Putin will meet a violent end similar to Hitler | Michael Clarke and Andrew Roberts

he will either die in office or be removed in something that will almost certainly then become violent um or be removed in violence do you know what I think churcher would have made of 2014 it would have been his reinand moment or his anchus moment or his Munich moment it wouldn't have been the moment in which he you know got NATO to go a war over this um he um wouldn't have done that but it would have been the key moment that he would have rallied uh opinion against Russia and to have recognized that they were on the road to war hello and welcome to Frontline for times radio with me K chabo so as we enter the third year in the war in Ukraine we're drawing from the past and looking at one of History's great wartime leaders so Winston Churchill often compared with President zalinski would do to defeat Vladimir Putin here in this island Fortress that he will have cor Reon and settle in the end I will be living the parliament today thanking all of you in advance for powerful English ples well joining us is Professor Lord Andrew Roberts a member of the House of Lords and one of Britain's best known military historians who first started writing about Churchill more than 30 years ago his latest book is called conflict the evolution of warfare from 1945 to Ukraine and Professor Michael Clark a professor of Defense studies who's a leading analyst on the conflict and his newest publication Great British commanders is out later this year welcome to both of you thank you so much for your time today thank you um many comparisons uh as I said have been made between President zalinski and Winston Churchill as wartime leaders uh Professor Lord Roberts you have been studying Winston Churchill as I said for for more than three decades how far do those similarities go I think they go relatively far in fact yes um I think that of course um zilinski has been described by Jonathan Friedland in the uh in the guardian as Churchill with an iPhone and I think there's something to that you know the the way that he stayed in um keeve at the beginning of the war uh was reminiscent of Churchill in the Blitz the way that he uh uses his his rhetoric and oratory and his real connection with social media and his capacity to to get the message out is something that I think that churcher would have been uh profoundly impressed with his relationship and I'm sure Michael would be very interesting on this with his generals um actually it strikes me uh he he he makes it very clear that he is in charge um and uh and that's something that Winston Churchill uh did at least least in the second world war not in the first world war um so that was much more complicated but he has a the two men do have similarities um when you take into account of course the fact that there's 70 years between them and what do you think Michael clar in terms of the relationship between President zilinsky and his generals compared to that of Churchill yeah I mean as Lord Andrew said um you the the war thrusts the national leader into the spotlight and churcher with an iPhone I think he's exactly right and a lot of people say to me what was what was the key moment in the first part of the war and I say the key moment lasted less than 40 seconds when on the think was F it with on the second night of the invasion zeni was out on the streets with his ministry of defense and two or three other members of his cabinet it's a very dangerous thing to do because there were six assassination squads uh running around Kev trying to get to him to kill him and and two of them have been have been neutralized by them but not the other four as we understand it and he went out on the street and he said I'm here here I'm not running anywhere I'm here The Minister's here we're all here and it was a short little clip that he did but he showed there the profound understanding of an actor or a comedian somebody who knew the media who had a very good media Empire before the um before the The Crisis began and a Communications team Second To None actually his own comm's team who are still there now are the best in the business and so he instinctively understood that you turn up on the street you show that you're there you don't need to do it for very long you don't need many ringing phrases just the sheer sincerity of it convince people and that fundamentally changed it changed the war it showed the ukrainians that they were going to fight and it showed the Americans that the ukrainians would fight and so the whole thing turned from a a Russian cetar military back cetar into full-fledged War which is where we are with it now and Andrew Roberts one of the things that you talked about before was the way that Churchill was one of the first people to warn against German Ambitions in in the first world war he was one of the few prominent people to warn against Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazis um he was against appeasement why did he see what others didn't and actually you can add of course that he was the first major Western politician to warn against Stalin and West and uh the imperialism in Eastern Europe as well after the second world war so he got three of the really big issues of the 20th century right and he had this um this extra view that awful lot of other politicians of the 30s didn't have uh which was that he was a pho seite he liked Jews he got on very well with them and therefore he had a a sort of early warning system that a lot of the other politicians of the 30s frankly quite a lot of them who were anti-semitic