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one way or another this war is either going to go into NATO countries or it's going to go into Russia proper and a nuke is going to fly uh and the best defense that we can possibly have needs to be erected before that happens so
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that's kind of midterm shorter term dealing with the war itself the Russians are not going to back down at this point even if everyone immediately stops using Russian crude but the goal has to be at
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this point to make sure that the Russians have problems rearming using third countries whether it's Iran or China or North Korea and the best way to do that is to completely destroy the income so we need to move into a
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position where we're talking about a naval blockade that simply keeps Russian oil and natural gas off the market completely and that shuts it in at the point of production in Siberia so it can not come back in anything less than a
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decade time frame that is a step that no one in Europe has been willing to consider because there were a number of countries in Central Europe that were still dependent upon it but as we get into the second half of this year the only country in Europe that is still
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dependent on Russian energy is Hungary and to be perfectly blunt the position in Europe is hardening in the general position towards Hungary Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban is that guy hello
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and welcome to front line for times radio with Me Kate shabo and today we are catching up with the geopolitical analyst Peter Zion Peter is a bestselling author whose most recent book is the end of the world is just the
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beginning mapping the collapse of globalization he's a regular com commentator on the war in Ukraine and Putin's Russia Peter good to have you back thanks for your time great to be here now the results of the Russian
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presidential elections were a foregone conclusion sorry sorry you you just you called it election that's funny I know thank you I knew you'd react like that the landslide results they exceeded
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expectations even though what are your takeaway from those results and the way President Putin and other global leaders have reacted to them Russia hasn't had a competitive election since 1996 so to call this an election and say that it
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signifies anything is kind of a joke uh so at Putin's election celebrations he placed the FSB front and center as a defender of Russia occupied Ukraine is
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is is Putin likely to R more on his s his old security allies over the siki the the Hard Men as he tightens his grip on Russia do you think oh I would argue that the FSB is part of
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thei uh the FSB um two things number one the core of PU power is an alliance between the intelligence officials primarily the FSB and organized crime so they've always been front and center they've always been core to his
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political Coalition and then second if you remember back to not just the Soviet period but the zarus period before it the FSB and its predecessors kgp and so on uh their primary job isn't
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International Affairs it's been patrolling the population Russia and the Soviet Union before it are not nation states they are multiethnic Empires and part of how you hold that together is you put enough intelligence agents into
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every ethnic minority's populations that uh they can sniff out subversion whenever and wherever it pops up well from the Russian point of view there are now four province in Ukraine that are in
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definite need of monitoring so the idea that the FSB is only going to have a stronger role moving forward that's kind of baked in now do you think this is um this okay I will use the word but like that election
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um is actually uh taking Russia just further down the direction that it's already on the trajectory of basically complete autocracy uh to be in the hands of a dictatorship there ever since the
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formation of United Russia the party that Putin runs in the mid 2000s there has been nothing in Russia that is even adjacent to the Democratic process the only difference this time around is that
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everybody is calling a spade a spade there are any number of countries in the last 20 years Germany the United States France Britain all of us for various reasons found reasons that we needed to
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get along with Russia maybe it was Financial flows maybe it was energy flows maybe it was getting support mil Military Support into a place like Afghanistan and needing the logistic support we don't need anything from
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Russia anymore and we're willing to be a lot more honest with ourselves and out loud the election sparked a new wave of attacks even before it took place from Ukraine inside Russia particularly in
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the belgrod and the kers areas ground incursions by Russian forces loyal to keep drone attacks according to Russia's defense Ministry missile and Rocket attacks they even I mean this is the Russian Ministry they they they claimed
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that the there was a US made Patriot fired um now according to reuter's agency uh Putin said Russia has its own plans to respond but it won't attack uh population and civilian targets inside
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Ukraine it's an extraordinary statement isn't it yeah no the Russians have been deliberately trying to cause power outages and famine in Ukraine since the war started so you know I would do anything with that uh the question is what can they do to prevent this sort of
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attack uh partisans are very effective in a territory that is only relatively lightly populated and by European standards that's the entire Russian periphery uh especially when you consider that you have at least 10
