237. Looking ahead to Battleground '45
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Hello and welcome to the first Battleground Ukraine podcast of 2025 with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. In a moment, we'll hear from friend of the podcast, Asgol Kruzelnitsky, who's currently in Kyiv, but who spent Christmas close to the front line, northeast of Kharkiv.

But first the news, and Patrick, it's been mostly all bad for Russia in my estimation. It began with the reported shooting down by Russian air defences of an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger plane over the Republic of Chechnya on Christmas Day, and that was followed up, probably inevitably, by a ham-fisted attempt to cover up the atrocity.

Yeah, that's right. So I bet the incident brought back memories, didn't it, of that downing of the Malaysian Airlines jet by Russian surface-to-air missile back in 2014. All 298 people on board were killed, and that was when it was flying over an area of eastern Ukraine that was controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. So in this instance, the Azerbaijan plane

Airlines plane was coming into Grosny, or rather was on the approach to Grosny airport when it was struck by what appears to be another Russian missile.

and it was fired in an attempt to down what its operators thought was a Ukrainian drone. So, you know, part of the fog of war, I suppose. The plane was then, you know, clearly in great difficulties. It was denied permission to land on Russian territory. It was forced to fly over the Caspian Sea all the way to Kazakhstan, to Akhtar, where it crashed, killing 38 people. Now, in true tragedy,

predictable style. The Russians tried to claim that the accident first of all was the result of a bird strike. That was quickly debunked, that theory. And then later, the official line was that the Ukrainian drones and dense fog

which were kind of zooming around in the area, forced the plane out of Russian airspace before the crash. But even this one was rejected, as was Putin's feeble attempt at an apology, which came without admitting any responsibility. Now, the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev,

wasn't having any of this. He was very forthright. He said the airline was hit by fire from the ground over Russia and rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare, i.e. they were jamming the plane's electronic systems, which made life even more difficult for them. And he went on to accuse Russia of trying to hush up the issue for several days, saying he was upset and surprised by the versions of events put forward by Russian officials.

Yeah, I mean, it surprised me. I have to say, Patrick, how strongly Aliyev has responded to this, given that, you know, some people have kind of depicted him as really another one of Putin's puppets. I mean, for example, he said on the 29th of December, an incredibly strongly worded statement that began, firstly, Russia must apologize to Azerbaijan. Secondly, it must admit its guilt.

Thirdly, the perpetrators must be punished and held criminally liable and compensation must be paid to the Azerbaijani state and the affected passengers and crew members. These are our conditions, he said. The first of these was fulfilled yesterday. I hope that our other conditions will be accepted.

Yeah, it's more than it seems. It's not just a sort of glitch, this. It's a real slap in the face for Putin. And why is Putin actually behaving totally out of character and actually fessing up for something the Russians have done? Well, the answer, very simply, is that Russia actually needs to keep Azerbaijan sweet for a number of reasons. For example, Russian exports of oil and gas are a significant part of Russian incoming wealth from its energy sources.

sales at the moment. After the war began, Azerbaijan became a significant bigger customer of Russian oil. In fact, I think exports quadrupled in 2023. Now, the export volume may not be huge, but it's, of course, disproportionately important because of the significance of oil income to Moscow since the start of the war. And it's also geographically very well placed

to have a lot of leverage on Russia. It's become an irreplaceable partner for Russia when it comes to transporting goods to and from Iran, obviously a key strategic ally of Russia, and also the ports of the

Persian Gulf. But there's a bigger thing going on here, Saul. I mean, it's another sign of Russia losing influence with its near neighbors. I'm going to come on to that a little bit later on. But once it could very happily, easily bully and subdue its near neighbors. But this is all beginning to unravel. So Azerbaijan already, before this happened in Armenia, the two had a long relationship.

history of conflict, particularly over the Karabakh region. Well, they're actually trying to mend fences with each other and keeping Russia out of the equation. Russia's been trying to sort of meddle in the whole thing, get its, well, it had peacekeepers in the area, which have been now, they came to the end of their term, and they've been told, you've got to go now. In the old days, that never would have happened. They would have said, no, no, we'll stay. And so I think those other neighbors, immediate neighbors, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,

they're going to be looking at this incident and seeing weakness and taking due note. Yeah, that's right, Patrick. And Putin's humour can't have been improved, I have to say, by a sort of interconnected news to this. And that is that Russia is set to lose its 5 billion euros annually in gas sales as more than four decades of supplies sent to Europe via Ukraine came to an end. I mean, it's extraordinary to think that this gas pipeline has still been operating well.

