this is bbc news. the headlines: ukraine says continued russian shelling is still stopping rescue workers reaching the theatre in mariupol targeted last wednesday. they say hundreds of people are trapped in the theatre�*s bomb shelter. there are reports that food and water shortages mean children are starving to death. ukraine says its troops have managed to stop russian soldiers advancing on the port city of odesa. heavy fighting is continuing in many parts of the country. united nations head antonio guterres has appealed for an end to the war, warning it's becoming more unpredictable by the hour. the us has condemned what it called russia's orchestration of a sham trial against the kremlin critic, alexei navalny. his prison sentence was extended to nine years after he was found guilty of fraud and contempt of court.

he's widely regarded as the country's most prominent opposition figure. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm sarah montague. 30 years ago, the soviet union collapsed and communist governments fell across eastern europe. liberal democracy appeared to have won the cold war and triumphed in the battle of ideas. my guest, the renowned political scientist francis fukuyama, posed a question — if humanity had arrived at the most effective form of government, were we at the end of history? well, in the years since, liberal democracy has often seemed in retreat. but when russia invaded ukraine, the whole world changed again. francis fukuyama is convinced that president putin has

miscalculated and is heading for outright defeat. what does that mean for the course of history and the progress of liberal democracy? francis fukuyama, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. now, you have said that russia is heading for outright defeat in ukraine. why do you think russia is going to lose? well, i don't know that it's going to lose. i'm pretty sure that it's not going to win. putin had hoped for a 48—hour rush to kyiv. he would overthrow the democratically elected

zelensky regime, put in a puppet. that's not going to happen. and i think at this point, three weeks into the war, even if he manages to take kyiv, which i don't think he will, he can't subdue a nation of more than a0 million people with the forces that he has. he's mobilised the entire ukrainian nation against him. and i think that in that respect, he's really lost because his expectation was ukraine would collapse, they'd be happy to be liberated and join russia. it's simply not going to happen. ok, but we have seen a change in the firepower being used, and he has immense amounts of quantities of weaponry. surely, russia could dominate militarily? well, it gets into a kind of technical discussion, but they have a hard time supplying their own forces. the morale it appears in the russian army is extremely low.

half of them are abandoning their vehicles rather than standing and fighting. so i do think that there is a fighting chance that the ukrainians could actually force a withdrawal of the russian army and impose a pretty humiliating military defeat. and there is a chance, though, backed into a corner, that president putin could ramp up the weapons he's using, whether it's chemical or even nuclear. the nuclear part, i think, would be so suicidal. and i don't, you know, he... we can't exclude anything that he might do, but i really doubt that that will happen. chemical weapons, unfortunately, may be more plausible, but militarily, i don't think that's actually going to buy him very much, and he's actually committed the larger part of the entire russian military to this operation. so it's not like he's got infinite reserves that he can keep pouring into this battle. 0k, you've described this as a criticaljuncture in world history, and if russia is defeated,

it could lead to a new birth of freedom, which paints a picture of what i imagine you consider a very positive goal. i wonder then what you think about the west sitting by, if this fight is so important? how do you feel about the fact that the west has been united, yes, on sanctions, supplying arms, but not going any further? well, i think that's probably prudent. i think a no—fly zone or some of the other interventions that have been suggested would require directly attacking russian forces on russian territory. and i think there are enough uncertainties and dangers to escalation that that's probably a prudent position. i wouldn't exclude it in the future, if the humanitarian catastrophe continues, if the thing really gets completely stalemated, it may be necessary to do that. but i think at the moment, the ukrainians are doing so much better than anybody expected at the start of the war that, you know, it's probably prudent to wait.

does it not feel uncomfortable to you? because i mean, it's a bit like if the big guy in the playground is picking on the little guy... sure. ..and everybody else is just standing around, saying, "we really want you to beat him, but actually, "you know, we're not going to get involved." so i have a lot of ukrainian friends and that's exactly the argument that they're making. and i accept that. i mean, in a way, the ukrainians are bearing a fight notjust for their own sovereignty, but it's really a fight over, you know, liberal democracy in the west as a whole, because russia will pick on other countries, if, you know, ukraine falls. and so they are fighting on behalf of all of us. and i do think that, you know, we have a — we have a debt to them. exactly what the level of support that entails is, you know, to me, is an open question. and i don't rule out, you know, direct participation in this war. i just think that the dangers of that