didn't have he also had a great sense of the Arc of History he'd seen what had happened um not personally of course but he was in historian himself and so he knew what had happened with the Spanish Armada and with um Nelson and with the um Napoleon's time and and of course his own great ancestor at the time of the war of Spanish succession the Duke of moror was key to uh winning that war as well and he'd fought in the first world war so for that this was not the first time Britain had been under um under direct uh threat and uh and he was able to put the threat of Hitler into those um into that kind of Continuum of British history MO things uh about just to you know build on that that he because of that sense of History he had a sense of the Strategic Focus he in the second world war he was absolutely focused on what the problem was and as you said I mean he warned about Stalin but remember you know he said when when Germany attacked Russia he said I'd have a good word for the devil if he' joined the Coalition against Hitler it was absolute strategic Clarity the one and most important thing we must do is defeat de the German threat the the Nazi threat to Britain that Clarity and that sense of national mobilization you can't think of many politicians who had that they didn't you certainly didn't get that in the first world war at the beginning uh you didn't really get it even halfway through with Lloyd George was I mean he was close but you get you don't get it quite the same the same way no but you do get it with um not at all you do get it with zilinsky though don't you he understands that this is total war this is something that you've got to have every nobody is going to no male of mil age you know uh is going to leave um Ukraine they are going to put the entire um uh economy onto into a war footing you know this is something he just he grasped the concept of Total War the minute that he wasn't great actually at grasping the idea that it was it was definitely going to happen um before it happened but as soon as it did wow and that phrase of course um about how we need ammunition not a ride was another another of those moments like you said the 40 seconds uh that was another of those moments which absolutely framed the conflict for the world do you know what I sorry could I butt in here uh again um do you know what I think churcher would have made of 2014 it would have been his reinand moment or his anas moment or his Munich moment it wouldn't have been the moment in which he you know got NATO to go to war over this um he um wouldn't have done that but it would have been the key moment that he would have rallied uh opinion against Russia and to have recognized that they were on the road to war um in the way that reinand and and anchas and Munich did Mike um what lessons do you think Churchill might have drawn upon to get Ukraine out of the current situation on the ground where the battle lines are largely static well I mean he he was a great man from National mobilization I mean he understood the need to mobilize in this sort of struggle and of course he he was he he was sparking with ideas all the time mean some of these ideas were were were hopeless um but he he loved technology he loved new ideas he ran with things and I mean people like Dudley pound the first SE law during Second World War he would sort of take some of these crazy churches and kind of shepher them out of play um you know D pound always said you never say no to Churchill but he Al he also said that you know if you make it clear um if you have a point to make he will let you make your point so never say no to him but you sometimes have to Shepherd his enthusiasms out of the way on the other hand a lot of his of enthusiasm turned out to be just right so he was a very contradictory character he was like a firework going off in all directions but he needed people around him like Alan Brook and Dudley pound as well and um Cunningham after that in the in the naval sphere who could sort of shape um all these ideas into something a bit more strategically um appliable and and um you could see zilinski is a bit like that I mean he's got lots of things he wants to talk about he talks about a million drones by the end of the year he's he's he's grabbing at everything he can use to fight the war against the Russians and he needs people around him as well who can help him uh help that sort of restless intensity which he embodies um to apply it in the way that needs to be applied Church would never have been I mean Andrew would have this one but I mean Church would never have been as effective in the war were it not for Alan Brook beside him as his great oh certainly um Alan Brook said that Churchill came up with 100 ideas a day of which three were good and so the key what what Alan Brook that's a big attrition ex well exactly so what you need is what you need is an Alan Brooke who is going to be able to get rid of the N the other 97 essentially can I go back to something that Michael said earlier which um I so agree with about El alamain what you've got to remember of course about Al Alain is that that war it was which was the first British Victory on land we'd won the British the the um um Battle of Britain of course in the air and there had been some victories on the North African literal against the Italians by then but but as far as taking on the Germans was concerned alamain was was the first Victory on and that comes three years and two months into the war it is not um you know it's a long time it's another year plus from the amount of time that zalinski has been fighting