maybe we live in some non-standard world, where diplomacy no longer plays such an obvious role, because diplomacy is important when there is no force as the main tool, and when in fact the bet is on force from all sides, what role can diplomacy have at all, i'm sorry, it again, it may sound ironic, i remember that we once had a minister of economy there in the 90s, it was absolutely unclear why we needed him, and now i have the impression that we will not need a minister of foreign affairs soon affairs, because we have allies who support us. and in any case, this is not some kind of diplomatic achievement, it is simply their reaction to the aggressive actions of russia, and russia does not want to go to any diplomatic solutions, and what should diplomats do, you know, i agree with you, as this sounds unpleasant to me, for the rest of my career i just have to put a stop to this, i often say at meetings with students, for example, who are going to become a diplomat, that the profession is not only dying of late, it is already dead, in particular because, that the leader between they communicate with each other, and... but also the decisions

that are made, they do not need these negotiators, who we were from the very beginning and remained there, i don’t know, in the 16th, some 15th century, when the profession was more or less formed, and really from the moment negotiations, let's say minsk ended, this era of minsk, when they ended, and more, well , to be honest, in one of the interviews i already said that, in principle, the biggest problem and mistake of the democrats of ukrainian diplomacy is that we could not avert a war, if only... diplomacy somehow something like that creative was done by minsk, post-minsk, it doesn't matter what the negotiations are called, then i would say, yes, diplomacy has the right to exist in this conflict and it plays a role, as soon as the conflict started, all diplomacy can do is try to concentrate, to coordinate the aid that comes, well, for this you don't really need to be a diplomat, well, ukrainian diplomacy tried to avert the war with the help of negotiations and consultations. this was, by

the way, the main line of president zelensky, he wanted to restore the norman format, talking with russia, conducting these huge number of consultations, in the contact group, all this was continued, so what? vitaly, i had the honor of being a minister, then i remember very well these negotiations, which actually led to the meeting in paris, i will be honest, we expected this meeting much earlier, right after the inauguration of president zelensky, so that we knew that it was a long process, and he needs a lot of time so that after the first meeting, getting acquainted, as it usually happens, something... the process would move somewhere, well, actually, you see that it was in fact, the last meeting of the presidents, and it was obvious that at this meeting putin finally settled in the opinion that he will not achieve what he wants, he needs to use other tools, the other tool was war. and if we talk about the extent to which it was possible to avert the war, from the point of view of delaying the situation there, we had some opportunities, do you remember?

the russians all the time pretended to want to negotiate there, put forward some conditions for nato and the european union, sent some documents, what were we to do in such a situation? we had a at the first stage, at least while i was involved in this process, we had an idea behind which we saw post-minsk progress, one of the problems of minsk, which was, if you remember, at some point the following phrase: there are no alternatives to minsk , it was very threatening. because we got stuck in this minsk and did not see a way out of it, the problem of minsk was that, being planned for only one year, it survived not only this year, but even survived its original authors, both merkel and poroshenko, and olando, and remained in fact, the only one who remembered what it was born for, how funny it is, was putin. one of the problems was that after leaving minsk we did not get the same alternative, the alternative should have been forms, and if you remember, there were also... advisory

councils, new road maps and so on and so forth. i thought it was dangerous to go this way, because unless putin understands that we continue to delay and there is no legal basis for this, he will simply tear up these agreements as he did and attacked, finding there some case of beli, having found some explanation for why he is doing it, but these so-called agreements in istanbul, it was a continuation of minsk from the russian side, they also wanted to create some trouble. there is such an idea that it is possible, you know, to break off the negotiations with, for example, russia and start from a new page and write the istanbul ones, i even sometimes hear in the comments that in this case the president will not have such unfortunate minsk negotiations, we will never sign and so on and so forth, the problem is not the ukrainian president, obviously, but the problem in the russian president, and likewise, if someone thinks that he can come to istanbul, sit down, take a piece of paper, say, well, everything that was postponed. yes, something happened,

