hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle a comedian his won the first round of ukraine's presidential election well the doesn't have strong policy positions maybe that was his greatest appeal though he made it clear corruption is ukraine's biggest challenge fixing ukraine's very serious problems is no laughing matter. crosstalk in ukraine i'm joined by my guest. in london he is a political consultant and foreign affairs analyst also in london we have alexander mackerras he is to director and writer for the duran dot com and in sonoma california we crossed to john jordan he is a political strategist right gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it well one of my rules of my

program is a week i go to the person that got up early is for this program and that goes to john good morning i hope you had your coffee my first question is what kind of game changer is this election in ukraine it's far from over but we have a comedian that won the largest number of votes and we'll talk about the people that weren't allowed to vote in this election as well go ahead john in sonoma. there are two primary factors in this campaign as you pointed out is the anti corruption message which is clearly resonated the other piece of this which hasn't been talked about so much is language there are two pieces to ukraine while there's a strong national identity there's a portion of the ukraine which speaks which is russian speaking and recently mr mr poroshenko there's been language bills making ukrainian the primary language blocking russian language websites and so forth this is it is a russian speaker although he is a ukrainian patriot and he may actually be. in the hall here maybe the fact that he

does very very well with the russian speakers and then splits the ukrainian speakers with us to push and go ok alexander make your assuming. the military hating russia and basically creating a schismatic orthodox church i guess that didn't go too down too well with the electorate because at the end of the day if you look at the disenfranchised three million russians living in ukrainians living in russia that weren't allowed the franchise he got in you take into account the turnout he got about nine percent of the vote go ahead alexander well i think that poroshenko is whole approach has full full and very flat because he has set himself up as the strong national leader leading ukraine in this conflict with russia and it's quite clear looking at how ukrainians voted that they don't want more war that they don't like the economic

crisis that ukraine is still you know in the country still facing an industrial recession wages still fully they don't like the corruption and those are all the issues that really concern them not these national issues that poroshenko for the election on and it seems to me that you're perfectly right to say that selenski doesn't have any very clear policy positions so the way to understand this election is not so much as a vote for the lenski yes as a vote against poroshenko and all the things that poroshenko stands for which has been the line ukraine has been following since the events in mind done in february two thousand and fourteen so it is an affair a repudiation of that policy and you're perfectly correct if those millions of ukrainians who are now. in russia had been able to vote they wouldn't probably vote

even lenski and poroshenko his share of the vote would have been even less in april is going to you in london it was quite remarkable it was still could happen but it was remarkable that you didn't have tory a newland visiting during this election here i mean there was no overt western support of puerto shank oh though he was their candidate when he ran the first time go ahead in london. well that's very true i do agree with you but i think the last month scandal with the defense procurement scared out of americans from being involved in supporting the support of junko and so we have the. previous guest rightly that we have a two dimensional win for mr zinni to keep first of all is the. corruption scandal over related to the end of the fence procurements related to the

son of the close of business partner mr poroshenko and the other one is the fact that mr leask is a well known actor and he blamed a president and he and then he seriously called seven of the people and so and and the main character who is the historian had a lecture. became a president because of the fact that he was against the corruption so i think that those. serious originating with the moods and the spirit within the ukrainian society which doesn't want to see any longer professional politicians who are more opposite and they want to see an ordinary man because mrs i think these are ordinary man and he's campaigning was conducted through the social media and it certainly resonated with the young generation so i think that if this can be the same. president same as with regard to bernie sanders gregson

or mr donald trump the people are shifting thrones or professional politicians now to the people who are easily accessible all resonate with the general mood of the nation and misses and indeed is resonating with the general mood of the nation you know john let's go back to california i mean we hear that's a very good point that we just heard here because the you had yulia timoshenko obviously. i mean these people have been in ukrainian politics and governments for the last decade and a half i mean they've certainly known quantities here and this is a rejection of the dominant political class because well they tried it with the orange revolution they tried it with them i don but they're still not. serving up the goods as it were to the population because of the trade policies that ukraine has against russia against its own national interest here i think that there are