so uh one's got to I think sometimes we are too expectant especially with that um last the big uh Autumn counter offensive at the end of last year we we're we're we're building up too much expectation sometimes for for what the ukrainians are capable of doing Mike you say 2024 is like 1942 a Tipping Point what parallels do you see yeah exactly that that somehow ukrainians have got to be kept going this year I mean my understanding is that zalinski is quite upbeat a lot of people around him are not but my current understanding is that he's upbeat about maybe a summer offensive which doesn't sound entirely credible to me from Ukraine's point of view but I think Ukraine will certainly try to pull some surprises they'll try to make the most of what they can do and see if they can score some good public relations hits in the way that let's say the you know the dambusters raid was a great public relations hit didn't make a whole lot of difference to German industry and the and the attack in 1943 wasn't followed up by bombing the the repair to the dams which would have made the winter of 1943 44 very difficult for the Germans we just didn't do it it was a one-off hit which was a fabulous raid made very little difference but it made a huge difference to the image of Britain particularly in the United States and so on and I can imagine that zalinski will have those sorts of things in mind as wersi his CH commander-in-chief now but the the underlying strategic reality is the ukrainians have got to survive this year and hope that the Western World gears up more than it has done so far to actually give them the the wherewithal to conduct an offensive in the spring of 2025 which incidentally is when the Russians will be capable of a strategic offensive as well so we'll be in that position of who goes first who goes first and with what effect I think it's worth remembering of course that church was the Godfather of the tank and uh and and and zilinsky needs tanks he needs those Abrahams from the Americans more of them he needs tanks from from everyone the leopard from uh uh Germany obviously as well I think the place I think Michael's absolutely right about the need for a spectacular I think the the need the place might be Crimea because um that is such an important aspect of the um Russian sense of of who they are and what they're trying to do and and how they are are moving forward so so think of something Naval uh in and around the crime in my view yeah I am thinking of something Naval actually um Andrew Roberts and it's actually uh one of those 97 bad ideas that so Winston church WIll had um every day perhaps for more than one day the gipo campaign of the first World War uh this attempt to break the stalemate on the Western and Eastern fronts by taking control of the Ottoman Straits to ultimately topple the Ottoman Empire we all know it from failed and spectacularly um it was his most famous military fa failure as first Lord the admiralty what do you think um he took away from that and he learned from that that built him into the war time leader he was in the second world war oh well he listened to the um to the generals as Michael was saying he listened to people like Alan Brooke and his Naval Commander pound and uh Charles portal at the air Ministry you know he never once overruled the Chiefs of Staff when all three of the Chiefs of Staff of the second second world war um came to a agreement and uh there were times when he nearly did in March 1944 over samatra for example but he never actually did and that is because he remembered he was a politician who learned from his mistakes made lots of mistakes all the way through his career he made mistakes but he learned from all of them uh that's not always true of politicians today but it was true of Churchill and that was the mistake that he uh that he learned from and you know as a result of calipo he went back into the trenches when he when he you know stepped down from government and he he know he not he you know he did something which was politically very clever even though I'm sure emotionally he wanted to do it he went he went and fought in the trenches or wore a French helmet so people would and a strange great coat so everybody would know who he was but he actually he he you know he actually smartened everything up in the trenches from from the in the command that he had he made it he was only there for a few months but he made a difference and for a for for a Cabinet member first Lord of the admiralty to go fighting The Trenches alongside the boys that was a bra he was 40 years old uh we were not calling up 40 year olds at that stage of the war he was married you know he did not need to to do it but as a Redemptive act essentially he did do it and he took part in no fewer than 30 trench raids he got as close as to the to the German trenches he could hear the Germans speaking in their trenches this is this is something that I don't see uh British cabinet ministers doing when they when they screw up a campaign frankly do you yeah and he also took part in the in the in the last Cavalry attack in in the Battle of Oman in 1898 he was he was part of the very last Cavalry attack um ever ever um ever undertaken by British Cavalry and he was there so Mike Mike as as we enter this third year of the war um what mistakes do you think president zalinsky has made and what evidence do you see of him learning from them I think it well I think his mistakes are are that he's probably he's talked up Ukrainian prospects probably too far in from the Autumn of 2022 because he he kept having to come to Western