it is necessary to move on to more familiar problems in one's political life, especially since if one looks at the processes and trends that are taking place in europe and the united states, that is, the right-wing bias, the bias towards conservatism, it means that those politicians who are talking to us now, they are losing influence precisely because the war is not theirs, let's put it this way, not only not theirs, it is an uncomfortable topic that... does not give them dividends in the elections, but the right plays absolutely on this, on the contrary, the opposition plays on this topic and gets more and more places and in parliaments, and in the governments of various countries, well , because people are afraid of war, obviously, yes, especially in europe, in europe people were pacified for 30 years, and now they are trying to prove that war is normal, that one should join the army, that it is necessary to... clean

the weapons, what, what the projectiles need to be released, in germany, for example, perhaps you know that there were cases when communities forbade the construction of weapons, ammunition factories on their territory, although from a pragmatic point of view, these are taxes , these are new jobs, but actually pacifism, it has sunk deep into europe, and this is normal for the 21st century, anyway, we in the 90s of the 20th century thought it was normal when the wall fell and the war. it won't happen anymore, it turns out that we were very wrong, and now it's hard for europeans to realize it too. thank you, mr. mykhailo, mykhailo samos, military expert, director of the new geopolitical research network, expert of the army, conversion and arms research center, was in touch with us. we are going to take a short break now, but please stay with us, there are some interesting dialogues ahead. the journalist who joined the zsu is political expert who became a special agent, taras berezovyts in a new project. on espresso.

the real front is a thorough analysis of the main events. reports, comments of leading specialists and experts. analytics from the major of the armed forces. how to make sense of disturbing news and distinguish truth from hostile propaganda. the real front program with taras berezovets every saturday at 21:30 on espresso. we continue the politclub program on the espresso tv channel. oleksandr kraev, expert of the council of foreign policy ukrainian prisma is in touch with us. congratulations, mr. oleksandr. so, congratulations, good evening to you. well, the summit in switzerland is over, the communique has been signed. president zelenskyy says that a new summit may take place in a few months, and russia will no longer be at this summit and the road to peace will be paved there. but after such statements, the question arises: how, in what way, what has technically changed since the arrival of statesmen at this truly representative summit in switzerland, what does it give?

is it possible to believe that russia will come somewhere, agree to some negotiations and end the war? well, actually, none there are no adequate reasons to consider that. unless the bar for entry to this summit was set so low that almost anyone could join it, because the issue of nuclear security, the issue of prisoner exchange, the issue of food security, these are precisely those three topics that interested everyone as much as possible, and that we saw a rather significant outflow of people after the final communiqué was... rearranged so that there was a mention of respect for territorial integrity and the borders of 1991, i.e. russia initially, here it is worth our to remind the audience that they wanted to involve already after a working group has been set up for each of the nine points, and as soon as these nine working groups can come to an understanding of how to arrange the 10th point, that is, documentary consolidation, the end of aggression and the impossibility of repeating such aggression, and only on this. it was planned

to involve russian representatives, conditionally speaking, putting them in front of the fact, which fact we now want to put the russians in front of, i personally do not have an answer to this question, but really, if we so quickly want to have negotiations with them, if we want to have a second summit quickly enough, then by that time we must have time not only to pass these three points, but to actually fulfill 90% of the agenda, which i do not consider simply possible, well, well, if we even fulfilled 90 % of the agenda, why russian? the ma federation shouldn't have ignored 90% like they will now ignore 30. uh that's a good question and really the only fuse that could make russia react in any way was china and actually in the very beginning like you you remember that during the meeting of advisers in jeddah, even during the meeting of advisers in malta, china showed some interest, and the presence of the chinese in jeddah, in principle, then still gave us hope that in fact everything could return to the right direction, and china will involve countries on a global... level more actively,

and there was a belief that only the presence of china, and its setting for some kind of dialogue, would force russia to come to an agreement at a certain point, however, after scholz's visit to china... when china announced its so-called four points, now that china was not at the summit, i personally do not understand what can make russia look differently at the results of the meeting in switzerland, especially considering what putin said the other day, that it is all profanation, this is an attempt to undermine russian-chinese unity, this is an attempt to generally aggress against russia, as he said there, the western masters of ukraine, his favorite wording, that is, as we want, at the expense of what to attract. at the second summit, i repeat, i simply have no idea, but if we really want to, then we have to work how at least fulfill what was planned before that, but maybe the chinese representative lihui was at a meeting of national security advisers in jiji, maybe he just thought that it was

