Transcript of News X ‘Big Debate’ on Ukraine cease fire

Transcript submitted by a reader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu8Yy9Vh5Y4

Rishab Gulati, NewsX: 0:04
Let’s refocus, because we are in times that seem to be showing us a ray of hope after a conflict in Ukraine that has gone on for months that have turned into years. Is there a possibility of an equitable ceasefire agreement that leads to a lasting peace? It’s a loaded question, because not only emotions, passions and life and death have been at stake; but grand geopolitics in what is already a new cold war have to play themselves out as well.

Joining us on the broadcast to discuss this further is Ambassador Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary of India. Ambassador Pradeep Kapur, Gilbert Doctorow and Professor Madhav Nalapat will also be joining us shortly. Ambassador Sibal, let me begin with you. What is your assessment of what is taking place in the conversation in Saudi Arabia, sir?

Sibal: 1:02
Well, I think the United States is trying to put immediate pressure on Russia to positively respond to the so-called agreement with Zelensky or Ukraine to accept a 30-day ceasefire. Now, if you see the narrative is that the ball is in Putin’s court or Russia’s court. Now, Putin yesterday has in his press conference with Lukashenko spelt out what the concerns of Russia are. And if you have heard that, I think what he has said makes sense and it is very legitimate: that the ceasefire cannot just be declared unless it is embedded in a proper discussion on what happens on the ground and what precautions and measures are going to be taken to ensure a proper implementation of the ceasefire.

2:17
Now as you know the ceasefire proposal has come at a moment when Zelensky has lost virtually his trump card in Kursk. He was all this time saying that this will give him a card to play in negotiations, in terms of exchanging territory with Russia, where Russia gives him whatever he seeks in the regions which have been annexed by Russia, and in return for a withdrawal from Kursk. But that card has been lost, and there is now a danger that Russia may actually go beyond Kursk and actually create, try to create a buffer zone in the future. So, there is need for an immediate ceasefire so far as Zelensky is concerned.

3:11
But there are other issues which are very, very important from the Russian point of view, purely logically. The Europeans have made it very clear that they are going to support Ukraine to the hilt. They will give him all the arms and aid that he needs. They have joined together in various ways. They have held a meeting of the 34 chiefs of staff of NATO to do brainstorming on how to support Ukraine. The European Union has talked about 850 billion dollars to be spent over the next few years by the European Union to rearm themselves.

3:57
And I heard the British Prime Minister say yesterday on television, which seemed a little odd, that Russia is threatening UK in land, water and air and in the streets of the UK. Now this narrative is being spread that if Ukraine is, if Russia wins in Ukraine then the future security of the European Union is [uncertain].

Now, European Union and the United States are working at cross purposes. And Russia cannot ignore what is happening on the ground in terms of what the Europeans are doing. So, they have to have a lot of clarity in terms of a future peace process. And that is where the matters are. I think it is going to be a very difficult process as the gap in the position of the two sides is very wide. And–

NewsX:
OK, so Ambassador Sibal, so the Trump administration wants the ceasefire to happen. They are not mincing words upon it; they are saying there has to be a ceasefire. Russia says we are cautiously optimistic but we do not want the Ukrainians simply to use the ceasefire to rearm. The Europeans … how much of it is rhetoric, gamesmanship, or do you actually think that Europe is going to take a different position to the Americans fundamentally?

Sibal: 5:19
For the time being, yes. Now, what the credibility of this [is], is a matter of judgment. There are people who say that at the end of the day, Europe has been used to US security cover and its defenses have been relatively neglected. And to rebuild them in any relevant time frame to the Ukraine conflict is not on the cards. You can’t set up a huge defense industry overnight. It’ll take years. And on top of that, who will then lead Europe in terms of defense?

Will it be Von der Leyen in Brussels? Will it be France? Because President Macron has been extremely active in this regard. So there are a lot of divisions within Europe. Do they have a joint armed forces? Do they have a joint command? Who will then actually man the various commands? So these are– the point is that the Europeans are putting a lot of pressure on United States and putting a spanner in the works as much as they can, so that the entente between USA and Russia under Trump can be delayed.

6:31
The Europeans from a certain point of view are not wrong that look it’s a question of peace in Europe, and you cannot then decide on peace in Europe without involving the Europeans. But what the Americans are saying is, “Well for three years you were involved in this, and what has come of it? You’ve not been able to solve it, so why [do you] at this stage want to come into the process?”

NewsX:
After all that has been–

Sibal:
One important last thing.

NewsX:
Yes.