capitals he was fed for 12 months in every Capital he came to and he kept having to say look we we'll do this and he sort of said we'll finish the war by the end of 2023 you know he he was talking up prospects and I understand why he did that but now now the effect of that is that that he's lost some credibility among Western public and people still sympathize with him but they don't see him now as as such a good um predictor of what is likely to happen and I think there's been some internal issues I mean they say that you know him and zusy didn't speak very much um um him and and Klitschko who's who's off the mayor of of keev whose office is only just down the street they don't speak and the fact that that the president's office seems to be cut off from other offices you know the common factor is is that zalinski has become a bit isolated and I think that is a dangerous thing and what he seems to be trying to do now is move towards a more of a government of national Unity remember his mandate runs out in May this year um the fact you know the postponed elections and the 2019 election gave him a mandate which expires in May of 2024 and so after May he's going to start to look a bit less credible particularly to governments in the global South who are constantly being criticized for not having elections and a lot of those autocratic governments will say oh look at zalinski you know he should have stepped down by now and he's still in power isn't that interesting um you know he he's got to do something about that equally we we suspended elections during a war you know that's it's a it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you've got a fullscale war and they've got a war actually on their land 18% or so of uh of um Ukraine is Russian occupied so it's not it's you know they they have more of an excuse really for um putting back their elections than than we second world war as well I think another problem sorry we're we're talking about um you know issues a major major problem of course uh the sort of elephant in the room with uh with zilinski is his relationship with Trump um that was my next question was it yeah I mean it is so terrible um there's there's probably nothing he could have done about it because Trump is hugely Mercurial figure obviously but nonetheless the way in which the Republican Party uh in America seem to have fallen for this this narrative and much of it which is a conspiracy theory actually about how um about how zilinski is corrupt and and so on um it's going to be extremely dangerous if of course uh Trump wins the election how do how do you think Andrew that um Churchill would have dealt with Donald Trump uh he'd have sucked up to him like crazy from the minute that he uh that he knew that he had a bad uh bad uh um reputation with him uh Churchill did go over to the United States as much as he possibly could uh in the second world war he didn't just concentrate on being nice to the Democrats to FDR's Democrats but he also uh reached out to uh former isolationists in the um in the Senate Republican isolationists and um and worked incredibly hard on that side now we know not least from what Marjorie Taylor green said about David Cameron uh own last week you know uh kiss my ass was her qu quotable phrase about when David was trying to get some uh get the Congress to pass this 60 billion uh deal and uh and I'm afraid you know that is the that's the sort of default position of everybody except for the sort of country club uh bushy Republicans who who have a much more in my view responsible attitude towards this uh Mike former military leaders uh like the former head of the British Army Lord danet they've drawn comparisons to this moment with the 1930s do you see it that way that we're in this kind of pre uh War Phase right now as the defense secretary's already said as well yeah I mean nothing is inevitable and we're certainly not we're not predicting that there got to be a major European War but undoubtedly we are on a road that can lead there because we we took the view until 2022 that um you know Putin was the playground bully but he was rather calculated playground bully and that he'd be a nuisance he'd just be a nuisance for the foreseeable future but there was no reason to regard that as strategically important unless we mishandled it in some way but then with the invasion of Ukraine Everything Has Changed because Putin has no choice now but to double down I mean he burns every bridge he crosses and so he has to keep going and what's happened is that his his um intrinsic sense of Russian imperialism has now become the dominating Force he he held in his mind before but now he he has to go down that road and so he is a threat to European security a manifest threat for the future and we either address it now or we address it in three years time or five years time or eight years time and each time we leave it it will be harder to address so in that respect yes it is like the 1930s you know whether we'll end up in the same place of course we don't know but it would be better to address it sooner rather than later because of what we now know happened in the 1930s this is what happens when a dictator is on a track that they cannot get off even if they wanted to and he doesn't want to um I think it's worth adding to that with with which I completely agree um that back in the summer of 2022 when he wrote that 6,500 word historical essay called on the historical Unity of the ukrainians and Russians which essentially argued that Ukraine didn't have a right to exist um he mentioned Lithuania no fewer than 17 times