ukraine that would be ready to change its position, accept the conditions offered by china, there is a freeze , cooling, lack of any guarantees, neutral status, well, then it is possible that china will facilitate such a... conversation, well , they saw that there is nothing like that, that ukraine continues to remain its own in its position, they lost interest, absolutely, and not even the statement of our ministry of foreign affairs helped, saying that there are points in the chinese formula that agree with our vision, and we need to speak further. in fact, the most important question for me, as it seems to me, now arises in this equation between china's own formula, china's attitude to our western vision and china's attitude to the russian vision, because these are three completely different approaches, and although the russian approach it appeals a little to what the chinese were talking about, but it is much more radical, and so far we have not heard or seen the real position of beijing regarding the russian plan, and therefore we cannot understand whether china will be ready

to work with us more, or whether china will be ready to fully support the russian position, although now we see from the supply of weapons that china is possible and ready to support the unspoken russian position, or... will china push the same china-brazil initiative that they wanted to do in the format of a bilateral summit between ukraine and russia in saudi arabia? while china's position remains unclear to us, not yet clear, what interests he will pursue from these three parallel formats, i can only wonder what we should really bet on, perhaps the fact that we are promoting the continuation of the peace formula, the second summit as soon as possible, the inclusion of russia as soon as possible, this is precisely an attempt to show china . that our plan is the only one that is progressing, is the only one that has at least some perspective. maybe ketaifa is interested in such a solution as a simple ceasefire, they don't want anything, they don't talk, let's decide this way and that way, there, recognize donbas as russian, or let russia agree to you joining nato, you

will become neutral, or russia there, let them agree, or your territorial integrity will be ensured by your demilitarization, they simply say: "cease fire." and then talk, indeed, china's position in this regard is very straightforward, but china's position is not actually mentioned, well, in such formulations, neither in our plan, nor in the russian one. before the ceasefire, the russians want the ukrainians to surrender more than a third their territories in general. we want to say that a ceasefire is possible only when we have security guarantees and an understanding that we will be able to liberate the territory in the future. even if the territory is free, we will be able to cement the non-repetition of aggression, and therefore, in this regard, it is just possible to emphasize that negotiations with russia should begin as soon as possible, china will be able to use it to say, well, if you want, as soon as possible, as they said before, let's meet somewhere

in the middle and just stop shooting maybe china will play on this narrative, but i repeat, so far we have not had any hints from the heavenly side, in principle... if we talk about the terms, why was it necessary to hold a summit at the level of the heads of state right now, you understand, expediency, why right now, what were the expectations, maybe something happened, you know, it’s like in the old joke about two political analysts, which i can explain myself, but you understand what is really happening, it seems to me the same here, the explanation is quite, well, let's say so, is built into a logical chain that we need to initiate... a format that will become irreplaceable in the future, as we would like to see, in our positivist thinking, and therefore we need to have the first summit at the level of heads of states, heads of governments, so that everyone can see the importance this, so that as many countries as possible join, work groups are launched, and there, in the future, somewhere in the second,

third, fourth, fifth, sixth summit, we have already reached some kind of vision, that is, this was obviously the logic of our leadership, but did it was expedient to hold such a summit right here and right now, as soon as possible, realizing that china will not be there, realizing that a large part of the countries of the global south refused to participate, realizing that many regional leaders of the global... said literally at the last moment that they are not ready to participate in such a summit. there was obviously no such expediency. that is, the logic is to launch this format and continue to promote it, if you proceed from the very positivist thinking of our management, well, there was such logic, but was there any practical value? well, the practical expediency disappeared the moment china decided that we were out of the way. and in principle, by and large, then why are russia and china so... with this summit, or was the main struggle actually around the very

presence of china? it seems to me that china fought only by the very fact of its absence, it understood that huge bets were placed on it, both in ukraine and in the west, and the global south would turn on it, that is, china constantly understood that it was here kingmaker, just he can decide how successful. there will be one or another initiative, simply because the participation of dozens of other countries depends on his decision, and it depends in principle on understanding how much pressure it will put on russia. therefore, what china did is absolutely understandable. he saw that for him such complex formats and such intricately linked formats with the western view were not suitable, he came up with an alternative opinion, this alternative opinion was not listened to to the extent that china wanted it to be listened to, and china... has decided to focus on this format of the ukrainian peace formula for the time being, and