are fairly great at the moment. what are the arguments against it? i mean, the arguments, because there is...sometimes it can feel that the west is hiding behind nato, being a defensive alliance and, therefore, mustn't do anything. well, i think the danger is that the war will spread to other parts of europe that, you know, we start attacking russian forces in russia. they start attacking our lines of resupply, they start attacking targets in poland and romania. there are plenty of ways short of nuclear weapons that this war could become a general european war. it's just that if — if they can't beat the ukrainians, one would have thought it might shorten the war and save some ukrainians if the west did get involved. well, you know, that's a calculation we may make, but wars never go the way that you expect them to. you're fairly confident, though, that this is, that in effect, russia is not going to win. yeah. does that mean president putin is ousted? no, it doesn't. but i do think that

if he's forced into some kind of a humiliating political retreat or, you know, an actual military retreat, it's going to be very hard for him. his whole persona is one of a strongman, and if a strongman isn't strong and actually, you know, faces defeat, i think that, you know, it's possible that somebody in that elite is going to move against him. 0k, and he'd be replaced by what? in this world that you envisage where the criticaljuncture, where russia doesn't win president putin is weakened, what happens to him or who is he replaced by? well, it's hard to imagine that there's going to be another right—wing dictator waiting in the wings that's going to be worse than him because he's got unlimited ambitions and he's been willing to use the most brutal means to do that. i think that, you know, if he is removed, they're going to come to some kind of a peace settlement that

will involve a withdrawal. but, you know, we don't know. i mean, it's impossible to predict that sort of thing, but i doubt it's going to be worse. and in the process of this war being fought, do you think ukraine should engage with, consider the options on the table when they're in the negotiations? i don't think that any solution that is envisaged right now is possible, leaving the russians in control of the donbas or crimea. basically, if you accepted that as a condition for ending the war, you would be rewarding putin for having basically destroyed much of your country. and i just don't think that that would be acceptable to the ukrainians at any point now. nor would a russian ceasefire, really, given how much they've lost, be acceptable. so i really don't think a diplomatic so—called off ramp is really possible now until things change on the ground.

so you think we should — the world should steel itself to watch this continued bombardment of ukrainian cities and ukraine holding out? i, you know, my hope is that actually the russian position could weaken substantially in the next coming days, in, you know, week or so. but, like i said, i'm open to a more serious involvement, if, you know, if that doesn't happen. right and the rest of the world, this critical juncture in world history with a new birth of freedom — what does what we are watching mean for the rest of the world? i think it has big implications. putin's russia is at the centre of a broad, authoritarian alliance. the other big power waiting in the wings is obviously china. but, you know, there are many other countries. there's syria, there's iran, there's venezuela, there's nicaragua. there are many countries that have turned to authoritarian government and they've gotten direct support from russia in their efforts to, you know,

spread dictatorship. and so, even if putin is forced to back down, it's not the end of the struggle. i think the world has ceased to be divided between the old left and right of the 20th century. and it really is a struggle between countries that really take seriously liberal democracy and those that, you know, are eager to spread authoritarian government. but however this plays out, are you confident that this has undermined populists? it's weakened them. you know, if you look around the world, marine le pen, eric zemmour donald trump, viktor orban, a lot of the leaders of these populists, these new populist movements all expressed sympathy for putin at some point, you know, some earlier point, and many of them have been forced to retreat from that because it's obviously, you know, just a very cruel and kind of absurd position to take,

in light of what people can see, you know, through their own eyes on their television screens. so, i think it has imposed a kind of moral clarity on the world where people could imagine that putin was just a nationalist like them, but, you know, still basically not that terrible a person and now i think they see the direction this kind of populist politics is leading. ok, let's talk about that moral clarity that you talk about, because 30 years ago, you said western liberalism had triumphed over all its ideological competitors and would end up as the single form of government over the long term. in your latest book, liberalism and its discontents, you recognise and analyse why liberalism has been in retreat. do you think what we are seeing now is effectively a correction to that retreat and will restore faith in liberalism, reinvigorate it? if the optimistic scenario materialises, if putin is forced

to back down, yes, i think it will help. i think that, you know, the problem with our faith in liberal democracy is in a way we've gotten too comfortable and really complacent since the fall of communism in 1991, we've gotten used to peace and prosperity, and so we've forgotten what real tyranny is like, what real military aggression is like, and i think the reaction of the western democracies and the nato alliance has been, you know, nothing short of remarkable. i mean, especially in germany, which had been the, you know, the country most sympathetic to russia that, you know, was the, in a way, the weak point of the western alliance. their transformation has been nothing short of miraculous after this russian aggression. and so i do think that the solidarity within the nato alliance has really been revived to an extent that we've really not

seen since the cold war. you're saying it's a good thing, but part of the end of history idea was that force would no longer be appropriate or needed and this has shown how wrong that was. well, yes, that's. .. just to be fair, i never said that history was somehow this automatic mechanism that went on despite the actions of, you know, individuals, we still have human agency and i think it's pretty clear that if people don't believe in liberal democracy, if they don't fight for it, if they don't constantly struggle for it, it's not going to happen. and that's, i think, a useful reminder to everybody. ok, so germany spending 2% of gdp on defence is a good thing... it's a good thing, definitely. ..because it's defending liberal democracy. when you talk about what this will all mean for populists, um... nicholas farrell in the spectator writes that, "the war puts the raison d'etre of most european right wing

