Trouble ahead? Russia, US in Black Sea showdown over Ukraine

[Music] so is it a case of vladimir putin putting joe biden to the test over ukraine with two u.s warships headed to the black sea in response to a russian troop buildup at the border moscow announcing live fire drills in the same waters while ukraine trumpets land maneuvers for its military we're going to be asking about a neighborhood that's getting awfully crowded and the timing of the sudden spike intention less than three months into that biden presidency on that score we'll also ask about the u.s leader's tuesday telephone call with vladimir putin only the second since inauguration day in the us and that offer of a summit at a neutral venue the suggestion followed up with the u.s ambassador invited to talks at the kremlin this wednesday so is this just a simple testing of wills or is it much more as a priority ukraine waxes and wanes on moscow's radar many ordinary russians say they feel an ownership over the whole of ukraine not just the two dumbass provinces where the kremlin is backing a low-level insurgency but again it's the question of why now and whether putin really is picking a fight today in the france 24 debate we're looking at the showdown in the black sea with us he was recently an election observer in the uh ukrainian province of luhansk uh which is in the donbass journalist julian nundy welcome back to the show good evening i want to welcome as well ludmila tatijev member of ukraine action advocacy group based here in paris good morning oh good evening sorry oh it's good morning somewhere good morning thank you thank you for being with us from moscow international affairs commentator mark sloboda how are you i am alive how are you okay still still alive as well and from syracuse new york brian taylor professor of political science at syracuse university author of the code of putinism your peace out this week in foreign affairs entitled putin's rules of the game welcome to the show thank you very much happy to be here the france 24 debate on facebook and twitter hashtag f24 debate 41 000 russian troops across the border from ukraine another 42 000 in crimea crimea which russia annexed in 2014 and now the announcement of those naval exercises in the black sea that's uh in response to two destroyers the uss donald cook and the uss roosevelt they're passing through the bosphorus notifying the turks that they're going on route to the area julian nundy what's it all about well i wish i knew um i think we won't know until it's all over um i hope that it's just a putin putting biden to the test but it's but it's always very dangerous when you put in men and hardware um in any in any situation and this is particularly volatile if the if the ukrainians are now starting exercises on their side it won't take much for that for there to be a mistake or a provocation that could that could set things off i think something that has been not mentioned very much that is important is the role of turkey turkey is on the other side of the black sea turkey is not happy about the annexation of crimea it's never backed it never supported it and we can we've seen turkey in action in azerbaijan recently well in nagorno-karabakh and we've seen it in libya and i think that turkey is the country we need to watch how so i mean they're not going to take on russia are they who knows they kind of they have they have sort of quite sophisticated they have a sophisticated drone system they've been selling drones to ukraine they had um president zielinski was in istanbul last weekend talking to erdogan and they they signed various agreements on defense cooperation i think that's that's the the area we should be watching very very carefully all right so another player to look out for uh ludmila tatiewa what what do you make of the russian troop build up the u.s sending the warships the russians uh increasing their naval exercises i would say that i um yeah i agree on partly what julian was saying about russia putting to the test biden but it's also not only about that it's about the internal situation domestic politics in russia and putting being not so let's say high on polls and frequently very frequently in russia what has been done to uh let's say turn away the situation from turn away the attention of the population from their internal problems especially if we talk about navalny imprisonment in his worsening situation with his health it's of course doing something outside and mobilizing itself against enemies and of course the enemy at the occurrence is ukraine and now it's for another i know seven years now that the war is oh that is uh that is going and of course u.s because automatically russia does not see ukraine as an automatic autonomous a sovereign state that can make a decision on its own to move its own direction but it sees ukraine only through the prism of geopolitics and let's say yeah the play with us let's take the precept that it is domestic politics that may be driving uh vladimir putin's calculations he's still popular he's there's no question that he's the one who's going to win elections that are scheduled for next september uh yes but um you know nobody wants additional problems additional let's say manifestations or any other upheavals of of population in russia so we have seen that has been more frequent than in other years um it depends on what what's going to happen but i guess um a quick win a good win and a comeback on a global stage in general that would help him to to get through with a let's say more supportive electorate marx laboda we saw back in 2014 uh putin's popularity rose to 80 