hello and welcome to worlds apart donald trump bowing out of a g. twenty meeting with vladimir putin doesn't seem like a big deal given the already poor state of affairs between the two countries but

the manner in which it was cancelled over twitter without as much as making a courtesy call may sting the kremlin more than the cancellation itself. the mythical tromp putin bromance finally over to discuss that i'm now i'm joined by nicolai petro professor of political science at the university of rhode island professor petras good to talk to you thank you very much for your time nice to be here now you seem cautiously optimistic about the two countries moving forward after the house and summit between the two leaders are heard in one interview you particularly noted the tone they it to president struck and i agree that they seem to have found if not there are a poor but at least sound way off not purposefully offending each other given the recent cancellation do you think that optimism was a bit premature well i actually wrote a piece at least it was entitled a summit of low expectations and that's because.

the personal relationship between the any two leaders only goes so far it then gets fleshed out by the of the experts that are brought in to finalize the details of any agreement so it's good in principle always for people to talk on the other hand if the positions of the two nations are fundamentally far apart then that's not going to go very far if this is at this point it's not even about personal relations or bilateral relations between the two nations it's simply about the diplomatic protocol as i'm sure you know this is something people take on both sides very meticulous if they deliberate the president's each sparing minute with great care and here you have somebody canceling a meeting that had hundreds if not thousands of people working around the clock

without as much as even placing your call do you think the kremlin would be justified in taking. a bit of an offense in this case you can always take offense at things that's the parag of the people in these positions have been and you're absolutely right in the way you describe the set up but the only person who doesn't seem to be aware of these protocols and the ramifications of deviating from them is donald trump himself. so what can you do you can take offense or you can move on i believe assume that the russian government is. wise enough to simply move on and not try to make too much or read too much in to this. into this incident well i was following the discussions about that on the russian

television then and many experts point out that russia is indeed trying to exercise what they call strategic patience i think that's a bomb us term in relation to charm but they also point out that putin stations has certain limits do you think putin politically can afford to be stood up in this fashion by trump on more than one occasion he's not the first. head of state to be so treated. and as i recall the twitter and there are many of them but the last twitter feed from the president of the united states that i read i actually thought it was rather apologetic the real thing to focus on here is that the president of the united states is in a bind. and he is attacked by the.

by the political opposition which has recaptured. the lower house the house of representatives. and and the investigation. of which he is subject is also proceeding and it's just a politically unacceptable time for him to be dealing with russians or chinese or saudi arabians or really any host of people. that the democrats in congress can simply label as people that are that we should not be talking to so the bottom line here is that russian american relations are hostage to american domestic politics well but i agree with you but from the russian point of view the meeting in argentina was important particularly important in the light of the american pullout from the iran after muska made it clear that they want they wanted

to discuss was specifically the issues of nuclear arms control and strategic stability aren't those issues a little bit more important than the difficulties of the american domestic politics . i wish i could say yes but the truth of the matter is no well that's a fair answer if they think you for that that's all i can say i mean listen to the rhetoric of the people who are coming who are the democratic leaders who are coming into key positions in the house and their counterparts in the senate. what do they say other than platitudes that do not in fact address the real interest of the united states which need to be addressed systematically comprehensively and by professionals well given what you just sad you mentioned before that entranced with there was a bit of

a if not wailed apology done at least and extended had he hinted at his willingness to meet again should the kremlin take that as a platitude as you put it or should it indeed read something into that no i don't i don't think there's much to be read into any twitter feed i'm not sure what function they play now in diplomacy seem to be simply a phenomenon of this president and they have no war no standing no diplomatic standing mckown was the subject of several fierce and really directly insulting. twitter feeds by the president and again you can blow this into a huge incident or you can simply say well that's trump being trump and move on you know the interesting thing the interesting outcome of all this is it is it brings.

