[000:00:00;00] and by the way, i was of this opinion from the very beginning, because it would require too much effort, these are occupation forces , the costs associated with this and much more, but above all, because russia, like the united states, wants to avoid direct confrontation between russia to nato, and if they occupied. then, in essence, nato soldiers would end up in russia. think also of the german soldiers in lithuania exchanging glances with the russians across the border. and the risk that this will lead to technical or human error. and an escalation will follow, which will be impossible to control politically; the risk of this would be very great. i think both

sides want to avoid this. you have actually already answered my next question, but i’ll still ask you, perhaps the answer will be short and concise, because that’s how they always talk about it in the media. the president of ukraine , vladimir zelensky, always says that they will not stop fighting until crimea is taken and all russian-occupied territories are returned, do you think... something like that realistic under the circumstances? no, in fact, no one who understands anything about this issue considers this to be realistic. the ukrainian armed forces are in critical condition. what we are seeing now is essentially a joke. this is no longer an offensive. the offensive failed. this needs to be said absolutely clearly. but that

just means what? that another risk arises: you see, the russian armed forces, russia as a whole, have two strategic advantages, one of which we just talked about is the logistics center in crimea. the second advantage is the ability to attack ukraine at long distances from 2 and a half to 3,000 km, with cruise missiles and drones, although ukraine can try to repel these attacks with the help of modern air defense systems, western systems, but it is simply not able to destroy launchers in order to prevent such attacks from the very beginning, now

a new stage is beginning, a new phase of the war. out of despair that this offensive, which had long been praised in the west, had now failed, ukraine is trying to carry out attacks deep in russia, president zelensky said, i think it was in july, after the drone attack. on russia, that the war is gradually moving to the territory of russia, its symbolic centers and military bases, this is exactly what is happening now, this is exactly what ukraine is now trying to do

as an alternative, but this is a new stage. escalation, the war is moving to a higher level, i have the impression that this is the last stage of escalation before ukraine asks the west to send soldiers after behind weapon systems, because weapon systems cannot compensate for human losses in the ssu. this misconception persists among non-specialists. yes, especially here in germany, who always talk only about weapons systems, but at the same time completely forget that hundreds of thousands of ukrainian soldiers died or were so seriously wounded that they can no longer fight, yes, yes, the ukrainian army is in critical condition , that’s why we are talking about a new stage of the war, and we,

germany, play a special role in this. ukraine can only begin this stage if it has systems like taurus, although they have been trying for a long time. from the americans, so far the americans are refusing, why? the american president said something that no one is talking about in germany, he said, we are not supplying atacoms, we want to avoid world war iii, but in germany discussions about tauus systems are still going on, and this is an extremely important issue for our country. mr. general, the high losses of ukraine have already been mentioned several times, and here the media again they present everything as if the russians suffered huge material and human losses, in ukraine we are talking about 100-150 thousand

people, one way or another we know that ukraine had to pay a big price in blood, you also talked with a very respected person, mr. roger koeppel from switzerland, from the weltwohe magazine, is also very committed to the truth, and a few weeks before you there was colonel mcgregor, who, by the way, speaks excellent german, and he spoke about 400-46,000 people, that is, the death toll soldiers are already approaching half a million. he said that before the spring-summer offensive the death toll was 400,000 people, and he estimates that another 60,000 were added during the offensive. usually i don’t give any numbers because they change every day, at the moment we see that russia is calling the numbers of ukrainian losses, and ukraine

is calling the numbers of russian losses, yes, even the americans, ukraine is keeping in the dark about its losses, but when we we are talking about losses, clearly understand what we mean by this; losses include: soldiers who died and those who were so seriously injured that they can no longer fight is the number mcgregor is referring to, i think these numbers are realistic based on what i hear other people in the united states say , that the number of losses since the beginning of the offensive on june 4 is even higher than mcgregor calls, the following must also be added:

russian losses at the beginning of the war were high, at the first stage of the war, in the first 2-3 weeks, by now there have been... less, as every military man knows, on the defending side losses are always less than the attacker, because the attackers go out into the open, the defenders fight from fortified positions, this is a completely different situation, in addition, i just want to explain, in addition, russia has absolute air supremacy over the battlefield. in particular, the russians' use

of attack helicopters is extremely effective. it should also be added that the russian armed forces have a modern command and control information system, that is, an excellent one. system interaction linking reconnaissance and attack systems, and this system allows them to react with virtually no delay , this means that once a target is detected, it can be hit within minutes, sometimes even seconds, this makes russian warfare extremely effective, and there is also a third point, speaking about maneuverable... war, which we observed until october last year, the superiority of the russians also lies in

