Lyse Doucet
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
And also the way they treated, there was notice, I remember at the time how shocked we were, that he would treat the Taliban leadership with such respect, in the same way he's treating President Putin with such respect. And he would snipe and dismiss and jeer. And Pompeo, his secretary of state at the time, did the same thing, dismissing
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
The government, the Afghan government, which in principle should have been the main partner of the United States. But mostly Afghans sort of throw it out there and say to the Ukrainians, beware when someone, an American president says to you, we are with you for the long run because we found out. how long that run is.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
And President Trump himself has been saying recently, it wasn't that we ended the war, it was how we ended it. And he blames President Biden, which I think he has to, for a very chaotic pullout. But it was a President Trump policy that President Biden continued.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
Lise, you wanted to come in. Maybe it's a question for, I'm allowed to have a question for James too. I saw an estimate, I don't know if it's the official view, that about 40% of the critical minerals are in occupied territory.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
As soon as President Putin heard that this deal was in the making, he suddenly, didn't he interrupt the news to say that he was ready to make a deal as well on critical minerals? So some of the minerals that President Zelensky wants to talk about with the Americans may actually be under Russian control now. Is that what you've heard, James? Yes.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
So you're going through all of world history. I'll just add to our last question. Of course, I'm a Canadian. President Trump talks about the 51st state and having an eye on our society and our economy too. Iran is very interesting. Let's drill down to what President Trump really wants. He loves the high profile, high publicity, quick deals that he gets credit for.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
As he said in his inauguration speech, my second term, I'm going to be a peacemaker. Iran is even more complicated, if that's possible, than Ukraine and Gaza. But just before I joined you, Jackie, there was a video by President Trump saying that he's written a letter to the supreme leader of Iran, Khamenei. He didn't say what the letter was in, what was in the letter.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
And he repeated again, he was very open about it. And we know that there are many on his team who who want President Trump to authorize military strikes against Iran to prevent Iran from, they say, acquiring a nuclear weapon. But President Trump keeps saying, I don't want to go for military. I want to do a deal.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
And he said again today, as he said in this latest video, which he has said before, the Iranians are such nice people. They're such successful people. I want the people of Iran to be successful. It's very strange how he has approached the Iranian FAA because,
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
We do know that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, who does have very close relations with President Trump, has been pushing him in that direction. We have to deal with Iran. But President Trump has made it very clear that when it comes to Iran, the same as with other things, he doesn't want there to be more death, more killing. He wants the deal.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
It does in the sense of... ending the war in Ukraine is now at the top of the agenda in a way that it wasn't before. I don't think you can say they're any closer to ending it, but it certainly is the main focus. That's the narrative now. It is about providing more military assistance to Ukraine so they'll be in a stronger military position once they actually get to the battlefield.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
But the focus now is how to find a way to end the war. And for Ukraine and the Europeans, that's also about security guarantees. The question was about peace. But of course, we have a whole lexicon now of how to describe. It could be a frozen conflict. It could be, there's a new word they're using now, a sustainable ceasefire. They talk about in Gaza.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
In other words, it has to be one that we're pretty sure is going to stick. It could just be the end of the war, the end of the fighting. I think it will be hard to have UN peacekeepers. That has to be authorized by the UN Security Council. Would Russia agree with that? Would the United States agree with that? They're sort of on the same side now. Russia would not want UN peacekeepers there.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
Even in the Biden administration, there were leading figures saying to Ukraine, you're not going to get Crimea back. Forget about Crimea. We're not going to argue for Crimea. OK, so maybe they won't get Crimea back, although they still say that they want it. Every Ukrainian, Vitaly's looking at me.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
And also, I remember the beginning of the war where President Zelensky entertained the idea there could be some discussions and compromise to say that the East, you know, Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk, Luhansk, where there's predominantly Russian speaking populations and ties to the pops, we could discuss them. Right. Right now, the official line is, no, we want all of our land back.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
But in the cut and thrust of making a deal, there's also been a suggestion about that you leave it for later. You kick it down the road. So these will be some of the issues. But at the end of the day, for Ukrainians, peace has to mean control of our land, control of our borders. And we must be sovereign, able to defend ourselves in control of everything that affects us.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
I think when you look at US military support to Ukraine, you have to look at it from a number... vantage points. One is the quantity of the weaponry that the United States is providing Ukraine, that the Europe, even though Europe is providing a lot, in some cases more, it cannot double that to provide what the United States is doing.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
Secondly, it's the quality of what the United States, as the world's mightiest military power, is able to provide. We've already heard about intelligence being discontinued, which creates a huge problem for Ukraine. We've heard also of the HIMARS. Those are multiple launch rocket systems. There's the ATAKAMS, which are ballistic missiles with a range of 190 miles, and there's howitzers as well.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
I know this is all military jargon, but I would say, Jackie, one of the most important things for Ukraine is not just the physical material, but the muscular, moral, political backing. That is what they feel. That's all that's going to deter Vladimir Putin, not British troops, not French. There has to be an American thumbprint of some kind.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
I remember last year, the EU foreign policy chief telling me with great frustration, our cupboards are bare. Our manufacturing cannot keep up with the volume, the intensity of the warfare. I don't know what it is like now, but in some cases coming down to their last I'll just tell you one story.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
One thing which is seared in memory is I was in Ukraine when they were waiting for that more than $60 billion that was held up by the United States. And I was really struck that everyone I spoke to, whether it was the guy serving coffee, the national security advisor, anyone I would meet anywhere would say to me that $60 billion we needed.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
It had so penetrated the thinking that every delay in American aid means an increase in lives lost. inches of territory that Russia is going to take. That's how consequential it was.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
I just want to jump in here because James mentioned the word one million. And well, both of Vitaly and James would know that I heard MPs bitterly telling the story of the one million bullets. 2023, the EU said, promised Ukraine, in one year, we will send you one million bullets. And one year on, they had only sent half.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
Yes, and Afghans certainly are mentioning it a lot. You see conversations on social media. I mean, they're very, very different societies, very different wars. Afghanistan became America's longest war. It lasted through two Republican, two Democratic administrations. But the way President Trump is approaching the end of the Ukraine war has a lot of similarity to how he approached the Afghan war.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
First of all, at that time, Afghanistan was at the top of the news, not Ukraine. It was before the Ukraine war, before Russia's full-scale invasion. And President Trump promised in his election campaign the first time around that he would bring all the troops home from Afghanistan. President Biden had spoken about that as well. But when he did it, he gave away the most important thing.
Global News Podcast
The Ukraine War: What happens next?
At the beginning, he said, I'm going to bring all my troops home. Same as the concessions when we heard from after President Trump's conversation with President Putin, we heard the U.S. Defense Secretary saying there'll be no Ukrainian membership of NATO. It's unrealistic for Ukraine to get any of its land pre-2014 back.