in that article that's something we ought to really think about because Lithuania is a native member if he crosses the border into Lithuania we will be going to war with a with a nuclear um dictatorship um we mentioned earlier Andrew that um churcher was among those who recognized Adolf Hitler's Ambitions in the interwar period how far do you think the comparisons between Adolf Hitler and President Putin go well one always really wants to go out of one's way not to equate Hitler with anybody in the modern world frankly because it's always a uh bit of a bear trap um historically but if there is anybody then of course you're looking for a totalitarian dictator who invades his neighbors has absolutely no uh time for human rights murders his domestic um opponents when the and the tragic death of Alexi Nali can essentially I think be put down to his choice of Putin's choice of where he was going to be imprisoned and so on so um so yeah of course the the ven diagram has lots of overlap areas but equally uh it's a uh and David Cameron himself has uh at the United Nations equated um uh Russian uh aggression with the Nazis so I think it is a it is a fair one but of course nobody's exactly like Hitler I'm Not For a Moment suggesting that Vladimir Putin wants to gas 6 million ukrainians for example what are the chances uh Michael clar of of Putin um having the same kind of well not exactly the same but a violent end as did Hitler oh well I nobody expects President Putin to retire peacefully to his dater or his Palace in SOI and live out the rest of his life observing Russian Politics as they pass in front of him that won't happen and so he will either die in office or be removed in something that will almost certainly then become violent um or be removed in violence I mean nobody can foresee a peaceful transition as and there never is in not in in most Russian history or in Soviet history and all Soviet leaders have been removed in some fairly forcable way followed by a period of internum where three or four people seem to V for power and then one of them emerges until they're removed and so on um I mean you know you know kov was the closest to somebody who was removed lived more peacefully for a while and gorbachov was was another one um but always there is the the the transition from one regime to another is never smooth it's always difficult and it's always full of of um unpredictable elements and that's why we say that you know Putin will not be replaced by a nice man all we're sure of is it will be a man um but but what we're playing for in the longer term is maybe to get on terms to with the next but one after Putin and that might not be so long after Putin maybe four years but we are still talking about the 2030s here not the next 22 or three years I and you can actually go back of course um as well into the Zars uh lots of them were um were overthrown in Palace coup sometimes by their own Sons um and those and those also wound up as a a very bloody thing I mean we would all love to see wouldn't we um President Putin one day standing up in front of the international criminal court but frankly that is not um that's not the way of of Russia and Andrew what at what point do we start looking towards the future and thinking of the kind of Russia and Russian Federation that will come out of this and its relationship with the rest of the world could could it be divided broken up as Germany was I mean how do you see the future no no I I um I don't think I think it'll be up to the Russians I think if we try to involve ourselves in internal um Russian politics that way Madness lies that's the point at which any Russian would be able perfectly reasonably to uh to fly the flag of ultra nationalism and say look this is the West interfering in our um in our Affairs so so the poor old uh Georgians and aaban is and you name it um they are going to have to work out their own future relationships with uh with Russia the best that we can do is to protect the Baltic states and give Ukraine as much as we possibly can to allow them to win this war and how does the way the war ends uh Michael Clark do you think affect the future of the Caucasus other Russian satellite States like kaliningrad bellarus for example well it's it's intrinsic K it's really important you know if this war ends badly for Ukraine then all of those territories that you mentioned and Europe as a whole will be far less secure the rest of the world will have made it its mind up that therefore the West is not is a paper tiger that the West offers guarantees uh and make statements but they don't really mean it they can't back it up um everyone will draw their own conclusions from that if Putin is seen somehow to Triumph in this however if he's seen to fail and you know we can argue about what does success look like for Ukraine but if the political judgment is made that the Russians say let's say are pushed back to where they were by February 2022 so this imperialist adventure of Putin has failed he have paid an enormous price for that failure that would look pretty much like Victory to me and the expectations therefore of the lithuanians the Baltic states aaban Georgia and states the client states in Africa and the Sahel they would all change their View and that's why as we've said before you know what what this Ukraine war is is very important of course to Ukraine but now we've Stak the reputation of the Western World on it or the Western liberal democracies to mean what they say about the rules-based international order and the unacceptability of naked aggression that's so it matters in a