241. Ukraine captures North Korean troops
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Battleground with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

With just three days to go until Donald Trump's inauguration as the 47th President of the United States, his National Security Advisor, Mike Walz, has said his boss could initiate peace negotiations with President Putin of Russia as early as next week.

We haven't set the exact framework for it yet. We are working on that, said Wolves. But I do expect a call at least in the coming days and weeks. So that would be a step and we'll take it from there. Wolves also hinted at a possible timescale for getting a deal with Putin going when he went on to say, from President Trump's perspective, he can't enter a deal if you don't have some type of relationship and dialogue with the other side. And we will absolutely establish that in

The coming months, by which I suppose we mean that, you know, we've been talking before about this, haven't we? We saw Zelensky's try to get in there first, you know, to get his sort of personal relationship going, and then presumably Trump will then switch to Putin and try and get some sort of rapport with him. So we've got that. But on the other hand, there's not...

The other noises coming from waltz were not particularly encouraging from the Ukrainian point of view. He was asked would he pursue a just peace with adequate security guarantees. And instead, he just repeated the Biden demand. He changed the subject and repeated the Biden demand for Ukraine to lower its age of conscription from 25 to 18. This is obviously going to be an ongoing theme.

He said they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers. When we hear about moral problems, when we hear about issues on the front line, well, if the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy. He says a surge in troop numbers would help to stabilize the battlefield. Before we talk, there's a slightly sort of confusing situation

message there, isn't it? So they seem to be saying, okay, you know, ramp up activity on the battlefield, that will stand you in good stead. On the other hand, there is a fair point there that he's making about this strange business of the age of conscription.

Yeah, I mean, it's the same call that Biden's been making for a while. I mean, it's passing the buck to a certain extent, because in the end, America's key involvement is whether it's going to supply the weaponry that's going to allow the Ukrainians to keep fighting until it can get a just peace. So, I mean, this stuff from Walsh is thin gruel in my view. And it doesn't sound like Trump's promise to end the war in a day is going to be kept, of course, not to be able to really believe that.

Waltz is talking about months to establish a relationship and initiate dialogue. And Keith Kellogg, the former general who's been nominated as Trump's envoy to Ukraine, said much the same thing last week when he suggested the end of April as a hopeful date for the war to end. So now they're talking in months.

And meanwhile, the war of words between President Zelensky of Ukraine and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia continues. Fico is angry. I think listeners will remember that Zelensky has shut off gas supplies from Russia, as we mentioned last week, and said the Ukrainian president was a beggar.

and a blackmailer of EU countries, and that Putin, and this is the extraordinary bit, was a more trustworthy ally. He also threatened to use Slovakia's veto at European Council to block further aid for Kiev, and that's a much more serious threat. So what, Patrick, was Zelensky's response to all this nonsense?

Well, it was, you know, understandably, he was pretty irate about it. I mean, he's a bit of an upstart. I mean, he'd been around for a while, but he does actually represent a definite sort of strand of Middle European politics, if you can put it like that. He's very much in the same camp as the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. And, you know, actually, as historians, we see echoes of the past here, don't we? There's always been this...

you know, kind of nationalist, you know, rightist, contrarian sort of

influence, impulse, tradition in that part of the world, or band of that part of the world, I should say. He's very much part of that. So Zelensky pushed back in the way that you would expect him to. But I mean, we've got to remember that Zelensky and Ukraine have a lot more friends in the West, powerful friends, who is Vico, after all, what is Slovakia, after all, it's not a huge player and all this. And that there has been a bit of positive news, actually, that I saw that Zelensky

is a bit of a sort of parting gift from the Biden administration to Ukraine, which will also help the Trump negotiations. It will certainly provide quite a lot of leverage under thought in getting the Russians into a more receptive mood. And that is that these sanctions on the Russian oil industry, which came into play,

last Friday imposed by the Al-Draig administration to further tighten up sanctions on the Russian energy trade are biting pretty well straight away. So, Reuters is reporting that Chinese and Indian refiners have been huge customers, of course, for Russian oil, seeking alternative fuel supplies as they adapt to these new tough U.S. sanctions, which have particularly hit the tankers in this famous

Shadow Fleet, which also has seems to have come to a standstill almost instantaneously. Again, Reuters reporting 65 oil tankers ceased operations in various or rather paused operations in various places around the world following these American sanctions, which are backed up by us here in the UK, particularly aimed at the Shadow Fleet.