you have to think about what will be reassessed later, but let's write from the very beginning, and so point one the war ends, point two and so on and so on, no, because the russian federation obviously remembers all these agreements, everything is hemmed, everything is numbered. and when they arrived, they declared, you, relatively speaking, fooled us all this time, it doesn't matter, even they were fooling, they were not fooling, this is their position, and from now on we will continue to follow those points, the most painful of them, and now there are much more of them, if we at first, well, we could not think about it, and they could not insert it , that ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity are threatened by something, the minsk agreements were not about this at all, and the istanbul agreements were actually about this, but tell me, if you are talking about diplomacy, to what extent can we... work with our western allies, to maintain this level of support and empathy is, again, this depends on diplomacy or withdrawal of hostilities, because now they say that the speaker of the house of representatives of the american congress, he realized that it is necessary to help ukraine when he was told that in april

there will be no weapons in the ukrainian army at all, and this will lead to a disaster, but it's not diplomacy, it's just staging a disaster. 2.5 years ago, almost before the war began, the talks in britain, when i held them there, were as much along the lines that we will help you, as we helped you, but you understand, our soldiers will never fight, and this is a red li and so on and so on and so on, to which i always replied to my colleagues in conversation, that your political system is so liberal-democratic that between the first frame, like the ukrainian children are killed lying along the roads, sorry for such a harsh comparison, and by the time you decide that you will help ukraine by sending everything, you won't even have time to protect yourself, so your voter, your press is free bbc, starting, ending all of us, you they will simply force a circle for it, you simply have no way out, that is why this conversation took place behind closed doors, let's not bring it to this, let's immediately determine what you are ready to do, what you are ready to do in

the event of an obvious escalation that leads to war, by the way, you mentioned the main motive, that western public opinion, american, european, canadian, australian, whatever, just an example was britain, it explodes just when it sees women and children shot and forces politicians to act, and if our army holds position and does not allow anyone to continue, then the interest of public opinion decreases, politicians sigh freely and start discussions for six months, these same discussions could have been for six months precisely because nothing of the kind happened, just imagine what could happen if we you successfully counterattacked, and you... would have fired even at some of your former places where our troops were stationed, but were pushed out, maybe we would have turned from good guys to bad guys with you, like israel, in fact the same thing, what happened in israel we talked about this topic, we talked with britain, the british noticed immediately and due

to the fact that, to be honest, they fought all their lives all over the world and accumulated a lot of history, this conversation was held, well, there is some kind of understanding of how to counteract such trends , the impression is that the israelis were not completely ready for this, strangely enough, although it has already happened several times, i do not know if they can be ready for this at all, if you proceed from the fact that the support position, it generally lives with that grief and the unfortunate who needs it to help, take for example this program that accepted ukrainian refugees in britain, unlike virtually all other governments, the british decided that the citizens of smi will take on the biggest, biggest burden , they pay 200-300 pounds for electricity there. water, i.e. people are not paid for it, people give it themselves, and britain is clear that the rise of ukraine, which in relation to ukraine will allow to calculate who has an extra apartment, i remember that the ratio of people who are ready were offered and those to whom the government allowed to take ukrainian refugees were 1 to 25, 25

times more british wanted to take them, but the government said, you don’t really appreciate it, you can’t afford it, now there is no such support even in britain, not to mention already about many other countries, or maybe it depends? such support from some kind of personal interest of the leader, so we see there that president macron began to show personal interest, and in france the discussion about ukraine began much more lively than several months ago, and on the other hand, there was prime minister johnson in britain, he was obviously interested in using the ukrainian case, at least for his own self-preservation, if we speak seriously, cynically speaking, well, prime minister sunak has other problems, he ukraine will not help, he needs to prepare for the elections, and that is why there may not be such an obvious ... you know, price tags, if we go to the end, then these conversations about the fact that berri johnson used us or another leader, i always answered , how many ukrainians do you know? interesting, opinion, zero, because as long as this or other reasons help us get what we need, it doesn't matter to us, i