percent after the annexation of crimea do you agree with miller yeah uh no i i think that the idea that this is some kind of test of biden i mean with due respect uh that's kind of poli science 101 level analysis it's kind of a hubris it has the assumption that other countries don't have their own foreign and military priorities national interests as if russia doesn't have interests in ukraine uh and that they're just waiting to test the new us president but a perfectly obvious one that uh u.s policy you know is has limited control by any given president in the white house rarely you know changes uh from from whatever occupant next occupant um so i i don't buy this testing binding this isn't about domestic politics in russia uh putin's approval rating has been very solid there isn't appetite for foreign adventures in the country right now uh it wouldn't necessarily hurt his approval roles but it certainly wouldn't uh help them out so what is going on this is about domestic politics uh of the kiev regime uh in ukraine uh zielinski's approval rating is some 30 percent uh and his uh party certain people uh named after his comedic tv show uh is even lower than that um this is about the kiev regime amassing military forces almost unreported by the western media for the last uh i was reporting on it from the beginning of march moving tanks artillery pieces thousands of ukrainian conscripts from all over the country and even ballistic missiles east to the contact line with um and russia's military buildup rather modest um by any stretch any military analyst worth their salt will tell you yes absolutely how much do military thrills by nato in the us uh you see them with with 30 40 000 people uh when military analysts talk about what would be necessary to invade iraq or iran uh you know by the united states they're talking upwards of 150 200 000 troops be serious here um and you don't have to take my word the pentagon reporting to cnn says they do not see these troops in an offensive posture if you listen to experts from the american center cnas the center for new american security some of the top u.s military experts no friends to vladimir putin uh michael kaufman uh maximum samaritan they say that this is a defensive build-up and a deterrent defensive build up uh it's enough certainly to worry germany's defense minister she spoke to state broadcaster ard let's take a listen uh they're here brian taylor uh saying that uh it is a provocation and that uh the west shouldn't rise uh to the bait your your thoughts on what's happening sure well i think the use of the word provocation here is interesting because we've heard that word out of washington and we've heard that word out of moscow and now we're hearing it out of berlin it's all sides are expecting some kind of escalation or worrying about some kind of escalation i don't agree with mark sloboda that this is some kind of defensive deterrent move but i would say that i don't think uh there is a plan right now in moscow for war it's more preparations and i do agree with him in one respect i think he channeled quite well the thinking of certain forces in the kremlin that believe that zielinski is someone who might behave in a unpredictable way i think in moscow they were quite upset by zolensky's moves against the pro-russian oligarch inside ukraine medvedchuk who is quite close to putin and whose television stations were taken off the air so i i think from the point of view of the kremlin they see moves like that as being approved in advance with washington i don't think that happened but i think that's how they read it in moscow so in that sense i i think there's worrisome attitudes about this on both sides uh i think it's important to stress a point that was made earlier that russia invaded ukraine seven years ago so to talk about russia invading ukraine now it's more a continuation of steps that were taken with the annexation of crimea and the sponsoring of insurgents inside the donbass i don't expect moscow to escalate at the moment but we should just be clear about how this whole conflict started in the first place brian you you mentioned there uh victor medvechuk and it's kind of a reminder that before 2014 ukraine had a pro-moscow president uh medvedchuk uh he's being probed uh over a stake he recently acquired in a russian oil refinery for a mere forty thousand dollars uh why does he matter so much well i think it's important to bear in mind that putin's goal all along was not to control crimea or to control a tiny section of southeast ukraine in the donbass the goal before 2014 was to bring all of ukraine into the russian political and economic orbit and those plans went awry with the euromaidan revolution that took place in ukraine in 2014 and since that time uh donbass has been used to a certain extent as a lever to try and influence internal ukrainian politics the problem for the kremlin is that the very act of annexing crimea and sponsoring a war in the donbass has turned the ukrainian population in a much more pro-nato pro-eu pro-western direction so despite the long-term russian goal of keeping ukraine within its sphere of influence they've actually harmed themselves by the responses they've taken to developments in ukraine since 2014 and especially as i noted the annexation and the sponsoring of a war in the donbass julian nundy when you uh went to the dunbas last october what was the sentiment there well um it was authentic it was actually a fairly quiet period um there's very very heavy security for obvious reasons all along the on the ukrainian control part of luhansk there was no particular apprehension at