other people there are many people are saying the status quo cannot stand somebody has to stand in do it now and if he can create a power base and support and attract institutional support those are all huge questions go ahead in california. absolutely this is an election which is more against something than for him things that was essentially an empty vessel in a lot of ways with poorly articulated if at all policy positions but he played it he is the character he plays on television which is remarkable but this is about this is about being against the status quo this is you know english vernacular erica vernacular we call it a screw it election this is trump all over again now can he survive will there be well with mr list i think mr zalewski wins this election but how he how he fares is an open question because the entrenched bureaucracy at all of arc is going to be very very hard to remove now if the ukrainian economy were very strong it would be harder for him to win and easier for mr pershing co but i just don't see

a disproportionate goings on alexander macarius let's go to you in london with the fat lady has been sung i'm so i guess i'm going to get in a lot of trouble i suppose it's politically incorrect to say but i said it we still have around to hear and push and go has enormous enormous administrative resources particularly in the media here. it's not beyond the realm of possibility that some event some provocation could still come into play here. absolutely i mean it is not of this still is and a second round mr poroshenko knows ukrainian politics very well he's got all the leave. that he can press and pull as president of ukraine he has massive resources behind him and of course he's also now maneuverings in lenski into a t.v. debate where he will probably as the more experienced candidate hope to win points

against selenski nonetheless the fact remains that selenski has polled almost twice as many votes as. he's run the rejection east the and he has stablish one vote. in ukraine and. thought that the people who voted for the surge and for candidates this is to machine and mr boyd call are more likely to support him in the second round so i think it would be an upset a major upset if zelinsky doesn't win but the problem is it's all very well to say you know that he's this populist candidate who's winning because he is against things i think the problem is given the problems of ukraine what you need is not someone who is just you know a vote because he's a negative you need a somebody who has a sort of more transcendental there lety to take ukraine's problems moving

forward has the political weight in wealth or ity to actually start to address them at this moment in time aren't far from sure that's pretty mildly there's a lenski is that person i'll get in are wait and see but you know are i have no great that he's going to be able to make much of an impression even if he wins yeah well ukranian some of their hopes have been dashed time and again ever since their independence or ariel it's talk about the nine hundred pound gorilla in the corner and that either of the oligarchy that the. well there are sources people report make claims that they're very close to call the morning ski and we know what that means the oligarchy will continue to shift and more the politics of ukraine the very origins of ukraine's problems are these people in the way they run the

economy for themselves by the way go ahead in london. were very skeptical were. the lewinski is a part of the i'm insane and i don't say you. puppet i didn't say puppet go no i'm just i'm just relating to going to you know to the newspapers here in london and in the united states calling him a puppet so with all due respect i just want to make clear that the fact of the channel one plus one all by mr cole noise here where the servant of the people to be serious where is the sillies case playing in the main character is the one thing also this program the voice of strong support with regards to its t.v. star but does it mean that he will be in the pocket of a mystical noisy well this mr new because as we probably know in the united states and western europe altered i gotta jump in here i'll let you finish in return we'll

go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on ukraine state with our king. young elephants have come to us after. especially brutal pledging incidents because sadly the baby elephants often do see their mothers. killed but also be caught up and tortured. i do believe they laugh and smile i see it's a nice little ones the home facial expression changes. i do think the numbers mean they matter to us with over one billion dollars in debt

more than ten or more and empty. eighty five percent of global wealth you long to be old rich if we get rich. bull market. should some with four hundred to five hundred three first such a first strike to include one rose to twenty thousand dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars a i industrial park but don't let the numbers over. the only number you need remember in one one business showed you know bored to miss one and only boom box. shows seemed wrong but all in all just don't call. me. yet to shake out this day to come to educate and gain from it because the trail.

when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. up. us veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. were going after the people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers either they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo from the search that says we're going to attack and destroy the government and seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with their money others with their lives if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war. surely we can risk some discomfort easiness.