as for russia, russia mainly, as we saw, pursued an active anti-summit policy and actively promoted the narrative that the summit would fail during the period when it was going to it preparations with the involvement of china, and with the active involvement of india, and with the active involvement of many other partners of russia in the global arena, that is, for russia this issue was more difficult than for china. if china had the opportunity to choose, then russia apparently she was afraid that she might lose her partners, who are still ready to make her diplomacy a handshake and continue to buy russian resources. by the way, about russian resources, a lot of countries came to this summit, i don't know if russia and china wanted them to come, they didn't want them to come, but they didn't stop economic cooperation with moscow because of that, right? obviously they don't stop, obviously some of them, especially the ones that have given up so gently now under... or that have dropped out in the last two days, apparently they can even to increase this cooperation, because

in fact, as lavrov said there, an anti-russian coalition has been formed, and accordingly, everyone who is outside the anti-russian coalition can count on better discounts, they can count on better treatment, they can count on the fact that russia will be ready to pay them own resources on even more favorable terms, so yes, unfortunately for these states, this will not yet in any way block the channels of cooperation with the russians. it must be repeated once again that until a complete ecosystem is formed around the formula of peace, if you give it god, it will turn out so that it will become mutually interesting for all sides of this communication, and not only for us, because we just want it to work, well, until that moment, the countries that traded with russia will still have an interest in trading with russia, because we need to remember that the formula for peace in general, especially its component in terms of food, in terms of new trade networks, in terms of safe trade and so on. it was done with the aim of other countries being ready to talk

about a world without russia, so that other countries, they say, were ready to work with ukraine with the west and not have the same contacts with russia, of course it was such an optimistic view of the situation, but based on these positions, well , so far the peace formula will clearly not bring such a result, and those who wanted to trade with moscow, for now, they can continue to do it completely calmly. in principle, what is more important now? diplomacy or weapons, or not even that, it is clear that weapons are important, how much can diplomacy strengthen weapons realistically in a situation where russia is not looking for diplomacy? well, me it seems that our key diplomacy should now be directed in two directions: the first is constant support, and the actualization, even rather, of ukrainian topics in our western partners, because we see that in the united states, in britain, the pre-election escalation of socio-political, we see that ukraine the topic very often falls out of the general context, and of course, it is important

for us to emphasize that despite the elections, regardless of the peace formula, and everything else, unfortunately, russia still exists, and if there is russia, there are shelling, there are attacks on the civilian population, there is a need to provide weapons to ukraine. and the second big issue is that, unfortunately, we started quite late, literally in the middle of the 23rd year, but what we need to do for sure is the search for non-western allies who... are ready to actively work with us, non-western we are talking geographically, because in principle most of those partners who work with us, say, in the far east, such as south korea, japan, most of our partners from globally heck, they in one way or another consider themselves part of the western coalition, but i repeat, part of the shells, a huge part, even new equipment that can be supplied to us, can now be found in those countries that did not cooperate with us so actively before, so these two directions, the actualization of our issues with old partners and allies, and the search for ways out and

the possibility of cooperation with new partners, it seems to me that this is the only diplomacy that will make sense now. this is the only diplomacy that will allow us to really get to that level arms, resources, and financial support, which will allow us to speak with russia on an equal footing, let's call it that. you don't have to worry, from the official comments i'm seeing, that now holding the peace summit, which can be considered a successful diplomatic action there, will be used to start convincing people again that the end of the war is only a few months away. , wait a few more months, and there will be... a peaceful situation, russia will completely agree, because so many countries oppose it, i already have you can see how it is going, and it reminds me of the story, about two or three weeks in 2022, why can't you honestly tell people that this is a multi-year war with no prospects for a political settlement, so that they at least understand in which country and in which world they live and will live there in the coming years, even if there is an armistice and

an end to the fire, we will not rule it out, because unfortunately, since we do not observe the communication... of the authorities during the war, we see that our authorities, no no knows how to manage expectations, that is, we are not so much talking about narratives that are used, we are not talking about messages that very often do not correspond to the real situation, it is just a real inability to work with the management of expectations, because for some reason it appears to those who form our policy, our information component , that if we convince everyone that everything will be fine and we will keep it up for... a long time, then people will simply have a reduced horizon of planning, people will have a sense of imminent danger, and they say at some point he simply either everything will be even, or everything will become so bad that there will be no need to explain anything. plus, they tried, our government, it is meant, as we saw, to promote this narrative to our western partners, which they say, everything is so cool with us that you can safely give us weapons now, because they say,