agree with you that there is a role of man, but there is another interesting factor, which in principle contradicts the first what we 've discussed with you, very often countries want to see that they're investing in someone who's... who 's winning, so basically speaking, we 're helping, we understand that we're going to be helping for a long time, it's going to hurt for sure, but look, we invest in the right guys, they attack, they attack, they resist, they are brave warriors. and not simply, which is obvious, where the war is going, and we just throw away, well, just out of pity, no, no, this fact that you are helped, as the americans say, that if you want to sit down at the negotiating table, we will help you negotiate, if you want to fight, we will help to fight, it depends on what you want to do, well, this is the order , not putin's, because he thinks that he will prolong the war, hold his ground, and in the end the west will lose patience, maybe he is miscalculated, maybe he is right, but we are in... i remember a conversation with the british prime minister, when he said that our economy is twice the size

of russia's, and after all, if it was directly applied to us, even we could to break them, even in the light of weapons, i am not talking about the fact that this strategic depth, which the allies, including the united states, have built for us, is not measured against the capabilities that russia has, it is obvious that russia is now accumulating weapons, a large resource mobilization, we are all aware of this, but ukraine would not have a chance, if we didn't have allies, we are currently discussing the method of exiting the war, we are not talking about how you and i will surrender and capitulate at the lowest cost, because we have allies for the fact that putin will survive them all, do you not think so , that there is a problem with this understanding of the very term victory, because for us victory is a zero-sum result, by the way, for the russians as well, by and large we have to win as we see it, and for the measures victory is success negotiations, and here we are the first day says we want you to sit at the table. negotiations with a strong position, i am generally surprised that you violate this, considering how

unelectrified our information space is, how divided we are and this idea that the year 91 is our goal and we are going to it, then the votes such, if you listen, you understand that our allies may not want us to be with you, allies may, but we have a sociology of the ukrainian position, it is like this, then it is necessary to understand at what moment this help from the allies will come. .. decrease on the way to reaching the border of 91, and if we are ready to fight even with shovels, and we say this, as when the israelis said that you are with us or without us , it does not matter, we will fight, and the american said that well, okay, well, we will do it with you too, although we asked not to do it, if we manage to convey it to them and show the way to victory, well, if we determine that our victory is a state better than before the start of the war, that's normal, that's just the way it is a diplomatic trick that is... easy to see what we could actually achieve, and i i can tell you until what moment, maybe

the allies will be with us, until the moment when the signal comes from the kremlin that yes, we are ready for real negotiations, until the end of the war, at least until the armistice, so we are ready to sit down and to speak, i'm afraid that this is the biggest trap that can drive us into, if russia says that we propose a truce, or let's say, a ceasefire, we suppress, we become an aggressor with you, because... for maybe not for americans with british canadians, but for the so-called global south side clock, listen, russia proposed, well, how come, they stopped the troops, they stopped what we were helping ukraine for, so that ukrainian boys and girls would not die, then our, our position will be very weak and diplomatic in in the sense that we need to disperse the allies once again, to say that listen, we have stopped, but they will come again, but they will come again someday, well... it is not as certain as now, the battle that happen directly, i cannot understand at all why russia does not try, in time

of the minsk agreement there were at least 26 or 28 e of these seesfire, what is called i.e. i.e. you can't for now , who stood behind us, i will say, well, that's it, we did everything, there are so many problems all over the world, we left, and you stay, you and i can find this point, when they broke away... but you were already working then in the ministry of foreign affairs, you remember all this, this conditional year 2014, the state is weak, there is no legitimate president, it is divided, you can take it with your bare hands, and they have never changed this point of view, they have only either stopped, or strengthened, stopped, but they have been in these breaths all the time for 10 years, thank god, one of the reasons why you and i survive is that we simply overestimate russians often, they are not that directly deep in intelligence. well, here is