"populists, the defence of the nation state "and national sovereignty back at the top of the political "agenda, exposes the dishonesty of automatically branding such "parties as anti—immigrant or anti—refugee." poland, of course, governed by the nationalist law and justice party, has taken in 1.9 million ukrainian refugees, more than the rest of the world put together. i mean, it does — some would argue — vindicate and presage a rise in nationalism as a result of what we're seeing. would you accept that? uh, so, first of all, nationalism can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. we've seen the bad effects in russian nationalism because their national identity is somehow inseparably connected to dominating all of their weaker neighbours. but there's another concept of nation that isn't inherently aggressive and it's not inherently exclusive, and it is compatible with liberal values and i think that that's the kind of national identity that a modern democracy really

needs to cultivate. and i think one of the weaknesses of liberalism is the universalism. i mean, you know, the lack of comfort with the idea of a nation, but there is a liberal nation possible and that really has to be the core. it's that idea that there's no cohesive idea to bind a group together when you're focusing on the individual, but you're talking in defence of poland being a liberal nation? yes, i would love poland to be a truly liberal nation. and the reason that it wasn't, or it was heading in the wrong direction was that the law and justice party was eroding the rule of law. it was manipulating its own judiciary. and, you know, frankly, it was willing to take in, you know, white ukrainians, but not so happy with people from the middle east. and, you know, it's, ithink, that kind of hypocrisy

that is still there. and, you know, we'll come to the fore once the immediate ukrainian crisis subsides. ok, well, you were putting it in the past tense as if they're not like that... no, they are. no, they continue to be. but, look, i mean, anyone that's doing what they're doing to accommodate these ukrainian refugees has my support right now. it's a matter of timing. ok, so nationalists? yes. not liberal democrats, but... but better than some of the alternatives. well, you have to, you know, you have to take what you can get, right? right. there is something, though, and it was another argument put by the writer ross douthat, which is that people disapproving... we're talking about the disapproval of polish nationalisms. and yet it does suddenly seem this crucial bulwark for the liberal democratic west. i mean, is that something you're accepting of, that, actually... oh, yeah, of course. look, you can't have democracyjust as an abstract

point of reference. democracy has to be embedded in an actual nation. that's what people fight for. and so they're always fighting for some combination of an ideal, you know, of a just form of government. but they're also fighting for their countrymen and for, you know, the place that they know and have grown up in and you do need, i think, that combination of both the idea, but the actual embodiment of that idea in, you know, in a place with fellow citizens. so, you know, we act out of a combination of these motives all the time. 0k. so, somebody who has sounded approving of what president putin has been doing is former us president donald trump. he admired president putin, describing him as a guy who's very "savvy" and he described the interference in ukraine as a "genius move". this was at the outset. now, how do you reconcile his

election and his possible future re—election, of course, with your claim that liberal democracy is the most efficient form of government and ultimately will win out? well, you know, that's probably been the most disappointing development, you know, in recent years. i mean, i had really thought that the american people could make a mistake, but that they would correct that pretty quickly because they had a basic commitment to democratic values. and i think that one of the things we've seen is that under the influence of a very clever demagogue like donald trump, a lot of americans can be, you know, bamboozled into believing a lot of things that simply are not true. i mean, something like 70% of republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen. it's based on a total lie. and yet, because of the, you know, the pull of a charismatic demagogue like trump, that's where they are. so, you know, they don't make great choices... there will always be

the pull of a demagogue, of demagogues, won't there? well, yes. so the other thing i guess to say is that, you know, in a way, that's the wisdom of the american founding fathers. you don't rely on simply having good leaders. you have a system of checks and balances that limit the power of anybody that's elected, even if they are legitimately elected. and that's why, you know, having an independent judiciary, that's why having a free media, that's why having a, you know, a separately elected legislature, you know, are important components of a true constitutional system. and i think that while trump was in office, he couldn't do a lot of the things — like build a wall against mexico — that he wanted to do because we do have these checks and balances.

so i do think that, you know, in a way, it does show the strength of that kind of institutional system that, again, is not dependent on simply having good leaders, but also limits power so that, regardless of who's elected, there are limits to what they can do. do you think he'll be the next republican candidate? i honestly don't know. i sure hope not. i think that it's possible that by the time we get to 2024, he's going to be old news. but i must say i don't really see an alternative to him at the moment. in your book, liberalism and its discontents, you address some of the challenges facing liberal democracy. some of them from within countries... we've talked about this challenge of no cohesive idea. another is that of identity politics, which you sort of dive into. but there are... there are groups that are marginalised, oppressed, abused within liberal democracies. and identity politics is an understandable reaction to that. so do you recognise that sort of there are groups who have a case?

