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Overnight, Russian drones hit Ukraine, destroying buildings, killing people
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But President Trump's gone back to bullying Ukraine's President Zelensky, telling him that his country will be destroyed unless he agrees to hand over more land to Putin
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Our Defence Secretary John Healy said earlier today that Britain was prepared to spend more
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than £100 million to deploy troops to Ukraine if there was a peace deal
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Well, at the moment, giant-sized if. I'm joined now by Lord Simon MacDonald, the former head of the Foreign Office
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And let's just pick up from there. The latest news is that Donald Trump is now saying that his great one-to-one with President Putin in Budapest may not go ahead, or at least there are no plans for that
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Do you think he has been played by Putin? And do you think he's beginning to recognize that
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It's deja vu all over again. I think, yes, he has been played by President Putin
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But as this happens again, I hope that he's seeing that. And so when it happens another time, his reaction will be more subtle than it has been the last three times
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Because he moved from saying that he thought Ukraine could win the war and take back all its territory and that he might give Ukraine Tomahawk missiles to exactly the reverse position within a day or two
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Indeed. And what seems to happen is that Ukraine has a good day, a good few days
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Moscow, particularly Putin, spots that, doesn't like that and reacts. So last week, all the talk was about the supply of Tomahawk missiles
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Tomahawk comes in various different varieties. The ones under discussion could have hit Moscow and St. Petersburg
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Putin really didn't want that. So he got on the phone to President Trump and worked the magic he worked several times before Made nice What your assessment at the moment of the European determination to back Ukraine Because that the other part of the picture
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I think that, too, has been pretty consistent. When Ukraine suffers a reverse in Washington
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the rest of Europe gets together to back Ukraine, and that has happened again
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So leading EU countries plus the United Kingdom restate the completeness of their support for Kyiv and hope that Washington notices
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And what's your assessment of where we are actually in the war at the moment? I read earlier today that the assessment is 100,000 Russian troops have been killed, not injured, but killed this year alone, and that Putin is beginning to have some difficulties about recruiting enough to keep resupplying his army
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What's your assessment? The latest figures are that one in 27 Russian men have been enlisted
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So this is a huge part of the population. In three and a half years, they've suffered over a million casualties, killed or injured
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The rate right now is about a thousand casualties, so killed and injured per day for very little gain territorially
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They are making some gains, but not sufficient to justify that level of bloodletting
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Russia has shown immense resilience. Nobody can see when that will come to an end, but surely it will
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No country can withstand that level of casualty indefinitely. So this is much, much greater than the war in Afghanistan for the Russians
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Correct. And we have seen maybe quite small but quite vocal anti protests starting to take place Mr Putin has his country under control And that historically is the case all the way until the moment the leader loses control So that must be on his mind as well
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But at the moment, I don't think he's worried about the domestic front. Let me ask you
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I was just discussing with Aggie just now, this use of Brexit, Brexit, Brexit by the government
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Is it your sense that the mood in the country towards Europe has changed enough for the government
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to be a little bit bolder on the subject? Or would you advise caution? I would say it takes two to tango
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Changing our mind about Brexit has to be synchronized with Brussels changing its mind
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So we may be in the early days of putting out more positive feelers
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But I do not think this government will go very far or should go very far unless it's certain of a positive reaction in Brussels
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And not much sign of that so far. I think you were probably in post in the Foreign Office when Prince Andrew was over in China and declined the offer to stay in British embassies and bought very, very expensive hotel suites instead, presumably on the taxpayers' money
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I mean, 50,000 quid or so is being talked about as the cost of accommodating him in hotels. What's your feeling about that
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I can't comment on that. I don't know the detail. But all I would say, Andrew, is that when someone falls and Prince Andrew has fallen hard and completely, there is a tendency to think that nothing that person did was any good
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The prince was a demanding trade envoy for sure, but he was effective
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He had the best access and he worked pretty hard So whilst I can comment on the detail I think we shouldn lose sight that over his long public service he did achieve something
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That's that's very interesting. Let's just circle around to where we started then and Ukraine again
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John Healy said that we're prepared to spend a lot of money putting in peacekeeping forces into Ukraine if there is a peace deal
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Now, we both know a peace deal for the time being seems very unlikely indeed
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Nonetheless, given that President Putin has been absolutely clear he would not accept or he would not want or allow or whatever Western European troops inside Ukraine
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Do you think this is a whole thing is a complete nonstarter? I think it's going to be part of a negotiation
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Clearly, President Putin does not want this. It is very easy to understand why he doesn't want it
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But although in detail things are going Russia's way on the ground, the bigger picture is still not going Russia's way
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So at some point, President Putin may have to accept things that right now he can't imagine himself accepting
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And in the meantime, we will have to accept continued sort of grey war attacks, you know, drones appearing in strange places, perhaps important undersea cables being snipped and the rest of it
6:51
It's going to be an uncomfortable period ahead. But I think NATO will push back
6:57
So after drones appeared over Poland, the Polish shot them down. And the polls are now saying that if President Putin flew across Poland to his meeting with Trump in Budapest, they would force his plane down and arrest him as a war criminal
7:15
I think the sequencing of announcements would be worth exploring. If it was after the announcement of the postponement, maybe that's not so muscular on the part of Warsaw
