Speaker 1: Kielder.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The countdown
Speaker 2: to the Putin Trump summit is on. The two leaders
Speaker 2: are due to meet in Alaska to discuss what peace
Speaker 2: could look like in Ukraine more than three and a
Speaker 2: half years after Russia's invasion. While Trump has spoken to
Speaker 2: Ukraine's Voladimir Zelenski ahead of the meeting, European capitals remain
Speaker 2: apprehensive that a resolution will come from it and a
Speaker 2: rallying behind Kiev. So is this latest development in fact
Speaker 2: a development at all or just posturing by two men
Speaker 2: desperate to be seen to be doing something Today. On
Speaker 2: the Front Page, KIWI journalist Thomas Martch joins us from
Speaker 2: Ukraine to take us through who is the latest on
Speaker 2: the front lines and behind the scenes. So, Tom, we
Speaker 2: know that Trump and Putin are set to meet in
Speaker 2: Alaska on Friday local time. But first off, what's the
Speaker 2: significance of Alaska?
Speaker 1: It does seem a bit of an odd choice at first.
Speaker 1: The reasons are primarily geographic. It's quite hard for Putin
Speaker 1: to go anywhere at the moment because he's wanted by
Speaker 1: the International Criminal Court, So any countries that have signed
Speaker 1: up the International Criminal Court have an obligation to basically
Speaker 1: arrest him and hand him over. Now the US has
Speaker 1: actually is not and has never been his signatory to
Speaker 1: that court, so it is technically safe for him to
Speaker 1: meet in Alaska. It's also something that when you choose
Speaker 1: these kind of locations, you often want to choose something
Speaker 1: that's kind of like equidistant for both leaders. For Putin
Speaker 1: it's just a straight flight from Moscow. For Trump it's
Speaker 1: a straight flight from DC. They kind of meet about
Speaker 1: in the middle. But it's also got some interesting historical
Speaker 1: significance as well because it was sold by one of
Speaker 1: the Russian czars I think was Alexander back in around
Speaker 1: eight I think it's eighteen sixty seven from Russia to
Speaker 1: the United States. So when we're talking about powerful people
Speaker 1: carving up spheres of influence and you know, handing over
Speaker 1: territories with a swath of a pen and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: there is some interesting historical legacy to it.
Speaker 2: Now, it has Vladimir Putin given any details on what
Speaker 2: the Kremlin is asking for.
Speaker 1: So what they say it. So they first announced their
Speaker 1: conditions basically last year, and they were Ukraine has to
Speaker 1: withdraw from all of the four major oblasts where the
Speaker 1: Kremlin controls that significant amount of the territory, that's Hassan, Zaprasia, Donetsky,
Speaker 1: Nahask and Ukraine has to agree to never join NATO,
Speaker 1: has to completely basically get rid of its armed forces.
Speaker 1: And there are other things as well, about like Russian language,
Speaker 1: you know, trying the right of the Russian language in
Speaker 1: government institutions, not particularly important stuff for them. The really
Speaker 1: important stuff is over territory. And it does seem that,
Speaker 1: at least according to reports, there was one of the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal that said that these demands have slightly lessened,
Speaker 1: which is that they're now dropping the idea for Ukraine
Speaker 1: to withdraw from the remainder of her Son and Zaparisia.
Speaker 1: And you know, those are very very major cities that
Speaker 1: the Kremlin has been pushed back from, so it would
Speaker 1: be very very strange for them to be handed over.
Speaker 1: And that what they're asking for now is the rest
Speaker 1: of Dnetsk Oblast, which if you look at it on
Speaker 1: a map doesn't look huge and you might wonder why
Speaker 1: that territory is so important or so we're fighting for
Speaker 1: the problem is that Danetsko Blast is the most heavily
Speaker 1: urbanized and heavily fortified part of the country. So if
Speaker 1: Ukraine would have hand that over, they would be handing
Speaker 1: over what they call like a fortress belt. It's these cities,
Speaker 1: about four of them in a row, that are just
Speaker 1: like trenched and mined and barbed wired and just like
Speaker 1: these kind of ultimate defensible outposts. And so the problem
Speaker 1: with those demands is that were the Ukrainians to give
Speaker 1: that over, not only would they be losing a large
Speaker 1: chunk of their territory and the civilians that go with it.