during more than three years of war. But finally, Naftogaz, Ukraine's largest oil and gas company, has refused to renew its latest five-year transit deal with Russia's Gazprom. And now this lapsed on January the 1st, and it won't be renewed. Gazprom confirmed that gas exports via Ukraine to Europe stopped at 8 a.m. local time on New Year's Day. The Russian pipeline through Ukraine accounted for roughly 5% of the European Union's gas imports,

And this was despite attempts by the bloc to wean itself off shipments from Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine is losing out, of course, as well. It's giving up roughly 800 million troops.

euros a year in transit fees that it had still been receiving from Russia, despite the war. I mean, it's bizarre, really, when you think about it, Patrick, two countries at war and yet paying each other for the transshipment of gas supplies. And on the energy front, you know, they're still hammering away at, so the Ukrainians are still hammering away at

Russia's oil industry, long-range drones struck the Yarsevskaya oil depot, which is in the Smolensk area. And also there was military strikes on various facilities just over the new year. But there was a really interesting incident

Bit of sort of war tech development that you no doubt notice all, which is on New Year's Day, where the Ukrainians put out this video footage of a Ukrainian Magura V5C drone destroying with onboard rockets a Russian helicopter. There were a pair of Russian helicopters obviously tracking it and seeking to destroy it just off the coast of Crimea. Well, one of these helicopters was brought down with these onboard rockets

ground or sea to air defenses and a second helicopter was hit. Some interesting audio that came from the cockpit there saying, you know, we've been hit, we've been hit and sort of limping back to base. But they were obviously taken by surprise. There's real astonishment in the transcription. It sounds that they really weren't expecting this. And so this is another first, isn't it? This is another example of Ukraine leading the way in battlefield technology by actually equipping this

the sea drone with a onboard air defenses, which operated very successfully in this case. So when the defense ministry in Kiev described it as a historic strike, I think that was no more than the truth. Exactly right. I mean, we've been saying for a long time that Ukraine's innovation in drones, both air and sea, has been nothing less than extraordinary. And it's been able to use these

its own kit to strike where and when it wants to. Now, meanwhile, the other big story that is rapidly approaching is, of course, Trump's inauguration as US president on the 20th of January. And prior to that, Moscow seems to have been setting out its red lines for negotiations.

And as I suspected, Patrick, they seem to be overplaying their hand. So what's happened recently? Well, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explicitly rejected two suggestions that had been made by US President-elect Donald Trump's team in

early November as conditions for ending the war in Ukraine. And those conditions were the delay of Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years and the deployment of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. Both sound pretty reasonable to me and not particularly favourable to Ukraine. And yet, nevertheless, Russia has rejected them. Lavrov stated in an interview with

Kremlin Newswire TASS on the 29th of December that Russia is, and I quote, not satisfied with the Trump's team's reported early November 2024 proposals to delay membership and to station a European peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine. Lavrov, of course, is simply amplifying

Putin's December the 26th explicit rejection of the Trump team's reported suggestion to delay Ukraine's membership in NATO for 20 years. I mean, in effect, these demands that Russia are now making effectively mean that Ukraine will be forced to become a permanently neutral state that will never join NATO, imposing limitations on the size of the Ukrainian military and removing the Ukrainian government. I mean, all of these terms clearly are not acceptable. They certainly aren't acceptable to the

to the Ukrainians and they probably aren't to Trump's team either. Yeah, I would have thought that's absolutely right. I mean, the one thing you think they'd have learned from just observation of the way Trump does business is that he's got a massive ego. He needs to be flattered. He needs to be given something and he needs to be shown to have won at the end of the day. He's the one, he's the guy that got the better deal. Now,

