Conflict in Ukraine: Putin & Zelensky Dig In for Long War Amid Nuclear Risks, Global Food Disruption

I'm Amy Goodman in New York joined by democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez in Chicago this is democracy now we turn to Ukraine we're Russian drone strikes on the Odessa region cause fires at a port near the border with NATO member Romania that damage facilities that transport Ukraine's crucial grain exports this comes after Russia left a deal two weeks ago that allowed Ukraine to export grain to World Markets through the city of Odessa Ukrainian President Vladimir zielinski said Russia had quote once again targeted ports grain facilities and Global Food security turkey's president Richard erdogan spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the attack and said he'll continue efforts to reinstate the Black Sea grain deal and push for D escalation on Tuesday the U.S Envoy to the United Nations said there were indications Russia May return to discussions about the grain deal this comes after Russian missiles struck a residential high-rise in the Ukrainian city of criviri Monday the hometown of President zielinski killing at least six people including a ten-year-old girl and her mother dozens more were injured in the attack one resident said she raced at the scene of the blast after receiving a panicked call from a friend who lived nearby so we jumped into our car and drove here what we saw was pure horror committed by the Russian I don't want to say the word here they hit a residential building and her block is just next to it so everything in her apartment was ruined she survived and is alive thank God elsewhere officials in Ukraine's Russian occupied Donetsk regions say two people were killed and six others injured when Ukrainian artillery fire struck a civilian bus in Moscow Russia's defense Ministry says Ukraine launched a fresh wave of drone attacks on Russia's capital with one of the devices striking an office tower that had been hid in a previous attack Sunday meanwhile Poland's accusing Russian Ally Belarus of violating its airspace with military helicopters Belarus denied the accusation but Poland's defense Ministry said Tuesday it's sending code additional forces and resources including combat helicopters to its eastern border also Tuesday Belarus President Alexander lukashenko mockingly told Poland it should thank him for keeping in check Wagner mercenaries now stationed in Belarus after last month's failed Mutiny in Russia this all comes as Saudi Arabia is planning to host a peace Summit this weekend this is U.S state Department spokesperson Matthew Miller support this Summit we have long said that it's important that Ukraine be in the driver's seat when it comes to any potential diplomatic resolution to this war it's important that countries that have not yet heard directly from Ukraine hear from Ukraine so we are gratified that there will be countries that are attending this Summit to talk directly with Ukraine if your question was with respect to what other countries will be attending I would defer to the governments of Saudi Arabia and Ukraine to that to that to answer that question if the question is respect I'm coming I'm coming to you you know to jump in if the question is with respect to um uh what U.S government officials will be attending I can confirm that there will be U.S government officials not ready to make announcements yet about who those those will be but as the week goes on certainly you can expect that that we will do so in a moment we'll be joined by Rajan Menon director of the grand strategy program at defense priorities the senior research scholar at Columbia University Salzman Institute of War and Peace studies the author of several books including conflict in Ukraine the unwinding of the post-cold war order he also just recently returned from Ukraine and has some very interesting pieces Rajan it's great to have you with us if you can start off by talking about the so-called Ukrainian counter offensive and the state of it as you just recently returned from Ukraine the primary focus of the Ukrainian counter-offensive is in the South particularly two provinces in danets the southwest part of it and zapore Asia to some extent in irsan the the Russians have had a great deal of time over the past several months to create layered fortifications to seed the area with mines and they're dug in the real question is how much Headway can the ukrainians make in the face of those barriers plus extremely intense Russian Artillery Fire and Air power they have made some advances in a few areas on the southern front but we're way too early in this process to know how successful the counter-offensive will be people have already called it a failure so I've called it a success I think we should be in a way in watch mode one where we're just turning on your mic go ahead one we can't hear you I oh go ahead um Rajan uh if you can talk about uh Saudi Arabia what's coming up this weekend uh who's included in this uh so-called peace talks well Russia is not included so it's not formally a peace negotiation between Ukraine and Russia I think this is one of several efforts made the Chinese made an effort the African group made an effort recently this is now a third effort to get some movement on the Peace front the difficulty is that neither side neither Ukraine nor Russia feels that it is losing the war each field can still win and so I have no indication that the two sides have any convergence in terms of how they see a settlement working out so I wouldn't be very hopeful about these processes if I had to give you my best guess it is that we are liable to see this war continue for several months if not more than that yeah I wanted to go back I know we were having some technical difficulties but I wanted to ask you in terms of the offensive the the at least in the U.S media there was uh quite a bit of expectation one that the offensive would have started much earlier than it did but also that it would be it would have been more successful by now you're saying that uh that it's still too early to stay but isn't it already uh a pretty evident that with the expectation was of NATO uh and uh and and the Ukrainian government have not been met well I don't know what the expectations of NATO were but let's remember that we're a month into this the ukrainians are hobbled in many ways um primarily the lack of air power probably insufficient artillery and ammunition and so I think to expect them to go charging forward into layered Russian defenses and take on enormous artillery fire and lose a very large number of people was I think from the beginning very foolish I know everybody formed a very good opinion with the counter offenses has failed I'm not saying that it's going to be a smashing success but I think one thing this war has taught us is that many things have happened that people said would not happen beginning with the invasion itself so I think at the moment what the ukrainians have done is to make some Headway in three areas along the southern front but and this has been missed in a lot of the press reporting they have carried out systematic attacks on Russian logistical facilities on command centers on fuel and ammunition Depots across the southern front including very intensively in Ukraine the goal seems to be I'm not saying that this will succeed to make it much harder for