Speaker 1: If the Kremlin ever decided to come back in five
Speaker 1: or teen years down the line, like it did in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two after the twenty fourteen war, Ukraine would
Speaker 1: be fighting from a much weaker position because it would
Speaker 1: have given up its most defensible territory. If you look
Speaker 1: at it on a map, after denis Goblast to Ukraine's
Speaker 1: major cities, it's pretty much just straight shooting.
Speaker 3: I think I believe he wants to get it over with. Now,
Speaker 3: I've said that a few times. Then I've been disappointed
Speaker 3: because they have like a great call with him, and
Speaker 3: then missiles would be lobbed in Tikiev. For some other place,
Speaker 3: you'd have sixty people laying on a road dying. They said,
Speaker 3: that's cold, that's cold. But it's a violent war. Five
Speaker 3: to seven thousand people a week, a day, and you
Speaker 3: know there's nobody from here. They're all Russian and Ukrainian
Speaker 3: people and some people from the city's much more on number.
Speaker 3: But still those missiles do damage and they kill a
Speaker 3: lot of people.
Speaker 2: So Trump is giving the impression that there will be
Speaker 2: some swapping of territories to the betterment of both. It's
Speaker 2: hard to believe that this kind of betterment would be achievable, though, right.
Speaker 1: It's a very odd turn of phrase. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that one the Kremlin has shown absolutely
Speaker 1: no willingness to withdraw from anything except for tiny parts
Speaker 1: of land potentially Ensumi or harkyvobe Blast. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: that were basically attempted incursions that never really win. Timmywhare
Speaker 1: and they own like tenklov as a farm land here
Speaker 1: and there, or like half a ruined village or something
Speaker 1: like that. Now, the worry is that one Steve Whitcoff,
Speaker 1: Trump's envoy, went to Moscow and basically apparently there was
Speaker 1: a mistranslation and he came back saying that Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: was actually willing to offer up much more than he
Speaker 1: actually was. And so it seems like if there are
Speaker 1: land swaps, they would almost always they would be more
Speaker 1: likely to be in the Kremlin's favor. You know, Ukraine
Speaker 1: giving up that large part of Denise Goblast that I
Speaker 1: was talking about. So that could be like a real
Speaker 1: stickler in the negotiations because people in Ukraine are saying, well,
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump, who are you to say what territories
Speaker 1: we're going to hand over or swap or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that leads me on too. I wonder what Zelenski's
Speaker 2: thinking about all this. Has he mentioned what he thinks
Speaker 2: of the Trump Putin meeting.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of of discussion over will
Speaker 1: Zelenski come, will he be an anchorage that day? Will
Speaker 1: he have anything to do with it? And it's looking
Speaker 1: more and more likely that no, he won't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with this particular meeting. And he has basically
Speaker 1: said the reason we can't withdraw from Donetsk is that
Speaker 1: Danette is going to be a springboard for a future
Speaker 1: Russian attack. I should say this is not just hypothetical, right,
Speaker 1: you know, this literally happened. The Russians took Crimea in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, and Crimea became a springboard in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two for the most successful Russian attack of the entire war,
Speaker 1: which took really large parts of southern Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also said that it's a personal victory for Putin,
Speaker 2: and I saw that it came out that the meeting
Speaker 2: is Putin's idea. It all looks like good press for
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin at this stage.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so this is the thing. Right, we're back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. It's completely you're completely right there.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty two, the kreminin effectively became kind
Speaker 1: of stracized by the world, right, you know, ban from
Speaker 1: sporting events, cultural events, banking systems, cut off, huge sanctions
Speaker 1: imposed on the works, and effectively what being in America
Speaker 1: and shaking hands of the US president and like as
Speaker 1: like a partnership of equals looks like is it looks
Speaker 1: like it's now you're welcoming them back into the fold.