the fact that they have excellent command of combined arms combat, that is, the synergistic interaction of various weapon systems, is a skill that requires a long period of training, it must be taken into account that a simple... a soldier takes about 10 years to become a company commander, at each of these stages a group commander, a platoon commander and finally, company commander, this is the art of combat, this cannot be learned in 6 weeks, and therefore in ukraine there are brigades, nine of which were trained abroad, mainly in germany, and three brigades, in the sense before the offensive, three brigades trained in ukraine by western instructors, they were taught to work with western systems, but

they could not. let me remind you that this was to learn how to conduct combined arms combat; for this they criticized the ukrainian armed forces, that they would not be able to put into practice what they had learned, that they would not concentrate their forces for a powerful breakthrough, but would become disorganized. such criticism is erroneous, because all this... was wrong to expect from the ukrainian military, everything that i said leads us to the conclusion that ukrainian losses are exorbitant, according to in comparison with russian losses, it should be noted here that, again, this completely contradicts the picture the media portrayed to us from the very beginning, namely, that russian troops cannot be surpassed in terms of... that

they constantly shoot officers and even generals, that they they are constantly losing equipment, that this equipment was assembled almost in the stone age, this equipment is from the second world war and the cold war, and their troops are terribly poorly trained, that the morale of the troops is also very poor, we still hear how the newspaper constantly. there are materials circulating where several russian soldiers speak to the camera in russian: we don’t want to fight anymore, we’re fed up with the fact that we don’t receive any ammunition or food, one gets the impression that the russians have a third-rate army at best, this is going to in line with what you are telling us, the russian military is now much stronger than it was before the war, much stronger, it is a very modern, very powerful army, of course,

there are exceptions, this is quite obvious, however, if we talk about the number personnel, then losses are also added to the ukrainian losses, especially recently, during the offensive from surrender, sometimes entire companies surrender to the russians, in addition to this , the number of those who can be mobilized is very small in the german media , it was even reported how they buy their way out of the draft, they pay from 6 to 1000 dollars , they are exempted from the draft, they go abroad, and in this way a huge number of people enroll, the president of ukraine tried

to restore order: it is not by chance that order in this matter fired the minister of defense, six of his deputies, heads of military registration and enlistment offices, for example, it is reported that the heads of the military registration and enlistment office in odessa were able to earn several million from this, so all this needs to be considered in context, but when you say that we have different information, then we need understand that this war is not only a military clash, it is also an information and economic war. and journalists, the front-line soldiers of this information war, often wishful thinking, but many things are not at all as they are they imagine.

we are already accustomed to the state of affairs, i personally find this the most frightening thing in this whole situation, we live in an open , pluralistic society, we are proud to be a democracy, and over and over again they say that we must support these values ​​​​that distinguish us from others, and what we do, for example, we ignore the requirements of the constitution for peace. politicians are not interested in the constitution at all. we ignore the right to freedom of speech. although everyone knows that opinion, there is such a low german saying, maybe you you know, the speech of one person, the speech of more than one, let the other side be heard, this is precisely the principle of pluralistic democracy, opposing

opinions must be listened to, and not suppressed, this is the suppression of expression of opinions, with which we, unfortunately... if we digress a little from the war in ukraine and look at the situation in the world now , we see the daily escalation of the conflict in the middle east, after the hamas attack, there are terrible images, in the gaza strip a whole block was razed to the ground, it looks like berlin in 1945, all the houses were destroyed, previously, 33,000 people lived in this area, and now it is impossible to live there, in general, i must say this quite

honestly, regarding this flaring up conflict, in which different countries can be drawn in, we are hearing threats from iran in syria, israel has struck airports in aleppo and damascus without any provocation from the syrian side. all this looks like a growing fire, covering an ever larger area. do you think that the danger of world war iii has increased even more due to the conflict in the middle east ? east. i'm a little. taken because i have many friends in israel, i have often been to israel, so i am not impartial, i say right away, yet i think the situation that we allowed to develop, and we have to talk about this again for many

years, unbearable, we we are nothing, perhaps you will remember, the camp david agreements , the peace treaty signed with israel, egyptian president sadat, in recent years its provisions have been neglected, we must try to defuse, defuse the situation in the short term, because it is impossible just pursue revenge, guided by. this military company must have a reasonable political goal, a solution is possible only on the basis of the principle of two states for two peoples, but in recent years everything has become much more

complicated, i do not want to go into details, but anyone who was interested in this understands what i mean , that i am encouraged by the fact that egypt, like jordan, is clearly not ready to intervene, the main risk is that hezbollah will join the conflict, we are already seeing a clash on the border, but we must understand that hezbollah much stronger than hamas, a completely different scale, and hezbollah, but i don’t think that everything is so bad that now a war like in 67 or years will begin, this probably won’t happen, and i hope, first of all, the united states