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million ukrainians who speak Russian fluently as their first language and then probably another 15 million who speak it fluently as a second language so the pool that the ukrainians can pull
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from in order to do these sort of regular taxes robust and when you've got places like belgrad that are within artillery range uh you've got a triple attractiveness I mean number one you've got the Russian populations within Ukraine that are fighting for the
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ukrainians number two you can support them with conventional means and number three if this war is ever going to be resolved to Ukraine's satisfaction the logistical places within Russia that are
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used to launch the conflict into Ukraine have to be neutralized one of those is belgrod so one way or another there's going to be a lot more shooting there do you think it's going to is something that's going to escalate then
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it's definitely going to escalate I don't want to say whether it's going to be successful or not but for Ukraine to continue to exist as an independent state belgrad has to be neutralized one way or the other now you estimate that Russia could keep the war going in
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Ukraine for another 6 to 8 years is um and Putin is now selling these sham election results as a mandate to continue the war with the will of the people behind him um will he keep it
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going for as long as he is President do you think he the Russians there's an ego issue here I don't mean to say that there's not but this primary issue is strategic the Russians are in demographic collapse not as fast as say
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the Chinese or the Germans or the Koreans but it's pretty bad and they're going to Cease the ability cease to have the ability to carry out offensive military operation within the decade I'd say that six to8 years is kind of the window that I've identified that's why
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I've put that Benchmark there uh that means they have to make it to Warsaw and the danu in that amount of time if they don't they have an unanchored Western periphery so this is about rebuilding the Strategic picture that we had during
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the Soviet period while they still can uh it doesn't matter if Putin were to die tomorrow uh the regime is going to continue this war one way or another and any sort of ceasefire would only be there to reposition and reprovision in
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order to launch a new assault when you talk about uh reaching the danu or warsa it's interesting because I was talking to a a mil a Russian historian or historian on Russia uh just a few
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minutes ago who was telling me that he actually didn't believe that Putin really had um territorial Ambitions Beyond Ukraine so you are in the camp that says absolutely that is not the case Estonia laia Lithuania mova the
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northeastern sliver of Romania and the eastern half of Poland plus the caucuses plus Central Asia we're only about Midway through this process this is the ninth military conflict the Russians have launched since
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1989 in an attempt to rebuild that outer crustal fortification uh this won't be the last and The Institute uh for the study of War um according to them s Sergey shyu the defense minister has addressed the
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Russian military board to outline structural reforms to the Russian military while expanding Russia's conventional capabilities in in preparation for a potential future large scale war with NATO I mean he may well
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be doing that but that is also a far cry though from actually signaling any intention uh shyu has arguably in the last 10 years stolen personally onethird
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of the Russian procurement budget and his allies have probably stolen another third so if shyu is involved think of it more as the announcing of a corruption gravy train in any meaningful policy I
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agree that the Russians need to do that if they're going to prosecute this war more successfully but that doesn't mean that shyu is a part of the solution um the only reason he is still defense minister is he's a personal friend of
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Vladimir Putin going back decades he is not a compant defense Min Minister he's certainly not a reformer he I'd argue he's Ukraine's greatest Ally in this war to this point I'd argue that shyu is the greatest Ally
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of the ukrainians to this point because he's so incompetent and and just to go back piece to what you were saying about that the intentions territorial intentions that Putin has um Can Russia be deterred
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or do you think that this push is inevitable they're going to try regardless the question is whether they can be stopped I mean the position of the Baltic Trio States has always been the same we know that the Russians will never stop they have to be stopped and
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the're right and now that Finland and Sweden are in NATO that position is largely echoed by the fins and the swedes as well and of course the polls are forthright on their position so
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we're seeing this dawning recognition uh across Europe that this is going to get worse before it gets better and everyone is going to have to dig deep in order to stop the Russians and I I look at what
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the french have been doing and saying over the last few weeks in that light and that there has been this sea change in attitude towards what needs to be done and even in Germany uh the open
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discussion of preparing the Next Generation for war you know this would have never happened two years ago much less four years ago I mean you mentioned France um they do uh seem to vented this war of words
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with with Russia um over the possibility of putting um International troops into Ukraine to support the ukrainians while the ukrainians say they don't need troops they just need the equipment at the moment and the Weaponry um but Russian sources are now claiming that uh