So, this shadow creep has been a huge help to the Putin administration by bringing income in, obviously. This is quite a positive thing, but we have to ask ourselves once again, don't we, Saul, why they didn't do this before? Yeah, absolutely right, Patrick. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? And, you know, we're going to discuss, of course, not least because we've got some questions on this, on what Trump is likely to do next. But one of the things he's been talking about is,

tightening the economic sanctions if Russia doesn't come to some kind of reasonable arrangement. But it is interesting that Biden's done this before he's left office. Yes, he should have done it before, but let's deal with the situation as it stands. If it really is beginning to have an immediate effect, that is tremendously good news. I mean, just going back to FICO for a second, the language that Zelensky used was

was pretty robust, to say the least. I mean, he said, we offered our assistance to the people of Slovakia during their adaption to the absence of Russian gas transit, but FICO arrogantly refused. Many in Europe warned him that doing nothing and waiting was not an option. Now he's resorting to PR, lies, and loud accusations to shift the blame away from himself and onto someone else. And as you say, Patrick, this business of Russia getting its gas out is

its gas and its oil out is being affected in multiple different ways now. So overall, that has to be good news. Last point about Slovakia. I mean, it's interesting that Ludovic Odor, that's FICO's predecessor, was actually a great supporter of Ukraine. So we can't say that Slovakia, you know, in general is anti-Ukraine.

Odor, if we remember, gave Ukraine howitzers, was the first leader to send MiG-29 fighter jets, and took in thousands of Ukrainian refugees. Now, a story which I'm sure everyone will be fascinated by is the Onhe Saga of the North Korean troops who were sent to shore up the Russian defenses in the Kursk area. Well, the first two North Korean soldiers have now been captured there.

They're aged 19 and 25, and they have been sent off to Kiev for interrogation. Of course, this is a great PR opportunity for the Ukrainians, isn't it, which they've seized with both hands. So the reports coming out, which have been assiduously leaked, are that they've been telling their captors that they thought that they were going to Russia for training, not to be fighting in the Ukrainian war. And the SBU, that's the Ukrainian Security Services,

said that one of them was carrying a Russian military ID card issued in the name of a man from the Republic of Tuva, which is way over in southern Siberia. We've mentioned this before, haven't we, Saul, that the idea was because Koreans look ethnically like people from the far east of Russia. So one big question, of course, is why haven't more of them been captured, given that they've clearly been pretty heavily engaged in

And that's a story in itself, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And we've got to hint as to the reason why so few have been captured in a briefing on Monday by Cho Tae-yong, who's the head of South Korea's National Intelligence Agency. And they apparently have been involved in the debriefing of these captured North Koreans, as listeners probably won't be surprised to hear. Well, Cho said that 300 North Koreans were

have been killed and 2,700 wounded already in the conflict in Russia's Kursk region. Now, if we go back to the original number, that was 12,000. That means a quarter of them are already casualties.

Cho told MPs, that is South Korean MPs, in a briefing that massive casualties have occurred because North Korean soldiers lack understanding of modern warfare and expose themselves to deadly danger by attempting to shoot down Ukrainian drones. One North Korean soldier facing capture reportedly tried to blow himself up by setting off a hand grenade, crying out,

General Kim Jong-un before being shot and killed. And the implication in all of this is that they've been ordered to commit suicide rather than surrender and that the Russians who were in overall command of them have been told to do the same thing, make sure none of them get captured. And it has echoes for me, I have to say, Patrick, very much with the situation with the Japanese in World War II, where they were absolutely determined not to surrender to the Allies and to fight to the death instead. Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of extraordinary stories coming out

from the battlefields where the North Koreans are engaged.

