saturday political club khrystyna yatskiv and vitaly portnikov. our values ​​and ukrainian point of view remain unchanged. stay tuned for espresso updates and thank you for your trust. we continue the saturday political club. khrystyna yatskev, vitaly portnikov and igor eisenberg, professor at new york university. congratulations glory to ukraine. glory to heroes. greetings friends. greetings to all express viewers. congratulations, mr. igor. so let's start with the president's message. of the united states to congress, how do you view it in general, how successful has it been, how much was the emphasis on the war in ukraine important? i think it was very successful, joe biden, it wasn't just the message, i think joe biden meant to start a crucial part of his campaign, obviously, and those who wrote him about the language, it was strong, very focused on the largest. the problems of both the world and

the united states, and the energy with which biden spoke, it was reflected, you know, there is such a very interesting criterion of whether the speech was successful, during this speech joe biden broke three times the record for raising funds for his election campaign just from ordinary americans, that is, he started his speech a little after 9 pm, so at 9 pm, at 10 o'clock. there at 12 pm three times in a row, it was a fundraising record, that is, it is obvious that people liked the speech. the fact that he spoke about ukraine from the very beginning, and the fact that he actually compared putin to hitler at the very beginning of the speech compared the danger that threatened the world in the days before that he actually referred to it speech by speech.

roosevelt in the spring of '41, when roosevelt addressed congress, compare the times with the present, a very apt comparison, and as he said that roosevelt then wanted to wake up congress, so he is trying to do so now, calling for the immediate passage of the national security bill, which involves aid to ukraine, and in general, joe biden spoke very, very confidently about the achievements of his administration. primarily in the economy, because when he became president, the country was really in a pretty terrible situation economic situation, there were a lot of unemployed people, and in the three years of the biden administration, thanks to the laws that it initiated, that were passed by the previous congress, the country created 15 million new jobs, recovered jobs lost during the pandemic, and inflation fell to three times, the stock market, it's...

records are absolute never -before-seen highs, meaning the stock prices of america's largest companies have never been as high as they are now, and the unemployment rate is the lowest it's been in more than 50 years, and this is the second, second year in a row, so this is an achievement, at the same time, joe biden has been talking a lot about the dangers of democracy in the united states itself, and he... which is very rare, maybe never before, he has been very harsh on trump , without saying that it was his, he called him my predecessor, but he criticized him very harshly all his approaches to politics, starting with foreign policy, because at the very beginning he said that this is not patriotic, just not un-american to say what what putin can do with nato countries in... well

and so on, so the speech was successful, that 's absolutely true, and i think even those people who had doubts about biden's age , that he doesn't have energy , they should have dispelled these doubts after this speech, by the way, yesterday biden in the state of pennsylvania gave another speech with approximately the same energy as when he spoke at the congress on thursday, we understand how important the ground on which is also important. .. this or that speech is spoken, it still seems to me that it is certain the difference, the speech, the annual speech of the american president joseph biden this year and the year there in 2022, for example, right? well, that's all, super tuesday, march 5, everything happened, and it becomes clear that it is unlikely that anything will change, the nominee from the democrats will be joe biden, from the republicans donald trump. at the same time, some of the analysts point out that donald trump can be used by biden.

be a bit easier to beat than some other republican candidate, what do you think? ms. khrystyna, look, you and i can to do with such hypothetical things , of course, well, the republicans couldn't have another candidate, it's just that the republican party is like this now, unfortunately, because it simply moved so far to the right that there couldn't be any other candidate but trump, well, unless, if we assume that trump ends up in prison, i even think that even in that case, nikki haley will not be the candidate, there's... there's rondosan, there's this vivek romaswamy, there's these trump clones who, who in this case , they are more likely to become candidates the republican party, it is, unfortunately, a two-party system in america, that is, of course, that people can have much

more views than binary views, that is , people are not only center-left and center-right, but that 's the way it is. .. the exercises of the republican party that have been going on for 30 years , he brought it, i would say, to the right corner, the democratic party also has such a left current, but it is not there, no, it is influential, but still the same, still after all, it does not have the ability, so to speak, to take over the party and dictate its own conditions, that is, there are people with more left-wing views, left-wing, you know, in the american sense, in europe we would say that they are so typical socially. democrats, but they do not have a decisive influence, and the republican party, as american viewers themselves say, is simply captured by trump, that he captured it, and he did with it what he wanted to do with it, and that, to things, he completed it by changing the leadership of the republican national committee, putting

