[000:00:00;00] but no, he promises to provide us with challenger-2 heavy tanks, although in small quantities so far, the united states has agreed to supply us with bradley infantry fighting vehicles and, accordingly, olafshol is the one who keeps his finger on the extremely important case, so to speak, because the main european tank is the leopard-2. at the beginning partially touched on this issue, saying that schulz is under enormous pressure from the rest of nato countries, his defense minister and all of germany rammstein felt what the chancellor felt in davos. i think that this pressure will be enough. i believe that germany will agree to the transfer of leopard tanks and other weapons to ukraine yesterday i was really amazed when i watched the news from the world economic forum in davos and heard statements about the continued support of ukraine by european leaders from whom i

expected it, the belgian prime minister , for example, after all, all belgian the news says that we will be with ukraine until the end , the spanish prime minister said the same thing in washington two days ago, the prime minister of the netherlands marrutte had a meeting with president biden a few days ago and also spoke to the atlantic council, where i was once a senior researcher and when he was asked whether you think that the time may come when the west and europe will not want to supply weapons to ukraine and we will get tired of ukraine , he said that this will not happen, that we must continue and we will continue because if we don't stop putin now his hand will reach us i think olafsholt also understands this but he is having a hard time maintaining political balance within german politics under so he is trying to find

a way to move forward and now is the moment when he has to tell his coalition partners that we can no longer withstand the pressure, we have to do the right thing , the green party and its foreign minister are already advocating for more weapons in ukraine, and i think that there has been a big change in germany's mind because at the beginning of the war they talked about we feel guilty before the russians for some deaths caused by the nazi regime. now, as far as i'm concerned, the debate has changed and the germans realize that if you compare ukrainians and russians, what's on the soul the population suffered most of the suffering caused by the nazis during the second world war, ukrainians, not russians, therefore scholz will not be able to resist more and we will see leopards who will arrive in ukraine soon after the meeting in rammstein , an extremely important meeting took place between the main

leading generals, the commander of luzhny and marko mili who heads the joint committee of the american staff, the meeting took place in poland, we know very little about the specifics of this meeting, but what do you think it could mean? this is an amazing symbolic meeting if not to say. let's recall the beginning of the russian invasion, how everyone was careful about the signals, wanting to make it clear that putin should not claim that nato is somehow an adversary of russia in this war. this was partly due to fears that putin could escalate the conflict and apply nuclear weapons and partly with the fact that if it looks like nato is really at war with russia, then putin will have more reason to claim that he had no choice but to invade

ukraine. let's talk. so, at the beginning of the war, such a meeting between the military leaders of the usa, poland and ukraine was truly politically unthinkable. now it is happening and demonstrates that, in particular, the military leadership of these two large nato countries and ukraine is coordinating their actions operationally and in terms of intelligence exchange. and now and in plans for more and more lethal weapons such as the himers, which the us has provided as patriot leopard systems, which i hope are already on the horizon. so this is a very important meeting and it sends a wide range of political signals, the biggest of which is that, putin, you decided to fight with nato - this is what you did and what is happening now, we in nato are not going to declare war, but we are going to make you suffer and guarantee that your military will not defeat the ukrainians, that is, as far as i

understand the united states has already ceased to be afraid of the so-called nuclear war, we understand that in any incomprehensible situation, putin, either personally or with the help of medvedev or patrushev or some other representatives of his , began to voice the scenarios of the so-called of nuclear armageddon hinting that it could happen and accordingly something must have happened whether in the mind of the united states or in the united states in washington they learned some extremely important points because there is a feeling that america is already ready to cross the so -called russian red lines because russia was crossing any red lines established by the geneva conventions , christianity, and common sense washington repeatedly crossed many of the red lines announced by putin, this was also

the case with heimers, now in the patriot system there were also other anti-ship missiles provided by great britain, denmark, turkey provided deadly drones without giving up the opportunity to be a mediator, all those red lines were being violated in front of putin , contrary to his nuclear threats that if nato were to be involved in the conflict, the war would pass to the nuclear level, this did not happen and will not will happen because, in my opinion, putin received very clear signals from these calls from the rendering of fashion from washington and from the head of mr. bill burns, for whom i worked for many years in the state department, ambassador burns, the former ambassador to moscow. as far as i understand, he made it very clear that if putin moves to nuclear escalation by symbolically detonating at least one warhead on the battlefield , there will be an intense human response from the united states that will destroy the russian military on the territory

of ukraine, and therefore i think that washington's response as well as china, india and all nato allies made it clear to putin that there is no point in nuclear escalation because it will only accelerate the defeat of the russian military on the battlefield in ukraine. what will happen in the future, who knows. i mean, putin likes to say that if a russian ship sinks, he can drag the whole world down with him, but this is completely irrational, and president putin is not irrational, he very carefully calculates all his steps, he tries to cause ukraine and europe more pain than they are ready to endure, but he will never succeed because ukraine will never surrender and he will never have a reason to use nuclear weapons because russian territory will never