and it seems that they're being used as cannon fodder by the Russians. Willing cannon fodder, it has to be said, because they appear to have been sort of brainwashed. There's no other way of putting it. So apparently on one dead Korean soldier, they found a notebook, and in that notebook there was a drawing, a sort of cartoon showing a sort of stick man breaking cover to attract the attention of a drone while he

His two comrades would lie in wait to shoot it down. This is reported in the Wall Street Journal. Accompanying this cartoon was a caption saying, when the bait stands still, the drone will stop and it will be shot down. Well, this also carried further details of how this operation was meant to be carried out. So the human bait is meant to stand within seven meters of the Ukrainian drone. That sounds very precise, doesn't it? Which will then be neutralized with precision technology.

shooting. This was found just before Christmas. It's been authenticated by experts and apparently the dead Korean died in a firefight alongside his two compatriots. Ukraine's special forces have reported. So there's been a lot of this stuff. I've heard other

stuff talking to people in Ukraine about how they've been sort of sent forward apparently in the expectation that they won't come back alive. And one of the reasons that the number of captives is so low, Saul, is that apparently the feeling is that if you are captured, then it means that you'll be signaling that you haven't fought hard enough and that will have consequences for your family back in North Korea, which is very much

An echo of the Second World War again, isn't it? With the Russian soldiers captured, Red Army soldiers captured by the Germans. That was just the beginning of their troubles. First of all, they would have deploring conditions in captivity. Then when they returned home, a lot of them were regarded as traitors because they'd been exposed to the other side, if you like, and therefore were politically unreliable. So, you know, again, a sort of totalitarian trope we're seeing here.

Yeah, one of the few saving graces of the modern Russian army is that it doesn't seem to treat its recovered POWs with this kind of pariah status. Having said that, there's not a lot of duty of care for Russian soldiers when they're fighting in the front lines in any case. So, you know, it's small consolation, I suspect.

The diary, I have to say, Patrick, is all the more tragic for the personal details it contains. It notes how the author was homesick for his parents and how he'd celebrated his best friend's birthday. And the diary also hinted at, listeners won't be surprised to hear, the devotion to or maybe fear of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un that was actually motivating the conscripts not to surrender. Even at the cost of my life, wrote the author, I will carry out the Supreme Commander's orders without hesitation.

Yeah, I know it is sad. We've always got to remember that these guys dying on the other side are humans beings as well. We're feeding some of the families and all the rest of it. And the whole thing is a massive tragedy. Well, on the battlefield, it's the same story, really. Russian forces continuing to make gains in Donetsk. They recently cut two important highways east and west of Popkrovsk.

which may, again, complicate Ukrainian efforts to resupply and redeploy troops to defend the town. But they're obviously dug in there. They're intending to make a stand there at this point anyway. On the other side, there's huge Ukrainian strikes go on, apparently involving a dozen or so American and British missiles, as well as 150 drones aimed at chemical plants, energy facilities, etc.

and other sites in the Russian military industrial complex in cities across central and southwest Russia. And according to the Ukrainian general staff, this was the biggest since the start of the full-scale invasion of 2022.

and targets up to 700 miles inside Russia had been struck, including a grass storage tank near Kazan, that's 600 miles to the border, and chemical plants in Bryansk, oil refinery in Saratov, and ammunition storage

storage facility at the Engels Air Base, which is constantly coming under attack, it's seen. Yeah, and these strikes actually followed quickly in the wake of other targeted attacks on three Russian command posts in Donetsk, Oblask. That was a few days ago. And it's interesting that these strikes are taking place now, Patrick, because we've been asked questions by listeners, you know, in other words, what's happening with the use of munitions, particularly storm shadow? Well, it seems like they're emptying their arsenal prior to

Trump becoming president. Why? Because they want to signal clearly to Trump that Ukraine still has agency, it's still able to fight this war, it's still able to degrade Russia's ability to keep in the fight. And it's an ally effectively worth backing. Yeah, well, that's one way of interpreting it. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment when we'll be answering listeners' questions.