we will endure, we will quickly do everything , and then you will not have to give weapons for so long, that is , the calculation goes to convincing everyone to the end that everything is very cool, everything can be solved quickly, and therefore we must be supported, no one wants to honestly say how difficult the situation is, because no one is sure that it will be possible to explain it both to our partners outside and to the population inside, because one way or another, but if we started working on two -three weeks, then coffee in july in yalta, then it continues again for two months, the war will end, if such a course has already been taken, it is very difficult to get off it. will have to tell too much truth, and as you understand, it is always very, very difficult. well, it seems to me that our partners do they understand very well that they are witnesses of a long-term conflict, they said in the 22nd year that if the conflict does not end in six months, at least for 6-8 years, they are acting in this paradigm of supporting ukraine for a long-term perspective? yes, but, but somehow we continue to believe

that we have to convince them that we can finish it quickly. accordingly, if we can finish quickly, then we are so... cool, good, and it is safe to give us any weapon, which they say, if you give it for a short period, we will win quickly, and do not be afraid, that you will have to give it for a long time, you can tell your voters that we will spend a little money, and then this spending of money will end and they say that very soon everything will be as it was before, and it will be possible to think about restoring a normal economy, dealing with inflation and so on further and the like, that is, the fact that our allies understand the state of affairs more realistically is one thing, but the fact that our... do not understand how partners perceive it, or how partners build their strategy, causes not only problems with the management of expectations , but by the way, it causes the same insults that were directed at the americans, it causes a misunderstanding of why european partners, or why the ramstein format gives weapons the way it does, and this already directly affects communication, it already causes such situations when the western press

literally such people come out with predivayyyy that biden and zelensky are dissatisfied with each other and do not want to understand each other. that is, it becomes not only a problem of communication to the outside, it becomes a problem of planning, and it is so embedded in our planning that we need to convince everyone that everything is great, i will repeat, as i said before, i do not know how to get out of this situation normally, because there is too much truth to tell now, it is already a real threat for such communication, and what is too much truth, you can really dose it at the same time, from monday to friday, it is also given in dosage forms, which... on saturday, everyone understood what the real situation looks like in the future, well, what i mean by too much, explain absolutely all punctures, explain absolutely completely. tion and clearly and openly say that this is how we are from the very beginning were mistaken, this is too much truth, it's not just a matter of fact, it's from what time, from the 22nd

year or from the 19th? normally, from the 19th, but let's be realistic, most likely we are already talking about the time of the 22nd, that is, explain why there were such decisions then, why there was no preparation right a month before the invasion, why in some areas , in fruition aspects, this preparation literally broke down, why our... partners did not receive quite the correct communication during that period, why we rejected absolutely obvious things at the time, why at the turn of 22-23 years we accepted such and such decisions, exactly how the counterattack was planned, and many, many more questions. thank you, mr. oleksandr, oleksandr kraev, expert of the foreign policy council of the ukrainian prism, we were in touch, and now we will talk with boris koshniruk, economist, head of the expert council of the ukrainian analytical center, congratulations, mr. boris, congratulations, let's go. let's start with russia, maybe you can explain what will actually happen to the russian economy or not happen in connection with the sanctions against the stock exchange, because

you know that the russian leadership, it tries to pretend that this will not change anything, that the dollar will be determined by the banks themselves, and the central bank will be known by the banks, and the currency system of the russian federation will be in the same state as it was, it is true or false, to a large extent yes, it is necessary to understand that... that the absence of an exchange mechanism for determining the exchange rate is indeed a certain problem, but in our country, for example, the national bank essentially determines the exchange rate manually every day, although formally we have some mechanism for interbank currency trading, but in the meantime in fact, it is determined by the national bank in manual mode, so it is not critical for the russian economy, it will not be critical, although, well, let's say this, spreads widens, which is not certainty, but what's next, it creates a situation when the buying and selling rate, it