the time about about the war cranking up but it's always there you can occasionally the year before i was also in in several which is the de facto capital of luhansk nowadays i was there for three months and then we could at night we could hear artillery uh in the distance um people are nervous people are tired um but there was at that time no particular anxiety these the anxiety seems to be coming along now and there are people on both sides of the divide right in luhansk yeah there are people on both sides who are living like let's say on the russian controlled russian troops controlled the side and then on the ukrainian side and then of course um i guess it's a part of ukraine where everyone speaks russian they don't speak ukrainian both they speak both and they very like i come originally from lugang so i can tell well also from my own experience people do speak ukrainian as well but they speak let's say in the mix of russian and ukrainian which is called surjek which is something that is very common especially elderly population but just coming back to this issue of a provocation it's very interesting that um provocation is is used everywhere but this is exactly what um what is kremlin is saying is basically trying to provoke ukraine to do the defensive actions and in this case there's going to be escalation of conflict and then russia would come into ukraine and say we're going to protect our russian citizens well of course because by by this time now the half of these uh people who are leaving the control city in control the russian area have the russian passports so what an amazing pre-tax just to go and do what you want and of course uh putin wants more he wants access to odessa he wants access more to the to the um to the uh um to the sea and he wants more and that's something that is obvious and this is not about uh the um let's say sudden um sentiment of ukrainians and of uh europeans who are like a little bit fussy is that is that what putin wants i'll put it to brian taylor or is that what russians want historically russians well they don't really see ukraine as anything other than part of their territory part of their sphere let's say well i think the issue of russian feelings about ukraine is actually quite complicated yes i think most russians tend to think of ukrainians as being part of the one nationality part of the same community but if you look at polling specifically on the issue of donbass you can see that the population is quite split it's about a quarter in four different categories a quarter of russians say they don't really know what to think about the future of the donbass about a quarter of them say it should be returned to ukraine and become integrated into ukraine in some way about a quarter say it should be attached to russia it should be merged with russia and about a quarter say it should be independent so you have no consensus in the russian population about what to do with respect to the donbass situation i would also add that we can see that there are a lot of domestic reasons that russians are unhappy having to do with declining living standards for the past seven years they've dropped about 10 percent uh and just a feeling that the state is ineffective unresponsive and corrupt and that's why you had about a hundred thousand people on the streets of over 150 cities and towns in russia in january uh in response to the arrest of alexey navalny so i think it would be highly risky for uh vladimir putin to think that he would be able to rally a lot of domestic support for launching another war right now i don't believe that that is the play alexei navalny whose name did not come up in that tuesday telephone call between the u.s and russian leaders we'll talk about it when we come back you're watching the france 24 debate [Music] welcome back or welcome if you're just joining us it's the france 24 debate uh troop buildups at the border between russia and ukraine followed by naval exercises military exercises on land as well all sides on edge it's been the topic at nato headquarters we're talking about it with journalist julian nundy who was recently an election observer uh in the donbass and the ukrainian rebel province of luhansk lujan square ludmila uh tatijev from a member of the ukraine action advocacy group from moscow international affairs uh correspondent mark sloboda and from syracuse new york uh professor brian taylor at syracuse university author of the code of putinism after a nearly seven years as we were saying just before the break uh it's still going on uh the this tension um the killings as well uh both sides more bar battle-hardened in the dunbas than before our correspondent gulliver craig filed this report seven years ago volunteers rushed to help defend ukraine some of them are still active on the front line and apprehensive will there be an escalation no one knows tensions rise then it calms down then again tenses up we do have information though that the russians are setting up field hospitals near the border with ukraine and that's a pretty serious sign over the past couple of years rising tensions have been accompanied by increased use of drones the other side are constantly flying drones and doing surveillance though our teams deal with that quite well oleg operates drones for the ukrainian side he takes us to sea these things cost just over a thousand dollars but they get shot down a lot we lose about one a month these commercially available drones can drop small explosives but are mostly used for precision targeting and short-range surveillance oleg transfers all his footage to the army we're noticing a