Transcript of yesterday’s News X interview

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruS1HzJIaWI

NewsX: 11:27
Now we have guest Gilbert Doctorow. He’s a Russian affairs expert joining us live from Brussels. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to NewsX World. How do Russia’s latest drone attacks on civilian areas, including a maternity ward, affect the perception of Moscow’s military strategy, both domestically and globally, according to you?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 11:53
[Strikes] by Russian missiles and drones on facilities in Odessa are an inadequate … response to the attacks on the 1st of June by Ukrainians on the air bases carrying strategic bombers last weekend. It amazes me that this has been muddled in Russian communications, which speak about a revenge or retaliatory strike for those air bases in what was an attack on the Dubnov tactical aircraft base in Ukraine. The point is that the Russians suffered a great humiliation when their major strategic bombers were damaged in the Ukrainian strike, an attack with great implications for Russia’s nuclear triad.

These attacks, counterattacks by Russia on, say, this Dubna air base and the attacks on Odessa that you have described extensively are in no way a proper response to what Russia has undergone. And I am questioning whether or not Mr. Putin’s staff appreciate what has to be done. You cannot provide for Russian state security by enhancing surveillance across the country or putting military with machine guns on every state building. That does not work. Russia is vast. The attacks that the Ukrainians have staged, both by their bombing of bridges in Bryansk and in Kursk are complemented by actions that they have taken elsewhere, which are much simpler and easier to affect, namely damage to rail lines with the objective of derailing Russian trains and causing havoc or terror among the Russian train travelers.

14:17
The only solution to that is Moscow’s dealings with Kiev, not Moscow’s dealings with Odessa. So I want to stress that the Russian response has been inappropriate to the strategic defeat that they suffered when the Ukrainians made their long-range attacks on air bases near Kutsk and Murmansk and whatever one week ago.

NewsX: 14:45
And according to you, how should we interpret the renewed but limited negotiations between Moscow and Kiev? Do they represent genuine progress or are they simply optics?

Doctorow:
They are simply optics. Well, having said that, they achieved something very important on humanitarian grounds. The families of those returning young soldiers and wounded, injured soldiers that began, an exchange that began yesterday, they are all comforted by seeing their sons, their brothers, their fathers, their husbands in their midst once again after months or longer in captivity as prisoners of war. That is all to the good. At the same time, those who have lost, and particularly on the Ukrainian side, those who have lost contact with their relatives who were fighting on the front and whose bodies are now being held in refrigerated trucks near Belarus, they are disappointed. They must be disappointed by their president, by, Mr. Zelensky’s refusal to let that aspect of the agreements reached one week ago in Istanbul to be effected. They are speaking now of 6,000 dead Ukrainians whose bodies are, shall we say, in limbo. They are neither here nor there. Ukrainians are refusing to accept them because they’ll have to make a very large payout to the widows. Well, so be it.

16:21
Nonetheless, to answer your major question, the technical agreements which are being implemented now in the prisoner exchanges in no way have a bearing on the resolution of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. They are not leading us any nearer to a ceasefire or to a final settlement of the war. That is sad, but it has to be admitted frankly.

NewsX: 16:56
And now zooming out to the bigger picture, what role, if any, can the US or European allies play in pushing both sides towards a sustainable ceasefire, especially amid Trump’s recent comments calling for a resolution?

Doctorow:
I’m sad to say: nothing. There is nothing that the Europeans or the Americans can do to resolve this crisis in relations between Kiev and Moscow. Both sides have laid out in their memoranda their objectives in peace talks and in ceasefire talks. And these are mutually exclusive objectives. Each side is demanding that the other side in effect capitulate.

That is unreasonable, completely unreasonable for the Ukrainians, because they are the losing side of this war, suffering massively greater casualties and deaths than the Russians are and losing territory day by day. On the Russian side, the capitulation that they’re demanding of the Ukrainians is not justified by their achievements on the battlefield so far or in their dealings with the Ukrainian regime. It is only by a decapitation of that regime that the Russians can obtain their objectives. And it appears to me that Mr. Putin and his colleagues are not yet ready for that drastic step.

NewsX: 18:28
And that brings us to another critical question here. Given Russia’s advances along the Eastern front, are we looking at a new phase in the war, one where Ukraine’s territorial losses could escalate without increased Western ally support?

Doctorow:
The chances of increased allied support are close to nil. Western Europe has cleaned out its armories. It does not have war materiel of great substance to give to the Ukrainians, and it certainly is not prepared to give any manpower assistance.

So the United States is slowly, quietly exiting the scene. And so the notion that the United States could step in and prop up Ukraine is not realistic. The Ukrainians, on this other hand, have more resources and greater commitment to continuing the fight than many of my peers in alternative media tend to believe. Ukraine has not been defeated. Those who are predicting the collapse of Ukraine in a week or two are talking without justification.

19:40
Ukraine continues to have very strong drone warfare going on. When you listen to Russian television, as I do day by day, and you hear reports from the field as their war reporters interview soldiers manning artillery stations or tanks, and they are telling you that after they fire on Ukrainian positions, they have to move immediately to avoid the counterattack, the responding fire from the Ukrainian side — you understand that the Ukrainians are not fleeing the field. The Ukrainians are largely standing firm and fighting to the death. So this is a war that is diffuse, and it is not at its point of conclusion yet.

NewsX: 20:20
And going back to the recent strikes, what did these strikes reveal about Russia’s tactical shift, especially after Ukraine’s recent attacks on strategic sites within Russia, the Spiderweb attack operation? Some of my peers have been saying that the Russian position in the war has changed, that this war is not an artillery war in the traditional sense, it is becoming a war on terror. As far as the Russians are concerned, they have identified the Kievan regime as supporting state terror. The logical conclusions from that should be an attack on the decision-making centers in Kiev, but we see nothing of the sort. Instead, we see more intense attacks on individual cities, more drones, more missiles.

21:20
That will solve nothing. It will not change the nature of the war in a way that the Russian rhetoric suggests. The terror attacks cannot be defeated by greater surveillance, by more police on the streets guarding government buildings and high personalities in Moscow or elsewhere. It can only be resolved when there is what Russia said it wanted in February 22nd, 2022, regime change in Kiev.

NewsX: 21:53
Thank you very much, Gilbert Doctorow, for bringing your expertise as a Russian affairs expert to our conversation today.

Thank you very much. Now we move on to our next story. Israeli authorities say activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat …