gas field located in a disputed maritime area in the persian gulf, which has not yet been demarcated to iran is critical of kuwait and saudi arabia's exploitation of the field. saying iran also has a stake in the area, i believe, to have an estimated half a trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves for energy hungry china, mediating between teheran and re off to improve ties between the states will help ensure its energy security as the world's 2nd largest economy, beijing is heavily reliant on foreign oil and gas. figures show that more than 70 percent of the countries oil is imported. beijing has been a major buyer of iranian oil, even at the height of the west's economic pressure against at one. it has also been saudi arabia's largest oiling porter. it to mean on by the raining, saudi resumption of ties would increase china's certainty regarding the oil market and improve its access to crude oil. the move will also increase the supply of oil

from the persian gulf to the east, and this will reduce oil prices since china leads the market in terms of oil demand . when the u. s. crap, the 2015 iran nuclear deal with world powers. it fell to bring toronto crude sales to 0. but this did not happen as a result of china and russia, continuing their business with iran against all odds. now china's latest move is believed to offer both iran in saudi arabia, a host of new opportunities as to energy powers. use of to roddy r t test run to africa. now one of nigeria most prominent business women who might, is the african countries largest full system, has decreased the problem of stereotypes in the world, both ankles, full, great agenda. was he all he corresponded in full him. david makes up the story. oh my, here was me a little headed. i'm slave would be the else. it's is it is a women. yes,

very few of them take part in any political process. as these has been set up for the conscious level class of development numbers every keeps twin late right now the chance house as a weakness and father reduction in the number of women who were successfully in that sense. the major challenges in this, in such an increase environment. oh, good. and also the social cultural maria. i want to end up watching that you've also appealed that then next year, unsecure. we shouldn't be provided, especially for women who are running the election so that we should be able to match the men by with foster form and then try and answer the issue of my message has been a major, tentative i am here to serve interest of everyone that i also want them to understand from fixing that you're

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hello and welcome to cross talk. we're all things are considered on peter level. so there are more calls for a cease fire or some kind of negotiated settlement of ukraine conflict. some nato leaders have worn zalinski will have to make some difficult decisions. however, the west has little interest in russia's plan to restore the peace. that plan is in plain view. ah discuss these issues and more. i'm joined by my guess, george samuel leon, budapest. he's a podcast or at the goggle, which can be found on youtube and locals, and in st. petersburg across to alexandra tom. he is a senior lecture at st. petersburg state institute of technology. our gentleman crossed up rules and effect that music and jumping time. he want and i always appreciated our let's start out with george in budapest, georgia. as i said to my,

my introduction. the whole focus of in the western world in this conflict in ukraine, is to somehow get it settlement that is to preferential to ukraine. and of course to which it's nato backers. and, but if, if you flip the coin, i think that you, it would be much easier to resolve this conflict if you took rushes interest into consideration and then it's never done. and that's one of the problems in moving forward. because if there is, if there is no needed there, there is no recognition of a legitimate security interest. this is not going to end well and it's good again, it's going to and very badly, i think for all tardies and goals. go ahead. you, you summarize the perfect, the peter, and this whole conflict started precisely because russia security concerns have not been addressed full around 30 years, but more more pertinently, for the last 8 years, while nato, you know, as his boast,

was building up ukraine as a battleship director. at russia, and then of course, when a president, putin issued his to draw off documents for some sort of a permanent security architecture for europe along the lines of the helsinki final like of the 1970s, the americans. and then, of course, nato just simply say that we're not, we're not interested. there isn't going to be any kind of a settlement unless russia security concerns are taken into account. and yet when, when reads are the media accounts and when we're on, read all the stories well that are that those sholtes and macro pushing zelinski book. what give us one good counter offensive. and then once this counter offensive, you'll succeed, then we'll be ready to negotiate. i mean, they know that you can't negotiate anything until you understand the position of

the other party and, and that's why the whole western position is so ludicrous and this, this war cannot be settle unless the west simply realizes that he has to take into account what's thought that this whole thing, namely russia security concerns. yeah. alan center in st. petersburg. is it one of the things i find very tragic in it's a, it's kind of an impoverished way of thinking is this, is it? georgia said no give it will give us one good offensive, you know, fallback some territory. then we'll sit down and negotiate it. is if russia be willing to do that, ok, assume in russia would do that if they were asked for it. because the problem in it would, they approach from the west, which is very, very poorly thought out other than, you know, hemorrhaging russia, which is probably one of the, probably the most important issue they had had. this has nothing to do with ukraine . but even if, if there was even a unilateral cease fire on the part of the ukrainians of the nato countries would

do, is just, you know, rebuild of ukraine's forces to start all over again. and there's no same person in moscow would allow that to happen because they want 3 years. oh, make a built up ukraine and then we had this. ok, why would they wait another 8 years? why even wait, 8 weeks go ahead center. i think part of what we're seeing from the west, as we've talked about before, is that there is a split in the u. s. the leads between those who support continuing this adventure and ukraine, and continuing to fund the effort and arm the efforts and those who are seeing that they're not going to accomplish the west goals. so one thing that i thought was pretty interesting recently is cameron hume, who was a former ambassador from the us. he had come out recently criticizing anthony blink and the secretary of state for his handling of international relations, particularly regarding russia. so i don't think that that sort of

commentary is just random. i would think that somebody with connections like that a human has connections with the council on foreign relations. so it looks like he's part of this effort from some people in washington to say, look, we're not accomplishing western interests in the ukraine. so does it make sense to continue pouring all this money and all of these resources into it? and i think it's a really good point that lincoln is, is he's not so much of a diplomat in the traditional sense. he is more of an ideologue and a political operator if you look at his career history. and that comes out in the way that he handles himself on the international stage. so he goes to meetings with the chinese and tries to chide them about what they're doing. and he goes in to meetings with the saudis and criticizes them on their internal affairs. and he is

really not making any friends with his attitude on the world stage, so he's weakening the position of the u. s. and i think that some of lease in washington are starting to get fed up with this really narrow minded, extreme push to continue trying to fight this war in the ukraine regardless of what outcomes we're seeing on the ground. yeah, i mean with the church it's allison brings up some very good points here. but again, the, the, the strategy that you can even call it a strategy. it's more kind of a messianic crusade, ideologically driven the again, lately and the, the entire approach, the u. s. in its allies have pursued as it, it's an anti russia policy. it's not a pro ukraine policy again, the way you get ok if a supposition is performed badly, you're always going to get a bad outcome. and this is what this is. what's happened in this case? yes, that, that, that's unquestionably the case. it. so it's all,

it's not really about ukraine. i mean that, that's why we need to sort of move away from any kind of discussion. this is about helping ukraine. this is an effort to arm your brain or anything of it. it isn't about your grade. this is a, a war using ukraine as a proxy in order to defeat, once a, for all russia, with it, with the hope that somehow you know, put in will be gone. you'll be overthrown. and some kind of a pro western puppet regime will take over in moscow. and then essentially, you know, whatever's left or russia will be entirely at the mercy of native that's the ultimate objective. and people such as a blinking and, and biden newland, you know, that's how they think that's their ideological perspective. and they're not just going to let it go. and that's why i've got the universe no rational voices will say, well, i think that doesn't make any sense as a ludicrously ambitious goal, but cannot succeed. but if, if people like that had prevailed at the beginning,

we wouldn't be where we are. you know, russia were accomplished, it's goals very early on last spring and would now be enjoying a peaceful as secure prism. we don't have that. instead, the, you know, the, the united states decided to make a stand here. and that's why where we are, and i think that's why it's such a dangerous situation because it's very difficult for the united states to step up . it's very interesting a you have to look at the, the, the sense of causation years. because there is been over the last couple of years, not an original idea, but russia and china moving closer together. this has been going on for a long time. people suddenly wake up to it here. and so the, the policy is we have to knock russia out where to use ukraine. we're going to knock them out before they get too close to china. well, that, that horse left the stable barry long time ago. and now with this proxy more

ukraine, it's only accelerated, it be kind of constituting an alliance of russian chinese alliance. i mean, they, they misunderstood what was going on, and their actions of actually created the opposite that they wanted. alexander. yeah, that's absolutely true. i think on the international stage, you have to look at china and russia as being one entity effectively because they're both being encircled by nato forces. and neither of them like it naturally. so when they see what nato can do, the break up, the former yugoslavia being involved in afghanistan, iraq, libya, the list goes on and they have a good reason to not be happy about that. keep going and economically, your point is well taken by chinese investors who have been pulling their money out of swiss banks because they're concerned that they're, you know,

their resources may be frozen in the same way that russian assets abroad were frozen by the us. so the u. s. as kind of overstepped over played its hand. it's been so aggressive in pursuing its or against russia that they spoke to the rest of the world. people don't want to do business with a bullying regime like so. that's also been shown by recent reconciliation efforts between iran and saudi arabia hawks that took place recently in china. and that's also very significant because here is china stepping into the middle east to try and brokers some agreements between parties that historically do not get along very well. and that also is going to have an effect on the situation in israel, because israel and saudi arabia for a long time have gotten along pretty pretty well. and saudi arabia has refrained

from criticizing their actions too heavily. so now when i ran into israel, our enemies, so with saudi arabia and iran attempting to re establish relations that doesn't look good for israel's influence. and there are russian forces and syria, which are providing a check against israeli attacks on, has below, or iranian targets in syria. so as the u. s. and the us ability to influence the situation in the middle east is declining. it's causing a decline and israel's influence in the region as well. so to some actors in the u . s. and in israel, it may look like the only way out of this spiral that they're finding themselves in is to push ever harder on what's going on in ukraine. maybe they think that if they can break the russian military, then they can trigger like i said this to george many times in our podcast.

i always get the sense there in the casino and it's rude let they just keep rolling the, you know, fitting the wheel and seeing the winning number will come up. ok. you know, george, we have a minute before we go to the break. what is it? it's 10 rounds, 11 rounds of sanctions that didn't work the 1st round and why? what if it doesn't have the impact you want? why do you keep hunkering down? it doesn't make any sense to me. george question, to the case weight. they think that they keep doing it, and eventually they, well, the called a falling t at which russia will collapse just like they, russia will supposedly collapse militarily or russia will run out of misses and artillery shells and the soldiers will mutiny or the russian government will collapse, poke and will be overthrown. and so the, the russian economy will collapse and i'll be shortages even though they were all of the u. k. media reporting, you know, the contrasting the empty shells in the supermarkets, in the u. k with the full a supermarket, the rock as well to her sanctions. and we're the ones who don't have a nice

a sanctioned in the it. but i do, and i have to go to a hard breaking up to that hard break. we'll continue our discussion on some really stay with our team. ah, ah, ah, ah ah. well connect across that were all things considered. i and peter le bell, this is the home addition to remind you. we're discussing some real things. ah,

let's go back to georgia in budapest, george. i sent him an introduction that rushes a plan for restoring pieces in plain view and we go back to december 17th, 2021. when a rush is sent to nato and to the united states. um, it's proposals basically recognizing the individual indivisibility of, of security, nato expansion of russia's role, rush, his place in the pan european, a security architecture. which of course, is all kind of in town. going back to the original thinking about security of the helsinki process, which you've already brought up in this program that's, that's viable. i don't think that's going to change. it hasn't changed even after a year of conflict. george? no, that's right. i mean, because what are the russians was seeking was some recognition ah, from the west that what the west has been doing for 30 years,

this nato expansion essentially creating this block, this military block that is clearly surrounding a russia and is to target that of russia that this cannot go on, the russian just simply cannot accept military alliance on its borders on the, those big, you know, oh, particularly got alliance. it has, is targeted russia as their primary recycling. they explicit about their explicit or then, you know, particularly when we've had the past decade of this constant barrage of anti russian propping gan, the old, the sanction of the sanctions didn't stop. you know, after that the, the launch of the special with the choppers. we've had all the magnet ski act sanctions. we had all the sanctions about. suppose it russian interference in u. s. elections in the been wave of the wave of sanctions. and russia sees this military alliance is moving towards our borders. you know, the one country that is, that is our ally. bella ross,

is that com some targets of would be color revolutions. they want us to be totally surrounded by nature and rushes that we can't take this anymore. this is an absolutely exist central right for us. and, you know, with responses, we're not even going to talk about it. you know, russia just isn't strong enough to dictate times to us. well, you know, this, this was the effects and although the europe, right, any kind of a negotiated outcome will have to recognize that you can't let nature cannot go on as it's been doing because they will be more was and they'll be even more deadly. was intending george competed up really well because if the west is obsessed with, again, it's ideologically obsess. democracy, a top prosy, all of this kind of nonsense that they throw out. and then they talk about ukraine's security. and it's relationship with the north atlantic treaty

organization. they're focused on ukraine's borders. it's security. but he can't, it can, at the same token, they can't recognize that russia has security interest as well. that's, that's that you know, that that's what's missing right here. and that's where that is keeping any kind of settlement of far out of reach, because up until they recognize russia has security interests. there's going to be no peace in europe. i think victoria new and also recently just admitted that the conflict in ukraine is about the stabilizing the russian government and trying to remove food from power. so this, you know, the talk about ukraine and territorial integrity that i would consider to be just wallpapering for their real motives, which are clear enough even before noon said anything about it that it was all directed against russia. so it seems that whatever portion of you train is not

taken under the control of russia, that's going to effectively be part of nato. whether it's admitted officially or not. in some sense of the russian attempt to remove nato from its borders through this war has failed. because now we do have an, an nato army in ukraine, and it's difficult to get figures on it, but there's up 220000, perhaps mercenaries, maybe 10000 of them from poland. the number is very all the time. so in that sense, russia is going to have to, if they can't find a diplomatic solution that actually removes nato from ukraine, then they're going to have to keep going further and further west in order to achieve their goals of removing nato's presence from that territory. however, i also wonder, you know, this is turning into a time issue for the us. it seems to me that russia is able to continue this

war indefinitely. while the us seems to be running more on a schedule, because already the u. s. is stretched between the ukraine friend and the taiwan front weapons manufacturers are several years behind delivery and taiwan isn't getting the weapons that they have ordered. so the u. s. is getting stressed and nato partners and partners are not completely happy with the situation due to the economic issues that germany has suffered in particular with energy prices, the u. k. has been hit with energy prices going up. and this is all a result of the sanctions and the ongoing war in the you in the ukraine and the u. s. as letting its partners out of this situation. so it's putting pressure on nato much more, i think then it's putting pressure on russia. oh yeah, it's a very interesting point, georgiana, i've always said that nato was never,

never designed actually to fight a war like disappear power. ok. it was a, i'm in georgia, i bit older. it was always kind of it a bit of a dinner club. okay. it wasn't designed to do actually be a military and in, in, in a, in a conventional sense. it was more political and, and this is what they faced. george, let's talk about the issue of d i d notification because that's the the 2nd prong that is have been never really been discussed much in the west. they just think is frivolous. but you and i know exactly what that means. the recipe regime change. you cannot have the current regime still in power. ok, and that is something that i'm on the west is going to have to contend with. and certainly mr. zalinski is going to have to contend with. because we all know that anyone in ukraine, in power make some kind of concession, large concessions number of concessions. um they're, they're not going to be around much longer after they do that. it, we know that go ahead. george. yes that's,

that's exactly that in russia's goals out while they were limited. i'm back in the last of february. clearly now has to include regime change in care because i cannot allow this zelinski gang, this rabidly raso phobic a crowd to stay in power. i mean, what, you know, what happens, i say there's an armistice as a, some sort of a peace agreement. they will immediately start running. we know that's exactly what nature is going to do. i mean, they going to do what they did in 2014 and just restart this all over again in 510 years time. so russia has to make a drastic change. and i mean, and that's over all this. i mean, whenever america has fault is, was a very cause who is pursued regime change in, or whether it's a regime change. you saw the regime change in iraq. i mean, they publicly called for, you know, barella sat, us to go. i mean, it's ultimately, that's how you win a war. you have to remove the source of your problems. and,

and in this case, clearly, you know, this is the landscape and now they come in this new plan, which is that we will, we will call russia russia anymore. we just call it basco via credit card. allow this historically a entity like this, you know, which a bum darren stand on your border. so it regime change has to be out of the ultimate war objects. if it doesn't only center, it's just mystifying for me, i can understand the landscape in his regime. there, russo phobic attitude because they have nato at their back to their funding. so keep protecting us. there's no downside delay, but the longer this goes on, the entire european security architecture is very unstable. it's very vulnerable. and of course, you know, there are people like victoria new and, and jake sullivan. anthony blink and they have

a very long history of wanting to see the end of the russian federation. and that this is the stuff that you can learn. but you know, what about the people in the rest of europe? i mean, this is not their crusade. okay. it's, it is a crusade of elites in a very specific group of beliefs. go ahead. alexandra. yeah, you're absolutely right about that. i think it recently came out how in march last year, just after the russian counter attacks and done boston and other parts of the train zelinski wanted to actually negotiate. and he was hoping to, you know, find a diplomatic solution to this right at the beginning. but the state department came in and the u. s. handlers came in and said, no, you can't do that. we have a war to fight here. so it's quite clear that the ukraine has become an apparatus, the state department in the same way that the e u. is as well we all remember,

newland call that was league where she was describing her disdain for the you. and i think you can only do that if you have effective control over the organization. so that's the problem that europe finds itself in. it's effectively a protector, it of the united states, regardless of what nato may call itself, or how it may brand itself, you find itself trans itself into protector position. so it doesn't have the ability to lead an independent policy. and that's been seen by germany, germany, his interests are in tighter economic cooperation with russia. and that's how we got the north stream pipelines. and that's not in the interest of a u. s. protexture it. and that's how we got the north stream pipelines destroyed as seymour hersh came out with his studies of how about probably happened and

indicate that the u. s. was involved, which doesn't really surprise anybody. you know, you had bite and going out there saying we're going to end it and we're almost out of time. but george sergeant schultz is we put referred to him on this boat and went to washington. what for like a day and a half, maybe less than that one hour visit with the president of the united states. no press coverage went back. so he was just giving his marching orders. wasn't he 30 seconds george marching out as well. that's the thing. europe's at least i use not in any sense representative of your own interest. it's an american bought and paid for trained lead and they represent openly, america's interest. yeah. well, you ended the program almost exactly on time. one thing we're going to be definitely looking at as of, as mentioned here, is that this reproach mount of saudi arabia and iran, which is very, very important. so viewers cross like we'll see that next week as all the time own . i think our guests in st. petersburg and in budapest on what they are viewers for

watching us here to see you next time. remember, ah, with we must further advance our modernization drive in terms of national defense concern. china smell to integrate wolfstein. john is a the conclusion of the country a how the nation with policy colonized the policy, but now is making rapid advances on the world stage. a wagner group says the battle for a ukrainian stronghold is intensifying. he says in reserve forces, while you create income on.