the question, yes, here we are, how we use this situation, that is, to what extent we can achieve real security guarantees, not neutrality, because the exchange of peace for neutrality is the exchange of peace for the end of the world, if it can be so, well , belgium violated its neutrality three times only during the second world war by the germans, and hussein declared neutrality right before the operation. a desert storm, that is, well, actually , the result shows that it does nothing, and it is necessary to tell the ukrainians about this, because there is some kind of belief that let's abandon nato, and then the russians will finally fall behind us, and everything will be fine, the problem is that, yes , we... want to join nato and they are offended because of that, some people still believe, without understanding, that finland increased the border with nato by 1,000 km, and we did not even join, that is, fight, you know, i always joked, i say, well, russian nezadov, so fight with nato, why are you at war with us, well, you are afraid of nato, well, what did you know, well , i will remember on your border, as much as you like, and the prevention of the coronavirus, like that, yes,

well, by the way, now, when the prime minister was -minister sunak in poland, just during the press conference with prime minister tusk, there was a conversation that thank you for came, brought with him the fact that your planes will patrol our space, polish, because we have such a difficult situation on our border, we have russia and belarus, and the british prime minister, yes, yes, yes, here i came specifically, and during the next year typhoons will be here to patrol, which is very important to protect your space, and the ukrainians are, well, at this moment , it’s even bothering them, it’s their problem, the poles, this is the country that actually has the most ... of gdp, the size of the military budget is more than that of the united states, 3.9%. well, the poles can believe that if there is any catastrophe in the russian-ukrainian war, then they can get at least a hybrid war from russia and belarus. well, what happened last time, as they call it,

you remember them, it's immigration, immigration, hybrid war brought to its peak, when it actually arms. was, and for this reason even the british sent their engineering corps to help the poles build barriers on the border, this is already serious. well, after all, here is a guarantee of safety, they can be provided. we saw the previous nato summit, which ended without the results that the ukrainian delegation was hoping for, and we saw that president zelenskyi was at a large expense even in the sense, he wrote this famous postik and showed it, i would say frustration with the fact that he saw there and now it will be washington. the nato summit too, i think there will be no frustration, because there are no special expectations. i think that what happened last time was a misplaced expectation of what could be what a specific organization is capable of. we have a misunderstanding in ukraine that nato is only as strong as it is, relatively speaking, it is their weakest link, the weakest link is

decisions that are made unanimously, and any country, i don't know, albania, hungary, slovakia, maybe the decision-making process, there are all kinds of cunning steps that allow, but from the very beginning we talked about the fact that those people who understand something about nato, that it is necessary to look for a coalition of those willing, since operations were formed, for which nato did not have of common opinion, if we had worked from the very beginning to assemble a coalition of the willing around us, and not to push through our accession to nato, which is obviously at this historical stage, to put it mildly, complicated, it seems to me, as of today... this coalition would look much better, but the trip brings the same strawberry back from britain and the meeting there in poland with the secretary general of nato, with tusk and not the reverse whore with the germans, these are just the first signs of building a coalition around a center like britain, willing to help us , to put it mildly, to go to the end, well, that

means that there will be several coalitions in the seventh bloc, you who will say that we must go to the end and you who will say that we must be ob'. operations in the east, which are nato, to be honest, this is not nato, these are countries that belong to the nato bloc, but they acted in their own, national form together with a coalition of people like them, they could belong, by the way, for example, operation in libya, if you remember, sweden and finland joined there, which, in principle, sweden bombed without being, without being a member nato, there is an indicator that is not necessarily nato, it can be coalitions. from nato and non -nato, relatively speaking, the australians, the australians are now training with the new zealanders, training our soldiers in great britain, they directly transfer weapons to us, they directly train, transfer intelligence to us, well, this is the result of this new military cooperation, which manifests itself between the united states, there is great britain, australia, new zealand, it is a pacific, you can say