welcome back to cross like we're all things are considered i'm peter remind you we're discussing ukraine. ok let's go back. in london you're right before we do the break we were talking about the influence of that could hit me on this candidate here i would like to posit something for our. members of the panel here i think a lot of business interests are really sick and tired of how pushing co has steered the economy and it also has a great deal to do with official kid as i call it. post my down here and there there are attitude towards russia well it is really wrecked havoc on the economy in theory you know you can redirect the economy a country's economy in a different direction but the european union certainly is not interested in much of

what ukraine makes and and the official kiev has been denied the russian market it seems to me that and i'm not singing the praises of but i'm sure people like him are saying look this this is a dead end we're not going to be embraced by the european union any time soon with considering all of its problems there has to be some kind of weird pro schmaltz with russia and i know that's very hard in ukraine right now but there seems to be in opening at least in london go ahead. the that was the very point i've made in a my report presented for the. book group think tank over the report title will tighten the sanctions on russia you are saying that in order to resolve the ukrainian problems ukrainian people need both europe and russia because this is a country which is leaning both over the way which is european union and this is

a desirable young joc younger generation of young people that and also. eastern potus aligning towards the towards the russia and i think up to the unifier mr zelinsky but most of all the myth of the as an entity is a perfect state for doing this i mean we have to understand that no one is capable to resolve this so deeply rooted economic problems and core and mentality problems with gender bending society within one day or even one term so it is ridiculous to say that old mr poroshenko almost as an insecure will result sounding no it is if there is a base not only a political base or business base but it is the desire within the society dan the real change can happen and this is what is going to be and i would just point out to my other colleagues in the panel that little abandoned. the so

far the political conclusions or kind of collations which were. done before breakfast and and coming to power for president on no trump because they fail and i think that then the same template will be. it will apply to mr zelinsky so it is unfair to use the old rules of the new game the new generation my generation is fed up with the professional politicians and people who. well we wanted to who. can speak the language because most of the people who are interested in it to be. and this is what just like every well everywhere else in the world here john you know it would be very difficult because of the political discourse in ukraine now in the ukrainian ization that push and co is pushed so hard with his. very dubious

allies these militia groups and far right is but it didn't serve him well in the first round of the election and maybe this is what ximenes he and others are going to say is that this track is not working we have to try something else go ahead in california. you know there in the late mr zilinskas path to victory over there to ukraine's or the russian speaking part and there's the ukrainian speaking part which is the unskilled is a russian speaker but he's also come out what allow the russian speaking people to be marginalized but he also speaks ukrainian as and is acceptable to the ukrainian speakers so he will carry it did do overwhelmingly well in the south east ukraine where it is predominately russian speaking and then he will split the other part of ukraine with mr poroshenko now the big question here the nine hundred pound gorilla in the room is what does this mean for russia and also for my country the united states the fact the matter is that western europe and the european common market

has sold out the ukraine i mean they're building the north stream pipeline they want russian gas in their bypass and you create the ukraine is only being kind of used by the west as a foil to putin but they've really it's really been disappointing how europe has treated ukraine well well i you know your past look at its own national interests and and i would point out to our audience is that north stream and south stream in these other pipelines were only built because ukraine showed itself to be an unreliable energy partner and it would they had no choice but to do it. ok well no i mean ukraine destroyed the pipelines they siphon that they stole gas they didn't want to pay for it i mean for god's sake i remember twice into it too you know two years in a row on new year's at midnight wondering if there's going to be a gas war that problem is resolved because ukraine ended up being not a reliable partner and russia continues to ask them to be an energy partner and they say no so what happened it wasn't the europeans that led the the ukrainians

holding the bag it was the ukrainians themselves that did it and they have to be able to work with russia and and the european union because you know what it's in between it's always been between and you can't take it from one side to the other i've been saying this ever since the orange revolution alexander me curious way in . yes i mean i think what mr zelinsky needs to do is he needs to end this conflict in eastern ukraine and sort things out with the russians he needs to reestablish normal commercial links with russia so as to revive the ukrainian economy he has to end the conflict to bring the right wing militias all these various armed men that there are in ukraine or this very heavy national atmosphere nationalist atmosphere that in exists in ukraine to bring that under control only if he does those things will he realistically be

