Transcript of NewsX interview, 24 June

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6CBHDNv2ao

NewsX: 0:00
Our other story: ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague, Russian drone attacks have killed over three in an attack in Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy. As per reports, there was a child among the three killed. There are also reports of at least three people wounded in the attack too. The fresh attacks in Sumi come a day after Ukraine said Russia carried out dozens of drone and missile strikes on its territory, killing 10 people in the capital, Kiev. Meanwhile, Russia has said that a drone had targeted a residential building in Moscow overnight, wounding two people, a pregnant woman included.

As the war between Russia and Ukraine continues to escalate, the diplomatic efforts to end the three-year war have stalled, with the last direct meeting between Kiev and Moscow almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks scheduled. The reports of the fresh attacks come amid Zelensky’s participation in the two-day NATO summit in The Hague which is scheduled to start later today.

1:18
Now we have Dr. Gilbert Doctorow joining us live for this news. He’s a Russian affairs expert joining us live from Brussels. Thank you, Dr. Doctorow for joining us today. And what do you suggest is coming next for these ongoing strikes between Ukraine and Russia, and also no talks or no scheduled talks ahead?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:50
In international affairs, everything is connected or interconnected. And what is happening now in the Ukraine-Russia War is impacted by what has been happening in the Middle East. We know that Russia has profited by the distraction for the United States of this higher-priority conflict in the Middle East, and it has withdrawn a large part of its anti-aircraft systems, and it has stopped the flow of military materiel to Kiev. That is what people talk about. What they don’t talk about is the new aggressiveness in the Russian attacks on Ukraine. The attacks in the past week on Kiev in particular were far more devastating and caused many more casualties than any prior Russian attacks.

So it is with Sumy. Sumy is a border town. It is the city very close to the Russian border from which Ukrainians staged their invasion of Kursk province, which is just across the border. The Russians have made it publicly known that they are creating a buffer zone, at least 15 kilometers in width, taking over or neutralizing Ukrainian territory that was being used as staging grounds for attack on Russian civilian settlements on the Russian side. The attack on Sumy that you have described is part of that operation.

3:36
And yes, the Russians make great emphasis on their concentrating firepower against military targets. Nonetheless, as we know, there always is civilian suffering, because how precise you can strike, particularly with artillery, does not rule out the possibility of damage to residences and so forth. So the deaths that you described were not the purpose of the Russian attack, but they were a result, a consequence of their strikes in Sumy for the purpose of weakening that center, degrading its military status, and preparing possibly for Russian takeover, if they so decide.

NewsX: 4:26
And Dr. Doctorow, as civilian casualties are increasing on both sides, Russia claims a drone targeted a building in Moscow. And now, does this signal a new phase where the war could become more mutually destructive on civilian fronts?

Doctorow:
But still, let’s put this in perspective. The relevant perspective is Israel’s conduct in this war on Gaza, which is genocidal and which has produced more than 55,000 civilian deaths. In the last eight days or so when the war in Gaza was scaled back by Israel, note that, “scaled back” because of their concentration on the conflict with Iran, there still were 500 civilian deaths recorded. Israel has daily killed more people who are waiting for food distribution in a land that is now in advanced hunger, advanced famine.

5:33
Israel is killing more civilians each day, many more, than the numbers that you’ve cited for Russian activities in their war in Ukraine. These are incomparable. And yet here we are, our mainstream media are reporting on Russian barbarity, how cruel it is, Mr. Starmer, with respect to the loss of life of civilians in Ukraine. And they are relatively quiet, if not absolutely silent, about the many times greater destruction of civilian infrastructure and civilian lives going on in Gaza, the West Bank, and in the recent strikes of Israel in Iran.

NewsX: 6:21
And now, building on the fact that NATO meeting is going to take place tonight, what message is Moscow sending by timing of this escalation, just hours before NATO leaders gather in The Hague, and are these strikes intended to coincide with the NATO summit to test or maybe dilute the alliance unity?

Doctorow:
I don’t think the Russians have to do anything to dilute the alliance. The alliance is collapsing in front of our eyes. The biggest event of the last couple of days has been the outright refusal of Spain to sign up to the increased contributions of NATO member states to armaments, to arms. That outright refusal is quite shocking.

7:08
It’s also backed up by other developments showing the loss of authority of NATO. Japanese are not coming to it. The idea of an Asian extension of NATO was just delivered a heavy blow by the Japanese refusal to attend. So NATO has its own problems, its inconsistencies, and I would say the utter nonsense of Mr. Rutte’s speech yesterday in preparation for this meeting, in which he was calling upon the countries of NATO to contribute to a vast improvement in their air defenses, making Europe safe from attack, particularly from that nasty neighbor to East, Russia, which is the greatest threat to security, according to Mr. Rutte.

That assumes that his audience is mindless, that they’re not paying attention to what’s going on in the Middle East, where the notion of an air defense against hypersonic missiles is utter nonsense. Europe, like Mr. Trump and his Golden Dome, is being asked to put up enormous amounts of money for a military strategy that is hopeless in providing any security. Therefore, NATO’s problems are NATO’s own problems. They are not in any way exaggerated or influenced by anything that Moscow is doing.

NewsX: 8:39
And now that there might be some chance, even though you show some pessimism towards NATO, could NATO countries use this summit to announce a change in policy, such as maybe providing longer-range weapons or air defense systems, more of them to Ukraine?

Doctorow: 8:59
If NATO continues on its present path, I predict that in five years it won’t exist. The internal conflicts within the European Union over foreign policy, which is a determinant, the determinant of military policy, are growing in front of our eyes. The famous 18th package of sanctions against Russia was just doomed by the veto of Slovakia and Hungary.

This is not a Russian intervention, It is common sense among European nations, who are seeking to defend their citizens from policies made in Brussels, which are destructive of the security and the economy of European member states.

NewsX: 9:49
Thank you very much, Gilbert Doctorow, for joining us today and sharing your expertise as Russian [affairs analyst].

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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