be under threat, mr. embassy of the peace reform, ukraine presented it at many world events platforms, in particular, and at the g-7 summit, the peace formula. yes, we understand that this is a completely logical and normal formula and it is generally accepted by probably the entire western civilization, but there is one extremely important point: russia does not recognize not only the peace formula, but russia is not ready to lead, so to speak these or other quite understandable negotiations, in particular, are about the withdrawal of its occupation contingents, as you and i have repeatedly said , military strategies agree with us, war is the same policy, only with other means of war end with a certain political result or continue, i.e., military force is used to achieve political goals. until now, putin in his rhetoric has not grasped what russia's demands are, because

they were unrealistic from the very beginning. he just wanted to attack ukraine. do you remember that among the initial demands was for nato to essentially withdraw the entry of the eastern european members who joined after the cold war and withdraw their troops . putin knew that nato and the usa would never agree to this, so he used such a political position to justify its military actions, which were then aimed at achieving political goals, namely the liquidation of the sovereignty and independence of ukraine, a year ago in march, negotiations were held with the mediation of turkey , a compromise supported by ukraine was already on the table, which consisted in the fact that russia withdraws its troops from the territory of the captured after february 24, ukraine remains neutral and does not join nato , and only in the future will the question

of the political and legal status of crimea and donbas be raised. putin rejected this formula because he wanted to use military force to achieve greater success on the battlefield, to strengthen his political position in negotiations, and he lost thanks to ukraine's amazing counteroffensive in kharkiv and then in the south in kherson in september, now ukraine is winning and it is clearly impossible a military victory for russia. therefore , now ukraine's demands are more aggressive and they all make sense for ukraine but for putin they are still politically unacceptable and if russia accepts ukraine's demands for negotiations it will mean that it recognizes its complete defeat, so he will never do it until he is completely defeated on the battlefield. putin is not ready for real negotiations, because he still hopes that if he throws

hundreds of thousands of new unfortunate conscripts into the furnace of war after the next phase of mobilization, europe and the united states will tire sooner or later to support ukraine and then, in his opinion, the russian military will start winning again. and then it will be possible to conduct negotiations about his political goals from favorable positions for him, so only then , god forbid, it will happen, but this will not happen will happen or when it will reach putin that he has lost in the military plan, only then will he go to serious negotiations and i think that this day is near dear mr. ambassador china in davos president zelensky's wife olena zelenska conveyed a message to xi jinping, in particular, it is about the activation , perhaps in the future, of the chinese of the people 's republic, so beijing, as far as we understand , is not eager to support the russian federation, but the question is to what extent it will be ready, so to speak, to limit

the various assistance as china wants to play it is difficult to say from the point of view of the harsh reality of the political perspective china is satisfied that the war will continue for some time he rhetorically supports russia by accusing the united states of expanding nato and justifying the russian invasion of ukraine i think that the chinese leadership does not like that ukraine is suffering so much that the russian troops are doing war crimes and we know for sure that he is most worried about the fact that putin can really resort to the use of nuclear weapons for china as well, but until putin has crossed this threshold, i think that xijin-pin has already calculated that the continuation of the war is beneficial to china because both the usa and europe are now occupied with ukraine. what affects their economies, but as we saw with the example of the zero-covid policy, all timpin can turn its course by 180° when

something dramatic happens, for example nationwide protests against him and against his policy of zero code, so the more ukraine succeeds on the battlefield and the stronger the unity of the transatlantic community and its allies in australia and japan remains, the more likely china will begin to retreat from its support for russia and express a desire to switch to the side of those who will win due to the restructuring of geopolitical power and russia can no longer be considered a great power china will want to take advantage of the new economic opportunities that will appear as a result of this so everything depends on the victory of ukraine on the battlefield and precisely this is the direction events are moving now, well, mr. ambassador, if we are talking about china, we cannot ignore another extremely important player, we are talking about turkey

, we are talking about the president, mr. president erdogan is trying to maintain the so-called constructiveness in communication with the kremlin and he, perhaps not the only one, succeeds in this. what will be the real non-declarative policy of turkey regarding the russian-ukrainian war? we in nato talk about turkey as a bridge between east and west, and this is exactly the role of turkey. in relation to russia and ukraine , this ability to be a bridge between east and west is one of the factors that makes turkey so important geostrategically for the transatlantic community erdogan policy is much more transactional and not collective from the point of view of security. his approach to nato is that they support nato and therefore support nato friends by getting something in return f transactional way. that is, it resembles the foreign policy of donald trump, although