Speaker 1: You're like, okay, you're a respected partner with whom we
Speaker 1: can do business again. And that is in and of
Speaker 1: itself a major concessions concession and the negotiations already. It
Speaker 1: also looks bad because, as I said, Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: his advisors don't seem to have a particularly good grasp
Speaker 1: of the battlefield dynamics or the even the geography or
Speaker 1: the culture of the various regions they're talking about. So
Speaker 1: it really does look like we're back in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: and it's Churchill and Stull and kind of drawing lines
Speaker 1: over countries and giving, you know, noting down the percentages
Speaker 1: of dividing up the world into spheres of influence.
Speaker 2: Again, what is the reality of a meeting between Putin
Speaker 2: and Zelenski at this point?
Speaker 1: So it's it's difficult because the two leaders absolutely despise
Speaker 1: each other. And one of the other problems is that
Speaker 1: neither side is in a catastrophic enough military possession where
Speaker 1: they're willing to sort of give it up, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian defense is pretty strong, the Russians have taken
Speaker 1: enormous casualties, but the Russian economy and the Russian military
Speaker 1: industrial complex seems to have enough kind of slack in
Speaker 1: it to support this kind of year, this level of war.
Speaker 1: Effort this level of operations for like another year or two,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's there's been a lot in Ukraine
Speaker 1: now about a Russian penetration of Ukrainian lines around Pakrovs
Speaker 1: and we don't quite yet know how serious that is,
Speaker 1: whether it's just, you know, a bunch of Russian guys
Speaker 1: got much further in the lines than they expected, or
Speaker 1: whether the Russians have actually made a significant breakthrough. What
Speaker 1: it does do is it does give Vladimir Putin the
Speaker 1: idea that he's got battlefield momentum, however slow it is,
Speaker 1: and that he can achieve his goals by military means.
Speaker 1: What Ukrainians, I guess I'm hoping for from this summit
Speaker 1: is that Donald Trump can convince him that it's going
Speaker 1: to be more painful to achieve his goals through military
Speaker 1: means than just banking whatever small wins he has now
Speaker 1: and kind of calling it quits. But I'm not incredibly optimistic.
Speaker 2: Is there any evidence suggesting that Putin is willing to
Speaker 2: compromise or retreat even or does the Kremlin remain kind
Speaker 2: of steadfast in its position at the moment.
Speaker 1: So there is the little bit of leeway that the
Speaker 1: Kremlin has given has been saying that there are the
Speaker 1: two provinces that it's not going to require withdrawal from those. Now,
Speaker 1: those provinces were like Hrsan and Zupparisia, like especially those cities,
Speaker 1: they were virulently anti Russian. They never had you know
Speaker 1: that the Kremlin had never said anything about them before
Speaker 1: the start of the war. They were generally considered the
Speaker 1: Kremlin's most outlandish demands and they they have been retracted.
Speaker 1: So it does seem like there is a tiny bit
Speaker 1: of wiggle room. But at the same time it does
Speaker 1: you know, Vladimir Putin and you know, top Russians will
Speaker 1: constantly come out and say things about how like Ukraine
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist and Russia should get to a Dessa
Speaker 1: and you know, Russia's borders have no end and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So what I think people are still on
Speaker 1: the tossing up is are these signs that he's genuinely
Speaker 1: willing for a compromise or is he willing to come
Speaker 1: to some sort of ceasefire conditions That would just mean
Speaker 1: that he will think that he can then have another
Speaker 1: light at the apple in five or ten years time.
Speaker 1: That's what everyone in Ukraine is really worried about not
Speaker 1: so much specifically where the final battle lines might be
Speaker 1: drawn in this round of fighting, but how do you
Speaker 1: stop this kind of invasion happening again?
Speaker 2: How do you stop something like this invasion happening again.
