LiveNOW's Austin Westfall discusses where the Russia and Ukraine war stands amid ceasefire negotiations with Hal Kempfer, national security analyst.
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00:00Welcome back. I'm Austin Westphal. Let's get the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war national security analyst and retired marine intelligence officer
00:08Host of the strap podcast Hal Kemper is standing by Hal as always
00:12It's good to see you. What I wanted to do with this interview is take a wide
00:17Lens look at the Russia-Ukraine war as a whole. We were just looking at this post from
00:24Cranium president Vladimir Zelensky. He says he held a meeting of the military cabinet. This was posted today
00:31The post gets cut off
00:33But it does say at the bottom of it that they're preparing for a meeting between Ukrainian and American officials
00:39It's going to take place tomorrow in Saudi Arabia before you and I talk about the past week of war and ceasefire negotiations
00:46What are we looking at tomorrow?
00:49Well, we're looking at tomorrow with Saudi Arabia is it's gonna be it's almost like shuttle diplomacy
00:55the u.s. Is the mediator if you will and the Russians will be in one room in Riyadh and the
01:03Ukrainians will be in another room and they're literally gonna go back and forth. It's like, okay, what's the Russian position run over to Ukrainians?
01:10okay, what's your
01:11counterproposal or what's the Ukrainian position and
01:14So they're gonna be basically they won't be meeting face-to-face Lisa not initially unless something changes
01:20But they're gonna be going back and forth trying to work this out kind of reminds you a little bit
01:24Of what we're seeing with the Middle East and Doha
01:27Where you know the law the country, you know, like the US and Israel won't meet directly with Hamas, but we work with the
01:35with the Egyptians and the Qataris
01:38to do this kind of
01:40Inter intermediate or interlocutor sort of thing
01:43So it'll be something like that and they're gonna be working on a number of things, you know with with with Russia right now
01:51They are trying to get their sort of what they would call their minimalist minimalist objectives
01:56Which is they want to take those four provinces those four oblasts that they have claimed. There are Russian territory
02:05There that now Putin has never really forsaken his maximalist objective
02:10Which is to take all of Ukraine completely and make a part of Russia
02:14But that's kind of the going-in thing. But the thing is that Russia doesn't completely occupy all of those territories
02:22They they occupy a lot of the territories particularly in the Donbass
02:26They occupy a lot but not all of it. Now. The other side is the Ukrainian side, which is
02:31Do they want to cede any territory to Russia and obviously up till now, of course not they they say it's sovereign Ukrainian territory
02:40so there's a pretty big gap between those two now what the first phase and what we're gonna see this week is they're gonna try and
02:47push for a
02:49comprehensive 30-day ceasefire
02:51Which should be freezing on the existing lines. That's what it should be
02:57But there's still a lot of work to be done to get to that point
03:00So how this
03:02Past couple weeks has been a busy couple of weeks as it relates to this war. We keep hearing Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia
03:10You know, my question here is right now. Where does the war stand? Let's just let everybody know what's going to be talked about tomorrow
03:19We've heard of ceasefire negotiations
03:22relating to
03:23Energy infrastructure. We we know that the Ukrainians at first we heard
03:28Russia would sign on for a 30-day or 30-day or so
03:32Temporary partial ceasefire and then we heard that Ukraine would be okay with something similar to that as it stands right now
03:38Is that partial ceasefire in place at this hour?
03:42the facto no
03:45Rhetorically, maybe I'm not quite sure. It's very strange
03:48It looked like that both sides kind of agreed to at first it was going to be energy
03:54Infrastructure would not be attacked and then it was energy and infrastructure
03:59Would not be attacked and that was a appeared to be that was something that was put out by the White House
04:05and then
04:07President Zelensky talked about energy and civilian infrastructure wouldn't be attacked and
04:13Those terms have never quite been reconciled. There's a big difference between saying energy infrastructure and
04:19Energy and infrastructure and then you have to define what do you mean by infrastructure?