Okay, welcome back. Alex, who says he's a Kiwi, who is until recently based in Berlin, asks us if we've seen this piece by Robert Kagan and what we make of it. I couldn't open it, Saul. You did open it. You did read it. What did you make of it? Yeah.

Yeah, it's a piece in the Atlantic. I would say, you know, best way to characterize it is this was a cleverly argued piece to frighten Trump into ensuring that he backs Ukraine to the hilt. I mean, in a nutshell, his argument is that already Trump and his team have made concessions to Putin already.

who meanwhile has absolutely no intention of accepting anything less than his maximalist aims, which is really total domination of Ukraine, no adequate security guarantees, denazification, which means the removal of its government, and the insurance in the long term that Ukraine is really a client state of Russia. So,

You could say we've got a bit of an issue if that really is the case. And certainly, that's the mood music coming out of Moscow in recent days. It's true. And even in the last couple of days, I think the last 24 hours, Patrick, Petrushev, who's a former boss, I think, of the FFSB and head of the National Security Council, he's no longer in that position. But Petrushev is an influential character saying exactly that. So, Hagan's got a point. And what his point is, is that if Trump isn't careful,

He will allow Putin, who has no intention of striking an honorable deal, to just delay negotiations. Meanwhile, he tries to win the war. Now, where I have an issue with the article, Kagan's argument, and I think it's well-intentioned, is that he basically makes the point that if Trump doesn't do much and it sort of lets the Ukrainians get on with things, they're going to lose the war in six to 12 months. I'd

not convinced about that in the slightest, because it takes away any agency from the rest of Europe to back Ukrainians. And it also makes out that Ukrainians are on the verge of collapsing, which they absolutely are not. On the other hand, Putin has real issues economically with manpower, weakening position in the world. So I don't think things are as bad as Kagan's arguing, but I understand why he's making this argument. He's trying to

frightened, basically, Trump's team into realizing this is really a serious issue for America, and it better be careful. Otherwise, before it knows it, Ukraine will have lost the war, and America will have been humiliated. Yeah, no, it's good that the warning note is being sounded in an influential quarter, but there'll be lots of people telling lots of different things to Donald Trump on this. So it'll be better, I think, if he settles on, which will decide the issue.

So he is hoping he's the right person at the right time and finally gets him to focus on what practically he's going to do. It's been astonishingly vague, hasn't it, really, when you consider what a key issue this is, how little you still know about timetables, about sequencing, all these sort of things that you'd expect being placed out if he was ever serious about this 24-hour business. Of course, it never would have happened, but at least it would have.

It really did signal urgency, which we're not actually seeing at the moment, I would say. No, just one extra thing to add to that, actually, another little snippet I got from the Kagan piece is that Kagan suggests, in other words, he's heard on the grapevine somewhere, and he is pretty well connected in American security circles, that one of the points that Trump made to Putin when they spoke after Trump won the election, I mean, this is a conversation, by the way, that's been denied by the Russians, but

But it is interesting the point Kagan makes, which is that Trump said, listen, you are going to have to negotiate. And if you don't, there is a threat that we will put American troops on the ground in Ukraine, not just as peacekeepers, but actually fighting a war. So whether he made that threat or not, I don't know. But clearly, it's a possibility, not just for American troops, but also for NATO troops more generally to get involved in some way.

Okay, Mike Ward here from Fayette, Alabama asks, since Putin has no problem targeting hospitals,

daycares and schools in Ukraine and the tentacle of Ukrainian citizens. And should Ukraine in return target Russian citizens? He goes on, how about the targeting of Moscow and St. Petersburg? Putin has to be terrified of popular unrest. And while he controls the media and the message, I find it difficult to believe the Russian people don't have any access to alternative information, giving a different picture of the war situation. So he's basically asking, you know, is it time to actually

try and change Russian apathy towards the war or difference or whatever it is. Quite hard to actually characterize, isn't it? By actually bringing the war home to them by bombarding major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Well, I say no to that for two good reasons. One is morally wrong.