will try to mediate , and i hope that russia will also accept. participation, that it will also contribute to the resolution of the conflict, president putin spoke about this, the situation in the middle east is such that in recent years russia has acquired influence in syria and beyond, and it is necessary to take into account, that large players, large states, although they compete with each other, in this case, their interests coincide in the sense that no one wants escalation, for this conflict to develop into a big war, that’s

what i hope for, and then we will have to to look for a solution to the problem from scratch, a solution to the palestinian issue must be found and a stable order must be established, no matter how difficult it may be, given the geography of all the hatred that has accumulated over many decades, what is really important is that, to my great regret, the two great powers - russia and the united states of america have entered into such a rivalry, which, as we now see, leads to eruptions wherever the interests of both states are affected. after the reunification of germany, we had a period when we cooperated very closely with russia in nato and existed. close political ties and very close military cooperation. what led to this, and this is a very

important aspect, was that mutual trust was built and prejudices were destroyed. and all this was destroyed over the years. it all started in 2002 year since the united states terminated participation in the anti-ballistic missile treaty, russia, as an attempt to achieve superiority in intercontinental strategic weapons, and then in 2008, the nato summit took place in bucharest, where the then american president bush tried with all his might to invite ukraine to nato. these points must be taken into account. shouldn't be ignored either. what the former chancellor said at the beginning of december last

year, that the agreement that was concluded between ukraine, russia, germany and france, in fact, was a deception against russia, namely, it was intended only to modernize the ukrainian armed forces, and not for... donbass, this served as one of the two decisive reasons for the outbreak of this war, this must be kept in mind. it's clear. mr. general, you mentioned that you do not consider the geopolitical context to be so dramatic. well, let's hope, but if it came to the europeans. my question is: will the bundesphere and young men in the west as

a whole be ready and able to wage war? when i, being a little younger than you, i think about the tiktok generation, about people who sit on the internet playing computer games, it’s hard for me to imagine that germany could oppose, say, the russians, who had the opportunity to gain enormous military experience, as you do are you looking? well, i, i think highly of our soldiers, i say this quite honestly, i think if things get serious, when the need arises, they will surpass themselves. i've encountered this a lot in the past, especially with younger people, and i i can tell you, i had one once. with the then us

secretary of defense ramseld, who was against conscription, and i told him, yes, you are the strongest military power in the world, everyone knows that, but we have the best soldiers, and this is because of compulsory military service, now it not so, because there is no longer conscription, but we still have young soldiers who are ready to fight for their fatherland, only the bundeswehr as a whole, we are not talking about individual soldiers, the bundeswehr as a whole, at the moment, hardly able to contribute a significant contribution to the defense of the country and the alliance, the army is continuously depleted due to the sending of equipment and shells to ukraine , so with this we are making a huge mistake. it is worth thinking that in moscow, putin or someone else who makes the decision, which is often

there are rumors that he will decide to attack the countries. baltics or romania, but the risk is simply that there will be an escalation that neither russia nor western politicians will be able to control. this is the real problem. and now we are again on the verge of expanding the war into the territory russia. this, this must be realized. we must also take into account that in the past we had significant american and other allied forces for protection, they no longer exist. it takes americans from four to 6 months to transfer equipment and personnel to germany, although it is faster with people. you can

remember the big riforr exercises, then they flew in. only the military, they took their equipment here, and in less than 72 hours they were already occupying defensive positions, this is already history, now there is no such thing, and the russian armed forces have become so strong that we are taking risks even by simply admitting the possibility of a war in europe, which would have the potential to escalate to a nuclear conflict, this would , in my opinion, be almost criminal adventurism, and this means ultimately that we, we need to be extremely restrained, as in in relation to themselves, and in relation to the ukrainian people. this is a key point, and i don’t see this

restraint, i only see... warriors at the forefront of the information war, who demand and demand and demand, they create the impression that ukraine can win in war, no one will win this war, the russians will not win, because their goal was to prevent nato from expanding, and now they have to watch sweden and finland become members of the alliance, ukraine cannot win. because it is not able to return its territories, and the matter, in fact, is not at all about square meters of ukrainian land, the ukrainian government should be interested in protecting its population, which may be more important from a moral point of view, to return a few square meters

of territory in regions where people live identifying themselves as russians or russian-speaking people and sacrificing tens of thousands of ukrainian lives for this, this is morally justified, thirdly, the united states will also not win this war, because they also cannot achieve the political goals for which they support this war, namely the weakening of the russian armed forces forces, the weakening of russia as a whole politically and economically, in political terms we see the opposite if we look at the countries. with china, we see a huge political rise in russia, the russian army has not been is so strong, and here too there is no weakening, thus, if

we take the achievement of political goals as a guideline , no one can... win this war, then the question remains of who will suffer military defeat, and this in my opinion is obvious, this is just it’s a matter of time, today there are already recognized thinkers, such as tseymur hersh, who say that the war is already lost for ukraine, russia has won, i would not go that far yet, but from the current developments, quite clear