will be more significantly different than when it is established during trading on the stock exchange, well , by and large, we can say that this is the beginning of some new type of sanctions or the continuation of those that were, this is the continuation of those that were, that's just, let's say. slow overlapping opportunity for russian economy, but this is a long game, it is also necessary to constantly explain to everyone that all these sanctions will continue to exist for decades after this war ends, and these problems will continue to exist in russia for a very, very long time, and again, i emphasize that the purpose of these sanctions is not so much to stop this war as to weaken russia as much as possible and... to make new aggression impossible, but when it comes to restricting the activities of chinese companies,

let's say that cooperate with russia, to what extent does this affect china itself and russian opportunities to restore the economy with the help of china? in my opinion, binding on one economy is always bad, a priori, and for russia it is undoubtedly an additional problem for china, this is even a certain plus, because a market for chinese products appears, especially in the conditions of growing problems for the chinese economy, therefore , it is not so bad for china in this regard, the other thing is that this sanctions regime, the so-called secondary sanctions against chinese companies, only demonstrates that two global coalitions, aftarks, are essentially being formed. democracy and the direct collision of these auto-tarchies is very, very probably, the autarchy with the democracies or the aftarchy with each other,

unfortunately, at least at the first stage of the autarky with the democracies, if they succeed, well, remember germany and the soviet union, and at first they divided their spheres of influence and so on, and then... have already collided with each other directly, in principle, if we talk about such a collision, to what extent can china afford such a direct conflict with the west, given its economic dependence on western markets almost to the maximum? do you understand if you take it, well, look for logic, then under any circumstances a confrontation is disadvantageous for china, a war, and a long war is always a minus game, it has never played a plus... but the problem is that the logic of dictators, who rule auto-tarchies, they have a completely different logic, and they very often... and

they actually project their ideas about the world onto life, which can be completely different, and this, again , there were many such examples in history, as it would look like the ukrainian economy after these strikes on the energy infrastructure, as far as in principle, it can be assumed that production can exist at the same level and work with the same with the same profitability in different conditions. due to the lack of electricity, increased tariffs, this will undoubtedly create additional problems, we will now see that a larger number of nuclear power units will be forced to be put on technical preventive maintenance, and the summer one in order to be able to work effectively in the winter, and i this thesis already said, i don't want to scare anyone

with it, but i don't rule it out... that's crazy the russians may come to the point that they will begin to strike at nuclear plants, and i emphasize, they cannot cause a nuclear catastrophe by doing so, and that is where the nuclear fallout is located, it is located in very protected zones, confiments, which are simply by missiles or an airplane it is impossible to destroy there, but to significantly damage the equipment involved in the production of gears. electricity, it is possible, and in this case the situation may be even worse than it is now. this is why we talk all the time about nuclear safety, i understand international, no, we are not talking about nuclear security so much about strikes on nuclear plants, as about these constant mantras of russia that it can use nuclear weapons, because although, again, history, including

the only ... case, when it was used by japan, a blow to the neck, nagasaki, well, it is known that they did not lead to the fact that japan surrendered, the surrender of japan was a consequence of the fact that the soviet union , despite the agreement with japan, started a war, occupied a significant territory in majura, and accordingly, the japanese army simply could not to begin after this and after that they already announced the capitulation, what is the general state of the economy in ukraine today, so what, what to do with the current ukrainian economy, well , you know, how to start and finish there, there is a lot to say, it is obvious that first of all there should be mechanisms have been created that would stimulate the work of small and medium-sized

businesses, because large businesses... are largely in worse conditions, because they are hit more often, in this regard, small and medium-sized businesses are less dependent on such attacks, but on the other hand for for conditions need to be created for it, and some kind of adequate and transparent and honest conversation with society regarding mobilization and economic reservation is definitely needed. business cannot function in conditions of paralyzing uncertainty, when they do not know who and how they can join the armed forces, and they will do it completely by accident, this undoubtedly creates big problems, there is the issue of the completely inadequate monetary policy of the national bank, extremely opaque, corruptible, and it also creates problems

for business. to determine what he should do, what will happen to the exchange rate, because it is actually determined manually by the national bank, what it does with interest rates, and how it stimulates crediting even in war conditions, it kills this sphere with its policy of the sooner rather than later, and so on, that is, the question of what is needed to do more than enough is another matter, which i do not expect at the current level of professionalism and ethics and ee... i don't know what experience and so on, those who are currently in power, they are able to do it effectively . and there is understanding in general, the real economic condition of those who manage the ukrainian economy today? i think not, well, because this is the so-called dunning kruger effect, that is, people, due to their incompetence, do not realize that they are not, that they are not...