military cooperation, and it simply is some kind of mirror in nato in another region, the story is old, was nato, as you remember the southern one, which i called. but until now, despite the fact that that block has left, there remains the so-called five eyes, this is a combination of intelligence and special agencies of these five countries, it is precisely the united states, great britain, canada and two countries of new zealand , australia, they still work very closely together and some of the information that we get that is critical for us, we get because there is this union that exchanges itself outside alliance, what can be done in order for you to really... build some kind of political model of support that would give us the opportunity to survive in the event of the end of hostilities? well, you have already taken the opportunity to finish, thank god, god let us finish it.' as long as the military operations are going on, we know that no one will offer anything, we heard from president biden's statements that the condition for ukraine's accession to nato is victory over russia, that's

good, quote, good, despite all my high assessment of the alliance as of our future block, i think, at this stage now we need to talk about the formation of the coalition he is talking about, which will help us solve the first stage, stop the war, i know that for some reason it is customary in our country to make fun of president macron's words. who offered his troops, it seems to me that he should have seized this opportunity, but he did not have time to finish speaking, he said absolutely, please, at least tomorrow, the verkhovna rada immediately receives the draft law on the entry of foreign troops, in particular in french, as well as everyone else on the territory of ukraine, even this move would show russia, i understand that it is escalation, but i think it's too late to cry now, the problem of escalation, the endless so-called escalation period, we're a little bit more... russians, we're going to get a storm shed, they're going to bomb us with churched ones, we 're going to get tanks there, they're launching the latest tanks there, i it seems that in this race, we, you know, like a steed, you can

saddle him, you just have to hold fast, otherwise, if you don't hold fast, you will fall, then you will become his victim. at this stage, i think that despite all our attempts peaceful to somehow resolve, this is a tiger that i don't think will be ready for negotiations, and why did president macron, by the way, not get this support with this... with this, i would say no , not even in words, to this new course that he could to count, we now know that the americans generally advised not to go to the conference he held in the elysée palace, many did not go, eh, i understand why olaf scholz did not support him there, yes, but when he is not supported in washington and london, it raises questions. i agree with you, some remind that macron has passed the elections and he is not afraid of more elections, he can behave like a statesman and not like a leader who is waiting for re-election, there is also some truth in this, but i don't think we need the competition between these centers of influence also played in our favor. in

addition, there was no clear position of ukraine. if there was a clear position of ukraine, then the same olaf scholz, the same risha sonak or joe biden would have to answer not only to the french, but also to the ukrainians, and so they only the french answered that you can do what you want there, but our troops will not be there. this one believed, the position can change roughly like the position with attacks, it has changed , it seems to me that it absolutely seems to me, but i have already said more than once, it seems to me that this is just the next stage of our war, it will be the same how we didn’t believe, or someone there didn’t know that there would be tanks, missiles, i don’t know, everything else, we generally started with the fact that our special forces ran with jewel inlavs and burned tanks wherever they could, these are semi-guerrilla measures, now we have, i i don't know, did you see what about... between germany is very interesting, not with poland, but with germany, there was a part that wasn't there before, about the support of ukrainian helicopters, that didn't happen, the only country

that we have so far handed over helicopters, three pieces, these were britain, britain continues to promote these main directions with other countries, and here germany is signing up for them, i honestly did not find mention of which ones exactly, but it is very interesting that it sounded, that is, this a new striking type of weapons that we did not have before. may politics is also in such a state of crisis as diplomacy, now it is not politicians who control events, but events control politicians, this is the impression, i am afraid that with diplomacy you and i have already agreed on what will happen, now we will take up politics, in fact, not so , that we, as in the movie that the tail wags the dog, did not reach such a degree, but the fact that politics has come very close to the events is true, and i think that part of it is all social networks and the ability of people... to move around the planet, communicate easily with each other, and therefore every event causes a resonance, the media is overloaded with tragic events, people read and learn

mostly about tragic events, and therefore every such event requires a reaction, there is no time for planning, there is no time for any long strategies, it is really necessary to have a very long time , i don't know, the imperial hundreds of years in order to be able to plan everything, for example, the decision said a very interesting phrase now in relation to ukraine. that we have announced a package and this package will be every year renew as much as it takes, not less than this amount, i have not heard this from anyone, despite the fact that in great britain the government can change, absolutely, moreover, we know that rish shunyk is a former former minister of finance , one of the reasons that followed, for example, the secretary of defense wallace, our second support, because he demanded to increase, to increase the allocation for weapons, it was a conflict with the new prime minister, as soon as. sunak came, over time there was a discussion about what you say or not the process is possible, it is possible, and it will happen, but sunak has now come to the point that despite the fact that he needs to spend money on all other projects, and he himself is a financier, a banker,