Speaker 1: So, look, a lot of Ukrainians have sort of lost
Speaker 1: faith in sort of Western institutions. So for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: at the start of the full scale war, the big
Speaker 1: thing was NATO membership. You know, Ukraine needs NATO membership,
Speaker 1: then the cast iron guaranty of Article five. I now
Speaker 1: talk to Ukrainians, and I've speaking of spoken to people
Speaker 1: in the Baltic States as well, who say, look, we're
Speaker 1: no longer convinced that NATO is all it's cracked up
Speaker 1: to me. We're no longer convinced that the US would
Speaker 1: necessarily honor an Article five arrangement and you know, come
Speaker 1: full throated to our defense if we were invaded or
Speaker 1: we had a Russian incursion or something like that. So
Speaker 1: so you know that, I mean, the idea of European
Speaker 1: peacekeepers had its flaws and its difficulties, but it was
Speaker 1: at least one way for European countries to have genuine
Speaker 1: skin in the game in protecting Ukraine. The only other way,
Speaker 1: as the Ukrainians have found, is unfortunately, the model where
Speaker 1: you just have an extremely strong standing army like they
Speaker 1: have in South Korea, like they have in Israel for
Speaker 1: all its issues, like they have in a number of
Speaker 1: countries where they expect that war could break out, that
Speaker 1: you just have to have an extra you know, everyone
Speaker 1: has military service. The country's just full of weapons, and
Speaker 1: there's minefields all over the borders, and it's not a
Speaker 1: particularly pleasant way to live, but it might be the
Speaker 1: only way to survive in this kind of new world order.
Speaker 4: Zelenski himself has insisted that all conversations about Ukraine must
Speaker 4: be with Ukraine present. Europe has backed him up on that.
Speaker 4: A quick reminder, though, a moment like today, a virtual
Speaker 4: conference with Trump and European leaders and President Zelenski setting
Speaker 4: out positions, does echo what we saw back in May
Speaker 4: when a ceasefire was demanded by Europe and Ukraine and
Speaker 4: Trump was on the phone to his European allies saying
Speaker 4: he'd impose sanctions with them if Putin didn't go along
Speaker 4: with that suggestion.
Speaker 2: And Tom, you're in Ukraine now, whereabouts in the country
Speaker 2: are you?
Speaker 1: I've been living in Kiev for the last three years now.
Speaker 1: So look in Kiev, like everyone is pretty used to
Speaker 1: like things that Things that can appear sort of very
Speaker 1: shocking on the mirror or on TV are often not
Speaker 1: necessarily that shocking to the eyes of Ukrainians who've lived
Speaker 1: through countless air raids, who've seen the battlefield situation go
Speaker 1: up and down for years and years and years. Now
Speaker 1: there's everyone is no one is sort of inclined to surrender,
Speaker 1: but everyone is more exhausted and more annoyed and more
Speaker 1: more sort of despondent than they were before, even if
Speaker 1: there is still no real appetite to sort of surrender
Speaker 1: large parts of the country to Russia.
Speaker 2: And in your book Dogs or the Dogs of Mariopol,
Speaker 2: there are some pretty incredible stories of just everyday Ukrainians
Speaker 2: stopping their studies, putting away their things and just checking
Speaker 2: on some some army gear. I mean is that it
Speaker 2: just speaks to the I guess the resilience of Ukrainians
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 1: Is that what you found, Yes, so that the whole
Speaker 1: the whole point in that was about. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the forging of Ukraine's iron generation, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the things that I said. That's that like so
Speaker 1: many of the people that I met in Ukraine, you know,
Speaker 1: were had you know, they had really good careers, really
Speaker 1: good educations. You know, they were you know, intensely well
Speaker 1: educated and patriotic, and they were the ones who sort
Speaker 1: of down tools, put on body armor and went to
Speaker 1: the front lines. That is an extremely inspiring story, but
Speaker 1: it's also a very tragic story because in large parts
Speaker 1: a lot of Ukraine's most promising and successful, especially young people,
Speaker 1: were the ones who ended up being killed. So there
Speaker 1: is that kind of sort of dual element of this
Speaker 1: kind of great heroism that this kind of like really
Speaker 1: horrible sacrifice at the same time, and when the war
Speaker 1: does eventually inevitably come to an end, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a really difficult thing in society, you know, how
Speaker 1: you deal with the memory and the legacy of.
