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00:00 Well, Zelensky is urging the West to do more.
00:02 And on the sidelines of the D-Day commemorations, he and U.S. President Joe Biden met at a Paris
00:08 hotel for talks.
00:10 Biden said that his administration would not walk away from Ukraine.
00:15 For more, let's speak to Roland Freudenstein from the Brussels Freedom Hub.
00:20 Hello to you, Roland.
00:23 I suppose Joe Biden's qualification there that it's his administration would not walk
00:29 away from Ukraine is probably the right way to qualify it since U.S. support is up in
00:33 the air because we have a presidential election in five months.
00:36 Okay, I would not predict anything for a possible Trump administration, a second Trump administration.
00:46 But indeed, the signs that we've been seeing are worrying.
00:50 Trump has claimed that he can strike a deal within 24 hours with Vladimir Putin.
00:55 He has expressed admiration for the strongman aspects of Vladimir Putin.
01:03 But he also walked back his statements on revoking Article 5 at NATO.
01:09 So there are very mixed signals we get.
01:12 But of course, with a President Biden, if I were Ukrainian, I would sleep I would sleep
01:19 much more safely.
01:20 Yeah.
01:21 And now we're also seeing Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron did it, Vladimir Zelensky, a lot of
01:26 comparisons between what's happening in Ukraine today versus what happened 80 years ago.
01:31 The lessons that we learned from the past, are they still valid today?
01:35 Have they changed?
01:36 Do they need to be updated?
01:37 No, the core lessons are exactly the same.
01:41 I would frame them in three questions.
01:43 First of all, can we still identify lethal existential threats to our freedom?
01:51 Second, can we still make sacrifices?
01:55 And that includes, unfortunately, the sacrifice of the lives of our soldiers.
02:03 And third, can we still unify as free countries and help another free country which is being
02:11 threatened at the moment?
02:13 And this is exactly the three questions that were positively answered in 1944.
02:20 And that will have to be positively answered by us now.
02:23 Yeah.
02:24 And the other difference, of course, back in World War Two, we had allied troops on
02:27 the ground.
02:29 A lot of divisions in Europe about how to address Russia's invasion and whether there
02:34 should be European troops or much more likely American troops on the ground there.
02:39 Well, I tell you what.
02:42 If Russia really breaks through the current Ukrainian defense lines and moves to towards
02:49 Western Ukraine, we are going to have Polish, Baltic and Romanian troops in Ukraine.
02:57 Whether NATO decides anything or not, I mean, this has been predicted by the governments
03:04 of these countries.
03:05 And the question will only be, can we make it a unified answer, which will be much more
03:12 effective, or are we going to leave those eastern flank countries fend for their own?
03:18 You know, that's the only question that remains.
03:21 And for me, the answer is clear.
03:23 So troops on the ground will be the case as soon as Russia achieves a decisive victory.
03:32 For the moment, what we're talking about is training more Ukrainian units in Western countries.
03:39 And that is also that was part of the of the agreements between between the French president
03:46 and President Zelensky.
03:47 Yeah, and we see Ukraine is outmanned, it's outgunned.
03:51 So these are this much needed help coming quickly.
03:54 Biden apologizing to Zelensky for the hang up in Washington to get the aid to Ukraine
04:01 after that six month delay, which was largely blamed on Republicans from blocking that aid.
04:09 Moving forward, when we heard Zelensky speaking in the French parliament today, he said, today
04:15 it's Ukraine, tomorrow it could be other countries.
04:18 If Russia does make gains in Kharkiv, do you think Vladimir Putin's eyes are on other countries?
04:28 Putin's eyes are always on other countries.
04:31 Putin considers free countries a threat to his own corrupt authoritarian power in Russia,
04:43 because we give the wrong ideas to Russian citizens.
04:47 We prove that democracy is more successful than dictatorship.
04:52 So you know, potentially we're all threatened.
04:55 I mean, Russia, Russia is waging a hybrid war against all of the free world right now
05:03 as we speak.
05:04 So this may actually escalate on Russia's side into even more into armed action, for
05:12 example, against the Baltic states.
05:14 Why have they removed the border markings between Russia and Estonia recently, if not
05:21 to threaten us and to actually make it thinkable that they will take armed action against us?
05:29 So I'm sorry, but you know, whatever happens in Kharkiv, Russia is a threat to any free
05:39 country in the world as long as Putin is in power.
05:42 Yeah.
05:43 And one of the main criticisms from the West is that it ends up providing what Ukraine
05:49 asks, but many months later or weeks later.
05:53 And so it keeps moving the goalposts back.
05:55 And so there's a game of catch up here.
05:57 What would you like to see Western leaders do now as efficiently and as quickly as possible
06:03 to perhaps have a significant change on the battlefield?
06:07 Well, deliver state of the art weapons from the existing stock of Western armed forces
06:15 is the only short term solution.
06:17 Right.
06:18 I mean, we have been lagging behind in so many fields, including, for example, aircraft,
06:30 including state of the art tanks when they could have been really of great use for Ukraine,
06:35 meaning in autumn, in the fall of 2022.
06:40 If we had started training Ukrainians on fighter planes right after the beginning of the full
06:45 scale invasion, Ukraine, Ukrainian cities would not be hit to the extent that they are
06:53 because Ukraine would have F-16s and maybe Mirage 2000 already up in the air fighting
07:02 Russian planes that drop these bombs against civilian targets.
07:07 So these are just two examples.
07:09 The European Union promised one million rounds of ammo within nine months or so.
07:15 They got about to one third of that sum.
07:18 I mean, these are things we should all be apologizing for to President Zelensky.
07:24 And unfortunately, that includes President Biden.
07:28 As much as I appreciate him saying we cannot walk away and as much as I appreciate him
07:36 actually doing everything to get the assistance package through Congress, he was also one
07:43 of the people who slowed down Western assistance for Ukraine because he was afraid of escalation.
07:51 Yeah.
07:52 And at the same time, Zelensky is also trying to organize this major peace summit.
07:56 We're not sure how major it will be if the US doesn't attend, if China doesn't go.
08:01 So what role does Zelensky have if the Biden administration can't attend to the peace summit?
08:10 Wait.
08:11 So President Biden is not attending.
08:14 But Antony Blinken is definitely coming.
08:17 So you know, the and the fact that that China is not attending or not even sending a working
08:24 level delegate, of course, is painful.
08:28 But frankly speaking, that peace summit is much more of a Ukrainian effort to talk to
08:33 the global south.
08:35 And there are 100 countries participating on one or the other levels of hierarchy.
08:42 So I think it will be a very successful exercise in communication of Ukraine's war of defense
08:53 against an imperial colonialist power.
08:56 And the Ukrainians are much better at sending this message to countries of the global south
09:01 than countries like France, Britain or the United States.
09:05 Roland, thank you very much for your time.
09:06 Roland Furstenstein joining us from Brussels.