Zelensky. I mean, I sat down with him for The Guardian a couple of weeks ago in the presidential administration and the lights sort of failed halfway through our interview. But one of the questions I asked him was, you know, how do you deal with Trump?

7:04Are you afraid of Donald Trump? And it was a very interesting reply. He said, I'm not afraid of Donald Trump. It's clear that Zelensky will not compromise on basic constitutional red lines, such as giving more territory to Russia, which was in the original Trump peace plan, or having its alliance choices cartel so it can't join NATO, or shrinking the size of its army, which is another Russian demand. So, I mean, Zelensky knows that he can't sign a bad peace deal, that were he to do so, thousands of people who've lost so much, loved ones, friends, homes, would demonstrate against him. And at the same time, he has to try and humor Donald Trump, praise Donald Trump and work from the premise that Donald Trump is a neutral arbiter in all this.

7:52Whereas in reality, to my mind, Trump supports Putin and either wants Russia to win or is entirely indifferent to what happens to Ukraine or both. Yeah. And I suppose it's that indifference that's the most concerning to Zelensky, isn't it? That Trump will lose focus, that he's been frustrated that he hasn't managed to find a kind of quick fix as he felt he was able to do with the Gaza ceasefire. there are suggestions that that's what Putin is hoping for, right? This kind of win-win of either he gets this plan that is so clearly a kind of wish list for Russia or the war continues indefinitely. That's sort of where Zelensky's at, isn't he?

8:34I mean, American direct military assistance to Ukraine has stopped. That was a feature for three years of the Biden administration, regular deliveries of weapons. Putin could end the war tomorrow. I mean, he could simply withdraw or stop. And similarly, Trump could heat pressure on the Russians. He could do massive sanctions, which he hasn't done. He could flood Ukraine with weapons. He could talk about sky shields or air defenses or Tomahawk missiles, long range American missiles that the Ukrainians very badly want. There was some very interesting reporting from the Wall Street Journal over the weekend.

9:09Really, what this seems to be about is a much bigger, comprehensive reset between America and Russia, where there are lucrative business opportunities, not just in the post-war Ukraine, but in the Arctic, minerals, American oil majors returning to Russia and so on. And I think we know that because of the choice of the delegation in Moscow, Steve Witkoff, a real estate guy, not a diplomat, and Jared Kushner, also a business person, and Trump's son-in-law. We're talking as if this is geopolitics. It seems to me, Of course, it is geopolitics, but essentially for Trump, this is business. Yeah. And so let's just go back to your experience reporting from Ukraine recently, Luke.

9:48I mean, talk to me about the impact on the ground of that withdrawal of American support in terms of the war effort. The gruesome fact is that since Trump returned to the White House in January, the number of Russian attacks on all of Ukraine's major towns and cities have increased. And I think the Russians do this because they feel impunity. They calculate there'll be no meaningful response from the Americans. And what's interesting is that Trump has been blaming Joe Biden for the war. He never blames Putin for the war, the guy who actually did the invading. And just one other thing, Lucy, I mean, being in Kiev, it's like this kind of dark roulette.

10:25Basically, someone is killed every night. It's chaotic. It's random. It's blocks of flats. It's teenagers watching TV or old couples. or people out walking their dog who are dying in a major European city in 2025. It's not normal. And I think we shouldn't treat it as normal. Yeah. And just moving forward, is there any realistic overlap between what Russia and the US were talking about yesterday in this meeting and what Europe and the Ukrainians are looking for? I mean, that's such an interesting question. I'm not a philosopher. But if you want to get epistemological for a moment, it's almost as if we're dealing with two different realities here.

11:10I mean, there's the actual reality where, you know, the Europeans and the Ukrainians agree that if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, it will keep going and probably invade somewhere else. And the American view, which is that, or the Trump view, is that Putin is sincere and genuinely wants peace and is a nice guy, as Steve Wyckoff said. Now, these views are fundamentally incompatible. One is based on delusion and you might say wish fulfillment, maybe a desire on Trump's side from the Nobel Peace Prize, also mediated by Russian disinformation and propaganda, which floods American social media networks and has been embraced by a lot of people in the Republican Party.

11:48And actually kind of the empirical truth, which is that this is a war of conquest. And if Putin isn't stopped, he will keep going. Well, Luke, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thanks. Great to talk to you.

12:02That's it for today. Thanks for listening to the latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. We'll be dropping into your feeds every weekday evening with what you need to know about the story everyone's talking about in around 10 minutes. And please do give us a watch over on YouTube. Today in Focus, we'll be back with you as normal tomorrow morning and we'll see you tomorrow night.

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