two co-chairs there now, and one of these the co-chairman is his son's wife , so that's how he made the party a family business, as everyone says... because he wants the republican national committee to pay his lawyers, because he has to pay a lot for lawyers because of all the court cases case against, that is, and maybe if, if nikki haley was, let's say, the candidate, she would have, i think she would have a much better chance of beating biden than trump has, because of course, she could be voted for by independent voters with such centrist views. but she could not become a candidate of the modern republican party, but tell me, mr. igor, why in general, in the world , do people perceive trump’s victory as almost already happened, and all even the forecasts for the future, they begin with the words after trump’s victory, no in the case, after,

the aunt and uncle will take place. i think it's, it 's, by the way, a successful pr campaign that trump's pr people are running, and... and well, i think people are kind of prone to falling for the bait, this kind of propaganda, when propaganda says what's going to happen, something terrible is going to happen, and that means it's going to be terrible, i can definitely say that there's absolutely no telling how the election will end in november, it's going to be in eight months, what's going to happen in america, in the world in those eight months we don't know, a lot can happen. and i would estimate the chances of both candidates as 50/50, but i would pay attention to such alarming bells for trump that arise from exit polls in states where primaries were held recently, and precisely in states where primaries could be

taken participation of independent voters, because there is states with open primaries, where not only party voters, but independent voters can come, let's say, i want to vote in the republican primaries. and they can vote, so exit polls, they are interesting because a lot of people were polled, tens, hundreds of thousands of people were polled in the exit polls, and people who had just voted, that is, who they thought, who they were for, were polled will vote and why, i.e. on this no no no non-abstract, they answered a non-abstract question, so it is very interesting that among independent voters trump's support is very low, it is somewhere... from 30 to 38-40%, this is very little to win the election, because it is independent voters who determine the results of the election, also interestingly, from 50 up to 59% of those who voted for nicky gale say they won't

vote for trump in november, so that means that a portion of republican voters, just a portion of republicans , won't vote for trump, so... well , it's not at all obvious, that he has some advantages and can do a lot in 8 months change, so to say now that trump will win, or to say that ... biden will win, is completely inappropriate, well, at least for now, the united states remains a democracy, where the fate of the election will be decided by the voters, and make, make predictions about who will win , i think it's not worth it now. mr. igor, what is the general tradition in the united states of visiting, elections, yes, that is, involvement in processes in general, because at one time ukraine was sick. was that we had a low turnout in the elections, and we started with what we started with, and now in

states, given that a large number of people may simply not find a candidate between these two that they would be willing to vote for, do they not have the same problem? voter turnout varies, i think it depends on the timing, it depends on the challenges, it depends on how much people believe that the election will... change their lives, say, in the 20th year, despite covid, the turnout was huge, a record in the entire history of the united states, well, i can say, i personally, my wife and i stood for three hours in line to vote, and we went to vote early, not even on election day, but a week before the election, and we then spent 3 hours in line, because so many people voted, there were never so many at... at 10 p.m. in the mid-term elections to congress in the next year, significantly fewer people will vote,

especially those who vote for democrats, they were somehow very passive about the elections, many of them did not go to the polling station, and what will happen now, well, it is very difficult to say, maybe so happen, so i agree with you that people can somehow decide that not they don't like trump or biden, so they will stay at home, of course that can happen. how will people feel closer to november, how important will they think it is to come and vote, well, it's hard to say now, but in the 20th year it was really a record, because then early voting was allowed in all states, even where it was not allowed before. it was because of covid and there were queues everywhere, but during all the days when voting was allowed, there were huge queues at all the polling stations, as it will be now, let's see, and please tell me what you think about... this idea that the republicans will propose some kind of independent bill regarding aid to ukraine, it

became known today, and this project is based, as it were, on some russian money that is stored in the west, and will this money be, as it were, a guarantee that ukraine will receive new aid? i've already heard, mr. vitali, about three republican bills, what you're talking about, another one where congressman fitz-patrick is trying to take that bill that... uh, that moved the senate, but add to it security at the border and so on, and another one where loans would be provided to ukraine, well, the option you are talking about is that the loans were provided from the eu at the expense of this russian money that is in the west, by the way, the same proposal came from great britain, where we must say russian money... sovereign money is more than in the united states, in the united states it is only about 6 billion dollars,

in general, the vast majority of this money is under the jurisdiction of the european union, and simply specifically, in brussels there is a european repository where more than 200 million euros of russian money is located, and i can say that i would like any solution. but in order for ukraine to receive aid, but what must be taken into account in the current divided congress , bills that are being prepared behind the scenes by one party, they have no chance of being passed, because even within one party there can be different opinions, so bills can be passed only if there bipartisan agreement, bipartisan coalition for their passage, and if the republicans are going to prepare bills somewhere under the carpet, so that no one sees it, i think there will be