And two, it doesn't work. We know this, don't we, Saul, from history that trying to bombard civilian populations into submission so they turn on their political leaders and demand an end to the war at any cost simply doesn't work. It didn't work in the British Blitz.

In the winter of 1940, 1941, it didn't work with the strategic bombing campaign, which went on for virtually from the beginning of the war to the end by the first British RAF and then joined by the American USAAF.

It hasn't worked in the case of Ukraine, has it? Well, that's clearly been one of the objectives, strategic objectives of the Russian plan. So there's absolutely no reason to believe it would happen if Ukraine now turned its attentions to the civilian population of Russia. They don't have the wherewithal to do it anyway, but even if they did, I think they would...

have already made the judgment that this is a bad idea, simply because its role is bad for their international reputation and it won't work. Yeah, well said. And Ukraine has very effectively retained the high ground in this whole conflict. And it would certainly lose a little bit of that if it was to indulge in that sort of tactic. It doesn't work and therefore they're not going to do it.

But no, for the reasons you put, Patrick, absolutely right. Okay, moving on to Julia in Iowa City, Iowa in the United States. How do you think Putin's compromise on Trump will affect US support of Ukraine and peace negotiations? Well, the trouble is, we don't know if he really does have compromise on Trump. I mean, this has been suggested for a long time. It's one of the reasons that Putin has

has had this relatively close relationship with Trump. Allegedly, the compromise was gathered on one of Trump's visits to Moscow in which, you know, needless to say, prostitutes were involved. It all sounds a bit unlikely to me. That's not to say that the Russians wouldn't try and get their hands on compromise. They've got a long history of doing that. But do they actually have anything that would really be worse than some of the accusations that

that have already made against President Trump. I doubt it very much. What's your feeling? I agree with you, Saul. I think that Trump's pretty competent on this point, isn't it? And I think if there was any real dirt on him, we would have seen a little bit of it by now. A little bit of evidence would have come

To the surface, but that isn't the case. I think it ain't true. And I don't think it's going to affect any peace negotiations. Okay. Karl writes, I always thought the main reason for the Ukrainian Kursk operation was the Prigozhin, that of course is the former boss of Wagner, of course, showed that once you pass the border defences, Moscow is just lightly defended. It's just a day's drive away from Kursk. That should freak out the Russian leaders, writes Karl, even if it would be a suicide mission of the Ukrainians.

In Russia, nobody is for or against Putin, writes Carlin. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but the Russians just tolerate him as long as he doesn't bring too much chaos. Troops at the gates of Moscow would be considered as such. I mean, it's an interesting thought, isn't it? I think that the Kursk operation, Carl's right to say, was launched partly because it was clear that the border defences were pretty ineffective. But it's one thing getting into Kursk, it's another getting all the way with an armoured spearhead to Moscow when...

you know, you really would be stirring up a hornet's nest. And of course, those defenses have now been shored up. Whether they should have given it a go during the initial Kursk operation is another matter. Who knows? It would have been a one-way trip, I suspect. And their actual strategy, which is to hold on to a bit of Kursk, albeit they've lost a bit of it, as we've mentioned many times, you know, has been reasonably effective. Yeah, I think we're talking about two different things, I mean, Prigozhin could present himself

as a loyal Russian who was clearing out the Orgy and stables of Moscow, getting rid of the corruption, overthrowing the bad guys who were around Putin. And so therefore, he's a patriot, isn't he? But I think if you've got an enemy force from a foreign country advancing on the capital, I think Putin would then be able to play this as another great patriotic war, invoke the memory of the Second World War,

And I think that message would actually get through to quite a lot of people. So I think it's a very different scenario. Got one here from John. Hi, Patrick and Saul. One much discussed aspect of the war is, of course, the development and use of drones. Unmanned ground vehicles presenting a greater challenge dealing with traversing the landscape, i.e. it's easy to fly out through the air, but not so easy to actually get a drone that goes across land.

terror firmer. So John's point is that given the manpower shortages in the Ukrainian military, isn't it time that we draw more attention to developing unmanned static defenses, not just mines? By that he means things like remotely operated machine guns. He said, I understand it would need

regular maintenance, rearming, but it would still seem a way to lessen the exposure to danger of the guys in the trenches. Well, that's an interesting point, isn't it? And we heard a bit about it last week when we were...

talking to Ashgord Krushelnitsky because he just visited a brigade which specialised in this high-tech warfare and it included land-based robots which actually did carry machine guns and did actually do the job of infantry, like robotic infantry. So that's something that we're going to be looking at when we get to Ukraine. We're doing our best to bring you more on battlefield developments of all sorts.