The way they're approaching this seems to be almost designed to put his back up, I would have thought, wouldn't it? And I think the tone that's being set in advance of the inauguration is actually quite favorable for Ukraine and pretty bad for the Kremlin. But we'll have to wait and see. Of course, better remind listeners, we're going to be in Ukraine on the 20th of January, reporting on reactions and doing a lot of other reporting. Otherwise, we're looking forward greatly to a lot of fascinating events.

stuff on the go at the moment. We've got lots of interesting people lined up to talk to. I just want to mention something else here about the way the war is going. You know, there's been a lot of kind of dispute about what the real figures are for casualties and what the significance of these advances in the East by the Russians mean. Well, Colonel General Alexander Siersky, the Ukrainian Armed Forces commander,

has tried to sort of, of course, he's putting a bit of a spin on it, but it's still interesting what he says when he, just before the new year, he gave his version of what actually is going on on the Eastern Front. He reckoned that there were 427,000, nearly half a million, i.e. casualties on the Russian side in 2024. Now, these casualties are coming at a very high price. So,

even though if you're just reading, you know, Western media, the general tone is, well, the Russians are sort of chewing their way through Eastern Ukraine. But the Institute for the Study of War, which we quote often, and there have been some challenges from listeners to as to how legitimate this is as a source, but I think we both agree it is legitimate and they're pretty good just on sheer factual stuff. But

So they're saying that in that intensive offensive period, September, October and November of this year, Russia gained 2,356 square kilometers. But in exchange for that, they lost 125,800 casualties. Now, you know, whichever way you compute it, that is not a great return to the amount of blood spent.

Ukraine is a vast country. None of these areas that have actually been captured have significantly impacted on the strategic situation. So as they go into the new year, Russia will be struggling to provide the replacement troops to keep up that sort of tempo. And I think, you know, looking forward, the idea there's going to be any major offensive in the coming months, something that, you know, is an attempt at a breakthrough or anything like that,

like that is extremely unlikely, wouldn't you say, Saul? Yeah, it would, Patrick. And there's been another blow to prestige, I suppose, from Moscow. And Finland took the, you know, the very sensible, but also quite surprising decision to impound an aging Russian oil tank. It's actually bad somewhere else, but it's undoubtedly part of Russia's shadow fleet. That

Finland said was responsible for severing the Baltic Sea's S-Link 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia. Now, we've had a number of these incidents over the last year or so. In fact, the last couple of years, a lot of people pointing the finger at Russia, but they do actually seem to have evidence now because they've got hold of this ship. It's known as the Eagle S, part of a fleet, as I say, associated with evading Western sanctions on Russia. Now, the S-Link 2 cable

suffered a rupture on the 25th of December that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia and it seems that this ship that they've got their hands on not only has a missing anchor which was allegedly used to drag across the sea bottom and therefore sever those cables but

but also has a number of people on board, including very sophisticated transmitting equipment that would imply that this was in effect a spy ship. So it's something that probably should have been done before, but it's now being done. And the Finns are being very robust about all of this. I mean, bear in mind, they've only recently joined NATO. They have basically said, our current understanding is that

drag mark, that's the drag mark on the bottom of the sea, is that of the anchor of the Eagle S vessel. We have been able to clarify this matter through underwater research, and they are examining the vessel in connection with potential criminal charges, including aggravated interference with telecommunications, aggravated vandalism, and aggravated regulatory violations. So not a minute before time, I would say, wouldn't you, Patrick?

Yeah, I mean, this is part, of course, of this ongoing low-level campaign of trying to degrade Western communications, all these kind of deniable sabotage operations, etc. And it's good to see Finland pushing back. But just on the general subject of...

of the way that the mood is very much changing against Putin at all sorts of different levels. So I'm thinking of what's going on in Serbia at the moment, and it sort of mirrors what's also going on in Georgia, where the population basically is being led by pro-Kremlin governments who are completely out of step with their own people. So in this case in Serbia, tens of thousands of protesters have been carrying out regular demonstrations in Belgrade and other Serbian cities

against the leader, President Alexander Vucic, classic sort of strongman type, who's been in power for about 10 years now, roughly, and is very much a friend of the Kremlin. Now, this is something that's happened in Belgrade before. It may not sound like a big challenge, but these regular demonstrations, which are being, you know, posed pretty brutally by the security forces, they're led by students who

largely young people and they've been basically just saying enough already there was an incident which sparked all this which was the collapse of a canopy in a bus shelter in the city of Novi Sad which killed various people that was just an emblematic thing of government corruption was all sorts of

other elements which are causing the young to come onto the street. But they've been manning blockades on roads. Universities are pretty much in turmoil. And they've got the support of their tutors. So there's a real stirring going on in Serbia at the authoritarian leadership. And I think Vucic, although he's saying, I'm not going to do an Assad and do a runner off to Moscow,