unlike trump, erdoğan really values ​​nato and values ​​its strategic importance for turkey, quality, strategic importance of turkey for nato, and for those of us who were brought up in nato during the cold war , our thinking has always been based on the idea of ​​one for all and all for one, we are a community values, we protect democratic and economic freedoms and we must be on the side of what is morally right, erdoğan agrees with this and still emphasizes his difficult neighboring situation, saying , look at our borders, here is a series of iraq , the south caucasus, and across the black sea , russia and ukraine therefore, our approach is somewhat different , the turks fought russia like no other since the ottoman empire, we have so many economic relationships we want to be

a valuable mediator because we are against war, this position is very similar to the german one and as we already they said earlier, there was a lot of pressure on germany to change its course and fully support ukraine, but in the case of turkey, we heard how president zelensky himself welcomed the mediation of president erdogan, in particular, when concluding the grain agreement , when putin was also grateful. i think that the moment will come, although not now when russia will finally be ready for real negotiations and all of nato will welcome the ability of erdogan or any other turkish leader at that moment to be a mediator and therefore to conduct an open dialogue both with ukraine and with russia, i will remind you that for it is also very good for the alliance that the nato member countries play such an important role, and because of this , putin's vile is going over the top. putin is trying to drive a wedge between turkey and

the rest of nato and bring it closer to russia, but he does not succeed because turkey provided ukraine with critical military aid . throughout the war in the form of drones , the rector also rhetorically supported ukraine and was steadfast in constantly and consistently condemning russia's invasion of ukraine and also condemning the violation of ukraine's territorial integrity. constantly condemns the occupation and annexation of crimea and calls on ukraine to become a member of nato children not to mention the closure of the turkish straits for russian warships that are not based in the black sea of ​​course it would be better if turkey under the leadership of murdogan fully supported all sanctions against russia, but i must say that they appreciate the net benefit of supporting turkey which is obvious turkey is definitely in the camp

of ukraine but i also see value in maintaining a line of communication with russia if it hurts i would not like to admit it as far as i understand the system of rationality that works in the west does not work, to put it mildly, regarding assessments of what is happening in putin's head, i am not a psychiatrist , i cannot diagnose his next steps , but we see that he is trying to adhere to his old stalinist line, perhaps, but this is a question of how far and to what extent he will go in this direction for a long time. i am also not a psychiatrist. i think that putin's goals regarding this terrible invasion and aggressive war have changed. now his main goal is probably to survive the physical and political two sides of the same coin and all this thanks to the amazing courage and efficiency of the ukrainian

military and the national determination of the entire population of ukraine putin received terrible advice from his secret services at the beginning of the war he thought he could achieve a quick victory by capturing kyiv and beheading the government instead he failed completely and now he is stuck in this war of attrition that he cannot win and if he cannot win it, then the end is near many analysts in washington have begun to say and write what they consider the probability that the entire russian federation will collapse will happen, but the debate in washington has changed dramatically for the better, they said something like oh, we will not provoke putin to escalate this war and he can use nuclear weapons and then even attack nato territory, and now russia will collapse as

a result of this failed wars, so i think that putin's goal in this war is to survive. for this , he hopes that if a sufficient number of russian soldiers are thrown into battle, and even if tens and hundreds of thousands die, this will not matter because in the end many ukrainians will die, the economy will suffer, the civilian population will not be able to take it anymore and ukraine will finally capitulate putin thinks he will find a way to declare victory, but this will not happen thanks to the military victory of ukraine and the solidarity of its friends and allies, we will see that putin will have to to adjust their goals and i assume that in the end he will say something like okay, we really won, we showed the west that we are not going to just stand by and let them take ukraine from us, we

destroyed the nazis, whoever putin thinks they are in ukraine, we rubbed the west of the nose and held some territory, whatever tiny piece of ukraine he talked about, passing it off as a victory , and then he will move on if you live and think about how to return to ukraine in another way in the future, but he will not succeed because russia will be incredibly weak at the end of its fiasco in this war. and in the united states, and in particular, in the headquarters of nato , they understand what is happening in reality on the territory of russia, in particular, it is about the formation of their military groups. and that what is happening in the kremlin, plus or minus , they have accurate information, i do not have access to secret information that we previously had, but judging by the recordings of the conversations of russian soldiers on the battlefield when they call their families or talk to their comrades, i believe that in the headquarters nato and washington have a deep understanding of the terrible

morale of the russian military and the fact that even the wagnerites complain that they are used as cannon fodder or that if they take a step back they get a bullet in the back as in the time of stalin, everyone knows this, we constantly hear about it in the media, and based on my previous experience working for the government , there is no doubt that the usa and its nato allies know much more about what is happening in the russian army, what is happening inside the kremlin is much more difficult to understand because it is not easy to intercept relevant messages, it is not easy to penetrate the inner circles at the highest levels of any government, and even more so the russian one, through espionage through agents who can visit and transmit