Russia to supply the troops that are in in the South dug in the South so I think for all this to play out we need time it is definitely true that the ukrainians don't have all of what they need to pull off a smashing counter offensive but from the beginning this has been an uphill battle for them because in every measure of military power Russia far exceeds anything they have even counting Western support and I wanted to ask you about the impact of the uh the Western sanctions or the NATO sanctions on Russia which are the most Draconian ever against the nation uh and uh and yet last year apparently Russia not only did its economy not decline but it actually there was an uh an increase in uh production and output in in Russia I'm wondering your sense of how long Russia can hold out against these sanctions I've been skeptical all along that sanctions would make any difference in terms of getting Mr Putin to stop the war we have a long history with sanctions and we know that when a government decides to pursue a goal that for whatever reason it deems extremely important sanctions are unlikely to work I think the history of sanctions in recent years or historically suggests that they don't really move countries away from positions that they're driven to produce all the indicators of the Russian economy bear out your point there's certainly no evidence whatsoever of personal discontent that President Putin cannot handle I was just looking at some public opinion polls they show no significant diminution in Putin's standing at home so I don't think he faces any kind of possibility of an Insurrection for opposition to the war that's for many reasons some people support him other people don't like the war but are too afraid to speak out yet a third group may not like the world but are going about their business and just getting on with their lives but the long and short of it is that he doesn't face anything on the home front that should give him a great deal of worry um if you can talk about the people you met with in Ukraine you wrote a piece months ago um talking about why talk of negotiations and you know discussion in the media because this is certainly larger than Russia and Ukraine Russia's military far more powerful than Ukraine but so many Western nations are now involved with supporting Ukraine um all over the world uh people are concerned about what's happening but somehow this discussion of negotiations is seen as a pro-russian conversation as opposed to a concern about the global um just perspective on can we afford this war especially when it comes to threats of nuclear weapons used rishan right so there are two issues that make the war a wider consequences there may be more than two but I'll speak to two one is of course the one you mentioned the POS Prospect of nuclear escalation it is certainly something that we have to be concerned about for obvious reasons the problem with escalation is that it's very difficult to know what is in the mind of Vladimir Putin so you and I for example could sit down and try step by step to figure out under what circumstances might he escalate would it be situation one situation two situation three but we have no way of knowing whether he's thinking that way and even if we could get a fix on what he's thinking down the road six months later his calculations could change so there's a there's a problem of logical deduction in how far I can get us there's also an information problem because we don't have access to anything that he's written about this in a confidential vein or what he's told people so we're flying in the dark that is not to minimize the danger of escalation it's certainly a problem the second one is the whole question of what happens to Global food prices now that exports from the Black Sea are now increasingly from the Danube with the Russians are attacking Ukrainian ports in the Danube if um food from Ukraine which is a major supplier of several grains and sunflower oil comes to an end so there are wider consequences but we have to come back with the narrow question here unfortunately of have the two sides shown any indication that they're willing to sign a peace agreement Mr Putin's position has been yes we can have a peace negotiation but Ukraine has to essentially concede up front that will forfeit the four provinces in which last fall Russia Russia conducted a referendum and said they were formally annexed to the Soviet Union now the ukrainians are not going to accept the partition of their country it is true that they're in an uphill battle but in my visits to Ukraine one thing which become absolutely clear and this goes to the point of the US fighting the last Ukraine and I understand why people are saying that but it's not as if the ukrainians are fighting unwillingly so if you wrap all this together the pessimistic conclusion I have to give you is that we're not at the end of this war and it will continue but all of the risks that you mentioned especially the food risk and the escalation risk are certainly very much going to be present and I wanted to ask you you've taken three trips now to uh to Ukraine uh to the area still under Ukrainian government control what's your sense of how the population that is holding up there and obviously we don't know what's happened in those areas that have been annexed by Russia we do know that about 2 million of people in those areas uh fled to Russia not to the West so that we I would assume that they had some sort of a support for what the Russian government was doing or at least felt safer going into Russia than they did going into Poland or other parts of Western Europe so I'm wondering how you feel the Ukrainian people are holding up at this stage right just on your last point you know I wouldn't necessarily conclude that those who went to Russia did it because of pro-russian feelings that could be possible the other explanation is simply that was the easiest Escape rod for them and there's some evidence that some people who are in Russia taken there unwillingly so that question is still very much murky as to the mood I've been now to the southern front lines and Eastern front lines I've traveled all over Ukraine and I've been to Ukraine even before the war coming to the war itself one of the consistent things that I found that I've asked people is a number of times has the economic privation refugees internally displaced people the destruction the Ukrainian economy and has the number of War dead led to the point where you think that although you cannot get ideal terms it's time to wind down the War I have not met a single person who's told me yes the pain has gotten to the point where we have to seek a way out now the one thing that the ukrainians have to bear in mind is if the war drags on into next year and the United States which is the main funder of the war because the number two country Germany gives only about a tenth of what the United States gives will the United States at some point conclude that it cannot continue supplying the war and will there be pressure on Ukraine to come to terms that is the thing that I think could force the Ukraine through the table because without American support they simply cannot continue

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 42,873

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: arM7ZLV01ec

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023