Sibal
That the Europeans are determined to send their peacekeepers, French and the British have agreed to that, on the ground after a peace solution of sorts. Russia has categorically rejected that time and again. This is going to be a big, big issue in the future.

NewsX: 7:18
Can Volodymyr Zelensky sit [at] a table with Putin or his representative? Is that possible, sir, or does a ceasefire or eventual peace deal in a sense mean that there has to be a change of guard in Ukraine?

Sibal:
Two things. One: Zelensky passed a decree that there cannot be any negotiation with Russia so long as Putin is in charge. Putin in turn has said that Zelensky is illegitimate and the power now lies with the Ukrainian parliament. And therefore there should be a re-election, election in Ukraine to decide on who would be, which would be the legitimate government. Now, Ukraine despite all the peace talks has not undone this decree.

8:06
If Zelensky was to undo the decree, it would be a huge political setback for him domestically. So, he is not going to do that. So, there are a lot of weaknesses in the situation with regard to the legality of the peace process, because Putin has said that don’t be in a situation where I sign an agreement with the government which is not legitimate, and a subsequent government may actually take this as a reason for not honoring the agreement.

NewsX: 8:35
Okay.

Sibal:
So, there are lots of difficulties ahead of all sorts. So, I can’t see Zelensky sitting personally together with the Russians.

NewsX: 8:45
Okay. As you are well aware, sir, Vladimir Putin has specifically mentioned Prime Minister Modi in, while talking about a potential ceasefire. What role can India still play other than that of a well-wisher?

Sibal:
–in which he made this statement, He didn’t want to give credit only to Trump to try and broker some kind of peace in Ukraine. He said that other leaders of other countries have also spent a lot of their time in trying to address this issue. And he mentioned our Prime Minister, he mentioned Xi Jinping, he mentioned Lula and he mentioned South Africa.

9:28
But there is a nuance here, if you want to read it that way, that if and when the issue of peacekeepers has to be decided, Russia would be totally against the idea of European peacekeepers, but these countries, if they so choose, they can actually be part of peacekeepers or peace monitors or whatever. I don’t think we like that word “peacekeepers” because that means you can use violence. But peace monitors on the ground. It is said in that context rather than asking for these countries to mediate. I don’t think so that was his intention.

NewsX: 10:06
We have under UN mandate deployed peace monitors and peacekeepers before, sir. Should it be open for consideration by us if the offer was to come?

Sibal:
Yes. If there is a UN resolution, then we should accept our responsibility. And in fact both sides would be quite happy if countries like India were on the ground, because we maintained a neutral stance. We have a credibility with both sides. We have actually not been mediating, but we have been passing messages to and fro between President Putin and President Zelensky.

Our national security advisor actually went all the way to Moscow to brief President Putin on the conversations our prime minister had with the president Zelensky. So, that credibility is there. So, our position has always been that it has to be part of a UN sanctioned peace keeping move not in any other format.

NewsX: 11:06
Okay, Kanwal Sibal, thank you for joining us with your thoughts. Let me open this up to Professor Nalapat. Professor Nalapat, “cautiously optimistic”, what can actually be achieved? Are we to assume that if the Trump administration is pretty adamant on the ceasefire that per force it will somehow happen.

Nalapat:
Look, I am bit surprised Trump has gone 180 degrees from his earliest months on peace in Ukraine. And frankly both he and vice president Vance clearly recognized Zelensky has a personal interest in keeping the war going and Russia has got a very long history of broken agreements with the western world and Ukraine. Look at Minsk 1, September 14, 2014. The Russians signed it in good faith. Very soon the Ukrainians broke it.

12:04
Then you had Minsk 2 in 2015. Again the Russians signed in good faith, February 2015. But again it is broken. Then in 2022 Prime Minister Modi in press together with Vladimir Putin said it is a time for peace and Putin would have agreed. Nothing happened.

I mean that particular effort was sabotaged by Boris Johnson for his own political reasons. He wanted to survive and President Biden for whatever reason. I mean Biden has always had a soft corner for the Ukrainians. So the fact is that Trump has completely changed his original plan, which was essentially, you know, a pull out of weapons. Now he said I am going to flood Ukraine with weapons.

12:54
Now, that is not going to go down very well with President Putin. Now, you know, and supplies to Ukraine will continue. So, what happens? It is another Minsk 1 or 2 and another 2022 in which Ukraine gets a whole month to rearm and replenish its depleted soldiers and have a ceasefire when the Russians are winning on all fronts. There is nothing in this deal that will attract the Russians and I will be very surprised if Putin agrees to it.