oh, of course. look, there's really two forms of identity politics, so the form of it that i think is completely supportable is when identity politics is the fulfilment of liberal ideals. you know, liberalism is based on a notion of universal human equality that we all have a moral core that gives us dignity that needs to be respected by governments. and, you know, in many forms, you know, martin luther king to begin with, you know, that was their understanding that he wanted african—americans to share in the rights that all americans had. there's another form of identity politics that basically challenges that liberal notion. it basically says that our lived experiences are so different from one another that they're basically not commensurate with one another and therefore we can't treat people as individuals, we have to look first to what group they're born into and then, you know, deal with them as a group.

and i think that that's fundamentally not liberal. i mean, you end up, you know, in the best of circumstances... but how do you counter that? because you deal with trying to remedy some of these things, that, you know, those who should be not complacent in campaigning for liberal democracies need to do things. how do you challenge? well, you challenge it by pointing out that it challenges other fundamental liberal principles. for example, you know, a lot of our identity politics in the united states has really interfered with freedom of speech, especially in elite institutions like universities or in the arts, you know, there are certain things you simply can't say because they contradict certain ideas of social justice, there are issues of due process that, you know, that get interfered with that, you know, is a product of this kind of identity politics. so with each one of these, i think it's important to defend liberal ideals and say, you know, the social

justice claims are correct up to a certain point, but they can't interfere with these other ideals. and in our discussion we have not talked about china. in your...what you are hoping is a sort of reinvigoration of liberal democracy, do you want the rest of the world, the west, to get tougher on china? i think that china, since 2013, when xi jinping took over, has been shifting from a kind of ordinary authoritarian state to essentially a totalitarian one in which the chinese communist party wants to control basically the most minute aspects of their citizens�* behaviour. and they've been projecting their power outwards. they're not as risk prone as putin is. but that challenge is going to come.

it's going to come against taiwan and, you know, other parts of asia in the first instance, and we have to be ready for that. francis fukuyama, thank you very much for coming on hardtalk. thank you very much for having me. hello there. at this time of year, warm days are often followed by decidedly chilly nights. and tuesday was certainly a warm day, with temperatures in northwest wales getting close to 21 degrees, the warmest day of the year so far. plenty of other places not too far behind. but as soon as the sun went down, the temperatures followed. it has been turning quite chilly out there. high pressure still close by on wednesday. it stays mostly dry, but with those clear skies overhead, quite a chilly start to the morning, with temperatures down around freezing, below freezing in a few places.

one or two early fog patches around as well. they should tend to lift and clear by the middle part of the morning. and then it is another beautiful spring day, with lengthy spells of sunshine. the vast majority will stay dry. there's just a small chance of one or two showers popping up in northeast scotland and maybe across eastern counties of england. not as breezy as it was on tuesday across western areas and every bit as warm. top temperatures between 16 and 20, maybe 21 degrees. but as we head through wednesday night, again, the sun goes down, the orange colours drain away from the map, replaced by blues and greens, with temperatures again dropping down to around freezing. those are the values for the towns and the cities. out in the countryside, i think there will be a touch of frost, and again potentially some fog patches on thursday morning. now, england and wales will once again have a mostly sunny day, with just the odd rogue shower. for scotland and northern ireland, expect more cloud creeping in from the northwest, with some spots of light

rain and drizzle. top temperatures through thursday between 16 and 19 degrees in most places. now, for friday, again, the further north you are, there will be a bit more in the way of cloud. some rain for the northern isles. further south, more in the way of sunshine, a bit more of a breeze through the english channel at this stage, and temperatures maybe down just a fraction but still getting up to between 15 and 19 degrees. and then we head into weekend, and some of that cloud in the north associated with a weak frontal system will try to work a little further southwards, but high pressure continues to hold firm, so despite that extra cloud and the greater chance of a bit of fog, it is going to stay fine and dry with some spells of sunshine. into next week, though, we develop a northerly wind. it'll start to feel quite a lot colder and there could even be some wintry showers.

this is bbc news, with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm sally bundock. gunfire. as ukrainian troops apparently reclaim lost ground, we report from the small town that's facing the might of the russian forces, and pushing them back. this war is only a few weeks old and the russians will almost certainly be back with more soldiers and a lot more firepower. nothing left but the ruins. ukraine says russian air strikes are turning the besieged port of mariupol to dust.survivors tell of children starving to death. the women's world number one, australia's ash barty, says she's hanging up her tennis racket.

we'll have the latest from sydney.