Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelinsky was in Spain today,
meeting with officials there to secure more military aid after
more than
820 days of war. President Zelinsky says that Vladimir Putin's
army is still dropping around
3000 bombs on his nation's sovereign territory every month.
On Saturday, Russian strikes hit a shopping center in Kharkiv,
a cowardly move hitting what is clearly a civilian target.
The attack captured here by security cameras killed at least
18 people,
local officials confirmed today. Multiple reports citing police say that
a 12 year old girl was among the dead.
Dozens of people were injured in the brutal assault.
And yesterday, President Solinsky renewed a new video.
Excuse Me released a new video in English.
Standing inside what remains of a Ukrainian publishing house that
was destroyed by Russian bombs,
he talks about the constant attacks from Putin that people
in Karkiv are facing and ask the world to continue
helping Ukraine in this illegal war.
We all know who are we dealing with.
Russia is run by men
who want to make it a norm,
burning lives, destroying cities and villages,
dividing people and erasing national borders through war.
There is no nation that can stop such war alone,
unaided world leaders. Engagement is needed.
I'm now in Harkiv, a city in the east of
Ukraine
and unfortunately very close to the border on Russia.
What does it mean for Harkiv?
A third year of constant terror.
More than a million of people in this city
and every night and every day Russian armies selling the
city,
mostly with S300 missiles, just like all other Russian strikes
on hundreds of other of our cities and villages.
Some of them was booming
with life, are now burnt to ashes,
people less and burnt out.
Emptiness the most horrible consequence of war.
War that we didn't want in Ukraine,
that we haven't provoked, and in which Ukraine is defending
itself from Russian attempts to seize our resources and territories
and destroy our national identity.
In the same video, President Zelinsky asked President Biden and
President Xi Jinping of China to join delegations from dozens
of other nations at a peace summit in Switzerland next
month. It's the kind of invitation President Zelensky knows he
could never make if Donald Trump is allowed back in
the Oval Office.
Trump was, of course, impeached for trying to extort Ukraine
to go after Joe Biden.
And last week, Trump took the unprecedented move to insert
himself,
a presidential candidate with a professed admiration of Vladimir Putin
into the very delicate situation involving Wall Street Journal reporter
Evan Gerskovic,
who is currently held in a Russian prison.
Trump claims that he and he alone can convince his
favorite autocrat to release the jailed journalist posting,
quote, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia will do that for
me,
but not for anyone else.
And we will be paying nothing.
What's the quid pro quo for that?
Joining us now is Michael Mcfaul,
who served at the US ambassador to Russia from 2012
to 2014.
He is also an MSNBC international affairs analyst.
Ambassador, I'm grateful for you to be here.
I want to start with what Trump posted about Evan
Gerskovich,
the idea that Trump is saying that he and he
alone has the keys to the cell,
literally to get an American home from Russia,
and yet he's not doing it right now.
He has the power and the ability to do it.
So he's using Evan's life
as a pawn. Talk a little bit about why A,
Putin would never agree to this and and B,
why it's suddenly OK for Trump decide to use that
as some type of power play.
Well, first, you're absolutely right.
If he has that power,
he should use it now.
Why not? He could call his friend Vladimir and say
let him let Evan out and he could show to
the world that he has this close special personal relationship
with Putin that he's always bragging about,
but he's always claiming would be in America's national interest.
So he should do that now.
There's no reason to wait till January
should he win the presidential election.
But second, it won't happen because he does not have
that kind of power and influence over Vladimir Putin,
despite what he brags about claiming that he can do.
He didn't think about. He was president for four years.
He met with Mr. Putin.
They had a summit in Helsinki.
They caught, they had meetings from time to time,
but try to think about what concrete national security interests
were achieved for the United States of America because of
that close personal relationship.
I literally can't think of a single thing.
The other thing that I want to talk about is
the fact that Russia has launched a multi front invasion
of Ukraine.
The Baltic states have actually said that if Russia makes
some type of significant breakthrough in terms of that multi
front invasion,
that they're actually contemplating sending troops into Ukraine to aid
Ukraine without waiting for NATO to give them the green
light.
There's also an issue, Ambassador,
about the fact that the United States and other countries
have said that their weapons cannot be used to actually
be entering into
Russian territory. But aren't we at the point now where
a lot of this is just conversation and it's time
for people to actually take action to help the Ukrainians?
Yes,
there is a lot of anxiety in Ukraine.
I talk to Ukrainians every day.
There's a lot of anxiety in the region,
as you just rightly noted.
I was in Lithuania a few months ago and there's
extreme anxiety that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine,
he will try to threaten
the states of of NATO,
especially if Mr. Trump was president,
to test to see if we will stand by our
allies.
I don't think it would be prudent for NATO countries
to send soldiers to Ukraine.
I do think, however, it is extremely prudent and long
overdue for the Biden administration and the rest of the
NATO allies to give President Zelensky the license to use
the weapons that we have transferred to him to defend
Ukraine,
especially in Kharkiv that you have been showing in your
show already.
Kharkiv is right on the border of Russia.
Russians are shooting into Kharkiv from Russian territory and the
Ukrainians cannot fire back.
They should have the right to self-defense.
That's a concept embedded in the United Nations Charter.
It's a pretty American idea to the right to self-defense.
I think the time is now because if we let
Vladimir Putin succeed around Kharkiv,
that is the beginning of threatening our NATO allies in
the in the neighborhood there.
And that's really the important message,
right? I think people kind of lose sight sometimes in
terms of why it's so important for the United States
to aid Ukraine.
It's not just Ukraine. It's the other countries that are
not only in Europe,
but frankly, the rest of the world if Putin remains
unchecked.
And so do you think that that meeting in Switzerland
that you're actually going to see somebody like Biden and
Xi Jinping actually show up for something like that?
Well, your first point could not be stressed more.
There's somehow this idea that Putin just wants a little
bit of territory and then he's going to relax.
There's no reason to believe that He didn't stop in
2008 after invading Georgia. He didn't stop until after
2014 when he annexed Crimea as part of Ukraine.
There's no reason he will stop unless he is stopped
on the battlefield.
And it is in America's national interest to allow the
Ukrainians to stop him in Ukraine so that we are
not dragged into a war when we have to defend
our allies in NATO, so that nothing could be
more important in terms of our national interest.
With respect to the peace conference,
I, I hope that all national leaders will go.
I'm not optimistic that Xi Jinping will show up or
even President Biden.
But I think it's an important meeting because it will
demonstrate that Zelensky is serious about peace.
Putin so far is not.
We'll have to wait and see.
Ambassador Michael Mcfaul, thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.