But in general, this seems to be the direction of travel, doesn't it, in terms of battlefield innovation? Okay, moving on, we've got a fascinating question from Colonel Retired Ronnie Bradford. He lives in Vienna, Austria. Thank you for your magnificent podcast, which I listen avidly every week. Last week, Alan Phelps mentioned that parts of Eastern Russia, including Vladivostok, were Chinese until taken by Russia in the middle of the 19th century. And that

Putin must dread the thought that China might want to regain this territory. Perhaps Putin, the tactician, is being outmaneuvered by Xi, a strategist. Ronnie goes on to say it is obvious that Xi wants to surpass Mao in the annals of Chinese history to eclipse the man who persecuted his father. I didn't know that actually, Patrick. Were you aware of that? No. That he was possibly a victim of the Cultural Revolution. I didn't know that.

Ronnie gives a bit of detail on that. Persecuted his father and found him, forced him to live in a cave. Incorporating Taiwan into the People's Republic would be something that Mao did not manage and has long been a declared goal of China. But what if reversing the Amur annexation, which is this

thing in the middle of the 19th century when they got their hands on chunks of what had been Chinese territory. The greatest territorial loss by China during its century of humiliation, writes Ronnie, would be a far, far greater achievement. In other words, if Xi actually concentrates

on overturning that and got his hands on this territory. Having previously thought that Taiwan's days of independence were numbered by Xi's reign, I now suspect that Xi may be tempted by the greater prize to the north. If he sent unmarked forces to provide security for Chinese territories,

businesses and people there or a Peter Russia's actions in Crimea and elsewhere what would the West do as the Ukraine war drags on and Russia becomes increasingly dependent on China do you think this becomes more likely well I hadn't been considering it but it is an absolutely fascinating prospect isn't it Patrick and would be right out of the Russian playbook yeah well I sort of been

pondering this one for a while. So I think Ronnie is absolutely right. This is one of the great overlooked aspects to this story. So thank you for sharing

pointing it out. We've got to remember there's no love lost between Russia and China historically. There are many territorial disputes which have massive geopolitical significance. So there's a lot of conflict of interest at stake here. And this was evident actually right from the start. So I just came across a fascinating article in an obscure magazine, which has now gone out of my head, but it's pretty authoritative. And apparently immediately after the full-scale invasion back in

February 2022, there were various online posts which vented ordinary Chinese people's fury at what the Russians were doing and reviving these memories of the sort of ancient territorial disputes between Russia and China. One poster said, according to history, Russia should return us Vladivostok and vast territory stolen a hundred and something years ago. So basically, what's sourced for the goose should be sourced for the gander. And

This is, of course, a reference to this territory of the dispute that Monty was talking about earlier. So Alan was talking about the fact that it's already there. The groundwork is already being done in a sort of psychological way, really, by these Chinese maps that he was talking about, which showed that Vladivostok is Chinese territory. And in fact, the Chinese name of Vladivostok is given on these current Chinese maps. So that's just a little reference.

taster of what's actually going on under the surface there. Now, I think it's a great prize. It'd be much easier to actually capture the vast Russian territories in the far east of Russia than it would be to cross the sea to get to Taiwan. And there's a lot at stake here, as I said. Only about 8 million people living in the Russian far east. And they are sitting on top of very abundant natural resources that

The usual ones, oil and coal, but also gold and fish, which is very important. Now, in the three Chinese provinces bordering this area,

There are 90 million Chinese, and the situation has been dubbed as a geopolitical time bomb. So this is his great prize, right on China's doorstep, which is extremely vulnerable, I would have thought, given the expenditure of lives and ammunition and kit and the rest of it, Russia has sustained in China.