04:23What do you mean by energy and I'll give an example
04:27Up in Kursk. There is a fueling station that was recently hit the Russians are claiming that the
04:33Ukrainians did it to attack energy infrastructure and it was a violation of the quote ceasefire
04:39Which is not clear if it's actually is a ceasefire and the Ukrainians saying no, this is something Russia hit
04:45By the way, they've been shelling this the same fueling station all along
04:50Well, is that energy infrastructure?
04:53Is it energy?
04:55Is there really a ceasefire in place? That's part of the question on this and of course
05:01Russia has continued to attack
05:04Things which are infrastructure and and energy sites
05:07this last week and Ukraine has also been attacking things that are what I would call energy infrastructure such as a
05:15major
05:16fuel or oil
05:18Pumping stations depots if you will
05:20The other thing too is though Ukraine has also been attacking a number of things. They have a very long-range
05:29Drone which is very capable going about 600 miles into the country and they also have a longer range
05:36Cruise missile. It's a modification of their original
05:40anti-ship Neptune C
05:42Missile but that goes several hundred miles and both of those have put a lot of new targets in Russia
05:50As as things that could be hit and these are not subject to a US freeze on aid or anything like that
05:57These are homegrown
05:59Home produced missiles and drones from from Ukraine itself
06:03so Russia's looking at this and they're and part of their part of the pressure on Russia is
06:08They better do something soon because all of a sudden there's a whole bunch of things that are energy energy infrastructure
06:15Energy and infrastructure in Russia that can now be hit by the Ukrainians now for Ukraine
06:20They've always been targeted with all those things by Russia
06:24But it's starting to kind of even up those scales and that's part of Putin's pressure is to get something in place
06:30Which will cease to to have all those targets in Russia
06:35Be hit as they have been over the last week or two
06:38So what's your gut feeling? Does it feel like a total ceasefire or something that could actually happen in the near future?
06:45It's possible. I would say this next week by the time we get to Friday. I would not rule out
06:52That they could have an agreement for a 30-day ceasefire
06:55I don't think it'll be anything much longer than that Russia's talked about they want a total peace agreement
07:00But when Russia says a peace agreement
07:02I'm not sure if they're spelling it P E a CE or P I E CE because what they want is they want
07:09more pieces of Ukraine added on to what they have and
07:13I don't think that Ukraine is going to see that anytime real soon now. It might be part of a longer-term
07:19discussion or
07:21Negotiation, but there's just a lot to get to but a 30-day ceasefire
07:25That's very possible that that this particular shuttle diplomacy thing in Riyadh
07:31Could actually put something in place a lot of pressure
07:34by the Trump White House to make this happen and
07:38And certainly Ukraine wants to keep the aid flowing. They want to keep the intelligence flow going. So yeah, I think that's it's possible
07:46I'm not saying it's gonna happen
07:47I'm not saying it's definite but I think there's a lot of
07:50Momentum and certainly a lot of interest on all sides to make this happen sooner rather than later
07:55Why is there interest on the Russian side to make something like this happen? I
07:59think for Russia, they feel the need to do something and and actually for Russia a
08:0630-day in their minds a 30-day ceasefire is a chance to regroup
08:11Rearm a lot of other things that they need to do on the front lines. Their troops are exhausted
08:17They've been using them as basically cannon fodder on the front lines
08:20So they would use this as a they would use this basically for tactical objective to reposition troops to reinforce troops to do something
08:29So at the end of 30 days, they could they could go on to the attack now with that said
08:34Ukraine will also be using that 30 days to regroup rearm
08:38Replenish its forces on the front lines in full expectation of an attack and it's also possible the Ukraine
08:45At the end of 30 days may also push off an offensive. That's something that can't rule out
08:50Of course the goal by the White House is that this 30-day ceasefire
08:55Leads to a full peace agreement or a longer-term truce that goes beyond the 30 days
09:01But we'll see right now Putin
09:05certainly doesn't appear to feel any great pressure to
09:09Concede anything in order to make this happen and at some point Russia's gonna have to make concessions
09:14So far, they they really haven't made much in the way of concessions
09:18I can't really think of anything that they've really conceded
09:22so far so there's there's there's there's areas that have to be covered there's a lot of a
09:28Lot of things that have to be figured out before you'll see an agreement in place real quick before we go
09:33How what's going on with the strap podcast this week? What do you have coming up?