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they say France is preparing to send around 2,000 soldiers to Ukraine why would they say this and what impact does this kind of rhetoric have when you're on the western end of Europe and you
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don't have any strategic weaknesses that you need to worry about as regards the Russian theater it's all a question of how you view the broader picture and a little from a certain point of view the French are a little bit like the
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Americans they can afford to take the long view on most issues because they're not Direct threatened by most issues so in this specific case the French aid to Ukraine officially is small but that's
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largely because unofficially they don't report it because they want it to be a surprise and things like their their Caesar artillery have been absolutely instrumental in helping the ukrainians stabilize the front line in the last six months now we're getting into a
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situation where we've had a mindset shift in France they realize that all of their corporate exposure to Germany I'm sorry all their corporate exposure to Russia that has been built up since 1989
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has collapsed so they no longer have any economic skin in the game and so they can afford to take a purely strategic position they've also made the gut-wrenching admission that the future
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of Europe is going to be radically different because the Europe that we have today with the Euro and the Border where it is is not sustainable the demographic situation is ugly the
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Strategic position with the United States because of globalization is weakening and Europe needs a new definition well the French have always seen the European Union as a political project their thinking is if they can
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shove the economic conversations to the side a little bit and now I'll make it up a political military project well France is the natural leader in that group now that the United Kingdom has gone there's there's no one in Europe who would assert otherwise and that
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means taking more of a leadership position in Ukraine and they can do that in a very lowrisk manner they can spin up their military-industrial complex a lot faster than most of the other European countries and if you start
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putting French troops in Ukraine three things come from that number one preference for French equipment number two the ability for French and Ukrainian troops to cross train we we've been thinking in the west about Ukraine as a
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bit of a charity case from the French point of view you know France hasn't been in a hot war in a while they didn't participate in the American war on terror aside from some special forces if they can actually learn modern military
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technology from the ukrainians that's the equivalent so say when the Europeans engaged in the Crimean War at the start of the industrial area or the Europeans sent observers to the American Civil War in the same period this is about
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learning how to fight for 30 50 70 years from now that's a smart play and all they would have to do is maybe Park some troops near trans nista or on the Belarusian Border in order to to provide
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a bull workk for the ukrainians who could then redeploy to the front line there's a lot of upside here for the French this is not just bomb bass this is this is a real strategic discussion on the um on the position of
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the European Union uh the president of the European Council has said that they should consider transitioning to a wartime economy and focus on effective implementation and enforcement of sanctions against Russia and it also now
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seems um finally the EU is is poised to UNL loock the profits on these Frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine do you think the EU is is finally getting uh its act together and
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becoming uh I suppose aware that it may have to support Ukraine without us Aid in the future I think you're right uh it's ironic that it took loen Bart in
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the United States and Donald Trump to force the Europeans into this conclusion I think we were going to get there anyway I think think eventually would have been obvious to everyone that even if the United States was completely committed every single day that Ukraine
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still needed a lot of help and that help has to come from Europe so getting the leaders of the European institutions which until recently were all about global cooperation globalization Market
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access and absolutely nothing military singing a very different tune and talking about a German style war economy like Nazi German style war economy that's a breathtaking ch change I can't
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say as an American I'm entirely comfortable with it but I think it's a very logical extension of where we find ourselves now and if Ukraine is going to
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survive it is necessary I don't doubt that when properly committed the Europeans have the ability to do this they do it will lead into a lot of other interesting directions though um the um
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the Russian defense minister uh sh Serge shyu he recently visited the black SE Fleet and he ordered increasing training and Firepower including the installation of large caliber machine guns on vessels
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to defend against Ukraine's air and Naval drones for him to say this and for the Black Sea fleet commander and the head of the Russian Navy to be fired or stepped down it does show the ukrainians have given Russia something to worry
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about in this area let's start with the Tactical and then look at the Strategic um the problem with taking out Ukrainian Seaborn drones is angle so if you've got a larger ship whether it's a landing