little chance of passing them, because something may get in there, which, let's say, may not be a significant part of the democrats like it there, if there are any conditions that are unacceptable, if it does not agree with the leaders of the senate at all, or if the senate will vote for it, in the senate, any bills can be passed only on a bipartisan basis, because there you need 60 votes, the democrats in the senate have 51 place. the republicans have 49, that is, nothing can be adopted there at all, unless there is a bipartisan agreement of a pre-partisan coalition, that is, i would say that... any bill that will provide assistance to ukraine, that can pass, it will be good, but if draft laws are being prepared in a row, this is bad. i read another message yesterday that the same republican congressman fitz patrick, he is going to collect signatures for another petition, a discharge petition about his bill, where is the aid to ukraine,

that means all things related to the border, a democrat. they said that they had already started collecting signatures for the bill that was approved by the senate. this, by the way, is the pressure of speaker johnson, because if there are 218 signatures for any of these bills, it will still be considered bypassing the speaker, it will be a terrible political defeat for the speaker, that is, it will show that he cannot govern chamber, can't even manage his faction, if there are, there will be those who will sign such a petition, so... i really want hope that eventually this problem will be solved, although it was embarrassing to see how most republicans reacted to the part of biden's speech that was about ukraine, they were silent, reading something on their phones, the speaker there in one place, when biden referred to as reagan

said, minister gorbachev will tear down this wall, so it's somewhere under the table. so that , so that, it was not very visible that he, that he was applauding, and it was clear from his face that he was very, very bad when biden talked about all this, and as we understand, in the event of an attempt to advance one of the alternative bills, we have time added to the moment of theoretical approval, the truth is, that is, it is not march anymore, it is already april and so on, yes, yes, although there are uh... one point, which, oddly enough, can be positive, because as the primaries continue, after they have taken place, the republican members of the house of representatives may, therefore, be losing their fears that trump may present in their districts, against them some of their own supporters, that is, they can, surprisingly, get more freedom of action.

thank you, mr. igor, igor eisenbeek. we were in touch. another important event this week: li huit, the special representative of the president of the people's republic of china xijianping for relations with the countries of central europe, visited kyiv after visiting the russian capital, the capitals of european countries, and we will talk about this with the former ambassador of ukraine to china , co-chairman of the ukrainian-chinese business council, ihor lytvyn. congratulations, mr. igor. i congratulate you. well and you can generally understand why. in general, he started this tour, and he is a special envoy of the government on the issue of relations with eurasia, and that is why he came here, and to moscow, and to the european capital, in order to express the main opinion, which is the opinion

that an international conference should be convened ... peace with the participation of russia, as the minister of foreign affairs and in general the chief diplomat of china, mr. wang yi, said at this session of the thai people's assembly, china supports the convening of an international peace a conference to which both ukraine and russia will agree, in which all parties will participate on equal rights and have the opportunity. to discuss all peace plans promptly and honestly, all conflicts must end at the negotiating table and the sooner negotiations begin, the sooner peace will come. that is , lihuey came here in order to call on the ukrainian side to participate in the peace conference of russia, although our position is, as

you know, that we hold the conference first... switzerland, and when ukrainian supporters the peace formula will be enough, then , russia is called to the carpet, but china wants to make it so that at the first conference, and not at the second, as we plan, and as our western allies support us in this, we planned for the second conference. .. and we plan to call russia, but china wants it, it seems that russia is not going to either the first, the second conference, or the third, they honestly have this impression, this is how they somehow look at it, to put it mildly, without big admiration, i do not know how the negotiations of the lifvei in moscow ended, but there is such an opinion that after all

, russia would be ready to be invited and to discuss these issues with it, but we are not ready for this, our president said that there is no reason for the aggressor to sit down at the negotiating table, let them withdraw their troops from our territory , and then there will be negotiations, when territorial integrity is established, which means restored. but not now, that is why there is such a formula, let us convince that the formula is the ukrainian formula for peace, it is the best, and we will have many supporters, and then we will call russia and simply set its conditions, such thoughts arise, but lihui , according to the south china morning post, was monitored during his european visit, there he repeated russian narratives in his conversations with his european colleagues, while during

his previous tour, he was much more proactive, can you explain what explains such a change of position in the direction of supporting the russian idea of ​​​​how the war should continue and end? i will tell you honestly that i do not see any change at all positions, both from the beginning and now. china is doing everything in order to achieve its chinese interests, and for and for chinese interests, what they call the conflict or the ukrainian crisis must be ended, because china is stopping in its efforts to make global economic expansion, and the continuation of the war, as they say, it is getting up , they don't see anything that would indicate that it is possible to advance somewhere by military means. and therefore there is no change, they want, they say what they want to hear in moscow. it is me i know, insider information from their