09:37Well, the strap podcast this week's gonna talk about everything that's going on. I'm gonna talk about the Middle East
09:41I'm gonna talk about Turkey what's going on with Erdogan and of course arresting the
09:47The mayor of Istanbul is number one political opponent. So I'm gonna talk to him about that
09:52I'm also going to talk about what's happening in Europe and one of the things that's being discussed is that the u.s
09:58May pull out of doing exercises in NATO
10:02This is a huge shift in our strategic balance in Europe
10:06So I'm going to talk about what the implications are the importance of exercises what this does for us
10:11They may be put a little historical perspective on what this means
10:15Maybe even talk about Charles de Gaulle and some of the things he did in France back in the 1960s
10:20Who doesn't miss that reference? So, uh
10:23so it's gonna be a
10:25It'd be a hopefully everybody will listen in I know exactly what you're talking about. Totally totally know what you're talking
10:32You bring it up now, let's let's actually show cuz we we did and people were watching live now earlier today
10:38You know, we were watching for hours as this
10:40protest activity
10:43Continued in Turkey. We were watching this in Istanbul for much of the morning and afternoon here in US time
10:49These are protests against the detention of Istanbul's mayor and it grew on Friday. It turned increasingly tense today
10:57This is Turkey's biggest show of civil disobedience in more than a decade after
11:02President Erdogan warned it would not be tolerated tens of thousands of Turks are taking to the streets and mostly peaceful
11:09Demonstrations since Wednesday when mayor Ekrem and mama glue was detained and charged and how he is Erdogan's main political rival
11:17Leads him in some opinion polls should Americans care about this how why should Americans care about this?
11:23What are the international stakes of Turkish politics?
11:26Well, he leads him in an opinion polls by double digits if the election was held today
11:31He would almost assuredly win he would become the president of Turkey and it wasn't just the mayor
11:38It was a bunch of people around the mayor there were academics or journalists or others. This was a full sweep
11:45to take this out and and what you're seeing on the streets and why we should be she should be focused on this is
11:51These are these are younger people these are people in their late teens
11:5620s early 30s. This is the next generation and what they're all saying is look
12:02We have got to take democracy back for Turkey
12:06They've looked at this shift away this, you know slipping into what they call dictatorship under Erdogan and they're saying look
12:14We got it. We have to stand up. We have to take this back
12:17You know when I look at what's happening on the streets now and we've seen a lot of times where these things
12:21Pop up and then they kind of go away
12:23We've seen that a number of times certainly and I ran where we were very hopeful but nothing ever happened
12:28But when I look at what's happening here, it does remind me of
12:33scenes from 1989
12:351990
12:36certainly 1991 in Eastern Europe
12:41various Soviet Republics
12:43Certainly and what happened there and of course as a cold warrior I can tell you at the time
12:49None of us saw that this was going to be the end of the Warsaw Pact all of a sudden or that the Soviet Union
12:55would collapse but I'm looking at this on the streets and I look at the
12:59makeup of who is on the streets and
13:02I think this could have real legs. I think this could really force things to happen and we'll see we'll see if
13:09If Erdogan relents and all of a sudden you see the mayor released and some of these others released that were also arrested
13:17I think that would be a big sign of where this is going if he doesn't I
13:21Think you're gonna see more protests for a while and it may get a little bit more intense
13:25All right, Hal. Thanks. We'll talk soon
13:28All right. Thank you. Awesome