into the company of many other american allies who have been treated in a similar fashion by this president when they. get together in mccall they can form a little. site as they can come together and form a little club and share share their experiences you know with the with trump well i'm not sure vladimir putin will be very welcome in that club either but let me ask you one more thing specifically about the way trump war that he is we've because at first i thought that he was trying to sound bossy demanding the immediate release of the ukrainian sailors but then it struck me that maybe he was looking for a more norm biding reason because he specifically cited that the meeting was cancelled not over the incident in the black sea which you can't really change but rather over the detention of the ukrainian sailor speech will be over in two months

do you agree with. do you think he was looking for the easiest way out and perhaps most non biting wait out that's a very thoughtful question but i don't think that much thought went into his tweet i think it was just well what can we use that is not been resolved yet and that is still ongoing to use as a pretext for cancelling this meeting which is politically unacceptable to the president in the current domestic context. that's i think as far as it is it goes and we cannot we also cannot know whether the ukrainian sailors currently being detained and presumably building being put on trial will be released that any point in the future of their detention is a pretrial detention and then we have to see what the outcome of the trial is now

you called my previous question a very thoughtful one left me counter that with a very lame question because i noticed in the preparation for this program that neither donald trump no lied to me put in follow each other on twitter i mean they both have twitter accounts to put in doesn't all of the use he's as often as mr trump but they do not follow each other do you read anything into that do you think that's a statement of perhaps their political independence to the extent that people don't have twitter accounts they evoke my admiration it suggests to me that they can think in more than one hundred forty or i think that limit has now been extended a little bit characters that's a good thing. so i i applaud president putin for that. it's rather. unfortunate in my opinion that trump spends

a lot of the his time as as our public servant on twitter now our ukrainian neighbors have presented trump's tweets as yet another victory on their part is that all they can get from the americans at this point or do you expect other things to follow things like sanctions and restrictions of any kind i think the current american congress. both house and senate have never met an excuse for sanctions that they don't like so there's always a good reason for sanctions yes but sooner or later they they have to run out of options no they don't as a matter of look at the sequence of sanctions as they've been imposed they are now totally divorced from actual actions and words it's in response to actions taken months if not years ago that clearly indicates that.

it's just a kind of. persistent effort to bring our displeasure with russia with its system of government with the russians with putin to the fore and the reason for that is there are no political there are no negative political consequences to such an attitude in american politics there's only pluses the question is how far do you think the they may be willing to go because the had of the ukrainian navy called on the international community to shot the bosphorus to russian ships over the incident side of the montreal convention so ukraine is clearly trying to internationalize to broaden the scope of this incident is there any chance of that happening in the american supporting that i don't think so no the immediate nato response was to

remind the ukrainians that the number of nato ships that entered the waters of the black sea this year has already increased by fifty percent compared to twenty seventeen. that's a very diplomatic way of saying no ok professor petro be have to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then. we should start. to discuss where we can put chancellor merkel

runs has said we have proved up a lot of. people in germany and europe and russia. to destroy your career choice is quite easy and really forced. to reprove. welcome back to worlds apart but nicole eyepatch a professor of political science at the university of rhode island professor these program is called worlds apart but i think we are more or less on the same page in believing that this incident. is most beneficial to the ukrainian president to try to but before we discuss it let me ask you to be a contrary and and think about the possible motives while why the russians would

initiate concoct and pull something like that well there is a russian interest in not letting the ukrainian assertion of sovereignty over crimea and this spirit of the kids peninsula. to stand unchallenged in other words russia makes the claim this is now russian territory and we assert our sovereignty through the implementation of these procedures of passage the ukrainian responses naturally to challenge that claim and to a certain craney and sovereignty by. not recognizing that by challenging that procedure well professor patrick but this was not the first time that the ukrainian ships were trying to save through the. strait of courage and before that they

always followed the procedure to avoid those confrontations these posts on the side of ukraine seems to be a new then so this this is a new approach and incident but it was bound. it was bound to happen at some point in other words the next logical step in challenging the russian claim to crimea is to assert its in that it is invalid in to in the context of existing international treaties the civility the two thousand and three two thousand and three treaty on of i should say accord on cooperation in the c. of us off. and to make sure that the ukrainian interpretation of that is is is acknowledged by russia and russia will of course reject it

as it applies to this curch straits so it was i think it could be expected that this would occur but the reason it occurred now and i agree with the past three ukrainian presidents who penned a common letter on this the reason it occurred now has everything to do with the upcoming ukrainian presidential elections now that's the most frequent explanation to be here but and i do want to ask you about that before we go there i think from the russian point of view the timing of this incident is doubly sensitive not only because of the trump meeting which was cancelled but also because of all the deliberations in europe over the north stream to pipeline the construction of which the ukrainians are actively trying to undermine. do you think the americans and the europeans whatever they think about russia president putin genuinely believed that