He will be looking back at the fairly recent past, particularly to October 2000, which was when another strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, the ultra-nationalist Serbian leader who basically started the Yugoslav wars, was overthrown as a result of peaceful protests. I was there. I remember it was very striking, very significant. So there's a history of this, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he might find himself in a very polished situation very soon. You know, another big supporter of...

of Moscow, not on the scale, of course, of Assad and Syria, or his regime, rather, but, you know, another sign of the weakening of Putin's authority. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll be hearing from Asgol Krzyzlnicki in Kyiv.

Hi, everyone. It's Katty here from the Rest Is Politics US. Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about our new series that looks at one of the darkest days in modern American history, the Capitol riots of January the 6th. You know, four years have passed since Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building and tried to overturn the 2020 election results. And Katty and I are going to explore the tensions and the

personalities at the heart of that storm. Yeah, we're going to look at the whole story, starting off with, of course, the 2020 election result itself, Joe Biden's victory, Donald Trump's attempts to undermine that result right up until January the 6th and those horrifying scenes that all of us watched on television back then. So don't miss it. Go and search The Rest Is Politics US, wherever you get your podcasts, to hear just how Donald Trump tried to defy

American democracy. And we've included a clip from the series for you to listen to at the end of this episode. Welcome back. Well, we're now going to talk to our old friend, Asgol Kruszonicki, who spent Christmas with the Katia Brigade based up in the northeast Kharkiv region. Now, what Asgol tells us is full of fascinating stuff, but particularly his account of what

As far as I know, it's the first fully automated battle of this war with an amazing combination of aerial and terrestrial drones. A small battle, but a very significant one in the history of the technology of this war. Something that keeps popping up on this pod. So ASCO has been down on the front lines northeast of Kharkiv over the Christmas holidays.

period where he's been revisiting some old pals, old comrades of yours, isn't that right, Asghold? Tell us about who you saw and what you heard. Actually, I was with a brigade called the Khartia Brigade, and it was the first time that I was with them. I'd heard a lot about them. They've acquired a great reputation not only for fighting,

prowess, but for an innovative approach to the use of new technology, weapons, and communications, but also in their attitude to one another. There's a culture of treating every member with respect, and for those who have been wounded or for the families of people who have been lost in combat, there's an extensive

aftercare network and part of their driving ethic is to

change or get rid of the lingering elements of Soviet era attitudes and how a military is run, a very hierarchical and with quite brutal methods instilling fear into their members. They're trying to get away from that. And from what I can see, they've done that very successfully, but also to try to spread that message and that

attitude into what they call forming a new Ukrainian army. So it was a very interesting experience to get to know these people and to see them in action.

Asgol, tell us a little bit about conditions that you found there on the frontline. I mean, this does sound like an interesting unit, the sort of unit that we all imagine the Ukrainian army will be staffed with in years to come, or we hope it will be. But tell us about the sense of morale on the frontline. And we've mentioned on the podcast many times that

numbers of people in Ukraine who are at least prepared to listen to the possibility of negotiating a peace with Russia is on the rise. So what about the soldiers? What are they thinking? You're right, Saul, that everybody's open to ideas for ending the war and peace negotiations. But there have been for a long time, of course, Trump

about to begin his second term in the White House starting January the 20th, focuses everybody's minds because he has campaigned on bringing a swift peace. He said 24 hours initially to end the conflict. Everybody knows that that's impossible. But Trump is serious about trying to arrange some sort of

peace. And as America is by far the greatest provider of military aid to Ukraine, his ideas and what he intends to do is, of course, of intense interest. And the people that I spoke to in this brigade in Khartia and with other soldiers, they're all open to the idea of some sort of peace talks. They're all open

As you know, and you and Patrick have mentioned many times in your podcast that some of these guys and women have been at the front lines for more than two and a half years with very little time off. They've seen their comrades being killed or being severely injured. And there certainly is a feeling of psychological as well as physical pain.

