But President, mister President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media right now.
So I think we should start with the meeting in the Oval Office between Zelenski, Trump and Vance. As you were watching it, I mean, tell me what you were seeing.
I think there's a couple of different thoughts that jumped in my head.
One was the lack of respect for a foreign leader coming to the Oval Office, especially one that has sacrificed so much to save his country from an invasion.
David Sconi is a political scientist and his specialty is money in politics. So while much of the world was stunned by Donald Trump and JD. Vance's treatment of Lord mu Zelenski at their meeting in the Oval Office, David kind.
Of saw it coming. The variety's been on the wall for weeks now.
It may well be that the Trump administration decided they weren't in a back Ukraine immediately upon taking office three even months ago, and this meeting was just kind of a cherry on the cake to set that process further in motion. But it's this public declaration that relations between the US and the Ukraine are the worst they've been in years.
Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going to feel.
I'm not telling you because you're in no position to dictate that.
You're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel.
We're going to feel very good. We're going to feel very good and very strong.
Before the meeting went off the rails. Before Zelenski was asked to leave, the leaders had been negotiating a deal that would give the US access to a significant share of Ukraine's rare earth minerals. But Russia has also been working on their own set of deals with Trump, and what they're angling for could be catastrophic for Ukraine. From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am today.
Associate Professor of Political science and International Affairs at George Washington University David Seconi on the new Russia US relationship and Trump's corporate diplomacy. It's Tuesday, March four. David, the original purpose of this catastrophic meeting at the Oval Office was to sign a deal where the US would get access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals that did not happen, And now there is this big question mark over what support the US will supply to Ukraine at all going forward.
So what does that mean for Ukraine?
A really difficult time going forward. Ukraine has depended on the US military and financial assistance since February twenty twenty two, and there's not already substitute for everything that we've provided so billions of dollars to fund its government, key technical assistance to repair and rebuild parts of its economy and
infrastructure that Russia keeps destroying. And also the intelligence support that the US appears to have been supplying and to a very large extent since February twenty twenty two, helping identify Russian targets to the best of our knowledge, passing on critical knowledge about how the battlefield is unfolding that
Ukraine's been able to deploy on the ground. We don't know how much of that is in jeopardy, but conceivably, after Friday's meeting, the US could cut off every single type of assistance across all these different.
Dimensions going forward.
If I was your gran I would be worried and concerned about how it can continue to push back against the Russian military machine with basically half of the supporter, even less than that enjoyed in the last three years.
Well, let's talk a little more about alternate back is. Then Zelenski went straight to the UK to meet the Prime Minister their Kirstama after the meeting in the Oval Office, and this meeting it went very differently, didn't it. So can you tell me a bit about what came out of it and what you think the state of that alliance is at the moment.
I think there's been more or less a united European front since Friday's meeting, initially on social media, now in person, signaling to Ukraine that Europe finally disagrees with the Trump administration and is going to try to do everything in its power to back Ukraine with what it needs.
Rather than telling Ukraine what it should.
Do, our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now so that they can negotiate from a position of strength, and we are doubling down in our support. Yesterday evening, the UK signed a two point two billion pound loan to provide more military aid to Ukraine, backed not by the British taxpayer, but by the profits from frozen Russian assets.
Now, Europe doesn't have the scale of military production to make up for the US abandoning Ukraine, and Europe has its own economic difficulties, and there's a lot of debate or whether it can afford to invest so much of its limited resources or borrow more than it already has, in order to both equip itself in the event that NATO ceases to be this backstop for Europe and supply Ukraine with what the United States have been providing, and potentially even more if it wants to change the course
of the conflict.
And Trump has been complaining for some time that he doesn't want the US to foot the bill for Ukraine's security. So in staging this disastrous meeting with Ukraine and then having Europe signal that it might come to the rescue, did Trump ultimately get what he wanted here?
I think Trump wants America to lead the world in some respect, even if he doesn't want US to pay for it anymore. And the idea of all the European leaders coming together to fund their own version of foreign policy, the potentially challenge of the United States may weaken Trump's ability to project power that he's promised the US voters, So I wouldn't say he's sitting extremely pretty right now.
After Friday, there's been I think a lot.
More criticism in the media than I expected, even from some conservative sources, about how he advanced handled the meeting. Putin is extremely unpopular in the United States, and Zelenski has over a majority of support according to the best survey opinion polls that we have in this country. So he's tacked out a hardline decision that is in conflict with what most of the American public wants. So I think it's too soon to tell.
Coming up after the break, what Russia is promising Trump.
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David, there was a meeting between Russian and US officials in Saudi Arabia just over a week ago. Now, tell me about that meeting and how it compares to what we saw at the Oval Office.
This was a pretty hastily convened meeting by the societies to bring together a handful of high ranking officials on the Russian and the US side to start a conversation about what a normalization of relations between US and Russia would look like, trying to put US Russia relations on
a new footing. And both sides told each other what they wanted to hear, and therefore it seemed like there was optimism coming out of the meeting that they'd be able to hash something out, even though there's so much to be done in so many different issues that are unresolved.