lot of movements of material at night but mainly by the sound they're not coming up close to the front line so it's beyond my drone's range of course maybe it's more about psychological pressure or these movements if the inhabitants of mariupol are feeling that psychological pressure most don't want to show it ukraine's leaders have also suggested russia's troop movements may be a bluff this local activist doubts that can you imagine how much all this costs for russia itself a deployment on the scale is no simple matter mariupol the largest city in donbass today controlled by ukraine is a strategic port it was shelled in 2015 and according to what is for most people here the worst case scenario it could again be in russia's sights interesting in that report ludmila tateva how we see that the locals themselves are everyone's in the dark as to what's happen what's happening really yeah well while the locals are in the dark let's say that the ukrainian government has been calling the national council on security and defense um let's say a separate occasion several occasions and a very short period of time to discuss what they would do what to do in case the russia russia starts uh to invade and then just to to mention that it's not a um there are all the arguments to believe that that could happen because according to the intelligence service of ukraine by the end of april around uh one thousand 100 100 000 troop like soldiers would be at the border of of ukraine and the just the opposite of what has been said to by by our colleague from moscow is actually the missile uh that is set in uh in not far from the ukrainian border in the russian uh territory and is 300 kilometers from ukraine so let's yeah not revert the sides it's actually very clear what has been happening and also the nato secretary has been confirming in his speech a few of those data points and um the very worrisome things that are happening mark solo investors are taking this seriously we've seen the ruble fall the last couple of days on the fears that they're going to be uh fresh sanctions uh how much of a pinch is that and again um everybody's unclear as to whether uh a small spark can trigger something a lot worse yeah uh first of all uh a reference to the beginning of this conflict this this conflict didn't begin with the so-called uh annexation of crimea by russia this conflict began with uh the overthrow of the ukrainian democratically elected government uh just uh over a month prior to that openly backed by the west violently and unconstitutionally and then the people of crimea and i full disclosure my wife is crimean my in-laws live in central and i have family all over east ukraine don boss harkoff odessa the government that they overwhelmingly elected to represent them was overthrown uh they with russian assistance had a referendum with overwhelming support and no one questions that uh to get out of dodge they didn't want to be part of that mad house anymore um and that of course led to the kiev regime assault on dunbas uh ongoing with a frozen conflict to this day to subjugate all of east ukraine to the new regime the seizure of power in kiev and there has been a continual reference of russian controlled and russian-backed separatists this is an attempt to deny the people of east ukraine agency they're not really people they're pro-russian something right um half of of ukraine is not rapidly anti-russian uh which is you know really what this is all about they don't want to be part of a rabidly anti-russian ukraine and this is about the manufacture of an anti-russian ukrainian nation by those political forces that seized power in kiev in 2014 and they have staged a military buildup in an attempt once again to launch an attack on donbass um uh you know to to put that final uh conflict to an end to cement their control over the tire of the country seven years later uh as to uh investors in russia you know the the last round of u.s sanctions was was so ineffectual they they prevented the entry of a number of russian officials who uh already can't travel to the west because of their security clearances have no assets in the west uh because of russian law uh because they're high-ranking officials and nicole has the ruble has has fallen this week i want to ask julian rises and drops uh you know sanctions the west has very little economic leverage over russia that's the truth let me ask let me just ask on this point uh julian nundy your reaction on on you know again it's that it's the question i was putting too in part one of our discussion when you were in luhansk how people feel about this how polarized they are is is essentially what mark mark sloboda is talking well when you're on the ukrainian side people tend to be very pro-kiev um this is i mean i spoke to i was in slavyansk in danietz gorbalist a few years ago and i was speaking to a former police a retired police colonel and i said what is the political makeup here and he said it's 50 pro kiev 30 pro russian and 20 waiting to see what happens and i think that's that is for a lot of simple people living in villages and so on and so forth people who do not have ollie arks millions behind them uh they're waiting to see what happens which is also not a very healthy uh situation and of course the idea of whether or not this is part of a a bigger game between uh a russian president uh who has uh been at the helm for since 2000 and a new u.s president who is a familiar face there was that tuesday phone call between vladimir putin and joe biden the white house stating that president biden quote emphasized the united states unwavering commitment to ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity a lot to say about that phone call brian taylor uh first of all the fact that it happened the fact that it's been followed up by the invitation sent to the u.s ambassador to russia to attend a a meeting at the kremlin this wednesday uh the fact that biden is talking about a summit at a neutral venue and again the fact that they didn't bring up alexey navalny at any point yes i think this was a good step by president biden to reach out to president putin at this point and try and once again signal that the u.s is committed as you just said to ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty but also to try and maybe unwind things a bit and try and get some kind of dialogue going between moscow and washington president biden i think understands that relations between moscow and washington are going to continue to be difficult and i think president putin understands that as well but i think they both also believe there is some benefit in talking about certain issues the ones that joe biden mentioned include arms control they include climate change include afghanistan iran so there's plenty to talk about and the last time there was a russian-american summit was 2018 in helsinki with president trump and as people will recall that one is pretty disastrous from the american side given how president trump disavowed the findings of his own intelligence community so i think a summit with joe biden will be very different i i don't think they'll expect to get much out of it in terms of deliberate bulls but it'll be worth them having a chance to communicate directly with each other if the summit takes place are you surprised the phone call happened uh in view of the fact that it's just a few weeks after biden had that interview with abc news where he said that putin's a killer prompting the russian president to recall his ambassador no i wasn't that surprised that the white house decided it was a good time to reach out i'll remind viewers that washington has been on the phone a lot this last week with kiev with berlin with paris talking to our allies talking to other parties many people in the bind administration have also been talking to their counterparts in moscow including the chief of the general staff and the chair of the american joint chiefs of staff so i think that's part of what we'll see with biden administration diplomacy believing it's important to keep all of these channels open and the people who advise joe biden you know the secretary of state the national security adviser they're all committed atlantis and believe that it's important to strengthen nato after the weakening has suffered quite frankly when donald trump was president there's the uh chair of the russian parliament's upper house's uh foreign affairs committee uh mark sloboda quoted as saying russia is now getting the respect it deserves it was a very important step forward news on a global scale uh with this phone call uh you agree with with those words and is there the feeling as has been portrayed in some outlets that uh it was biden who blinked first no not at all that's entirely uh really a us presentation this idea that biden blinked forth you know beating the the uh drums of neil mccarthyism and russophobia in washington trying to portray biden as soft on russia just like they tried to portray trump that way you'll notice that moscow actually hasn't responded yet what they have responded is that if the u.s resorts to another round of sanctions and there have been some 80 packages of sanctions uh over the last several years against russia that um you know russia will take decisive action uh and particularly when the u.s is at the same time trying to make a gesture of improving relations with russia meaning we need russia's help with some things in the world uh so we'll continue to slap them with one hand uh while we you know uh pretend uh you know to be uh reaching out our hand on the other hand to them and and there's no there's no appetite for this in the country and i think there's very little how should vladimir putin handle joe biden um i i think for right now the best that the us and russia can do for the next several years to avoid a further deterioration in relations is to continue the political and economic decoupling of russia from the u.s and the west and uh to go our separate ways as it were i don't believe there can be any real improvement of relations with you know the continued us military occupation of east syria uh with the continued military you're saying go back to the cold war era when the two sides didn't do any and didn't have much contact not much trade there was more rules of the road and there was more respect for both sides during the cold war then there is right now and there has been for the last several years we're already in a new arms race and you know the us has pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty the open skies treaty all that architecture is in tatters to his credit biden did renew the last foundation pillar the new start treaty so the new arms race is qualitative not quantitative thank god uh at this point but i think there's very little constructive we can do for the next several years maybe we'll see a change of administration in the united states maybe we'll see a change of administration in russia but right now until we see movement in these hot spots uh in syria with the u.s withdrawing from the country uh in ukraine with the u.s back kev regime finally you know sitting down talking with the political representatives in donbass and fulfilling the un security council solidified