But I really haven't come across anybody, and certainly not with the people I met in Khartia, who said it's time to give up and make huge concessions. They're open to some form of concession and some kind of honest, perhaps, compromise.

but they're not willing to just throw the towel in. And they, all Ukrainian military people, but Ukrainian civilians know what the ghastly consequences of actually being defeated by Russia mean. It's been demonstrated in the areas that the Russians held hostility

Temporarily, I mean, famously, places like Bucha, where anybody that had connections with the Ukrainian military had been in the Ukrainian military. If they could find them, they rounded them up. Many of them were executed.

People who were political activists or had political connections or had cultural collections, people who cared about the Ukrainian language, history, writers, musicians, poets, they were rounded up. And that's what...

Ukrainians know whether they're civilians or military awaits any portion of Ukraine that falls under Russian domination. So whatever Trump or anyone else says about the need for a peace, every Ukrainian agrees with them. There's a need for peace, but certainly not at any cost.

Yeah, so that suggests, Asgode, what I'm trying to get at is how much people are thinking into the future and what they're prepared to accept. But from what you were saying, I mean, Ukraine, the territory that it holds now is unlikely to fall to the Russians. So what you're talking about is what's going to happen to those territories.

parts of Ukraine that are under Russian control. Now, is anyone envisaging sort of a population transfers with people who want to live under Ukrainian rule being exported, if you like, into Ukrainian territory at the moment?

and those who want to stay behind them. Presumably there are a proportion of the population who are okay living under Russian control. Is that something that's on people's minds? And secondly, from what you're saying, and I think from what we all understand, the question of security guarantees a

about the basically Western bolstered Ukrainian armed forces, which are capable of a real deterrence in the future. Are those things that are being talked around the campfire, metaphorically speaking, among the soldiers and among the civilians that you've been talking to? First of all, about whether there are any plans for a population transfer.

I don't know of any plans for some sort of future putative negotiations that involve a transfer of territories. But what's been happening so far is that millions of people have fled from areas that were occupied by Russian forces or where Russian forces were approaching since the beginning of the full-blown invasion in February 2022. So there's already been

substantial population transfer. Many of the people had to remain behind because they were elderly, they didn't have relatives, they were not confident that the Ukrainian government would be able to provide them with shelter and some sort of adequate income. And so there are thousands or probably hundreds of thousands of people who would rather be under Kiev's rule who've

remained reluctantly behind because they were too scared of an uncertain future. The Russians have been making incremental but steady gains. You mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, the scale of territorial gains in those places, chiefly in the Donetsk Oblast and in Kharkiv Oblast, where Russians have last year made a

very small but steady advances. The local authorities have for months been urging people to go to west to Ukrainian-held territory. And there's a constant evacuation process where possible trains, special trains,

are laid on with free seats for refugees and whatever baggage they can take with them. There are buses. There are volunteer organizations that come with minibuses or with vehicles to evacuate refugees.

But as you mentioned, there are people who are sanguine about living under Russian occupation. They're called in a slightly derogatory way, Zhduner, people who wait, and they're treated with suspicion. Everybody kind of knows who they are, that they're actual Russian sympathizers, or they're just people who aren't particularity.

particularly worried about which kind of regime they live under as long as they've got shelter and something to eat. But these people, as a blow of millions of people into Ukrainian-held territory shows, are in a minority. Askel, returning just for a moment to the actual conditions on the front line, the conditions in the east of Ukraine more generally, we've been coming across a lot of reports suggesting that

The successful Ukrainian strikes on Russian ammunition depots have actually reduced the number of glide bombs coming into the kind of Kharkiv region, the eastern front more generally. I mean, did you get a sense of that speaking to the guys who were actually on the ground there?

Yes, people are talking about the number of glide bombs halved or down to a third of what they were just a little while ago. So these strikes deep into Russian territory, where either the airports that Russian planes take off from or depots where these weapons are stored, have proved successful.