the russians were the ones to initiate this incident there's no way to know that that's that's just an ex psychological you know good trying to trying to explore. the inner mind and psychology of of a politician let me try to rephrase it question this guy. do you think the russians would judge jeopardize both of these issues what i think is that the the psychology and intentions of the expectations of what the other side intended to do are beside the point we have the incident as it played out. and as i understand it is what happened followed more or less the rules of procedure and engagement on the high seas that that one would expect there's

a certain leeway here as to. the conditions under which. ships can be stopped and boarded if they refuse to be stopped and boarded then upon which they can be fired upon. and lawyers should dispute that. but beyond that there was nothing really extraordinary about this incident once it had reached the appropriate stage of conflict the the actual incident at sea itself this this was the natural or logical i should say outcome of this and these sorts of confrontations at one end of the spectrum or the way to more rarely thank god incidents in which there is shooting in casualties they occur routinely around the world but i think it is important to. at

least try to understand who. if there was any party what that was deliberately planning this incident because if we take the russian version of events and believe that the president presented was planning deliberately planning it all along than the implication of that would be that he was also pushing his main geopolitical partners both europe and america into a corner on russia he wanted to put them in a difficult position way when they would have to choose between the horrible of russia and the young struggling ukraine once again and i think nobody likes. feeling the feeling that they're being played least of all on go america or donald trump what do you think do you think the they they will pick up on his intention if there was indeed an intention of playing them. i've spoken in the last

year to several former u.s. ambassadors to russia. and my sense of. their view is that. stern powers dealing with ukraine understand very well that ukraine is trying to maneuver the west into a more aggressive and direct confrontation. with with russia over ukraine. so this is certainly not new this is. been the pattern not only for the last four years one could go back to previous presidents of ukraine most notably that are you sure. and.

and it is it is a policy that is under has been understood as such of the main thing to understand is that that is not a position which is necessarily uncomfortable to many western politicians so it's a you think they're totally fine for example angela merkel who publicly of peace talks about the need to solve the ukrainian conflict as soon as possible do you think she's perfectly fine with president poroshenko pulling such a trick on the eve of his own presidential elections and hopefully perhaps at least with the help of dragging europe and the united states into a direct confrontation with russia i take it as a good sign that. western political leaders are aware of the desire of ukrainian politicians to manipulate them because then they

recognize what is happening from that perspective and they do not need to react in a knee jerk fashion. they can actually determine what their own policies are and try to respond in a more measured and careful way to alter slightly ukrainian policy but no one i think i hope your readers should your viewers understand i think that no one in this political game is naïve all the sides wish to manipulate the other side and at the same time try to promote their interests as they see them. the only way to avoid permanent conference conflict and confrontation is to be

willing to make concessions and that's what has been absent in this dialogue is the is the willingness to make concessions in order to reach a common view and a common agreement you said that everybody in this in this field understands that everybody else is what kind of a game everybody else is playing and yet i think of really for the first time we've seen a very strong opposition domestically in ukraine to those kind of tricks as you mentioned the number of pro western ukraine and politicians accuse poroshenko of exploiting the situation for his own personal a political game and yet the ukrainian parliament did give him what he wanted the martial law although shortened to one month was it do you interpret that as as more of a victory or a defeat for president. i see it as

a defeat because we have seen publicly expressed for the first time in ukrainian politics since really the twenty fourteen my done. a an elite consensus against the president why then you may ask did they accept martial law at all well because the context of ukraine that tells us more about the context of ukrainian politics namely that. the current majority in the parliament in that. and of course the administration and most of the intellectual and political elite and financial elite how asked to be anti russian because russia has been legally defined in ukraine as the aggressor as the aggressor nation. so you cannot display

a division of this kind. in the face of what is defined as russian aggression it would be invalidating your entire your entire political agenda what we see in the thirty day. the thirty day martial law applied to only to essentially the problem of the majority russian speaking regions. is in fact a political compromise that they find acceptable but that sends a very clear signal to president bush and co that that essentially his time in office is over i would be astonished if his ratings after this went up i think his chances of reelection which were very slim to begin with are now even lower well it's interesting you say that because people in his weak

position often the allowed himself reckless actions but anyway we have to leave it there professor thank you very much for being with us today and for sharing your insights thank you i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to syria same place same time here on worlds apart. what hope to do something to. put themselves on the line they did accept or reject . so when you want to be president. or somehow want to.

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