Ukraine. Now, this is all part of a much bigger thing, which is even though the Chinese have ostensibly been supporting Moscow since its invasion and indeed have, it's a tactical consideration. It's not genuine brotherhood in the sort that they've been declaring with a no-limits friendship, agreed between Xi and Putin a little while back. And so I think if you're being practical and

You must be thinking, as Ronnie is, that Beijing is almost certain to seek to exploit the diminished, distracted condition of Moscow in the near future to advance its claims over the Russian Far East. And generally, there's a big prize at play here. I think that's going to drown out any notions of this sort of new axis that Beijing and Moscow have.

And Pyongyang have been talking about. Okay, we've had a couple of questions about Trump's rather irresponsible rhetoric concerning various countries that he argues America should get its hands on, which include, of course, Canada being the 51st state.

Greenland and the Panama Canal. And Gary Romans, in particular, who points out that he's married to Mila from Kharkiv in Ukraine and son-in-law to Zoya, who was rescued from Ukraine at the start of the full-scale invasion. Well, I mean, his question or his point is there's long been an idea coming from Putin that the strong so-called superpowers are entitled to conquer, dominate and absorb lesser countries. It's just the way the world has always been in a natural order of sorts. But

Gary's asking the question, well, is Trump playing into that with his rhetoric on Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal? Given that he has a tendency, says Gary, to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, it occurs to me that his latest rhetoric may be a way to gauge

All conditioned public reaction to the idea that Ukraine should really be considered on a similar basis, i.e. the 500th oblast of Russia, etc. After all, I seem to recall Trump stating at the start of the war that he always thought of Ukraine as being part of Russia. What are your thoughts on this?

I mean, it's an interesting question. I personally think Trump's got to the point where he does consider an independent Ukraine as actually quite important to Europe's stability, the stability of the democratic world. I may be overly optimistic and all of that.

and that he's not looking to add it to Russia anytime soon. Hence some of, you know, what are possibly some of the robust comments he made to Putin when they spoke after he won his second presidential election. But I can't say that for sure. I mean, Patrick, what's your feeling about why he's been making these, you know, these pretty bizarre comments about some of the neighboring states to the US? Yeah, I think that's probably in response to something that someone has told him,

And it probably plays to his instincts, his natural instincts. I think Trump is a politician of instinct. He's not somebody who has structured plans. And he'll have all sorts of people around him whispering in his ear. And I think that idea, which has been around quite a long time about Greenland, you know, why is Greenland owned by Denmark, Germany?

It's actually closer to us than it is to Denmark, which is actually geographically true. So this will be something that gets his attention. I don't see it as being part of a broader kind of strategic landscape where he thinks, okay, we're now in a new age where might is right. The conquest is the natural condition of great powers. That's what they do.

I think there's a bit of that going on there, but I wouldn't actually link the two. I don't see them as being linked to Ukraine. What you do see is Trump's enormous catalytic power, if you can put it like that, the way that he's able to toss these kind of hand grenades into the debate. Who knew about Greenland a couple of months ago? No one's talking about it. And it does – we're in an age now where –

nothing is off limits, is it really, in terms of because of the internet or the rest of it, everything is up for discussion. And this is something that has provoked a lot of very interesting debate. And it's not nearly as clear cut as you would think. It turns out that the actual inhabitants of Ukraine are by no means completely opposed to the idea. Donald Trump Jr. has been there stirring up, not trouble exactly, but he's certainly bringing the thing to the boil. So,

Yeah, I mean, all she does is try and keep track of all the twists and turns of the story. But, you know, this Trump presidency, we're going to be in for very, very interesting and, I'm afraid, dangerous times.

Okay, well, that's it for us from home base. We're going to be in Ukraine very shortly. So do listen out. We're going to have lots of specials, lots of on the ground stuff, lots of fascinating reportage and interviews. So stay tuned.