he understood. that nothing can be done, it is necessary to spend more, for example, a unique thing, he said that 5% of the budget will be transferred to the innovative development of the military, because the war in ukraine has shown that it is a war of technology, moreover, we are launching an analogue, a british analogue darpy, to be honest, i would expect that these words would be said by ukrainian officials, it is necessary to say that in ukraine there is a long-term plan, so many funds are allocated, plus only some of them are for innovation, plus a special agency that is engaged in the development of the newest ones. weapons and coordinate this process. well, by and large, this is the only way democracies can match dictatorships, because putin, he no longer thinks about electoral results, he can simply plan for 20 years ahead, the question is correct, how can he plan, i am ready to agree with that , which in concrete a consensus has been established in society. well, the government can sit down with the tunis government, hold consultations, come up with such an initiative after, well, you saw the leader a couple of days ago.

of the government, not the government, but the ministry of defense, criticized the acting ministry of defense for the fact that they use money from the ukrainian fund very slowly, by the way, this is a separate fund from the money that rishasunok promised, this is the money that the northern countries collect under the leadership of the great britain, that is , imagine, instead of saying, it is unique case, they are alarming that they are not spending enough for ukraine, slowly, we need more and faster, well, this is another motive of the election campaign, if in america the republicans say to the democrats, you give... a lot of money to other countries, but you have to think about america, then the great they say no to britain, you are not helping much, because this is the security of great britain, well, because great britain is closer, it is simply closer to the truth, although traditionally they are also libertarians due to many geographical and other reasons, but they realized that there is nothing they can do , with this tyrant can't come to an agreement, everyone has to, listen, even riche sunyk's statement that i guarantee government procurement for british military companies, it means that well... what we

say to ourselves that we have to go on the rails, they go , we have chances that we will build our policy in this way, that we will really be able to, and we will not be guided by events, but by events, but to finish our conversation, there is such an optimistic idea, i am sure that optimism has to be present, at least an indicator of this justice, that we've been at war for 2.5 years during this even... one of the biggest armies in the world and we 're still taking it, of course we just don't have to come up with anything sometimes, just lead by example if they understand it, being safe , for now, thank god, we definitely need to think about it, well, maybe that's just why they are safe, because they believe that we are the force that restrains russia from any other actions, not only we knots in this situation, russia is tied up to its ears in it, they also say that helping us is, relatively speaking, not easy.

investment in the future, and this investment in the future is still so cheap, that is, there is no need to explain to mothers and other voters where their children have gone and everything else, and that is why we still need to start talking with our allies about what we may not there will be enough strength, of course we must first set an example ourselves, because no one will come if we cannot mobilize ourselves, but in principle the difference is as it is, we have already proven that technologically nato weapons are better, if we get more technological we close it, we will get it... there are 4 million shells from britain alone, 15 million from the czech republic, the americans are accelerating, as the second world war showed that if the americans go crazy, they will break everything, just the power of the economy, it happens if add to all this coordination, the ability to fight, i think that this war can have completely different endings, even with all the optimism that you and i have, it can be better. thank you, mr. vadim, vadim prystayka, diplomat, former minister of foreign affairs of ukraine and ambassador

of ukraine in great britain. was on our air, thank you for being with us, and we are finishing the political club program on the spresso tv channel, vitaliy portnikov was with you, victory and peace to you, friends, good luck, then close to politics would be close to politics , close to the world, i am maria gurska, journalist of the ukrainian tv channel. information week and talk about as always, we will summarize the main events for ukraine, poland and europe. let's start with the fact that this week the senate of the united states of america voted to...