information, but it is definitely easy to understand under what kind of pressure is putin under now, i myself hear from my own environment that now even at the level of ministers in russia, not to mention the oligarchs , there is deep resentment against putin putin, you have ruined our lives we will never be able to live like this, we lived before, you are destroying the reputation of russia, i constantly hear about such a state of affairs from various people, i even put it off because i think there is a deep awareness of how serious the problem is that putin found himself in . that is why i took such a hard position in this interview, as i already said in the answer to your previous question. i think that putin's goals have changed and now he just wants to survive. unfortunately, i have to end our conversation with another one. i am grateful to the ambassador for this extremely meaningful and interesting conversation, and i want to remind our tv viewers that

matthew bryza worked for them on the espresso tv channel. ex-adviser to the secretary of state of the united states, former director of european and eurasian affairs at the us national security council thank you very much, ihor yakovenko, a sociologist, ex-deputy of the state duma, is now joining our broadcast he is currently in exile. kudos to ukraine, mr. igor. i congratulate you as a hero of the word, good student. the head of the russian federation urgently went to volgograd for the anniversary of the battle of stalingrad, which was urgently renamed stalingrad and even installed a bust of stalin there. we understand that it may not have any specific military consequences or any specific decisions that putin will make in this regard, but this very clearly outlines putin's stalinist trajectory

of vision of the situation and further movement, you know in general, putin’s demands are made. here are such historical parallels. they are actually , on the one hand, ridiculous, and on the other hand, if they are carried out, they are very unprofitable. surely this is the battle of stalingrad. it was indeed one of the most large-scale battles in history . humanity died during this battle, about a million people . although one of these battles was roughly torn from the side of the soviet union and from the countries of the third reich, it is estimated that half a million from each side, and one of putin's henchmen yevgeny prigozhin allowed himself to make such a disparaging statement that stalingrad rests compared to solidar, i don't know if they ask putin or prigozhin

questions from volgograd, do they really think that stalingrad rests compared to solidar, but the second most important thing is that the demand is something in the image of getting into the boots of stalin, they lead to putin , despite the fact that stalin is undoubtedly a monster, but they lead to the fact that putin, first of all , escapes from these things, and secondly, there are indeed parallels, enough dangers for putin, because if putin is talking about the battle of stalingrad, he is certainly not stalin, but rather hitler, and i believe that this means, first of all, in relation to and from the point of view of the fact that in this case putin is the aggressor, and secondly - this is the situation in the world. the fact is that after the battle of stalingrad there was absolute support from the countries of the entire civilized world for

what happened. there was really great respect at that time for the soviet union and for the leadership of the soviet troops, which means also from the united states in america. it was very warm admiring words from the country of the president and public figures of the usa were very warm eastern words from the part of e-e churchill and other politicians of great britain, france of other countries today e-e putin from the countries of the western countries in the same countries that enthusiastically perceived the victory in stalingrad e-e he eh meets only the opening of disgust, isolation, and in particular, this is the same munich conference at which in 2007 putin spoke with his famous munich speech, eh, russia, and

they did not invite russia to it because russia today is the conference on the international security of russia. today is the source of the main source of danger in the world, so putin is not there . igor, i agree with you. it is a very characteristic moment that can be used to describe the transition, so to speak , from volgograd to stalingrad - this is fear. everything was blocked by the russian special services, this means that putin is experiencing immediate fear and the second moment is characteristic of this , so the coven than zhukov, not stalin, did not count with the lives of their soldiers, and perhaps that is precisely why they draw parallels, so to speak, with the battles in donbas , all the surrounding fields are littered with bodies, they are talking about the bodies of russian demobilized people. they even manage to call them insultingly kuzmich. zhukovsky

's method of brewing, er, brewing the enemy with human affairs, well, he perceives people , er, cannon meat, yes, indeed, this is so, but the concept is some kind of essential difference , which is practically mm with accuracy data exchange reproduces the situation of the second world war and it was clear what people are going to die for, what they are going to do, but the enemy was really on their own land, and today they are trying to explain, they are trying to explain, they are talking about the fact that we are fighting with nato, we are fighting with ukraine, ukraine would attacked if we had not attacked first, but in general it is quite difficult to explain because why is there such a massive mass flight from mobilization, there are

about three times more people fleeing from mobilization at night so to speak, the military enlistment offices are sent, and the reason is very simple , despite all this hysterical propaganda, everyone understands that the tanks are not, er, ukraine. it's just obvious, but any person can look out the window, go outside and understand that there is no nato or ukrainian soldier there. and that's why the motives for going to war are reduced to two . this violent mobilization, they just arrived, reduced it and sent you first to the military enlistment office, then to the front, and secondly, money, and if you pay attention to it, how is it advertised , this is the mobilization company, then, at