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ship or a missile Cruiser you are designed to deal with things over their horizon or your deal designed to make a beach land and do roll on roll off you don't expect to be
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swarmed by Small Things operating nearly at the waterline and so angling something down in order to attack an incoming small vessel especially at night is nearly impossible with the
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weapons that your ship was built with so putting on High caliber machine guns that can do that depressed angle is really your only option but it means for example having ammo just stacked up on the deck which
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has other problems uh so it's a necessary change but it's one that indicates that the Russian position in the western half of the Black Sea is already gone and any ship that would be considered a pre-war surface combatant
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that the Americans might have had a little respect for those are basically having to be shift off over to noisin Parts even further east to stay out of range of these things uh but it's also part of a broader strategic issue here
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there's there's a four-part strategy at the moment for what the ukrainians are doing with the drones and using these modified jet skis to go after Russian naval vessels that's only part one uh part two is to compensate for the lack
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of American support at the moment and that's to develop these one and two pound bombs that are carrying something that's the size of a grenade uh in order to replace artillery and so when the Russians do their human wave tactics you
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just send in several dozen if not several hundred of these small drones that are anti-personal Personnel in nature but the more strategic issues are things like the sythe which is a basically a garage project people
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basically taking aluminum and plywood slapping a warhead on it and then sending it off um and the Beavers which have I think it's about the 600 kilometer range and using those to T
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Target energy infrastructure within 600 kmet of the Ukrainian borders they've done that against 15 facilities in just the last month and did significant damage to a number of them but where
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things get a little sexy and technically against American recommendations is they're very clearly using those Phoenix ghost uh shoulder launched drones that were designed originally for anti-tank
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operations and they're giving them to Special Forces and sending them 1500 kilometers into Russia to then launch attacks at distillation Towers on refineries well out of range of anything
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they can launch from Ukraine the damage that has been done so far is significant and the ukrainians are very clearly ramping up those sort of operations and you're talking about
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damage to an economic sector energy exports refined energy exports that earn more for the Russians as a percentage of their overall budget than corporate taxes generate for Western countries so
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the Ukrainian have found a very lowcost way of doing far more damage to the Russian economy than anything that has happened with the sanctions so far so when the commanderin-chief of Ukraine's
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Armed Forces Alexander zki says that he considers the development of unmanned systems as a key technological innovation to gain advantage over the enemy and that this is a priority um is
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that exactly what you're talking about or is this actually an intention to develop this further and go for even better quality in this area I would argue both now the the Phoenix ghosts that come from the United States those are the shoulder launched ones those are
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those are great for what they're using them for now it's not that they were bad against armor they were basically an RPG at range uh but they're discovering that there's a lot of sensitive spots that you can use with those and so they've
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largely been removed from the battlefield and now being used for economic sabotage the beaver is 100% a Ukrainian special that they designed from the ground up and it's only in its second generation so I can only imagine
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what they're going to do for range and payload and accuracy moving forward the sidee is literally a thousand Ukrainian dudes making these things in their garages and if that gets any sort of
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regularization on a normal supply chain you're talking about a much heavier Warhead being able to be delivered at more than 400 kilometers range that may very well be the way they break those internal logistical systems in Russia
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most notably in belgrad and Ros of zandan and um on the ground in Ukraine um what Russia has always had is Manpower and people to throw in waves along the
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contested Frontline areas um how do you see um following this um this election the idea of mobilization being popular or or possible with the support of the people I the election was not a
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referendum on the war there was no public support he tried to it like that though didn't I mean exactly I mean that's the talking point that will be the propaganda but I think everyone in Russia is pretty um inerd to the government statements on things like
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that at this point I mean I'm amused that the the one Precinct in Russia where Putin did not get a commanding majority in the votes they ordered a recount just it was just silly um that
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said conscription is absolutely coming um it's just going to be stealth for now until such time as Putin feels that the propaganda has really dug in enough and had its impact they're just going to do it on the sly and they've shown for the