Right, Can you tell me about the key officials who were at those talks.
So on the Russian side, they have the long time Foreign Minister Sergey Lvorov, who's been at this for decades now and extremely experienced, alongside the former Ambassador to the United States Yshkov, who's getting on in his years but has a lot of experience deal with the Americans. But I think the surprise to everybody was Caerier Dmitriev, who's severally younger than the other two from the Russian delegation. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked
at Goldman Sachs. He's a deal maker, he's a business person, and he could speak the language both corporate and just linguistically, just English, and he's been in these situations before. I think they're putting a lot of faith that he's going to be able to work some magic with Trump.
And his emissaries.
And when you say the corporate or the business perspective, what is that perspective on these talks.
It's something that I think a lot of tes have internalized, you know, since the election of November, is what do we do with Trump? Two point zero? How do we find a common language with Trump? And many countries, including Russia, have centered on this. Well, flattery, of course works, but so does speaking the language of business. So does offering Trump some type of business deal where America purportedly benefits financially. Right, Trump wants seems to want to demonstrate to American voters
that he's making America wealthier, more prosperous. So Russia had trotted out several proposals that really pull.
On this string with Trump.
Right, these are areas of joint Russian and American investment in rare earth minerals.
Right.
The Ukrainians offered something months ago the background of this deal last week, and the Russians offered a counter proposals saying, we have rare earth minerals.
Too, you should come and help develop them and we'll cut you in on the deal.
And something a little bit more nebulous and vague, but potentially just as large as the other two, which is the development of the Arctic. We all heard Trump desiring to annex Greenland. The Arctic is massive. It supposedly has vast.
Stores of rare earth minerals and even fossil.
Fuels, and a lot of other implications for economic development. And Russia has been competing ferociously for access to the Arctic over the last couple decades with the United States. They saw an opportunity to maybe make nice by having some talks about how to split the Arctic and make it so that Trump could come home with some win, some victory. But it just goes against decades of diplomatic strategy, So.
You can't necessarily see what the long term goal of the Trump administration is when it comes to this conflict.
I think our best guess is that he's okay with a multipolar world where Russia has taken seriously treated equitably in a way that it's wanted to for decades, and the US is fine with that, and Russia is seen as a partner rather than an adversary. And Trump can go back and say that he brought peace to different parts of the world through negotiation, even if there were
significance concessions made. But I think any business with Russia right now just does not have any sort of guarantee, especially what we've seen the last three years in terms of nationalization and property rights violations and just so very aggressive putin government towards businesses of all types.
And you talked about the way that Russia has reopened business negotiations with the US on these different fronts, But can you just tell me what was said about what Russia wants when it comes to Ukraine, what terms they would like to see.
Well, they very clearly don't want Ukraine to be ever invited in too NATO, and any type of agreement that spells that out in writing, whether it's twenty years or fifty years is going to be extremely welcome in Moscow. They also want recognition for the territories that they annexed in twenty fourteen, that is Crimea, as well as those that they've claimed since twenty twenty two, the four regions that they illegitimately annexed in September twenty twenty two. So
those are think are its main goals. But Putin doesn't necessarily want peace, right, he doesn't want the fighting to stop because I think he feels he has the upper hand that Russia can withstand another year or more of this conflict, can mobilize more troops if it needs to, and I expect their wishless to expand if their campaign picks up any speed.
And it does sound like from what you're saying, that Russia in approaching negotiations in the way that it has, they understand that for Trump, any peace deal is a business deal as well, that this is a transaction. Does it seem to you that that approach is working.
I think so.
So we need to think of the Trump approach as kind of like corporate diplomacy. Right, this is a bunch of business people that are trotting around the world asking what can you do for us and.
What can we give you in return?
And let's put some numbers to those conversations, rather than thinking about what does a new security architecture look like? Or what do troop deployments? How should they be organized? Or nuclear weapons. I think all of those are going
to take second priority to money. The Russians understand this, and that's why they've floated these various investment proposals because they think, and I think they're probably correct, that Trump cares more about the finances than he does about other ideological goals at this stage.
David, thank you so much for your time.
You're very welcome.
Also in the news today, lawyers for former military lawyer David McBride have argued their client's prison sentence failed to take into account that he was acting quote bravely and selflessly in an attempt to write what he thought was
a serious wrong. McBride is appealing against both his conviction and the severity of his sentence in the Act Court of Appeal after he was sentenced to five years and eight months for releasing documents to the ABC which detailed war crimes in Afghanistan and Mikey Madison has won Best Actress at the ninety seventh Academy Awards for her role as a sex worker who marries the son of a
Russian oligarch in the film Anora. Meanwhile, Adrian Brody won Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist, and Shawn Baker's Anora took home both Best Picture and Best Director. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM. Thanks for listening.
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