Welcome back to our program.
So what are the questions you have today?
Are there
actually still
more questions than answers?
Oh, absolutely.
There are more questions than answers.
I think the first question on my mind
is, was promotion alone
or were people
in the Kremlin
or in Moscow
actually supporting his efforts
as a way to weaken Putin inside Russia,
something we don't know anything about?
We don't know where Prigozhin is.
We don't know where Putin is.
We are still watching
what the next steps will be.
It is hard to imagine that Putin
will accept this attack on his leadership
without repercussions
of some kind,
going after him, trying to kill Prigozhin
and Prigozhin,
anticipating
that is going to
have protected himself somewhere
and be planning what he can do as well.
Ultimately,
and I hate to keep going on here,
but this is about the narrative.
This is about what they're telling
the Russian people.
Prigozhin wants to be seen as a hero,
as a savior of Russia,
that the people leading Russia
were leading them astray.
And Putin wants to be seen also
as the savior of Russia against a mutiny.
So that's why they are doing this dance
really off screen right now
to see how they can position themselves
about where this goes next.
Can I just pick up on what you said?
It would be interesting to know how much
support promotion
had from within the establishment.
I mean, clearly not enough.
Otherwise you wouldn't have turned around
Well well, first off,
the amount of support
he had is really striking.
He took over the military base
in Rostov on Don
the military base in Baton Rouge
and did so without firing a shot.
He had people in the streets
bringing flowers and bread and water
And so
there was clearly a show of support
for promotion in doing this.
And everybody else
who should have been on Putin's team
here was just kind of sitting it out.
Some were even getting on
their airplanes.
So it showed a relative weakness for
a relative or worse promotion.
That is really striking.
He may not have accumulated
the forces that he wanted
to be able to take Moscow,
but he showed that
he actually has
some residents in the Russian military
and the Russian population.
So let me ask you then,
what the United States
should do about this.
Is the president was very clear
and actually all weekend,
none of the NATO allies came out
with anything much more then.
We're watching the situation.
We're talking to our partners.
They obviously didn't
want to give any excuse to
anybody like the foreign minister.
Lavrov already has
said that investigation
will will commence on on on
whether the West was involved in this.
We heard what President Biden said today.
What would next from the U.S.
perspective and from the
NATO's perspective?
Well, first several things.
First off,
I think it's important to make clear,
as President
Biden has done, as Secretary
Blinken has done,
that we have nothing to do with this.
There will be efforts to blame the West
and we should preempt them by saying
we had nothing to do with this.
This is an internal Russian thing.
The second thing is
we should drop the restrictions on
aid to Ukraine.
The Russian soldiers sitting in trenches
in Ukraine right now
do not want to be there.
They know that their country
is coming apart behind them.
They know the imperial quest
that Putin has set
them on is failing
and they don't want to be there.
So we should be giving
Ukraine what it needs
to help push them out.
And that will help convince them
to leave on their own.
And then finally, I think that NATO's
needs to recognize
that all of this depends
you know, all of this future
the future of European
security depends upon Europe.
Ukraine being secure in the future
so that if Russia is left on its own,
it will regroup.
It will attack again.
This will be a threat to all of Europe,
not only Ukraine.
So as NATO's convenes in Vilnius, July of
the 12th,
they need to send
a signal
that Ukraine
is on the way into membership.
So we'll get to that in a second.
But I'm really interested to hear
what you say,
that they should give Ukraine
what it needs.
A lot of the narrative
about the West, particularly
the United States
method of delivering weapons,
has been to do enough,
but not too much to antagonize Putin and
prompt some irrational response.
Are you basically saying now
that that equation
should be out of the door
because you've seen a weakness in Russia?
Well, my own view, Christiane,
is that that is a wrong calculation.
That's the boiling the frog argument
that we've gone slowly.
We've increased, but we haven't provoked.
My view on
that is
if Putin could have done more already,
he would have already done it,
that he's not in this war in Ukraine
to lose. He's in it to win.