My surprise frankly is that Trump has completely changed his original position on Ukraine peace as a candidate and then as a president and he has now adopted a line which is very favorable to Zelensky. And every single European leader who is for the war has been cheering this. So, I would like to say, I think this is quite a change in tone, a 180 degree change in position. I cannot see Russia agreeing to this kind of a quote unquote deal.

NewsX: 14:02
Okay, Shun. Gilbert Doctorow, what do you make of what is going on?

Doctorow:
When you repeated what is commonly said now, that the ball is in the Russian court, that’s dead wrong. The ball is in the American court. And there may yet be a deal over a ceasefire, but it has nothing to do with anything that mainstream is now discussing. It has to do with what you and me and everyone else doesn’t really know fully, because it’s going on behind closed doors. It is what Witkoff was doing yesterday in Moscow.

14:40
And what we’re talking about is, again, to go back to the start of this discussion when you mentioned the new Cold War. It’s about ending the new Cold War. That is what the Russians want. And everything else is details. The Russians’ position, which CNN tells us has been changed and has become an obstacle, is nonsense.

The Russian position today is exactly what President Putin declared very precisely when he addressed the Russian ambassadors in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June of 2024. It is we will stop fighting at once if the Ukrainians remove their troops from the four oblasts, regions, which have been integrated into the Russian Federation. It is that Ukraine be neutral. It is that Ukraine not allow any foreign military installations on its territory.

15:36
These are unchanged conditions. They are not making the situation worse today. They’re simply reiterating why Russia got into the war to start. And Russia will not leave the war if these issues are not addressed. I believe they are being addressed quietly behind closed doors as is normal diplomacy.

The fact that we do not know the details, well that’s the way life works. I am not bothered by it. I don’t think it is a hindrance, and I think it is premature to draw any conclusions on whether Donald Trump’s team knows what they are doing or not. I tend to believe that they know what they are doing.

NewsX: 16:13
OK. Ambassador Kapur, it has now been reiterated every time Donald Trump speaks about Ukraine that had he been president, there would have been no war. And the reasons the war happened and one can suspect, that Ukraine was driven to war perhaps against its own best interests with rhetoric and promises. many of which did not come to fruition, like joining NATO and joining the European Union. Is it your assessment that if the American administration wants it to happen regardless of what the Europeans think or Zelensky think it probably will happen?

Kapur:
Well, I think it’s become very complicated over the last few years with so many players, with so many different parameters, with so many different interests, so many vested interests involved and the change of administration here. As far as I can see currently, Donald Trump has a tremendous interest to make sure that the war comes to a close, beginning with the ceasefire, of course. And he put a lot of pressure initially on Zelensky because Zelensky was quite adamant in terms of, you know, security umbrella, in terms of the NATO membership, etc., etc., in terms of getting his territory back. So he had certain conditions, including not to negotiate with Putin, etc., which were quite absurd, to say the very least.

17:56
And Trump realized that, and he had to push Zelensky into a very difficult corner for him to understand that what he was talking was not tenable at all. And thereafter, I think there was a lot of pressure internally in Ukraine, through the parliament, through the polity, through the, you know, common man that what Zelensky was saying was absolutely unachievable. And they would need to change their stance completely, which they did.

Now, once Trump has achieved that, he wants Russia also to become a little bit more malleable in terms of, you know, threatening Russia, giving arms to Ukraine, giving them the intel to be able to attack the Russian forces. So, this is all a ploy to bring Russia in a sort of a slightly comfortable negotiating position onto the table.

18:49
Now Russian demands, as some of the other panelists have mentioned, have been very clear, not from 25, not from 2024, not from 2023, but from maybe 1945 onwards after the Second World War. After that they had also at some stages even tried to become members of NATO. Then they had asked the western world not to push NATO towards its borders. After the breakup of the USSR, the NATO has actively pushed, you know, NATO towards the Russian border incorporating more and more East European countries into NATO. So, they feel a geostrategic threat to their own security.

NewsX: 19:34
Okay. But, Ambassador Kapur, I have to ask you this. What is, why would a Donald Trump administration want peace in Ukraine? It seems to be serving an American purpose, you keep Russia busy, Russia seems to be friends with China, which is your current number one problem, You are keeping them tied down there, you know, you test out the American field artillery and equipment and the new warfare on somebody else’s people, Russians and Ukrainians die. Americans are not, do not have boots on the ground, they are not dying. So why, why other than peace being a reward unto itself, what would be the American interest in ending this?