friends, the chinese, they all see moscow as something so crazy that it can start a nuclear war, which china absolutely does not want to even think about . therefore, in russia they say what they want to hear, in fact, in fact, china does not stop trying and thinking, does not stop in order to create a bipolar world, china, united states, and now a lot needs to be done for this, for example, on sessions of the national people's congress, the chinese people's assembly ... litian made a report, where the goal, that is, of the new five, will be 5.5%,

that is, the growth of the economy, and at the same time the military budget, it will be a record, with an increase in everything, everything, everything, and it will reach uah 231 billion, that is... we we are doing everything to strengthen the economy, and we are looking for new productive forces, as xi jinping said last year and now repeated to the lions, and at the same time we are increasing the military budget to be ready for any situation. mr. igor, you said that china is interested in russia's war in ukraine stopping as soon as possible, they they think moscow is not full of reason, and so on, but nevertheless, to drag moscow right away to the first round of any peace negotiations is to actually allow it to continue

the mantra once again, and here mr. vitaly will now remind me that there is denazification, extermination, defication , i’m sorry, please, i can’t twist these words, to be honest, so what, does it give us at least some options for getting out of the situation, that is, china’s desire... according to you, in principle it is understandable and can even very right, but at the same time, what does now the chinese representative does not in any way pave the way for the realization of these wishes, well , they think differently, they think that if you rather bring russia and ukraine to the table, to the table of negotiations, then a process will begin, which will end in peace after all, you you understand, and i tell you once again that it is not necessarily that. what we should perceive as something absolutely true, what diplomatic negotiations are, these are two sides whose positions

i will clearly form. approved on the mountain, trying to make the other side on as a result of the negotiations, she voluntarily gave up her position and took your position, these negotiations are diplomatic, and their purpose is exactly that, that's why he is cunning, he is playing this one, that is , the proposal and looks at the reaction, he will go or not, because otherwise it is impossible to find out, in which direction will it go, that is, the development of events , if... er, it is not done as we would like, you understand, so here we definitely cannot talk about the fact that china is promoting, it is not promoting anything, and turkey is does not promote, turkey also wants russia to take participation in a peace conference, in which i cannot specify, but the narrative is the same, for some reason we believe that it is a russian narrative, nothing like that, russia has its own narratives, and

china has its own, and for him... it is better that this what they call a rat ended as soon as possible and otherwise i'm in the middle of negotiations, sitting the parties, nothing will move and that's it, it's easier, huh, and tell me, do you understand why all this is happening right now, because lihui took a break quite a long time after his last tour, after president zelenskyi's contacts with the head of the people's republic of china , xi jinping, about whom we have almost already... forgotten why this is such an important topic again, well, he is not the one who invents these topics, he received the command and went, there they think that yes , since the phase is coming, or the phase has already come, as they believe, well, in military actions, which do not see any prospects behind them at all, then it is necessary to move the process from its place with this very

negotiation. i cannot speak otherwise, i cannot express our opinion, except what i have already said. and tell me, please, sir igor, there is such information that russia could be preparing, or at least thinking about striking ukraine with nuclear weapons in 2022, and we talked a lot about the fact that it is possible that even china became an additional safeguard, perhaps for the russian federation, so that this don't do is the position of china now decisive for the russian federation in this matter? well, at least i am deeply convinced that russia is significantly dependent on the position of china in all issues, including

international security issues, and they naturally listen to the opinion of the chinese leadership, which has already been expressed several times in various documents, including sidzimpin's march visit to moscow a year ago, where it was clearly stated that it was the insistence of the chinese side that there are no opportunities for the nuclear use of nuclear weapons to begin. .. even in their thoughts, this position has not changed, they are clearly guiding russia to, god forbid, use nuclear weapons, you know that russia has almost 600 nuclear warheads, china has 200 or so, so what? it it is possible to compare, that is why no one in china needs a nuclear threat at all, and

this is an unchanged position. and thank god that they are doing what the whole world is asking to restrain, aggressive plans and threats of nuclear weapons, so that they do not materialize, god forbid, to what extent do you think china can influence russia here? i think very well, he influences and can influence, influence russia, and not only on this issue. and from others those that, for example, were discussed during a briefing for lihuey in the office of the president, the ministry of foreign affairs of affairs, this includes demilitarization, de-occupation of the zaporozhye nuclear power plant, and from the return, that is, of our children from abroad, and the grain corridor and many other things, they, of course, stick to their position, and they

invest in... their position this main meaning.