much broader sense which is why I I agree with all of that um but uh you have to think about how we're going to put our money where our mouths are and the answer has got to be it strikes me that the $300 billion dollar that is presently being held in Euro clear of Russian assets held in Brussels in Euro clear should be taken um and sequestered and given to the ukrainians for their defense and reconstruction it will especially in the aftermath of the death of Alexi Nali it will tell Putin that there are consequences to his evil actions and of course it would obviate the problem that we're going to have with if there's such a thing as another president Trump who um if you give 300 billion to the uh ukrainians they might be able to see through the four years of um of getting nothing from a president Trump who vetos every uh Aid package uh Michael Clark how how do you react to those who Advocate a negotiated peace which seeds territory to Russia in return for NATO membership certainly totally rejected by President zalinsky right now and a large number of the people in in Ukraine itself um how do you see that thought it goes back to the old the old idea that it's very hard to negotiate with somebody who's trying to kill you and what President Putin seems to be offering is that well we'll do it in installments um so we took one installment in 2014 we'll take another installment in 2022 to 24 um we don't honor any agreements we make the Putin has has not got a record of sticking to any agreements that he makes um so they'll come back in 2026 or 2027 for the rest or for something more there's no future in a negotiated settlement there might be some future for a temporary ceasefire sometime on more favorable terms to Ukraine but that's K's judgment can't be our judgment um I don't think any negotiated settlement from where we are now could possibly be stable for even the next three or four years let alone the next 10 or 20 Andrew Roberts World War II as we know lasted from 1939 to 1945 are we looking at a similar time frame for Ukraine yes um yes I'm afraid we are I think that uh and that's on the assumption that the West does continue to uh support Ukraine and to and to give it what it uh what it needs I mean this bill um the $60 billion bill has to go through uh Congress it's it's absolutely essential that it does and that's OB the under a Biden Administration um the um the time frames Wars tend to take longer than you think that they're going to the uh largest number of people die in the last quarter of the war that's the time when the real bloodletting takes place historically this is this is um there's been an analysis of something like 350 Wars uh since medieval times and and and there and a few things do emerge that tend to be quite Universal and that's that's one of them um that that the blood letting actually happens towards the end and we've had large amounts of blood letting already so God knows what it's going to be like at the uh at the end of this one it's the same in the dynamic of battle as well that you know historically most casualties in a battle occur towards the end of it because one side cracks or you know the front breaks up and suddenly it becomes chaotic and you know one side is Victorious and it's in that chaos of Victory and defeat at the final third or quarter of a battle whether it's a monthlong battle or a day long battle that's where most people get killed in injured Andrew do you think um Russia can still be defeated oh yes oh absolutely I do yes I think um if you give them if you give the ukrainians long range missiles if you do what I mentioned earlier unfreeze the Russian assets uh and give the ukrainians the money um they uh obviously the Russians are willing to take huge numbers of casualties but there is a point where where Army's morale breaks we saw in K in the um in the Autumn of um 2022 a breakdown in Russian morale uh where they they retreated over hundreds of of kilometers very suddenly oh yes it's it's not by any means um uh certain that that Russia's going to win and if it does win it's going to be in a long and grinding process that um can be uh I think reversed uh Michael Clark um by President zelinsky's admission at the format for ending the war will be decided this year so what are the options well the options are for this year that that both sides carry on until one can exert a Strategic Benefit against the other and you know this war will not be either won or lost by any one's side I mean one side will prevail for the time being and if that if that side is Ukraine then it buys them sort of 30 or 40 40 Years of armed um defense I mean they'll have to be a very heavily defended country for the foreseeable future if Russia prevails I don't think they will prevail this year but if they Prevail say sometime in the spring or summer of next year um then the problem still goes on because the war will turn from being a war of Liberation Ukraine is trying to liberate their their territory to a war of resistance resisting this this gestapo style of Russian um behavior in the occupied territories and that will be pretty gr gruesome in its own way so from the ukra for the ukrainians you know they they they they will not lose this war they'll just turn it into a different sort of war that will be open-ended um and what we're looking at realistically is some sort of ceasefire that where the West Europeans can somehow insert themselves perhaps with NATO membership to solidify that ceasefire into a cold war that will between Ukraine and Russia that will then last for the next couple of generations yeah it could