With this Cartier group that I stayed with, the people who are fighting, there aren't complaints about they've got food and they've got more or less enough ammunition. No soldier anywhere in the world, you've met many of them all over the world, will say, yeah, we've got everything we need. They always need more. But

they're not in some sort of hard-pressed situation as they were this time a year ago when some American politicians

blocked for months the supply of weapons and, critically, ammunition to Ukraine. What Kharzai, as I said, that they've got a reputation for innovative methods of warfare, they're very keen on drones. You mentioned this probably historic first, where an unmanned sea drone knocked out a Russian helicopter. And a lot has been, of course, risen about that, how that changes the nature of

This Brigade Khartia, they announced, and it was in a lot of the Western press, including British and American press, about two weeks ago, that they had launched an attack against Russian trenches solely with weapons.

ground drones and air drones. And they managed to destroy a lot of the Russians. They told me how for about half an hour, the Russians had the impression that they were under an attack by soldiers backed by

And they used some drones with loudspeakers calling on Russians to surrender and all sorts of other kind of chatter to make it seem that there were people approaching these trenches. So how does this work, Asgore? These are like...

Robots, are they? It's kind of hard to get your head around. Completely. They were using an assortment of various air drones that we've heard quite a lot about. But there are some smaller ones which are called suicide drones, which can be manufactured for about less than 500 pounds, $450.

$400, and they're one-time use. They actually fly into a bunker or into a Russian armored personnel carrier or hit individual soldiers. Hundreds of these are used. Thousands of these are used every month. But there are larger drones that

aren't suicide drones. They're expected to come back, and they can carry larger payloads. I saw one of these being used called the Vampire drone, which is about the size of a lorry, a truck tire. It's dimensions, and it's got six propellers. And this one was carrying payloads of about 10, 12 kilograms, so 20, 25 pounds of explosives.

And there are also surveillance drones which are used to pinpoint targets. But with this attack by the Fatih Brigade, they also used robotic ground vehicles. And some of them laid mines, some of them

a new type of remote-controlled machine gun, which is 12.7 millimeter, which is a .50 cal weapon. So it's a substantial size bullet. And this was remote-controlled and was spraying the Russian trenches, killing and injuring Russian troops. And this was the first time anyone

anywhere that's known to have used an entirely robotic drone force to defeat in an albeit small-scale battle an enemy. And the Ukrainians said, look, not a single Ukrainian life was lost, nobody was injured. And they definitely think this is the way forward.

How were they propelled then? Did they track to... They sound a bit like the old Goliath, the World War II Wehrmacht Goliath mini-tanks, which used to go and...

And, well, they were also kind of like early suicide drones. They go and basically explode. And they were used with some effect, actually, on the Eastern Front and indeed in the liberation of Paris. Is that how they get across the terrain? They're tracked vehicles, some of them. Some of them are wheeled vehicles, but they're intended to return back their remotely controlled vehicles.

and operated by people who have something that kind of teenagers or young people that play video games would recognize as a control with a tiny joystick with a

a monitor which sees what the cameras on the various devices, airborne or ground, have. So they're controlled by human operators, but way out of danger. So the ground vehicles, the ones that I was told about and saw, they were intended to return. They were chiefly with these machine guns called Wally by the Ukrainian forces.

And they also dropped laid mines so that when the Russians counterattacked, they came across mines which were anti-personnel mines and also anti-armor mines. And this is something that I know is being talked about, looked at closely by other Ukrainian military units. But I think that every...

ally of Ukraine or military that is interested in future warfare will be studying this. And the people from Khartyia have already got requests for visits by not just other Ukrainian units, but foreign militaries.

Fascinating stuff, Asghold. Just turning to politics for a second. I mean, we've long depicted the opening of 2025, not least with the Trump inauguration. There's a bit of a kind of race against time for both sides. Obviously, Ukraine needs to stay in the fight until it either gets the backing from America that it needs to continue or it gets a peace deal it can find acceptable. On the other hand, Ukraine

Putin clearly wants a way out of this war with a win, as Patrick put it a little while ago. But it doesn't seem that the hand he's playing at the moment is likely to get him one. And are you getting a sense, at least from the Ukrainian side, that Zelensky himself is playing quite a clever game in this regard in that he's saying, yeah, we are prepared to listen to peace negotiations, not any peace negotiations, but some negotiations.