Speaker 2: What's happened, and once the war ends, hopefully what that
Speaker 2: will do to future generations, in the future of the
Speaker 2: country as a whole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well, I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: it's already quite evident tension society now, but it's the
Speaker 1: tension between the truths have been on the front line
Speaker 1: for you know, three years, you know, after ten years
Speaker 1: if they fought in the First War sometimes and the
Speaker 1: men who maybe stayed in the home cities and like
Speaker 1: you know, hit for mobilization squads and like didn't join
Speaker 1: up in the war. There's the tensions between, you know,
Speaker 1: because we're women were the only people who women and
Speaker 1: children were the only ones who could leave. The women
Speaker 1: who stayed in their home cities, and the women who
Speaker 1: left and went to Europe or the UK or Canada
Speaker 1: or wherever. That tension between you know, did you really
Speaker 1: go through the war? I remember once driving past a
Speaker 1: recruitment sign in Harkiv Oblast. It said, you know, daddy,
Speaker 1: what did you do during the war, And it's like
Speaker 1: a man like twenty years in the future, like holding
Speaker 1: his infant son. I thought that was like a really
Speaker 1: kind of interesting and probably quite effective psychological marketing campaign.
Speaker 1: But it really does speak to because there's going to
Speaker 1: be so many soldiers who come back from the front
Speaker 1: line at the end and they look around at people
Speaker 1: who whether they left and then came back or just
Speaker 1: stayed in their cities the whole time. They're going to
Speaker 1: be like, we fought and watched our friends died and
Speaker 1: sometimes got maimed and utilated, and we're all psychologically traumatized
Speaker 1: from sort of four or five However many years it
Speaker 1: is a full scale war. What do you guys, you know,
Speaker 1: where was your sacrifice and all this?
Speaker 2: What could New Zealand do better?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got to be honest. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I have consistently been annoyed about from the
Speaker 1: start is that New Zealand has almost I think the
Speaker 1: Defense Minister has been once but no New Zealand. Why
Speaker 1: are they know, never any New Zealand officials that are
Speaker 1: visiting Ukraine. All Australian prime ministers have done it all
Speaker 1: the UK you know prime ministers have done it. Joe
Speaker 1: Biden did it when he was US president, you know,
Speaker 1: Earthula Vondle and you know did it as president of
Speaker 1: the European Commissioned several times. And especially is I remember
Speaker 1: I talked to a University of Target expert about this,
Speaker 1: whose name unfortunately skates me, but it's he was like
Speaker 1: New Zealand's you know, strength is in its soft power
Speaker 1: and its diplomacy. We're never going to to be a
Speaker 1: military superpower, but our we sort of project our values
Speaker 1: in our soft power, And I'm like, why is New
Speaker 1: Zealand in no way trying to get trying to have
Speaker 1: some kind of voice in the negotiations for instance, It
Speaker 1: just seems that their issue was almost sort of entirely
Speaker 1: disappeared from New Zealand political discourse to the extent that
Speaker 1: it ever was there. So I think even just some
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric from politicians. You know, why when Christopher
Speaker 1: Luxon is on a European tour, why does he not
Speaker 1: just come to Ukraine? I know the Ukrainians, for instance,
Speaker 1: have been trying to get a New Zealand Prime minister
Speaker 1: for ages and they've had no luck. Just Sender and
Speaker 1: Chris Hipkins, which we were they were told note which
Speaker 1: is not interested and you know why not? I just
Speaker 1: don't understand it, Like every other world later has done it.
Speaker 1: Why why are the key we sort of not picking
Speaker 1: up a slack here?
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Tom.
Speaker 1: No worries please.
Speaker 2: As always, that's it for this episode of the Front Page.
Speaker 2: You can read more about today's stories and extensive news
Speaker 2: coverage at enzidhrald dot co dot MZ. The Front Page
Speaker 2: is produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is
Speaker 2: also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front
Speaker 2: page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.