What future for Ukraine? Your questions answered. Global News Podcast teams up with Ukrainecast for a special Q&A, in a week that has seen US military aid halted. Can Trump and Zelensky get back to talks on a peace deal?Jackie Leonard will be joined by Ukrainecast's Vitaly Shevchenko, the BBC's Ukraine Correspondent James Waterhouse and Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet.
Chapter 1: What is the current situation in Ukraine?
From the BBC World Service, this is a special collaborative edition of the Global News Podcast with our colleagues from UkraineCast. I'm Jackie Leonard and in the studio we have UkraineCast presenter Vitaly Shevchenko and our chief international correspondent Lise Doucette and in Kiev we have James Waterhouse. We are recording this edition at 16 hours GMT on Friday the 7th of March.
That's 1,108 days since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Events are moving very fast and we'll be putting your questions to our experts and trying to unpick some of the issues that have come to the fore in the last week. Now, we want to get through as many questions as possible. So let's begin with Denise.
Hi, my name is Denise and I'm from Auckland, New Zealand. I'm exploring worst case scenarios. And my question and concern is what happens if US stops supporting Ukraine and eventually they will have no choice but to surrender to Russia.
Now, for the last three years of war, America has been Ukraine's largest donor. The decision to freeze military aid follows that very public disagreement in the Oval Office between Volodymyr Zelensky, Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. James, if we begin with you, what if the U.S. never restarts its military support? Would a Ukraine surrender be the most likely outcome?
Well, I mean, what any Ukrainian will tell you on a Kiev street is that they would never surrender. I mean, the idea of sticking it down in weapons and allowing Russia to occupy, take over the country, install a puppet regime is, and as always has been, a non-starter. I think when you speak to those in military circles...
It is accepted that Ukraine could probably fight on for months, maybe a little bit longer. But that is the reality, such as the quality and quantity of what America does provide. Now, it is true European allies as a whole. have donated more military aid collectively than America.
But when we're talking about American intelligence, its quality, the broad scope of it, we're talking about sophisticated long-range missiles like HIMARS, which have been pivotal for Ukraine's war effort. I think without that, and we saw this when there was that big disagreement in the US Congress about a military aid package for Ukraine, when that was delayed,
Ukraine lost land and lives as a direct result. You know, the eastern town of Avdiivka, it was a fortress at one point. It fell because you had Ukrainians, along with their own manpower issues, run out of kit and be forced from their positions.
I think rather than surrender, it may well deteriorate to a point where Ukraine would have to engage in a far less or an even less arguably favourable peace deal where they would have to, for example, meet Russia's continued demands that it would have a shrunk military, that President Zelensky would be forced from power, that any NATO talk would be paused completely and that there would be no foreign troops in Ukraine.
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Chapter 2: What if the US stops supporting Ukraine?
Hey BBC, this is Renaud from Portugal and my question is, what is the deal? What is actually on the table for Russia, US, Ukraine? Where is the money coming from? How is Russia relaxed about this? Does she get what she wants in the end? What is happening?
And this is Anthony in Thailand.
Let's just stop a moment and consider what Trump has said about American businesses in Ukraine and that the Russians would never dare touch his people. What do you think about this? Can this be analysed and has there been any other president in history where an economic entity has provided a military security guarantee? Despite the bravado, could this actually work? Thank you.
Well, back to James Waterhouse in Kiev. James, what is it that Ukraine's got that the US wants?
Well, Ukraine says it's got around 5% of the world's what are called critical raw materials. So we're talking about graphite, granite, lithium, titanium, things that are used to make electric cars, turbines, electronics, weapons. They're worth a lot of money, billions of dollars.
President Zelensky himself at the end of last year, as part of a peace proposal, said, look, you know, we could negotiate. We could say to America, you can have a slice of this pie in exchange for some of these critical minerals. What he probably didn't anticipate was Donald Trump saying, OK, great, we want complete access to $500 billion worth and you'll get no security guarantees in return.
There has been some movement. It was thought President Zelensky was going to sign on that trip to the Oval Office. Of course, that did not happen. And I think as a reflection of the political road he has run out of, he is still willing to sign this deal without any kind of security guarantee by America in return. Kiev is saying there'll be a domino effect of agreements.
Once you have American companies here drilling, it would give Donald Trump and future presidents a reason to step in and protect their interests. The problem with that is that it wasn't exactly the presence of American companies in Ukraine, which stops Russia from launching its full scale invasion.
The other complicator from speaking to people in the industry, we were at this enormous graphite quarry. close to the central city of Oman. This is a quarry that was built in 1964. It takes a decade just to work out where to dig. It then takes decades to yield any kind of profit.
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