able to deal with these issues of corruption and of these overpowerful all the guards as they're called that have such power in ukraine and bring ukraine to become a normal country as so many people in ukraine want now ps made some interesting science he's talked about the need for direct talks with russia which is a move forward he's talked about having referendums about nato an e.u. membership which is also a step forward and it poroshenko tried to embed all these commitments in the ukrainian constitution here he spoke at he's spoken to people in ukraine in russian the russian speakers there. it has made the right signals the big question is given the volatile political history in ukraine the extent to which

so many people so many powerful power brokers have been heavily invested in this anti russian policy that has been followed in ukraine since two thousand and fourteen given the large number of armed men there are in ukraine and given the fact that previous governments. that is trying to tilt the country towards a more equal relationship between you and russia given that those governments who fall will he be able to pursue these policies now on the one hand i sense that there is an exhaustion. and there is a sense of disillusionment with the policies that have been followed on the other i come back to the point i made before does he have the political weight and strength and experience and ability to bring people together that he needs in

order to be able to shift the ground in that way i am prepared and prepared to give him you know i hope he does but you know i have to be skeptical wait and see. let me go back to london i mean i have to agree with alexander mackerras some in you know i know i know ukraine but well i've been there many many times. i have been banned since two thousand and fourteen for obvious reasons i suppose but i mean it is it's really a country of cliques and connections there is a great russian word creature which means ru for you basically have protection i mean that's how the economy is run here i mean i think it's wonderful that this outsider could make an entry onto the stage of national politics but other than his like humor and he's a very affable person. the tools that he needs to push through whatever he wants to because we're not really sure what he wants to do is going to be very very

difficult the the admin the administrative workings and parliament itself will have to have good will toward him did have that even happen go ahead in london. well i think that we have to be slightly more optimistic with this regard because i like having won you know that's why i like having you. think doesn't this is the new from also is not a professional politician he's a businessman so i think we need to abandon this political logic of having a people who are supported by someone and something we know the people who are the professional politicians in the ukraine i totally agree with you peter have the stigma of being crude. and there's no doubt about it but the hope is that this person paying way then just going back to the previous commentator i think does mr president good the perfect person i have

a dozen of jewish people to attend the other five functions movements within the ukraine because to me as a person also of jewish heritage it would be. insane to not being a president of jewish festival and not trying to paint a anticipating an fascist movement. with their nationalism against russia which is insane so i put my hope in mrs in here other ukrainian young people from my generation and the time will tell whether he will deliver something all whether he will be just a puppet or. a person could earn the seat over over the. leader in charge of ukraine but i put my hope in mr zelinsky and i hope that he will make such a great president he may want to accept it and when i'm doing what i think we should do is that the first round is over when we have a second round i'd like to have all of you come back and we will discuss the final

round of ukraine's presidential election that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks i guess in london and in california and thanks to our viewers for why. us here at r t see you next time and remember cross talk rules. i know there was it. seems to do crack when i was a little kid my dad he was like oh. so you know i got like what i needed when i was a baby but i had a bad childhood. there's always been single mothers and african-american community service and same very. i think it's more of a teenagers having kids and you can't expect

a fourteen or fifteen year old first daughter now order for hand if you're far there and he's a chav. we actually lost our place and. my car end up breaking down and i was unable to get to work on time so they let me go with my paycheck that i bring home i have barely enough to pay my car insurance . the gas in my car. you know world of big. law and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for

the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks. yes brace for a single purpose. of a superman. so you start training very young. eight months of intensive school. rats. and they save lives. really. did. nothing. one.

one. in what's being talented as and important milestone in roseau german relations chairman called giant time which owns miss avies is opening a new plant name of sco. as spain struggles with the sheer number of newcomers arriving by scene smuggling gangs cashing in on the refugee crisis and investigative journalist shows with us a rare interview with one of the human traffickers involved. over porcelain you can . tell the festool fourfold. it took one hundred fifty plus one report them to your boss probably at the point.