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last year and a half that they can conscript in excess of 30 4,000 men a month and not call it conscription and the population puts up with
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it um where are we at with the with the American Funding the $60 billion uh Aid package because um at this monthly meeting of the Ukraine defense contact group at Ramstein in Germany at the US
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defense secretary Lloyd Austin he warned that Ukraine surviv was in danger he was trying to convince allies of the US's commitment to Ukraine um but then the Republican House of Representative speaker Mike Johnson he refuses to call
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a vote on it um last time we spoke you'd hope that Ukraine would be getting assistance by April I think um have you changed your mind at all I think that might be a little bit too optimistic the the discharge petition that allows
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Congress people to go around the speaker is in play and if we don't see action from the speaker in the next couple of weeks we probably will see the discharge petition come into play but if it were to come into play today it would still
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be a month probably before we got the vote uh and we've had something change here um speaker Johnson has had a bit of a heart-to-heart meeting with the hardliners who are opposing any sort of
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Aid uh and he has put a series of things on the voting docket that even they realize have to happen mostly related to budget issues and so we finally do have a budget deal in the United States to continue funding the government which is something that
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we're I think on our fourth one in the last 16 months anyway it's finally happening and in the same press conference that he announced that this was now going to be available for a vote he talked about the tyranny of Russia
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and what it means to fight oppression and terrorism and how Ukraine is one of the great lights standing against the darkness and of course the United States is going to step in and help and you could tell uh that the people who have been
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stopping Ukrainian Aid to this point um were choking on their bile but none of them said anything so if Johnson is true to his word we will see we should have a
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vote on the house floor within the next two weeks uh and at that point the Senate is expected to approve it relatively quickly and Biden will sign into law almost a heartbeat later but
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even on that for American Congress accelerated time frame that wouldn't suggest meaningful Aid gets to Ukraine in April um so that's kind of the quas
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good quas bad news the better news is that Congress had has no problem uh passing funding to get the US defense complex uh running on a faster speed so at least looking forward six to 12
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months the United States will have more of the production that is necessary not just for itself and to restock the Allies who have supplied the Ukraine while the United States is out but probably even have some spare stuff to send Ukraine in addition to what was
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already planned and just finally Peter um what do you think the West strategy it long-term strategy should be towards Russia because you believe irrespective of this these results uh in mos in in
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Russia the days of the current regime are numbered well from an American point of view as opposed to a western point of view I would triple invest investment in
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Strategic Defense initiatives and anti-missile defense systems um push one way or another this war is either going to go into NATO countries or it's going to go into Russia proper and a nuke is
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going to fly uh and the best defense that we can possibly have needs to be erected before that happens so that's kind of midterm shorter term dealing with the war itself the Russians are not going to back down at this point even if
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everyone immediately stops using Russian crude but the goal has to be at this point to make sure that the Russians have problems rearming using third countries whether it's Iran or China or
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North Korea and the best way to do that is to completely destroy the income so we need to move into a position where we're talking about a naval blockade that simply keeps Russian oil and natural gas off the market completely
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and that shuts it in at the point of production in Siberia so it can not come back in anything less than a decade time frame that is a step that no one in Europe has been willing to consider because there were a number of countries in Central Europe that were still
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dependent upon it but as we get into the second half of this year the only country in Europe that is still dependent on Russian energy is Hungary and to be perfectly blunt the position in Europe is hardening and the general
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position towards Hungary Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban is that guy uh and we are getting very close to the Europeans stripping the hungarians of
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voting rights of funding and making it so that they can't veto policy any longer so I would expect with this shift in rhetoric at the very top of not just Russian governments but the EU secretary
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itself that we're gonna have a significant change on enforcement of sanctions and the nature of the sanctions in the second half of the Year Peter Z great to speak to you thank
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you very much for your time my pleasure you've been watching Frontline for times radio my thanks to Louis Sykes our producer to support the work of Front Line hit the Subscribe button you can also listen to times radio throughout
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the day or read it at times.co.uk thanks for watching bye-bye
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