And yet, on the other hand, the Russians seem to be digging themselves into a hole by making demands which not even Trump, with his determination to end the war in a single day, is going to find acceptable. You're right that people think, and I've read, as you have read, analyses by Ukrainians and by non-Ukrainians,

where they think that, yeah, Zelensky is playing a clever game because he's immediately, Trump was victorious in the presidential elections. He congratulated him. He sent a team of senior people from his administration. As soon as Trump was elected president or won the elections, he

Zelensky immediately set about trying to get close to him, engage with him. He congratulated him. He sent a senior team of Ukrainian people from his own administration to talk to the people that would

their opposite numbers in any kind of negotiations. Some of those are known. A person called General Kellogg is to be appointed Trump's envoy to Ukraine. So they immediately tried to engage and to show that in contrast to Putin, the Russian leader and his foreign secretary, Lavrov, who we mentioned earlier, who've thrown down

damp dishcloths on what seemed to be Trump's proposals for peace negotiations. So in that way, Zelensky and the Ukrainian government realized that they've got to appeal to Trump's egos that you've already mentioned.

And I think even though everybody wonders what Trump actually has got in mind, and there's a lot of speculation that he yet doesn't know himself, and I suspect that's the case, that Trump doesn't yet have a fully formulated plan.

view of what peace negotiations or what a future peace arrangement should look like. The Ukrainians are trying to be there whilst Trump makes this decision. But I think that the Ukrainian administration, the Ukrainian President Zelensky, the Ukrainian people know that they have to prepare for the worst case scenario. And it

And if that isn't what comes to pass, so much the better. But until after Trump re-enters the White House, we don't know. And I think it's foolish to predict what will happen. Just before you go, what does Cartier mean something?

Khadija means charter, and it's supposed to reflect a charter in the sense of a social contract, that it's an agreement between the people who lead that brigade and its members. And it's not that it's all huggy-feely, tree-hugging, and that decisions are taken in some kind of hand vote. It's very...

But it's discipline that comes from an intelligence and making sure that everybody understands what their task is, rather than just instilling fear and saying that the consequences for disobeying orders are going to be dire sometimes.

So it's part of their thinking of how to eradicate, yes, as I said, these lingering, but still, unfortunately, strong traces of Soviet, hierarchical, inefficient, as it's been shown to be, military structure in the Ukrainian army.

Okay, well, that was brilliant. Thank you so much, Asgol, for joining us. We'll be seeing you very soon. Stay safe. And once again, thanks for coming on the pod. Thank you. And thank you for all the work that you've done over the last nearly three years. And I know that I speak to people who listen in Ukraine to your podcast, and they're very envious that I actually...

know the two of you. So let's hope 2025 is a good year, not just for Ukraine, but all the civilized world. Thanks, Eskold.

Bye-bye then. Thanks very much, Ascock. Brilliant. Okay, that's all we have time for. Just a quick appeal for more questions, please. Could you send them to battlegroundukraine at gmail.com? Do join us next Wednesday when we'll be hearing more from Battleground 45 as it's now become, and also on Friday when we'll be hearing the latest from Ukraine. Goodbye.

As promised, here's a clip from the Rest Is Politics US miniseries. Trump is naturally a conspiracy theorist fueler. He will fuel the fire of any conspiracy theory because he's always seen himself as an outsider and he wants to foment the

the people from the outside to attack the people from the inside. So he's developing these ideas that he eventually uses in January on the 6th of January. And the ideas are there's misinformation out there. There's lies out there. Let's use these lies as fodder to attack the people on the inside. He's doing it with COVID. I think hydroxychloroquine works well.

You may remember this. I took hydroxychloroquine. Mr. President, you took hydroxychloroquine? Yeah. Yeah, I'm on it. I took it. And this is the beginnings. This is the kernels.

of what's about to come. And it all starts with COVID and it leads up to this insurrection, or as the president says, a very peaceful group of tourists descending upon the Capitol building. If you want to hear the rest of the show, go and search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.