minsk accords which they have basically said that they are pulling out of all right julian nundy uh just recalling uh would you remember them as the good old days when there was the cold war when you were a student i think i think i think the cold war were very very bad old days but it was it's true that at the time diplomatic channels remained open there was a huge uh split between britain and the soviet union in 1971 when britain expelled 105 soviet diplomats from london but at the same i was there as a reporter in moscow at the time at the same time everything where britain and the soviet union were working together in international organizations continued they were having they were having middle east peace initiatives that sort of thing and they were always they all the diplomatic channels were kept open it seems to me that the diplomacy is is much much weaker now than it used to be 30 or 40 years ago weaker than it is 30 or 40 years ago and at the same time you also have moving pieces especially within the nato alliance we've seen the ukrainian foreign minister go to brussels several times in the last couple of weeks and we're hearing different noises from different nato members when it comes to what ukraine's future relationship will be with the alliance well i think the i think the majority of nato countries do not really want ukraine to to join they they see this would be as a be ratcheting up the current situation that make things worse not better and of course there are those who say that well nato should be right behind ukraine supporting it helping it and so on and so forth in all ways if ukraine would have become a member of nato then it would mean that an aggression against ukraine would be considered an aggression against the whole alliance and that is something i think the most of the alliance and on that score there seems to be a difference between on the one hand the uk on the other france and germany yes uh france and germany are very nervous about making such a commitment and and and they're right because it's it would be a huge step ludmilla tatia your your your thoughts on that on what how nato should handle ukraine it's true that it is um let's say ukraine now has become a very um let's say um an element that um if you take it um responsibility uh for it then it will of course uh incur all the the actions behind it but um i think um the general secretary general of nato said it very directly there are a lot of reforms that ukraine has to do in order to become nato member and that covers not only uh military type of reforms but that also covers governance and any other points that have been also mentioned on by the eu under the eu association treaty and this is something i think that ukraine should continue to work on in order to become the country that is not an alley or is not a partner that everyone is afraid of do you have the sense in the last week that promises have been made that can't be kept on the part of ukraine's allies i feel like um that we have a situation where um everyone is taking their time to say whatsoever and just uh reassuring the commitment to ukraine is not enough that is something that is very obvious i guess for for everyone that is something that ukraine is also saying that we would require something more than just um just the words of support of um being worried about what's happening at the borders and the u.s has been going in this direction in sense of um helping ukraine with um with some of the um let's say um defensive uh military uh pieces that have been uh provided also by trump administration and now have been agreed by the pride administration final question to you brian taylor in your piece in foreign affairs you focus on the challenges putin faces domestically should joe biden have brought up alexi navalny in that phone call yes i think it would have been a good idea to raise that issue because the situation with alexia navalny is very concerning you know he's in prison he's on a hunger strike he is not being given access to his doctor which by russian law he should have access to uh so this is something that i know the bright administration has been communicating to russia about it would have been good if that came from president biden speaking directly to president putin as well but it's a tricky sort of tightrope to walk because russia is very sensitive about what it perceives as interference in its internal affairs whereas the u.s view is that russia has made democratic commitments human rights commitments including in the council of europe and that they should be asked to uphold those commitments so it's sometimes hard to know what's going to help the democratic and human rights movement in moscow and in russia throughout russia but i think asking russia to abide by its international commitments under various international uh legal organizations uh is something that we should return to we the west should return to often given uh how often russia violates those commitments all right much more to talk about on this subject unfortunately we're running short on time brian taylor i want to thank you for joining us from syracuse mark sloboda in moscow i want to thank as well ludmila tatijeva julian nundy thank you for being with us here in the france 24 debate you

Channel: FRANCE 24 English

Views: 213,117

Keywords: Biden, Black Sea, Blinken, Europe, NATO, Russian, Russian military, Russian politics, USA, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky, border, conflict, military, military drills

Id: Qt4iTm6_ZvI

Length: 38min 36sec (2316 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021