Kapur: 20:10
Well, the American interest meaning currently the president being Donald Trump, his interests are that he prospers more under peace. His absolute paradigm is that if you have peace, there is more economic progress, there is development, there is real estate, you know, which becomes more profitable, a real estate sector, which he has been very, very good at in his past. So he is definitely not favoring the military-industrial complex here.

He is not favoring the deep state. The deep state, the military-industrial complex, which were profiting phenomenally from this war, were the ones who were pushing for the war to continue for longer. Whereas, the economies of Europe, the economy of Ukraine, the economy of Russia, of US have all been impacted very very badly. So, Donald Trump wants to make sure that the US economy does well. For the US economy to do well, the war has to stop.

NewsX: 21:09
Okay, now we will get Gilbert Doctorow back in. Gilbert Doctorow, is it possible? Is it, are we simply, you know, being drowned out in rhetoric, which is public positioning, which is part of the process, but actually everybody is sick of it and wants it to end?

Doctorow:
The question of where’s the substance? I would like to explain my view that the substance is a new world order. Mr. Trump has been criticized for being isolationist, for wanting to take the United States out of NATO, for being inward-looking. I think this is dead wrong. Mr. Trump is an internationalist, but he has a different vision of what that constitutes from what has been operating in the United States for the last 30, 40 years or more.

22:13
His view is to establish a Yalta 2. That is to say a world that is governed jointly by major powers and not by alliances. The major powers in this world are four, and India is one of them. I believe that Donald Trump wants to have a personal accommodation with Mr. Putin, with Mr. Xi, and with Mr. Modi, and that these four countries will be looking after global peace and will mediate their own differences or differing interests in parts of the world peacefully at a single table. I think this first Yalta 2 meeting may take place on May 9th in Moscow, when both Xi and Modi are there. And I think that Trump will do everything possible to catch up with the other three.

NewsX; 23:17
All right. Professor Nalapat, Is it possible because the complexity of global issues [is] very large, can we disaggregate them? Because if we assume that the Americans under Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan with great rapidity, left everything there, immediately after a war started in Ukraine.

Subsequently a war started happening in Gaza, where we are told funding came from Iran. Iran is not full of money so they get funding from China. It’s a very complex global affair. Are we assuming that whatever points had to be scored in Ukraine and whatever intents and purposes this war was serving to whoever has now concluded and actually all sides want peace?

Nalapat: 24:03
I would say that’s really not the side, not what exactly the Europeans are talking about. They’re talking about Ukraine continuing the war until there is a surrender by Russia. And frankly, I mean, ever since, you know, ever since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and other countries have been trying to see if Russian Federation will collapse. And unfortunately for them, and I think fortunately for Russia, it hasn’t happened yet. I am not very optimistic about China being part of that architecture. India, Russia, US, definitely. As for Europe, Europe had better get on board.

24:51
The fact of the matter is, but the point is that this particular peace deal is an unconditional deal from, I mean, I’m only going by television reports. I don’t know what the behind-the-scenes conversations are or were, But the reality is what Trump is asking is an immediate ceasefire of 30 days, and after that everything is again up in the air. That’s exactly what Zelensky wants. He’s gasping for air. He’s losing practically the whole of Kursk. His forces are retreating across all fronts.

25:25
Given that situation, I am rather, I do not believe that President Putin is going to agree to this kind of a peace in a hurry. And my surprise is frankly that Donald Trump is even suggesting it, because that is not his earlier position vis-a-vis Russia. He is quite correct that Russia has to be a friend of the US and the reason for that is China. Just as Nixon said China has to be a friend and the reason for that was Soviet Union.

So the reason for Russia and America becoming friends because it’s a nightmare for the Chinese, complete nightmare. India and Russia are already good friends and the Prime Minister Modi. So, this nightmare, it’s a nightmare scenario for [the] Chinese. And frankly, given the security choices of President Trump, I am not at all sure that he would like to see China at the table. Rather, I think you know he would like to isolate China and thereby win the new Cold War. It is not between Russia and the US, but between the US and China.

NewsX: 26:38
All right, it is reasonable to still assess three years later that this war should not have started. In many reasons, it has started under false pretext on promises made by those who have not delivered. Russians have died and Ukrainians have died in the tens of thousands. And what exactly we have to show for it three years later is absolutely nothing other than a continuing stalemate. There are global considerations which are far larger than all of us at play over here. But does everybody want peace in Ukraine at this moment? Difficult one to answer.

We are probably closer than we have been to a ceasefire or a peace deal than in the last 6 or 8 months, but who knows whether the next few weeks can deliver one. My thanks to my guests for having this conversation.

27:30
We take a break. See you in a minute.