And if he could add more troops,
if he could attack somewhere else,
if he thought that attacking and NATO's
ally would help him,
he would have done it.
The fact is that he knows
he is losing in Ukraine.
He can't possibly open
another front somewhere else.
Least of all with the narrow country.
He couldn't possibly handle that.
Nuclear weapons won't solve his problem.
And I think he knows that
So he is putting these messages out
to deter us
rather than
to actually mean that he's
going to go in these various directions.
We ought to understand that
we should be pouring
all the support to Ukraine.
Now, it's going to be really interesting
to see
whether other leaders actually do this
because many have said that
had it been a lot more a lot earlier,
we might already have seen a major
change on the battlefield.
But let me ask you, because, look,
there are those who say that
what happened over the weekend
and I think you said it as well.
Basically burst popped the Putin bubble.
Others might think that actually,
you know, it's Prigozhin
that's on the run is the Wagner
people who turned around
and Putin is still pretty much in charge.
I want to play this byte,
part of an interview
from Secretary Blinken,
because it relates to this
and we'll talk about it
The fact that you have from within
someone directly questioning
Putin's authority,
directly
questioning the premises that upon
which he launched this aggression.
Against Ukraine.
That in and of itself is something very,
very powerful.
It adds cracks
where those go when they get there.
Too soon to say
But it clearly raises new questions
that Putin has to deal with.
So, Ambassador Volker,
clearly there was a lot of wishful
thinking over the weekend
and a certain
a certain amount of disappointment
from the
from the cognizant, if you like,
when Prigozhin turned round.
Do you what do you think?
I mean.
It's very Byzantine These are two
essential gangsters
fighting for
supremacy and money and power.
What do you think is Putin stronger
because he survived all the opposite,
because he's been challenged
Christiane, I think you asked exactly the
right question
because you framed it in the in
the sense of these are gangsters.
This is a mafia mentality
that we're looking at.
Putin can not live
with having been challenged this way.
It is a threat to his control of Russia.
To his legitimacy
if he is seen to be weak.
So he has no choice now
but to go after Prigozhin.
I think Prigozhin knew this knows this.
He stood down to position himself
as the reasonable person,
the one who doesn't
want to destroy the state.
But then if Putin goes after him,
it gives him a justification
for trying again,
for somehow pushing back again.
So many shoes left to drop
that we haven't seen
now as far as the U.S.
policy goes.
Again, I just want to come back to that.
The U.S.
has no stake in this.
Other than to say
get out of Ukraine,
live within your own borders and accept
responsibility for the war
that you launched.
Who runs Russia?
There's no way we control
we control that. No way we can do that.
And we shouldn't pretend
that we're involved in that.
So I think we've got that part of it
right.
Okay.
Very quick
question about Putin
has also been at least certainly
the United States is concerned
that he's able to build up a
a coalition of those who support
in powerful countries
like China, to an extent, India,
you know, against the United States.
This is what the China
Foreign Ministry said on the weekend.
This is Russia's internal affair,
as Russia's friendly neighbor
and comprehensive strategic partner
of coordination for the new era.
China supports Russia
in maintaining national stability
and achieving development and prosperity.
So they didn't use the name Putin.
And frankly,
they didn't put this out
until it was clear
that the whatever it was was aborted
on the biggest strategic level.
How is this going to affect
Well, those people
who have suggested that
China is a strategic
ally of Russia and is helping Russia,
I think have misread the tea leaves here.
China is very happy for Russia
to try to weaken the West.
They can get anything from Russia
that they want for cash,
whether it's minerals
or whether it's energy, oil, gas, etc.
They're not invested in Putin's war.
And I think they actually
look down on Russia.
They don't have a lot of respect
for Russia
because they view it as a declining power
that doesn't take care of the state, does
take care of the people.
China is very much the opposite of that.
So I'm not at all surprised that China,
looking at this, says
it's just one more mess, more chaos.
Putin is not the strong leader
that he pretends to be.
And we're just going to sit this out
and watch
China has time on its side and Russia
to China
appears intemperate and desperate.