be like um North Korea South Korea a sort of a DMZ Zone that um keeps uh uh both sides on their toes for as you say a couple of generations um but um but there are there are other slight aspects of of Hope for Ukraine the um the Ukrainian economy for example they can now um they now export pretty much all of their grain because they've managed to push the Russian uh Fleet out of um out of the western side of uh of um the Crimean Seas so that's a that's a very positive aspect um too you're getting you're getting a a um uh a sense that yes they their entire generation of young men are going to the front but they've got a very low it's growing but still low um rate of uh of people refusing to serve it it is growing but nonetheless it's nothing like you'd expect for a nation entering its third year of war against um a um dictatorship like Russia Michael Clark what what do you think the most important thing president zalinski might learn from Winston Churchill's ideas on leadership as he faces what he concedes is the most difficult period so far in this War I well National mobilization uh the the the thing that is holding Ukraine back at the moment is the the speed at which he can really mobilize the whole society um so you know Churchill was good at National mobilization and that maintaining that strategic focus and I think that's you know zalinski has those instincts and I think he he needs to you know turn his talent for convincing people um into that sort of effect that he can have on Ukrainian Society he's got to maintain both a sense that they can Prevail but that they must mobilize even further to do so that's what he most needs because that's what Churchill had in abundance you know with all the things that were wrong about church and all the mistakes he made he was he is fundamentally somebody that British history is grateful to for that that strategic vision and sense of unwaver you know unwavering mobilization and and Andrew Roberts um if churcher were alive today what experience or events would he be drawing upon to get him through this moment uh sorry what um what experience from the 19 from the 1940s from his own life you mean yes yes oh uh well he the blitz um of course the moment in May 1940 when some of his own cabinet ministers were thinking about making peace with Hitler and he outmaneuvered them and and and stop that from happening um the moment when the United States came into into the war in December 1941 and instead of concentrating on the Pacific where they've been attacked uh he managed to uh to get them to support the Germany first policy where 70% of American resources went to the um uh went Eastward to to fight against the Nazis the these are these are major moments obviously the moment that Michael mentioned earlier um where he in in a second threw away a lifetime of anti-com ISM when Hitler invaded Russia on the 22nd of June 1941 in operation Barbarosa and said you know I if if if Hitler in if if Satan invaded um uh I would have a good sorry if if Hitler invaded hell I would have a good word to say in the House of Commons about Satan you know that is that kind of of thing is maybe the moment where where where zilinski somehow is able to um to convince president Trump that President Trump will go down as a truly Dreadful president if he allows Russia to um to reconstitute and uh pose a threat to the world and just finally if I could ask each of you um how will president zalinski go down in history no well I think zilinski is the great hero of the first part of the 21st century um and that's the point you know we mean Putin will go down as the great international criminal of the 21st century this first part of it and zalinski will go down as the hero of it and one of the reasons that Putin hated him so much is that when he was a comedian before he took on a a political role and R for president he used to you know he used to um do sketches where he impersonated Putin doing quite obscene things and I mean one of the reason they hated him is that he was this he was this rather rude comedian who laughed at Putin all the time and so here he is now I mean who would have thought that transformation from being a vulgar comedian to the hero of the 21st century which he undoubtedly is I think we should also remember of course that Winston church WIll lost the election at the end of the second world war so even if zalinski does uh get um mused out politically and his his popularity is still at 62% yes it's not the 85% it was the year before um last but nonetheless it's still at 62% um so he uh he uh he could win the next election but even if he doesn't that doesn't mean that he hasn't got the churchillian um position in history when it comes to this war is the war ukrainians foundational war of independence you know it's their 1776 it's their uh a great moment the Israeli equivalent would be 1948 you know lots of countries have have these um foundational Wars this is Ukraine's and he was in charge and no one can ever take that away from him professor Andrew Roberts Lord berts and Professor Michael Clark thank you so much for your time it's been fascinating talking to you and having your thoughts today you've been watching Frontline for times radio with me kabo if you'd like to support us you can subscribe now or listen to times radio or go to the times.co.uk my thanks to our producer today Morgan berdick and to you for watching bye-bye

Channel: Times Radio

Views: 241,971

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Id: wDssIYj2Gso

Length: 41min 16sec (2476 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024